Italy has also tried to seal the far end of the people-smuggling route, in Fezzan, a vast area of desert that borders Algeria, Chad and Niger. It is Libya’s poorest region. Though it has oil wells capable of producing 400,000 barrels per day, residents receive few benefits; producers fly in staff from the north. A large state-run farming complex has fallen into disrepair since the civil war in 2011. With few chances for legal employment, tribes in Fezzan have turned to smuggling. The migrant trade brings in perhaps $1bn annually.
In April, the Italian interior ministry negotiated a peace deal between two warring groups in the region. In exchange for money, they agreed to stop fighting and work to close the borders. There is little evidence that they have done the latter. With so few Mediterranean crossings this summer, aid agencies believe tens of thousands of migrants are stranded in Libya. Some are kept in detention centres run by militias in the north, or held for ransom in grim “safe houses”. Others stay in the south and find ill-paid informal jobs.
There is one other explanation for the reduced flow, and it may be the most compelling. “The smuggling business is a business. It’s all about money,” says Claudia Gazzini of the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think-tank. The traffickers may have simply found a more lucrative business. Petrol is heavily subsidised in Libya: a litre costs $0.12 at the official exchange rate and just two cents at the black-market rate. Smugglers can sell it in Europe (or neighbouring Tunisia) at a huge mark-up. The business is thought to be worth $2bn annually—a sum that dwarfs any aid on offer from Europe.
The western port of Zuwara, once a hub for the migrant trade, has lately switched to smuggling fuel. Residents complain of petrol shortages because so much of the supply is stolen. Libyan ships are thought to bring the petrol out to international waters, then transfer it to non-Libyan tankers. A team of UN investigators said in June that they had seen “vessels showing suspicious navigational patterns” near the city. But stopping petrol-smuggling is not a high priority for the European navies that patrol the Mediterranean. “It creates a lot less social alarm than the migrants or drugs,” says Mr Toaldo. “You won’t see people complaining about smuggling petrol.”