The first person in government to voice concern about the threat of ISIS was Foreign Minister George Vella. Speaking to this newspaper, the Foreign Minister said that he was concerned by the presence of an IS offshoot in Libya.

Three years after the ouster of Muammar Gaddafi, Libya is still on the brink of civil war. Libya is an artificial country. It is the result of hammering together Cyrenaica in the East and Tripolitania in the West. Under King Idriss, the project worked and when Gaddafi took over in a coup, the status quo applied, albeit under an iron fist.

The nature of Libya's uprising against Gaddafi leaves it in the position that it finds itself in. The Zintanis, the Misuratans, the people of Benghazi and other places all had their own mini revolution. Given the tribal nature of Libyan life, once Gaddafi was overthrown, a power vacuum ensued as the police and military unravelled. The country fell into the hands of different militia. Even now, the bomb and trade fire with each other. The situation is so fractured that Libya has two governments - three if you can count a splinter group that has also claimed legitimacy. But in the last 24 hours, the elected Libyan Government, which is in Malta at present, has allied with renegade general Kalifa Hifter, who was once a Gaddafi man. Hiftar has pledged to battle the militia and especially the Islamic one, which seems to have developed into an offshoot of IS.

As things stand, the Libyan government is in Malta - supposedly to engage in bilateral relations with Malta. Sources have informed this newspaper that the Libyan delegation met with the US ambassador and the Turkish ambassador, both key players in the ISIS crisis which is infolding on Turkey's border. Yet, it seems, the EU was not informed of the Libyan delegation's visit. Neither Turkey, nor the US are part of the European Union, which Malta is a part of. We are politically affiliated to the EU, yet here we are, with the Libyan Government in meetings with the US and Turkey, both of which are not EU members. What is going on?

It might well be that Malta has facilitated meetings between the two and Libya in a bid to share intelligence or to make clear political positions. If there is such a threat to the South, then surely, we should also be including the European Union in these matters. While we enjoy excellent relations with both the US and Turkey, we should also keep our European counterparts involved, for our own sake and the sake of Europe as a whole. There is a threat on our doorstep. We should be lobbying for as much support as we can now, and we should also be making our case clear.