War Deepens Libya Migrant Crisis
A member of the Tunisia’s national guard stops a fishing boat in the sea bordering Tunisia and Libya as they check vessels for illegal migrants trying to reach Europe on May 5, 2015 off the coast of Tunisia’s southeast port of Zarzis. The chaos and violence in Libya and the region has driven up the number of immigrants risking their lives to cross the Mediterranean in hope of reaching Europe. Fethi Belaid/AFP Photo
TRIPOLI // After 15 years shipping human cargo, Abu Samir understands the need to soothe his customers.
“I won’t take you on rough waters,” he told a would-be migrant one evening this month, as they stood on a Libyan beach, looking out toward Europe.
“I’ll take you when they are smooth like today.”
Abu Samir’s business has been flourishing as more desperate migrants board rickety boats for the dangerous journey across the Mediterranean. As Libya’s own conflict worsens, he’s about to get busier.
While many of his clients have been people passing through, Libya’s war and social breakdown are starting to force resident Syrians, Somalis, Nigerians, Sudanese and even some Libyans to leave as the African country teeters on the brink of collapse.
Faltering electricity grids and unmaintained water pipelines add to the grievances pushing people to risk drowning at sea on the way to Europe’s shores.
The vast majority of those who fled to Europe in 2014 were not Libyans, said Mattia Toaldo, a Libya expert at the London- based European Council on Foreign Relations. That will change “if the situation keeps worsening”, he said.
The four years since the removal of Muammar Qaddafi has seen Libya lurch from crisis to conflict to civil war. It is now split between two rival governments and their militia allies, with ISIL taking advantage of the insecurity to carve out a fiefdom.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that 400,000 of Libya’s 6 million people have been displaced by the conflict.
The conflict caused oil output to slump, deepening the country’s economic plight.
Authorities spent more than a quarter of its $106 billion foreign-currency stockpile last year to keep the country running. Still, nationwide blackouts lasting up to 10 hours are likely by August, electricity minister Nuredin Salem said from Tripoli. Contracts with foreign companies to supply mobile generation units were cancelled this year as the country could not afford them, he said.
In Tripoli, residents are digging wells on their property or relying on fountains at local mosques. Suleiman Abboud, head of the information department at the water ministry in Tripoli, said officials are working to minimise water shortages.
Daily life is punctuated by kidnappings, assassinations and threats, said Bilal Bettamen, a 25-year-old who witnessed the wave of violence engulfing Libya from the eastern city of Benghazi.
“After the revolution business was booming in the city, there was entertainment, businesses, malls opening, coffee shops, there was life,” he said. It all went wrong from June 2012, with assassinations, car bombs and public executions.
“By 2013, the city began to feel grim and was slowly dying,” he said. “There’s no police, no leadership, no justice, no law.”
Mr Bettamen says he gave up hope of a better future and emigrated to Canada. Others don’t have the resources.
That’s where Abu Samir comes in.
“Libyans who can’t take a flight for political or legal reasons, as well as families and young people who can’t afford air fares, take boats,” said the human trafficker, who is in his 40s. He says he has shipped 70 to 80 Libyans since last year.
The economics of trafficking are brutally simple and dictate the likelihood of survival, he says.
The former fishermen charges from $800 to $1,500 per person for a place on one of his boats.
“A Libyan or a Syrian can afford to pay more than others, and so they travel in better and less crowded boats and have greater chances of arriving safely,” he said. “Africans pay less.”
Abu Samir’s client on the beach outside Tripoli is a Syrian baker, who asked to be identified as Abdelrahim.
“I came to Libya to try and make a living but the country has changed in the past two years and it has become a real threat for me to stay,” Abdelrahim said.
Abu Samir tells the Syrian he will be waiting for him on the chosen day. A dingy will ferry migrants to a larger inflatable boat anchored about 1 kilometre offshore that will make the journey to European waters. Abdelrahim says if Abu Samir can arrange for a fake visa in time, he’ll try to bring along his wife, currently in Turkey.
“We have no home, no country. We are left with no choices. I feel numb and only think of finding a new, safe home,” said Abdelrahim.
* Bloomberg