There is also evidence that the gold mining sector and the migrant smuggling sector are intersecting. As outlined above, some migration itineraries now include travel via gold mining areas, as smugglers place migrants within the mobility patterns used by non-migrants to reach gold sites. In some cases, these migrants seek to work in mining areas to fund onward travel. Moreover, Chatham House analysis of mobility data and satellite imagery from March 2022 to March 2023 illustrated that there was interconnectivity between mining areas in Niger and in Libya. Chatham House analysis also found that a significant number of mobile devices moved from the Djado mining area to a large processing facility in the Libyan city of Murzuq, indicating that the processing of gold mined in Djado may occur in Libya.
At the same time, gold mining in places like northern Niger requires transport of a valuable commodity from remote extraction sites to urban transport hubs, thus fostering the emergence of various protection rackets (which may involve state security services), banditry and an increase in arms trafficking to meet demand for small arms and light weapons.
Aside from gold, other actors previously involved in migrant smuggling have turned to or reverted to smuggling contraband. This involves transporting products such as fuel and foodstuffs across various borders in the region, as well as alcohol and tramadol into Libya. Many view the smuggling of such products as having a better risk–reward ratio compared to migrant smuggling post-criminalization. One individual who was arrested for migrant smuggling in 2019, and spent five months in prison before he was released due to the COVID-19 pandemic, pivoted to smuggling beer and whisky into Libya (where alcohol is illegal) for this very reason.
However, there is no substantial evidence that drivers previously involved in migrant smuggling have transitioned to more high-profile types of criminal activity such as arms trafficking from Libya into Niger for onward transport to Mali, or the trafficking of high value narcotics such as cocaine (transported into the region from Latin America into coastal states and transported overland through the Sahel into North Africa) or cannabis resin (cultivated in Morocco). Despite these activities having overlapping skillsets, the subset of actors involved in these forms of arms or high-value drug trafficking is considerably smaller than those involved in migrant transportation, the former requiring levels of discretion, acumen and connections within formal and informal state security structures.
Expansion of Libya’s conflict economy and the rise of banditry
The presence of non-local Tebu in the city of Agadez appears to have diminished considerably after the crackdown on migrant smuggling in 2016, although several affluent and influential members of the community are still based or spend time there. Interviews with members of the Tebu community in Agadez, as well as with other key interlocutors, indicated that many Tebu who were previously involved in migrant smuggling as drivers have transitioned to the gold sector in northern Niger and northern Chad, and are no longer based in Agadez.
Banditry throughout northern Niger has also increased in recent years and is linked to the growing presence of armed actors from southern Libya and Chad. These bandits, who are active along key transit corridors linking gold sites to trading and logistics hubs, are often referred to as ‘Chadian’ and ‘Sudanese’ by local populations, although their legal nationalities may be from other countries in the Sahel-Sahara region. They have access to heavy weaponry and materiel, having brought them from Chad and southern Libya, and many are ex-mercenaries as well as former members of the Chadian military. Their military capabilities combined with their knowledge of the area enables them to operate across northern Chad, northern Niger and southern Libya.
Banditry throughout northern Niger has also increased in recent years and is linked to the growing presence of armed actors from southern Libya and Chad.
Interviews in Agadez and Niamey, the capital city of Niger, indicated that bandits operating in northern Niger generally avoid encounters with the Nigerien security services, whose role in the north is largely limited to intermittent patrols along transit corridors linking military outposts in key towns and cities. There have been clashes between the Nigerien military and armed bandits, with one notable incident taking place in 2018 when Nigerien special forces pursued a convoy of 17 heavily armed vehicles belonging to ‘Chadian’ bandits near Arbre de Ténéré (the location of a publicly accessible well in the middle of the desert). Two Nigerien soldiers and an unknown number of bandits were killed. Attacks by bandits on gold sites or convoys carrying gold continue to proliferate.
The rise of heavily armed ‘Chadian’ bandits in northern Niger is a source of resentment among local communities, particularly ethnic Tuareg who compete with the ‘Chadian’ bandits throughout the region for control over licit and illicit activities. Several Tuareg leaders interviewed during fieldwork for this paper, including community leaders and elected officials, stressed that there is a need to ‘securitize’ or even ‘militarize’ northern Niger to restore order to the region.
Although bandits operating in northern Niger generally target vehicles carrying gold, cash and equipment, they do occasionally attack vehicles transporting people. There have been several incidents of bandits attacking vehicles carrying Nigeriens to gold fields or to Libya. Generally, these incidents tend to be ‘shakedowns’ in which the bandits either ask for a payment or rob the driver and passengers of their money and mobile phones. There are occasionally violent clashes over drug consignments – notably cannabis resin cultivated in Morocco being trafficked through Niger, as well as cocaine trafficked through Niger via Mali or Nigeria. However, these networks, their protection economies and the patterns of violence do not intersect with the migrant smuggling economy, as there is minimal overlap among the actors involved in each activity.
Local grievances and dissatisfaction with national government and the international community
Efforts to curb migration through criminalization also eroded trust between local populations and their government, as well as between local officials and the national government. The crackdown disproportionately affected Agadez, home to communities that have traditionally felt marginalized and discriminated against by the government in Niamey. This in turn has reinforced narratives that the national government is willing to sacrifice the economic well-being of northern communities to ensure that the international funds tied to cooperation continue to flow to the central government. Local authorities in Agadez claim they are never properly consulted and cite Law 2015-36, as well as other controversial measures such as permitting the US to build a drone base outside of Agadez, as evidence that the national government prioritizes placating powerful counterterrorism allies and aid donors over the interests of its own citizens.
‘I couldn’t provide anything for my family for months. How is that just?’ asked one smuggler who had been arrested, and who like many interviewed for this paper, questioned the motives of his government, the EU and the international organizations present in Agadez. ‘They [the Niger government] are doing this because they get money from Europe’, he said. ‘The migrants who are suffering here could be fed with 500 francs [€0.76] but they don’t do that. Instead, they spend money arresting me and harassing people’.
Three different current and former government officials interviewed for this research paper expressed similar frustrations at the time. ‘We keep being told that there is money for security and development, but we never seem to find it’, said one official. ‘Before the [anti-smuggling] law, we were the border of ECOWAS’, he continued. ‘The government took money from the Europeans… and afterwards, we learn we are now the European border’.
A driver, who had been mugged on his way to buy bread the evening prior, which he said would have never happened before, said that he felt unfairly targeted by the government as well as by Europe. ‘I am not the one putting them on boats. I am just transporting people across my country, which is my right and their right’.
In response to calls from local leaders warning of the economic fallout from Law 2015-36, the European Union Emergency Trust Fund (EUTF) for addressing root causes of irregular migration and displaced persons in Africa (EUTF for Africa) and Niger’s High Authority for the Consolidation of Peace launched a ‘reconversion plan’ for ‘former recognized smugglers and other actors of migration’. The highly publicized plan was, by all accounts, poorly communicated and haphazardly implemented, with only a small amount of projects actually receiving funds amid accusations of mismanagement and corruption. According to a government official in Agadez who is an adviser to the president of the regional council on issues of migration, the project struggled not just because of a lack of resources and poor implementation, but because it is conceptually flawed. The failed implementation of this programme had the dual impact of exacerbating local populations’ frustrations with their own government, as well as reinforcing local scepticism that European aid and development funds will ever reach local populations.
‘They said, you have to write these papers and turn them into this programme. It’s been four years and I have not one cent from it’, said one smuggler who is still regularly active moving migrants from Nigeria to Libya. ‘They gave some money to some people, but it wasn’t enough. They haven’t given me anything. So, if I have passengers, I go’.
The mass arrests in 2016 also had the adverse effect of exposing hundreds of people to the workings of the Nigerien justice system, where corruption is deeply embedded into social and institutional norms. After Law 2015-36, people were arrested without due process, and several people who were arrested said the process was arbitrary, based on a system of bribes, and that they were held for months without ever being formally charged.
‘The judges were not up to the task’, explained a regional councillor who is highly critical of the law. ‘They judged according to the parents’ envelope [from families of the accused], releasing some detainees and keeping others caught up in the same affair.’ Others further argued that the law exacerbated corruption. ‘You are always going to lose out to those who have money to give to the judges’, explained a retired teacher who described the criminalization of migration as ‘the root cause of poverty, injustice and banditry’ in Agadez.
Agadez has also seen a marked increase in the use of hard drugs in recent years, particularly heroin and a local version of crack cocaine. Several drivers who had previously been involved in migrant transportation said they are now involved in low-level local dealing of heroin and crack cocaine that comes to Agadez from Nigeria. One interviewee alleged that he recently learned from Nigerians how to adulterate cocaine powder, and purchased a small quantity of powder from a local dealer that he plans to dilute and then sell. This is a new phenomenon in Niger, where the use of hard drugs and abuse of pharmaceutical painkillers is reportedly growing among men under 50 as well as among young women.
Multiple people in Agadez cited unemployment and the lack of youth opportunities for the increased drug consumption. ‘Libya’s no good. Chad too. Algeria’s the same. We don’t know where to go anymore. It’s difficult. That’s why young people steal or take drugs to forget their problems’, explained a Tebu driver who described migrant smuggling as his ‘real source of income’ and the reason he was able to get married and build a house. ‘As far as I’m concerned, it’s the closure of migrant smuggling that has led to all the problems we’re experiencing’.
One side effect of Agadez becoming a concentrated area of international resources devoted to migration control is that northern Niger came to be used as a ‘dumping ground’ for states wishing to expel migrants. Since 2016, there has been an unprecedented number of deportations from Algeria to Niger, in which Algerian authorities drop migrants off just over the border, in the middle of the desert, 15 kilometres away from Assamaka. As is often the pattern, IOM offers assistance, transporting the migrants to Arlit, from where they are entered into IOM’s Assisted Voluntary Return and Repatriation (AVRR) programme.
Several locals expressed frustration that there is an influx of migrants who are stuck in Agadez and complained that migrant men do drugs and harass women, while migrant women dress and behave inappropriately according to local social norms. They characterized migrant women as prostitutes who ‘spread disease’ or that migrant men brought ‘new diseases’ to the community and argued that migrants have ‘accentuated the problem of drug abuse’. ‘Before, our children didn’t know about certain types of drugs, but now it’s worse’, explained one local. ‘Girls are in a catastrophic situation in Agadez’.
‘It’s all connected,’ said a former smuggler. ‘Look at all the young people, especially the girls, who are taking drugs. Stealing… that’s serious. We’ve never seen this before. No one in Agadez is happy with the current situation,’ he continued. ‘Today, people can no longer travel. People can no longer sleep peacefully in their homes. People can’t even hold a telephone in the streets of Agadez [for fear of theft].’
The intervention in the mobility economy was reported by locals to have disrupted flows of other trade from Libya into Niger, as a reduction in the number of vehicles travelling north with migrants since the 2016 crackdown constrained freight capacity on the return journey. This has contributed to price increases for available goods in Agadez.
‘I’ve seen Agadez evolve over the years. I can assure you that Agadez has changed and changed for the worse’, explained a retired schoolteacher who lamented the current situation in Agadez. ‘Before, you could leave a bag outside your door and find it the next day. Now, that’s impossible. Too much theft, too much crime, too many falsehoods. One thing’s for sure, here in Agadez, there’s hunger, thirst and disease’.
These local perceptions further illustrate the extent to which policies that aimed to transform Agadez and boost migration management have not only reinforced local frustrations with the government but fostered local animosity towards migrant populations themselves.
