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TRIPOLIIf you didn't know what lay behind the gates of the vast structure in Janzour, just outside the Libyan capital, you'd probably assume it was the Libyan Naval Academy. That, after all, is what it used to be. But drive past the empty main building and into the former living quarters, and you won't see any sailors. Laundry hangs from the balconies. Children play in the dust below. Women in black abayas walk up and down the concrete plazas, while elderly men in long white gowns smoke cigarettes and stare at the sea.
Instead of junior officers, the naval academy now houses more than 2,000 refugees, a fraction of the 70,000 people displaced by the Libyan revolution and scattered across the country. Most of this camp's residents come from Tawergha, a town whose inhabitants had the misfortune to be caught between soldiers loyal to Muammar Qaddafi
and the anti- Qaddafi militia forces in the nearby city of Misrata last summer. A few residentsno one agrees how manyjoined the regime's soldiers, and now the Misrata militia doesn't want any of them back. To be precise, the militia has threatened to murder anyone who returns and has bombarded some of their homes for good measure.
You won't learn much about Janzour from the Libyan media. Although Libyan journalists have filmed interviews at the camp, their reporting has yet to be broadcast, and no one is quite sure why. The journalists speak of different prioritiesthe country is preparing for electionsbut those in the camp blame pressure from the Misrata militia or racism: Most of the refugees are black. Lack of coverage means lack of interest. Nobody in power feels any urgency to help them.
And thus the Tawerghans remain, semi-invisible, in limbo, like so many other things in Libya, where power is still held by a Transitional National Council and a provisional government; where elections are scheduled for June; where decisions are suspended "until we have a government" and would-be investors hang around the lobby of the Radisson, drinking mint tea and waiting to see what will happen next.
This might be a good thing: In a society where everything has been controlled for more than four decades, a vacuum can be creative. Civil society, unknown in Libya until the revolution last year, has begun to reformulate, and civic groups have emerged to help care for refugees and to lobby on their behalf. The brand-new Libyan Housing Authority, a charity, helped arrange for journalists to go to Janzour. The camp itself has elected a spokesman, and tribal leaders are negotiating with the Misratans about a possible return.
But just as a vacuum can produce constructive forces, it can produce destructive ones, too. Janzour has been attacked more than once by armed militia members from Misrata. In a recent raid, five people were killed.
What is true of Janzour is true of everything else: The Libyan media hangs in a legal and institutional vacuum. While in Tripoli this weekI was visiting on behalf of the Legatum InstituteI went to at least three institutions that thought they were responsible for state-owned media, and I spoke with one state television boss who felt beholden to none of them. Dozens of newspapers and radio and television stations have emerged, as has a new breed of citizen journalist: popular talk-show hosts who have never spoken on the radio before, writers whose work previously appeared in anonymous blogs.
Would-be regulators are proliferating almost as quickly. Wanting fair elections, the transitional authorities passed a law mandating equal coverage to all 2,000 parliamentary candidates. Some think this means that anyone who airs an interview with one candidate is legally obligated to cover the other 1,999. Hoping to prevent regime loyalists from returning to public life, the transitional authorities have also banned any criticism of the revolution. But the law they have written is so vague it could imply imprisonment for anyone critical of the current government, or perhaps anyone who discusses revolutionary excesses in places such as Misrata. In that climate, it's easy to see why Libyan reporters might not want to write about the refugees in Janzour.
BENGHAZI, Libya (Reuters) - A bomb exploded outside the U.S. diplomatic mission in the Libyan city of Benghazi overnight, an attack that could be retaliation for the killing, in a U.S. drone strike, of al Qaeda's Libyan second-in-command.
An improvised explosive device was dropped from a passing vehicle onto the road outside the mission, in an upmarket area of central Benghazi. It exploded moments after, slightly damaging the building's gate, U.S. and Libyan officials said.
Washington had confirmed a few hours before the attack that a U.S.-operated drone had killed Abu Yahya al-Libi, a Libyan-born cleric and senior al Qaeda operative, in Pakistan.
The U.S. State Department said it had asked Libyan authorities to increase security around U.S. facilities.
"We deplore the attack on our diplomatic mission in Benghazi," State Department spokesman Mark Toner told a news briefing.
Toner said a local guard reported that an attack was underway against one of the Benghazi compound's perimeter walls and warned diplomatic staff to take cover.
The bombing will revive concerns about the lack of security in Libya, where last year Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown in an uprising supported by NATO air power.
The fragile government is still struggling to restore stability after the revolt and arms and explosives looted from Gaddafi's arsenals are easily available.
Toner said Washington was awaiting results from an investigation by the Libyan government, but had no reason to suspect the attack was retaliation for Libi's killing.
Some security analysts disagreed: "The possibility that this act took place because of what happened to Abu Yahya is, in my personal opinion, a very strong one," said Noman Benotman, a Libyan former Islamist who is now an expert on militant groups.
(TRIPOLI, Libya) Libyan Islamists and their liberal rivals have held their last rallies just before a deadline to stop campaigning in the first national elections that follow the overthrow of dictator Moammar Gaddafi are to be held.
The Saturday vote for the 200-member transitional parliament follows a ruinous 2011 civil war. Nine months after it ended in October, the country is deeply divided.
Late Thursday, a motorcade carrying posters of the Alliance of National Forces, led by secular-leaning former premier Mahmoud Jibril, took to the streets. The National Front, which descends from a G Gaddafi -era opposition movement, lit the sky over the capital with fireworks. A party affiliated with Libyas Muslim Brotherhood and another Islamist group are also considered top contenders.
(TRIPOLI, Libya) Libyas first nationwide elections in nearly five decades brought hints Sunday of an Arab Spring precedent: Western-leaning parties making strides over Islamist rivals hoping to follow the same paths to power as in neighbors Egypt and Tunisia.
While final results from Saturdays parliamentary election could still be days away under a two-tier selection system, unofficial and partial counts from Libyas biggest cities suggested liberal factions were leading the Muslim Brotherhood and allies in a possible first major setback to their political surge following last years uprisings.
If the Libyan trend holds which is still far from certain it would challenge the narrative of rising Islamist power since the fall of Western-allied regimes from Tunis to Cairo. It also could display the different political dynamics in Libya, where tribal loyalties run deep and groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood at times cooperated with the rule of Moammar Gadhafi.
Anyone with past ties with old regime is hated, even despised, said Fathi al-Fadhali, a pro-Islamist Libyan political analyst who lived in exile for 30 years. Any political names associated with the regime are immediately politically burnt by that association.
Ultimately, the 200-seat parliament will face the task of forming a government which could become tests of strength for Islamists and secular forces over questions such as womens rights, the extent of traditional Islamic law and relations with the U.S. and other Western nations that helped bring down Gadhafi.
U.S. President Barack Obama congratulated Libyans on the vote, calling it another milestone on their extraordinary transition to democracy. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon praised the people of Libya and the candidates who contested the election in a peaceful, democratic spirit, according to his spokesman.
Now, the ballots have to be portioned out according to two categories: Eighty seats are set aside for party lists, and the remaining 120 for individual independent candidates.
In the first group, a liberal alliance led by the former rebel prime minister Mahmoud Jibril appeared to hold more than half the seats in the capital Tripoli and the revolution stronghold of Benghazi, according to several party representatives. They spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief media.
In western Libya, where Jibrils tribe, the Warfalla, is prominent, his party also was on the top in the early counting, the political officials said. In Libyas third-largest city, Misrata which was besieged by Gadhafi forces for weeks an upstart faction of local politicians appeared to hold the lead in another possible blow to Islamists.
Faisal Krekshi, secretary general of Jibrils Alliance of National Forces, said the results were based on reports by party representatives at ballot counting centers across the vast desert nation of 6 million people. Even officials from rival Islamist parties the Muslim Brotherhoods Justice and Construction Party and the Islamist Al-Watan described Jibrils alliance as the biggest winner in the race for the 80 party seats.
Libya seems relentlessly committed to proving the pessimists wrong. When last years revolution quickly evolved into a brutal civil war, the international community and indeed many Libyans warned of a quagmire down the road. God is great served as the rebel battle cry in the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi, and the jihadists the dictator had once repressed rose to prominence as militia leaders and politicians in the vacuum left by his fall. Libya has always been a conservative and largely homogenous country; its population of 6 million is almost entirely Sunni Muslim. And thats why when Libyans went to vote last weekend in the first national election since 1965, many observers assumed with good reason that if neighboring Tunisia and Egypt had elected Islamist governments in the aftermath of their revolutions, surely Libya of all places would follow suit.But in the past 18 months since the start of the Arab Spring, Libya has also served as the Arab worlds anomaly: waging war when others waged protests, overthrowing an entire regime rather than simply its strongman, and most recently, demonstrating remarkable stability despite the odds. As election results trickle in this week, Libya appears poised to buck yet another Arab Spring trend: the Islamist rise.
Weeks after Egypt elected Mohamed Morsy, the first Islamist president in the countrys historyand just months after it elected a parliament dominated by Morsys Muslim Brotherhood Libya has done the exact opposite. Early electoral results indicate that the liberal, secular-leaning National Forces Alliance of Mahmoud Jibril, the former wartime Prime Minister of the rebels National Transitional Council (NTC), has swept the majority of the countrys new parliament. Even Libyas newly empowered Muslim Brotherhood has conceded that it failed to win a majority of the assemblys 200 seats. And indeed, as the newly elected body moves to select a government to replace the NTC this month, Jibril may well become Libyas first post-revolution prime minister.
All that may have some observers blinking and blind-sighted in the Libyan sunlight, but analysts on the ground say it makes more sense than you might think. To start, many Libyans voted along tribal and familial lines, rather than according to ideological alliances. And analysts say that political inexperience may have fragmented support for the Islamists even as Jibrils broad coalition, benefited from well-known personalities and parties that span the countrys tribes and cities.
TRIPOLI, Libya -- Liberal parties held a lead Wednesday in partial results from Libya's first parliamentary election, on the same day that the head of the interim government stated his country would not be ruled by Islamists.
Up to now Islamists have taken leadership roles in other countries that experienced Arab Spring revolts, like Egypt and Tunisia.
The overthrow of longtime ruler Moammar Gadhafi left Libya without a cohesive regime. Gadhafi, who was captured and killed in October, opposed democracy in Libya and ruled virtually by himself. Saturday's election was a major step toward reform.
Libyans went to the polls to elect a National Assembly that will name a new government.
Partial results released by the election commission show that the Alliance of National Forces, a coalition of liberals led by former Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril, maintains a lead. Jibril was the international face of the opposition during the uprising last year.
According to the official results, the liberal alliance finished far ahead of the Muslim Brotherhood's Justice and Construction Party in the eastern city of Benghazi, the country's second largest and the birthplace of the uprising. It also beat out Islamist parties in western cities as far away as the country's border with Tunisia.
Some 2.7 million Libyans, making up more than 60 percent of eligible voters, cast their ballots for the first time in more than five decades on Saturday in the first nationwide vote since the downfall of Gadhafi.
"What happened in Libya was a miracle," National Transitional Council chief Mustafa Abdul-Jalil told The Associated Press. "People's choices of the assembly are excellent and nationalist."
Despite the early signs of democracy in Libya, Abdul-Jalil cautioned that Libya will need at least five years to move beyond the legacy of tribal warfare and rogue militias left in the wake of the uprising.
"If they continue to battle and strike the chord of tribalism ... it will take much longer," he said.
The transitional government has been unable to bring rival militias under the umbrella of a national force. Instead, they often battle each other while maintaining control of many segments of the country.
It was a hot, still afternoon last week in Tripoli when three young men entered a four-star hotel on the waterfront armed with a letter. It began with a Quranic verse about Gods favor toward the righteous: "Whatever good you prepare for yourselves, you will find it with God, better and greater in reward."
The men belonged to the Child and Promise Association, a new child welfare group that is part of post-Qaddafi Libyas fledgling civil society. They hoped to use the hotel garden for a fundraising dinner.
Interim leaders say civil society is vital to repairing a country ravaged by dictatorship. But while civic groups are at last able to operate freely, they now face a struggle for know-how and cash.
They are needed almost everywhere, says Atia Lawgali, deputy minister of culture and civil society. In rebuilding our institutions, to encourage peoples participation, to fight corruption, to name only a few areas.
Libya inherited those challenges and others from Muammar Qaddafi, who dismantled state institutions after seizing power in 1969 and crushed civic ones. Political parties and trade unions were banned, while civil society groups needed 50 members and a thorough vetting by security services for permission to operate. In recent years Qaddafis family members created pro-regime NGOs that swallowed up public funds while public services sank into ruin, says Mr. Lawgali.
When war began peeling back Qaddafis regime, new charities often groups of friends and neighbors arose to help organize, feed, and educate Libyans. Interim authorities want those groups to keep working, says Lamia Abusedra, a board member of a state support center for NGOs that will open soon in Benghazi, with branches around Libya.
But many groups who registered with authorities have shut down for lack of direction or means, she says. The new center will offer services, including training in management, project planning, and fundraising.
They played a great role in the revolution, but its difficult to say now who is still up and running, she says. Were very worried that the energy weve seen in civil society could fade out. A "delay" in public funding because some groups dont want public funding without a transparent mechanism that is fair for all also poses an obstacle, Abusedra says.
A YouTube upload purporting to show new footage from after Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi's violent death last October has surfaced, allegedly providing a clearer view of the late dictator's bloodied body.
Activist Sami al-Hamwi (@HamaEcho) tweeted a link to the video, remarking that someone should show the footage to Syrian president Bashar Assad as a reminder of what befell another Middle East dictator.
Previous footage posted shortly after Gaddafi's death last year showed him on his knees, seemingly alive. In the clearer footage below, Gaddafi's shirtless body appears to be transported by a group of men in the back of a van.
When a bomb planted under a car exploded in a hotel parking in Benghazi last June, residents dismissed fears their city would be transformed into an urban battlefield. Libya wont become Iraq, said Abdallah Faraj as a fire crew extinguished the flames. A year later a string of bombings has kindled worries that this historically quiet desert country is facing a surge in violence. And it is unlikely to end soon as an interim government which did little to address security concerns having handed power to an elected government yet to find its footing.
Just this week two car bombs planted outside security installations in the capital of Tripoli resulted in two deaths. The next day another bomb placed under the vehicle of an Egyptian diplomat exploded but caused no casualties. Libyan authorities were quick to point the blame at supporters of longtime leader Muammar Gaddafi. Though he was killed at the end of last years eight month revolution, he still commands silent admiration in many parts of Libya.
We know that Gaddafi loyalists are behind these bombings says a source close to the countrys newly elected president Muhammad Muqaryef. In the last few months, the security services have intensified the campaign against the late dictators loyalists in strongholds such as Bani Walid and Tarhuna. In a recent interview with TIME, Prime Minister Abdel Rahmin al-Kib noted that abomb making cell in Tripoli was captured, yielding much information about how the loosely organized cells operate.
Security officials note that senior Gaddafi regime figures in neighboring countries of Algeria, Egypt and Niger are behind the budding insurgency. At the top of their list are Gaddafis son Saadi in Niger and his nephew Ahmad Gaddaf al-Damm in Egypt. We know these people are sending in large quantities of money and support to the loyalists, explains Colonel Khamid Bilhayr of the Libyan National Army (LNA).
Residents from cities like Bani Walid have reason to be angry with the new government. Gaddafi drew on its inhabitants to staff key positions in his security services. It was the last city outside of Gaddafis birthplace of Sirte to fall to the rebels; and his son SaIf al-Islam passed through after the regime collapsed. In January, residents attacked a military camp associated with the interim government on the outskirts of the city. Meanwhile, other parts of the country have seen loyalists tortured and persecuted. Beatings and other ill-treatment are common, Amnesty International noted in its report entitled Detention Abuses Staining the New Libya.
Some however believe jihadists are behind the bombings because many of the attacks have singled out Western targets such as the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and convoys carrying the British ambassador and the United Nations special envoy to Libya. An anti-Gaddafi group called the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) waged a campaign against him between 1995-8. Following its defeat, many cadres fled to Afghanistan where they mingled with al-Qaeda operatives. Though the LIFGs leaders have embraced the democratic process, some fringe elements oppose it. Other Libyans traveled to Iraq to fight American forces. Records captured there by the United States military at an al-Qaeda safe house revealed that more foreign suicide bombers came from the eastern Libyan city of Darna than any other in the Arab world.
(Beirut) New evidence collected by Human Rights Watch implicates Misrata-based militias in the apparent execution of dozens of detainees following the capture and death of Muammar Gaddafi one year ago. The Libyan authorities have failed to carry out their pledge to investigate the death of Gaddafi, Libyas former dictator, his son Mutassim, and dozens of others in rebel custody.
The 50-page report, Death of a Dictator: Bloody Vengeance in Sirte,details the final hours of Muammar Gaddafis life and the circumstances under which he was killed. It presents evidence that Misrata-based militias captured and disarmed members of the Gaddafi convoy and, after bringing them under their total control, subjected them to brutal beatings. They then executed at least 66 captured members of the convoy at the nearby Mahari Hotel. The evidence indicates that opposition militias took Gaddafis wounded son Mutassim from Sirte to Misrata and killed him there.
The evidence suggests that opposition militias summarily executed at least 66 captured members of Gaddafis convoy in Sirte, said Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director at Human Rights Watch. It also looks as if they took Mutassim Gaddafi, who had been wounded, to Misrata and killed him there. Our findings call into question the assertion by Libyan authorities that Muammar Gaddafi was killed in crossfire, and not after his capture."
Libya: New Proof Of Mass Killings At Gaddafi Death Site
(Beirut) New evidence collected by Human Rights Watch implicates Misrata-based militias in the apparent execution of dozens of detainees following the capture and death of Muammar Gaddafi one year ago. The Libyan authorities have failed to carry out their pledge to investigate the death of Gaddafi, Libyas former dictator, his son Mutassim, and dozens of others in rebel custody.
The 50-page report, Death of a Dictator: Bloody Vengeance in Sirte,details the final hours of Muammar Gaddafis life and the circumstances under which he was killed. It presents evidence that Misrata-based militias captured and disarmed members of the Gaddafi convoy and, after bringing them under their total control, subjected them to brutal beatings. They then executed at least 66 captured members of the convoy at the nearby Mahari Hotel. The evidence indicates that opposition militias took Gaddafis wounded son Mutassim from Sirte to Misrata and killed him there.
The evidence suggests that opposition militias summarily executed at least 66 captured members of Gaddafis convoy in Sirte, said Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director at Human Rights Watch. It also looks as if they took Mutassim Gaddafi, who had been wounded, to Misrata and killed him there. Our findings call into question the assertion by Libyan authorities that Muammar Gaddafi was killed in crossfire, and not after his capture."
Human Rights Watch: Libya: New Proof Of Mass Killings At Gaddafi Death Site
