Opinion

Libya mired in madness

December 18, 2017

WHEN nations are in crisis, good men step forward at their peril. The mayor of Libya’s third city, Misrata was such a man and on Sunday his brave stand against extremism cost him his life.

Mohamed Eshtewi had just returned from an official visit the Istanbul with a large municipal delegation. His brother had met him at the airport. In circumstances that have still not been explained, Eshtewi had not been met by his normal bodyguards. One unconfirmed report has it that the mayor himself said they were not necessary because he was being met by his brother.

Their vehicle was ambushed at traffic lights on the road into the port city. The brother was shot in the head and Eshtewi was bundled into another car. His bullet-ridden body was found a little later outside a local hospital.

As with all such terrorist assassinations, a number of groups is being blamed. It has been suggested, least convincingly that he was murdered by supporters of the old regime of Muammar Qaddafi. More possibly, his killers could have been members of Daesh (the so-called IS) which in October mounted a suicide attack on Misrata’s court house killing four and seriously injuring 15.

However, as so often with the multi-dimensional conflict in Libya, the leading suspects are radical militants within the city itself, whose power base is the Misrata Military Council. Though opposed to the largely foreign terrorists of Daesh, whom they helped drive from Sirte last year in a long and bloody battle, the Military Council is dominated by members of the Muslim Brotherhood who are believed to have received financial and logistical support from Qatar and Turkey. The Military Council has sought several times to force mayor Eshtewi’s resignation. His crime in their eyes was his support for the Presidency Council (PC) of Faiez Serraj, installed in Tripoli in March 2016 by the UN with the backing of the international community.

There has been fury in the city at Eshtewi’s murder. Moderate militias seemed likely to take on the radical Islamists. But in reality all this means is more bloodshed in a city which, alone in Libya, has enjoyed moderate stability, to the extent that foreigners have returned and been working there in relative safety. Libya’s tragedy is that, with the exception in the east of the Libyan National Army (LNA) led by former Gaddafi general Khalifa Hafter, none of the many ill-disciplined and generally criminal militias that dominate the country is strong enough to dominate all the others. Most of the time they are involved in fuel, drugs and people smuggling, kidnapping and extortion. Courted by politicians, including Serraj and the PC, whose tenuous and limited hold on the reins of power continues only courtesy of the armed gangs in the capital, these militias come the blows every once in a while when there is a territorial dispute or a disagreement over the proceeds of crime which can lead to the deaths of some of their supporters.

In such a toxic brew of murderous rivalry, good men such as Eshtewi, shoulder the duties of public office at their peril. The voice of moderation is growing ever fainter in Libya. Ambitious international plans for reconciliation and the restoration of security and the rule of law sound good, but the reality is the country is mired in madness.


December 18, 2017
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