Hearts & Minds

When I crossed into Libya, the rebels manning the border were happy to see foreign journalists coming into the country. The armed men at the checkpoints would smile and give a “V for victory” salute as our car drove through their barricades, en-route to Benghazi.

Around the city, graffiti would thank Al-Jazeera, CNN, the BBC. Television screens had brought the plight of those in Benghazi to the world stage, as well as having offered inspiration from their coverage of the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions.

The rebels liked journalists.

In a burned out building on Benghazi’s corniche, over-looking the Mediterranean, a set of offices had been cleaned out and dedicated to the new national, and foreign, press. The “Media Centre of Rebels”.

They issued Heath-Robinson press cards, bearing the tricolour of the Sanussi-era flag. And more importantly, they could arrange drivers and translators. A willing little army of young, educated, English- and French-speaking volunteers was keen to get their first taste of The Press.

There was also another army of volunteers, surrounded by slogans in both Arabic and in English, claiming an end to Qaddafi’s rule, cataloguing his errors and his crimes. The building was filled with caricatures, political slogans and “fact-boxes”. Some of these posters and placards would later be out in the street, protesting against Qaddafi, and raising the morale of the Benghazians. And of course, splashed across the pages of the international press.

Caught in a war-zone

I had already met with thousands of migrant workers fleeing Libya at the Egyptian border. Depending on your viewpoint, they were the lucky ones.

Lucky in that they were out of the conflict. Unlucky because, stranded at the border, the humanitarian situation was rather dire. Many had no shelter, little food nor sanitation, and knew not when they could return home.

At the port in Benghazi, the Libyan Red Crescent was incredibly organised, providing hot meals for over one thousand migrants now camped there. The port authorities had vacated their offices, which had turned into dormitories for the foreigners stuck there. People would arrive with donations of food and blankets.

Many spoke of wanting to leave for the border, but were unaware of the situation that awaited them there, and feared the journey out of Benghazi. The majority were not “hardened refugees”, but migrant workers having been brought here by recruitment agencies, promising the chance of a job with which they could send money home.

“I haven’t been paid for four months” said one Bangladeshi man, clutching a photo-copy of his passport - the original still in his employer’s office in Tripoli. “My boss just left the country”, fleeing the conflict.

With little information on the situation in the country, nor what would happen to them, many preferred to stay put in the camp at the port. They didn’t know that the cracks of gunfire that could be heard around the city were celebratory, and not the sign of a nearing battle. Instead, they spend their days gazing out of the harbour, hoping that another ship would arrive, and take them to safety.

The heart of the revolution

The heart of the revolution

Two weeks previously, the population of Benghazi would not dare utter a word against Col. Qaddafi. Any public gatherings—even congregations of several people—could see people arrested. There was general mis-trust between friends, neighbours and colleagues. Qaddafi was in control.

On the 15th February, a civil protest in Libya’s second city was brutally quashed by security services, with people being shot for demonstrating. The following day, the funeral processions were dispersed in the same way. Come the 17th February, a full-scale civil uprising took place in the city, eventually leading to the capture of the barracks here. The revolt spread throughout eastern Libya, with Derna and Al-Baida coming under “rebel” control and large parts of the army defecting.

Qaddafi now has no control over the city, and the rebels control the country’s eastern border with Egypt, a vital supply line for the region.

Television channels are broadcasting images from the front-line, three hundred kilometres from eastern Libya’s capital, showing full-scale warfare as volunteer fighters and army defectors battle against the might of Qaddafi’s army and, reportedly, foreign mercenaries.

But the atmosphere in Benghazi is somewhat more calm. Here, the battle is fought with placards and slogans. It is a battle for morale, for publicity, for recognition.

To my friends who worry for my safety, fear not. This is not a war-zone. This is a revolution. And the Libyans of the east are incredibly generous when using us to fight their battle, the one with the foreign press.

Against the flow

After hours crossing endless horizons of flat desert, a range of hills rises up to meet the sea. At the top of these bleak hills, just past the Egyptian town of Sallum, chain fences mark the divide between a country having just peacefully toppled its president, and a violent conflict hoping to reach the same result.

But just metres before the no-mans’ land between the two countries begins, thousands of people caught in this conflict now find themselves stranded. Libya had a huge migrant population, with around fifty per cent of its workforce coming from foreign countries. Many of them were now forced to the edges of the country, caught either at the Tunisian- or Egyptian-border.

For the few Britons leaving the country, the UK Embassy had staff stationed at the border to normalise any problems they faced. Similarly, other countries had sent delegations to aid their respective nationals as many were forced to leave without passports.

For the large groups of Bangladeshis, however, their government was not forthcoming with help. They had just announced that they had no desire for their nationals to return to Bangladesh, citing the lack of jobs, housing and prospects for those that had left their country for just these things.

And then there were the refugees. The people from Eritrea, from Somalia, from Ethiopia and from Sudan. People who had fled their own country, often just intending to pass through Libya with the hope of reaching Europe. These people often had no passports, and certainly no desire to return to the countries from which they had fled. Many said they would prefer to return to Libya “when the situation improves”.

We were few, those traveling in the other direction. A few Egyptian private vehicles, offering humanitarian aid to their Libyan brothers. And the occasional journalist. I did not know what would await me, but I was stepping into the revolution.

Towards the Unknown

Into the Unknown

It started at noon on a Friday in Khartoum. With the latest of the “Arab Spring” revolutions engulfing Libya, I’d looked at going there, but dismissed it due to the difficulty of obtaining a visa. Particularly as a freelance, the word that seems to instil fear into all bureaucrats in such regimes.

On this fateful Friday, I was talking to a friend who had just arrived in Cairo, and was planning on driving to the Libyan border the following day. “The rebels have the border, and they’re letting journos in.”

Thus ensued three hours of internal debate, pacing around the flat in Sudan’s capital, trying to decide if I should head north. It would mean giving up any chance of going to Darfur, for which I’d spent the last two weeks waiting on a travel permit.

Three pm. I’d wrestled with my demons, and there began the process of figuring out the logistics of it all. Trying to buy a plane ticket—or anything—in Khartoum on a Friday, the Muslim holy day, is nigh-on impossible.

Six pm. I had the mobile number of a travel agent who could get me on a flight. I wanted to fly immediately. She promised she’d get back to me, and I began to think about packing.

Ten pm. The flight was confirmed, I would be leaving to Libya that night.

One am. I was at Khartoum International airport, hoping my passport was in order, and saying goodbye to two of my closest friends there. I hoped that I would see them soon.

Once in Cairo, the logistics of getting to Libya suddenly came into play. I couldn’t justify the $300 of a taxi to the border, and buses were no longer running there. The crisis in Libya had thrown regular transport into disarray. But there were buses to Marsa Matrouh, the Egyptian coastal resort town just two and a half hours drive from the border.

In Marsa, shared taxis were driving to the border, and so I squeezed myself into a beat-up old Peugeot estate along with eight other people. During this drive at the edge of the desert, the question of what I was actually letting myself in for started to come to the fore of my mind. A Libyan man squeezed in beside me tried to explain what was happening in his homeland.

I had never covered conflict before, and I knew nothing of Libya, nor of how easy it would be to operate there. A hand-full of journalists had already crossed, but their numbers were swelling rapidly. This could be my break, and I was keen to join their ranks.

And so it began.