Libya and the Route to Europe: Report from Kufra

 In an article for the BBC Wyre Davies gives a first hand report on the situation in Kufra in the southern desert of Libya. “Migrants seeking jobs and a better life or fleeing violence in their home countries have often moved through Libya”, Davies writes. But now the new Libyan government says the “situation along its southern border is becoming unmanageable.”

With little evidence of a co-ordinated approach to the problem from a non-existent central authority in distant Tripoli, the local official showed me the new, desperate, approach to containing the crisis. (…) A 150km “barrier” along part of Libya’s border with Chad, five metres high and made from nothing but old cars. Desperate times bring desperate measures.  (bbc.co.uk: “Battles over Libya’s dangerous migrant smuggling routes” 23.3.2012)

See the reportage at length at bbc.co.uk: “Battles over Libya’s dangerous migrant smuggling routes“

The pre-war situation in Kufra from the migrants point of view is covered by the documentary “Like a Man on Earth“