Libya marks 10th anniversary of revolution today

MISRATA: The first demonstrations against Qadhafi’s rule began in the eastern city of Benghazi on Feb.17, 2011.

Usama Ali Al Aguri, a graduate from Benghazi, was unemployed in 2011 and at the time decried what he called the “injustice that we suffered and heard of from our fathers and grandfathers.”

As the fighting spread through the summer of 2011, he joined the assault on Tripoli. When he and a comrade went to reconnoitre an atack, Qadhafi’s forces spotted them.

“There was massive shooting at us. I got a bullet in my leg,” he said. His comrade was killed. He ended up in a wheelchair, paralysed from the waist down.

He condemns many of those who emerged as leaders in 2011.

“The revolution has been stolen from the honourable people now in their graves,” he said.

As the country fell further apart, he joined many others from the east in backing Khalifa Hatar, head of the eastern military forces whose push to capture Tripoli failed last year.

Aguri said his injury changed his life. Now 34, he lives for his two children, he said, and for work he goes each morning to the catle market to buy and sell livestock.

Hisham Al Windi came from a family that did well under Qadhafi — his father was a diplomat. But ater taking part in protests, he learned he was wanted by police and fled to Tunis.

Travelling to the south of Tunisia, he crossed through a border post held by the rebels and joined their batle in the western mountains. “I was several months in the fight,” he said.

Interviewed that day on television wearing the hat, Windi voiced his hopes for the future, briefly gaining international recognition as a face of Libya’s uprising.

“I wanted to say first that Libyans were not as bad as people thought. And I was also saying ‘Qadhafi is finished and we need to rebuild,’” he said.

He now works in Tunis and is hopeful for change. In Misrata, Malek Salem Al Mejae, then aged 20, began to fight in 2011 when his city came under atack by Qadhafi’s forces. That July, he, too, was wounded, losing a leg. “I was in the back of the truck. A missile fell behind us,” he said. “Some of my friends were killed. I received treatment in Tunisia, then returned to Libya.” He had hoped to see far greater progress in Libya than he has in the last decade, and blames Libya’s post-revolutionary leaders for the country’s failure to unite.

“Unfortunately the situation is as you see it ater 10 years of wars. The politicians, who were entrusted with the task, were not up to the standard.”