Militia ouster chokes Libya’s migrant flow
Resort city of Sabratha now empty, as are smugglers’ safe houses
FSABRATHA, Libya or nearly two years, this ancient, beachfront city, famed for its Roman ruins, was one of North Africa’s largest smuggling hubs, a gateway for tens of thousands of migrants seeking better futures in Europe. Now, there are none on the beaches where hundreds of rickety boats once ferried them to Italy illegally, none in the migrant detention center where they ended up when an attempt failed.
At the five-star West Taleel resort, the white, two-story villas once housed as many as 3,000 migrants at a time waiting to set sail. Their traffickers had erected sand dunes along the beach to hide them from Libyan coast guard patrols and curious swimmers.
The resort is now empty, as are the smugglers’ other safe houses.
Ferocious street battles among rival armed groups erupted this fall, ultimately driving out the young warlord Ahmed Dabbashi, whose militia ran the trade in migrants. The victors then expelled the migrants.
A rare visit by a reporter to Sabratha last week revealed how the massive trafficking of Africans, which has roiled European countries and raised concerns about widespread abuses of the migrants, is tied up with Libya’s internal power struggles. The ebb and flow of migration reflect the shifting fortunes of the city’s civil war, emblematic of the strife afflicting Libya since the Arab Spring.
Dabbashi, a black-haired and bearded fighter from a prominent tribe, had been above the law. As a teen, he had stolen cars and robbed shops, then graduated into trafficking arms and fuel. By the summer of 2015, he had entered the burgeoning migrant trade, according to local officials, tribal leaders and United Nations investigators. His control over that trade deepened as Libya’s weak, U.N.-installed government in the capital, Tripoli, looked the other way.
“He was a vicious fighter,” Col. Najmi Farah, a police investigator, said of Dabbashi. “He always carried two revolvers.”
Locals say he once killed two men and dumped their bodies on the street to stir fear in people. From then on, residents were too scared to look him in the eye.
The fierce urban clashes broke out after one of Dabbashi’s cousins was killed in September in a skirmish with a competing armed group. Soon, other militias and tribes joined the fray, making common cause against Dabbashi’s forces, called the Anas Al-Dabbashi Brigade.
Some migrants were killed in the crossfire, their bodies strewn in the streets. Thousands more fled to neighboring areas. When the migrants re-emerged, an unlikely coalition of Libyan National Army soldiers and ultraconservative Muslim fighters were in control of Sabratha. Known as the Anti-ISIS Fighting Room, they swiftly dispatched most of the migrants to detention centers in other cities. “It’s finished for now,” said Muhammed Amma, 32, a migrant from Chad who fled the fighting and was now cleaning streets for the municipality. “The boats to Europe have stopped.”
Amid the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings, Dabbashi helped lead a rebel brigade during the NATOsupported revolt that toppled Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi. When Dabbashi’s cousin, Anas, was killed in one clash, the brigade was renamed in his honor.
In the ensuing chaos, criminal and smuggling networks expanded. Human smuggling became the most lucrative. “It’s easy money,” said Hussein Dhwadi, Sabratha’s mayor. “It’s better than trafficking in drugs.”
In August 2015, more than 200 migrants drowned off the coast of Zuwahra, 15 miles west of Sabratha. That disaster triggered an angry backlash by locals in Zuwahra, who pushed the smugglers out. Thousands of migrants headed toward Sabratha, generating even more wealth for Dabbashi.
Silence now fills the large warehouse that served as the government-run detention center. On the floor are worn-out mattresses, blankets, ragged shoes and empty water bottles — debris left behind by thousands of migrants.
Since Dabbashi’s militia was ousted, more than 10,000 migrants have been expelled from Sabratha, local anti-migration officials said. Those who arrive are quickly detained and placed on a bus to detention centers elsewhere in Libya. In Tripoli, many are being put on planes to be deported back to their home countries.
While the battle for Sabratha choked off the flow of migrants bound for Europe, it had already been declining in the months before hostilities broke out. Italy and the European Union had begun training and equipping the Libyan coast guard, which increased patrols in the summer to intercept and return migrants to Libya, often to face more abuse.
Leading figures in Sabratha provide another explanation for the reduction. They say they believe Dabbashi had received a significant payment from Italy to stop the migrant smuggling trade. Italy’s ambassador to Libya, Giuseppe Perrone, disputed that account. “We don’t fund militias,” he said.