In recent weeks, the unfolding tragedy of refugees stuck in the Libyan migration system has caught the eye of the European public. The conditions they face are terrible: beatings, torture, systematic rape, slave trade and killings...

Yet it is European policies, and more specifically the EU outsourcing “migration control” to Libya, that have helped bring about the current crisis. In fact, it is impossible to understand why the Libyan “migration control” system developed the way it did without considering the intensive EU involvement in the country’s border control policies and the massive profit that various private companies are making out of it...

In 2007, the newly formed EU border agency Frontex dispatched another technical mission to Libya to examine possibilities for “developing an operational and technical partnership” with Libyan authorities.

As EU-made arms, vessels and surveillance technology started flowing into Libya, the union pushed Italy to expand its bilateral cooperation with Libya on border control...

Since the early 2000s, an increasing number of actors have viewed border control as a lucrative market and have lobbied for its expansion. Companies such as British BAE Systems...and HP have been actively competing for border security contracts.

The export of control equipment like IT databases, drones, fighters, jeeps, biometric tools, ships and radar equipment may not appease racist and nationalist circles in Europe, but it does make a lot of money...

These contracts, along with the international legitimacy derived from having closer relations with the EU, helped Gaddafi consolidate power and pushed refugees into a deeply exploitative system...