Refugees Deeply | 03.01.2017
The story of one former desert driver and his struggle to escape the migration trade reveals the limits of an E.U. scheme to offer alternatives to the Sahara smugglers. Giacomo Zandonini reports from Agadez.
Giacomo Zandonini
AGADEZ, Niger – Issa Tahir and his friends, who all worked in one way or another in the people-smuggling business, kill time and hide from the relentless high-noon heat in a darkened room in the bowels of the town hall of Agadez in northern Niger.
While they wait on Rhissa Felthou, the Saharan city’s mayor, Tahir flips anxiously through the pages of a long dossier he hopes will open up new horizons for them. “If everything’s in order,” Tahir says, “we’ll be recognized soon as an official association and then we’ll really be able to start working.”Half an hour later, and with evident satisfaction, they are on their way to another municipal office for the next step in the paper chase. Tahir’s brainchild, the Association for the Reconversion of Actors of the Migration Economy, or ARAEM, is closer to becoming a reality.