The number of migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean for Europe has been dropping and that is partly because of tougher measures introduced on the migrant routes, as Mike Thomson reports from Niger.
In a small dusty courtyard near the centre of Agadez, a town on the fringes of the Sahara desert, Bachir Amma, eats lunch with his family.
A line of plastic chairs, clinging to the shadow of the mud walls, are the only visible furniture.
Mr Amma, a former people smuggler, dressed in a faded blue denim shirt and jeans, has clearly known better days.
"I stopped trafficking migrants to the Libyan border when the new law came in.
"It's very, very strict. If you're caught you get a long time in jail and they confiscate your vehicle.
"If the law was eased I would go back to people trafficking, that's for sure. It earned me as much as $6,000 (£4,700) a week, far more money than anything I can do now."
Traffickers jailed
The law Mr Amma mentioned, which banned the transport of migrants through northern Niger, was brought in by the government in 2015 following pressure from European countries.
Before then such work was entirely legal, as Niger is a member of the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) that permits the free movement of people.
Police even provided armed escorts for the convoys involved. But since the law was passed many traffickers have been jailed and hundreds of their vehicles confiscated.
Before 2015, the Agadez region was home to more than 6,000 people traffickers like Mr Amma, according to figures from the UN's International Organization for Migration (IOM) .
Collectively they transported around 340,000 Europe-bound migrants through the Sahara desert to Libya.
Migration in reverse
Since the clampdown this torrent has become a relative trickle.
In fact, more African migrants, who have ended up in Niger and experienced or heard of the terrible dangers and difficulties of getting to Europe, have decided to return home.
This year alone 16,000 have decided to accept offers from the IOM to fly them back.
A large and boisterous IOM-run transit centre in Agadez is home to hundreds of weary, homesick migrants.
In one large hut around 20 young men, from a variety of West African countries, attend a class on how to set up a small business when they get home.
Among them is 27-year-old Umar Sankoh from Sierra Leone, who was dumped in the Sahara by a trafficker when he was unable to pay him more money.
"The struggle is so hard in the desert, so difficult to find your way. You don't have food, you don't have nothing, even water you can't drink. It's so terrible," he said.
Now, Mr Sankoh has given up his dreams of a better life in Europe and only has one thought in mind: "I want to go home.
"My family will be happy because it's been a long time so they must believe I am dead.
"If they see me now they'll think, 'Oh my God, God is working!'"
Coast guards intercept vessels
Many thousands of migrants who make it to Libya are sold on by their traffickers to kidnappers who try and get thousands of dollars from their families back home.
Those who cannot pay are often tortured, sometimes while being forced to ask relatives for money over the phone, and held in atrocious conditions for months.
With much of the country in the grip of civil war, such gangs can operate there with impunity.
In an effort to curb the number of migrants making for southern Europe by boat, thousands of whom have drowned on the way, coast guards trained by the European Union (EU) try and stop or intercept often flimsy vessels.
Those on board are then taken to detention centres, where they are exposed to squalid, hugely overcrowded conditions and sometimes beatings and forced hard labour.
Legal resettlement offers
In November 2017, the EU funded a special programme to evacuate the most vulnerable refugees in centres like these.
Under this scheme, which is run by the UN's refugee agency (UNHCR), a little more than 2,200 people have since been flown to the comparative safety of neighbouring Niger.
There, in a compound in the capital, Niamey, they wait for the chance to be resettled in a European country, including the UK, as well as Canada and the US.
So far just under 1,000 have been resettled and 264 accepted for resettlement.
Abdul Karim, a young man from Somalia, arrived at this compound just over three weeks ago after six terrible months in the clutches of a Libyan kidnap gang
"When I was in Libya I didn't see the sun for six months because we were kept underground.
"It was so difficult to breathe and if you talked they would kill you. There was a lot of people, they died in there," he said.
Finally, Mr Karim told me, he and nine other hostages managed to overpower one of their guards and escape, though two were shot dead on the way out. They were then rescued by police who notified UNHCR.
Healing through music
Among the most vulnerable refugees evacuated from Libya are unaccompanied children.
Image captionA child's drawing at a migrant rehabilitation centre depicts part of the desert journey
Many have experienced similar horrors to Mr Karim and have brought memories of their long running nightmares with them to Niger.
But a rehabilitation centre in the capital is trying to address these.
The arresting tones of an electric organ mingle with gentle drum beats and the strumming of guitars in a small dusty room on the outskirts of Niamey.
Around a dozen teenage migrants sit transfixed as they are patiently shown the basics of composing a melody.
Image captionMusic therapy is helping migrants who have returned from Libya deal with the trauma
One boy at the back stares into space, his troubled mind evidently elsewhere, but most eyes remained glued to their young Senegalese music teacher, Adel.
He tells me that many of these young migrants find it hard to articulate their thoughts, their traumas trapped deep inside, but believes that learning an instrument will help them.
"Music doesn't have limits. And even if you are sad, music can express it. So if they learn music it's like a voice for them to talk," Adel said.
'Forced to drink urine'
During a break in the lesson, which was organised by UN children's charity Unicef, I spoke to the boy at the back of the room whose attention had seemed elsewhere a little earlier.
The 16-year-old, who did not want me to use his name, revealed what happened to his group when they were crossing the Sahara.
When their water ran out they were forced to drink their own urine and the traffickers, who kept asking for more money, beat them all and repeatedly raped the women.
But it seems that sessions like this one are slowly helping him recover.
"When I first came to Niger I kept thinking of bad things, like when one of my friends died while we were crossing the Sahara.
"But I have kept busy and the music is helping me forget these bad things."
For tens of thousands of other refugees and migrants still in Libya, whether they are in squalid detention centres or being held by kidnappers, the nightmare continues.
Little chance of desert rescue
Although there has been a big drop in the number of African migrants heading north to Europe, the risks are now worse than ever for those who continue to make this journey.
The law banning the transport of migrants in northern Niger has led many traffickers to take dangerous back routes to avoid being arrested by police patrols.
These take them further from water holes into areas plagued by armed groups and strewn with land mines. The chances of being rescued in such desolate, hostile places is often extremely remote.
The vastness of the Sahara desert, an area around four times the size of the Mediterranean, also means that the bodies of many migrants who have perished there may never be found.
Image captionOnce the pick-up trucks leave Agadez they need to navigate through the desert
UNHCR's country representative in Niger, Alessandra Morelli, believes that many more migrants have lost their lives in this merciless sea of sand than have drowned in the Mediterranean.
"We, the international community, the UNHCR, say that for every death in the Mediterranean there are at least two in the Sahara, unknown and anonymous.
"Definitely the routes are more dangerous and more costly."
'Smuggling makes money'
Back in Agadez, as the scorching sun sinks from the sky, a young man, his face partially concealed in the hood of a white fleece, is on his phone drumming up business.
Ibrahim, who does not want his real name published, is preparing for his next trip through the Sahara to Libya.
His task now is to get enough migrants to fill the pick-up truck he drives for a local people trafficker.
Image captionDespite the restrictions Agadez will remain a place for migrants to head for
Far from being worried about the clampdown which forces him to take longer, more dangerous back routes, Ibrahim smiles. Because he is paid by the day, he is now making more money than ever.
"In the past the journey to Libya would take three days but now it can take a week. Also because these back routes mean me driving through mined areas we charge the migrants twice as much."
The young trafficker says bandits and armed groups are other dangers which justify the higher charges.
Not short of customers
He tells me that he had given up this risky business after the EU funded offers to smugglers like him a variety of inducements to quit. These ranged from giving them motorbikes, fridges or livestock to help in starting a new trade.
But, he says, he has never received a thing.
"If they give us money then we definitely will stop.
"For two years they've been promising to give it to us, but we haven't received anything yet. That's why we have to go back to this work, we can't stay penniless."
An association set up in Agadez to represent some of the region's 6,000 former people traffickers claims only a small fraction of them have received anything.
Many, like Ibrahim, are said to be returning to their dangerous trade.
It seems they will not be short of customers.
On my first evening in Agadez a convoy of pick-up trucks packed full of migrants sped past me on the desert going north.
Others, like Sophie Herman Mbambi from Congo-Brazzaville, wait to join them soon. Convinced she has nothing left to lose she is undeterred by the terrible risks ahead.
"If I'd stayed in Congo I would have killed myself because I had no family and no money to live on.
"So even if I'm going to die, I'd rather my corpse was somewhere else than in my own country."
Keep these in mind as you contemplate the direction of the American government over the past 50 years and especially since the Obama election.
The Goals of Communism
(as read into the congressional record January 10, 1963, from "The Naked Communist" by Cleon Skousen)
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
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