Libya: Journalists asked to Leave Derna after Protesters Denounce Neglect, Demand Accountability

September 19, 2023 –
From Internationalist 360

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Libyans protest outside the Al Sahaba mosque against the government in Derna, Libya September 18, 2023. The sign reads: “The sad city of Derna demands its rights”. REUTERS

Protesters took aim at officials, including the head of the eastern-based Libyan parliament, Aguila Saleh, during the demonstration.

Hundreds of people protested in the eastern Libyan city of Derna on Wednesday, venting anger against authorities and demanding accountability one week after a flood killed thousands of its residents and destroyed entire neighbourhoods.

They bemoaned the failure of the authorities to prevent the calamity despite advance warnings about the city’s vulnerability to flooding.

They lambasted regional officials and called for national unity in a country left politically ruptured by over a decade of conflict and chaos that have hampered the disaster response.

Demonstrator Taha Miftah, 39, demanded an international inquiry and “reconstruction under international supervision”.

Protesters took aim at officials, including the head of the eastern-based Libyan parliament, Aguila Saleh, during the demonstration outside the Sahaba Mosque. Some sat on the roof in front of its golden dome, a Derna landmark.

Later in the evening, angry protesters set fire to the house of the Derna mayor Abdulmenam al-Ghaithi, his office manager told Reuters.

Hichem Abu Chkiouat, a minister in the eastern Libyan government, said Ghaithi has been suspended from his post. Reuters could not immediately reach Ghaithi for comment.

The parallel government in eastern Libya said the prime minister Usama Hamad dismissed all the members of Derna’s municipal council and referred them to investigation.

Monday’s protest marks the first large demonstration since the flood, which swept through Derna when two dams in the hills outside the city failed during a powerful storm, unleashing a devastating torrent.

“Aguila we don’t want you! All Libyans are brothers!” protesters chanted, calling for national unity in a country left politically fractured by more than a decade of conflict and chaos.

Mansour, a student taking part in the protest, said he wanted an urgent investigation into the collapse of the dams, which “made us lose thousands of our beloved people”.

Taha Miftah, 39, said the protest was a message that “the governments have failed to manage the crisis”, adding that the parliament was especially to blame.

He called for an international inquiry into the disaster and “for reconstruction under international supervision”.

The full scale of the death toll has yet to emerge, with thousands of people still missing. Officials have given widely varying death tolls. The World Health Organisation has confirmed 3,922 deaths.

Saleh last week sought to deflect blame from the authorities, describing the flood as an “unprecedented natural disaster” and saying people should not focus on what could or should have been done.

But commentators have drawn attention to warnings given in advance, including an academic paper published last year by a hydrologist outlining the city’s vulnerability to floods and the urgent need to maintain the dams that protected it.

Derna is located in eastern Libya, a part of the country controlled by Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, head of the Libyan National army (LNA) and overseen by a government established in parallel to the internationally-recognised administration in Tripoli, in the west.

Following the protests, eastern Libyan authorities have asked journalists to leave Derna, a government minister told Reuters on Tuesday, saying the large number of journalists was hampering the work of rescue teams.

“It is an attempt to create better conditions for the rescue teams to carry out the work more smoothly and effectively,” Hichem Abu Chkiouat, minister of civil aviation in the administration that runs eastern Libya, said by phone.

“The large number of journalists has become an impediment to the work of rescue teams.”

People protest outside the Al Sahaba mosque against the government in Derna, Libya September 18, 2023.

A week after the flood that swept the town centre into the sea, Derna families are still coping with the unbearable losses of their dead and haunted by the unknown fates of the missing.

Officials using different methodologies have given widely varying figures of the tolls so far; the mayor estimated over 20,000 people were lost. The World Health Organisation has confirmed 3,922 deaths.

Derna is in the east, beyond the control of an internationally-recognised government in the west, and until 2019 was held by a succession of Islamist extremists including branches of al Qaeda and Islamic State (ISIS).

Authorities have not yet given up on the possibility of finding people alive, Othman Abduljaleel, health minister in the administration that controls eastern Libya, told Reuters.

“Hopes of finding survivors are fading, but we will continue efforts to search for any possible survivor,” he said by phone.

“Now efforts are focused on rescuing anyone and recovering bodies from under the rubble, especially at sea, with the participation of many divers and specialised rescue teams from countries.”

The roads into Derna were clogged on Monday with ambulances and trucks carrying in food, water, diapers, mattresses and other supplies.

Men in white hazmat suits sprayed disinfectant mist from pumps mounted in the back of a pick-up truck and from hoses in backpacks, as authorities hoped to halt the spread of disease.

The International Rescue Committee charity said the flooding had left thousands of people without access to safe drinking water, raising the risk of waterborne diseases.

Foreign countries from the region and beyond have sent teams of rescue workers and mobile hospitals. Five Greek rescue workers, including three members of the armed forces, were killed in a car crash on Sunday.

Arab Weekly

Libyans come together after disaster but are asking many questions

Volunteers sit on piles of aid and relief items as traffic slowly proceeds, following fatal floods in Derna, Libya, September 17, 2023. REUTERS

Libyans “can’t afford having a corrupt and incompetent local governance any more, no matter what happens at the national level,” Eli Abou Aoun a Tunis-based university lecturer and director of the MENA regional hub at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), told The Arab Weekly.

For many Libyans, the collective grief over the more than 11,000 dead has morphed into a rallying cry for national unity in a country blighted by 12 years of conflict and division. In turn, the tragedy has ramped up pressure on the country’s leading politicians, viewed by some as the architects of the catastrophe.

The oil-rich country has been divided between rival administrations since 2014, with an internationally-recognised government in Tripoli and a rival authority in the east, where Derna is located.

Both are backed by international patrons and armed militias whose influence in the country has ballooned since a NATO-backed uprising toppled long-time ruler Muammar Gadhafi in 2011. Numerous United Nations-led initiatives to bridge the divide have failed.

Many analysts believe the fragmented political scene in Libya, torn apart by more than a decade of civil conflict following the fall of Gadhafi, contributed to making governments dysfunctional.

But some experts believe there is more to Libya’s problems than this divide. The lack of real state organisation under Gadhafi was replaced by an inefficient and ill-managed administration.

“It goes way before the split between two governments in 2014. Existing laws, some of which predate the change in 2011, are vague and actually contribute to the confusion in roles and responsibilities when it comes to disaster management. On another hand, no investment was ever made in building the capacity of the local authorities and the central government to deal with disasters, “ Eli Abou Aoun, a Tunis-based university lecturer and director of the MENA regional hub at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), told The Arab Weekly.

In the early hours of September 11, two dams in the mountains above Derna burst, sending a wall of water two storeys high into the city and sweeping entire neighbourhoods out to sea. At least 11,300 people were killed and a further 30,000 displaced.

An outpouring of support for the people of Derna followed. Residents from the nearby cities of Benghazi and Tobruk offered to put up the displaced. In Tripoli, some 1,450 kilometres west, a hospital said it would perform operations free of charge for any injured in the flood.

The disaster has fostered rare instances of the opposing administrations cooperating to help those affected. As recently as 2020, the two sides were in an all-out war. Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar’s forces besieged Tripoli in a year-long failed military campaign to try to capture the capital, killing thousands.

“We have even seen some military commanders arrive from the Tripoli allied military coalition in Derna, showing support,” said Claudia Gazzini, a senior Libya analyst at International Crisis Group.

A week after the wall of water rushed through Derna, sweeping thousands to their deaths, the focus turned from rescue to caring for survivors of the disaster.

Despite lingering suspicions between east and west of the country, international aid is arriving from the United Nations, Europe and Middle East, offering some relief to the thousands of survivors.

The aid includes essential medicines and emergency surgical supplies, tents, blankets, carpets and hygiene products as well as body bags to allow corpses to be moved.

The distribution of aid into the city has been highly disorganised, with minimal amounts of supplies reaching flood-affected areas in the days following the disaster.

While young people and volunteers rushed to help, “there was a kind of confusion between the governments in the east and west” on what to do, said Ibrahim al-Sunwisi, a local journalist from the capital, Tripoli.

Many have levelled blame for the burst dams on neglect by government officials.

“Everyone in charge is responsible,” said Noura el-Gerbi, a journalist and activist who was born in Derna “The next flood will be over them.”

Under pressure, Libya’s Attorney General Siddiq al-Sour said Friday that prosecutors would open a file on the collapse of the two dams and investigate the authorities in the Derna, as well as past governments.

But the country’s political leaders have so far deflected responsibility. The Prime Minister of Libya’s Tripoli government, Abdulhamid Dbeibah, said he and his ministers were accountable for the dams’ maintenance, but not the thousands of deaths caused by the flooding.

Meanwhile, the speaker of Libya’s eastern administration, Aguila Saleh, said the flooding was simply an incomparable natural disaster, an act of God. “Don’t say, ‘If only we’d done this, if only we’d done that,’” said Saleh in a televised news conference.

Surprisingly the West quickly dealt with Haftar over the management of humanitarian assistance. “The hesitancy of the Western governments to deal with the east based authorities waned down in the last couple of years, the result of which was an increased engagement between diplomats and officials in the East, “ noted Abououn.

“So when this disaster happened, these relationships were useful to get things done relatively quickly. The authorities in the East did well by easing up the access through Benghazi’s airport”.

Appreciation for humanitarian aid did not conceal misgivings among the population about Europeans’ role in Libya since 2011. “The narrative is that Europeans’ active interventions in Libyan politics helped create the corrupt Libyan politicians being blamed for the disaster, but those same Europeans vanish when they could really help,” recently wrote Tarek Megerisi of the European Council on Foreign Relations.

For the population, there are many challenges to be reckoned with. Their focus is on the country’s domestic politics.

“This disaster comes to strengthen this dissociation from partisan politics and the focus on how they can have an effective and transparency governance structure at the local level. This is not the first time this is being highlighted but it is certainly now more obvious than ever to Libyans,” said Abououn.

“They can’t afford having a corrupt and incompetent local governance any more, no matter what happens at the national level,” he added.

Arab Weekly