Lastly, there are the internal refugees, the Libyans forced to flee their homes because of attack or fear of attack by Muammar Qaddafi's forces. It is estimated that there are 200,000 Libyan internally displaced persons (IDPs) at present. They have been accommodated by relatives and friends and, in many cases, by complete strangers as well as by the Transitional National Council’s IDP committee.
Feeding them has been a major challenge. Many fled their homes with what little they could grab. Some do not have the money to pay for food. In some places, there are no facilities to cook. The task of feeding the tens of thousands has fallen to Libyan kind hearts, to local charities including the Libyan Red Crescent supported by external organizations and governments, such as the Turkish Red Crescent, the International Committee of the Red Cross and Qatar, and to the UN’s World Food Program (WFP).
The largest single number of IDPs comes from Ajdabiyah, 160 km south of Benghazi. Before the Feb. 17 uprising, it had a population of over 160,000. Like so many towns in Libya, it joined the revolution. Today, it is firmly in the hands of the National Liberation Army, the new name for the revolutionary forces. But 90 percent of the population has fled. On March 15, Qaddafi’s forces attacked. Two days later, the city was in their hands. Two days after that, the UN no-fly zone came into operation enabling the revolutionaries to join up with their counterparts still in the town. But it was not until March 26 that the city was finally liberated. During that time, inhabitants fled as and when they could.
Ahmed Mabrouk’s family lived on Ajdabiyah’s Tripoli Street. His cousin Saad had managed to get out with his brothers and sister and their children on March 17, just three hours before the main body of Qaddafi's forces arrived. They drove 230 km south to Jalu where they had relatives. It was a nightmare. About 100 km from Jalu, they were warned of Qaddafi forces ahead. They took a desert track that meant deflating the tires so as not to get stuck and hours longer on the journey.
Ahmed and his family had to wait for more than another week before it was safe to leave. For most of that time they stayed shuttered in the house, out of sight of Qaddafi’s snipers who shot at anything that moved. The house of one neighbor was shelled and half destroyed by Qaddafi’s troops; fortunately the neighbors had already fled. “From our window, I saw two other neighbors, two women, running down the street in terror,” said Ahmed. “They were not even wearing shoes; they were just running as fast as they could.”
He tells how another neighbor decided to go onto the roof during a lull in the fighting to see what was happening. “He was shot dead by a sniper.” Ahmed’s uncle was also shot at, but fortunately the bullet missed.
On March 25, with the revolutionaries in control of the town’s eastern gate, Ahmed’s family finally left. Initially they went to Tobruk to stay with other relatives. Two weeks later, they thought that it might be safe to return home. They were wrong. They have ended up in a three-room cabin in a former construction workers’ camp in Benghazi. But at least they are not alone. A few days after he arrived, cousin Saad and his family joined them, as did an uncle and aunt.
Life is not easy. “We have nothing here. We want to go home, but we can’t. We just wait,” said Ahmed. He was desperate to find work to earn some money. Before the crisis, he was a telecom engineer with French company Alcatel-Lucent but now he will do anything. Could Arab News employ him as a driver and translator (his English was excellent), he asked. Unfortunately, we already had one.
Tea and biscuits are brought. The biscuit packet has a WFP label. The camp is one of many supported by WFP with dry goods and vegetable oil. Without that support, it is impossible to say how Ahmed’s family and so many other Libyans would have coped. The simple truth is that they would not have been able to. In crises like the Libyan one, international attention invariably focuses on the latest political and military developments, not on issues like food. But people have to eat every day.
So far in Libya, the WFP has helped feed 500,000 people who fled across the Egyptian border, another 250,000 across the Tunisian border and 300,000 IDPs in Benghazi and the east of the country. In the three months following the uprising, it delivered over 6,000 tons of food. By chance, it already had a logistics hub before the uprising started. It operated a food run from Benghazi down through Kufra across the border to Chad to feed refugees from Sudan’s war-torn Darfur region.
Six days ago, the WFP’s fourth shipment of food arrived in Misrata — flour, pulses, vegetable oil and energy biscuits — enough for 25,000 people for a month. There was also a WFP team on board to assess the situation on the ground. So far, it is estimated that the WFP has helped feed 125,000 people in the besieged city.
Another camp in Benghazi aided by the WFP is at the city’s main football stadium, originally built in 1967 and in the process of being rebuilt when the uprising started. The departed Turkish and Vietnamese construction workers’ accommodation in the stadium grounds now houses 51 refugee families. Most are women and children. The men are at home fighting to protect their towns and villages — although there are exceptions, such as the family from Tripoli who were visiting Benghazi when the uprising started and who cannot return home at the moment. Or Mohamed Nasir who arrived with his wife and infant son a month go from Ajdabiyah. He is partly paralyzed. He offers tea and opens a pack of the ubiquitous WFP biscuits.
Among the other residents are Noura and her sister Rima, from the southeastern town of Kufra.
Refugees started arriving in Benghazi from Kufra in late March. Like Ajdabiyah, it joined the revolution in February. The day after the NATO airstrike started on March 19, pro-Qaddafi forces cut the water and electricity supplies to the town. A number of inhabitants left as a result. Others stayed. On April 20, the day after pro-Qaddafi forces entered the town, Noura, who works with the deaf and dumb, and Rima, a local journalist, fled along with three other sisters, the eldest sister’s four children and their youngest brother, Mohamed. About 40 percent of the town’s 70,000 population have now left.
“We were afraid of being raped by Qaddafi’s troops,” said Noura. “We had heard of what had happened in Misrata where women were raped. So all the Kufra men took the women to somewhere safe and then returned to fight.” Both women are quietly spoken but do so with a passion. They want the world to know what has been happening to their town. They say that it has been under constant threat not from Libyans but from members of JEM, the Sudanese rebel group in Darfur reportedly funded by Qaddafi. Kufra is one of the closest towns to north Darfur. “They are Qaddafi mercenaries,” says Rima. “They come regularly and have to be repulsed.”
Unlike Ahmed’s camp, where prepared food is provided, they do their own cooking. They share their basic accommodation with three other families and one of the rooms has been converted to a communal kitchen. Like all the rooms it is spotlessly clean. They are given bread, water, rice, oil, vegetables and dry goods from local people as well as from the WFP. Meat is eaten just once a week. It is costly and there is not much money around at the moment; moreover, there is no fridge to keep it in. Nor is there any air conditioning. Some recreational activities are provided for the children as well as Qur’anic lessons. There is a clinic too and Noura acts as a volunteer there. But the days are long and monotonous — much of the time is spent watching TV — and they want to go home.
In the initial stages of the crisis, it was foreign migrants who were the most vulnerable, who could not access public distribution systems. The situation has changed. Those who wanted to leave or had to leave have done so. One of the WFP’s chief concerns now is western Libya, in particular the Nafusa mountains. It has been trying to gain access to the areas to assess the needs. But there is a larger fear that both sides are running out of food.
There is good reason to think that that may be the case in the areas controlled by Qaddafi. In Benghazi, however, the shops are full. Food does not seem to be a problem. But there are many individuals who are no longer being paid or employed — like Ahmed. There are also the poor. Before the revolution, there were a significant number of Libyans who lived in poverty. Libya’s public distribution system helped provide food. That has to be done now by the WFP.
Even if the conflict ends within the month, the disruption it has caused will inevitably linger. The help provided by organizations like the WFP, the Turkish Red Crescent and ICRC is going to be needed for some time after the conflict is over. For the moment, however, it is the immediate needs that concern everyone.
— This is the fourth part of the Libyan series
