Bayda, one of the first places to embrace the anti-Qaddafi revolution, has now also embraced the work of what might follow
The signs in Bayda still read the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab State of the Masses. It was never much of a state, nor did the people have much say. Now two weeks after its liberation, residents of this highland town have the task of making it so, a challenge that may prove pivotal to the course of Libya’s revolt.
Far from the front, in mood and reality, Bayda, an eastern city that was one of the first to embrace the anti-Qaddafi revolution, has now also embraced the work of what might follow: building a state on a landscape riven by divisions of tribe, piety and class in a country whose leader spent four decades in power dismantling anything that might contest his rule.
The new police chief has less than a third of his officers and worries that vigilantes might not surrender their weapons. He has no prison. Hundreds have volunteered for work, but on Sunday, many sat under a tent watching the news channel Al Jazeera. With revolutionary fervor, and a resurgence of pride in running their own lives, residents have set up a slew of committees to impose order, distribute charity and run schools, but even its own members admit they have more enthusiasm than experience.
That it has gone as well as it has is a testament to the strength of the society in a place like Bayda, where Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi conquered but could not divide.
“Our task isn’t easy,” said Mahmoud Bousalloum, a graduate student and one of the committees’ organizers. “We don’t have parties, we don’t have a constitution, we don’t have political organizations, we don’t have an effective civil society. We have to create a completely new state and we have to do it in the middle of a war and revolution.”
A city of roughly 250,000, Bayda spills across a plateau in northeast Libya called the Green Mountain, which takes its name from the pine, juniper and wild olives that are native here. It was one of the first cities to fall after two youths were killed in a clash on Feb. 16, and the graffiti of the moment still washes over walls and government buildings.
Personal slogans
The slogans borrow from the revolts in Egypt and Tunisia, but are more personal. There is no call for the overthrow of the government; only Colonel Qaddafi is mentioned, as lackey, tyrant and the man with really bad hair. The graffiti also hints at the anxiety in a city where tribal elders still hold sway and religious currents have cultivated a following.
“No to destruction and violence, no to corruption and tribalism,” reads one. “There’s no difference between East and West, we’re all Libyan,” intones another.
For decades, Bayda was run by the pretenses of Colonel Qaddafi’s Green Book, his supposed blueprint for a revolutionary state. There were Popular Committees that carried out the orders of the Popular Conference, but as Tawfiq Bughrara, a cleric here put it, “The head of it didn’t have the power to pick up a glass and set it back down.”
In reality, power was exercised by the security forces — internal security, external security and military intelligence — along with a more traditional police agency known as the security directorate. The loathed and feared head of internal security was Ali Saad al-Majaab, who residents say sought protection from his tribe soon after the uprising began.
Then there was Colonel Qaddafi’s second wife, Safiya Farqash, who was born in Bayda and whose family, from the city’s largest tribe, Birasa, acted as mediators between the city and the colonel himself. Her uncle, Jarah, long ran Bayda’s sole army battalion.
“No one in charge did anything without their permission,” Mr. Bughrara said.
At the height of Egypt’s uprising, Cairo exploded in fervor as popular committees sprung up to police neighborhoods and volunteers picked up trash and painted fences. It was largely symbolic, since the Egyptian military and bureaucracy remained intact. There was never that much bureaucracy in Bayda, where residents had to travel 750 miles to the capital, Tripoli, for something as simple as a housing loan or a business permit.
Days after authority collapsed, residents set up a local council. They said they avoided terms like popular and revolutionary because they smacked of Colonel Qaddafi’s statements. Of its six members, one is from a group called the Youth of February 17, the date people have given the uprising here. Two others are Muslim clerics, one a professor of agriculture and another a businessman. It is led by Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, a former justice minister from Bayda acclaimed as a transitional leader who is now in Benghazi.
Answering to it are impromptu committees for everything from security to education, though schools remain closed here. Underneath a tent in Bayda’s downtown, organizers added more names to a list of 750 volunteers, who identified themselves as everything from students to a tank gunner. Detachments have tried to collect trash every morning. Others have organized aid from Egyptian relief convoys crossing the border.
Even the volunteers, though, seemed overwhelmed at the task of running a city. Most of them on this day sipped tea, chatted and watched a television set up at the tent.
“We’re in a transition and in that, there’s going to be chaos,” said Mr. Bughrara’s brother, Ahmed, an engineer. “But what we had before was organized chaos.”
As he spoke, another volunteer interrupted.
“We’re still waiting for Tripoli to be liberated,” he shouted.
Anger and shame
In the aftermath of the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, there was anger at the occupation tinged with shame that destinies in the hands of a dictator were now determined by an invader. The experiences in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya have unleashed a far different energy, indigenous narratives written with the pride of people running their own lives.
The only shame hinted at in Bayda was that residents had consented so long to the rule of a man seemingly unhinged, where the political system had become a capricious exercise in absurdity. (Videos traded in the tent portrayed Colonel Qaddafi as a barking dog.)
“We’re no longer patient,” said Othman Suleiman, a 42-year-old day laborer. “What did patience get us in the end? It got us a regime of gangs and thieves.”
As in Cairo and the rest of Egypt, politics seemed to dominate every conversation in Bayda, with everyone quick to offer an opinion, an analysis or, more often, a rumor.
“There’s a report that Qaddafi took Tobruk,” said Khaled Mustafa, a volunteer.
“It’s rumors,” answered Walid Ibrahim, who was helping take down names. “Just turn off your phone and quit watching his television station. It’s a world war of lies.”
The scene was more grim at what constitutes the Bayda police station, a former tax office that avoided the burning and looting that befell 30 other government buildings, mainly security offices and police stations.
Past a lobby warmed by a space heater and littered with overflowing ashtrays was the office of Maj. Mustafa Muftah, a former deputy police commander and now head of the security committee. He spoke with the clipped answers that tend toward clichés of a man accustomed to answering to himself.
“This stuff happens in every revolution,” he said with a wave of his hand.
'I trust the people here'
But when asked about a city suffused with arms, he turned vulnerable for a moment. Only a third of the city’s police officers were still at work, he said, and hundreds of volunteers, essentially anyone with a gun, were only nominally under his control. The jail had been stormed, and most of its 700 prisoners were still at large. He said he needed at least six months to bring authority to a city that spent days getting rid of it.
“I’m anxious,” he admitted. But, he added hopefully, “I trust the people here.”
There was a sense of optimism, too, at the city park next to the Bilal mosque, colored in shades of brown. At dusk, scores of children played on merry-go-rounds and swings. A traffic policeman on the road outside joked with a driver inching into the intersection. “Don’t ignore me,” he scolded, smiling. Not even a drizzle seemed to diminish the feeling that one order was ending and another, however ambiguous, was under way.
“This is the first time people have breathed freedom,” said Idris Abdullah, whose three children, Marwa, Shahid and Anis, tumbled down a slide, laughing. “It’s a blessing, and I say that without any exaggeration. Look at me. I can inhale deeply.”
Ibrahim Badawy contributed reporting.
Source: The New York Times
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