http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/middleeast/la-fg-libya-dangerous-20130331,0,4597838.story
Libya's south teeters toward chaos — and militant extremists
Libya's long-neglected, isolated southern region has grown more lawless since
the fall of Moammar Kadafi. Only ill-trained tribal militias hold Islamist
extremists at bay.
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A celebrant in Benghazi, Libya, waves the national flag a commemoration
of the second anniversary of the revolution that drove Moammar Kadafi from
power. A weak post-Kadafi central government has left a security vacuum in the
country's isolated south. (Mohammad Hannon / Associated Press / February 15,
2013)
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By Jeffrey Fleishman, Los Angeles Times
March 30, 2013, 4:57 p.m.
SABHA, Libya — Their fatigues don't match and their pickup has no windshield.
Their antiaircraft gun, clogged with grit, is perched between a refugee camp
and ripped market tents scattered over an ancient caravan route. But the
tribesmen keep their rifles cocked and eyes fixed on a terrain of scouring
light where the oasis succumbs to desert.
"If we leave this outpost the Islamist militants will come and use Libya as a
base. We can't let that happen," said Zakaria Ali Krayem, the oldest among the
Tabu warriors. "But the government hasn't paid us in 14 months. They won't even
give us money to buy needles to mend our uniforms."
Krayem is battling smugglers, illegal migrants bound for Europe and armed
extremists who stream across a swath of the Sahara near the porous intersection
of southern Libya, Chad, Niger and Algeria. Since the 2011 Arab uprisings that
swept away Moammar Kadafi and other autocrats, Western countries and Libya's
neighbors fear that this nation may emerge as an Islamist militant foothold.
Kadafi was replaced by a weak central government that has struggled with
economic turmoil and the lack of judicial reform and a new constitution. The
long-neglected south has grown more lawless. The Al Qaeda-linked militants,
including Libyans, behind the January assault on a natural gas processing
complex in Algeria that killed at least 37 foreigners traveled from Mali
through Niger and Libya's poorly patrolled hinterlands.
While the Libyan national army is rebuilding, the country is relying in part on
ill-trained tribal militias rife with grievances, feuds and agendas. This
volatile mix holds sway in the country's southwest and in the northeast, where
last year militants killed four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher
Stevens, and trafficked guns and missiles to extremists in Egypt's Sinai
Peninsula and the Gaza Strip.
"Our concern is the Mali situation coming here," said Fathallah Ali, assistant
to the president of the local council in Sabha. "Much of the sophisticated and
heavy weaponry looted from Kadafi's military went to Islamic militants there
and other parts of Africa. Al Qaeda is moving in this direction."
Even under Kadafi, the nation produced Islamic militants who reached well
beyond the country's borders. Libyan extremists are now connected to an Al
Qaeda branch in Algeria, rebels in Syria and the fighters trying to establish
an Islamic caliphate in Mali. Security officials also are concerned about
reports of militant training camps with caches of weapons hidden in the desert
south of Sabha.
Government officials in the south shy away from discussing the region's chaos.
An activist was recently shot and killed after publicly criticizing the lack of
law and order. Much of the danger stems from tribal animosities that were
suppressed during four decades of Kadafi's rule and are now playing out in the
kind of security vacuum that Islamic militants have exploited in countries such
as Somalia and Yemen.
The Tabu, who are Africans, have been battling the rival Arab Awlad Sulayman
clan for more than a year. At least 130 people have died. Peace talks have been
complicated by joblessness, rising drug and alcohol abuse and skirmishes over
smuggling networks stretching from the borders of Algeria and Chad.
The streets of Sabha, the main city in the south, rattle with gunfire and the
gripes of desperate men waiting for work, sitting on dusty curbs with buckets,
paint rollers and chisels. Jailbreaks are common. Libyan news reports said in
January that three bodyguards were wounded when gunmen fired on a hotel housing
Mohammed Magarief, president of the national congress.
In the city's hospital, doctors are pistol-whipped and patients shot in their
rooms by rival tribesmen. The sick slump in hallways. There is no CT scan or
MRI machinery; a trauma victim is likely to die before he can be driven 400
miles north to a better hospital in Tripoli.
"We're treating illnesses we've never seen before in languages we don't
understand," said Dr. Othman Habib, a pediatrician. "More and more migrants are
coming from Chad and Mali. Libya's borders are open and poorly guarded. We
never saw malaria before, but now we see it all the time. We're overwhelmed.
The hospital is full of germs and bacteria. Rats. This is shameful, but it's
true."
A bereft father, his tunic wet with the blood of a son hit by a car, walked
past.
"One man was brought in with a gunshot wound not long ago," said Habib. "We
fixed him and put him in intensive care. But his enemies came to the hospital
that night and shot him 18 times. We operated and he lived. We hid him in the
women's ward and then sneaked him out of town."
Dr. Yusef Farag, a surgeon, listened and said, "We have 200 beds. We've turned
500 people away. This hospital serves the whole south, but we can admit no
more. We have no neurosurgeon. We have no oncology doctor. There are too many
weapons and too many comas. It's a disaster."
Despair permeates the dirt alleys not far from the hospital that curl through
the cinder block slums of Tabu tribesmen.
"Clashes between border tribes have increased," said Adam Ahmed Dazi, a Tabu
councilman who sat at a desk stamping papers while complaining about the lack
of financial support from Libya's central government. "Tribal militias and
smugglers have better arms. But smuggling is in the hands of rich people with
trucks. The Tabu in this neighborhood barely have bicycles. But we are like a
towel. Everyone wipes the bad on us."
He sighed, his narrow frame almost lost in his coat.
"When you look at the revolution," he said, "not much has changed in the
southern tribal areas. It hasn't gotten better, except that we are now free to
practice our traditions without fear anymore of the racist Kadafi regime."
The road out of Sabha cuts through a green blush of oasis and a series of
checkpoints — the first controlled by a militia, the second by the national
army — in a strange hodgepodge of overlapping interests. Krayem and his Tabu
tribesmen, their faces covered with scarves and sunglasses, guard a third
checkpoint near rock formations at the edge of blowing sands.
"The desert is wide with many roads," said Krayem, a man seemingly wearing away
bit by bit. His teeth are loose, a nostril is gouged and he is missing a finger
that was shot off by soldiers exacting retribution for his defection from
Kadafi's army during the revolution.
"Anything forbidden they try to smuggle through here," he said. "The military
can't control this territory on its own. If we left this checkpoint even for 30
minutes bad people would come. The government doesn't pay us. We do this to
protect our country."
He tugged the brim of his camouflage hat.
"But men need to feed their kids," he said. "That's why many are moving into
the smuggling trade."
They traffic in rocket-propelled grenades, stolen cars, hashish and
government-subsidized gasoline and flour. Krayem has seen it all.
He stepped toward the broken road as dusk fell across market tents, thicket and
scrub. The wind cooled. A big truck, draped with boys and barrels and lumbering
like a collapsing house on wheels, approached. His men checked their guns and
prepared for night.
"The next checkpoint is 150 kilometers away," he said, nodding to the outskirts
of Sabha and the encroaching desert. "We don't have enough patrols to cover all
what's in between."
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