Introduction
The Sahara has been a pipeline for smuggling and trafficking of many types of goods for well over a thousand years. Libya, which has ties to Europe dating back to the Roman Empire, has always been a key destination and transit area for many of these illicit flows. Since the fall of Gaddafi, the smuggling and trafficking business involving both armed groups and organized crime networks has increased dramatically in Libya. Instability and state breakdown has allowed the traditional tribal trans-Sahara trade, in drugs, counterfeit products and migrants and arms to grow to around US$43-80m at most, distributed among a large number of traffickers, clans and groups.
The increase in flows of money and illegal goods are having repercussions across North Africa and the Sahel. Illicit finances and weaponry from Libya helped facilitate the rebellion in Mali in 2010, and continues to fuel conflict today. More significantly, the high number of migrants along the North African coast has enabled the development of a far more lucrative coastal migrant trade, valued now at US$ 255 – 323 million per year in Libya alone. The value of this trade dwarfs any existing trafficking and smuggling businesses in the region, and has particularly strengthened groups with a terrorist agenda, including the Islamic State.
Drawn from a range of open source data and a number of recent interviews across the Saharan region, this brief documents the current scope and scale of trans-Saharan criminal economies and highlights their possible implications on stability and security. The goal of this brief is to provide a timely update of the evidence base on potential conflict drivers in the greater Sahara region, for the benefit of policy-makers, practitioners and researchers. The brief is a collaboration between the Norwegian Centre for Global Analysis (Rhipto) and the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime.
The brief concludes that given the level of illicit revenue it is currently possible to generate from the migrant flow, preventing Islamic State and coastal Libyan armed groups from becoming involved in or profiting from migrant smuggling should be of greater priority than attempting to cut off the long-established trans-Saharan trade routes passing through the Sahel towards Libya.....................................................
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Berhane Habtemariam