A horrible storm hit the Eastern parts of Libya on the 10th of September 2023. Thousands of lives have been lost in the city of Derna.
It is a real tragedy and as a friend from Derna said “it is the worst genocide in Libyan history.”
I completely understand my friend’s frustration. It was difficult for him to see family and friends disappear in a glimpse of an eye.
Thinking back of what happened in Derna, not only nature is to blame, but also, to a great extent, the current political and security actors.
Hurricane Danièle was expected to come to Libya, it was not a secret at all.
Normally, a series of preventive and safety measures should have been taken in order to preserve the lives of the people and keep them safe. Measures that are quite standard, don’t cost much and could have been easily carried out.
Everyone is blaming what happened on the divisions and fragmentation in the country.
Is the country that divided? We have been hearing of meetings of the 6+6 committee between the House of Representatives and the Higher State Council, the 5+5 military committee meetings which were very much praised by UNSMIL and the international community, the recent meeting of the two central banks and the claim that it is heading towards unification , the different meetings between the Dbeiba’s, the Haftar’s and the armed groups, and finally the tripartite meeting between Mohamed Al Maneifee, Agueela Saleh and Khalifa Haftar in Benghazi.
All these meetings were presented as efforts to find a solution to the country’s political crisis. Different comments and statements were made that such meetings are encouraging and could raise hope.
The question that also should be asked, didn’t UNSMIL know about hurricane Danièle and that it would hit Libya? Why wasn’t there a statement from UNSMIL warning of the impact of the storm and calling the different committees (5+5, 6+6 and the other groups that meet) to unite their efforts and come up with an emergency plan to prevent that harm and disaster Hurricane Danièle would do to Libya. This would have been a good opportunity towards unification.
Everyone is to blame, it is about time to change the approach to the Libyan crisis from one focusing on power sharing between fake “strong political, financial and military groups” , to one focusing on the safety, wellbeing, welfare and mainly the grievances of the Libyan people who in 2011 took peacefully to the streets and demanded these grievances be taken into considerations. Unfortunately, all this has been ignored and neglected by national and international actors.
UNSMIL should admit that it holds its part of responsibility in the disaster that happened in Derna and the East. The current Libyan leadership has emerged from UN political processes built on a wrong hypothesis that Libya needs a strongman. Libya needs modest, sincere, creative and down to earth politicians for whom serving the people is an honour.
Unfortunately, the UN political processes produced dwarves who pretend to be strongmen whose ignorance, arrogance, weakness and neglect caused a human tragedy in Libya.