As dawn breaks over the Mediterranean Sea, the Tunisian Coast Guard intercepts a flimsy ship full of migrants, ending their dream of reaching Europe – for now.
“This is your final warning: Stop!” shouts an officer.
About two dozen migrants, carrying inflated inner tubes as makeshift life preservers, look dejected as they realize the game is up.
But Fatim, an 18-year-old from Ivory Coast who worked for a year as a cleaner in Tunis to collect €1,250 in smuggling fees, says she will try again.
She sobs as she climbs from the rusting, home-built ship onto the humble Coast Guard speedboat.
“I don’t want to stay in Tunisia,” she says. “Life here is hard.”
The North African country, just 130 kilometers from the Italian island of Lampedusa, has long been a stepping stone for people fleeing violence and poverty across the continent and seeking refuge in Europe.
In May last year, Tunis signed an agreement with Rome that agreed to provide economic aid in exchange for Tunisian efforts to curb illegal migration.
But while Tunisian authorities intercept thousands of migrants each year, most are released once back on Tunisian soil, where few choose to stay.
“If I could find another boat, I would leave in a heartbeat – I will never give up,” said 20-year-old Guinean migrant Ali after being released in Sfax port.
In just one night earlier this week, the Coast Guard intercepted 130 African migrants, including children and babies, on four vessels attempting to make the crossing from the central region of Sfax.
Idia Sow, a 26-year-old Guinean suffering from the effects of a stroke, said she paid smugglers €1,560 for a place for herself and her three-month-old baby on an inflatable boat bound for Lampedusa.
– Recorded and Released –
The migrants are brought back to the port of the provincial capital of the same name, their personal details recorded – and then released again.
Officials say the Coast Guard lacks the resources to stem the flow.
“We are in a vicious circle. We make tremendous efforts to stop these migrants, but in the end they are released and then we try again,” said the commander of the patrol, Colonel Major Brahim Fahmi.
Hours earlier, AFP journalists saw police officers armed with batons and pistols removing more than 100 migrants from bushland 30 kilometers (18 miles) along the Sfax coast.
Some said they waited two weeks for boats.
“This summer we hit a record of more than 17,000 migrants (intercepted off Sfax), almost doubling the number in recent years,” Coast Guard Officer Saber Younsi said.
“That’s our role,” he said. “We must move on, but there has been a worrying development.”
Demand has created one of Tunisia’s few thriving new industries: the clandestine manufacture of boats.
Younsi said new smuggling networks are springing up to take advantage of the booming market, with demand also coming from Tunisians who have lost hope of finding decent jobs and in some cases are migrating as whole families.
Speaking in the port of Sfax, Younsi was surrounded by hundreds of captured migrant boats.
According to official figures, more than 22,500 migrants have been intercepted off the Tunisian coast since the beginning of the year, around half of them from sub-Saharan Africa.
About 536 people, mostly Tunisians, were arrested on suspicion of people smuggling.
Younsi said authorities were struggling with limited resources.
“If the same trend continues, we will reach a point where this phenomenon will spiral out of control,” he said.
