In the early morning of June 14, the Egyptian fishing vessel Adriana sank off the coast of the Peloponnese with 750 migrants on board. Most were Pakistanis, Bengalis, Egyptians, Syrians and Palestinians. Among them were women and children. Some had paid up to $9,000 to smugglers to get to Italy. Only 104 survived. It was one of the worst shipwrecks in the history of the Mediterranean. The causes are diverse. The Greek coast guards are largely to blame for failing to rescue the ship, but the tragedy would not have occurred if Libya had not been a failed state.

The Adriana set sail from Tobruq, in Cyrenaica, the eastern region of Libya under the control of rebel general Khalifa Haftar. “He and his children benefit from the migrant business,” says Mary Fitzgerald, a researcher at the Middle East Institute in Washington DC, during a talk at the IEMed.

Migrants fly from Karachi to Dubai or Cairo and from there continue by road to Tobruq. They also leave Dacca for Damascus and from there to Benghazi on a Cham Wings flight, the Syrian airline that brought hundreds of people to Minsk in 2021 to cause a migration crisis on the border with Poland.

The central Mediterranean route, the one that directs migrants from Libya and Tunisia to Italy, has grown by 137% this year. It has been used by more than 65,000 people, a figure not seen since 2016.

The Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, tries to close with the Government of Tripoli and also with that of Benghazi, led by Haftar, an agreement similar to the one signed with Tunisia: economic aid in exchange for curbs on immigration.

The problem is that Libya is not a functional state. He was the one who had the best ability to get out of the 2011 revolts and, with Yemen, he is the one who has done the worst. It barely has 6.5 million inhabitants, with a very high literacy rate, not like in Egypt or Tunisia. Also, it is a homogeneous society, not like in Syria or Iraq. And very rich thanks to the largest oil reserves in Africa.

However, as Fitzgerald explains, tribal fragmentation and, above all, the proliferation of militias prevent the Tripoli government, led by Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah, from being able to control the territory.

Dbeibah rules thanks to the military protection of Turkey, while Haftar controls eastern Libya with the support of the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, France and Russia, through Wagner’s mercenaries.

The French special troops in Benghazi have coincided with those of Wagner in a geostrategic struggle between antagonists that highlights the principles of both, reduced to the control of hydrocarbons and a Sahel that is crumbling in the hands of jihadists and military coup leaders.

Libya is an important point for the trafficking of arms, drugs, fuel and people between Africa and Europe. The port of Zaouiya, 50 kilometers from Tripoli, is the base of the mafias that dominate the area under Tripoli’s control. Dbeibah bombarded it in May with Turkish drones, a show of force highly indicative of the precarious balance that has remained since the ceasefire three years ago. The swords are high, not only between Haftar and Dbeibah, but also between the mafias and the militias, between the Central Bank and the National Oil Company.

Money moves with opacity. The economic reforms seem impossible, also the democratic ones. The EU believes that the elections are not a priority, that it is better for the elites to consolidate the status quo.

Fitzgerald disagrees. He believes that Libyans deserve to vote. Dbeibah is the most popular candidate. Behind him is Saif el Islam, son of the deposed Gaddafi. Two thirds of the population is under 35 years of age. The horror of the dictatorship fades. The appetite for a new one is not less.

Libya is the last country in the Arab Spring that is not in the hands of a warlord. A presidential election, as the EU fears, may pave the way for the winner to a dictatorship.

Dbeibah multiplies its options with very popular measures. The administration has had a surplus since last summer it returned to exporting crude oil. The aid of 7,000 euros to each couple who wants to get married guarantees the support of young people.

With or without an election, the US and the EU are courting Dbeibah and Haftar to rein in Wagner and immigration. That Libya is a state with a face and eyes is not a priority. Neither is it that migrants are treated with humanity.