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.”

Calls for Western Intervention

When I first arrived in Libya, the people here were adamant that this was their revolution, and that they didn’t want any Western intervention.

Now, a couple of weeks later and with an increasing toll being inflicted by Qaddafi jets bombing rebel positions, the mood is changing.

In front of Benghazi’s tribunal, the make-shift headquarters of the revolution, large letters painted on the ground spell out “Where are the United Nations?”.

A group of women and children demonstrated today, calling for a UN-imposed No Fly Zone. The fact that many of their banners and placards were in English and in French didn’t go unnoticed - these were calls intended for us, the international media, to broadcast “home”.

As the rebels seem to be losing ground at the front-line as Qaddafi jets bomb their positions, the revolution seems to be faltering.