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To date, the Sahel has transcended its status as a mere theater of insurgency and humanitarian crisis, evolving into a full-fledged center of sophisticated transnational organized crime. The region now accounts for more than half the deaths related to violent extremism around the globe, a statistic that speaks less to ideological fervor and more to the fertile ground provided by its sprawling criminal economies. These enterprises are now operating in the gaps left by weakened states, actively dismantling state authority and co-opting the functions of government.
With youth unemployment reaching 75.6 percent in Burkina Faso, for instance, while illicit mining alone robs governments of billions in much-needed revenues, the economic desperation is systemic. However, it would be rash to conclude that the Sahel’s trajectory is merely about poverty fueling crime. Instead, it is a deliberate restructuring of power, by armed groups like Jama’at Nusrat ul-Islam wa Al-Muslimin, an extremist organization operating in the Maghreb and parts of West Africa, as well as Islamic State Sahel Province, a remnant of Daesh that operates in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger.
These groups, along with a range of local armed actors too many to list, impose taxes on mining sites and smuggling routes, generating immense revenues that fund their activities and expansion. Moreover, the Sahel’s deteriorating security situation is only accelerating, given the political quagmire in Libya serving as a source of weaponry from its vast post-conflict stockpiles, and a decisive corridor. This “northbound highway,” protected by factions within the Libyan Arab Armed Forces, ensures that criminality flows unimpeded to the Mediterranean, permanently wiring the Sahel’s instability into illicit global networks. We are witnessing the consolidation of a criminal ecosystem that is becoming the region’s de facto governing structure.
Given the Libya dimension, the unique business model of Sahelian transnational criminality becomes even more sophisticated and brutally efficient. Consider the hybrid human smuggling system now dominant in Libya. In 2024, over 76 percent of migrant arrivals in Italy from Libya came from just four nationalities. These individuals do not typically arrive by foot or perched on ramshackle vehicles from the start. They fly legally or semi-legally into Benina airport in eastern Libya, paying upward of $500 for a security clearance often facilitated by elements within the  Libyan Arab Armed Forces.
The system — a robust network of travel agents, officials, and smugglers — then moves people west by bus or car to coastal hubs such as Zawiya and Sabratha before the final maritime leg. With full package costs reaching $13,000, this is not a movement of the destitute and desperate, but a high-value, illicit logistics enterprise, so normalized it includes bus services and pre-paid accommodation, all operating under the watch of armed factions that are also part of the official security apparatus funded by the EU to keep migration in check.
This criminal fluidity is a direct byproduct of a collapsed state. Libya’s western coast, a chronic hotspot, demonstrates how political fragmentation is the smugglers’ best asset. When one hub faces a crackdown, such as the 2023 operations to tamp down on large-scale departures from Tobruk, traffic simply reroutes to another. Moreover, the assassination of a figure such as Abd Al-Rahman Milad, a commander in the Zawiya refinery coast guard, did not cripple the trade. Instead, it created a power vacuum that was immediately filled by competing networks, with men loyal to a rival, Mohammed Bahroun, directly engaging in smuggling along the coastline. 

Criminal fluidity is a byproduct of a collapsed state.

Hafed Al-Ghwell

Unfortunately, the security apparatus is often complicit in these complex smuggling networks, making enforcement actions next to impossible. For instance, the counter-terrorism force deployed in Zawiya is largely composed of local fishermen from the Gmanda tribe, who often accept bribes to allow migrant boats safe passage. In such a climate, any “official” law enforcement actions are frequently theatrical, such as the early 2025 “anti-crime” campaign in Zawiya that was widely derided as staged and involved forces that were themselves part of the problem. Despite these performances, estimated departures from Libya’s west coast remain consistently high, effortlessly absorbing the inevitable displacements from crackdowns on other regions, thereby demonstrating the ecosystem’s immunity to superficial interventions.
The consequences of Libya’s criminal ecosystem and kleptocratic networks for the Sahel are both immediate and systemic. The Sahel is already defined by poly-criminal hubs, where trafficking in cocaine, gold, and firearms converges, fueling the violence that has made the region the source of over half of the world’s terrorism-related deaths. These are no mere isolated markets, but an integrated economy of illegality spanning across the Sahara and likely reaching the Red Sea should Sudan descend into permanent dysfunction given its civil war.
The same smuggling corridors that move migrants north are used to transport other commodities, with cocaine seizures in the region exploding from an annual average of 13 kg to over a ton in recent years. Libya’s enduring political disintegration provides the final, critical link, connecting this vast interior network of instability directly to the Mediterranean. The logistical pipelines are already in place; the business model is proven. And, as a result, a containable regional security crisis quickly transforms into a complex hybrid threat with unimpeded access to European borders that will demand extremely costly intervention. Brussels’ policy focus on intercepting migrant boats is only a superficial response, targeting a single symptom, while ignoring the underlying condition, a fully operational criminal network with territorial control, which continues to mature and expand.
So far, the global response has been outmaneuvered. Attempting to fight 21st-century criminal enterprises with disjointed aid and fragmented diplomacy only creates gaps ripe for exploitation as the newly empowered seek to profit while covered by veils of legitimacy. If Libya remains a patchwork of fiefdoms and the Sahel suffers from persistent socioeconomic woes, criminal networks will continue to offer a twisted form of livelihood and governance that will likely become a chief export via Libya’s Mediterranean shores.
After all, Sahelian hybrid actors provide jobs where states cannot, and enforce order where the rule of law has collapsed. In a nutshell, the $500 security clearances at Benina airport are much more than a bribe. They are a symbol, among many, of a parallel system that “works.” Until such a system is dismantled, the winds blowing from the Sahel only tell of escalating threats that Europe and the world are woefully ill-prepared to confront.

• Hafed Al-Ghwell is senior fellow and program director at the Stimson Center in Washington and senior fellow at the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies.
X: @HafedAlGhwell