Rival governments - Power vacuum makes it hard to effectively tackle people smugglers

The mass drowning of refugees heading from Libya for Italy as their large boat capsized off the coast of Greece underlines Libya’s continuing power vacuum and the inability of its divided leaders to deliver on their promises to stem the profi table people-smuggling trade. It is striking that the ship sailed from the eastern port of Tobruk, a city where local leaders have mounted a campaign against illegal migration.

- Patrick Wintour

On 4 May, the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, granted Libya’s strong man in the east, Khalifa Haftar, a meeting in Rome at which she offered to invest in Libya’s east – the country has been divided into a rival east and west since 2015 – in return for action on the smugglers.

Haftar appeared to try to deliver on his deal. On 4 June, his allies imposed a temporary night curfew to stop the smugglers. Security forces conducted raids in towns bordering Egypt. They claimed to have found 1,000 people in farms and houses waiting to be taken across the Mediterranean. Boats and a harbour used by the smugglers were destroyed.

The deputy interior minister, Faraj Egaim, one of Libya’s power brokers, urged the population to report the smugglers and called on tribes controlling the borders into Libya to help.

Some of those rounded up at the beginning of the month – as many as 4,000 – were forcibly marched on foot to the Egyptian border towards Musaid, on the basis that they were there illegally. The violence involved, including the death of a young boy, led to an outcry.