Less than 10 months have passed since the episode that a senator had defined un case of unscrupulous "rejection", ridiculous and at the same time humiliating for them and for us.
What had happened? A military of the Julia as soon as they landed in Misrata, permission was denied by the Libyan authorities because "their passport would have missed the entry visa ".
They were sent home in the same plane (v.articolo).
"Quite right! What's the problem?" - someone will say. The question was not of form, it was of substance: that a government would allow itself to humiliate the soldiers of a mission in its support was symptomatic of the level of consideration towards us.
Well, after less than a year, are we full stop? Negative, we are in worse shape.
Over 200 military personnel from the Bilateral Assistance and Support Mission in Libya (MIASIT) they have been blocked since April in Libya.
And guess the reason ... Visas are not issued to colleagues who have to replace them!
We are talking about compatriots, in their eighth month of stay in the theater (and over 200 families waiting), who, however, do not make the news ...
The foreign minister who has just visited Tripoli? He writes his thoughts on his personal profile and has them retweeted on the official account of the Farnesina (which does not even try to publish an institutional quote).
Will he have belatedly thought of our soldiers too? We doubt it but we hope so. Not so much for its international credibility - the level of which cannot be affected in the least - but for that of President Draghi who will meet his Libyan counterpart Dabaiba in Rome on Monday. Let's hope he doesn't have to make him take the position ("prone") of the previous Prime Minister of the Italian Republic who 6 months ago showed the strong man of Cyrenaica the terrible consequences for the kidnapping of 18 Italian fishermen in international waters (photo below ).
One should ask, after too many years of watching, what are we still doing down there, with few men and means, without strategies, mocked in an international context in which we always play the part of the penitent in the game of the "slap of the soldier". We know who in turn gives us the slap but we prefer to turn around and take another one, laughing - for no reason - with everyone, rather than trying to change places.
Photo: Farnesina / Twitter
