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10 March 2012Return to LibyaAbout a fortnight ago, the country celebrated the first anniversary of its revolution. An

Indian professor, now back at his university there after a gap of ten months, ispleased to see his students who had turned into armed revolutionaries get back totheir books again. His report

0BYAJ Thomas EMAIL AUTHOR(S)TAGGED UNDER |revolution|Libya|Gaddafi

PASSAGE

LIBERATED Tripoli Street in Misrata, site of one of the fiercest battles, after pro-Gaddafi forces lost this city in May 2011

I lived in Libya for two-and-a-half years as a teacher. When the revolution started on17 February 2011, I saw my students suddenly turn into armed revolutionaries (seeThe Red Hibiscus Revolution,Open, 9 April 2011). When I left, the country was inthe first flush of full-blown revolution, with the entire East in rebel hands, andGaddafi just beginning his large-scale military deployment against his own people.For months together, the struggle remained a stalemate. Eventually, aided by Nato

bombing, the dictator was ousted and killed.

Benghazi University (Garyounis University before the revolution), at whose branch Iworked, had let me go on leave along with other Indian evacuees until the situationstabilised. On 6 January this year, I returned along with a colleague. During the

war, this town of 126,000 was attacked from air, land and sea relentlessly for amonththe only place in Libya to be so attackedand I had felt all kinds offorebodings on the fate of my students. This return offered me a sense of closure, forit would have been difficult for me to live on in India without going back to check.

Outside Benghazis Benina Airport, the weather was chilly and windy. A trueMediterranean winter. The late afternoon sun played around the rain clouds thatdelivered an occasional spray. It was a 160-km drive to Ajdabiya, and about 20 km

south along this road was Tikka, where French President Nicholas Sarkozy orderedthe scorching of an armoured division of Gaddafis elite forces tasked with razing
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Benghazi to the ground. The remnants and hulks of tanks and armoured vehicleslittered a 2-sq-km area on either side of the highway at Tikka. Further down the roadtowards Ajdabiya, the city I lived and worked, burnt skeletons of tanks, armoured

vehicles and heavy cannons visited upon by Natos Brimstone and Hellfire missilescould be seen along the kerbs. This road had thick patches of green on either side,

suggestive of hope for the future; the farthest limits of the plains were a dull turmericyellow of desert sand.

The check points were all manned by Thuwars (ex-freedom fighters) in battlefatigues, wielding Kalashnikovs. Many of them were obviously in their teens, with noevidence of darkening hair on their faces. Nearing Ajdabiya, the Eastern Gate cameinto view, surrounded by tanks and anti-aircraft guns. There were many tanksdisabled during the fighting. This gate was the scene of pitched battles during threeseparate attacks by Gaddafis forces between 15 March and 15 April 2011. Security

bunkers were pockmarked by machine-gun fire and mutilated beyond recognition byartillery and mortar shells. The Thuwars checked our vehicle and let us pass. I wasentering Ajdabiya after nine months. At one time, the media had termed it a ghost

city. How many of my students and colleagues and their local friends would be left? Iwas gripped by apprehension.

At the University Branch, the staff greeted me with tight hugs, kisses on the cheeksand salaams. Walking along the corridors, students, both boys and girls, greeted me

with exclamations of joy. Most of them had signed up for the semester that was tobegin after nine months upon being assured that we would be brought back. Boysembraced me; girls came and shook handsa gesture they reserve for only oneoccasion in their college years, when they make presentations of their researchpapers, effectively ending their course of study.

They all seemed to take my return as a sign of things returning to normalcy. Many

male students proudly said they were Thuwars and had fought Gaddafi s forces.There were many boys now with crutches and plaster casts. Many of the pick-up

vehicles parked in front of the university, belonging to students and staff, weredabbed in camouflage paint and nettings and had telltale metal tripods for themounting of heavy guns.

The carefree, chattering schoolgirls and swashbuckling boys passing along the roadwere a refreshing sight, in complete contrast to last years gloom. My students moodhad been transformed. They were filled with laughter and joviality, a far cry from thefear that seemed to envelop them under the Gaddafi regime, when they seemed sohesitant to express themselves to me.

The rejoining done, it was time for me to look for my old house. It was gone, takenover by refugees from another city. Muman Alkhaldly, my benign Head of theDepartment, a young and sprightly man in his early thirties who had been afreedom-fighter along with his brothers (and fought the Battle of Sirte that ended inGaddafis death), had solicitously taken all my household belongings to places ofsafety. I could get them back once I found a house, he told me, as he drove me to hishouse to welcome me back with a lunch with himagain, a rare gesture. Housing wasa difficult problem in post-war Ajdabiya, he said. However, with the help of SayedMujahid, an Indian colleague, I found a house on the third day.

My exploration of Ajdabiya began. Muman had told me that his brother Hamad, acomputer engineer turned Thuwar who had visited the city during the month-long

attacks by regime troops, had seen a number of sheep, dogs, camels and jackals allrunning in the same direction, as the constant boom of explosions from shells,


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rockets and bombs told them that doomsday was near. But the ghost city had onceagain become a bustling business centre, with shops packed with goods, and streets,

with people. However, all 14 government offices that were set on fire during therevolution remained the same way, their walls blackened by flames that had leaptfrom the windows, though reconstruction has just begun at one or two sites.

Government banks, in contrast, were thronged by hundredscurrency was in shortsupply, and each account holder was assured of only 300 Libyan dinars at a time fora month. Still, the crowds continued to swell.

Every wall and lamp-post, dustbin and culvertany surface that could be paintedwas covered with the Libyan tricolour. Where Gaddafis portraits had once stareddown from hoardings, with his thrust-out chin and dark glasses at a rakish angle,there were now portraits of martyrssome with RPGs fixed to their launchers, some

wielding machine guns with garlands of cartridges crisscrossing their torso.

THE MYSTERY OF THE NIGHT SHOOTINGS

Since the day of my arrival, there has been sustained automatic fire from rifles of

varying calibres (as can be discerned from variations in the crack and boom of thereports) every night, and sometimes during the day too. There was also an occasionof much firing in the air by a procession of hundreds of cars and pick-ups with anti-aircraft guns and heavy machine guns. That turned out to be the funeral processionof a Thuwar who had been airlifted to the UK after being injured in the Battle of Sirtein October, and who had succumbed to his injuries. I also saw some of their new-

born political rallies. Instead of slogan-shouting, its firing in the air for them.Theirjathas are all in cars and pick-ups, horns blaring deafeningly in a continuousstream, peppered with celebratory fire.

But what explained the firing at night? It would begin as midnight approached andlast for at least a couple of hours. The usual explanation I got was that it was

celebratory gunfire at wedding processions. But so many weddings? I reasoned thatdifferent armed groups would be advertising their strength, or night-guards would beshooting in the air to signal their presence and everyone elses safety. No incident ofarmed clashes between rival groups had been reported here either. However, as Ilater realised, a huge portion of the truth was that the gun, wielded by practicallyevery Libyan during the revolution, is now a plaything in many hands and the mosttangible symbol of the freedomwhatever that meansthey had won. Mysuspicions proved true when a lady colleague confided in me that some girl studentshad shown her (and not me, since they were in their informal clothes in the privacyof their homes) videos of their brothers teaching them how to use rifles late at nighton their terraces.

THE FIRST ANNIVERSARY

On 17 February, Libyans celebrated the first anniversary of the beginning of theRevolution. Thousands of people flying the tricolour on cars, pick-ups and trucksmounted with all kinds of captured weaponsranging from six-barrelled anti-aircraft guns, multiple rocket launchers and RPGs to heavy machine guns, bazookasand howitzers and light-cannonsmoved in processions along all the main roads of

Ajdabiya. Deafening music, drumbeats and cymbal clashes, shouts and chants rentthe air.

A day earlier, I had gone to Benghazi, and visited the spot where the momentumturned in favour of the revolutionaries for the first timethe army barracks or

Khatiba overrun on 20 February 2011. As mass killings of unarmed protestors wenton unabated in Benghazi for four days starting 17 February, Professor Mahdi of our


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university had mounted a suicide attack, ramming into its gate a car laden with gascylinders to serve as explosives. That is how tens of thousands, armed with just sticksand stones, swarmed in through the opening and captured weapons. It was at thismoment that the struggle turned into an armed revolution. Cities throughout the eastof the country followed this example overnight. They overran army and police

barracks, and on 21 February 2011, all of eastern Libya was declared liberated.On the same trip, I also visited Sulooq, off the Benghazi-Ajdabiya road, where thelegendary Omar Mukthar, the Father of the Libyan Nation, was hanged by Italiancolonialists under Mussolini in 1931. The execution spot is marked by a giant plaque

with an inscription of the incident. This was my second visit here. The last time, in2010, I had observed that the plaque had Gaddafis name too. This time round, thatportion was disfigured with paint. Thuwars had repossessed Omar Mukthar as thesymbol of their freedom struggle and national unity.

THE STORIES

As I got back to teaching, I was to be regaled with first-hand accounts of events by

students and colleagues. Once, while teaching Literary Criticism, explaining the termhistorical criticism and citing the case of fellow Ajdabiyan Hisham Matarsacclaimed novel about Gaddafis institutionalised kidnappings and killings ofopposition figures living in any part of the world,Anatomy of a Disappearance, agirl student, whom I shall call A, blurted out: My Father and uncle had disappearedtoo, 20 years ago. I was surprised because this was the same girl who had written anessay on the Great Man-made River, praising Gaddafi as a great man, just last year.

When I asked her why she wrote that way earlier, she said, The Great Fear! Shecould never be sure that if she wrote her true feelings of Gaddafi, she wouldnt be

betrayed. She recounted her early years when she would persistently ask for herbaba and be told he would return soon, an expectation she grew up with. But her

hopes were dashed when Mustafa Abdul Jaleel, the interim President, released lastmonth photos of prisoners held incognito in Tripolis Abu Salim prison who wereeventually put to deathher father and uncle were among them.

Just then, as this girl was telling me her story, a girl sitting next to her, lets call herJ, broke into tears at the mention of the word father. Her own fathera highlydecorated opposition fighter, who had returned just a few months ago to his dutystation guarding oil installations after carrying home for burial his only son, aThuwar who had died on duty in a vehicle accidenthad just met with a terrible roadaccident, and was in coma in Germany, where hed been taken for treatment. This

brave girls fianc had also been killed along with her brother in the accident a fewmonths ago.

Another such revelation was made by S, a girl who had written a story, as part of aclassroom exercise on Narrative Essay last year, about an Amazonian woman inGaddafis personal security squad who had eventually hanged herself. In her fictionalaccount, this woman was portrayed as her sister. But now, when I enquired, she toldme that it was not fiction but fact. She couldnt tell me earlier because of the all -pervasive fear.

H is an engineering college teacher whose house was by the main Benghazi-Tripoliroad. He said seven Grad rockets had crashed into his house during the siegenoone was hurt, as the house was big and they moved into the interior rooms dodgingrockets that came crashing one after another.


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TRIBES AND TENSIONS

Muman is your quintessential idealist in a New Libya faced with the complexities ofnascent democracy. He asserts his need to retain impartiality and objectivity in asociety ridden with tribal and regional rifts and tensions. But his is a lone voice, orone of rather few.

Once united in opposition to Gaddafi, the majority of Libyas people seem to havereturned now to their tribal identities and affinities, a phenomenon that makes amockery of the notion of nationhood. (When I say tribal, it is not to be confused

with our word adivasi, as the anchor of a Malayalam channel did last October whileI was on air the day Gaddafi was killed; these are not stereotypical African tribes,

but Bedouin tribes, much like the Jewish tribes described in the Old Testament orthe gotras of Indias Brahmin communities.)

Even individuals who once sided with Gaddafi and are implicated in heinous acts aretreated leniently and given positions of power by particular groups if they belong tothe right tribe. And there are manyopportunists who have switched loyalties, just as

Indias own fifth-columnists did in 1947, donning Gandhi caps overnight. Asanywhere in the world, the patriotic freedom fighter is selfless by definition and doesnot hanker after positions, while the unscrupulous grab all opportunities.

Ajdabiya at the moment is wracked by tension created by the rivalry of two suchpowerful tribal groupings. Tribal tensions elsewhere in the country are vieweddifferently by different groups. The current conflict between Tubus and Izwaiyyas inKufra, the south-eastern extremity of the country, is a case in point. According to 15February international news reports on this, the Libyan military had put down pro-Gaddafi insurgents. However, I was surprised to be accosted by a young medicalstudent in front of Benghazis iconic Tibesti Hotel on 16 Februaryhe was one of theprotestors demonstrating against the killing of Black Tubus by light-skinned

Izwaiyyaswho took me for an international journalist and wanted me to reveal thetruth to the world. A top-level emergency meeting of the National Transition Councilon the issue was in progress inside the hotel, he said. In spite of the grimness of thesituation, I noticed something positive: democracy was plainly in operation, as the 50odd protestors were left unharassed by the armed soldiers guarding the street andhotel. This would have been unthinkable a year ago. The revolution itself had begunon account of a similar protest a few hundred metres away from this very spot. Backin Ajdabiya, a colleague said that many Tubus were tribal infiltrators fromneighbouring Chad who hoped to blend in with Libyas own border-area Tubus. Thethird viewpoint I came acrossthe most astute and objective onewas that theseTubus and Izwaiyyas settled in Kufra were as Libyan as any, and their killing eachother was meaningless.

Tawergha is about 30 km southwest of Misrata, the city that Gaddafi brutally tried todestroy. A majority of Tawerghans had sided with Gaddafi then, and had reportedlyled an orgy of murder and rape. Now, with the tables turned, Misratans are bent onmaking life hell for Tawerghans. Tawergha is a deserted town now. ManyTawerghans are resettled in Ajdabiya; so are people from Sirte, the fallen hometownof Gaddafi, and members of his tribe, Gaddadfa. Some Ajdabiyans do not take kindlyto them; there is growing tension on account of this as well. Sane voices likeMumans plead for equal treatment for all and forgiveness and reconciliation. Butlarge numbers of Libyans are not convinced. Regional and sectarian tensions prevail,

though there is absolutely no Shia-Sunni divide here (the country is entirely Sunni).


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However, international apprehensions of Libyas radicalisation along Islamic lines,or at least early stirrings of it, are not easily dismissed. Some of the countrys youth,many of them model students earlier, have taken to growing long beards and anincreasing number of girl students are adopting face veils (whereas in the past, there

would have been just one or two in a classroom of a hundred). I asked a few boys and

girls about this, and they said Gaddafi had imposed restrictions on wearing beardsand veils, which are normal practices for Muslims, and now that he was gone, they

were exercising their freedom to do as they liked.

As of now, what these signs presage is not easy to tell. However, what I know ofpeople here prompts me to stand by my earlier convictionthat religion is a way oflife for them and not a mode of political expression.

PEACETIME CHANGES

An extraordinary opportunity came by the other day. With the help of Muman, actingas interpreter, I held a long interview with three women military officersa fastdiminishing minority, on the verge of extinction as I am told, in Libya.

Colonel Hanea, Lieutenant Colonel Marzooka and Lieutenant Aisha are all membersof the official Libyan Army that switched loyalties as the opposition took to thestreets in February last year. They form a special cell of the Military Council of

Ajdabiya, thanks to the efforts of an upright male officer, Colonel Khaleefa, and areable to work here without trouble along with other women personnel. Marzooka saysshe began supporting the revolution rightaway as she was disgusted with the regime

when four schoolboys were shot dead in Ajdabiya by soldiers on the first day of therevolution. During the fiercest of battles, she was among those who ensureduninterrupted food supply to fighters entrenched at the frontlines. Asked about theprospects of women in the army, the difference between Gaddafis time and now,Hanea and Marzooka are unambiguous in giving the devil his due. Then, they were

treated as professional soldiers, but the emerging authorities now want all womensent back in their kitchens. Yet, the three are determined to stick to their roles. Therole of women in nation-building and establishing a democratic society is beingoverlooked, they feel.

Look around the place, and you notice that Thuwars are everywherein the markets,main streets, near educational institutions, hospitals, etcetera, armed typically withKalashnikovs, though sometimes with RPG launchers slung across their shoulders.Most of them are on guard duty. So, even though there are no police or securityforces around to maintain law and order, there is no crime reported, nor anyinsecurity felt in the streets. This sense of order can partly be attributed to a few

positive aspects of tribal traditionsby which youngsters listen to their elders, forexample.

Libyas broader social setup, of which the political is just an offshoot, is mono-cultural and based squarely on religion. More or less all activitiesbe it education,

business, commerce, political discourse, activism or even the daily routineareconducted in accordance with Islamic codes. This is not to imply that Libyans areextremists. Far from it. They are just like orthodox people everywhereCatholics,Jews, Brahmin sects and even some Marxists and atheists back in India. But the realtest begins when a modern democracy is sought to be fashioned from this. Thechallenge of reconciling mono-cultural norms with multi-cultural ideals, as well-

wishers across the world expect of Libya, can bog even well-meaning leaders down.

The conflicting voices being heard, as the country gears up for its first ever election inMay this year, are no surprise.


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Will the aspirations of young Libyans see fulfilment? It was theirrevolution to beginwith, and they were inspired by social networks, internet information and globalideas. So, will a Libya emerge where citizens are treated equally and justly ascitizens? It may seem like a stiff challenge, but thats the least Libyas revolutionariesowe themselves and those they fought for.

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