The ceremony aboard an Italian Navy ship in the port of Valletta, Malta, had all the trappings of a European Union affair.
But the “cadets” being awarded certificates on a recent morning were an unusual group — 89 Libyans who the European Union hopes can help solve its migrant problem.
Officers in the Libyan Coast Guard, they were trained by the Italians to intercept and rescue migrant boats near the Libyan coast before they reach international waters. Normally, European forces intercept migrant boats and must take them to Italy.
But if the migrants are picked up by the Libyans in their own waters, they can be taken back to Libya instead.
For European leaders, training the Libyan Coast Guard is in many ways an attempt, against long odds, to shift the answer to Europe’s migration crisis off its shores, and deal with it at the source.
The ceremony aboard an Italian Navy ship in the port of Valletta, Malta, had all the trappings of a European Union affair. But the “cadets” being awarded certificates on a recent morning were an unusual group — 89 Libyans who the European Union hopes can help solve its migrant problem.
Officers in the Libyan Coast Guard, they were trained by the Italians to intercept and rescue migrant boats near the Libyan coast before they reach international waters. Normally, European forces intercept migrant boats and must take them to Italy.
But if the migrants are picked up by the Libyans in their own waters, they can be taken back to Libya instead.
For European leaders, training the Libyan Coast Guard is in many ways an attempt, against long odds, to shift the answer to Europe’s migration crisis off its shores, and deal with it at the source.
The plan is to give money, resources and training to the Libyans to keep the migrants there, an idea somewhat similar to the European Union’s deal with Turkey, only this one is with a country run by competing militias and multiple weak governments.
It is not the first time Italy has forged an agreement with Libya to stem the flow of migration. But the most effective attempt was before Libya descended into chaos with the collapse of its government in 2011.
Libya has since become the prime launching point for many of the 180,000 migrants who reached Italy last year, when more than 5,000 people died trying to make the Mediterranean crossing.
Even previous agreements met criticism for the sometimes brutal tactics that North African countries used to hold back migrants. Embryonic as it is, this latest plan to stem the flow is already being criticized as both potentially unworkable and inhumane.
Some international experts are skeptical about the scope of the operation, and human rights groups fear the plan is the equivalent of throwing the migrants back into the frying pan of Libya, where many are fleeing dangers and dire conditions.
The internationally backed Libyan government the European Union is dealing with has barely a toehold in the fragmented, violence-plagued country, and may even be verging on collapse. Much of the Libyan coast remains in the hands of criminal and rebel groups.
“It’s a first step taken with an interim government that doesn’t really control the country, but it’s a first step,” said Natalino Ronzitti, professor emeritus of international law and an adviser at the Institute for International Affairs in Italy.
“We need to see whether it complies with human rights and whether Europe will open identification centers for migrants in Libya, or will help Libya do so, but we know little about that at present,” Ms. Ronzitti said.
The pilot program is the first of its kind within Operation Sophia, the European Union’s anti-immigrant trafficking operation, and is part of an effort that European leaders agreed to this month at their summit meeting in Malta, where they pledged “sustainable and predictable” funding to train the Libyan Coast Guard.
The day before the Malta meeting, Italy’s prime minister, Paolo Gentiloni, signed an agreement with the Libyan premier, Fayez Serraj, to curb migrant trafficking from Libyan shores.
In exchange, Italy will provide money, technology, medicine and training to set up migrant holding centers in the country, which it ruled as a colony between 1911 and 1943.
Italian Embassy officials were the last European delegation to leave Tripoli in 2015, and last month became the first to return to their original compound.
This week, Italy’s Interior Ministry hosted a meeting in Rome with 10 Libyan mayors from the southern region of Fezzan, the main gateway for migrants into Libya, to underscore Italy’s intention to help them control the border.
“We can’t expect such a large phenomenon to have an immediate solution,” Roberta Pinotti, Italy’s defense minister, acknowledged one recent morning aboard the aircraft carrier stationed in Valletta’s harbor.
“But it’s a phenomenon that we want to be able to govern,” she said, citing the thousands of weekly arrivals in Italy, even in winter.
Joseph Muscat, Malta’s prime minister, echoed the sentiment. “The training didn’t take place because there is a crisis, but to try to prevent a crisis,” he said.
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The migrant holding centers are among the most contentious components of the plan.
Hussein Thwadi, the mayor of the western coastal city of Sabratha, Libya, the busiest departure point for Mediterranean crossings, has said that keeping migrants in Libya is a “dangerous step” because the country does not have the resources to deal with them.
Huge numbers of migrants are already in Libya, and they face constant threats, humanitarian groups point out.
Last year, Doctors Without Borders highlighted the “alarming levels of violence” against migrants and refugees in Libya, including sexual attacks and killings, not only from smugglers, but also from myriad armed groups and individuals.
Migrants reported being detained by militiamen for months in dire conditions. Others were kept in a form of slavery by private individuals who forced them into labor, often in exchange for scarce food.
“As Libya is not a party to the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, and is itself emerging from a humanitarian crisis, E.U. countries cannot assume that these rights are granted,” Doctors Without Borders said last year, referring to the United Nations treaty that outlines the rights of the displaced. “E.U. countries, therefore, should not deny people the chance of reaching Europe.”
Anything that stems the flow of migrants in Libya also runs the danger of running up against the interests of the powerful armed groups that control the trade. In a country racked by conflict, migrant smuggling has become a lucrative business for a bewildering array of criminal gangs and associated militias.
European leaders concede that Libya’s instability and widespread violence were causes of concern.
“The young men who received this training, when they return to their country, will face enormous pressure from criminal gangs and smugglers who have an influx of millions of euros a week,” Mr. Muscat, Malta’s prime minister, acknowledged.
Most smugglers’ boats depart from remote beaches along a 230-mile stretch of coastline in the west of the country, between Misurata and the border with Tunisia.
Theoretically, this territory is controlled by the U.N.-backed unity government led by Mr. Serraj, which installed itself in Tripoli last March with backing from the United States and other Western countries.
In reality, much of the coastline, as well as the desert towns through which the migrants pass, is controlled by a network of criminal and militia groups with a vested financial interest in the continuation of the trade.
Few believe the unity government has the military muscle, political clout or money to stop the trade, given that it barely controls even the capital, Tripoli.
Its forces control the city port and a handful of government ministries, but otherwise compete for turf with a rival administration led by a coalition of Islamists and militants from Misurata.
Gunmen from dueling factions frequently clash on the city streets in violence that has intensified in recent weeks, prompting warnings from Western officials that the unity government is in danger of being completely marginalized, if not worse.
The U.N.-backed administration is also under pressure from rivals in the east of the country, where forces led by the strongman Gen. Khalifa Hifter have taken near-complete control of the country’s second-largest city, Benghazi.
General Hifter has consolidated his forces, with backing from Egypt and Russia, and has shunned the unity government. During an Egyptian-led effort to broker peace between rival Libyan factions in Cairo this week, Mr. Serraj and Mr. Hifter refused to meet.
The Italian plan to train the Libyan Coast Guard has already run afoul of Libya’s fractious political scene after the San Giorgio, an Italian Navy vessel participating in the program, docked in western Libya last month.
In an indication of the potential pitfalls ahead, leaders in the east of Libya accused the Italians of illegally entering the country.
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