"We will stay here as long as there is war"

We will stay here as long as there is war

Abd el-Mawla reckons his age to be around 85. He has lived his whole life in Libya, but three days ago, two days after the start of the Nato bombing campaign on Libya, Abd left his home in Tobruk with his eleven daughters, coming across the Egyptian border and settling in the coastal town of Marsa Matrouh.

Fighting has intensified in Eastern Libya as Qaddafi troops made huge advances towards Tripoli just under a week ago, forcing many to flee further east to the oil-town of Tobruk. For families like Abd’s, the risk was too great.

But in post-revolution Egypt, Libyans are finding are warm welcome. A local religious group in Marsa Matrouh, led by a sheikh here, is providing humanitarian assistance to families fleeing the violence. The sheikh, also a local landowner, is offering apartments to those coming across, as well as coordinating with the local hospital.

Whilst many Libyans have ties with this Egyptian town, it is not a long-term solution. They want to return to their country. “I don’t have any idea of what I will do” Abd says. “We will stay here as long as there is a war.” And for the time being, that seems to be the foreseeable future.

Fleeing Conflict

Fleeing Conflict

Driving for hours across the bleak Libyan desert in the back of a standard saloon, this Libyan from Ajdabiya hopes to find repose in Egypt. His friends at the wheel, and deeply critical of the Qaddafi regime, are helping him to safety, but adamant that they will soon return to be in their country as the revolution deepens.

Thousands of Libyans have been forced to flee their homes as violent fighting erupts in the town of Ajdabiya, over two hundred kilometres south of Benghazi. Many have fled to the eastern town of Tobruk, but an increasing number are crossing the border to Egypt, either for medical care of for peace.

Mohamed* was shot by “a sniper” during fighting near Ajdabiya; with the town under heavy shelling the hospital there has all but closed down and so he is en-route to Alexandria on the Egyptian coast.

Despite facing its own problems post-referendum, with little governmental organisation, Egypt has virtually opened its borders to fleeing Libyans, allowing them to seek refuge in the country, and with access to medical facilities.

* name changed

Stranded at the border

Stranded at the border

NATO has implemented its no-fly zone over Libya, driving back Qaddafi forces as they neared the rebel “capital” of Benghazi. Not that they would call it their capital, they are still striving for Tripoli.

It was a tense few hours, as reports came of the approaching army, and the destruction and killing that it would entail.

But for refugees such as Mustabar, a Chadian fleeing the conflict, nothing is changing much at the border. He spent a year living and working in Benghazi, before the revolution ripped the country apart. With so much talk of mercenaries being employed by Qaddafi, “black Africans” such as Mustabar no longer feel safe in the country, for fear of retaliatory attacks, regardless of their involvement in the conflict.

Over two thousand Chadians are stranded here at the border, with little help from their government to repatriate them home.

In the mean time, they sleep out in the open under make-shift shelters at the Egyptian-Libyan border near Sallum. A desolate, dust-filled place, where a bitter cold descends at night.

Soundtrack to the revolution

I first heard this song stood on the roof of Benghazi’s tribunal building. Below me, hundreds of demonstrators were singing it, a cappella.

I then noticed it playing from virtually every car that passed by. Families would be humming it.

And on the front-line in Ras Lanuf, I heard it again. I asked a fighter what it meant to him. “It is a song to jihad” he told me. Quite a different sense of the song than that of the protestors in Benghazi. For them, it was simply as a song of resistance.

My driver one day had a tear in his eye when he heard it. His brother had just left to fight at the front-line, and he was worried. This song raised his morale, but also brought home the realities of their struggle.

Sowfa nabka huna. “We will remain here.”