{"id":246455,"date":"2026-10-06T06:30:27","date_gmt":"2026-10-06T04:30:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/north-africa\/libya\/libya-the-salvador-pass-how-a-nameless-desert-gap-became-a-battleground-for-libyas-warlords\/"},"modified":"2026-10-06T06:30:27","modified_gmt":"2026-10-06T04:30:27","slug":"libya-the-salvador-pass-how-a-nameless-desert-gap-became-a-battleground-for-libyas-warlords","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/north-africa\/libya\/libya-the-salvador-pass-how-a-nameless-desert-gap-became-a-battleground-for-libyas-warlords\/","title":{"rendered":"Libya: The Salvador Pass &#8211; How a Nameless Desert Gap Became a Battleground for Libya&#8217;s Warlords"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"28\">A failed prisoner exchange in Niger has revealed a complex network of Libyan, Nigerien, Chadian, and Russian interests converging on one of the Sahara&#8217;s most established smuggling corridors.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"121\">On the maps that colonial cartographers drew of the Sahara, most features carry the names of the people who &#8216;discovered&#8217; them, or of the places they resembled. The origin of the name given to the gap in the escarpment where Libya, Niger and Algeria meet is murkier: <a href=\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:NF_33-1_Passe_de_Salvador,_Niger;_Libya_(GeoPDF)_-_PCL_Map_Collection_-_nf-33-1-passe_de_salvador-niger-libya.pdf\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">old French military survey maps<\/a> simply&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/allafrica.com\/stories\/202610050048.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Read more on AllAfrica.com<\/a><br \/>\n<br \/>South Africa Today Africa \u2013 North Africa <a title=\"Libya\" href=\"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/category\/north-africa\/libya\/\">Libya<\/a> News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A failed prisoner exchange in Niger has revealed a complex network of Libyan, Nigerien, Chadian, and Russian interests converging on one of the Sahara&#8217;s most established smuggling corridors. On the maps that colonial cartographers drew of the Sahara, most features carry the names of the people who &#8216;discovered&#8217; them, or of the places they resembled. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":246456,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cdn.allafrica.com\/static\/images\/structure\/aa-logo-rgba-no-text-square.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[891],"tags":[258,256,28311,10117,12910,4711,892,6649,55592,257,17013,41224,254,20748],"class_list":["post-246455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-libya","tag-africa","tag-africa-news","tag-battleground","tag-desert","tag-gap","tag-libya","tag-libya-news","tag-libyas","tag-nameless","tag-news","tag-pass","tag-salvador","tag-south-africa-today","tag-warlords"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cdn.allafrica.com\/static\/images\/structure\/aa-logo-rgba-no-text-square.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246455\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/246456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}