By Roberto Savio
ROME, Mar 25 2015 (IPS)

The United Kingdom has been accused of “sleepwalking” into the Ukraine crisis – and the accusation comes from no less than the House of Lords, not usually considered a place of critical analysis.

In a scathing report, the upper house of the U.K. parliament has said that the United Kingdom, like the rest of the European Union, has sleepwalked into a very complex problem without looking into the possible consequences, letting bureaucrats taking critical political decisions.

Roberto Savio

It said that it was only when the conflict was well entrenched that political leaders decided to negotiate the Minsk ceasefire agreement, reached by Angela Merkel of Germany, Francois Hollande of France, Vladimir Putin of the Russian Federation and Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine, with the notable absence of U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron.

In fact, it was left up to bureaucrats of the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) to take decisions regarding Ukraine, the same kind of bureaucrats as those appointed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the European Central Bank (ECB) and the European Commission who, with their usual arrogance, decided the European bailout conceded to Greece where it is widely known that the priority was to refund European (especially German) banks.

The media have a great responsibility in this situation. In all latter day conflicts, from Kosovo to Libya, the formula has been very simple. Let us divide conflicts into good and bad, let us repeat the declarations of the ‘good guys’ and demonise the ‘bad guys’. Let us not go into analytical disquisitions, complexities and side issues because readers do not like that. Let us be to the point and crisp.“The media have a great responsibility … the formula has been very simple. Let us divide conflicts into good and bad, let us repeat the declarations of the ‘good guys’ and demonise the ‘bad guys’. Let us not go into analytical disquisitions, complexities and side issues because readers do not like that”

The latest example. All media have been talking of the Iraqi army engaged in taking back the town of Kirkuk from the Caliphate, the Islamic State. But how many are also informing that two-thirds of the Iraqi army is actually made up of soldiers from Iran? And that the Americans engaged in overseeing this offensive are in fact accepting cooperation from Iran, formally an archenemy?

How many have been reporting that the ongoing negotiations over the nuclear capabilities of Iran are really based on the need to restore legitimacy to Iran, because it has become clear that without Iran there is no way to solve Arab conflicts? And how many have informed that all radical Muslims have received financial support from  Saudi  Arabia, which is intent on supporting Salafism, the Muslim school which is at the basis of al-Qaeda and now of the Islamic State?

Recent history shows the West has gone into a number of conflicts (Kosovo in 1999, Afghanistan in 2001, Iraq in 2003, Libya in 2011 and Syria in 2012), without looking beyond the immediate consequences, and without any consideration for long-term analysis. The costs of those conflicts have always exceeded the benefits foreseen. An auditor company could not certify any of those conflicts in terms of costs and benefit.

Let us start from the collapse of Yugoslavia, and let us remind ourselves that the West has three principles of international law under which to shield itself as a result of its actions.

One is the principle of inviolability of state borders, which was not applied to Serbia, but is now the case for Ukraine. The second is the principle of self-determination of people, which was used in Kosovo for the Albanian minority living in that part of Serbia but it is not considered valid now for the Russian populations of East Ukraine. The third is the right to intervene for humanitarian interventions, which was used first in Libya, and is now under consideration for Syria.

The drama of the Balkan conflicts was due to a very unilateral action by Germany, which decided to extrapolate Croatia and Slovenia from the Yugoslav federation as its zone of economic interest. The then Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, pushed this in an unprecedented way throughout the West.

It was the first time that Germany had play an assertive role, with U.S. support, and it was a Cold War reflex – let us eliminate the only country left after the collapse of the Soviet Union, which still inspires itself to a socialist state and not to a market economy.

Serbia, which considered itself heir to the Kingdom of Serbia (out of which Josep Broz Tito had created the socialist Yugoslavia), intervened and a terrible conflict ensued, with civilians paying a dramatic cost.

That conflict renewed dormant ethnic and religious divisions, about which everybody knew, but Genscher, who was then no longer in the German government, explained at a meeting in which the author participated: “I never thought the Serbians would resist Europe.”

It is interesting to note in this context that just a few weeks ago, the International Court of Justice ruled that neither Serbia nor Croatia had engaged in a genocidal war. The news was reported by many media, but without a word of contextualisation.

The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia had been destroyed to implement the winning theory of “free market against socialism”. Did the creation of five mini-states improve the lives of the people? Not according to statistics, especially of youth unemployment, which was unknown in the days of Tito.

Then there was Iraq where, in the aftermath of the Twin Towers attack in September 2001, the rationale for attacking the country was based on assertions that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was both harbouring and supporting al-Qaeda, the group held responsible for the attack, and possessed weapons of mass destruction that posed an immediate threat to the United States and its allies. These, which turned out to be lies, were blindly propagated by the media

But if, as is widely believed, petroleum was the cause, let us look at figures as an accounting company would do. That war is estimated to have cost at least two trillion dollars, without considering human life and physical destruction.

Iraq’s annual petroleum output at full pre-war capacity was 3.7 million barrels per day. Now a part of that is under the control of the Islamic State and Kurds have taken more than one-third under their control. But even at the full production, it would have taken more than 20 years to recoup the costs of the war.

It is, to say the least, unlikely that the United States would have had all that time – and since the war, has spent more than a further trillion dollars just in occupation and military costs.

And what about Afghanistan where there is no petroleum? Two trillion dollars have also been spent there … and the aim of that war was just to capture al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden!

Among others, it was said that democracy would be brought to Afghanistan. Now, after more than 50.000 deaths, nobody speaks any longer of institutional building, and the United States and its allies are simply trying to extricate themselves from a country whose future is bleak.

Now, the question I want to raise here is the following: what has happened to looking beyond the immediate consequences and long-term analysis in foreign policy?

Is it possible that nobody in power questioned the wisdom of an intervention in Libya for example, even assuming that Muammar Gaddafi was a villain to remove?  Did any of them ask what would happen afterwards? Did any of those in power ask what it would mean to support a war to remove Bashar al-Assad in Syria and what would happen after?

It appears that the House of Lords is right, we are taken into conflict by sleepwalkers. The West is responsible either for creating countries which are not viable (Kosovo), or for disintegrating countries (Yugoslavia and now probably Iraq), or for opening up areas of instability (Libya, Syria).

Without mentioning Ukraine where intervention is aimed at pushing the country towards Europe and NATO, thus provoking the potential retaliation of Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

Those errors have cost hundreds of thousands of lives, displaced millions of people and, altogether, cost at least seven trillion dollars. Who is going to wake the sleepwalkers up? (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

Sub-Saharan migrant garbage collectors push their carts through the streets of Tripoli´s old town. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

By Karlos Zurutuza
TRIPOLI, Libya, Dec 18 2014 (IPS)

It’s easy to spot Saani Bubakar in Tripoli´s old town: always dressed in the distinctive orange jumpsuit of the waste collectors, he pushes his cart through the narrow streets on a routine that has been his for the last three years of his life.

“I come from a very poor village in Niger where there is not even running water,” explains the 23-year-old during a break. “Our neighbours told us that one of their sons was working in Tripoli, so I decided to take the trip too.”

Of the 250 Libyan dinars [about 125 euro or 154 dollars] Bubakar is paid each month, he manages to send more than half to his family back home. Accommodation, he adds, is free.

“We are 50 in an apartment nearby,” says the migrant worker, who assures that he will be back in Niger “soon”. It is not the poor working conditions but the increasing instability in the country that makes him want to go back home.

Thousands of migrants remain detained in Libyan detention centres, where they face torture that includes “severe whippings, beatings, and electric shocks” – Human Rights Watch
Three years after Libya´s former ruler Muammar Gaddafi was toppled and killed, Libya remains in a state of political turmoil that has pushed the country to the brink of civil war. There are two governments and two separate parliaments – one based in Tripoli and the other in Tobruk, 1,000 km east of the capital. The latter, set up after elections in June when only 10 percent of the census population took part, has international recognition.

Accordingly, several militias are grouped into two paramilitary alliances: Fajr (“Dawn” in Arabic), led by the Misrata brigades controlling Tripoli, and Karama (“Dignity”) commanded by Khalifa Haftar, a Tobruk-based former army general.

The population and, very especially, the foreign workers are seemingly caught in the crossfire. “I´m always afraid of working at night because the fighting in the city usually starts as soon as the sun hides,” explains Odar Yahub, one of Bubakar´s roommates.

At 22, Yahub says that will not go back to Niger until he has earned enough to get married – but that will probably take longer than expected:

“We haven´t been paid for the last four months, and no one has given us any explanation,” the young worker complains, as he empties his bucket in the garbage truck.

While most of the sweepers are of sub-Saharan origin, there are also many who arrived from Bangladesh. Aaqib, who prefers not to disclose his full name, has already spent four years cleaning the streets of Souk al Juma neighbourhood, east of the capital. He says he supports his family in Dhaka – the Bangladeshi capital – by sending home almost all the 450 Libyan dinars (225 euros) from his salary, which he has not received for the last four months either.

“Of course I’ve dreamed of going to Europe but I know many have died at sea,” explains Aaqib, 28. “I´d only travel by plane, and with a visa stamped on my passport,” he adds. For the time being, his passport is in the hands of his contractor. All the waste collectors interviewed by IPS said their documents had been confiscated.

Defenceless

From his office in east Tripoli, Mohamed Bilkhaire, who became Minister of Employment in the Tripoli Executive two months ago, claims that he is not surprised by the apparent contradiction between the country´s 35 percent unemployment rate – according to his sources – and the fact that all the garbage collectors are foreigners.

“Arabs do not sweep due to sociocultural factors, neither here nor in Egypt, Jordan, Iraq … We need foreigners to do the job,” says Bilkhaire, Asked about the garbage collectors´ salaries, he told IPS that they are paid Libya´s minimum income of 450 Libyan dinars, and that any smaller amount is due to “illegal subcontracting which should be prosecuted.”

Bilkhaire also admitted that passports were confiscated “temporarily” because most of the foreign workers “want to cross to Europe.”

According to data gathered and released by FRONTEX, the European Union´s border agency, among the more than 42,000 immigrants who arrived in Italy during the first four months of 2014, 27,000 came from Libya.

In a report released by Human Rights Watch in June, the NGO claimed that thousands of migrants remain detained in Libyan detention centres, where they face torture that includes “severe whippings, beatings, and electric shocks.”

“Detainees have described to us how male guards strip-searched women and girls and brutally attacked men and boys,” said Gerry Simpson, senior refugee researcher in the same report.

In the case of foreign workers under contract, Hanan Salah, HRW researcher for Libya, told IPS that “with the breakdown of the judicial system in many regions, abusive employers and those who do not comply with whatever contract was agreed upon, can hardly be held accountable in front of the law.”

Shokri Agmar, a lawyer from Tripoli, talks about “complete and utter helplessness”:

“The main problem for foreign workers in Libya is not merely the judicial neglect but rather that they lack a militia of their own to protect themselves,” Agmar told IPS from his office in Gargaresh, west of Tripoli.

That is precisely one of the districts where large numbers of migrants gather until somebody picks them up for a day of work, generally as construction workers.

Aghedo arrived from Nigeria three weeks ago. For this 25-year-old holding a shovel with his right hand, Tripoli is just a stopover between an endless odyssey across the Sahara Desert and a dangerous sea journey to Italy.

“There are days when they do not even pay us, but also others when we can make up to 100 dinars,” Aghedo tells IPS.

The young migrant hardly lowers his guard as he is forced to distinguish between two types of pick-up trucks: the ones which offer a job that is not always paid and those driven by the local militia – a false step and he will end up in one of the most feared detention centres.

“I know I could find a job as a sweeper but I cannot wait that long to raise the money for a passage in one of the boats bound for Europe,” explains the young migrant, without taking his eyes off the road.

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Bondok Hassem (left) gets help to mount a mortar inside Zwara´s squat house. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

By Karlos Zurutuza
ZWARA, Libya, Dec 5 2014 (IPS)

It could be a squat house anywhere: music is playing non-stop and there is also a radio station and an art exhibition. However, weapons are also on display among the instruments, and most here wear camouflage uniform.

“The house belonged to a former member of the secret services of [Muammar] Gaddafi so we decided to squat it for the local youth in Zwara [an Amazigh enclave 120 km west of Tripoli, on the border with Tunisia],” Fadel Farhad, an electrician who combines his work with the local militia, tells IPS.It could be a squat house anywhere: music is playing non-stop and there is also a radio station and an art exhibition. However, weapons are also on display among the instruments, and most here wear camouflage uniform.

The centre is called “Tifinagh” after the name given to the Amazigh alphabet. Also called Berbers, the Amazigh are native inhabitants of North Africa.

The arrival of the Arabs in the region in the seventh century was the beginning of a slow yet gradual process of Arabisation which was sharply boosted during the four decades in which Muammar Gaddafi (1969-2011) remained in power. Unofficial estimates put the number of Amazighs in this country at around 600,000 – about 10 percent of the total population

Like most of the youngsters at the centre, Farhad knows he can be mobilised at any time. The latest attack on Zwara took place less than a kilometre from here a little over a week ago, when an airstrike hit a warehouse killing two Libyans and six sub-Saharan migrants.

Three years after Gaddafi was toppled, Libya remains in a state of political turmoil that has pushed the country to the brink of civil war. There are two governments and two separate parliaments one based in Tripoli and the other in Tobruk, 1,000 km east of the capital.

Several militias are grouped into two paramilitary alliances: Fajr (“Dawn” in Arabic), led by the Misrata brigades controlling Tripoli, and Karama (“Dignity”) commanded by Khalifa Haftar, a Tobruk-based former army general.

“Here in Zwara we rely on around 5000 men grouped into different militias,” Younis, a militia fighter who prefers not to give his full name, tells IPS. “We never wanted this to happen but the problem is that all our enemies are fighting on Tobruk´s side,” adds the 30-year-old by the pickups lining up at the entrance of the building.

Local militiamen gather outside their squat house in the Amazigh enclave of Zwara. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

The polarisation of the conflict in Libya has pushed several Amazigh militias to fight sporadically alongside the coalition led by Misrata, which includes Islamist groups among its ranks.

However, the atmosphere in this squat house seems at odds with religious orthodoxy of any kind, with an unlikely fusion between Amazigh traditional music and death metal blasting from two loudspeakers. This is the work of 30-year-old Bondok Hassem, a well-known local musician who is also an Amazigh language teacher as well as one of the commanders of the Tamazgha militia.

“Both Misrata and Tobruk are striving to become the alpha male in this war. We are all fully aware that, whoever wins this war, they will attack us immediately afterwards so we are forced to defend our land by any means necessary,” laments Hassem between sips of boja, the local firewater.

But can it be international partnerships that hamper an already difficult agreement between both sides?

Egypt, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and France are backing Tobruk and Misrata relies mainly on Qatar and Turkey. Meanwhile, NATO officials are seemingly torn between wanting to stay out of the war, and watching anxiously as the violence goes out of control. Today, most of the diplomatic missions have left Tripoli, except for those of Italy and Hungary.

A fragile balance

Moussa Harim is among the Amazigh who seem to feel not too uncomfortable siding with the government in Tripoli. Born in Jadu, in the Amazigh stronghold of the Nafusa mountain range – 100 km south of Tripoli – Harim was exiled in France during Gaddafi’s time but he became Deputy Minister of Culture in March 2012.

Although he admits that Islamists pose a real threat, he clarifies that in Misrata there are also people “from all walks of life and very diverse affiliations, communists included.”

It is the geographical location itself which, according to Harim, inexorably pushes the Libyan Amazigh towards Misrata.

“Except for a small enclave in the east, our people live in the west of the country, and a majority of them here, in Tripoli,” the senior official tells IPS.

But there are discordant voices, like that of Fathi Ben Khalifa. A native of Zwara and a political dissident for decades, Ben Khalifa was the president of the World Amazigh Congress between 2011 and 2013.

The Congress is an international organisation based in Paris since 1995 that aims to protect the Amazigh identity. Today Ben Khalifa remains as an executive member of this umbrella organisation for this North African people.

“This is not our war, it’s just a conflict between Arab nationalists and Islamists, none of which will ever recognise our rights,” Ben Khalifa tells IPS over the phone from Morocco. Although the senior political activist defends the right of his people to defend themselves from outside aggressions, he gives a deadline to take a clearer position:

“If Libya´s Constitution – to be released on December 24 – does not grant our legitimate rights, then it will be the time to take up arms,” Ben Khalifa bluntly claims.

At dusk, and after another day marked by exhausting shifts at checkpoints and patrols around the city, the local militiamen cool down after swapping their rifles for a harmonica and a guitar at the squat house. This time they play the songs of Matloub Lounes, a singer from Kabylia, Algeria´s Amazigh stronghold.

“I can´t hardly wait for the war to end. I´ll burn my uniform and get back to my work,” says Anwar Darir, an Amazigh language teacher since 2011. That was the year in which Gaddafi was killed, yet a solution to the conflict among Libyans is still nowhere near.

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Libyan writer Aicha Almagrabi says women were part of Libya’s revolution but seen no political benefits from their participation. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

By Karlos Zurutuza
TRIPOLI, Dec 19 2013 (IPS)

Unless immediate changes are enforced, Libya is heading towards an “Afghan” model regarding women´s rights, Aicha Almagrabi, a Libyan writer and senior women rights activist, told IPS from her residence in Tripoli.

Women who fight for their rights in Libya “are constantly insulted, harassed and threatened,” lamented the 57-year-old university professor, who also chairs the Organisation for the Defence of Freedom of Thought.

Almagrabi studied philosophy in Libya and France and is the author of four books of poetry, a novel and a play which has just been published in Arabic. She´s currently working on three other books, a task which she combines with her activism and lessons on “Philosophy of the Plastic Arts”.

Q: Last October marked two years since the overthrow and brutal killing of Muammar Gaddafi. What has changed for Libyan women since then?

A: Things have changed but not for the better, and we´ve lost the few rights we had. As an example, polygamy is still common currency in Libya but, at least, a man needed his wife´s approval to marry a second wife under Gaddafi (1969-2011). That is no longer required.

Actually, reviewing the law on polygamy was the first thing Mahmoud Jibril (head of the National Transitional Council) mentioned in his famous speech at the end of the (2011) war, even before talking about reconstruction or rebuilding civil society…

Changes? Libyan women were handed over as spoils of war.

At a street level, when women protest they face a lot of violence. Women advocating their rights are constantly insulted, threatened and harassed. We were part of the revolution, we had our own female martyrs, but we didn´t get any political benefits out of it.

Q: But some women do hold government positions today, don´t they?

A: They do, but they´re struggling to keep their seats. Their parties used them for mere electoral purposes. In the Committee of 60 (the group to be set up to write Libya´s constitution) there are only six seats for women.

One of the members of the General National Congress (the Libyan legislature) even suggested measures to prevent men and women from sharing the same space during meetings. Some figures are also eloquent: 90 percent of teachers are women but only two percent have reached the decision-making level.

Q: Nonetheless, politics seemingly play a lesser role compared to that of Libya´s mufti (religious high authority), Sadeq al Ghariani. Many say he is the country’s de facto leader.

A: The mufti holds religious power and is also backed by both the political and military bodies. They want Sharia (Islamic) law to be at the core of the penal code and the future constitution.

What they want to implement is actually based on their own interpretation of the Quran, so we could say that it´s more dangerous than the holy book. There´s always been a lot of talk about Sharia but few seem to notice that there are many versions of it: do we want the Iranian one? The Afghan? Maybe the Moroccan?

One of their main goals is to control women through their own vision of the Quran; that´s one of the reasons it is mandatory to keep religion separate from politics.

Girls at school are now forced to wear the hijab (a headscarf that covers women’s hair and necks but not their faces) and the mufti is also campaigning for all women to always cover their hair.

I´m a professor at Zaytuna University (in Tripoli), and I´m the only one who doesn´t cover her hair. The rest of my female colleagues wear either hijab or niqab (a headscarf and veil which reveals only the eyes). Their number is growing not because of the law – it´s more about group pressure.

Q: There are also rumours about a new fatwa (Islamic ruling) to be enforced from January 2014, according to which women won´t be able to travel across the country without a muharram (male companion).

A: It wouldn´t surprise me at all. I live outside the city, and on Feb. 13 I was stopped by a group of armed men on my way to work. They held me at gunpoint for an hour and a half because I had no muharram travelling with me. I took the issue to the media and it got the attention of the general public. On Mar. 14 we organised a protest called “the march for the dignity of women”. As usual, we were insulted, beaten and harassed.

Q: Is increasing violence in the country the most pressing problem for Libyan women today?

A: It´s just one among several. Women are limited by strong domestic ties. Besides, the streets are not safe for them. There are many street assaults and even kidnappings, but there´s still no visible will to grant women rights in the new constitution.

A low level of participation in civil society is also a big issue. We were very strong at the beginning (of the 2011 revolution) but growing pressure led to a decline in that strength since the end of the war.

Today we are very disappointed because we also took part in the revolution and now they want to change our ideals of freedom and justice through fatwas and religious speeches which have a very strong influence among the new generations.

Even Gaddafi switched to religion back in the 1980s when he realised that Islam could be an effective tool to gain greater influence over people. However, the lack of rights and freedom during his rule pushed many to more extreme positions, such as the Muslim Brotherhood or the Jihadists.

Q: What can help Libyan women in such a difficult scenario?

A: Even in the unlikely case that we finally get a constitution based on human rights, we would also need to conduct another revolution to change the mindset of Libyan women.

Nevertheless, a key question is to break the militia rule as well as that of all armed groups outside the umbrella of the national army and police before the constitution is written. If that doesn´t happen, we´ll be heading towards an “Afghan model” in women´s rights.

One of the Berber militiamen blocking the gas and crude oil complex in Nalut, Libya. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

By Karlos Zurutuza
ZWARA, Libya , Nov 9 2013 (IPS)

“Oil tankers won´t get crude from this port until Tripoli finally meets our demands,” says Younis, one of the Amazigh rebels today blocking one of Libya´s largest gas and crude oil plants.

Located 100 kilometres west of Tripoli, the Mellitah complex is a joint venture between the Italian oil and gas multinational ENI and Libya´s National Oil Corporation (NOC). The plant remains blocked since a group of armed activists took over the docking port for oil tankers, on Oct. 26. Younis provides IPS with the details:

“We arrived at night by sea from Zwara [the city near Mellitah] and we’ve been organising ourselves in shifts of 30 men,” explains the activist under the tent that hosts the command centre for this strategic location.

“We are the true guardians of the revolution” reads a banner displayed next to the tent.

“In 2011, we Amazighs took up arms against a regime that had treated us like dogs for decades. But two years later we are still struggling for our rights against the new Libyan government,” laments Younis, as he helps to unload supplies from a small boat that has just arrived.

Also called Berbers, the Amazigh are indigenous inhabitants of North Africa with a population extending from Morocco´s Atlantic coast to the west bank of the Nile, in Egypt. Touareg tribes deep in the Sahara desert share the same common language.

The arrival of the Arabs in the region in the seventh century was the starting point of a gradual process of Arabisation that was sharply boosted during Muammar Gaddafi´s four-decade rule in Libya. Estimates put the number of Amazighs in this country at around 600,000 – about 10 percent of the total population.

“The government does not recognise us and we do not recognise the government,” reads another of the banners displayed throughout the complex. Most of them are written in three languages: Arabic, English and Tamazight, the Amazigh language which also has its own alphabet.

“We´re strongly against the committee in charge of writing the new constitution, as we have literally no chance to achieve our rights as a people through it,” says Ayub Sufian, another member of the rebel group controlling the port.

He is referring to the 60-member constituent assembly set to work on the draft of Libya’s post-Gaddafi constitution. The crux of the matter seems to be the six-seat quota given to the country´s minorities.

“Two for the Amazigh, two for the Touareg and two for the Tubu [a group living in the far south of the country],” the rebel tells IPS.

“It is a system that will rule on majorities of two-thirds plus one, so you basically need 41 votes out of 60 to reach an agreement. What are our choices as non-Arab Libyans? We want our language to be co-official, and we want to be able to decide on key issues concerning the country,” says the rebel spokesman, who would favour an agreement “based on consensus, not on majorities.”

Today Sufian wears a camouflage uniform and a gun at his waist. But he is also one of the members of the Amazigh Supreme Council, an umbrella organisation for every Libyan Amazigh town. Most of the towns are distributed across the Nafusa mountain range, in the country´s northwest, but Zwara is an unexpected yet compact enclave on a flat coastal spot bordering Tunisia.

The lack of an effective central government in the country has led to a fragmentation of power along regional and tribal lines. The former insurgents against Gaddafi have turned into a myriad of militias, each one in control of their places of origin and who only pay loyalty to their local councils. And the Amazigh rebels blocking the plant are no exception.

“We receive a lot of food and supplies from Zwara. The whole city is with us,” Sufian claims.

The reasons behind the alleged “unconditional” support are detailed by Fathi Buzakhar, a senior Amazigh activist today working for the Libyan Centre for Strategic and Future Studies, an NGO with offices throughout the country.

“So far we have conducted many peaceful protests and we have also met several times with United Nations representatives, but it has simply not worked. The action in Mellitah takes it a step further,” Buzakhar tells IPS from his home in Tripoli.

“Our region in the Nafusa mountains played a key role in the takeover of Tripoli during the war. They used us and now they reject us under the ridiculous pretext that we are working under a foreign agenda,” laments Buzakhar, who recently visited the oil pipeline south of Nalut, 250 km southwest of Tripoli, which has also remained blocked by the Amazighs, since Sept. 29.

IPS also visited the complex, a cluster of pipes and solar panels under the control today of Amazigh militias from the Nafusa mountain range, Libya´s main Berber stronghold southwest of Tripoli.

“People are coming from every corner, even our Tuareg brothers from the south. They followed suit and blocked the Ubari plant [a complex run by Spain’s Repsol company,  700 km southwest of Tripoli], “ Jadu militia spokesman Omar Srika told IPS.

The rebel had a message to convey: “All this started as a move to get language recognition, but today we also want to tell all those interested in setting foot on Amazigh soil that they will have to take us into account from now on.”

So far the government has not made any military or political move on Mellitah and the Libyan parliament also decided not to address the issue in its last session, on Nov. 5.

In the meantime, blocking gas and crude oil complexes has seemingly turned into a trend to pressure the government across the country.

The crews of the anchored tugboats in Mellitah kill time fishing until a solution comes, while similar protests across the country have knocked down Libya´s crude production by 90 percent.

Workers at the Mellitah plant confirmed to IPS that while the country’s oil shipments -around 160,000 barrels of crude a day – remain interrupted, neither the complex nor its staff have suffered any damage, aggression or threats by the occupants.

However, the rebels say they are willing to take new steps in their protest.

“So far we have only cut oil supplies. Gas is flowing at 40 percent. But if our demands are not immediately addressed in the next few days we will also block the underwater gas pipeline completely,” a rebel spokesman told IPS at the port.

Collateral victims of the dispute between Tripoli and the Amazigh would then be the Italians, who would see their gas supplies on the brink at the gates of winter.

Going from being a country with a highly controlled press to one that has free, independent and functioning media in roughly a year is a tall order.

This is true even for Libyans, who, last year, did what seemed impossible, and freed their nation from Muammar Gaddafi’s iron grip.

But Gaddafi’s four-decade rule has left its scars everywhere, including the nation’s newsrooms, which, for so long, acted as nothing more than the propaganda machine of the “Brother-Leader”.

Despite the initial revolutionary surge of entrepreneurial journalists, finally free to report on the horrors of the Gaddafi era, what remains is a struggle to understand the type of media a budding democracy needs – and what it takes to build it.

Many of the post-revolutionary efforts – newspapers, magazines and blogs – have fizzled away, although a core group of journalists, veterans and upstarts alike, remain.

“Every single person wanted to start their own magazine, their own station,” said Alaa El-Huni, a member of 1Libya, a non-profit organisation that focuses on supporting civil society and independent media in Libya.

“It took us a long time to learn that there’s a huge learning curve, and there’s a huge grade of reverting back to normal figures.”

That’s what the media here is being built on – will and enthusiasm, rather than a foundation of best practices and know-how.

“I guess you could say we were like a Coke can you shake,” said Sami Zaptia, managing editor of the Libya Herald news website. “We wanted to let it all out.”

Gaddafi as editor

And there was a lot to let out.

Mohamed El-Huni was a presenter at Al-Libya TV, one of Gaddafi’s state television channels. He was no stranger to the red lines. He told Al Jazeera about the time when Muammar Gaddafi took issue with a segment they aired about the relationship between Egypt and Hezbollah and made a personal 2am visit to the newsroom to make the point.

Another time, after Huni aired a segment on people who lived in sheds and shanties around Tripoli, he and the entire crew on shift were taken in and interrogated for an entire day – the same day he found out the editor in charge of his section also worked for the ministry of exterior.

After that, there were no more interrogations, said Huni. “Because we stayed away from anything sensitive.”

On Feb. 18, 2011, he caught an Al Jazeera broadcast of the chaos that was breaking out in his country. Knowing what his station wasn’t reporting, Huni said he couldn’t possibly go back to work there.

“It would be like stabbing my country in the back,” he said.

He is now a presenter at Al-Asima TV, a privately owned station, where he also hosts a political show. He said he doesn’t feel like anyone is controlling him, but that doesn’t mean that things are ideal.

“The first thing is that as much as there is freedom, there is a lack of security for reporters,” said Huni, adding that this has made him more cautious in what he reports and how he reports it. But many of his colleagues are less experienced.

“The new journalists – they have good intentions for Libya, but they don’t know how to discuss certain subjects, and with their lack of professionalism, and they end up creating a bigger problem than the one they were trying to report,” said Huni.

And the chasm between the number of new reporters and experienced editors is huge, as Huni said there are roughly 15 TV stations in Libya now, where there used to be only two major news channels.

A new national journalists’ association has been formed, and Huni said that the group is working specifically to address this issue.

“We need to come up with guidelines for journalists and also tell them how they can protect their rights,” said Huni.

Everything is a startup

Like the hundreds of homeless families who have found shelter in the wasteland of Gaddafi’s bombed-out compound, all of Libya is essentially living in, and with, the disaster that more than four decades of isolationist, authoritarian rule created.

And creating a robust media culture from this wreckage has its challenges for people such as Zaptia, who worked for the Tripoli Post for roughly a decade.

He said many of his articles were never published under the highly restrictive Gaddafi regime, which was routinely ranked by international rights groups as being among the most harshly censored, repressive societies.

“It was very frustrating being a writer in a state-owned, state- controlled publication. As soon as the revolution happened, I wanted to start my own newspaper, be my own boss,” said Zaptia. But that’s not as easy as it first seems.

“We’re starting from a void … We’re starting from zero – that is a challenge. There hasn’t been a tradition of a free, independent press for, some would say, roughly 40 years. So we don’t have that tradition, that culture. And that’s not easy, building a tradition, a culture, overnight,” said Zaptia.

He says he started an English language news site because he was frustrated that most of what was being reported on Libya was being done by foreigners, and generally, from a distance.

The people who might be in the best position to report on Libya are Libyans, but they are also the least trained to do so as journalists.

There’s currently no institutional training for journalists in Libya, although enabling a free and professional media is something the National Transitional Council (NTC) has stated as a priority. The prime minister’s office has also made a point of being more responsive to the media, with regular press conferences to address concerns.

A small talent pool – coupled with the fact that no-one these days wants to pay for advertising – means outfits such as Libya Hearald are struggling to survive. Zaptia can’t pay his writers and runs Libya Herald from a tight office space in the Damascus district, where dividers create the illusion of several offices in a single room and things are stacked atop each other.

“We’re all subsidising (the site) right now, hoping that things will get better,” said Zaptia.

A patchy approach

Most of the training and development work in Libya is done by local and international non-profits, which can lead to a rather sporadic, uneven approach to training.

“This is very much on a civil-society platform,” said Alaa al-Huni. The challenges are so overwhelming that organisations such as 1Libya have had to pull back and focus on one small project at a time – say, running photojournalism workshops.

“I’ll be honest with you – not enough is being done and it’s very patchy,” said Huni, whose phone buzzed and chimed non-stop during our interview. The fighting might have stopped, but Huni is still in the trenches.

“There’s a lack of understanding of even a basic code of ethics that comes with journalism – there’s a lot of responsibility that journalists have.”

Teaching people about vetting sources – especially when using social media – is also a mandate, although it might represent the less glamorous, back-end work that Huni said most aren’t interested in.

This is a problem, because, as Huni said, the most credible media source right now in Libya is social media.

“People believe what’s written on Facebook, they believe what’s written on Twitter. It’s faster, and there are so many different thoughts and opinions coming into it that the net result is that it might be, to some extent, less biased and more accurate,” he said.

There’s really nothing available in terms of formal internships at media organisations here, and there is no government-backed initiative to help support the creation of a free, independent media.

“We believe this is critical to the success of a democracy, critical to establishing a transparent government, an accountable state … there is a need for a free media – it can no longer be controlled or censored to that extent,” said Huni.

Not waiting for government support

Still, despite the enormous obstacles that stand in the way, those who want to can find a way to learn key newsgathering skills.

Mohamed Essul, 24, and 19-year-old Majdi Al-Nakua have both been trained in Alive in Libya, a project of U.S. non-profit Small World News, to report and film, edit and produce short news clips.

They are now helping Small World News teach others those same skills in hopes of building their country’s media.

“Libya has many talented people, but they need the support to be professional … and not to use the agenda of the government or the agenda of those who want to control the media,” said Essul.

Both men say they don’t feel they’re getting any help from the NTC.

“But I’m not waiting for support from the NTC,” said Al-Nakua.

“They haven’t done anything – they haven’t done anything good, and they haven’t done anything bad. They’ve just stood there.”

After getting the training, Al-Nakua said the biggest hurdle was “building trust – being trusted among the people”.

Brian Conley, co-founder of Small World News, has run similar programmes in Iraq and Afghanistan. He said the goal of the programme is to “create something that could be an inspiration or a direction to Libyans as to how to produce something different, but was produced by them, by Libyans”.

When they came to Libya last year, Conley said their role was to provide training and advice.

“Near the end, we were hardly doing anything at all – we were just producing back-end support. Everything else is being done here, by Libyans – the story concepts, the shooting – they were doing it all.”

Still, there seems to be a slight crisis of confidence.

“I think Libyans recognise that they can do it, but not yet that they can do it themselves,” said Astrid Schipper, Libya media support programme coordinator at the Doha Centre for Media Freedom.

“They are watching Al Jazeera, and they are watching BBC, and they are watching whatever Arabic language international station they can get,” said Schipper.

“But the fact that a national media can be trustworthy and interesting? That still has to grow.”

*Follow D. Parvaz on Twitter: @Dparvaz

Published under an agreement with Al Jazeera.

Spent ordnance at the Misrata war memorial. Credit:Rebecca Murray/IPS.

By Rebecca Murray
MISRATA, Libya, Feb 25 2012 (IPS)

This week more than half the residents eligible to vote in Libya’s embattled coastal city of Misrata cast their ballots for local council representatives in their first democratic election in decades.

“The elections were great,” says family man and aid worker Mohammed Amer, 31. “They went very smoothly. I went to the centre and elected someone, and my wife elected someone else,” he laughs. “It was like a big celebration. Everyone was happy. It is especially great for old men and women to see this.”

The 28 winners from a total of 242 candidates now form Misrata’s local government. These tangible results contrast with what is widely perceived as an opaque and complex national electoral process announced by the National Transitional Council (NTC) based in Tripoli. The NTC have slated elections in June for a national assembly, which will pick a committee to draw up Libya’s constitution.

Misrata, Libya’s third largest city with an estimated 300,000 residents, is still recovering from a brutal siege last year. A street side museum commemorates the city’s victorious role in the downfall of Muammar Gaddafi’s regime in October. The memorial is crowded with spent ordnance, memorabilia scrawled with graffiti, identification cards belonging to Gaddafi’s mercenary fighters, and a wall lined with pictures of Misrata’s dead and disappeared.

Multi-storey buildings remain pockmarked or gutted, especially along Tripoli Street, the main commercial artery. Queues are omnipresent outside banks to withdraw limited amounts of cash, and at gas stations. Egyptian migrant workers stand patiently at busy intersections holding paint cans and brushes to advertise their services, and a few business owners pour savings into the reconstruction of their small shops.

But Misrata, like other cities in Libya, has yet to receive reconstruction funds from the transitional government. Houses and businesses, including those owned by the previous government, lie damaged and dormant.

Mohammed Abdullah Ashab has sunk over 20,000 dollars into rehabilitating an upscale bookshop and a boutique filled with glittering gowns. These stores are in stark contrast to the piles of rubble and scrawled graffiti facing them.

“The NTC came to look at the damage,” he says. “But we won’t be compensated until a government is established. I am doing the reconstruction out of my own pocket.”

Atiya Al-Dreini, administration director for Misrata’s executive committee, and a winning candidate in the local elections, proudly shows off the refurbished Ottoman-era building housing the municipal offices. A destroyed wing is walled off; strewn with rubble and garbage. A brand new police car and two newly recruited traffic officers stand in the middle of the street in front.

“There is no national reconstruction budget yet,” Dreini says, noting that they took the money to clean up the office out of the current operating budget. “The committee to evaluate building reconstruction has finished its work, but is just waiting to include some people who fled their houses and are returning.

“This all takes time,” Dreini adds. “We had 42 years of corruption and need to break with the past. We are changing the whole system of the country, and this needs big money.”

Another stumbling block was bleakly illustrated in an Amnesty International report released this month. The report also covered Misrata, and warns that militias are one of the biggest threats to Libya today:

“Hundreds of armed militias, widely hailed in Libya as heroes for their role in toppling the former regime, are largely out of control. Their actions, and the refusal of many to disarm or join regular forces, are threatening to destabilise Libya, hinder the much-needed building of accountable state institutions based on the rule of law…”

“Most (brigade) members want to return to their professions – Misrata is a commercial region,” says Dreini. “Even during the tyrant’s day, most people didn’t want to join the security or police services. The mentality is still like that. But when they hear of clashes, like in Bani Walid, they will be ready to fight and join back with their brigades.”

Hasan Al-Homa, 31, sits outside a large sports complex with half a dozen young men in military fatigues and guns – part of an affiliated 200 militia that fall under Misrata’s military council leadership. He left his factory job to join a brigade during last year’s war. He wears the militia’s name on a laminated identification card.

Homa was wounded by a sniper during a ferocious battle in Misrata’s Tripoli Street, but recuperated in time to participate in the fall of Gaddafi’s hometown Sirte. He is married and has a two-month-old daughter. He is ready to return to his old job “once the national elections are over,” he says. “Even then, if there is a big (military) operation, we will join up to do it together.”

“We have about 200 brigades,” says Misrata’s military council head, Ramadan Ali Zarmouh, who reports directly to Tripoli’s Ministry of Defence. “Some rebels have gone back to their normal lives, but the brigades themselves still exist.

“Everyone knows that the brigades are temporary and must be dissolved at some point, and go back under police, military or civilian life,” he says. “We are currently establishing committees to work on short-term contracts for the Ministry of Defence. Those starting out will make 600 Libyan Dinars (around 480 dollars).”

International Crisis Group researcher Bill Lawrence is doubtful about an immediate capacity to rebuild the national army. “In Libya’s exceptional case there are no foreign troops or peacekeepers. So they are going to have to bring people in from the outside as trainers.

“No matter how many times the militias say they are going to disband, it’s not going to happen. The government doesn’t have strong institutions and is going to have to live with these militias, who are not ideological, but are defending turf and local issues under the military and civil councils.” (END/IPS/MM/IP/HD/RA/RM/SS/12)

After Colombia’s attorney general announced that she was bringing charges against a former government peace commissioner for his role in a staged surrender of a fake guerrilla unit, he called for an investigation of her husband – which she promptly ordered.

Saying she “cannot be blackmailed,” attorney general Viviane Morales launched an investigation of her husband, former guerrilla and former senator Carlos Alonso Lucio.

She had announced on Monday that her office would seek the arrest of Luis Carlos Restrepo, a former high peace commissioner under then president Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010).

According to Restrepo, Morales “lashed back because I know a secret story about her husband.”

Restrepo will face charges for the case of Cacica Gaitana, which according to military intelligence was a Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) unit that operated in the central province of Tolima.

The Cacica Gaitana unit demobilised with great fanfare on Mar. 7, 2006 in the middle of the campaign for the re-election of Uribe, and even surrendered a plane that was supposedly used by FARC founder Manuel Marulanda, who died in 2008.

A U.S. embassy cable leaked by the whistleblower website WikiLeaks, dated Mar. 22, 2006, raised doubts about the “veracity” of the demobilisation, and said Restrepo “was warmly congratulated by senior military officials.”

The Cacica Gaitana unit in fact never existed. The demobilisation of some 70 purported guerrillas was a farce that received wide media coverage. Around 15 of them were FARC deserters, and the rest were unemployed or homeless people recruited for the fake surrender operation.

The “leader” of the false unit, alias Saldaña, had been in prison for two years. Part of the weapons surrendered apparently came from a cache of the far-right paramilitary militias, and the plane had been in government custody since 2003.

“Unemployed people were picked up, armed, given military supplies and instructed about FARC ideas, and then they ‘surrendered’,” José Alfredo Pacheco, a former FARC insurgent who took part in the farce told La FM radio station in 2008. “Demobilisations of this kind have always been carried out in coordination with the army.”

After a 10-month investigation, the attorney general’s office plans to issue an arrest warrant for Restrepo on Jan. 20 and charge him with fraud, conspiracy to commit a crime, and trafficking of arms.

Army colonels Hugo Castellanos and Jaime Ariza will also be accused, along with Pacheco and other participants, and drug trafficker Hugo Rojas – now in prison in the United States, where he was extradited – who reportedly financed the sham with between 500,000 and one million dollars.

Retired Colonel Castellanos was the liaison officer between then peace commissioner Restrepo and the defence ministry, to deal with the demobilisations of paramilitaries and guerrillas that were frequent during the Uribe administration. And Colonel Ariza was regional head of military intelligence in Tolima.

Restrepo said military intelligence informed him in 2006 of the imminent demobilisation of the Cacica Gaitana unit, and added that the report was “confirmed by then army chief (General) Mario Montoya,” who assigned a helicopter to carry reporters to cover the event.

He also said “the high command were there. What were they doing in that area? Several top generals were in the area where the demobilisation occurred.”

Without going into detail, he said the defence ministry “knows that it was a military operation whose results are secret. Since it involves documents pertaining to national security, they cannot hand them over,” Restrepo said, adding that the classified documents are necessary for him to defend himself in court.

“Why do they insist on keeping that information classified? Why do they deny it? Tell us everything,” Restrepo said in an explosive interview Monday night with the RCN radio station.

He declared himself “opponent number one” of President Juan Manuel Santos, who was Uribe’s defence minister, and asked “What is Santos afraid of? That maybe one of his brilliant officials who are now in the presidency and who were involved with the Cacica Gaitana case until well into 2010, under his ministry, will end up being implicated?

“Yes, there were many military operatives with them,” he added, referring to the fake guerrillas who surrendered with Cacica Gaitana, “and there were high-level defence ministry officials working with them.”

Restrepo urged the government to reveal who in the defence ministry “worked with these gentlemen after and during the ministry of Santos, and what they were involved in.” He also did not rule out the possibility that military intelligence was “deceived.”

Former government minister Camilo González, director of the Institute of Studies for Development and Peace (INDEPAZ), said the Cacica Gaitana demobilisation was not the only sham.

According to the Uribe administration, some 52,000 armed fighters laid down their weapons in eight years.

That total includes 32,000 members of the far-right paramilitary militias who surrendered in collective demobilisation ceremonies after controversial negotiations with the Uribe administration.

But only 15,000 people actually handed over weapons in these high-profile ceremonies: 10,000 armed combatants and 5,000 people close to them, who were recruited for the purpose, according to a civil society monitoring committee of which INDEPAZ formed part.

“There were 17,000 false paramilitaries who ‘demobilised’,” said González.

“The demobilisation of Cacica Gaitana was a total parody,” he told IPS. “But that was not the main problem. The big sham was (the paramilitary demobilisation) which was of such dimensions that it was impossible for the highest spheres of government not to know.”

In González’s view, the Uribe government “formed part of the entire farce.”

The demobilised paramilitary chiefs confessed to the prosecutors that the militias “had training schools where the people who showed up at the last minute put on uniforms, got haircuts, and learned to describe where they patrolled, what paramilitary front they were in, and what they did.”

Restrepo, meanwhile, argues that attorney general Morales, to whom he sent a letter containing his accusations, should herself be investigated because she took part in a public forum in Santa Fe de Ralito, where the government and the paramilitaries negotiated the demobilisation agreement.

He also maintained that it was a crime for her husband to be an adviser to paramilitaries and guerrillas, in the search for reconciliation. He alleged that Lucio was involved in negotiations with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez – who helped broker releases of hostages by the FARC – and Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

In response to his letter, Morales ordered the investigation of her husband, in which she said she would not take part. She also wondered why Restrepo only called for an investigation of Lucio after the attorney general’s office announced that charges would be brought against the former high peace commissioner.