Benghazi threatens 'another revolution'
2013-02-01 10:24
Benghazi - As night fell over Benghazi, a familiar sound
echoed across the eastern Libyan city - an explosion, and then gunfire. A bomb
had just been thrown at a police car on patrol, injuring an officer.
It was the latest of many attacks on local security forces.
Two months before, the man whose job it was to ensure Benghazi was safe, the
police chief, was shot dead outside his home.
Two years after Libya's second city kindled the uprising
that ousted Muammar Gaddafi, it epitomises a popular revolution gone awry -
rival militias and Islamist gunmen more powerful than the police, moving
residents to ask: where is the state?
"Imagine a city taken over by militias when all you
want is to support the state," activist Mohammed Buganah said.
"People feel insecure. They are very upset and annoyed about this."
There have been assaults on diplomats and international
missions, including the 11 September killing of the US ambassador, amid a
rising tide of kidnappings, bombings and assassinations, mainly of security
officials.
The anarchy, along with garbage-strewn streets and
unravelling municipal services, have deepened a sense of neglect by the capital
Tripoli far to the west and reawakened demands for autonomy in a region with
most of Libya's oil wealth.
"Everyone is increasingly worried about eastern
Libya," a diplomatic source said. "Things are seriously
deteriorating."
Reinstating basic security across Libya is a priority,
especially in Benghazi, cradle of the 17 February revolt against Gaddafi but
now seen as a foothold and springboard for Islamist militancy once suppressed
by the dictator.
Interior Minister Ashour Shuail singled out his home town as
part of a mammoth project in building an effective police. "The security
is getting better and the attacks are dwindling," he said in early
January. "It is not as bad as it was."
But a few weeks later, a curfew is now being considered in
the Mediterranean coastal city of nearly 1 million people.
No one in charge
Another activist, who declined to be named for his own
safety, said: "There isn't anyone fully in control of Benghazi."
Former anti-Gaddafi rebels claim to have been absorbed, at
least symbolically, into the interior ministry, like the Supreme Security Committee,
and military.
But fighters for such factions as the Libya Shield, February
17 and Raffalah al-Sahati boast more firepower than the police or army and are
estimated to number in the thousands.
"Brigades control entrances into the city, streets, key
infrastructure. The police don't want to challenge them because they just don't
have the manpower," said the activist.
Ansar al-Sharia, a radical Islamist group whose members
witnesses say were at the scene of the September attack on the U.S. mission,
was driven out of its base by protesters after a "Rescue Benghazi"
rally by outraged citizenry.
Locals say the group, which once guarded a hospital and
denied involvement in the assault, has since kept a low profile.
But analysts and activists say Islamist militants are
amassing power on the ground even if their numbers are unknown. The police,
seen guiding traffic or carrying out patrols, admit they are often powerless,
and targets of attacks.
"We only have pistols and rifles. They have tanks and
heavy weapons," the chief of a downtown police station said. "We want
to do our job but some police officers are simply afraid."
Even if security forces make arrests, ensuing attacks
discourage prosecutions. A police investigator is still missing after being
abducted in early January.
"Everyday I check under my car and in my rear view
mirror before I set off," an officer who gave his name as Anis said.
"I am proud to be a policeman but you have to be careful now."
The violence is mainly against security forces and may be
revenge attacks by former prisoners or militants seeking to stamp their
authority. But without an effective army or police, authorities have little
power to confront criminal suspects.
"Benghazans need the police [to] lift our morale,"
one officer, also declining to be named, said. "But anyone who leaves his
home for work every day is like a martyr."
Sense of neglect, isolation
This is hardly the image Benghazans want for their city. But
they concede that life has been disrupted by violence and unrest on top of
demands for greater autonomy or investment in a region separated from Tripoli
1,000 km (620 miles) away to the west.
Benghazi's security problems form the backdrop to more
pressing civic grievances - a government failure to satisfy a public whose
frustration has been simmering since rebel leaders left their eastern base for
Tripoli in October 2011.
Long a pro-autonomy hotbed behind earlier attempts to unseat
Gaddafi, Benghazi is now the focal point of a widespread sense that the new
Tripoli authorities are still ignoring the east.
Benghazans point to rubbish-strewn streets, dirt track
roads, hospitals and schools in need of basic upgrades. New shops have opened
and building projects have resumed.
But they expect more.
"Where is all the money from the oil? Why are they not
spending it to help us?" one female teacher said. "These politicians
sit in their hotels in Tripoli and forget about us."
The bigger issue is what status Benghazi will have in the
new Libya and stake in national oil supplies of 1.6 million barrels a day -
much of it from the east. Discontent has led to calls for return to a federal
political structure.
For about a decade after Libya became an independent state
in 1951, the North African state was run along federal lines, devolving power
to the eastern, western and southern regions.
Benghazi was Libya's commercial capital and the east had the
cachet of being the family homeland of King Idris. Libya began to centralise
its government in the last years of the monarchy. Gaddafi sped up the process
after his 1969 coup, concentrating the power of the state in Tripoli and
neglecting Benghazi.
"This is not new for us. Let people handle their
problems," said Abubakr Buera of federalist National Union party. "We
are campaigning for political decentralisation and good governance."
Westerners shun Benghazi
Few Westerners live in Benghazi, which has borne the brunt
of a wave of violence against diplomats and international bodies, including the
killing of US Ambassador Christopher Stevens and a gun attack on the Italian
consul's car this month.
Britain's recent call to its nationals to leave immediately
due to a "specific and imminent" threat to Westerners highlights the
insecurity plaguing Benghazi.
The assault on the US mission, for which no arrests were
made, grabbed world attention. But there had already been attacks on British,
Red Cross and the UN properties here.
An Algerian hostage crisis in January, in which Islamist
militants apparently entered from Libya and seized a natural gas plant before
Algerian troops stormed it, leaving nearly 70 captives and gunmen dead, has
raised regional security concerns.
Randy Robinson, principal of British School Benghazi, said:
"One of our staff was carjacked. Our residence last spring was robbed with
teachers in a room held at gunpoint as thieves cleaned out the apartments. We
have to take care."
