Will the Master of Whispers become the Prime Minister? Or is it a need of the hour?

   During a visit to Moscow in 1980, Marco Minniti, a bald and bold young functionary in the Italian Communist Party, mortified his comrades by asking a Red Army general why the Soviets had occupied Afghanistan.

   The general pointed south on a map and explained that the far away land mattered for his country’s national security. Now, decades later, it is Mr. Minniti, Italy’s powerful Interior Minister and the hard-nosed veteran of its intelligence apparatus, who is again looking south — but to Africa, which he calls the “mirror of Europe”.

   A mass migration streaming up Africa, through Libya and across the Mediterranean, enabled by human traffickers and exploited by political populists, poses a challenge to his Centre-Left government, not to mention his country and continent.

   To stem the flow of migrants and the potential infiltration of terrorists he is calling on his vast government experience. Minniti is surrounded by bookcases filled with tomes about espionage and religious fanaticism.

   Mr. Minniti was the “protagonist of the breakthrough” last week, when Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj of Libya requested the support of Italian naval ships to counter human trafficking. It is a risky endeavour that Italy has nevertheless sought for years, desperate to cut the migrant flow.

          The chosen one

   

   Some political observers have even suggested that Mr. Minniti, with his leftist background and ability to please conservatives with tough talk on security, might be a good candidate for Prime Minister.

   He has already served in five centre-left Italian governments, though he emphasised that he has never asked for a position. “I’ve always been chosen,” he said. “Minniti could be a card to play,” said Marco Damilano, a prominent Italian journalist who has written often about him. Mr. Minniti dismissed such talk.

   He said he was instead more focused on countering Islamic radicalism by making pacts with local imams that required them to preach in Italian, building new relationships in Africa and working with the Libyans to defeat human traffickers. “Human relationships count a lot,” said the old spy master.

          Little help

The number of migrants who have landed in Italy this year totals more than 95,000, with about 2,000 who drowned. It is a crisis that has defied nearly every attempt to solve it. Despite a mix of appeals and threats by Mr. Minniti at European Union meetings, neighbouring countries have done little to share Italy’s crushing burden or to try to agree on a new code of conduct for rescuing migrants near Libyan waters.

More than 40% of migrants at sea are now rescued by private aid ships, and Mr. Minniti wants to make sure those ships are not colluding with traffickers — an accusation popular among rightwing politicians, white nationalist groups and a Sicilian prosecutor.

“My duty is to be close to those who are afraid, to reassure them, to liberate them from fear,” said Mr. Minniti, who argued that the left can no longer afford to ignore or look down on people scared by immigration or terrorism. “I think fear is the crucial element of the next 10 years in democracy in Italy and all the world.”