Boats used to carry irregular migrants from Libya to Europe have become part of a clandestine market growing alongside people smuggling.
Smugglers are gradually moving from boats brought in from abroad to vessels built in Libya and outfitted specifically for sea crossings, security officials and rights advocates say.
Libyan authorities regularly announce the discovery of clandestine workshops or factories making boats for irregular migration, widely known as “death boats.”
The raids point to continued smuggling activity in coastal areas across both western and eastern Libya.
Photographs released over the years by security agencies on both sides of the country offer a glimpse of the workshops. Often abandoned or secluded sites, they contain wooden planks, engines and manufacturing equipment, as well as finished boats and others still under construction.
In some cases, security agencies have burned seized boats and components after raids to prevent their reuse in migrant smuggling.
The workshops are scattered across coastal cities near departure points for irregular migration, according to monitoring by the Benghazi Center for Migration Studies.
Some are carpentry shops or simple premises near the coast that have been converted to boatbuilding, the center’s head, Tarek Lamloum, told Asharq Al-Awsat.
In Zuwara, for example, authorities found a coastal property that had been turned into a workshop for wooden boats.
Earlier this September, authorities found two facilities making migration boats in Tobruk, in the east, and Sirte, along with boats and manufacturing equipment.
Similar sites had previously been raided in western Libya, including Tajoura in Tripoli, Khoms and al-Qawiya. Authorities found two facilities in Misrata last year.
Boats of every type
The discoveries, stretching from Misrata and greater Tripoli in the west to Sirte and Tobruk in the east, show that local boatbuilding continues across a wide area. They also come as migration routes and smuggling methods have changed in recent years.
Lamloum pointed to workshops concentrated in eastern Libya, particularly in Tobruk, Bir al-Ashhab and areas near the Egyptian border. Some wooden boats have historically been linked to Egypt, he said, whether through the boats themselves or the workers and expertise used to build them.
As the migration route from eastern Libya toward Crete and Greece expanded, local boatbuilding workshops also appeared in the region. Boats, including inflatable craft and locally made vessels, are smuggled from western to eastern Libya, reaching Tobruk and nearby departure points.
The market is therefore not a collection of separate local markets, Lamloum said. An internal supply network connects different parts of Libya and provides the boats and equipment needed for crossings.
He said his assessment draws on accounts from people who made the sea journey, as well as UN reports and published investigations into migration and smuggling routes.
Vessels used for the crossings include wooden and fiberglass boats, inflatable craft and old fishing boats bought for reuse. In recent years, boats built specifically for migration journeys have also appeared.
Their quality varies widely, and some are made cheaply without the standards required for fishing boats or ordinary seagoing vessels.
Their sizes and capacities vary too. Some carry dozens of people, while larger wooden boats can hold far more. “There is no single model that can be described as the Libyan migration boat,” Lamloum said.
Harsh crossings
Since the fall of former President Moammar al-Gaddafi’s government in 2011, Libya has remained both a destination and a transit country for migrants. Its role in Mediterranean migration routes to Europe subsequently grew.
About 936,000 migrants were in Libya in January and February, according to the latest figures from the International Organization for Migration’s Displacement Tracking Matrix.
As the smuggling of irregular migrants expanded, the boats themselves became a commodity in that economy.
A security source told Asharq Al-Awsat that a well-made wooden boat costs about 50,000 Libyan dinars, or roughly $5,000, without an engine. Lamloum agreed with the estimate, taking exchange rates and the cost of materials and engines into account.
Migrants and refugees often describe harsh crossings. Boats are frequently unseaworthy or overcrowded, increasing the risks for those aboard.
Mohamed K., a 25-year-old Egyptian who later settled in Italy and regularized his legal status, still remembers a journey he made on one of the boats years ago.
“The wooden boat was falling apart. There were about 85 people aboard, packed together without room to stand, and everyone was waiting either to arrive or to die at any moment,” he told Asharq Al-Awsat.
Departures from Tobruk and its surroundings toward Italy increased from mid-2022, sometimes using large vessels carrying 400 people or more, according to the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime.
As controls on those journeys tightened, smugglers changed tactics in late 2023, turning to smaller boats that were harder to detect, the organization said.
Related businesses, including supplying and outfitting boats and transporting them to departure points, flourished alongside the smuggling trade.
“There are those who finance, those who build, those who import boats and engines, those who transport them between cities, those who provide the captain and those who secure the departure point,” Lamloum said.
“It is no longer simply a smuggler buying a boat from a fisherman,” he said. “We are now looking at a supply chain and an entire economy linked to migration journeys.”
