# taz.de -- Migration policy in Libya: Where hope is dying
> The country is drowning into chaos, the traffickers use it to smuggle
> migrants and refugees to Europe. No good climate for the EU to find
> partners.
(IMG) Bild: Libyan Red Crescent members carry a deceased migrants body away from the beach
Each of the 241 passengers on the flight of Libyan Airways received a
personal hygiene kit, underwear, a shirt, jogging suit and shoes. All
sponsored by the International Organization for Migration (IOM). The 241
refugees from Nigeria, who entered the Airbus A330 in August, were on their
way home. They had abandoned their dream of Europe, had broken the Libyan
reality and would rather return to the uncertainty of their homeland.
Each of their fates is a reminder of how vulnerable migrants are in Libya:
one was attacked, robbed and shot. A twenty-year-old was stopped on the
sea, on his way to Europe, and thrown into jail. The newspaper Libya Herald
said she „I never thought that Libya could be worse than at home. I am glad
to be able to return again. „What they mean by this are the notorious
detainment centers, prisons where migrants are imprisoned to extort money
from them. Human rights organizations such as Amnesty or Human Rights Watch
have gathered dozens of testimonies of torture or ill-treatment committed
by Libyan guards to the inmates.
In fact, anyone who has been illegally or illegally immigrated to Libya is
regarded as a criminal who can be detained for deportation indefinitely,
without judicial or legal assistance. Asylum law has not yet been anchored
in Libyan law; deportations are carried out arbitrarily and without
hearing.
A total of 581 Nigerians have carried the IOM 2016 on these voluntary
return flights to their homeland. 3,000 migrants from Niger and others from
Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Guinea-Conakry, Ghana, Sudan and the Gambia. A
small fraction, compared to the 170,000 refugees who were sent to Italy by
December 2016, while more than 3,000 people drowned on the same escape
route. However, official repatriation agreements do not exist in Libya –
after all, the country is in chaos: more than 300,000 internally displaced
persons (IDP) are among the UN refugee aid UNHCR, most of them due to years
of fighting around the cities of Bengazi and Sirte.
## Young Transit
The absence of state control in Libya has meant that most refugees are
opting for the risky crossing over the Mediterranean to Europe in the face
of the EU-Turkey Agreement. The EU is therefore trying to implement various
measures in Libya to close this route. But no one knows exactly how much
refugees or migrants are waiting for the crossing. While the European
border protection agency Frontex suspects one million volunteers, serious
estimates go from half. But Libya has only recently changed to a transit
country from a receiving country in which Bangladeshis, Filipinos and
inhabitants of sub-Saharan Africa found work. In 2009, before the fall of
the Libyan dictator Muammar al-Gaddafi, 2.5 million migrants lived there.
Even in 2013, when the country had long since become unstable, it still
accounted for about 1.7 million.
The journey across the Mediterranean was not unusual for a long time. In
the times of the Gaddafi regime, about 40,000 people traveled across the
Mediterranean to Europe every year. The crucial difference: since the
Syrian conflict has broken out, the crises in West Africa and the Horn of
Africa have been added.
For the refugees, two routes to Libya are crucial, which vary according to
the political constellation. Migrants from West Africa, such as Nigeria or
Niger, often travel through the desert town of Sebha in the south-west of
Libya towards the coast. Migrants from Eritrea or Sudan themselves travel
via Khartoum via the Goldgräbercamps around the city of Dongola to Libya.
Once they have crossed the border, they are a game ball in local power
struggles: in the south of Libya between the Tebu and Tuareg tribes.
Whoever has entrusted himself to the wrong smugglers is captured by the
tribes and only released for a high ransom. In the Libyan power vacuum,
where every city and every quarter is its own government, the migrants are
regarded as a welcome source of income.
Threatened by IS
In the south, this has led to the migrants and their smugglers avoid the
city of Kufra because of the fighting and prefer to travel around the
world. In the north, on the other hand, the city of Ajdabiya was long
considered the logistical center of the smugglers, in order to spread the
migrants to the different sites on the coast. Even the policeman of the
city was involved in the smuggling, as a refugee tells: „He is 50 or 60
years old. He is very cruel. „The fact that Ajdabiya has been abandoned as
a center is representative of the dynamism of the conflict in Libya: the
two great power poles of the country, the Haftar government in the East,
and the unity government supported by the international community West
fought the Islamic state, which had settled in Sirte and Bengasi. The
latter, on the other hand, tried to expand towards the capital of Tripoli.
Thus, the IS had direct access to the migrant routes.
In fact, the Islamists captured hundreds of them and enslaved or murdered
them. Meanwhile, Bani Walid, the oasis city in the west, is the new center
of the smugglers, as the city is far from the front line between the
government in the east and the west. And with the crucial difference that
it takes only hours from here to bring the migrants to the depositories
Subratha and Zawiyah on the coast.The few, still functioning state organs,
which could act against the smugglers, are hopelessly overstrained. Anyone
who visits Captain Ashraf, one of the senior officers of the Libyan coast
guard in Tripoli, knows why he fails in the fight against a million-strong
industry: he has only six inflatable boats available. And „We control only
two coastal sections“ – of six. What happens in the others, he does not
know, there are competing groups.
## Partner Italy
Under Gaddafi's regime, it looked different: he sent immigrants from
southern African countries to Libya – or looked beyond illegal border
crossings. His followers deserved their transport, and the country's
economy could use cheap labor. Libya was booming, many migrants wanted to
find jobs there. At the same time, Gaddafi used the migrants to threaten
Europe with them. „Should Europe be black?“ Was a phrase that he emitted
gloomily to extort money.After a long period of isolation of Libya as a
terrorist state, Gaddafi returned to the international political scene with
these arguments. In 2000, he signed an anti-terrorist and anti-immigration
agreement with his primary contact person Italy, and in 2008 even a
friendship contract. This led to joint patrols on the Mediterranean, the
establishment of electronic control instruments on Libya's southern border
by Italian companies and Italian assistance in dialogue with the EU. From
2009, Libya even accepted the admission of refugees to the Libyan coast by
pushing back Italian mariners.
This policy, however, was stopped after violent international criticism
because it violated the law. In the process „Hirsi vs. Italy „at the
European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, there were about 200 people
who had been deported to Libya and from there to their homelands –
including Eritrean claimant Jamaa Hirsi. In 2012, the Court of First
Instance came to the conclusion that Italy had thus infringed the European
Agreement on Human Rights. But at that time the Court had already been
overtaken by the story. Gaddafi was no longer in power, the country was
sinking in chaos, tens of thousands of foreigners fled to Algeria – or even
to Europe – for fear of pogroms.
## New Approaches
Anyone who wants to pursue migration policy in Libya now no longer has to
rely on a single actor like Gaddafi, who called for 120 million of the EU's
role as EU border guards, but a barely manageable number of groups.
Officially, the fight against smuggling is under the responsibility of the
Department for the Control of Irregular Migration (DCIM), which is – again
officially – under the Libyan Ministry of the Interior. In fact, the local
militia are the ones who hunt migrants and lock into prisons to make money
with them. The single government, which has been governed by Tripoli since
March, under Prime Minister Fayez al-Serraj has so far failed to bring the
24 country-wide prisons under their control. The EU estimates that a total
of 7 per cent of all migrants are held there.
The EU is slowly coming to the conclusion that its previous policy on Libya
has failed. In the Communication to Parliament and other bodies on a new
partnership framework with third countries, the European Commission
formulates five pillars: financial support of € 100 million for projects;
Protection of refugees already in Libya; GNA Government aid to government
and administration; Technical assistance and security sector reform for
police, criminal justice and border management. The EU is focusing on the
following: EUBAM, the Libyan Border Security Mission, which has existed
since 2013.
Within the framework of the EU's Common Security and Defense Policy, this
mission should work together with Libyan authorities to improve border
management. This included the establishment of inter-ministerial working
groups, the training of coastal units and technical equipment.
Unfortunately, due to the unstable situation, the mission had to move to
Tunisia as early as 2014 – in so great a hurry that, according to the UN
sanctions committee, weapons were left in Tripoli. „They wanted to train us
on much too complicated technical equipment,“ grumbled a border guards, who
checked at the airport Tripoli entrants. Only the most handy training units
for the Libyan coast guard, organized by the 17 remaining EUBAM members, he
praises. The learned boat knot and fuse sweatboxes had been top. „The only
ones who had it, they were themselves. They earned good money,“ he accuses
EUBAM.
In fact, the financial package for the mission is pleasantly padded. EUBAM
Libya has just been relaunched by the EU, with a total budget of 17 million
euros, which must last until August 2017. They are to support Libyan
institutions in the fields of criminal justice, migration, border security
and counter-terrorism. The Coast Guard, Captain Ashraf, said: „The
Europeans have been promising us financial support since October 2015“. He
has never seen any. Obviously the EU has a problem with the unstable
situation in the country, it only wants to support state institutions. But
they are blurred in the chaos of the Libyan power games.
## Military in the Mediterranean
Nevertheless, the European border protection agency Frontex seems to have
built up a stand in Libya: the agency is cooperating with Libyan border
guards in the multilateral working group AFIC (Africa-Frontex Intelligence
Community) and collecting information there. Just as in 2007, when she was
on a mission to Libya with Gaddafi's border guards because of common
defense against the migrants.
One thing is certain: Europe's security policymakers have enough plans for
Libya in the drawer. From a training mission for Libyan soldiers to the
deployment of the EUROGENDFOR EU policing group, which could be used as a
stabilizing instrument such as in Bosnia or Afghanistan. The most effective
instrument, however, seems to be the EU in the naval operation „EUNavfor
Med Sophia“, in which a European military shipping association is supposed
to prevent the sluicing of people across the Mediterranean. In January 2016
Enrico Credendino, Commander of the Operation, told the EU Commission that
he had scared the smugglers with his 16 ships and airplanes, and had been
able to arrest 46 smugglers and to destroy 67 boats. How many millions that
had cost him, he did not say.
The EU, in mid-2016, told Operation Sophia to do more: to train the Libyan
coast guard and to prevent the illegal transport of weapons. This could
contribute to a more stable Libya, according to the officially formulated
hope. Until then, the Libyan coast guard has to deal with life buoys,
rescue buoys, torches and other equipment, which was handed over by the
German and the Dutch ambassadors for Libya at the end of November. The 650
refugees in the Tariq al-Matar prison also received something: clothes and
hygiene kits. A drop on the rocks – nevertheless, the Libyan government is
resisting the demands of the EU countries Austria and Hungary to return
refugees to Libya or even to build up new refugee camps in the country.
12 Dec 2016
## AUTOREN
(DIR) Alexander Bühler
## TAGS
(DIR) migControl
## ARTIKEL ZUM THEMA