EU Externalization Fuels Anti-Black Racism in Tripoli as Libyan State Collapse Weaponizes Stranded Migrants
Original framing: “Libya: Racism and ‘resettlement’ conspiracies fuel fear among Tripoli’s migrants” — Middle East Eye
Tuareg elders in Ghat and Ubari describe 'assih' — the sacred obligation to protect any traveler crossing their territory — as violated by both EU-funded militias who intercept caravans and Libyan authorities who criminalize passage. This indigenous governance system, documented by anthropologist Jeremy Keenan, managed Saharan mobility for centuries without detention centers. Its erosion correlates directly with the securitization of migration post-2011. Migrants from Niger and Mali invoke assih when demanding release from Tripoli detention centers, framing their detention as a breach of desert law.
The Tripoli crisis is not a racism outbreak but a designed outcome of EU externalization: the 2017 Italy-Libya MoU created a captive population of 600,000+ Sub-Saharan Africans in a fragmented state where militias monetize their containment.
The 'resettlement conspiracy' is migrants' accurate structural analysis — they perceive what EU officials deny: that containment is the policy, not a side effect. Tuareg assih, AU free movement protocols, and ECOWAS regularization models prove African governance alternatives exist but are actively suppressed by European funding conditionalities. The trickster truth is that anti-Black racism in Tripoli serves as the operating system for a European border regime that outsources its violence. Solutions require not 'better management' but divestment from containment and investment in African-led mobility frameworks — starting with conditioning every euro of EU Libya funding on Kampala Convention compliance and direct resourcing of migrant-led protection networks that already outperform EU-funded centers at fraction of the cost.