(AFP) If he wasn’t making good money smuggling irregular migrants to the European Union by sea, Ibrahim himself might have joined the growing exodus from crisis-hit Lebanon.
“If I didn’t work in this profession, I would have left, just like so many other people,” said the 42-year-old trafficker, who asked to use a pseudonym when he spoke to AFP in the northern city of Tripoli.
“Maybe I would have turned to someone to smuggle me out,” he said, his face hidden by an anti-Covid surgical mask and a hoodie.
Lebanon, in the throes of a brutal economic crisis, is no longer just a launchpad for Syrian refugees and other foreign migrants.
Its own desperate citizens now also risk drowning in the Mediterranean in their quest for a better life.
