The principal gateway into Europe for refugees and migrants runs through the power vacuum in southern Libya’s Fezzan region.
Any effort by European policymakers to stabilise Fezzan must be part of a national-level strategy aimed at developing Libya’s licit economy and reaching political normalisation.
European policymakers increasingly are looking at the Fezzan, Libya’s vast and scarcely populated south west, as their frontier against sub-Saharan African migrants and refugees traveling the Central Mediterranean route to Europe.
In 2016, over 160,000 took this route from Libya on makeshift boats; most had entered through this region, which…