The news that the recent attack in Sousse, Tunisia, was committed by Seifeddine Rezgui, a terrorist gunman trained and equipped in Libya, has brought the country’s security situation back into the media spotlight. David Cameron was recently asked what the case would be for strikes on Isil in Libya. His answer was predictable: of course where there is a threat to British people he would be prepared to authorise action to neutralise it. However, the focus of Cameron on Isil and its ‘ideology’ risks obscuring the greater strategic concern in Libya which drives the power of groups like Isil and others, that is criminal economies. The civil war that emerged to oust the Qadaffi government created a vast number of armed groups drawing in fighters from across the country and the region. This collection of revolutionary fighters helped overthrow the despised dictator. However, after Qadaffi’s death a huge number of these fighters found themselves with little to do, and little way of earning an income. Moreover, the National Transitional Council (NTC), who acted as the de facto government after the end of the war had a very poor understanding of how to demobilise these groups and reintegrate them into the Libyan working economy. As Libya’s internal security remained hopelessly fragile, the NTC had to rely on a number of these armed groups to provide security, in particular in the rich eastern region. The awarding of government contracts to armed groups offered a valuable combination of political influence, both in government and in local tribal politics, and the ability to amass powerful protection rackets that distributed revenues to young, able, and out of work fighters. These rackets have made the most of both existing and upcoming trafficking and smuggling networks, profiting from their exploitation and control. These protection rackets have proven to be extremely important, particularly in key areas of the country. The coastal areas have seen a dramatic rise in illegal migrant smuggling, with migrants coming along the East-West corridor from Syria, but also from the South, from the Sahel-Sahara and East Africa. The town of Sabha is a crucial transit point for numerous smuggling activities, migrants, counterfeit medicines, and also arms and ammunition going out of Libya to fuel conflicts all over the continent. Similarly, border crossings in the South between Libya and Niger and Algeria are seeing vast amounts of goods and people pass through, enriching the local communities as well as the traffickers. Smuggling and trafficking networks in Libya are not new, they have existed since at least 700 A.D. However, a recent report by the Global Initiative Against Organised Crime outlines the details of how the since the fall of Qadaffi, “smuggling and trafficking business involving both armed groups and organised crime networks has increased dramatically in Libya”. It goes on to detail how their value has risen dramatically from a previous estimate of US$ 8-20 million, to now between US$ 255 – 323 million a year. This dramatic rise in value is a serious strategic issue for Libya and the Sahel-Sahara. These criminal networks both support armed groups and develops their ability to create semi-autonomous economies seriously undermining the stability and security of the region. The proliferation of such trades often dominates legitimate economic activity, side-lining the ability of the state to regulate trade, and offering greater incomes from extortion of local businesses. Moreover, the new found economic and local political power for particular groups undermines all incentives to negotiate political solutions or support any state-based settlements. This places criminal networks as extremely powerful within their own localised and regional areas, with the potential to leverage increasing influence on the political process. These evolving and increasingly valuable networks should be of great concern to European states. The major reason for this being that Isil’s strategic moves suggest an aim of dominating such trades, providing a potentially vast form of income for the group. Libya differs from Syria and Iraq as it remains an exclusively Sunni country, where local Sunni armed factions regard Isil as an infiltrator which doesn’t hold the same roots in the country that other groups do. As a result, a differing strategy that focuses less on fuelling sectarian conflict and more on securing valuable financial networks is evident. Since being ousted from Derna last month by local Islamist fighters affiliated with Al-Qaeda, Isil have focused on attacking oil fields south of Sirte, in what is known as Libya’s “Oil Crescent”. Analysts also point to the likelihood of ISIS targeting key strategic checkpoints where the East-West coastal highway links with a route to Sabha in Libya’s southern region. Given the greater transnational support that Isil has over local Libyan Islamist groups like the Abu Salim Martyrs Brigade, it is possible that if Isil wanted to increase resources to the Libyan frontline it could dramatically increase its power and presence. This would only go to add even more complexity to the fractured armed groups that already exist in the countries, and certainly make any Western backed military strategy impossible to coordinate with so many different allegiances and alignments. Moreover, it could see Isil gain massive financial incomes from controlling major highways, taxing smugglers moving through, and gaining key oil sites. Both these strategies are familiar from Iraq and Syria, the only difference in Libya is the dramatic increase in value and diversity of such networks. The value of similar networks in North Africa have been used by other terrorist groups. Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb’s leader, Mokhtar Belmokhtar, is known to have financed a considerable amount of his jihad through the smuggling of cigarettes. Similarly, the Mouvement pour l’Unicite et le Jihad en Afrique de l’Ouest have organised their power base around criminal networks in Gao, North Mali.
The overall importance of the issues of criminal economies in Libya cannot be understated. With the continuing destabilisation of Libya along with the increase in smuggling and trafficking economies, the organised crime trade poses a very real and direct problem to the region, and its neighbours.
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August 2015
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