stimated it to be valued around $498 million in 2015, including approximately $200 million for cigarettes, $148 million for fuel, and $150 million for other goods. While the smuggling of certain consumer goods (electronics, clothing, home appliances) decreased from 2013 to 2015, there was a dramatic increase in the smuggling of tobacco and fuel during that same period. The markets for both are estimated to be large. For example, 40 percent of the 380 million contraband cigarette packs consumed annually in Tunisia originate from Libya. Contraband fuel traded at the border accounted for 17 percent of Tunisian consumption in 2014.
While the World Bank attributes the decrease in trade of certain illicit goods to border enforcement, other Tunisian policies have instead led to an increase in trade of contraband items. Also complicating the situation is a reported lack of communication between Tunisian security forces and the military; the army has reportedly been reluctant to share its equipment and information (procured through foreign aid) with other Tunisian security forces, encumbering border patrol operations. Further impeding the Tunisian government’s efforts are Libyan militias, who often directly profit from illicit trade.
Since 2011, rival militias operating along the border in Libya (estimated to number around fifteen) have thwarted expanded border security efforts, and competition over smuggling profits has increased in the absence of a unified Libyan government response. Most recently, militias from the nearby Libyan towns of Zuwara and Zawiya have been repeatedly clashing over control of a vital border crossing in Ras Jedir. The growing influence of Salafi groups in this border dispute mirrors the expansion of like-minded groups across Libya’s policing sector and adds another complicating factor to the border security landscape.
Another skirmish—Libyan Major General Usama Juwaili’s offensive on Abu Khammash, a Libyan town near Ras Jedir—caused the border crossing to close in January 2018 for at least twenty-four hours and led some Libyan border officials to seek refuge in Tunisia. After a ceasefire and several days of negotiation, Juwaili and Libya’s Government of National Accord (GNA) reached an agreement that handed over control to official government authorities but required that Juwaili provide oversight and integrate local armed groups into the effort. The agreement, however, has largely not been implemented on the ground and has caused significant tension within Zuwara. The mayor, Hafez Ben Sassi, has accused Juwaili of forcibly taking control from ethnic Amazigh forces from Zuwara and has questioned if the GNA had in fact ordered the attack. Juwaili himself told a Libyan radio station that his offensive was part of a larger plan to establish “state control” over the entire road leading to the border.
In separate statement, another Libyan military officer, Brigadier General Hafez al-Ghali, argued that the Presidential Guard, a GNA-aligned military unit, had actually previously appointed him to protect the crossing in 2016. What seems likely is that the murky incident at Abu Khammash was an abortive attempt by the GNA’s Presidential Guard to use Juwaili and his forces to project its authority on the border, demonstrating once again how local rivalries and political disarray on the Libyan side negatively impact border stability.
Further destabilizing the situation is the counterterrorism narrative surrounding border enforcement, which has enabled local militias to consolidate their power on the pretext of fighting transnational jihadism. During one of the authors’ visit to the town of Sabratha—following the early 2016 U.S. strike on a self-proclaimed Islamic State training facility run by a Sabrathan local—a Libyan militia commander named Ahmed al-Dabbashi (or “al-Ammu”) rallied with rival clans and armed groups against Islamic State fighters inside the town and its environs. The anti–Islamic State offensive helped make al-Ammu the preeminent smuggling boss in the area (until he fled in late 2017 and was later