Sub-Saharan Africans have arrived from the other direction to reinforce the black Toubou tribes of southern Libya.
The ethnic Toubou who dominate the trade charge migrants between $200 and $300 for passage into southern Libya, or ask them to carry drugs in lieu of payment.Smuggling is the town's main business.
And in the Sahara, where the largest oilfields are, both sides have enlisted ethnic minorities as proxies: Libya Dawn has drafted in the brown-skinned Tuareg, southern cousins of the Berbers; Dignity has recruited the black-skinned Toubou.
In Sebha fighters from the professor's Arab tribe, the Oulad Suleiman, sealed off the nearby shanty town of Tiyoura, inhabited by rival Toubou people, pounding it for three days with tank shells.On the walls the graffiti express ethnic hatred between Arabs and blacks.
In the south, Touareg and Toubou tribal paramilitaries control territories adjacent to the Niger and Chad borders and have clashed with each other.
Jibril also mentioned the minority Toubou and Amazigh (Berber) populations, who have complained of discrimination in the past.
They have rebelled against the government several times, and, together with Toubou tribesmen, they have hoped to establish an independent Saharan state, spanning parts of Mali, Niger, Algeria, Chad, and Libya.
A few days after that, an American aid worker was kidnapped and taken to Mali, and a notorious Toubou narco-trafficker was assassinated in public.
One driver, a young Toubou named Oumar, told me that he had made the trip twenty-five times.
Oumar, the Toubou smuggler, left Agadez in a Toyota Hilux with a Nokia G.P.S. unit, two hundred litres of water, and extra fuel.
There was also talk of the fighting between the Tuareg and the Toubou in Libya spilling across the desert and taking root in Agadez.
