Damned for Trying

The largest flow of modern African migration funnels through a single country — Libya.

Coming from the south, migrants flee the vestiges of wars that have left entire nations in ruin. From the east, they escape a life of indefinite military servitude and violent conflict. From the west, they evade destitution and governments that arbitrarily jail whomever they please.

Some arrive by choice, others by force. But Libya is the purgatory where most migrants prepare to face the deadliest stretch of the Mediterranean Sea.

What links the migrants' stories is the fundamental human desire for survival. But that doesn't begin to explain the complexity of Libya's crisis.

The costs of the journey -- both human and monetary -- match a steep sum of desperation and demand.

The conundrum Libya poses for policymakers is that the root of its wave of migration does not come from a single source. Like a flood of tributaries streaming to the mouth of a river, migrants are fleeing en masse from at least a dozen different countries.

Shutting off the flow would mean addressing the needs of migrants spanning half of an entire continent.

To tell the story of Libya's escalating migration crisis, one must weave together the threads of instability left behind by a toppled dictator, Muammar Gaddafi, and the power vacuum filled by rivaling factions vying to take his place. The chaos allowed smuggling networks to thrive, suddenly opening up a lucrative market designed to profit off trading humans like other goods and commodities.

The country's 1,100-mile coastline has effectively become an open border without government forces to monitor who comes and who goes. Smugglers have filled the void, willing to tightly pack hundreds of migrants at a time into flimsy vessels and shuttle them to Italy.

Migrant crossings through the central Mediterranean jumped by more than four-fold after 2013. The International Organization for Migration estimates that nearly 182,000 migrants from Libya have landed in Italy since the start of last year, exacerbating a massive refugee crisis already spilling out of Syria and other parts of the Middle East.

Unlike the millions of people forcibly displaced by Syria's brutal five-year civil war, migrants that pass through Libya do so amid a complex web of forces that have uprooted entire generations.

For years, broad regions of sub-Saharan Africa have been swallowed by squalor and extreme poverty, crushed under the rule of oppressive governments or caught in the crosshairs of deadly groups that thrive on terror.

But suddenly, technology made the world much smaller and dreams more concrete. Facebook feeds were now flooded with pictures of friends and family who had made it to Europe, projecting the notion that a dramatically improved lifestyle was easily within reach. Remittance packages from loved ones abroad proved that higher wages were not merely a myth. Connections to smugglers selling safe passage to a new life were all of a sudden just a phone call away.

The problems driving migration through the northern fold have been festering for decades. But for a short time, world leaders were able to keep the wave from spilling over into Europe.

Gaddafi once proudly served as protector to his country's maritime border, promising that, for a sizable compensation from Europe, makeshift loads of human cargo would not suddenly arrive in search of refuge on Italian shores.

Gaddafi tapped into the ugliest part of the European public's fear of immigrants and concerns that their communities would falter under the weight of rapid migration.

But in the time since Gaddafi's fall from power and subsequent death in 2011, international attention on the flood of migration has grown, reflecting the level of desperation that fueled the crisis. Suddenly, it wasn't just migrants arriving in Italy by the thousands — a disturbing number of corpses were also washing up on shore.

The Mediterranean is now a vast unmarked grave to thousands of migrant lives lost at sea. More than 3,000 people have died crossing the most treacherous point of the Mediterranean, where Libya's northern shore connects to the string of islands surrounding the Italian coast.

European authorities have tried to crack down on the practice, turning back the boats still out at sea. Many migrants are deported outright. But for every smuggler's ship that is seized by authorities, a new, often rickety, version replaces it, launched at the peril of those onboard.

The costs of the journey — both human and monetary — match a steep sum of desperation and demand. But what's most shocking about the factors driving families from their homes is that no two countries are the same.

The journey will drag them through several layers of hell before their toes even touch the sea.

Of the entire African continent, Eritrea — the country that sends the highest number of migrants to Europe — is roughly equal in size to the state of Pennsylvania. Nearly 40,000 migrants fled Eritrea last year, escaping a government notorious for one of the worst human rights records in the world and for condemning citizens to lifetimes of mandatory military service.

But neighboring Somalia, another distressed country located along the eastern Horn of Africa, has its own migration push-factors at play, pinned to decades of armed conflict, now leading to the rise of al-Shabaab rebels throughout the region.

The dynamic is markedly different along the western route to Libya.

Referred to as "the backdoor to Europe," the lines of migration link a diverse region. In a single leg of the journey, one might find a mix of Nigerians displaced by the militant insurgent group Boko Haram, Gambians escaping a brutal authoritarian government, or Senegalese existing on the brink of survival.

What many migrants don't know is that their journey will drag them through several layers of hell before their toes even touch the sea.

Five out of the six countries that border Libya have either been engulfed in war or are in the midst of violent unrest. In order to reach the ports that serve as the gateways to Europe, migrants first must spend months, even years, criss-crossing the Sahara or the countries still raw from violent armed conflicts.

The desert has turned into a massive hub for human smuggling, with migrants shuttled between refugee camps, stash houses, even tucked inside the hollowed-out center of a merchant's lorry. Those who survive share horror stories of kidnappers who held them for ransom, waiting hours, days, or weeks until families back home or in Europe opened up their pocketbooks once again.

Conditions inside Libya have deteriorated since the citizen uprising against Gaddafi and the government's collapse in 2014. Armed conflict between two rivaling factions has engulfed the country as they fight for legitimacy. The chaos has caused a massive displacement of hundreds of thousands of Libyans who are left now without work or a place to call home.

Migrants caught in the crossfire are often used as pawns in the power struggle. Thousands languish in overcrowded detention centers on any given day, and allegations of torture and unsanitary conditions have led to concerns of widespread human rights violations.

That Libya serves as a beacon of hope points to the desperation that drives families from their homes.

The country is a place of limbo as migrants face chaos and prepare for the next leg of their journey. Tenements dot the major ports of migration, filled with mostly African men in search of jobs to fund their travels.

For a time, Libya's economy was largely propped up by the labor of foreign workers. The oil-rich nation was once a prosperous land of opportunity. But now, there's not much by way of jobs. And with each new wave of migrants trucked into the coastal cities, opportunities diminish.