Death of migrants in the Sahara desert

Vijay Prashad reports on the latest IOM report on migrant deaths and under-reported deaths of migrants crossing the Sahara Sabah, Libya, is an oasis city on the northern edge of the Sahara Desert. Standing on the edge of town and looking south across the desert towards Niger is prohibitive. The sand extends endlessly and, if there is a wind, it lifts it up to cover the sky. The cars get off the road that passes in front of the al-Baraka mosque and arrive in the city. Some of these cars come from Algeria (although the border is often closed) or from Djebel al-Akakus, the mountains that run along Libya's western border. Every now and then, a white Toyota truck full of men from Africa's Sahel region and West Africa enters Sabah. Miraculously, these men managed to cross the desert, which is why many of them get off the truck and fall to the ground in desperate prayer. Sabah means “morning” or “promise” in Arabic, a word befitting this city that sits on the edge of the enormous, growing and dangerous Sahara. For the past decade, the United Nations International Organization for Migration (IOM) has been collecting data on migrant deaths. The Missing Migrant Project releases its numbers every year and this April released the latest figures. Over the past decade, the IOM says 64,371 women, men and children have died while traveling. Half of these died in the Mediterranean Sea. On average, 4,000 people have died every year since 2014. However, in 2023, the number has risen to 8,000. One in three migrants fleeing a conflict zone dies on their journey to safety. These numbers, however, are grossly deflated, as the IOM is unable to track what it calls “irregular migration.” For example, the IOM admits that “some experts believe that more migrants die crossing the Sahara Desert than in the Mediterranean Sea.”
Sandstorms and armed men Abdel Salam, who runs a small business in the city, points into the distance and says: “In that direction is Toummo,” the Libyan city on the border with Niger. Running his hands over the landscape, he says that in the region between Niger and Algeria there is the Salvador Pass, through which drugs, migrants and weapons move, a trade that enriches many of the small towns in the area, such as Ubari. With the erosion of the Libyan state following the NATO war in 2011, the border is largely porous and dangerous. It is from here that al-Qaeda leader Mokhtar Belmokhtar moved his troops from northern Mali to the Fezzan region of Libya in 2013 (he would be killed in Libya in 2015). It is also the area dominated by Al-Qaeda cigarette smugglers. These transport millions of Albanian-made Cleopatra cigarettes across the Sahara into the Sahel (Belmokhtar, for example, was known as the “Marlboro Man” for his role in this trade). Every now and then a Toyota truck heads into town. But many of them disappear in the desert, victims of terrifying sandstorms or of kidnappers and thieves. No one can keep track of these disappearances, because no one even knows they happened. Io Capitano (2023) by Matteo Garrone, nominated for an Oscar, tells the story of two Senegalese boys, Seydou and Moussa, who go from Senegal to Italy passing through Mali, Niger and then Libya, where they are imprisoned before escape across the Mediterranean to Italy on an old boat. Garrone built the story around the testimonies of several migrants, including Kouassi Pli Adama Mamadou (originally from the Ivory Coast, now an activist living in Caserta, Italy). The film does not shy away from the harsh beauty of the Sahara, which claims victims among migrants who are not yet considered as such by Europe. The film focuses on the journey to Europe, even though most Africans migrate within the continent (21 million Africans live in countries where they were not born).
I Captain ends with a helicopter flying over the ship as it approaches the Italian coast. It has already been pointed out that the film does not acknowledge the racist policies that will greet Seydou and Moussa. What is not shown in the film is how European countries tried to build a fortress in the Sahel region to prevent migration north.
An open tomb More and more migrants have sought the Niger-Libya route since the fall of the Libyan state in 2011 and the crackdown on the Moroccan-Spanish border in Melilla and Ceuta. A decade ago, European states turned their attention to this route, seeking to build a European “wall” in the Sahara against migrants. The aim was to stop the migrants before they reached the Mediterranean Sea, where they would become an embarrassment to Europe. France, at the forefront, brought together five Sahel states (Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger) in 2014 to create the G5 Sahel. In 2015, under French pressure, the government of Niger approved law 2015-36 criminalizing migration through the country. The G5 Sahel and the law in Niger came together with European Union funding to provide surveillance technologies – illegal in Europe – to be used in this band of countries against migrants. In 2016, the United States built the world's largest drone base in Agadez, Niger, as part of this anti-migrant program. In May 2023, Border Forensics studied the paths of migrants and found that due to the law in Niger and these other mechanisms the Sahara had become an “open grave”. In recent years, however, all this has begun to crumble. Coups in Guinea (2021), Mali (2021), Burkina Faso (2022) and Niger (2023) led to the dismantling of the G5 Sahel and calls for the removal of French and US troops. In November 2023, the government of Niger revoked law 2015-36 and released those accused of being smugglers. Abdourahamane, a local grandee, stood next to the Grand Mosque of Agadez and spoke about migrants. “The people who come here are our brothers and sisters,” he said. "They come. They're having a break. They leave. They don't bring us problems." The mosque, built of clay, carries with it the signs of the desert, but is not transitory. Abdourahamane told me it dates back to the 16th century, long before the birth of modern Europe. Many of the migrants come here to be blessed before buying sunglasses and crossing the desert, hoping to overcome the sands and find their destiny somewhere beyond the horizon.