Mohammed slows his truck down and turns onto a road that cuts through the desert; he’s driving east of the city of Dehiba, in southern Tunisia. Dehiba is about four kilometres west of the border with Libya. And Mohammed doesn’t need to check how rough the road ahead is because he knows it well – he’s been driving this truck along this road almost daily for three years. Because for three years, the 34-year-old has been trading illegally with Libyan smugglers here.

Mohammed slows his truck down and turns onto a road that cuts through the desert; he’s driving east of the city of Dehiba, in southern Tunisia. Dehiba is about four kilometres west of the border with Libya. And Mohammed doesn’t need to check how rough the road ahead is because he knows it well – he’s been driving this truck along this road almost daily for three years. Because for three years, the 34-year-old has been trading illegally with Libyan smugglers here.

But Mohammed doesn’t think that there is anything bad about what he’s doing. Along with some of his fellow smugglers, he has a number of rules he won’t break: these involve smuggling people, weapons or drugs, none of which he will undertake. Other than that though anything coming from Libya into Tunisia – and vice versa – is permissible.

And the rules at these exchanges are as follows: no names, no photography, no breach of secrecy.

Dozens of trucks travel along the roads in border areas near Dehiba, some of them only meters from Libya. Apparently local police used to confiscate the trucks and the goods but they no longer do this.

“The police are well aware of our situation,” Mohammed explains. “They know that we wouldn’t be doing this if we had any other option.”

About six years ago the smuggling in this area was limited to small amounts of electrical goods and household appliances which came in on donkeys.  

But after 2007, things became more professional. This was mainly due to a lack of employment opportunities anywhere else, Mohammed explains. It was also due to the relative weakness of the new governments in both countries after the revolutions that ousted both the former Libyan and Tunisian leaders. Undisturbed, smugglers have become much more audacious.

Now Mohammed stops his truck. He’s parked next to five, rusty trucks without number plates. They’re all empty – so far. The trade has already been agreed – smugglers in Dehiba have called their Libyan contacts in the city of Nalut and they’ve already agreed upon the price and the amount of goods.

Most of the time the Libyans are sending gasoline into Tunisia. The Tunisians export everything else into Libya – from livestock to food products to phosphate to alcohol; the latter is banned in Libya.

It has been suggested that the Tunisian economy is suffering because of all the smuggling – prices for some food products have risen because of demand for them over the border, and those price rises are particularly high in border towns like Dehiba. Nonetheless locals also say that smuggling has now become the major source of income in these remote areas. There is no manufacturing or service industry here and kiosks selling smuggled gasoline line the streets. It’s a booming business.

As Mohammed explains, almost everything is smuggled here now. Including trucks like his, as it turns out. The smugglers have been driving the trucks without license plates for a while now, he says. Why? Because they too have been smuggled in from Libya, where they can be bought for around TDR 1,000 (around US$640), far less than they cost in Tunisia.