inShBenghazi
tries to escape its ghosts, past and present
By Jomana Karadsheh and Tim Lister, CNN
Children in Benghazi hold up placards reading "No to terrorism" (R) and "yes for stability and security" on January 15.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Law graduate Bilal Bettamer is trying to make Benghazi a safer, prosperous place
- Threats may drive the 23-year-old civil activist from this troubled Libyan city
- Assassinations, bombings and kidnappings keep progress at bay
- The ghost of Moammar Gadhafi still hangs over Benghazi and rest of Libya
(CNN) -- Bilal Bettamer is a 23-year-old student who
wants to save Benghazi from those he calls "extremely dangerous
people." But his campaign against the criminal and extremist groups that
plague the city has put his life at risk, and he says that if he
receives more threats, he will have to leave Libya.
Libya can't afford to
lose the likes of Bettamer. A law graduate and civil activist, he helped
organize the protest against jihadist groups after the attack on the
U.S. Consulate there in September, in which four Americans were killed.
That protest led to the
expulsion from Benghazi of the militant Ansar al-Sharia group -- whose
members were suspected of involvement in the attack -- and other
jihadists from the city.
A month later, Bettamer
says, the extremists were back in Benghazi with a vengeance. He
estimates there are maybe 100 of them at large. And last week, several
European governments, as well as Canada and Australia, urged their
citizens to leave this eastern Libyan city immediately, with Britain
speaking of an "imminent threat."
One Libyan source with
contacts in Western intelligence circles says the warning followed an
intercepted communication that revealed a specific and concrete plan to
attack British interests.
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Bettamer says Ansar al
Sharia has expelled its more militant members and is now helping provide
security at the western entrance to Benghazi.
"People describe every extremist now as Ansar al Shariah, [but] there are people more extreme and more dangerous," he says.
Bettamer says he received three hostile text messages after the Save Benghazi Friday protest.
"You feel the threat and feel you are being watched; they follow you and you feel something abnormal."
A "religious-looking
man" had approached Bettamer's uncle outside their family home in
Benghazi with a message for Bilal: "Tell him to watch out." The trouble
is, no one knows who the assailants are.
"It's like fighting a ghost," Bettamer says.
Bettamer says police and
security forces are gradually getting better and that ordinary people
in Benghazi are relatively safe. That's not so for activists or members
of the security forces, who are often targeted for assassination.
The past three months
have seen several assassinations, bombings and kidnappings of police and
security officials in Benghazi. Among them was the abduction earlier
this month of the head of the criminal investigation division, Abdel
Salam al-Mehdawi. He'd been investigating the murder of Benghazi's chief
of police in October and is still missing.
Last week, Naji
El-Hariri, the nephew of a leading figure in the Libyan revolution, was
shot in Benghazi's Al Laithi neighborhood, where a senior police officer
was killed a week earlier by a bomb.
And earlier this month,
gunmen ambushed the car of the Italian consul in Benghazi, Guido De
Sanctis. He escaped injury, but the Italians suspended their diplomatic
presence.
State of denial
Outgoing U.S. Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton told a congressional hearing last week that the
new Libyan government had the "willingness but not the capacity" to
provide security.
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Bettamer doesn't agree, saying the government is in a state of denial.
"The government is
ignoring the problem and not confronting it," he says, by blaming
everything on Moammar Gadhafi loyalists. He believes it's afraid of
confronting extremist groups.
Another Libyan source familiar with the situation in Benghazi agreed.
"When every day you have
campaign of assassinations and attacks against government, police and
security facilities and nobody is arrested, you have a bad situation,"
the source said, adding that a group affiliated with Ansar al Shariah
now controls one of the largest Gadhafi-era military camps in the city.
Libyan Interior Minister
Ashur Shuwail unveiled a plan last week involving the police, army and
some militia to secure Benghazi -- one that may involve a nightly curfew
from midnight to 5 a.m.
But it's not just
Benghazi. The UK Foreign Office has advised against travel throughout
Libya -- apart for Tripoli and a number of towns on the coast. To the
east of Benghazi, several towns are jihadist strongholds.
Canada's Foreign Affairs
Department warned last week of "ongoing clashes, including
indiscriminate shelling, between pro-government militia and Gadhafi
loyalists in Bani Walid," as well as clashes between armed groups in
Sabha and Kufra in the south. An estimated 400 people have been killed
in tribal clashes around Kufra over the past year.
The Libyan government is
aware of the urgent need to better control its borders, but they are
long and desolate -- and much of Libya's air force was destroyed during
the revolution. Last week, the Interior Ministry closed the Imsaed
border crossing with Egypt to any foreigners, officially to discourage
illegal immigration, and began air patrols over the border out of
Tobruk. In the south and west, the borders with Niger and Algeria are
even more beyond its control, according to regional analysts.
The government is
beginning to integrate some of the many militia into national security
forces. It says 26,000 militia members have applied to join the police.
But the process is a slow one only now gathering pace.
Foreign exodus
The public warnings last week have accelerated the exodus of foreigners from Benghazi.
French doctors have quit
the city's hospitals. The city's International School is closed. Just
last week, the Libya Herald, an independent newspaper, reported on a
conference organized by the Benghazi Chamber of Commerce to address the
city's huge problems: among them its dilapidated port and collapsing
water-treatment system, which pumps raw sewage into the Mediterranean.
But participants said there was little foreign presence.
In the wake of the
terrorist attack in Algeria and the warnings about security in Libya, BP
announced at the weekend it was putting its Libyan exploration plans on
hold.
"We had expected to
restart drilling at the end of the second quarter this year, but we're
currently reviewing our plans," a BP spokesman said Sunday.
BP signed a $900 million
agreement with Libya's National Oil Corporation in 2007 but suspended
the contract when fighting broke out in February 2011.
Crispin Hawes of Eurasia
Group says Libyan oil production has made a strong recovery since
Gadhafi's overthrow, but security issues, protests and labor disputes
are putting further gains at risk.
"The operating security
environment continues to deter some service companies from operating in
the country at all while others that have returned to Libya are still
only slowly ramping up their activities," Hawes writes.
Libya needs foreign
expertise to invest in its dilapidated infrastructure. Former interim
Prime Minister Ahmed Jibril told al-Monitor newspaper in October: "We
have construction projects all over the place, all infrastructure
projects -- roads, bridges, power stations, airports. They are all
paralyzed."
There are ambitious
plans to turn Benghazi into Libya's commercial capital, with its port
being upgraded to handle ships carrying 5,000 containers. But other
infrastructure projects are stymied by a growing number of disputes
about land ownership in the wake of the revolution, according to the
Libya Herald.
A little Gadhafi in each of us
Despite the need for
qualified attorneys, some of Bettamer's fellow law graduates in Benghazi
work as taxi drivers amid widespread unemployment.
Even so, the freshly
minted graduate is guardedly optimistic about Libya's future despite
everything. He believes in greater federalism, saying Libya should
comprise seven states, each with its own budget and measures to
redistribute from the richer to the poorer.
"After 42 years of
Gadhafi, there is a little Gadhafi inside each of us. He took
stubbornness from us -- and we saw that when he refused to step down.
And we took tyranny from him -- trying to impose our ideas on each
other."
But he thinks the ghosts of Libya's past can be exorcised.
"Sometimes I get very
nervous about the future of this country. I get depressed. But I still
see things that make me optimistic."
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