Italy claims it’s found a solution to Europe’s migrant problem. Here’s why Italy’s wrong.

Co-Authored with Jalel Harchaoui. Originally published on the Washington Post Monkey Cage, Available Here.

The seas off western Libya have been quiet since late July. Before that, they swarmed with smugglers’ boats overfilled with migrants, mostly sub-Saharan Africans heading for Europe. From 23,000 migrants per month, the flow of arrivals has slowed to a trickle.

The migrants are accumulating on Libya’s coast and many are incarcerated in opaque circumstances. Their movement has been stymied by militias, who have turned on the northbound flow of migrants they once profited from. Deep in the southern desert, emergent militia groups evince the goal of closing the border with Niger and Chad to migrants moving north — attempting to patrol areas that none of Libya’s three rival governments ever secured.

Motivating the Libyan militias’ newfound zeal for blocking migrant movement is a new policy spearheaded by the Italian government and embraced by the European Union. The approach relies on payment to militias willing to act as migrant deterrent forces. Italian government representatives use intermediaries such as mayors and other local leaders to negotiate terms of the agreements with the armed groups. They also build local support in the targeted areas by distributing humanitarian aid.

There are two channels for compensating the militias. First, multiple reports detail direct cash gifts. Second, a more politically consequential flow of money moves via the internationally recognized Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli. The E.U. is a major donor to the GNA, and Rome is apparently in a position to earmark some funds for entities that it wishes to reward. This official process allows Rome to claim it doesn’t remunerate the militias directly and the GNA to maintain that it stopped the flow of migrants.

Migration has emerged as one of the most politically charged issues in Europe in recent years. Since 2014, 1.7 million irregular migrants have arrived on the continent. In this context, the E.U. has sought to offshore migration enforcement, incentivizing its neighbors to halt the migrant flow by offering economic aid and political concessions.

To this end, in 2016, the E.U. struck a deal with Turkey, which significantly cut the flow of departing migrants. The E.U.’s attention then turned to Libya, with a view to duplicating the Turkish bargain. However, efforts to shut the migrant corridor — now the primary one into the E.U. — were impeded by Libya’s fractured political and security landscape. As it became clear that the vast majority of migrants now arrived, and stayed, in Italy, the E.U. rallied behind Italy’s approach.

While a narrow tactical success, the E.U.’s policy pushes the goal of a stable, united Libya farther out of reach for three principal reasons.

The policy empowers nonstate armed groups

The pay-them-to-stop scheme has introduced a novel way for amoral, uncontrolled armed groups to carry on extracting rents from the still-raging migrant crisis. Previously, migrants and smugglers paid militias a tax to depart for Europe. Now, the E.U. — coordinated by Italy — in effect pays a tax to the same groups to keep the migrants in place.

The payments also offer militias an imprimatur of legitimacy. That makes it easier for local power brokers to build political capital while continuing to profit handsomely. And if the funds stop, the armed formations can resume and tax migrant smuggling at any point.

Libya’s interior minister says that this policy assists in a “reconversion” of Libya’s militias into legitimate economic pursuits. This is fanciful. Militias leaders, and fighters beneath them, have the leeway to engage in other facets of Libya’s war economy — including smuggling of subsidized fuel and other commodities.

In 2015, an Italian oil company hired militias in western Libya to protect hydrocarbon installations. The militias gladly accepted the protection mission even as they continued profiting from human smuggling. This underscores that purchasing services from militias does not “reconvert” or reform them. The additional revenue only empowers them.

The policy stunts efforts to build a credible security apparatus in the near term

As a result of the arrangement promoted by Italy, Libya’s militias are now considered part of the GNA’s official security forces. This is a textbook case of hybrid security: A weak government claims that it has co-opted independent militias by offering them money. Armed groups in such situations continue pursuing their agenda and shun political compromise.

Libya is already deeply challenged by a hybrid security sector. Eighty percent of the country’s border guards derive from militia units. The guards’ continued militia ties and involvement in illicit activity hobble the effectiveness of the force. In interviews, Libyan security officials stress that one of their biggest concerns is how to handle and professionalize these hybrid forces so that they become genuinely integrated. By rewarding militias without scattering or reshuffling them, the Italian approach delays that integration process.

Italy’s strategy may breed conflict

The numerous armed actors not yet included in these deals are unlikely to watch passively as their enemies benefit. Some will seek to seize territory made more valuable by the new situation. Others may improvise alternative migration routes. In still other cases, militias will fragment, as fighters repudiate the commitments made by their leaders. Violent clashes in the city of Sabratha in mid-September are an illustration of this.

Moreover, factions aligned with Libyan National Army leader Khalifa Hifter, opponents of the GNA, will be tempted to intervene militarily to stop their rival from deriving political legitimacy from E.U.’s migrant strategy. An array of violent ripple effects across western Libya and beyond are thus to be expected.

For the moment, migration flows from Libya are down. However, migration routes were always just a symptom of state fragility. That fragility — and the vast challenges that remain to security and state consolidation — is the real crisis in Libya. The E.U.’s policy, instead of ameliorating the latter, sacrifices institutional strengthening in the pursuit of expediency.

By concentrating power into the hands of unaccountable actors, it undercuts the development of statutory security forces. Put bluntly, it weakens an already-weak state. Any approach that preferences short-term gains against migration while undercutting efforts to stabilize Libya is one with long-term strategic risks.

At the edge: Trends and routes of North African clandestine migrants

From The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. The Publication Can be Accessed Here.

Jointly with the Institute for Security Studies, the Global Initiative published At the edge (Nov 2016) as part of a research project on human smuggling from Africa to Europe, funded by the Hanns Seidel Foundation (HSF). Our research team sat down with smugglers themselves in Libya, Turkey, in the Sahel and in Sub-Saharan Africa to understand who are the smugglers behind Europe’s migration crisis, to understand how they operate, what drew them into the trade, and how they are responding to international community efforts to end illicit migration.

In 2015, over 16,000 Algerians, Tunisians and Moroccans were caught while attempting to migrate to Europe covertly. Though North Africans are a relatively small portion of the masses of clandestine migrants, they are a critical group to understand. They are the innovators and early adaptors of new methods and routes for migrant smuggling, such as their pioneering in the 1990s and 2000s of the routes across the Mediterranean that now fuel Europe’s migration crisis. Understanding how and why North Africans migrate, the routes they use, and how these are changing, offers insights into how clandestine migration methods and routes in general may shift in the coming years. In shaping better responses to actual dynamics, it is important for countries to proactively address the chronic conditions that drive forced migration before they generate social instability.

Hoping for Brave New World

Originally Published by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, Available Here.

The boat was packed. Five hundred men and women were on board, hailing from Ghana, Somalia Eritrea, and a kaleidoscope of other countries. Sailing north from the Libyan coast the boat was within sight of its destination when it began taking on water, and then capsized. While coast guard vessels rescued some of the migrants, few knew how to swim. The bodies floating in the surf off the Italian island of Lampadusa were a grim reminder of the desperate journey many embark on for a better life, and the often-fatal dangers they face.

While migration is no crime, the challenges of negotiating complex immigration or asylum procedures in destination countries, or transiting the complex geographical routes across inhospitable terrains leads many to seek the assistance of smuggling groups to help them navigate their passage. As a consequence, migrant smuggling is becoming all pervasive in the modern world. Migrant smuggling denotes a situation in which an individual willing contracts with a third party to be transported into another country without having formal documentation or consent to enter that country.

The demand for illicit migration is driven by the economic discrepancies between the developed and developing world. The salaries of Europe, the U.S., Canada, and Australia far higher than what can be earned in many developing countries. For millions of young adults facing bleak job market in low-income areas of Africa, Latin America, and Asia, the most viable way to achieve financial success is to engage in a risky, and often unsuccessful migration to the developed world. Others, fleeing from war or oppressive governments, may have little choice but to migrate and hope for the best.

Specialized migrant smuggling organizations have arisen to cater to this demand. The market is lucrative, generating more than $6.75 billion annually for the groups involved. Migrant smuggling is often facilitated by a vast number of different groups, each specializing in moving people through one distinct geographic area. Some of the gangs are highly complex, able to supply doctored passports or maintain fleets of migrant smuggling vessels. More frequently, the smugglers are minimally organized and low tech. Successfully moving someone across a land border requires an intimate knowledge of the territory and the operational habits of border guards, creating a low bar for prospective migrant smugglers who live alongside an international border.

The largest flows of illicit migrants move via two well defined corridors: from Central America into the United States, and from Africa into Europe. The Latin America-US corridor is one of the most well-traveled illicit migration routes in the world. Migrants, mainly from Mexico, Central, and South America, along with smaller numbers of Asian and African migrants, attempt to cross Mexico’s border with the U.S. in areas that are remote yet have access to roads. Historically most the migrant smugglers in the area have been small, locally based organizations. This has shifted over the last decade, as Mexico’s powerful drug trafficking organizations have moved into the market. The UNODC Global Threat Assessment estimated that this high traffic route may be used by upwards of three million migrants every year.

The other large migration corridor extends from Africa to Europe. Routes extend from sub-Saharan Africa either across the Saharan desert and on to the North African Coast, or to the West African coast. At either of these end points, the smuggled migrants face a daunting sea voyage. From West Africa, migrants attempt to reach Spain’s Canary Islands. From North Africa, migrants attempt to cross the Mediterranean, often aiming for Italy. Historically, the number of migrants smuggled along these routes and into Europe has been a far smaller than what is seen along the US-Mexico border, but with the increasing instability in North Africa and the Sahel, these numbers have been rising exponentially. 92 migrants were recently found dead in the northern deserts towards the Libyan border, the majority of which were children. A European intelligence officer recently estimated that 3000 migrants pass through the Agadez region of Niger each week, and that represents fifty per cent of the migrants landing on the shores of Lampedusa.

Whichever route they take, smuggled migrants often face extreme danger. Once outside of their own country, they become dependent on smuggling groups for their survival. This dependence can open the smuggled individual to physical and sexual abuse at the hands of the smugglers, as well as forced labour and coercive demands for money. The line between migrant smuggling and human trafficking is particularly fine. Migrants may start off a journey as willing participants, however their vulnerability can lead to their exploitation at the hands of criminal groups. Finally, corrupt security officials who control the areas migrants must pass through also frequently victimize them.

Migrant smuggling is unlikely to dissipate in the near future. Populations are continuing to grow in many nations in the developing world, creating a fierce battle for available jobs. Young adults who are financially and physically able are likely to continue to try to reach high-wage countries in North America and Europe. While for some the migration will end happily, for far too many their efforts to get a better life will lead to abuse, injury, or death in the clear waters of the Mediterranean or somewhere in the vast Sahara.