Nearly 20,000 people have attempted the crossing from Libya's east coast to Crete this year alone, with a single October day registering 710 arrivals in 14 boats. The route — Tobruk to Crete, roughly a day and a half at sea — has surged after crackdowns on the western Libya-to-Italy corridor pushed smuggling networks to adapt. Migrants pay up to $4,000 each for the passage. The shift is not random. After eastern Libyan armed forces targeted Italy-bound smugglers in 2023, networks pivoted to smaller boats aimed at Greek islands. According to the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, operators who previously moved goods, vehicles, or drugs have entered the people-smuggling market. The infrastructure — contacts, transport, security — was already in place. People are just another commodity flowing through existing logistics. This is the core of Libya's conflict economy. Since the 2014 split — UN-backed Tripoli in the west, Khalifa Haftar's military-political apparatus in the east — armed actors have built power by controlling informal markets and transport routes. Chatham House researchers found that instability created a "fertile environment" for smuggling, which in turn expanded the conflict economy itself. The system is self-reinforcing: instability breeds smuggling, smuggling funds the actors who perpetuate instability. Haftar's eastern bloc plays a particularly cynical game. No proven links exist between Haftar family networks and coastal smugglers, but the appearance of control matters more than the reality. High-profile operations against smuggling serve as demonstrations of political legitimacy — proof to European governments that eastern Libya can "restore order and curb migration," as GIGA researcher Hager Ali told DW. The more apparent control one has over the migration market, the greater one's leverage. The EU walks straight into this dynamic. European cooperation with Libyan actors to prevent irregular migration simultaneously empowers those actors locally. As retired Giessen University professor Andreas Dittmann noted, if eastern Libyan leaders can influence the "scale and timing" of migrant movements, they are demonstrating strategic importance to European governments. Brussels funds its own dependency. Geopolitical competition adds another layer. In late October, Tobruk signed a maritime agreement with Turkey — a rapprochement between former civil-war enemies. Greece rejects the deal as infringing on its economic rights around Crete and Rhodes. A direct link between the agreement and rising migrant numbers is unproven, but Ali suggested migrants could plausibly be used as leverage in such disputes. The eastern Mediterranean is becoming a chessboard where human beings are the pieces. Meanwhile, the IOM reports roughly 950,000 migrants and refugees registered in Libya as of mid-2025, many without healthcare access, residence permits, or work authorizations. Their dependence on informal markets completes the extraction loop — a captive population feeding the very conflict economy that traps them.
