London: Four years after Muammar Gaddafi was killed, the high hopes of Libya’s activists have crumbled as Daesh fills the vacuum left by scrapping militias.
“It was better under Gaddafi,” says the young Libyan student, studying the froth bubbling over the top of his cappuccino in a cafe in Tunis as he contemplates the revolution that swept Gaddafi from power four years ago.
“I never thought to say this before, I hated him, but things were better then. At least we had security.”
On February 17 Libya marked the fourth anniversary of that revolution but nobody celebrated.
Egyptian air strikes now hammering Daesh positions in the east of the country, is a further twist in an already grim civil war.
Four years ago the student picked up a gun and joined rebel militias. Now he wishes he had stayed home.
“If I had that time again, I would not join [the rebels],” he says. Like many of his former comrades, he has left the country, but won’t give his name, fearing retribution against his family back home.
“In the past, we would have a party for the anniversary of the revolution, but not this time,” says Ashraf Abdul Wahab, a journalist. “A lot of people tell you it was better under Gaddafi, that the revolution was a mistake. What they mean is, things are worse now than they were then.”
“So many of the revolutionaries of four years ago have gone to ground, they have fled,” says Michel Cousins, editor of the English-language Libya Herald newspaper. “They say a revolution eats its children.”
Journalists flocked to Libya four years ago. Now Tripoli, after a series of Daesh attacks, is too dangerous for all but the most intrepid, while Tobruk, in lockdown after a series of car bombings, has told the media to stay away.
The new government, hunkered down in a hotel in Tobruk, is riven by disputes, with many fearing it will fragment. In Tripoli, Libya Dawn has struggled to impose firm rule on a city now giving way to anarchy. Dawn commanders have reconvened the former government, the general national congress, but true power lies with the militias.
Zealots are making themselves felt in the capital, which was once Libya’s most liberal city. Women can no longer leave the city, on the few flights still operating, unless they have a male chaperone. Gunmen have attacked statues, Sufi mosques, a library and the art college, warning against displays of idolatry. Beauty salons are closed and schools segregated by sex. This week one unit announced the arrest of a woman for witchcraft, posting photographs of her and a mutilated black cat.
“I know people say it was safer in Gaddafi times but not for everyone; one of our relatives was kept in prison then, he was starved and beaten,” says a Tripoli resident, again declining to give her name. “Our problem were the elections. Many of the candidates were full of enthusiasm but with no experience in politics.”
Meanwhile, Benghazi, Libya’s second city, where the revolution first began with protests outside the courthouse, is being transformed into an Arab Stalingrad by fighting between government troops and Islamist militias. Four years ago, Courthouse Square was festooned with flags, revolutionary banners and youngsters singing songs in brightly painted tents. Now it is a pulverised wilderness.
Nato was midwife to Libya’s revolution, its bombing the key to victory, but alliance leaders now look on aghast at the result, not least the growth of Daesh. Unknown in Libya before last summer, Daesh has taken advantage of the chaos to expand rapidly. Its execution of the Egyptian Christians, captured in December and January, has triggered an Egyptian response that promises to turn the war into an international conflict.
London, Paris and Washington, prime movers behind Nato’s intervention, worry that Daesh could launch strikes on Europe across the Mediterranean.
Meanwhile, Italy is dealing with the arrival of tens of thousands of migrants funnelled through Libya, many drowning on their hazardous journey. Amid the chaos, some politicians on both sides are scrambling to make a deal.
“We are fearing the disintegration of the state, ” said parliament’s deputy speaker, Mohammad Ali Shuhaib, who spent 10 years in political prison under Gaddafi. He is pushing for a new unity government. “There is hope, not all Libya Dawn are fanatics.”
The problem is that Libya is now polarised, a majority backing the government, a sizeable minority turning to Libya Dawn, with the room for compromise shrinking fast. The UN’s envoy, Bernadino Leon, abandoned peace talks in Geneva last month after Libya Dawn refused to show up.
Egypt, allied with the recognised government, may now tip the scales in favour of Tobruk. Already, by dint of its international recognition, the government is acquiring military hardware, an expanding air force proving the trump card in recent battles with Libya Dawn.
Leon insists his priority is saving Libya before it attains complete meltdown. With oil exports plunging, the country is surviving on fast-depleting foreign reserves. He fears Libya will soon run out of money to feed itself, run power plants, and fuel the pumps that supply the cities with water from deep wells in the Sahara.
“Libya is falling really very deeply into chaos,” he says. For ordinary people, life is now a battle for survival, and amid the power, water and petrol cuts, the most acute shortage is optimism, a quality flowing so abundantly four years ago. Where it exists at all, it is cautious and circumspect.
“Martin Luther King said ‘I have a dream’, and I still have the dream,” says Shuhaib. “It’s not the same dream as four years ago, people now are disappointed and frustrated, but the dream is there.”
