The tragedy of Tripoli
Six years after the fall of Gadhafi, Tripoli is a divided city trapped in a cycle of war and financial crisis. It’s easy to forget Libya was once one of the world’s wealthiest nations
TRIPOLI, LIBYA— The line at the bank was two blocks long and Abdul bin Naji was once again praying for the doors to open. He desperately needed his $60.
With Libya in the throes of a currency crisis, that was the weekly limit for withdrawals. For the past month, though, the bank hasn’t had any cash. That didn’t stop Naji and hundreds of others from arriving every night to get a good spot in line.
On this morning, the unshaven airline employee was third from the door. At 10 a.m., the bank still hadn’t opened. “Thirty-two days and no money,” he sighed.
Excruciatingly long bank lines are the latest misfortune for Libyans trapped in a cycle of war and economic upheaval.
Six years after the revolution that toppled dictator Moammar Gadhafi, the mood in this volatile capital is a meld of hopelessness and gloom. Diplomatic and military efforts by the United States and its allies have failed to stabilize the nation; its denouement remains far from clear. Most Libyans sense that the worst is yet to come.
Increasingly, decisions that were once mundane are potentially life-altering.
Is it safe to visit parents in a neighbourhood across the city? Which car will kidnappers be less likely to notice? Will a $60 (U.S.) bank withdrawal stretch until the next one is available?
“Every day, our future is getting darker and darker,” said Naji, 57, leaning against an ATM that hasn’t worked in years.
Under Gadhafi, oil-producing Libya was once one of the world’s wealthiest nations. Even as the economy struggled in his last years, Libyans enjoyed free health care, education and other benefits under the dictator’s brand of socialism.
The insecurity that followed Gadhafi’s death has ripped apart the North African country. Rival governments and an array of armed groups compete for influence and territory. The economy is on the verge of collapse. Criminal gangs prey on the vulnerable.
In Tripoli, parliament and other buildings are concrete carcasses, shattered by heavy artillery fire, rocket-propelled grenades and tank shells. Clashes often erupt suddenly, trapping residents in their homes and creating new no-go zones.
A journey through the city revealed how Libyans are adapting to the vicissitudes of the civil war.
In the southern Tripoli district of Salaheddin, a main thoroughfare bustles during the day but is deserted at night.
Once a typical middle-class enclave, it has become a focal point of the contest to control the capital. On one side of the street, militiamen aligned with a selfdeclared, Islamist-leaning government run checkpoints. The other side is controlled by fighters loyal to a U.N.-installed unity government.
By 9 p.m., many residents have locked themselves inside their homes. Gunfire usually starts around that time, residents said. Those who dare to venture out are careful not to bring any valuables.
“I leave my iPhone and carry a cheap Nokia,” said Ibrahim El Worfali, 31, a shop owner. “All these guys have guns and they can do anything they want to you.”
At the western entrance to the city, fighters with the Knights of Janzour, a militia aligned with the unity government, stop and search cars for weapons being funnelled to their rivals.
“It’s obvious they want to control the capital,” said Mohammed Bazzaa, 29, the militia’s thickset commander, who wore camouflage fatigues and stood next to a pickup truck mounted with a machine gun.
One of the militia’s biggest rivals is a group led by Gen. Khalifa Hifter, whose army controls much of eastern Libya. Hifter, who lived in exile in Virginia for two decades, is aligned with a third government based in the east.
“He’s another Gadhafi,” said Bazzaa, who fought in the revolution.
But the militia’s primary threat, Bazzaa said, were the fighters from a rival tribe controlling an enclave less than three kilometres down the main highway between Tripoli and the city of Zawiyah. Last year, they had fought fiercely. Now, they are both aligned with the unity government. The tensions and mistrust, however, run deep. “They are motivated only by money,” Bazzaa said of his rivals.
Not far from the checkpoint, Sulaiman Abu Hallala was kidnapped. He was pulled out of his car by three masked gunmen and taken to a farm outside the capital. Held there for 19 days, he was deprived of his diabetes medication until his family agreed to pay an $11,000 ransom.
“I was so scared,” recalled Hallala, a businessman who is in his 80s. “My nephew was kidnapped three months earlier. He was killed after we paid the ransom.”
Kidnappings have become so common in the capital that residents constantly trade detailed information about the enclaves and roads where they have occurred. Once predominantly motivated by political or tribal rivalries, abductions have become a criminal enterprise fuelled by the worsening economy.
“All they want is money,” said Mohamed Grabli, another businessman. “There are shortages of cash in the country. There are no jobs.”
Grabli was kidnapped last year and held for 63 days in a room smaller than a walk-in closet, with a steel door and iron bars on the windows. His hands were cuffed with cable wire, and his legs were chained, he said. His captors fed him pieces of bread “like a dog.” His family paid about $31,000 for his release.
Osama Labib has not driven his maroon Lamborghini in months.
The architect has been waiting for spare parts, which take weeks to arrive because fewer ships are willing to dock in Tripoli. But even if he repairs the car, he plans to keep it under a tarpaulin behind the high walls of his compound near Salaheddin.
“If I drive it, it will draw too much attention,” he said. “If I enter Salaheddin in this car, I am never coming out.”
Many Libyans are keeping their expensive cars out of sight, said Ali Kabous, a luxury car dealer. Others, he added, have sent their cars to neighbouring Tunisia to keep them safe.
His worst-selling vehicle these days is a Toyota Land Cruiser. “It’s the most dangerous car to drive,” said Kabous. “The militia commanders really like them.”
Some customers, he said, are buying luxury cars and sending them outside Libya because they don’t trust leaving their money in the banks. “It’s a way of safeguarding your money,” he added. But few residents of Tripoli residents have such options.
As he stood in the snaking bank line, Allama elMotamed lamented his declining health and the money he must spend on doctors. But what made him more despondent, he said, were the deepening social and cultural divisions he has noticed.
“Before, we never asked where a person is from. We always saw ourselves as part of one country,” said the 67-year-old airline employee, a colleague and friend of Naji. “Now, when someone stops you, he asks, ‘Where are you from?’ ”
“Sometimes he will kill you if you are, for example, from the east,” he said. “Or maybe he will kill you if you are from the west.”
At that moment, Naji interrupted, expressing a sentiment shared by many in the capital.
“The revolution was not the right thing,” he said. “Before, people were happy. Before, I was a king. I had a job. I felt like a man. Now, I can’t even take out my own money.” At 11 a.m., the bank was still closed. They planned to return again at night.