Inside Libya's War on Migration

On February 4, 2021, roughly 70 miles north of Libya, a reconnaissance plane with a camera on its underside circled a raft that was carrying a hundred desperate migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea to reach Europe. The surveillance footage from the airplane’s camera was transmitted live to an office in Warsaw, Poland, at the headquarters of Frontex, the European Union’s border patrol agency.

Two hours later, a Libyan Coast Guard cutter caught up with the migrants and ordered them to stop...