reuters
(Reuters) -
Damaged ancient columns, smashed glass display cases and a visitors book
from 1999 are pretty much what's left from the historic museum in the
Libyan city of Bani Walid.
Once a European
tourist destination, the museum was occupied by militia fighters from
different cities who smeared slogans on its walls when they seized the
former bastion of Muammar Gaddafi during heavy fighting in 2011 and
2012.
"There is no excuse
to destroy a museum. It is difficult to forget it," said Abdel Nasser
al-Rabasi, a civil servant and candidate for parliament when
Libya goes to polls on Wednesday.
Officials
and diplomats hope the North African country's second vote since the
ousting of Gaddafi will help ease political tensions and chaos gripping
the major oil producer.
Libya
badly needs a functioning parliament and government to impose authority
on a country dominated by rival militias, armed tribesmen and Islamists
who helped topple Gaddafi but now defy state authority.
But
the story of Bani Walid shows the challenge Libya's new rulers face in
reconciling groups and regions with long-running enmities, while
embracing the losers of the revolt.
Long
a bastion of Gaddafi, Bani Walid - on a rocky perch 170 km south of
Tripoli - held out two months longer than the capital before rebels
finally took it. Gaddafi's son Saif al-Islam made a last stand here
before vanishing into the desert.
Fighting
did not end even after the NATO-backed uprising. Militiamen from
western cities such as Misrata came back in October 2012 in a
government-approved attack after Bani Walid failed to hand over men who
had kidnapped and tortured Omar Shaaban, a rebel fighter who caught
Gaddafi hiding in a drain. Shaaban had died of his wounds.
Residents
have rebuilt the heavily shelled university buildings and repainted
most houses, but the scars of war can still be seen in bullet-ridden
walls in the city center.
Forgetting the fighting - during which residents say many houses were looted by militiamen - will take time.
"Bani
Walid is a struggling society because of the movement of change.
Therefore mentally they don't believe in slogans like democracy," said
Abdallah Belkhir, a lawmaker who is running again. A failure by Tripoli
to improve state services - a complaint heard all over Libya - was
fuelling dissent, he said.
Like
many in Bani Walid he avoids using the word "revolution", common in
Libya to describe the 2011 uprising, calling it instead "movement of
change". Others here call the uprising "the first war", in contrast to
"the second war" - the fighting in 2012 which killed dozens and wounded
hundreds.
Some residents
are bitter that militiamen from other cities wrote slogans on the walls
such as "national campaign" to take the city. "How can they call this a
national campaign?" said Rabasi, who said he sat long in jail under
Gaddafi.
"This was for
the first time a government-approved attack in Libya," he said, standing
in the deserted museum. His election campaign's slogan is: "Don't worry
about Libya because Bani Walid is part of it."
LONG ENMITIES
Western
powers worry that conflicts between militias and tribes will push the
major oil producer deeper into turmoil as its nascent army, still in
training, is no match for fighters hardened during the eight-month
uprising.
Many in Bani
Walid complain the rest of the North African nation frames them as the
"bad guys" because Gaddafi used to recruit members of the Warfalli tribe
which dominates the city.
"It's
not true that Bani Walid supported the previous regime," said Idris
Emhemed, engineer at the faculty of electronic technology. "We want to
leave the past behind us. After all we are all Libyans."
When asked whether the fighting in 2012 still hurts he said over lunch in the faculty canteen: "It's not easy to forget."
The
enmities date back to before the revolution. Bani Walid, a Bedouin
settlement, has long been at odds with urban coastal communities such as
Misrata, where the Muslim Brotherhood movement is strong.
The mutual hostility deepened during the 2011 civil war when Misrata was shelled for weeks by Gaddafi forces.
While
both cities dislike each other, they are united in opposition to a
federalist movement vying for regional autonomy in the east, controlled
by a different set of tribes.
At Bani Walid's university, female graduates have produced a film about the city's history, hoping to improve its image.
"We
want to showcase the history of Bani Walid which many people don't
know," said one of the students during their graduation ceremony. They
had enrolled during the revolution but classes were interrupted several
times due to the violence.
Their Indian professor said her students were talented but some suffered from psychological problems from the fighting.
"I had a good student who suddenly stropped writing during the exams," she said. "She just couldn't write anymore."
(Editing by Peter Graff)
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