World

In Libya’s Anarchy, Migrant Smuggling a Booming Trade

Published

10 years ago

April 23, 2015

In this file photo taken Friday, Nov. 29, 2013, African migrants cover themselves with blankets, after being captured by the Libyan Coast Guard while on a boat heading to Italy, in a detention center for illegal migrants in Abu Salim district on the outskirts of Tripoli, Libya. Libya’s chaos has turned it into a large and lucrative funnel attracting migrants desperate to make the dangerous sea voyage to Europe. With no central authority to stop it, business is booming, creating a vicious circle that only translates into more tragedies in the Mediterranean. (AP Photo/Manu Brabo, File)

MAGGIE MICHAEL, Associated Press
LEE KEATH, Associated Press

CAIRO (AP) — Libya’s chaos has turned it into a lucrative magnet attracting migrants desperate to make the dangerous sea voyage to Europe. With no central authority to stop it, business is booming, with smugglers charging ever more as demand goes up, then using the profits to buy larger boats and heavier weapons to ensure no one dare touch them.

It’s a vicious cycle that only translates into more tragedies at sea.

With each rickety boat that sets off from Libya’s coast, traffickers rake in hundreds of thousands of dollars. So assured are they of their impunity that they operate openly. Many even use Facebook to advertise their services to migrants desperate to flee war, repression and poverty in the Middle East and Africa.

And they are armed to the teeth, often working with powerful militias in Libya that control territory and hold political power.

One coast guard officer in Sabratha, a Libyan coastal city that is a main launch point for smugglers’ boats headed to Europe, said his small force can do little to stop them. Recently, he heard about a vessel about to leave but refused to send his men to halt it.

“This would be suicidal,” he told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation from the powerful traffickers.

“When you see smugglers with anti-aircraft guns mounted on pickup trucks on the beach, and you have an automatic rifle, what are you going to do?”

If any one factor explains the dramatic jump in illegal crossings into Europe, it’s Libya’s turmoil since the 2011 civil war that ousted longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi. As the boat traffic increases, so do the horrific disasters. Over the weekend, a ship packed with migrants capsized off Libya, leaving at least 800 dead, the deadliest shipwreck ever in the Mediterranean. At least 1,300 people have died in the past three weeks alone, putting 2015 on track to be the deadliest year ever.

During his rule, Gadhafi struck deals with Europe to police the traffic, helping to keep the numbers down. In 2010, some 4,500 migrants made the perilous crossing from North Africa to Italy, the vast majority departing from Libya, according to the EU border agency Frontex.

In 2014, that number spiraled to more than 170,000.

By comparison, just under 51,000 took the second-most-popular smuggler route into Europe in 2014 — from Turkey into Greece and the Balkans. That was about the same as in 2008.

European authorities have been scrambling to find ways to deal with the crisis. One proposal is to fund camps in countries bordering Libya to house migrants before they reach its coast. Italian Defense Minister Roberta Pinotti said Wednesday there are contingency plans for military intervention against smugglers in Libya and that Italy is willing to lead an operation if it gets U.N. backing.

In the past year, Libya’s crumbling into anarchy has only accelerated. The country was plagued by multiple armed militias since Gadhafi’s ouster and death, but since 2014 what little political structure Libya had has collapsed. There are two rival governments, neither with any real authority, and each fighting the other on the ground. Local militias hold sway around the country, some of them with hard-line Islamist ideologies.

The Islamic State group has emerged as a strong and brutal force, with control of at least two cities along the central and eastern parts of the Mediterranean coast and a presence in many others. Over the weekend, it issued a video showing the mass beheading of dozens of African migrants, mostly Ethiopian and Eritrean Christians who were abducted as they tried to make it to the coast.

In the chaos, smuggling has “become an organized crime, with cross border mafias in possession of weapons, information and technology,” said the head of an independent agency that studies human trafficking and tries to help migrants in Sabratha.

Extensive cross-border smuggling networks organize different legs of the journey: First from the migrants’ home country to the Libyan border, then from the border to a jumping-off point on the coast, then onto boats for the Mediterranean crossing.

“We call the Mediterranean Sea ‘the graveyard,'” said the agency director, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation from smugglers.

Along the way, traffickers strike deals with local militias to turn a blind eye to their movements. For example, smugglers bringing Africans across Libya’s southern border pay off the ethnic Tabu militia nominally tasked by the Libyan government to patrol the border, he said.

Smugglers have also raised prices, he said. Some have bought larger fishing trawlers that are ostensibly somewhat safer and can carry hundreds more migrants — and they charge up to 3,000 euros ($3,200) per person. They use the funds to buy weapons and technology — including satellite phones, GPS systems and 4-wheel-drive vehicles to move across the desert.

Migrants pay for each leg of the journey. It costs around $1,000 to get to Libya from Senegal and around $2,500 from Ethiopia, according to migration experts in those countries. But prices can vary. Italian prosecutor Maurizio Scalia, who investigates human trafficking, said the price from Ethiopia can reach as high as $5,000.

The cost for the trip across the Mediterranean depends on the type of boat and, on better vessels, which part of it the migrant is crammed into — the top deck or down below, according to several smugglers who spoke to the AP. They were reached through the Facebook pages where they advertise and gave only their first names for fear of prosecution by authorities in Tripoli.

A place on an inflatable boat — a more treacherous journey — can run $500, while relatively sturdier wooden or steel boats run from $1,000 to $2,000s, said one smuggler, Luqman, in the city of Zwara, another main launching point.

Mohammed, another smuggler in Zwara, said he runs boats to Italy — 15-meter (45-foot) wooden boats with a capacity of 200 people, or 18-meter ones with a capacity of 280. He insisted none of his boats have sunk, saying the danger was when smugglers overload their vessels, as they often do, sometimes to well over double capacity.

Each leg of the trip must be paid in advance. Migrants often scrounge together the money in their home country for the first leg, then stay for weeks in Libya working informal jobs to earn the money for the boat trip.

Scalia, the Italian prosecutor, said migrants’ families in Europe often help by sending funds through an underground money transfer system known as “hawala” that avoids the traditional — and traceable — banking sector. The system runs on networks of agents working on an informal honor system to process the cash payments.

In March, the European police agency Europol formed a task force to gather information from national law enforcement agencies in Europe to map out the criminal groups organizing the migrant influx, Europol spokesman Soeren Kragh Pedersen told the AP.

While sub-Saharan Africans are smuggled across the southern borders into Libya, Syrians, who make up a significant proportion of the traffic, usually come via Algeria, since they can fly there and enter without a visa, the smugglers said.

Luqman outlined the path his network uses: A migrant arrives at the airport in Algeria, then is taken by car to a border area called Tebessa, where the smugglers arrange the crossing into Tunisia. Then it’s a 250-mile (400-kilometer) journey along desert roads to the port of Zwara in Libya. Along the way, migrants may have to stay for days in a safehouse waiting for enough other migrants to arrive to make the journey, he said.

“The people who help the migrants cross from one country to the other don’t deal with small numbers but big numbers. So migrants can wait in one country for a couple of days or a week until the number is enough,” Luqman said.

___

Associated Press correspondents Vanessa Gera in Warsaw, Jan Olsen in Copenhagen, Krista Larsen in Dakar, Senegal; and Elias Meseret in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, contributed to this report.

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Newsom, Pelosi Welcome Election of First American Pope; Call for Unity and Compassion

“In his first address, he reminded us that God loves each and every person,” said Newsom. “We trust that he will shepherd us through the best of the Church’s teachings: to respect human dignity, care for the poor, and wish for the common good of us all.” Newsom also expressed hope that the pontiff’s leadership would serve as a unifying force in a time of global instability.

Published

4 weeks ago

May 19, 2025

Oakland Post

Pope Leo XIV. Screenshot.

By Bo Tefu, California Black Media

Gov. Gavin Newsom and First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom on May 8 issued a statement congratulating Pope Leo XIV on his historic election as the first American to lead the Catholic Church.

The announcement has drawn widespread reaction from U.S. leaders, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who called the moment spiritually significant and aligned with the values of service and social justice.

In their statement, the Newsoms expressed hope that the newly elected pope would guide the Church with a focus on compassion, dignity, and care for the most vulnerable. Newsom said he and the First Partner joined others around the world in celebrating the milestone and were encouraged by the pope’s first message.

Newsom also expressed hope that the pontiff’s leadership would serve as a unifying force in a time of global instability.

“May he remind us that our better angels are not far away — they’re always within us, waiting to be heard,” he said.

Pelosi, a devout Catholic, also welcomed the pope’s election and noted his symbolic connection to earlier church leaders who championed workers’ rights and social equality.

“It is heartening that His Holiness continued the blessing that Pope Francis gave on Easter Sunday: ‘God loves everyone. Evil will not prevail,’” said Pelosi.

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Retired Bay Area Journalist Finds Success in Paris with Black History Tours

In the late 90s, Stevenson finally realized her dream of living in Paris, now with her daughter. She started exploring the history of Africans in the city and would go on to teach others the same. Her business, which she named Black Paris Tours (BPT), received a significant boost when a family friend gave her a stack of cash and encouraged her to expand on the knowledge that she had only started to share with people she knew.

Published

4 months ago

February 18, 2025

Oakland Post

Ricki Stevenson, Blacks in Paris. Courtesy photo.

By Post Staff

There were two things Oakland-born, East Palo Alto-raised Ricki Stevenson always dreamed of:

Going to New York as a newscaster to tell the true story of Blacks in America.
Living and working in Paris one day.

Her dreams of life in Paris began when she was three years old and her mother, a former professional dancer, took her to see Josephine Baker perform. She was 11 when her parents took her to the Stanford University campus to meet James Baldwin, who was speaking about his book, “The Fire Next Time.” Ricki says that’s when she knew she’d one day live in Paris, “the city of light!”

But before that would ever happen, she had a tumultuous career as a newscaster across the country that was inspired by her family’s history.

Stevenson recalls marching with Cesar Chavez as he fought for labor rights for farm workers in California.

“Are we Mexican too?” she asked her parents. “No, but we will fight for everyone’s human rights,” they responded to her.

Ironically, Ricki’s paternal family roots went back to Greenwood, Oklahoma, infamous for the 1921 bombing of Black Wall Street. A time when Black people had oil wells, banks, and a thriving business community.

This background would propel her into a 25-year journalism career that gave her the opportunity to interview greats like President Jimmy Carter, PLO leader Yassir Arafat, James Baldwin, Rev. Jesse Jackson, UN Ambassador Andrew Young, Miriam Makeba, and the leaders of South African liberation movements.

A job offer from KCBS radio brought her back to the Bay Area in the 1980s. Then came the switch to TV when she was hired as a Silicon Valley business reporter with KSTS TV, working at the first Black-owned television station in northern CA (created and owned by John Douglas). Along the way, Stevenson worked as an entertainment reporter with BET; coproduced, with her disc jockey brother Isaac, a Bay Area show called “Magic Number Video;” lived in Saudi Arabia; worked as an international travel reporter with News Travel Network; and worked at KRON TV a news anchor and talk show host.

In 1997, Stevenson realized her dream of living in Paris with her young daughter, Dedie. She started exploring the history of Africans in the city and would go on to teach others the same. Her business, which she named Black Paris Tours (BPT), received a significant boost when a family friend, Admiral Robert Toney put a chunk of money in her hand. He said, “Ricki, my wife and I have been coming to Paris for 20 years, but in just two days with you and Dedie, we’ve learned and seen more than we ever did before.”

Years after BPT took off, Ricki met Nawo Carol Crawford and Miguel Overton Guerra, who she recruited as senior scholar guides for Black Paris Tours.

Guerra says he is proud of his work with Black Paris Tours in that it provides a wealth of information about the rich legacy of African and African American history and influence in Paris and Europe.

“I tend to have a feeling for history always being a means of a reference point backwards … you start to understand the history, that it isn’t just the United States, that it began with African people,” Guerra says.

He said that it’s been a pleasure to watch people learn something they didn’t know before and to take them through the city to key points in Black history, like hangout spots for writers like Baldwin and Richard Wright, restaurants in the busiest parts of Paris, the home of Josephine Baker and so much more.

Although the tours are open to all, Guerra hopes that those of African descent from all over the world can embrace that they don’t have to just stay where they are because movies and media have portrayed cities like Paris to be only white, it’s multicultural and accepting to all.

“We’ve been here, and we’ve been there, going way back when. And we shouldn’t be considered or consider ourselves to be strangers in any place that we go to,” he said.

Stevenson notes they’ve had 150,000 people take their tour over the years, with notables like former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, Smokey Robinson, Steve Harvey, Miriam Makeba, and more.

Friends and former media colleagues of Stevenson compliment the BPT crew on their knowledge of the city and their ability to always keep it interesting.

“He [Guerra] just had a deep, deep wealth of knowledge and he was constantly supplanting information with historical facts and the like. I love that it was demonstrating and showing how Black people have thrived in Paris or contributed to the culture in Paris,” Candice Francis said.

She toured in the summer of 2022 and stated that in the two weeks that they visited Paris, BPT was the highlight of her trip. She shared that she was proud of Stevenson and the life she’d managed to manifest and build for herself.

“Even if you’re visiting Paris for the tenth time, if you haven’t taken the tour, then by all means, take it,” Francis emphasized.

Magaly Muñoz, Gay Plair and Paul Cobb also contributed to this story. You can book your own adventure with Black Paris Tours at www.blackparistour.com.

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COMMENTARY: Will a Dictator’s Loss Change Trump’s Tune?

What’s happened in Syria has the potential of reshaping the politics of the entire Middle East. The U.S. can’t afford to sit back and do nothing. Now is the time to exert peaceful, diplomatic influence on how Syria maintains stability and goes forward with a new democracy.

Published

6 months ago

December 24, 2024

Oakland Post

iStock.

By Emil Guillermo

In our polarized country, half of America can’t wait, while many of us still wonder, “where’s Kamala?”

I hope President-elect Trump — who famously said during the campaign that he’d be a dictator on day one — eats his words.

Dictators aren’t doing so well these days.

Last weekend, the dictator Bashar al-Assad was run out of Syria and sought exile with his puppet master/dictator Vladimir Putin of Russia. In just about two weeks, a coalition of rebels applied enough pressure to end a family regime in Syria that lasted 50 years.

al-Assad’s wealthy family dictatorship plundered Syria and ruled in terror.

It sounds all too familiar to Filipino Americans, many of whom came to the U.S. fleeing the Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

al-Assad’s end was different from the Filipinos who forged a peaceful People Power movement that chased the Marcos family to Hawaii where they sought refuge from their U.S. puppet handlers.

But as in Manila, there was cheering on the streets of Syria. Men, women, and children. Christian, Muslims, different sects and ethnicities, all united against al-Assad.

al-Assad has been described as a genocidal narco-trafficking tyrant, whose friends were America’s biggest enemies, Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia, said Mouaz Moustafa, the executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, on CNN.

Moustafa said it was amazing that there would be no more Russian airstrikes, no more al-Assad gulags torturing civilians. “To see good triumph over evil is an amazing thing,” he added.

But last weekend has some trickle down.

Consider that we are talking about al-Assad, the one Tulsi Gabbard consorted with and hyped to her colleagues when she was in Congress. Now Assad has been shamed into exile with his puppet master Russia, and Gabbard wants to be the U.S. director of national security? Given her wrongheaded judgment on al-Assad, can she be trusted with any national secrets?

It’s still not over in Syria, as now there will be a scramble to see what kind of governing democracy emerges.

Predictably, Donald Trump has said, “The United States should have nothing to do with it. This is not our fight. Let it play out. Do not get involved.”

Nouveau isolationism?

Overall, the ouster of the dictator should give Trump pause.

If by nominating MAGA loyalists like Gabbard, Pete Hegseth and Kash Patel, Trump’s testing the evolution to strongman rule in the U.S., he should consider what happened before last weekend.

In South Korea, a weak president tried to declare martial law and was voted down by Parliament. That’s a faux strongman.

Let’s hope Trump learns a lesson from the week’s news.

The next president sets the tone for a politics that’s already toxic.

He needs to remember the joy in Syria this week when an autocrat was dumped in the name of freedom and democracy.

About the Author

Emil Guillermo is an award-winning Bay Area journalist. His commentaries are on YouTube.com/@emilamok1. Or join him at www.patreon.com/emilamok