Libya is one of the epicenters of the world crisis because
of the massive influx to Europe of African migrants. Since 2015 385.000 of them
have arrived from Libya to the Italian coasts and in four years, 12.064 have died
in the sea. It is unknown the number dead in the desert.
Located between Egypt and Tunisia, Libya is weak and
divided. There are two main reasons for this. Libya shares with a large part of
the Arab world the lack of consolidation of a national state (as happens in
Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, etc.) and the main social fracture is composed by
the tribal one. But there is also a peculiarity of the former regime of the
Gaddafi dictatorship, who kept a security apparatus not especially strong and
kept the military fragmented and not too much equipped because of fear of
sedition.
Weak border controls have transformed the country into a
primary departure area to migrate across the central Mediterranean to Europe in
growing numbers. In addition, almost 350,000 people were displaced internally
as mid-2016 by fighting between armed groups in eastern and western Libya and,
to a lesser extent, by inter-tribal clashes in the country’s south. Coming from
countries like Nigeria, Senegal or Gambia, they try to reach the coast but
sometimes they are captured and sold averaging a cost of some 200 to 500 US
dollars. They are used sometimes to achieve a rescue payment, sometimes
exploited as forced labor or sexual abuse.
The strife-torn inner situation has handicapped the
productive infrastructure including the oil terminals, in a country almost
entirely dependent on oil and gas exports.
Bottom line, a bad situation, were apparently only an
international strong help could deliver results, albeit we do not see this
happening. A decisive European action could only be promoted not that much by the
interest in the Libyan energy resources, but by the possibilities that the
country’s domestic development could absorb the African migrants and stop their
flow to Europe.
