Ben Guerdane: Months into the closure of Tunisia’s main border crossing with Libya, a haven for smugglers, shops are shuttered and unemployment has soared in the already-marginalized desert region, merchants say.
Ras Jedir, in Tunisia’s south, is a major hub of informal trade between the two North African countries.
The crossing has been shut since March 19, following what Libyan media said were clashes between armed groups and security forces on the Libyan side.
Libya’s Interior Ministry said it ordered the post’s closure “after outlaw groups attacked the post in order to create chaos.” It said the groups are involved in smuggling activities, which “they consider to be their right.”
More than three months later, Tunisian merchants in towns like Ben Guerdane, around 30 kilometers (19 miles) west of the border, are suffering.
“All shops are closed,” said Abdallah Chniter, 45, whose own store is among those that went out of business.
Mounir Gzam, head of a Tunisian-Libyan business association in surrounding Medenine governate, said that since the closure of Ras Jedir, the region has experienced a “commercial stagnation affecting around 50,000 merchants and their families carrying out activities linked to the border post.”
Now, he said, “they are unemployed.”
Gzam called the crossing “the beating heart and lifeline” of the struggling region. Unemployment in southern Tunisia topped an average of 20 percent last year, compared with the national average of 15.8 percent.
Summertime tourism is also set for a blow as Libyans usually flock to Tunisia’s island of Djerba, north of Ben Guerdane, Gzam added.
Ben Guerdane hosts vast marketplaces of car and mechanical parts, household appliances and clothing, at times even supplying cities in the north.
But the most lucrative commodity is petrol, which is smuggled from Libya and sold at half the price found elsewhere in Tunisia.
Libyan authorities have many times announced the reopening of Ras Jedir, around 170 kilometers (105 miles) west of Tripoli, only to have it delayed. This confusion has only worsened the dismay of the local population in Ben Guerdane.
In 2023, about 3.4 million travelers from both countries crossed Ras Jedir, according to official Tunisian figures.
While Libyans crossed mainly for tourism and treatment in private clinics and hospitals, most Tunisians traveled for trade or other work.
The commerce in Ben Guerdane often went unsupervised, without taxation and customs control. Tunisian officials ignored the unofficial cross-border trade, aware of its importance to a desert region where promised development has not materialized.
Throughout Libya, armed groups filled a security vacuum following the overthrow and death of longtime dictator Muammar Qaddafi in a 2011 NATO-backed uprising.
Libya is still struggling to recover from years of war that followed Qaddafi’s overthrow and is split between rival administrations — Tripoli in the west and Benghazi in the east.
The border had most recently been expected to reopen on Monday. It was delayed again when armed groups from the Libyan city of Zuwara, a few dozen kilometers east of the border, erected barricades of sand on the coastal route to protest measures announced by Libyan Interior Minister Imad Trabelsi.
“We will not leave our borders unsecured, just as we will not stand idly by in the face of trafficking and chaos,” Trabelsi said in March. He vowed to bring an end to the smugglers’ control and directed official security forces to take charge of the crossing.
Pledging not to back down “in the face of drug traffickers and smugglers,” he described the crossing as “one of the biggest smuggling and crime hotspots in the world.”
It remains unclear when the border crossing will reopen and the hardship in Ben Guerdane might ease.
“The crossing is the only source of livelihood for young people because the (Tunisian) state abandoned us,” said Chniter.
“The state must find solutions for us. Why do we depend entirely on Libya?“
Tunisia town shuttered after Libya closes smuggler-linked border
https://arab.news/42b5s
Tunisia town shuttered after Libya closes smuggler-linked border
- The crossing has been shut since March 19, following what Libyan media said were clashes between armed groups and security forces on the Libyan side
Sudan’s war robs 8 million children of 500 days’ education
- British NGO Save the Children says many teachers are leaving their jobs due to unpaid salaries
PORT SUDAN: Almost three years of war in Sudan have left more than 8 million children out of education for nearly 500 days, the NGO Save the Children said on Thursday, highlighting one of the world’s longest school closures.
“More than 8 million children — nearly half of the 17 million of school age — have gone approximately 484 days without setting foot in a classroom,” the children’s rights organization said in a statement.
Sudan has been ravaged by a power struggle between the army and the Rapid Support Forces since April 2023.
This is “one of the longest school closures in the world,” the British NGO said.“Many schools are closed, others have been damaged by the conflict, or are being used as shelters” for the more than 7 million displaced people across the country, it added. North Darfur in western Sudan is the country’s hardest-hit state: Only 3 percent of its more than 1,100 schools are still functioning.
In October, the RSF seized the city of El-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, and the last of Darfur’s five capitals to remain outside their control.
West Darfur, West Kordofan, and South Darfur follow with 27 percent, 15 percent, and 13 percent of their schools operating, respectively, according to the statement.
The NGO added that many teachers in Sudanese schools were leaving their jobs due to unpaid salaries.
“We risk condemning an entire generation to a future defined by conflict,” without urgent investment, said the NGO’s chief executive, Inger Ashing.
The conflict, which has claimed tens of thousands of lives, has triggered the “world’s worst humanitarian crisis,” according to the UN.
On Sunday, UN Human Rights commissioner Volker Turk condemned the increasing number of attacks against “essential civilian infrastructure” in Sudan, including hospitals, markets, and schools.
He also expressed alarm at “the arming of civilians and the recruitment of children.”
The UN has repeatedly expressed concern about the “lost generation” in Sudan.
Even as war rages in the southern Kordofan region, Prime Minister Kamil Idris has announced that the government will return to Khartoum after operating from the Red Sea city of Port Sudan, some 700 km away, for nearly three years.
Main roads have been cleared, and cranes now punctuate the skyline of a capital scarred by the war. Since then, officials have toured reconstruction sites daily, promising a swift return to normal life.
Government headquarters, including the general secretariat and Cabinet offices, have been refurbished. But many ministries remain abandoned, their walls pockmarked by bullets.
More than a third of Khartoum’s 9 million residents fled when the RSF seized the city in 2023.
Over a million have returned since the army retook the city.
A jungle of weeds fills the courtyard of the Finance Ministry in central Khartoum, where the government says it plans a gradual return after nearly three years of war.
Abandoned cars, shattered glass, and broken furniture lie beneath vines climbing the red-brick facades, built in the British colonial style that shaped the city’s early 20th-century layout.
“The grounds haven’t been cleared of mines,” a guard warns at the ruined complex, located in an area still classified as “red” or highly dangerous by the UN Mine Action Service, or UNMAS.
The central bank is a blackened shell, its windows blown out. Its management announced this week that operations in Khartoum State would resume, according to the official news agency SUNA.
At a ruined crossroads nearby, a tea seller has reclaimed her usual spot beneath a large tree.
Halima Ishaq, 52, fled south when the fighting began in April 2023 and came back just two weeks ago.
“Business is not good. The neighborhood is still empty,” the mother of five said,
Near the city’s ministries, workers clear debris from a gutted bank.
“Everything must be finished in four months,” said the site manager.
Optimism is also on display at the Grand Hotel, which once hosted Queen Elizabeth II.
Management hopes to welcome guests again by mid-February.
