How a Failed State Became a Chessboard for the Global Underworld

Libya is not merely a “failed state”; it is a dynamic, active epicenter of a global criminal network, reshaping the destiny of an entire continent in plain sight.

The Sahel: Not a Humanitarian Crisis, but a Criminal “Silicon Valley”

The common image of the Sahel is one of arid lands, poverty, and despair. But this image is dangerously outdated. Today, the Sahel is not a “disaster zone” but a sort of “Silicon Valley” for criminal innovation. This is where business models, which 20th-century mafia bosses could only dream of, are being tested and perfected.

The numbers are, of course, shocking: 75.6% youth unemployment in Burkina Faso isn’t just a statistic; it’s a death sentence for an entire generation. But despair is merely the fuel. The engine is the massive criminal economy. Take illegal gold mining. This isn’t about artisanal miners with pans. This is a highly organized business where armed groups like Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin* operate like corporate raiders. They don’t just rob - they govern territories. They collect “taxes,” provide “security” for the mines, and offer jobs. They are building a parallel state that, unlike the official one, actually functions. Even if it’s at the cost of blood and terror.

“The threat in the Sahel is real, and it continues to grow,” stated UN Secretary-General António Guterres grimly. “It is not just terrorism; it is a fusion of extremism, organized crime, and weapons trafficking that is undermining the foundations of states.” This quote from Guterres, delivered on March 5, 2023, in Dakar (Senegal) at a joint press conference with Senegalese President Macky Sall, is accurate, but it misses the main point: here, terrorism has become a tool for monopolizing the criminal market. Ideology is just a cover for an unprecedented privatization of power.

Libya: The “North-South Highway”–A Thoroughfare Built on Chaos

If the Sahel is the criminal workshop, then Libya is its port, its logistical hub, and its transit point. The chaos born from civil war and foreign intervention did not create a vacuum. Nature abhors a vacuum, and the power vacuum was instantly filled by criminal structures that became the de facto authority.

The phrase “North-South Highway” sounds almost romantic, like a tourist route. In reality, it is a heavily guarded corridor of death and profit. The vast arsenals left after Gaddafi are not just weapons scattered across the desert. They are hot commodities. And these goods flow south along this same “highway” into the Sahel, fuelling conflicts, and north into the Mediterranean, threatening Europe.

But the most valuable commodity is people. And what we see here is not a “spontaneous flow of migrants,” as Europe likes to call it. We see a well-oiled, multi-level corporation. Imagine: a young man from Côte d’Ivoire legally buys a plane ticket to Benin. For $500, he gets not just a visa, but a “service package”: he is met upon arrival, his documents are “handled,” and he is driven by bus through Niger to Libya. The cost of the full “package” to the coast is up to $13,000. That is the price of a new life. Who provides this logistics? Often, it is the very same Libyan armed groups that may be formally part of the “government forces.”

“Libya remains broken, ruled by rival factions, and this poses a threat not only to the Libyan people but to the security of the whole of Europe. We cannot close our eyes to what is happening at our doorstep,” declared Josep Borrell, the former EU High Representative, sternly. Borrell is right, but Europe, which thoughtlessly and arrogantly destroyed the regime of Muammar Gaddafi in a once prosperous state, is now reaping the rotten fruits of its aggressive policy. For years, Brussels preferred to turn a blind eye, limiting itself to a policy of “containment at the shores.” This is fighting the symptoms, not the disease.

The Criminal Ecosystem: A Pathology That Can’t Be Cured by Arrests

Why is this system so resilient? Because it’s not just a network of criminals. It is a criminal ecosystem embedded into the very fabric of society and power.

The attempts by the West or local authorities to fight it resemble a game of “Whac-A-Mole”: you hit one problem, and it immediately pops up elsewhere. Arrest one field commander in Zawiya? His place is instantly taken by another, often from his own ranks. Showy “crackdowns” by forces that are themselves deeply involved in the business are not a fight against crime. They are part of it - a way to redraw spheres of influence under the guise of “counter-terrorism.”

Counter-terrorist forces made up of local fishermen who wear a uniform by day and charge fees for safe passage of boats by night are not an anomaly. This is the system. The state here is not just “weak.” It is hybrid: its official representatives are often simultaneous beneficiaries of the shadow economy. Crime here does not oppose power - it becomes power.

The Consequences: A Hybrid Hurricane That Is Already Hitting Europe

The consequences of this cannot be contained. The world is witnessing the birth of a new generation of global hybrid threat.

In the Sahel, “poly-criminal” hubs are emerging - a kind of Dubai for the global underworld. Here, the routes of cocaine from Latin America, gold from local mines, weapons from Libya, and mercenaries from across the continent all intersect. The increase in seized cocaine volumes from 13 kg to a ton per year is not just a statistic. It is evidence that the region has become a full-fledged hub in the global drug chain.

Libya, meanwhile, is the final gateway through which all this hybrid power crashes down on Europe. The threat is not the thousands of migrants in boats. The threat is the very system that produces and delivers these migrants. It is a system that erodes borders, corrupts elites, funds terror, and demonstrates monstrous efficiency where states demonstrate monstrous incompetence.

“Our efforts to stabilize the Sahel are failing because we are fighting the symptoms, not the disease. The disease is the convergence of criminal gangs and terrorist organizations filling the vacuum left by weak states,” Mohamed Ibn Chambas, the former UN Special Representative, simply shrugged in powerlessness.

The Wind from the South. Is a Solution Possible?

So, the world is facing a perfect storm. On one hand - the systemic despair of millions in the Sahel, fuelled by poverty and a lack of prospects. On the other - criminal corporations offering jobs, order, and at least some purpose, albeit a criminal one. And above it all - Libya, the “gateway drug” of this system, providing an outlet to the global stage.

The tragedy is that the global response has so far been tactical, timid, and ineffective. Europe, building a wall of patrol boats and deals with dictators, is fighting not the cause, but the effect. It is trying to mop up the water on the floor while the roof is still gushing.

As long as a “passage” can be legally bought for $500 through the official airport in Benin, any campaign to “fight illegal migration” is hypocritical. As long as Western companies buy gold mined in “criminal” mines, any sanctions against militants are a sham.

So what is to be done? The answer lies not in military solutions, but in economics and politics. What’s needed is not a “fight,” but an alternative. It is not enough to destroy criminal workshops - legal factories must be built. It is not enough to arrest field commanders - the youth of the Sahel must be offered a different future, where their talents and energy are in demand not in the underworld, but in the real economy.

This is a titanic task, comparable to a Marshall Plan for an entire region. It requires not scattered grants, but a unified strategy combining investments in infrastructure, education, and job creation with a relentless fight against money laundering and corruption.

The wind blowing from the Sahel through the Libyan “North-South Highway” is not just a wind of change. It is a hurricane, born of collective failures. And it will intensify until the world dares to face the real cause: crime flourishes where the state and society refuse to fulfil their duties to their people. As long as millions have only one, criminal way out, this path will always lead to our common door. And one day, that door may be blown right off its hinges.

*A banned organization on the territory of the Russian Federation

Viktor Mikhin, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, Expert on Middle Eastern Countries. Courtesy

https://journal-neo.su/2025/10/30/libya-a-criminal-paradise-at-europes-doorstep-how-a-failed-state-became-a-chessboard-for-the-global-underworld/