Using force to bring slaves home is a non-starter convincing migrants to return home a tall order

State officials screen migrants from Libya at the Murtala Mohammed International Airport in Lagos on December 5, 2017. Some 150 Nigerians voluntarily returned from Libya after being stranded in the volatile North African country en route to Europe. PHOTO | PIUS UTOMI EKPEI | AFP

What you need to know:

  • The African Union estimates between 400,000 and 700,000 of traffickers’ cargo is stranded in Libya.

As the story of African migrants “bid ‘em in; bid ‘em in” in a Libyan slave market plays, so do suggestions of solutions.

The anger about the trade resulted from a CNN clip of Africans going for as little as $400, followed by narratives by former victims.

A Wednesday meeting in Paris presided over by President Emmanuel Macron will be attended by officials from Mali, Niger, Chad, Mauritania and Burkina Faso. 

These countries provide troops to the G5 Sahel force that is combating Islamic militants.

Other than in towns, lawlessness in the Sahel — in the name of freedom, nationhood, democracy, ad infinitum — is not new.

ECONOMIC HARDSHIPS

It is widely accepted that the fall of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 flooded the region with arms to increasing numbers of Osama bin Laden copy cats.

Add conflicts in Cote d’Ivoire, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Central Africa Republic, Gambia, Sudan, Eritrea, and others — and ensuing economic hardships — and you have serious instability.

In such situations, people flee, not necessarily to fight another day but to go on with their lives in seemingly stable regions.

For the West African desperados that had been towards Europe, where, if they make it, they encounter different miseries.

In conflicts, fortunes are made. Libya, where “authorities” flourish even around an oasis, is a good route. In all fairness, Good Samaritans exist.

TRAFFICKERS

The African Union estimates between 400,000 and 700,000 of traffickers’ cargo is stranded in Libya. With financial and tactical aid from some EU members, the wobbly Libyan Government has some in camps. Others are in the “bid e’m in,” sphere, where nobody cares. The issue is how to stymie the flow.

And there is hypocrisy. France, the US and the UN have troops in the region. They should have known of the slave trade. 

Macron has called for a police and military effort to bring home migrants, a non-starter.

FIGHT ISLAMISTS

Making the G5 force fully functional to fight Islamists and the traffickers is more feasible.

Convincing migrants to return home is a tall order. It is good governance and economic development that will entice returns.

Most important, though, as Sierra Leone President Ernest Bai Koroma put it, the whole thing “...is a regional problem, an African problem.” All the rest of the world can do is help solve.