In Niger, anti-smuggling efforts risk trading one crisis for another

[Elisabeth Janaina]

In Niger, anti-smuggling efforts risk trading one crisis for another
Posted on January 13, 2017 by Peter Tinti
The migrant smuggling industry has brought jobs, stability and wealth
to northern Niger. Which is why countering it is fraught with risk.
Credit: Matthew Paulson.

Figures suggest the number of migrants transiting through Niger has
dropped, but these statistics should be treated with caution. Credit:
Matthew Paulson.

With unprecedented flows of irregular migrants from Africa to Europe,
EU policymakers are eager to work with governments in source and
transit countries to stem migrant arrivals from the continent. Having
seen its controversial €6 billion ($6.4 billion) agreement with Turkey
prove effective in dramatically reducing migrant arrivals via Turkey
(for now), the EU is seeking to buy similar cooperation from African
governments.

In October 2015, the EU launched the multi-billion Emergency Trust
Fund for Africa to “tackle the root causes” of irregular migration,
with a particular emphasis on the Sahel and Lake Chad Region, North
Africa, and the Horn of Africa. Additionally, the EU has negotiated
bilateral compacts with countries such as Mali, Niger, Nigeria,
Senegal and Ethiopia as part of its Migration Partnership Framework,
which lists “breaking the business model of smugglers” and enhanced
“cooperation on returns and readmission of irregular migrants” among
its goals.

Yet within this web of frameworks and agreements, Libya, the principle
point of departure for maritime crossings from Africa via the Central
Mediterranean, remains a policy black hole. Insecurity and a lack of a
central government preclude meaningful partnerships, so instead
European policymakers have turned their attention to Libya’s southern
neighbour, Niger, which has seen hundreds of thousands of irregular
migrants from throughout West Africa pass through its territory on
their way to Libya since 2012.

The numbers game

EU engagement in Niger has included a pilot project to convince
migrants to stop their journeys, encouraging Niger to pass a law
against migrant smuggling, a range of capacity-building projects for
law enforcement authorities and the judiciary, and increased
cooperation in “the fight against smugglers”.

As recently as last month, EU officials were openly touting the
success of these efforts, citing IOM figures to claim that the number
of migrants transiting through Niger to Libya had dropped from 70,000
in May to 1,500 in November, in part due to EU programs as well as
arrests of migrant smugglers and confiscation of vehicles by Nigerien
authorities.

One should be cautious, however, in placing too much faith in these
numbers, let alone ascribing causality to particular interventions. As
IOM concedes, the dip could be the result of smugglers changing routes
in order to avoid detection at the two monitoring outposts of
Séguédine and Arlit. Similarly, past decreases in migrant flows have
often proved ephemeral.

Furthermore, recent arrests of smugglers are by no means the first of
their kind, and if previous crackdowns are any indication, the
motivations behind them will have been far from pure. My own
interviews in 2014 and 2015 in Agadez, Niger’s preeminent smuggling
hub, indicate that crackdowns on smugglers were almost always symbolic
and often only targeted low-level operatives who had run afoul of
local authorities, failed to pay the necessary bribes, or upset higher
level counterparts who sought to use law enforcement to settle scores
or wipe out competition.

When I texted one smuggler in Agadez last week, he told me that
smugglers are being more discrete, but that migrant convoys are still
leaving for Libya with regularity. “[The government] can’t close
things down definitively…The more they complicate it, the more
profit,” he said, alluding to a phenomenon that Tuesday Reitano and I
encountered in several key smuggling hubs across Africa, the Middle
East, and Europe in our research for our recent book Migrant, Refugee,
Smuggler, Saviour. That is, absent meaningful measures to offer
alternatives to irregular migration, increased border patrol and law
enforcement do little more than force migrants to pay greater sums and
take greater risks, while also increasing the profit margins of the
smugglers.

[Review: Migrant, Refugee, Smuggler, Saviour – by Peter Tinti and
Tuesday Reitano]

The danger of destabilisation

In the case of northern Niger, however, haphazardly designed
anti-smuggling efforts come with an even greater danger: destabilising
one of the few pockets of stability in a volatile region. Aside from
the promise of money from Europe, the reality is that the Nigerien
government has few incentives to crack down on migrant smuggling, in
part because doing so is fraught with political and security risks.

In northern Niger, migrant smuggling is part of a broader political
economy that is thoroughly enmeshed within formal and informal
political and security structures. In fact, Niger’s anti-corruption
agency found that state security forces in the region would not be
able to function if they did not take bribes paid by smugglers, and
would otherwise be unable to purchase basic necessities such as fuel,
spare parts for vehicles and food.

Government officials in Agadez have also conceded that everyone from
drivers, fixers, landlords, shop owners, currency dealers, and even
local law enforcement are profiting from the economic boom. “Many are
eating off these migrants,” Ahmed Koussa, an assistant to the mayor of
Agadez, told the New York Times. Abdourahamane Moussa,
deputy-secretary general for the regional government in Agadez, struck
a similar tone speaking to the Wall Street Journal. “Migrants are
buying things, consuming our goods, animating our economy,” he said.
“People here are benefitting…How can we stop it?”

Far from being an ancillary activity taking place on the margins of
northern Niger’s economy, the migrant smuggling industry has become an
integral part of entire communities, many of which have long derived
their livelihoods from facilitating the movement of goods and people.
As a result, it is worth asking to what extent curbing irregular
migration through Niger might work against the long-term goals of
development and stability in the Sahel.

If we acknowledge that the migrant smuggling industry has been a
tremendous boon – not just for high-level smugglers, but for entire
populations that otherwise struggle to find opportunities amid
economic uncertainty and regional instability – one might go so far as
to say that migrant smuggling revenues are actually a force for
stability.

European policymakers must therefore consider the extent to which
anti-migrant smuggling efforts might upset the delicate security
equilibrium that the Nigerien government has worked hard to maintain
amid external shocks from neighbouring Libya, Mali, and Nigeria, and
an array of domestic pressures.

After smuggling, then what?

In a recent report I co-authored for the Institute for Security
Studies and Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime, I
argued that European policymakers need to incorporate a more nuanced
understanding of how anti-migrant smuggling efforts might impact local
security dynamics into their policies.

Elements within Niger’s coup-prone armed forces, for example, stand to
lose a source of revenue if they are no longer able to collect money
from migrant convoys. As a result, the Nigerien government might have
no choice but to reallocate its already tight budget in order to
adequately fund its restive security forces, thus diverting finances
that could otherwise be used for health, education, and economic
development.

One would also need to consider how low-level smugglers, many of whom
are former combatants, would respond if they were no longer able to
earn a living smuggling migrants. When we asked one driver what he
would do if he were no longer able to earn a living smuggling migrants
to Libya, he told us he would “go back to war” or “kidnap white
people”, referring to recent rebellions in northern Niger and the
kidnap-for-ransom industry in the Sahel and Sahara that has netted
armed groups well over a hundred million dollars in the last 15 years.
Another low-level smuggler warned, “If the government manages to stop
this traffic, it will kill us. Literally. We would starve to death.”

A migrant-driven economic boom followed by a policy-induced economic
bust is hardly a recipe for stability. It is imperative, therefore,
that European policymakers recognise that any success in stemming the
flow of migrants through Niger must be coupled with credible economic
alternatives for those who stand to lose. Otherwise, Europe is
courting another crisis in the Sahel.

Peter Tinti is an independent journalist and Senior Research Fellow
with the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime. He
is the co-author, with Tuesday Reitano, of Migrant, Refugee, Smuggler,
Saviour.
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