European plans for a military campaign to smash the migrant smuggling networks operating out of Libya include options for ground forces on Libyan territory.

The 19-page strategy paper for the mission, obtained by the Guardian, focuses on an air and naval campaign in the Mediterranean and in Libyan territorial waters, subject to United Nations blessing. But it adds that ground operations in Libya may also be needed to destroy the smugglers’ vessels and assets, such as fuel dumps.

“A presence ashore might be envisaged if agreement was reached with relevant authorities,” says the paper which is expected to be endorsed by European Union foreign ministers on Monday before the mission is ordered by heads of government at an EU summit in June.

“The operation would require a broad range of air, maritime and land capabilities. These could include: intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; boarding teams; patrol units (air and maritime); amphibious assets; destruction air, land and sea, including special forces units.”

The document speaks of possible operations to destroy smugglers’ assets “ashore”. This could include “action along the coast, in harbour or at anchor of smugglers assets and vessels before their use”.

Senior diplomats and officials in Brussels, speaking privately about the military planning, have consistently stressed that there would be no prospect of “boots on the ground” in Libya. But it is clear from the detailed planning document that they might be needed and are not being ruled out.

EU leaders ordered Federica Mogherini, the union’s foreign and security policy coordinator, to come up with proposals for military action to attack the networks three weeks ago. The resolution is being drafted by the British in New York. Mogherini went to China last week and believes Beijing will not veto the plans in the security council. Russia is the biggest problem. It says it is willing to “cooperate” but may object to some of the more robust language.

The campaign’s aim is defined as “to disrupt the business model of the smugglers, achieved by undertaking systematic efforts to identify, seize/capture, and destroy vessels and assets before they are used by smugglers … The operation will need to be phased in and will be heavily dependent on intelligence.

“The Mission is therefore defined to be ‘to provide surveillance, intelligence gathering and sharing, and assessment of smuggling activity towards and through the Southern Central Mediterranean Area, and to stop, board, search and dispose of, possibly through their destruction, trafficking vessels and assets before use and thereby contribute to EU efforts to disrupt the business model of trafficking networks.”

Subject to a UN go-ahead, the military operations would need to focus on actions “inside Libya’s internal and territorial waters and the coast”, the document says, while adding that seizing and destroying vessels on the high seas or in international waters in the Mediterranean would also be mandated.

The planning document admits that the campaign could result in innocent people being killed: “Boarding operations against smugglers in the presence of migrants has a high risk of collateral damage including the loss of life.”

The military campaign planning has been ordered because of the influx of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East across the Mediterranean from Libya, with the death toll this year alone already nudging an estimated 2,000.

The paper cites information from the Italian police authorities saying that 200,000 migrants are preparing to board shoddy vessels to risk the crossing from Libya to Italy’s southern shores.

Up to 10 EU countries have volunteered to take part in the campaign, said senior officials, including Italy, which would command it, Britain, France, and Spain.

Across the Mediterranean, people smugglers are advertising their services on Facebook, promising safe passage to migrants desperate to reach Europe. Their pages offer a glimpse into a smuggling network that spans three continents, generates hundreds of millions of dollars, and has become, in effect, an alternative asylum service for the EU.

“With the beginning of the new season we have a range of journeys on offer. Turkey Libya Italy, $3,800. Algeria Libya Italy, $2,500. Sudan Libya Italy, $2,500… The boats are all wood… If you have questions, contact me on Viber or WhatsApp.”

This is not an ad from a travel brochure. It’s a Facebook update posted by a people smuggler, Abdul Aziz, from the Libyan port of Zuwara on 21 April. Abdul Aziz is just one of hundreds of smugglers now using social media to promote their services to migrants and refugees trying to reach Europe.

Their pages advertise everything from fake documents to safe passage by land, air, or sea. Many are illustrated with photos of luxury cruise liners or crisp new passports, and include package deals – “Kids go free” is a popular offer – as well as glowing testimonies that purport to be from migrants who have made the journey.

But behind the glib promises and the slick online communications is a ruthless real-world web of smugglers and con men who thrive on the vulnerability of the migrants.

This web extends not only across the Mediterranean and the Middle East but deep into sub-Saharan Africa. Abdul Aziz alone claims to have agents in “almost every Arab state” and says “if people can’t get here to Libya, I have legal and illegal ways to get them into the country.”

The network that links a boat-runner like Abdul Aziz to a passport forger in Istanbul or a truck driver in Eritrea is an underground, ever-shifting configuration of personal contacts, criminal gangs, and one-off business deals that runs across national borders and is almost impossible to police.

The adaptability of this system only makes it more efficient: last year some 220,000 migrants crossed the Mediterranean, most leaving Libya in smugglers’ boats before being rescued at sea by the Italian coastguard or navy. Since the start of 2015, another 35,000 have reached Italy. More than 1,800 have drowned in the attempt.

There is nothing new in this. African migrants have been sailing from Zuwara for at least 30 years. But the proliferation of Arabic-language smuggling pages on Facebook reflects a surge in demand from Syrian and other Arab migrants since the uprisings of 2011, as well as a growing confidence among the smugglers themselves, many of whom post their mobile phone numbers online or field enquiries via online messaging apps.

Abdul Aziz, who spoke to the BBC via Skype, said that between 10 and 20 people contact him through his Facebook page every day. “Until 2012 we didn’t use social media at all,” he said. “Now, it accounts for between 30% and 40% of my business.”

The collapse of the Libyan state has also emboldened the smugglers, allowing them to promote themselves online without fear of arrest. Abdul Aziz laughed at the suggestion that his Facebook page might attract the attention of the authorities. “What authorities? There aren’t any authorities. There isn’t even a regime. There’s nothing.”

Giampaolo Musumeci, an Italian journalist who has written a book about North Africa’s smuggling gangs, sees their growing social media presence as “part of the marketing operation for the biggest illegal travel company in the world.”

According to Musumeci, this “company” made something between 300m and 600m euros (£235m-£470m; $215m-$430m) last year from those trying to get into Europe, and now constitutes an unofficial asylum service for people whose lives have been derailed by poverty, chaos, and war.

“What I’m selling,” a Pakistani smuggler in Italy told Musumeci, “is the dream of Europe.”

For many of those who arrived in the EU last year, it’s a dream that could not be realized through legal channels.

Take Ayham al Faris, a Syrian translator and anti-Assad campaigner who fled his country in fear for his life in October 2011. Before he left, Ayham tried to apply for a visa from the French and Austrian embassies in Damascus. He got nowhere. Later, after he had reached Turkey, Ayham approached the German, Australian, and Bosnian embassies with the same request. “They didn’t even say, ‘We don’t have programmes for you, we can’t give you a visa now,’ or something like that… They just say, ‘Send us an email,’ but when I send them my email they just throw it away.”

Faced with this wall of bureaucratic indifference, Ayham made his own way into Greece, where he used Facebook to contact a Syrian smuggler called Hafez. “He said he can take me wherever I want, no problem, it’s easy for him. The most important thing is that you have your money in your pocket.”

Despite the sales patter, Hafez failed to get Ayham out of Greece. Eventually, Ayham bought a fake passport from another smuggler and, at the 11th attempt, got on a flight to Paris. He has now been granted asylum in the Netherlands.

It’s a case that illustrates the crux of the problem: people smugglers are responding to a demand for asylum that Europe’s politicians are unwilling to meet. As long as this situation persists, says Musumeci, the smugglers will always find a way into the fortress.

“They’re thinking about how to get into Europe 24 hours a day… They communicate. They stay in touch. They change routes… one of these guys told me, “We study Europe, we study the laws, and the more you close the borders the more money we’re going to make.'”

New EU proposals to distribute migrants across member states and break up clandestine networks might help to reduce people smuggling within Europe. But Musumeci says it will do nothing to stop the boats coming across the Mediterranean. Dealing with that, he argues, will require a whole new level of engagement with the political turmoil in parts of Africa and the Middle East.

“Migration is going to force us to deal with these international issues… We need to focus on Libya, Eritrea, Somalia, Syria. It may sound naive, but it’s the only way to stop the influx… We’ll never stop this just by closing the doors. I’ve talked to dozens of migrants, and these people are willing to die to get into Europe.”

Despite the obvious difficulties, European countries are still trying to solve the problem at the level of policing. Europol, the EU’s law enforcement agency, recently launched an intelligence program, JOT Mare, which is supposed to disrupt or dismantle the smuggling networks that are bringing so many migrants across the Mediterranean.

A spokesperson for Europol confirmed that their agents will look at the online presence of the smugglers: “JOT Mare is focussing on all modi operandi used by facilitators of irregular migration in the Mediterranean Sea, including the use of social media.”

He conceded, though, that “Europol has no operational cooperation agreement with Libya” – the point of departure for the vast majority of migrants.

In Zuwara, Abdul Aziz hadn’t heard of JOT Mare, but didn’t sound too worried. “It’s just words on paper. I’m not afraid, because it’s meaningless. How are they going to follow me? Are they going to come to Libya? If they try, it would be considered an invasion. Are they going to catch me outside Libya? I don’t go outside Libya. And if I do go, they won’t know about it.”

Instability across the Islamic world will dominate talks as NATO foreign ministers gather in Antalya, Turkey, on 13-14 May.

The security implications for NATO stretch from Afghanistan and its potential involvement there beyond 2016 to the alliance’s southern perimeter where the alliance is tracking how an EU military mission could be deployed to halt the huge numbers of immigrants being illegally trafficked from Libya across the Mediterranean.

“Right now all eyes are on the EU and what mandate might be given to Europe’s militaries,” said Douglas Lute, US ambassador to NATO, referring to the EU’s recent request to the UN for a mandate to militarily guard the Mediterranean against human trafficking into the EU.

Libya has been in a state of chaos ever since the fall of its former dictator, Muammar Gaddafi, and the situation scarcely seems to be improving. But it’s not just a nightmare on land – Libya is starting to poison the Mediterranean too.

Since a civil war and UN-backed external intervention put an end to Colonel Gaddafi’s regime in 2011, good order and security have never been restored. Libya remains divided, with continuous clashes between rival militia and two internal “governments”.

The attack against the US Consulate in Benghazi was just one incident in a spiral of unrest.

Italian naval forces are back to conducting search-and-rescue operations in the Mediterranean on a daily basis in order to cope with a massive surge in migrants trying to cross the sea from North Africa, where Libya is the primary transit point. Thousands have died in recent months alone.

But on April 17, they had a very different task: a Sicilian fishing boat had been seized by armed men, 50 nautical miles north of the Libyan Coast, forcing the Italian Navy to board and retake control of the vessel.

And on top of the nascent piracy problem, Libya’s efforts to police its coast are apparently getting more violent.

Back off

A Turkish cargo ship was shelled by the Libyan military on May 11 2015, having defied warnings not to approach the port city of Derna; one crew member was killed.

This comes after a Greek oil tanker was bombed twice on January 5 2015 by Libyan air force jets while delivering fuel to industrial facilities off the port of Derna. Two crew members were killed and two more injured in that bombing, which a Libyan military spokesman said was a response to “suspicious” movement and possibly transporting Islamist militants to Derna.

In fact, these attacks are probably part of the two parallel Libyan governments’ struggle for control of the state-owned oil firm NOC, which remains under lax official control since both appointed officials to run the firm and the oil ministry.

The point is not which of Libya’s governments should be in charge. The point is that state fragility ashore inevitably results in maritime insecurities – with all sorts of nasty spillover effects and thorny implications for regional and international security.

Claim and counter-claim

The international community in general – and the EU in particular – is ostensibly concerned about the smuggling of migrants from the North African coast to Europe. While they come from a great many countries, most of them depart from Libya, which in turn is clear evidence of the lack of law enforcement ashore.

But the EU’s real fear is the extensive recruitment and popularity of Islamic State and the group’s threats putting European and Italian targets on top of their list.

Above all, it’s worried that the likes of Islamic State could easily exploit this mass movement of anonymous and undocumented people by sea to establish cells in Italy and the rest of Europe.

How not to do it

Back in 2011, analysts expressed their concerns about the likelihood of this scenario and urged the international community to find ways in preventing Libya from turning into the Mediterranean’s Somalia.

Yet despite their warnings, Libya’s maritime problems are following a very similar pattern to Somali piracy, which emerged off the Horn of Africa following the collapse of the federal government in 1991. In so many cases before, state fragility, instability and insecurity ashore have been proven to lead to insecurity at sea; Libya is simply conforming to type.

Search-and-rescue operations and armed interventions are of course tactical options, but the responses we’re seeing try ineffectually to treat the symptoms while doing nothing to address the root causes on the mainland.

The whole Libyan affair is an example of how not to manage military intervention. A solid long-term strategy needs to be put in place before, or at least in parallel with, any decision to intervene against authoritarian regimes or post-revolutionary upheaval. And as part of that, the maritime domain has to be seen, not as a barrier that separates one coast from another, but rather as a medium that connects them.

The Mediterranean has always had a massive geostrategic importance, defined by three choke points (Suez, Bosporus and Gibraltar) for primary sea lanes, with vital importance for international energy and economic security. But the Mediterranean of 2015 is becoming a bigger security challenge than ever.

The EU can’t afford to overlook the desperate security crisis brewing in its own neighbourhood. Now that it’s established a presence to address it in the Indian Ocean, and recognised the need to secure the Gulf of Guinea, it needs to start taking the Mediterranean seriously.