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Friday, June 3rd, 2016 | By Rachel Ehrenfeld

Originally published by American Center for Democracy. Republished with permission.

Tents of African migrants that are popping up under bridges in Paris look nothing like Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s tent (pic. right) that was pitched in the garden of Hôtel de Marigny, the government’s official guest house, opposite the Elysée Palace in December 2007. But Gaddafi’s tent was the foretaste to today’s African illegal immigrants’ makeshift camps littering the French Capital. Their spread forced the Mayor Anne Hidalgo, to announce the creation of the city’s first refugee camp.

In 2010, Qaddafi warned the Europeans of the growing threat of African illegal immigration. On August 30, 2010, as he ended his visit to Italy, the Libyan leader packed his tent and demanded that the European Union pays Libya €5 billion a year “to ensure its co-operation in preventing illegal immigration from Africa.”

Gaddafi warned:

“Europe runs the risk of turning black from illegal immigration; it could turn into Africa. There is a dangerous level of immigration from Africa into Europe, and we don’t know what will happen. What will be the reaction of the white Christian Europeans to this mass of hungry, uneducated Africans? We don’t know if Europe will remain an advanced and cohesive continent or if it will be destroyed by this barbarian invasion.”

Qaddafi urged the Europeans to “imagine that this could happen, but before it does we need to work together.” But the Europeans, despite the already increase number of African refugees, accused Qaddafi of blackmail. And when Libyan Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated rebels joined the “Arab Spring”, European and American forces intervened militarily in March 2011 to remove Qaddafi.

Their help resulted in a war-torn country with daily violent clashes. This gave al Qaeda’s adherents the opportunity “to establish well-armed, well-trained and combat-experienced militias,” as a report by the Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress concluded in August 2012.

This turned Libya into fertile ground for ISIS. And ISIS has been using Libya.

Libya’s coastline’s strategic importance as a step-stone to Europe was not wasted on ISIS. In January 2015, ISIS started to ship more than a million Muslim refugees to the Italian island of Lampedusa, just 162 nm from the Libyan coastline. This was followed by repeated calls for ISIS operatives to travel to Libya. Intelligence sources reported that “ISIS earns millions of dollars from taking part in the networks that smuggle migrants to Europe.”

It is unknown the ISIS operatives arrived in Europe via Libya as refugees. But until February 18, 2016 (!) ISIS operatives who traveled to Libya after March 1, 2011, had the ability to return to the U.S. from any country with a U.S. Visa Waiver Program. This made it also easier for ISIS operatives to legally enter European countries.

Qaddafi rightly predicted that the economic, social and security problems would overwhelm Europe. He did not threaten Europe and demanded less than Turkey’s Islamist President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

As refugees from the Middle East, Asia, and Africa are continuing to flood Europe, Muslim Brother Erdogan, who initially assisted ISIS, and who has made no secret of his aspiration to re-establish the Ottoman Empire, is demanding billions of euros (€6 bn according to the Turks, only €3bn according to the EU) from the European Union to hold millions of refugees in Turkey. Moreover, he demands the money together with speeding up Turkey’s full accession into the EU, and in the interim, allowing all Turkish nationals visa-free travel.

In the meantime, Erdogan attempts, sometimes successfully, to curb Europeans’ free speech, and intervenes in EU members’ internal affairs. This week he threatened the German parliament from adopting a resolution labeling the 1915 Turkish massacre of 1.5 million Armenians, as “genocide.” The vote in favor was overwhelming in the Bundestag (lower house).

Ankara responded swiftly; The Turkish Foreign Minister berated the German charge d’affairs, and Erdogan threatened actions that could harm the relations with Germany, using the refugees as a bargaining chip.

Rachel Ehrenfeld is founder and CEO of the American Center for Democracy and the Economic Warfare Institute.