Toubou militiamen at their headquarters in Murzuq, southern Libya. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

By Karlos Zurutuza
MURZUQ, Libya , Nov 26 2013 (IPS)

“Can there possibly be anything more satisfying than teaching your own language to your own people?” Abdel Salam Wahali remarked to IPS. He is a teacher of Tebu, an ancient language which is experiencing a boom in post-Gaddafi Libya.

“Lessons start at 5:00 PM and finish at 7:30 PM because the children go to school in the morning,” Wahali, 38, explained from Murzuq, about 800 kilometres south of Tripoli. “For the time being, formal education is taught in Arabic.”

Living in the inhospitable region crisscrossed by the borders of Libya, Chad and Niger, the Toubou were victims of Muammar Gaddafi´s (1969-2011) brutal Arabisation campaigns seeking to eliminate indigenous cultures and languages.

Many Toubou – whose ancient language is Tebu – were deprived of citizenship, which prevented them from getting healthcare, education and employment.

“Ours is a race against the clock for which we do not have any help from the Libyan government. Still, we are pleased with the results so far,” said Wahali, who also teaches French.

Adam Rami Kerki, the leader of the Toubou National Assembly – the main political organisation for members of this ethnic group in Libya – told IPS from his office in downtown Tripoli: “While today we don´t suffer persecution, the current Libyan government insists on identifying Libya as an ‘Arab’ country, just as Gaddafi did.

“What makes you an Arab? Is it the colour of your skin? Your religion? Your mother tongue? For us one thing is clear: we may not be Arabs but we are Libyans. In fact, traces of human habitation have been found in our region dating back to 30,000 years ago,” added the senior representative, while he underlined the stigma that being black still poses in Libya.

Two years after Gaddafi’s death, the country as a whole is suffering from chronic instability, which recently peaked after the dramatic episodes of violence on Nov. 15, when dozens were killed and hundreds injured after a peaceful march was broken up through the indiscriminate use of force.

The Toubou are watching what is happening in Libya from a distance, hoping that their own militia will be able to react against any possible aggression.

They are all too aware that stability in the region is key to being able to jump on the train to the 21st century.

One of the stops in this merciless desert is the social centre run by “The Sons of the Sahara”, the leading organisation for the cultural awakening of this community. From its headquarters in downtown Murzuq, volunteers teach English and French, as well as Internet courses.

Hassan Egi is one of the group’s coordinators. He stresses the importance of access to the Internet for what he describes as “the most inhospitable region of one of the most isolated countries on earth.

“We Libyans thought we lived in the best country in the world until 1997, when satellite television arrived. The Internet is like a new revolution for us,” the 31-year-old explains to IPS while he strolls among the ten computer terminals.

Adam Kukin is using one of them. At 14, he is able to herd 100 camels across the Sahara desert. But unlike his parents, he can also read and write in his own language. And he is also increasingly familiar with online social networks.

“Thanks to the Internet I know what’s happening in the Murzuq area, and way beyond,” says the teenager.

An ambitious friend

The Toubou “spring” is very much transcending the four walls of the classroom and the cultural centre and spreading across the southwestern Libyan region of Fezzan, or Zalaa in the Tebu language, thanks partly to publications such as the Sodur Zalaa (The Echo of Zalaa) newspaper or the Labara Zalaa (News of Zalaa) magazine.

The latter was launched just as Gaddafi lost his grip over the south, like almost everything else involved in the renaissance of Toubou culture.

“We started printing 500 copies in August 2011 and today we are releasing 2,000 every month,” Ahmed Kuki, the publication’s proud promoter and editor, told IPS.

In its latest issue, Labara Zalaa offers news, interviews, crossword puzzles, song lyrics and even a report from the very heart of the Toubou cultural movement, across the border in the Tibesti mountains of northern Chad.

“We owe Kandamai a lot. None of this would have been possible without his passionate work and the morale boost he has given us,” says Kuki.

Kandamai – which means “ambitious” in the Tebu language – is the name by which the Toubou know Mark Ortman, a linguist from the U.S. who settled in Chad’s Toubou region 20 years ago. His aim was to start a language programme in order to reduce the local language to a written form and develop literacy in Tebu.

“I chose an adaptation of the Latin alphabet as the national language in Chad is French, and it also serves as a bridge into English, which the Toubou in all three countries want to learn,” Ortman told IPS on the phone from the other side of the border, where he is based with his wife and five children. The youngest one, he said, was born in Chad.

Ortman said the future of Libya’s Toubou people depends on to what extent they are able “to continue to avoid assimilation into the Arab worldview and maintain their historical distinctives and culture.”

So far, the strong will of this desert people seems more than proven, partly thanks to the bold initiative of this family which has also reshaped their life.

“Our children essentially grew up among the Toubou and attended local primary school with them,” Ortman said.

“We became a part of this people, and the more we learned about and understood them, the more we believed they share many of the same values as we do, including freedom of religion, separation of church and state, and democracy in the sense that people should be free to choose to live as they want,” explained the man who is helping a long neglected people to write their story. Some may well say he is even part of it.

Tebu security staff at Saharan oil fields in southern Libya. Credit: Rebecca Murray/IPS

By Rebecca Murray
SOUTHERN LIBYA, May 17 2013 (IPS)

Kaltoum Saleh, 18, is elated to graduate from her overcrowded high school in the remote Saharan town of Ubari, near the Algerian border.

Saleh, a member of Ubari’s indigenous Tebu tribe, says that for decades under former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan Tebu suffered from state-sanctioned discrimination, which stemmed in part from the failure of the semi-nomadic tribe to register under Libya’s 1954 citizenship law.

Gaddafi’s subsequent “Arabisation” campaign, intended to erase indigenous language and culture, also contributed to discrimination against the Tebu, many of whom were deprived of citizenship papers. As a result, they were barred from decent health care, education and skilled jobs. They often worked for low pay or as subsistence cross-border smugglers.

The tribe was swift to join the revolution against the regime in 2011, and with Gaddafi’s overthrow, the Tebu hoped to attain what they had long been struggling for: their full rights as citizens.

More than two years after the revolution, Saleh proudly says that her father, once a security guard, is now a hospital manager. She herself has considerable ambitions and is striving to become a human rights lawyer and fight for Tebu rights.

“The revolution was good for our self worth,” she says optimistically. “Now I feel like a Libyan citizen.”

But the revolution has not produced all the gains the Libyan Tebu have sought.

They lack sufficient representation in the Tripoli-based government, are in conflict with neighbouring Arab tribes, partly over resources in the current power vacuum, and are still branded by some Libyans as ‘foreigners’.

Guarding southern borders

In their quest for equal rights, Libya’s Tebu are now positioning themselves as valuable and natural guardians of the country’s vast southern borders.

Stretched across Libya’s south, the Tebu live in Ubari, Sebha and Murzuq in the west, and across the Sahara nearly 1,000 kilometres to the Kufra oasis in the east.

The desert terrain, with no roads across its width, is rich in underground water – which is diverted to ninety percent of Libya’s population along the coast – as well as oil and precious minerals.

It is also a haven for illegal cross-border trade, with weapons, government-subsidised gasoline and food smuggled out, and migrants and drugs transported in.

At the beginning of the revolt in 2011, Gaddafi promised both the indigenous Libyan Tebu and Tuareg citizenship papers and rights in exchange for their support.

While the Tuareg threw their lot in with his regime, only to find themselves on the losing side, the Tebu say they instead took Gaddafi’s weapons, and turned them and their desert expertise against him.

“Our forefathers came here hundreds of years ago,” explained Ibrahim Abu Baker, a Tebu archeologist from Ubari. “When we hold the sand, even in the night when the moon is shining, we know where we are.”

Although the Tebu were heralded for their revolutionary role guarding Libya’s southern borders and oil wells, with just two Tebu representatives out of 200 in the current General National Congress (GNC), their fight for equal rights is just gearing up."The Tebu want to close the chapter so they can get their citizenship, healthcare and education."
-- Mohammed Sidi

“During the revolution, people were perfect, excellent,” said Ali Ramadan, a Tebu military commander. “But when we returned to normal life, we found all the same people in their old positions, doing the same thing.”

In 2012, brutal clashes erupted between Tebu and Arab tribes in the desert towns of Sebha and Kufra. Mostly over power and resources, including smuggling routes, the fighting left hundreds dead and wounded, destroyed infrastructure and deepened animosity between neighbours.

Now an enormous wall and wide ditch encircles Kufra, built and controlled by the Arab Zwai tribe, who share the town with the minority Tebu. A tense ceasefire – not peace – is in place.

There is more optimism in Sebha. Last month, community elders successfully hammered out a reconciliation agreement between the western town’s Tebu and Arab Awlad Suleiman tribes.

“The Tebu want to close the chapter so they can get their citizenship, healthcare and education,” said Mohammed Sidi, one of the chief negotiators.

But Sidi still had reservations. “The wise people are together,” he said. “But the young people are separated now. The bad people – like those working in smuggling – are still together. They can’t negotiate because their experience is low. How do we bring those people together?”

Ubari, over 100 kilometres west of Sebha, is the last in a chain of fertile desert oases surrounded by sand dunes before the Algerian border. Dominated by the semi-nomadic Libyan Tuareg, who are also indigenous and have strong cross-border ties, this desolate corner thrived as a tourist destination until the 2011 revolution.

Now Ubari is known as a stop on the rumoured smuggling routes south to Mali and for its lucrative oil fields. It is also where Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, a son of Muammar Gaddafi, was apprehended while trying to flee Libya after the fall of Tripoli.

The Tebu, along with Tuareg and Arab militias, maintain an uneasy presence here, legitimised and paid for as part of the Ministry of Defence’s auxiliary Shield of Libya brigades and by private oil field security companies.

For now, they are the border guard presence. While the Tebu loosely patrol the southern border from Niger to Egypt, the Tuareg control Libya’s far southwest corner and the Algerian frontier running north to Ghadames.

Keeping an uneasy peace

The war in Mali, the terrorist attack against the nearby Amenas oil field in Algeria, the French Embassy bombing in Tripoli and rumours of Islamists trafficking weapons and fighters south have heightened community tensions.

“Libyans were very worried when the French intervention started in Mali,” a western diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told IPS. “Their main concern is that Islamists being flushed out by French jets could seek refuge in the kind of ungoverned space in southern Libya. They are worried about extremist groups moving through the region.”

Concerned about Libya’s porous frontier, the European Union and countries including the United States and United Kingdom are providing “advisory” roles in building up the government’s border guard.

The U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) has established a military base for drones on the south side of the Libyan border, in Niger.

“Broadly speaking, there are localised rivalries, ethnic rivalries and tribal rivalries in the south,” said the western diplomat. “A long-term solution for border security would most probably include both Tebu and Tuareg because they know the region and they live on the borders.”

Chaotic downtown Ubari is filled with migrants, most from Mali and Niger, who congregate on damaged sidewalks hoping for work, while Tuareg and Tebu tribesmen, wrapped in elaborate scarves to shield themselves from the dust, drive by in honking Toyota pickups.

Chieftains work hard to maintain the peace in mixed Libyan Tebu and Tuareg communities, like Ubari. They understand their shared battle is to overcome discrimination from Libya’s Arab population and to secure their rights.

Shamsideen Khoury, an 18-year-old Tebu student in Ubari, fought in the revolution and has faith in the future. He seeks a different path from his deceased father, who was a low level security guard. “I want to be an architect,” he says quietly. “I want to build a new Libya.”