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(So the UAE, Russia and Gadaffi's henchmen are backing General Hifter,
who also relies on Salafists to maintain a repressive city-state in
Benghazi. Just another reminder that geopolitics is almost useless in
understanding the traumas of MENA today.)
NY Times, Feb. 20, 2020
Inside Hifter’s Libya: A Police State With an Islamist Twist
By David D. Kirkpatrick
BENGHAZI, Libya — The field marshal stares from billboards into the
wreckage of the Libyan city of Benghazi. His uniform is festooned with
epaulets and honors, even as the civil war he is waging has stalled into
a bloody stalemate.
His plainclothes security agents loiter and listen in cafes and hotel
lobbies. He has handed control of the mosques to extremist preachers.
And he has showered patronage on a tribal death squad called the
Avengers of Blood, blamed for a long string of disappearances and
killings of his political opponents.
“We are living in a prison,” said Ahmed Sharkasi, a liberal activist
from Benghazi who fled to Tunis because of threats on his life.
Khalifa Hifter, the 76-year-old commander known in his dominion as “the
marshal,” is the military ruler of eastern Libya. He has been fighting
for nearly six years to take control of the country, and he has been
waging an assault on the capital, Tripoli, for the last 10 months.
The United Arab Emirates, Egypt and others have lined up behind him, and
Russia has sent mercenaries. The largely powerless United
Nations-sponsored government in Tripoli is defended mainly by regional
militias and, recently, Turkey, which has flown in hundreds of paid
Syrian fighters.
Mr. Hifter has cut off Libya’s oil production for the past month to try
to deprive the Tripoli government of revenue. This week he began
shelling its civilian port, killing three people, narrowly missing a
ship loaded with liquefied natural gas and derailing United
Nations-sponsored cease-fire talks.
Mr. Hifter has promised to build a stable, democratic and secular Libya,
but he has largely shut Western journalists out of his territory. A rare
visit there by a New York Times correspondent and photographer revealed
an unwieldy authoritarianism that in many ways is both more puritanical
and more lawless than Libya was under its last dictator, Col. Muammar
el-Qaddafi.
In Mr. Hifter’s Benghazi stronghold, we found a half-ruined city beset
by corruption, where security agents trailed foreign journalists,
residents cowered in fear of arbitrary arrest, and pro-government
militias answered to no one.
Residents complain of corruption and self-enrichment by tribal militia
leaders and former Qaddafi officers. There are reports of unexplained
bombings, abductions and detentions without trial. Islamist extremists
have taken over the mosques and may be infiltrating the police force.
“Everyone is afraid, even afraid of their fellow citizens,” one Benghazi
resident said, speaking on condition of anonymity for his safety.
Jonathan Winer, a special envoy to Libya under President Obama,
described a brutal system. “If you are with Hifter then you are under
his umbrella and you can do whatever you want,” he said. “If you aren’t,
you are an enemy and you may be jailed, killed or exiled.”
The United Nations Secretary General warned last month of “a
deterioration of law and order” in eastern Libya, “including numerous
cases of crimes and intimidation,” reportedly by groups affiliated with
Mr. Hifter’s forces.
Aging and distracted, Mr. Hifter is seldom seen in Benghazi. He presides
from his mountain home an hour’s drive to the West. He holds salons with
tribal elders and depends on family as his closest advisers. Two of his
sons are among his top military commanders, as well as his caretakers.
“They make sure he is well fed,” said Faraj Najem, a director of a
government-run research center who is close to Mr. Hifter. “They make
sure he takes his medicine. They provide him with security when they are
around him.”
A Destroyed City. A Fearsome Ruler.
The center of Benghazi is little different today than it was in 2017,
when Mr. Hifter seized it after a four-year campaign of shelling and
bombing.
Neighborhoods on the periphery now bustle with newly opened stores and
cafes. But the streets of the city center are crumbling ruins. A few
desperate residents have begun returning with their families to squat in
the wreckage of their former apartments. Their crude light fixtures cast
an eerie, nighttime glow on the desolate alleys.
Libya is rich with oil, but it is a volatile prize. It has been in
turmoil since an Arab Spring revolt and NATO’s intervention toppled
Colonel el-Qaddafi nine years ago. Its deserts shelter Islamist
militants, and its Mediterranean coastline teems with migrants.
Mr. Hifter had served as an officer in Colonel el-Qaddafi’s army, but
later fled to the United States where he lived for decades as a C.I.A.
client before returning to Libya during the uprising in 2011.
He began his drive for power by promising to save Benghazi. In 2014,
when Islamist militias were terrorizing the city, he vowed to declare
military rule and rid the country of Islamists.
Armed by foreign sponsors, he started by recruiting fighters from local
tribes and welcoming the help of former Qaddafi officers and officials.
Then he won the support of Saudi-style Islamist fighters — known as
Salafists — who saw a common enemy in the rival schools of Islamists
that Mr. Hifter was battling. He has never acknowledged any
contradiction between his avowed hostility to political Islam and his
brigades of Salafists.
The deals he struck with tribal militias, Salafists and former Qaddafi
henchmen in Benghazi now threaten to run roughshod over his promises of
secular law and order.
Many Benghazi residents celebrate Mr. Hifter for restoring security to
the streets, an attitude reinforced in his official media. Images of Mr.
Hifter’s face are ubiquitous. A pro-Hifter satellite television network
broadcasts his propaganda and sometimes Salafist sermons. Weekly street
demonstrations, organized by the government’s Office of Supporting
Decisions, recall Qaddafi-era displays of forced enthusiasm.
On one recent Friday, about two dozen adults and an equal number of
children marched for about 150 yards while holding photographs of Mr.
Hifter. Then everyone settled listlessly into plastic chairs and chanted
profanities about the president of Turkey.
During an interview, a spokesman for Mr. Hifter required a visiting
journalist to watch a video of more than a dozen gruesome beheadings.
“Some of the terrorists are now in Tripoli and hiding in the militias
there,” the spokesman, Col. Ahmed Mismari, said. “That is why we decided
to go to Tripoli.”
Access to Benghazi by foreign journalists or rights goups is severely
restricted. Residents must obtain official permission to travel abroad,
sometimes requiring interrogation by security agents. Some are forced to
submit reports about who they met outside Libya — or, sometimes, on
friends and neighbors at home.
Return of the Qaddafi Machine
Mr. Hifter leans heavily on members of the old Qaddafi machine, and a
surge of former Qaddafi loyalists have rushed back from Egypt and
elsewhere over the previous 10 months.
With Mr. Hifter focused on Tripoli, the most powerful figure in the
day-to-day governance is widely considered to be Aoun Ferjani, a former
senior officer in the Qaddafi intelligence service who is now in charge
of the internal security agencies.
“Don’t even mention his name,” one former official in Mr. Hifter’s
government said, looking anxiously over his shoulder. “He is the boss.
He is the most dangerous.”
Opposition views are not welcome.
Mr. Sharkasi, the activist now living in Tunis, was forced to flee
Benghazi after he posted an online video urging peace talks and
circulated the hashtag “War is not the solution.” Other critics have
been detained or suspended from jobs at government-run companies.
Last July, a British-educated politician, Seham Sergiwa, 57, publicly
questioned Mr. Hifter’s assault on Tripoli. A group of armed men
abducted her that night. They spray-painted a warning against
criticizing the army on the wall of her house.
Her relatives outside Libya said the power was cut before the attack and
the police had ignored calls for help. Most family members now believe
she is dead. But the Benghazi authorities have told her husband that
they believe she is alive and advised him to keep quiet.
“All the evidence points to Hifter,” said her brother, Adam Sergiwa, a
doctor living in Indiana. “We know that. Everybody knows that. He wanted
to teach a lesson.”
A spokesman for Mr. Hifter called the killing an act of terrorism and
said that his military had nothing to do with it.
Another former Qaddafi associate now working with Mr. Hifter is the
former Air Force Gen. Muhammad el-Madani el-Fakri. Mr. Hifter authorized
General el-Madani el-Fakri to create a for-profit investment arm for Mr.
Hifter’s military.
He seized prime real estate, imposed a $500 entry fee for foreign
workers, and claimed a lucrative monopoly on the sale of scrap metal.
But he also used his position to press for a personal stake in private
ventures, according to Western diplomats and Benghazi businessmen.
Mr. Najem, of the government-funded research center, insisted that the
general had been sidelined because of abuses, but Mr. el-Madani el-Fakri
served as Mr. Hifter’s representative at recent United Nations
cease-fire talks.
Rise of the Salafis
The modest mosque in the Benghazi neighborhood of El Leithi was once a
hub for leaders of Ansar al Shariah, the jihadists who carried out the
2012 attack that killed the American ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.
These days, noon prayers are often led by Ali el-Omani, a 23-year-old
Salafist with a bearded baby face. Like other extremists, the Salafists
backing Mr. Hifter oppose liberal ways like electoral democracy or the
mixing of the sexes. Unlike their jihadist cousins, though, these
Salafists preach absolute obedience to an earthly ruler, in this case
Mr. Hifter.
“For sure the army supports us,” said Mr. Omani, insisting that the
Salafis had restored “the true teaching of the Quran.”
Benghazi liberals complain that the Salafis are scarcely an improvement.
“The Salafis want to ‘purify’ Libya just like Ansar al Sharia tried to,”
said Fathi Baja, a political scientist and former Libyan ambassador to
Canada.
Salafist brigades under Mr. Hifter have demolished shrines and lodges
belonging to Sufis, practitioners of a Muslim mysticism that
ultraconservatives consider heresy, including another one leveled last
month in the city of Surt.
Salafist fighters shut down a celebration of Earth Day, also deemed
heretical. And a general close to the Salafists tried to ban women from
traveling without a male guardian, an order later rescinded after an outcry.
Some of Mr. Hifter’s supporters argue that he is using the Salafists in
a temporary alliance of necessity and keeping them in check. They point
to a locally notorious episode in 2018 when police officers raided a
meet-up of female Twitter users at a Benghazi cafe. A top security
official apologized and Mr. Hifter reassigned the Salafi police
commander who had been in charge.
But Lt. Col. Naji Hamad, a Qaddafi-era veteran who now runs the Benghazi
police academy, said the operation was legitimate. The meet-up violated
“public decency,” he said.
A Fragile Future
Although no longer a battleground, Benghazi is hardly free of violence.
A car bomb in August killed three U.N. staff members and two others. The
United Nations pulled its diplomats from the city.
U.N. reports warn of frequent kidnappings, forced disappearances and
assassinations by unknown assailants. In the second half of last year,
that included the killing of a bank employee, the kidnapping of a
prominent lawyer and the abduction of the official in charge of policing
corruption. Two Sudanese women were tortured and killed on suspicion of
practicing witchcraft.
In October, a mass grave was uncovered in the Benghazi neighborhood of
Hawarri.
Responsibility for the violence is impossible to determine, but many
Benghazi residents point to tribal militias that fought with Mr. Hifter.
One of the biggest sources of fighters was the Awaqir tribe. Members of
the tribe now boast of their impunity, and some have claimed prime jobs
in government-owned companies or even the local university.
“The Awaqir are the big beneficiaries,” said Mr. Najem, the director of
the research center. “They claim that they have paid a dear price — too
many martyrs — and they want the rewards.”
Awaqirs formed the Avengers of Blood in 2013 to seek revenge after a
deadly clash with an Islamist-leaning militia. The Avengers became known
as enforcers for Mr. Hifter, widely blamed for disappearances and killings.
A spokesman for Mr. Hifter said the Avengers were unarmed civilians who
collected information about “terrorists.”
But during the abduction of Ms. Sergiwa, her attackers scrawled the name
of the Avengers of Blood on the wall.
A prominent Awaqir militia leader often linked to the Avengers declined
to comment.
The militia leader, Ezzedine el-Waqwaq, said he was busy with civilian
matters. In the construction industry before 2013, he was appointed to
the potentially lucrative role of director of the Benghazi airport after
Mr. Hifter captured the city.
Now Mr. el-Waqwaq has an even better job: director of a popular Benghazi
soccer team, Al Nasr.
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