Libya's chaos allows migrant numbers to surge

For the thousands of migrants braving the waters of the Mediterranean, the voyage to Europe is the last leg of a perilous journey that begins in Libya's remote southern desert, where bands of armed men have opened a hazardous new route out of Africa.

Politicians, international officials and civil society leaders in southern Libya say armed groups describing themselves as militias have transformed a remote desert route from the border with Sudan into a lucrative passage to the Mediterranean coast, contributing to a surge in the numbers of migrants transiting the oil-rich country.

"Most of the migrants are coming from the Sudan border," said Youssef Ibrahim, a political activist and medical student in Marzouq, a town in Libya's southern Sahara. "It's always been the most dangerous for civilians but there are now militias that are securing the road. There are organised militias who secure the passage [for illegal migrants]."

Libya's 11-month civil war has left much of the country in chaos. The vacuum has allowed the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or Isis, to get a foothold in the country and halted faltering efforts at staunching the flow of migrants, drugs, weapons and extremists across Libya's sparsely populated desert terrain.

Underscoring the dangers, Isis on Sunday released a video showing its militants beheading and shooting a group of Ethiopian migrants, ostensibly because they were Christians.

A UN report in February cited Italian officials as saying that 85 per cent of the 167,184 migrants rescued at sea in 2014 had originated from the Libyan coast. Many fear that Libya's spiral into chaos has made it easier to skirt law enforcement and may have hastened many departures.

Those living near Libya's smuggling routes say the migrants come in groups during the early spring months, when seas are the calmest. The migrants arrive from Eritrea, Ethiopia, South Sudan and other impoverished, war-ravaged African countries to the Libyan frontier, from where they follow harsh desert roads at the hands of unscrupulous smugglers while dodging roaming bands of jihadis.

Activists in southern Libya said the affiliation of the self-declared militias controlling the migrants is unclear but the network of desert roads from Kufra to Sabha - a crucial hub of the trafficking trade - is especially dangerous, with long stretches without telephone signals or towns. Migrants are increasingly risking this route to bypass the coastal cities of eastern Libya, where there is fierce fighting between militias.

"In these areas [between Sebha and Kufra] there are only Tebu [tribes]," said Jomaa Souky Hilali, a 37-year-old engineer and Tebu community leader in southern Libya. "No one else can drive there, because they are the sons of the desert from a long time ago."

The groups work in small segmented networks based on routes. For example, one group of smugglers transports migrants from Niger to Katroun, then another from Katroun to Sabha then another from Sabha to Tripoli, while another focuses on the sea passage. Mostly ethnic Tebu traffickers move African migrants across the southern borders, handing them off eventually to others. Separate networks of Arab smugglers bring Syrians, Palestinians and others across the Egyptian border into Libya.

"When they reach western Libya there is a big smuggling network," said Mr Hilali. "Once they bring them from the borders then there are local smugglers - Arabs not from Tebu - who hand over the migrants from one city to the other through the desert."

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Locals said migrants paid about $1,200 each to cross Libya and between $800 and $2,000 more for a place on a boat. The UN report said Libya's human trafficking business generated $170m in 2014 for sea crossings alone, with migrants paying fees at each stage of their voyage.

"They are a network of armed gangs, not militias," said Mohamed Mahdi Hoderi, a member of Libya's parliament from Sabha. "They take people from one border to another and then to the Libyan coast and then across the sea. We can't stop this because authorities are weaker than those gangs."

Policing of the Libya-Niger border by French paratroopers has done little to stem the flow of migrants, say locals. "The French military fights drug-smuggling and terrorists, but when it comes to Africans, they just let them pass through," said Mohamed Badi, an activist in Katroun, near Libya's border with Chad and Niger. "The French government facilitate procedures for the entrance of migrants into Libya."

Many Libyans have been horrified by the images of migrants lost at sea and pained at the role their own cousins and neighbours may have played in facilitating the deaths. But they say a lack of economic opportunity leaves young people with little other choice. 

"Even the smugglers themselves who do human trafficking have a conscience," said Mr Hilali. "Our youth are dear to us, and they have been lost to the smuggling trade."

Additional reporting by Mariam Metwally.

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