LetterfromBENGHAZ

After the RevolutionCLARE MORGANA GILLIS

I FIRST MET ENAS ALDRSEY the day I arrived inLibya, February 25,2011,12 days after her graduationfrom Benghazi's Gar Younis University and eightmonths before the death of Libyan leader Muam-mar Qaddafi. Aldrsey's serious demeanor and redplastic-rimmed glasses befitted the degree she'd justearned in medical engineering, but she was enter-ing a new, uncertain worldin which her activism sur-faced at the mere mentionof his name. "Qaddafi!" shewould spit out with a scowl.

Benghazi's air vibratedwith a new energy, the sud-den freedom to mock the"Leader," openly, in frontof God and everybody,feeding a kind of revolutionary high. The Libyanshad 42 years' worth of stories to tell, they wouldsay, and words tumbled from their mouths toofast for me to write them down.

Since that encounter three years ago, Aldrseyhas related again and again her despair aboutLibya after Qaddafi's demise. "I am so sad," shesays. "This is not what we wanted." And, sincethe deaths on September 11,2012, of U.S. Ambas-sador J. Christopher Stevens and three otherAmericans at the hands of Benghazi militia-men, there has been a rash of bombings, armed

Clare Morgana Gillis is a freelance journalist specializ-ing in the Middle East. She reported from the Libyan deserttown ofKufrafor the Summer 2012 issue of the SCHOLAR,and her report from inside Syria appeared on our websitein early 2013.

Though it is widely agreedthat homegrown Islamists

are responsible for theSept 11,2012, attack, the

commander of the primaryaggressors still walks free.

attacks, and assassinations. The security situa-tion has only deteriorated.

Going back further, more than 50 promi-nent Benghazis have been targeted and killedsince July 2011, when General Abdel Fateh You-nis, field commander of the eastern army, wasassassinated. His corpse was burned, a viola-

tion of Muslim practicesof respecting the dead,and dumped in the out-skirts of Benghazi. Morerecently Abdelsalam Mis-mari, a civil rights attor-ney, was shot and killedas he left a mosque afterFriday prayers. Thoughit is widely agreed that

homegrown Islamists, the older generation ofwhom in the '80s fought in Afghanistan againstthe Soviets, are responsible for these killings andthe 2012 ambush at the U.S. diplomatic mission,no one has yet been brought to justice becausethe courts are in disarray and no official body isable to guarantee security for judges.

U.S. and Libyan authorities have named AhmedAbu Khattala and others in the militia AnsarSharia, of which Abu Khattala is the commander,as the primary aggressors in the aftack. Benghaziresidents find it strange that Abu Khattala stillwalks free. The blowup in the press following anOctober 27 report on 60 Minutes, an account ofthe aftack later retracted by CBS, shows how pub-lic aftention to the case continues to be dogged

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by factual questions and U.S. politics. Neither ofthe contradictory versions of the events given toCBS and the FBI by Dylan Davies—an employeeof the security firm hired to protect the build-ing—challenges the claim that Abu Khattala andhis men are primarily responsible for the attack.

"Black Saturday," June 8,2013, confirmed formany just how bad things have become. Beng-hazi residents gathered at the headquarters ofLibya Shield One, the main brigade responsiblefor securing the city, to protest what they saw asabuses of power and inability to provide security.The confrontation turned violent, and at theend of the day 32 were dead, mostly from theranks of protesters. After Black Saturday, LibyaShield decamped and the Special Forces (Saiqa,"thunder")—a national force with branches inTripoli, Benghazi, and Sebha—took over.

Aldrsey used to drive a car, one she proudlybought with money she'd earned working forhuman rights initiatives that sprang up in Beng-hazi after October 2011, the end of the Libyancivil war. But because she is a staunch advocate

of women's rights and.

one day the car was torched. An unfamiliar voiceon a phone call from a blocked number told her,"This time it's your car; next time it's your head."

Now she spends most ofher time in her family'sdowntown apartment, a cozy labyrinth of brightlycolored carpets and big-screen TVs, scented byher mother's cooking; the building has a weaponsmarket on the ground fioor. When she goes to heroffice, 20 minutes from home, at a quasi-govern-mental human rights association, her father andbrother drive her. She says she intends to stay inBenghazi long enough to get an English languagecertification, which she needs to study in the UnitedStates or the United Kingdom.

During the civil war, Benghazi functioned asthe de facto capital, but after the liberation ofTripoli in August 2011 and the capture and execu-tion of Qaddafi two months later, national officesreturned to Tripoli. So did political headquartersand the offices of NGOs that had recently sprungup, including Aldrsey's former place of employ-ment But fearing for her safety, her family wouldnot allow her to relocate to the capital.

Afire in the city's largestcarpet market on Octo-ber 15, 2013: "In daylight.Benghazi appears to be afunctioning city."

unlike most Libyanwomen, does not coverher hair, her tires wererepeatedly slashed until

THE CIVIL WAR BROUGHT together Libyans of

radically different backgrounds who all refusedto live under Qaddafi any longer. Aldrseyjoined

the revolution the same day as General WaneesBokhamada, commander of Saiqa.

In 1980, when he was 20 years old, Bokhamadasigned up for Qaddafi's army and was promptlysent to northern Chad during the Libyan-Chadian war, an obscure and complex desert con-flict fought, during most of the '80s, over terri-tory in the border region. He quit serving Qaddafion February 15,2011, when he refused to shootprotesters. Most of the men under his commanddefected with him, and others stayed at home thatday. Mass defections in eastern Libya's army arewhat made Benghazi the military, political, andcultural headquarters of the uprising. EasternLibya's territorial integrity helped make NATO'sno-fly zone enforceable in a way that, for example,S)TÍa's rebel-controlled areas cannot be.

Dressed in a faded yeOow djellaba, Bokhamadaseemed tired and worried on the day I spoke to himin September. He was seated at a plastic table in hisfront yard within the dusty, concrete Saiqa com-pound. We met at eight A.M. on a Friday morning.His assistantbroughtus astringof momingrefresh-ments—Arabic coffee and biscuits, tea. Friday is thebeginning of the Islamic weekend, and eight o'clockis an hour when most Libyans are still sleeping. "We[in Saiqa] don't have Fridays," he said. "We worknight and day because we're in a very dangeroussituation. And if s the third year like this."

Saiqa headquarters, a sprawling, walled com-plex of low buildings and training fields, is justoutside Benghazi and was the only place we couldsafely meet. Like Aldrsey, Bokhamada lives underconstant threats to his life from radical Islamistbrigades, such as Ansar Sharia and from commoncriminals and Qaddafi loyalists. His wife and chil-dren live with him in the compound.

Saiqa is the only security outfit that seemsto be working at all in the city. It currentlyguards Jala Hospital, the Libyan Central Bank'sBenghazi branch, the Benghazi airport, and thecity's electrical power station. Saiqa plans toexpand its responsibilities. "But we are not trainedfor internal security, and we have no powers ofinvestigation," said Bokhamada as he lit his fourth

Marlboro Red and considered his words. "Wecan't use tanks and airplanes in the city. And ifthe police were working the way they should, youwouldn't see what you're seeing now."

The Libyan government hasn't managed tointegrate the various militias, which vie with eachother for power, into a national army or policeforce, not least because governmertt is more anaspirational term here than a real one. PrimeMinister Ali Zeidan himself was kidnapped forseveral hours on October 9.

In daylight, Benghazi appears to be a function-ing cify, a t5^ical North African mix of traffic jamsand speeding cars, women walking in the streets,and men gathering in seaside cafés to smoke shi-sha pipes. A surprising number of luxury hotels,restaurants, and shops selling home-decor itemsmade of silver and Czech crystal have sprung up inthe city. Intrepid foreigners, in Benghazi on busi-ness, stay in the hotels; wealthy Libyans patronizethe restaurants. Some people in Benghazi specu-late that such upscale establishments must belaundering money taken in by a flourishing blackmarket of weapons and drugs, and by the smug-gling of foreigners through Libya's porous borders.

But bad things happen at night. In the six daysI spent in Benghazi, a car bomb killed a formerMinistry of the Interior functionary and injuredhis son, another explosion that I could hear in thepredawn hours of September 11 went on down-town in the former U.S. diplomatic building, anda rocket-propelled grenade attack also occurreddowntown. I heard the grenade launch and theexplosion, soon followed by men's voices and thesound of moving cars. It couldn't have been morethan 500 yards away. I asked around the next day,but no one knew anything about it.

Under Qaddafi, the Ministry of the Interiorwas the most feared security branch, and the cur-rent government has not managed to reconstitutea suitable replacement—an institution with theauthority to investigate, detain, and prosecute.Many of those held prisoner in Libya are illegalimmigrants—often sub- Saharan Africans detainedon suspicion of being mercenaries who fought on

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Qaddafi's side during the war—and well-known

loyalists, as well as criminals whose guilt has been

determined by common knowledge rather than

by proof of law.

I WAS NOT THE ONLY FOREIGNER Enas Aldrsey

had welcomed to Libya. Starting on February 22,

2011, when the Egyptian border patrol opened

the crossing into the country, and continuing

throughout that spring, Aldrsey volunteered to

help orient newly arrived journalists.

After deeades of media coverage that trickled

out of the country—normally through organized

and government-supervisedjunkets—thousands

of fresh eyes had come to look at revolutionary

Libya. Activists and artists expended unforeseen

creativity in their songs, graffiti, newspapers, and

speeches. Every day, ehants rose in front of the

eourthouse, which became the so-ealled media

center for the rebels. Journalists worked there and

activists embellished it with posters and slogans.

On that first visit, I found characters on the

streets I could appreciate. One middle-aged man,

for instance, stood on a pavement carpeted with

spent 14.5mm anti-aircraft shells, remnants of an

hours-old victory that had driven regime troops

from the city. Gesturing toward his prayer cap and

long robes, he said, "I look like Taliban! I look like

Bin Laden! But I am not. I am an engineer and a

freedom fighter!" Who could not love him a little bit?

Then there were scenes worthy of cinema.

Kalashnikov-toting shebaab (young men)—heads

wrapped in kajfiyehs and feet elad in designer

training shoes—raced toward the frontlines, piled

10-deep in pickup trucks with anti-aircraft weap-

ons bolted in the beds. Each had a stoiy to tell

about a brother shot at the protests, a father

killed in the 1996 Abu Slim prison massacre, an

uncle detained and tortured for years.

Since war's end, journalists have curtailed their

Libyan visits, many of them drawn to the bloodier

and exponentially more complex Sjrian confiict.

The dangers of working in Libya—no significant

diplomatic missions exist outside Tripoli, which

itself is by no means a safe haven—have helped

keep Libya unscrutinized by outsiders.

Many of us journalists have asked ourselves

and each other what we got wrong. Were we blind

to the possibility that the outeome could turn

as dark as it now appears? And though active

warfare may look like the hard part, surely the

more arduous task is the decades-long efi'ort to

rebuud. Is it right to abandon a place and its story

once they drop from the top of the news cycle?

Journalists worked hard during the rebellion

to identify rebel failings, including disorganiza-

tion, war crimes, staged POW tours, the inability

of cities to work collaboratively with each other,

and tribalism that smothered the fragile shoots

of national identity. But we were not wrong to

report as well the breathless intensity of those

early days when ever}^hing seemed possible.

Perhaps, following the rebels' lead, we were too

easily inclined to hope that the problem lay exclu-

sively in the dictator and, once he was dropped

from the equation, freedom would take hold.

A YOUNG MAN I MET On a side street downtown in

Benghazi in March 2012 made very good sense

to me. He was decked out in a turquoise track-

suit and wore gold chains around his neck. His

name was Barraeuda, he said, and he was selling

cigarettes from a cabinet painted to look like a

pack of Marlboros. Tucked behind the Swiss,

Algerian, and Egyptian cigarettes were sticks of

hash and rolling papers.

While we were talking, one of his clients puffed

on a joint and by chance blew a cloud of smoke

into the face of a passing policeman. Shouldn't he

hide his wares from the cops, at least a little bit? I

asked. "Police not like Qaddafi time, police good!"

he explained, dancing around with a bouncy ner-

vous energy. He broadened his chest and shook

a fistful of Libyan dinars at the sky.

Referencing first a famous American and then

the man who was Libya's prime minister at the

time. Barracuda shouted, "No Obama! No Mus-

tafa Abdel Jalil! Demoeraey, myself!" •

Letter from Benghazi

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