Libya and Migrant Smuggling
International Journal on Criminology
From Syria and Iraq , Lebanon and Egypt , sub-Saharan Africa and Tunisia ,
migrants flock to the Libyan coast , a springboard to Europe . While under
Gaddafi there were 4,500 passages to Europe in 2010 , the passage of migrants has become a migratory tsunami ( 170,000 in 2014 ). In 2014 , 60 percent of all migrants to Europe took this route , known as the “ Central Mediterranean ,” from the Libyan coast to southern Italy . For some states in the region and for the Islamic State , these flows of migrants are a strategic weapon ; for criminals and human traffickers , they are easy prey .
Smuggling and migration routes end their African course on the Libyan coasts . There , an elaborate criminal system is rooted , a multi-ring chain of trafficking . From east to west , the collection of potential migrants takes place from Eritrea , Gambia , Ghana , Mali , Niger , Nigeria , Chad , Senegal , and Somalia . One of the major “ pipelines ” goes from Ghana to Libya , via Burkina Faso and Niger ; trucks , fuel , refugees , and water points , everything is planned . In the east , a hub at the triple Egypt-Sudan-Libya border , bandits dream of border areas , especially when tribes living off the traffic ride on futile postcolonial dotted lines , as is the case here . As on Libya ’ s western border , there is also one on the Tunisian side , which we now present .
This is undoubtedly the most important point of our entire study : who can do more , can do less . Therefore , we have chosen to present and describe in detail the most important pole of smuggling and criminal trafficking , by far , of all the territory considered by our study , more important than the troubled zone of Perthus-La Junquera and more dangerous and fraught with criminal implications than the troubled zone of Andalusia-Algesiras .
This “ mother of all troubled zones ”— absent from the maps of globalization — is that of Ben Gardane-Ras Jedir , in the Tunisian governorate of Medenine , on the borders ( for here , how can one speak of a real border ?) of Tunisia and Tripolitan Libya ( the “ border ” between these two countries is 460 km long and largely desert ).
A globalized but invisible business network and an efficient and structured cross-border parallel trade pole , Ben Gardane ( with about 60,000 inhabitants ) is located on Tunisian territory ; 30 km to the east , Ras Jedir is against the border , on the Libyan side and clearly in the orbit of Tripoli .
Ben Gardane-Ras Jedir : Genealogy of a “ Troubled Zone ”
2017-2018
• Throughout the zone , the specter of “ Islamo banditry ” prowls around , by criminal infiltration of regional militias or by Islamist contamination of
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