The gold-leafed lanterns on the balustrades around the tomb are inspired by those that adorn Buckingham Palace. The crenellated walls are resplendent with the finest Italian marble. Inside shines a magnificent chandelier from Egypt. Twenty years after being abandoned in the desert by a jealous Muammar Gaddafi, the tomb of Omar Al-Mokhtar, Libyan intellectual and anti-colonialist war hero [il est connu pour avoir organisé la résistance armée à la colonisation italienne de la Libye, au début du XXᵉ siècle] has been lovingly restored.
However, you only have to look through its windows to see nothing but ruins all around. Those of Benghazi, Libya’s second city. The ancient Italian city, [l’Italie a envahi la ville en 1911 et l’a annexée à la Libye italienne] with its cafes, its Art Deco cinema and its royal palace, is nothing more than a ghost town. The court where Libyans rose up against Gaddafi in 2011 [les premières manifestations pacifiques opposées au régime de Muammar Kadhafi ont éclaté le 15 février 2011 à Benghazi]looks like a dump.
ravaged by fighting
“lost homeland”, can we read on the remains of a column of the old bank of Rome. Municipal services have collapsed. Garbage cans pile up in the streets. Garbage flows into the sea. Schools recently had to be closed due to flooding. And war profiteers and other smugglers moved in.
Like other beautiful cities in the Middle East – Aleppo, Mosul, Rakka – Benghazi was ravaged to be wrested from the Islamists. For three years, Khalifa Haftar, a former general turned warlord at the head of the so-called Libyan National Army (LNA), bombarded the city, capital of ancient Cyrenaica, from land, sea and air. , until his fall, at the end of 2017. Egypt, France, Russia and the United Arab Emirates all helped him before leaving leaving the city under his responsibility.
The United Nations has not proposed any reconstruction program for Benghazi. On March 21, the Italian government organized an architectural meeting, largely followed by videoconference, to call for the renovation of the city. But in Tripoli, the western capital, Libyan policymakers are more concerned about oil revenues and the appointment of the prime minister [le pays connaît un imbroglio institutionnel : en février, Fathi Bachagha, influent ex-ministre de l’Intérieur, a été élu par le Parlement établi à Tobrouk, dans l’est de la Libye, pour remplacer Abdel Hamid Dbeibah à la tête du gouvernement intérimaire, mais ce dernier refuse de céder le pouvoir]. “Ithere is no real desire to rebuild the city”, laments Atif Al-Hasiya, an engineer in Benghazi.
General Haftar, however, presents himself as his protector. “With one hand we build, with the other we fight terrorists”, says a flyer blown away by the wind. The inhabitants, them, speak only of the terror which the men of the general reign and say that it squanders the money in military forwardings and to pay its 127.000 combatants.
In 2018, a United Nations report revealed that a unit led by one of his sons looted the city’s central bank, stealing $300 million in national and foreign currency. “His sons are worse than Gaddafi’s”, sighs a Benghazi businessman in exile.
A drug city
In the city, journalists are watched and muzzled. Those who criticize the general run the risk of disappearing. In 2020, the Wall Street Journal revealed that he was hiding a mountain of gold, coming from Venezuela. Since he reopened the port of Benghazi in 2018, it has become a reserve of captagon, an amphetamine manufactured in Syria.
“Drugs are the first economic activity in Benghazi”, summarizes a local researcher. Drug dealers launder their dirty money by opening upscale clothing stores and restaurants on Venice Street. The jewelers who supply the gangsters see their business prosper.
The people of Benghazi had hoped that Abdel Hamid Dbeibah, besieged Prime Minister in Tripoli, would launch the reconstruction of their city. In May [2021], he unveiled a reconstruction program including Benghazi. Optimists have compared him to Rafic Hariri, the Lebanese businessman who used his own businesses to rebuild post-civil war Beirut (before he was assassinated).
Some unfinished projects, such as the Olympic stadium, which Dbeibah was in charge of under Gaddafi’s presidency, could be finished. General Haftar’s men, however, prevented Dbeibah from going to their stronghold, and the money never arrived. Parliamentary elections scheduled for December had given hope for a solution, but they have been postponed. Meanwhile, Benghazi is falling into ruin.