The crackle of gunfire mixes with the burble of conversation in
Cinnabon,
Tripoli’s most popular cafe, where customers enjoy cappuccino and
chocolate cakes even as Libyan militias battle for control of nearby
streets.
“There’s gangster trouble over there, you get used to it,” says Majdi
Nakua, a photographer, former rebel fighter and patron of the closely
held Atlanta-based bakery chain. “But if it goes on for long, that’s not
good. That’s not why we fought a revolution.”
While Libya, home to Africa’s largest oil reserves, has seen crude
oil production return to pre-war levels of 1.54 million barrels a day,
roads in Tripoli are potholed, building projects dormant and laws to
create a city council stalled. Photographer: Mahmud Turkia/AFP/Getty
Images
More than a year after the downfall and death of dictator
Muammar Qaddafi,
Tripoli is as divided and fractured as the country itself. The central
government has yet to establish order on a city that lacks an elected
council and where militias, some loyal to the former regime, vie for
control with police, the national army and the gendarmerie.
“It’s the capital of the country and if you can’t get Tripoli
organized and functioning more smoothly, then it’s going to be harder to
do outside of the capital,”
Ronald Bruce St John, author of 14 books on Libya, said by telephone from
Albuquerque,
New Mexico. Parties and militias have cut “the country and the major cities into little spheres of interest.”
While
Libya, home to
Africa’s largest oil reserves, has seen crude
production return
to pre-war levels of 1.54 million barrels a day, roads in Tripoli are
potholed, building projects dormant and laws to create a city council
stalled.
Militia Patchwork
Libya has a prime minister, Ali Zaidan, and a Cabinet but there’s no
government control because militias won’t accept orders and won’t
disband 15 months after Qaddafi’s downfall. The former dictator’s
reluctance to create institutions that could challenge central authority
during his 40-year rule means there was “very little for the government
to fall back on,” St John said.
The power vacuum has left Tripoli a patchwork of militia fiefdoms.
The city’s east is largely controlled by former rebels with links to
Misrata, a coastal city besieged by Qaddafi forces during most of the
uprising. They fly the national tricolor, which has replaced the green
flag of the previous regime, and cartoons showing the late ruler being
crushed cover the walls of the Suq al Jumaa, Fashloum and Tajoura
districts.
The sprawling southern district of Abu Salem, formerly home to
Qaddafi’s most loyal supporters, was the last to fall to rebels in
August 2011.
National flags are rarer here, and trucks tip waste amid weeds and shattered concrete.
Bunker Home
Living in an abandoned bunker that he turned into a home for his
family, Al Hadi Shamrush, 53, a school janitor, said mounds of garbage
in his neighborhood are a symptom of the malaise affecting his city.
“The authorities do nothing for Tripoli, nothing gets sorted out,” he said. “It is bad for the spirit to see all this.”
Cinnabon is in the western coastal Gargaresh district, a neutral area
that attracted families who prospered under the old regime, and seek to
profit from the new one. Next door is Palm City, a fortified oasis of
villas on pristine Mediterranean beaches protected by armed British and
European security guards. It’s home to the
United Nations, diplomats and oil executives.
Salafists, ultraconservatives who adhere to a strict interpretation
of Islam, are not bound to any neighborhood. While less visible than in
the second-largest city of Benghazi, some attacked the mosques of the
minority Sufi sect in the capital in August. Salafists have also
protested against fashion shows and women wearing Western dress.
Italian Era
The center of Tripoli, the only zone that belongs to everyone, is an
untidy mixture of government offices, hotels, shops and apartments in
elegant buildings from the Italian colonial era of 1911-1942 gathered
around the old walled city.
Crossing from one zone to another can be perilous.
“Moving around in the morning is OK, in the afternoon it’s OK, but at
night it can be unsafe,” said Abu Baker Benaji, an unemployed chemical
engineer, in an interview. “The problem in Tripoli is the same as in
Libya — there is no security” and little work because foreign companies
have been scared off, he said.
Tripoli enjoyed a burst of unity during national elections in July, the first fully democratic vote in more than 50 years.
Both eastern and western Tripoli united to support the National
Forces Alliance, led by University of Pittsburgh- educated Mahmoud
Jibril, to defeat the Muslim Brotherhood’s Justice and Freedom party.
With parliament yet to agree on the formation of a commission to
write a constitution, the promised raft of administrative, regulatory
and legal changes have not yet been approved. Tripoli’s future, like
that of Libya, may depend on Zaidan’s success in giving the legislative
process fresh impetus.
“I kind of like Zaidan, he seems to be serious,” said medical student
Baha Naser, eating a chocolate bun in Cinnabon. “But there is so much
to do to fix this city.”
shabablibya.
