Abandoned Places: Tawergha

NOTHING BUT the wind moves in Tawergha. Its deserted streets are silent and eerie. Several buildings bear the signs of heavy bombardment.

The doors of abandoned homes hang open, revealing ransacked rooms littered with the detritus of everyday life. Inside the town’s battered mosque, its windows broken and masonry crumbling, a stopped clock rests incongruously on the steps of the minbar, where the local imam once delivered sermons. He and his congregation are now scattered across Libya, the name of their hometown a byword for revenge and retribution. The fate of Tawergha is one of Libya’s greatest tests for reconciliation as the country struggles to adapt to its new realities.



To understand why Tawergha is now a ghost town, its approach roads blocked with sand berms, you must first begin in Misurata, Libya’s third-largest city, located some 50km away. For several months last year, Muammar Gadafy’s forces laid siege to the rebel-held port city repeatedly subjecting it to indiscriminate rocket and mortar attacks.


Those forces used Tawergha as a staging post and volunteer fighters from the town are accused of assisting in efforts to snuff out the revolt. Many Misuratans are convinced that Tawerghans were responsible for some of the worst atrocities committed during the siege, including murder, rape and sexual torture.

“They did unspeakable things and Misurata will never be able to forget,” says Mohammed el-Fortia, a medical doctor who was active in the uprising.

Misurata, with help from Nato air strikes, eventually managed to throw off the regime forces encircling the city. Soon after the siege ended, its militias sought vengeance in Tawergha, driving out its 30,000 inhabitants before burning and looting homes, businesses and schools.

Human rights groups have described what happened in the town last August as an act of revenge and collective punishment, possibly amounting to a crime against humanity.


Before the revolution, Tawergha was a rundown town inhabited mostly by black Libyans, a legacy of its origins as a transit point for the slave trade in the 19th century. Its people were viewed as generally pro-Gadafy.

Some of the current animus towards Tawerghans has racist overtones, partly fuelled by Gadafy’s alleged use of mercenaries from sub-Saharan Africa as he tried to quash the uprising. Graffiti on the road from Misurata refers to “Tawergha slaves”. The name of the town has been scratched out on road signs. A green sign on the outskirts of Tawergha has been blackened and replaced with the name of Misurata.

“Tawergha is the burnt land. Misuratans are your masters now, you Gadafy dogs,” reads one slogan scrawled on a charred building in the town.

Last August, Misurata’s militias rounded up masses of Tawerghan men suspected of fighting for Gadafy. Most remain in detention in Misurata, including Jibril Mohammed, who says he was at home with his family when he was captured. “What happened to my town was not just,” he says, just after prayer at a detention centre run by adherents to the ultra-conservative Salafist strain of Islam. “The revolutionaries entered with heavy weaponry, terrifying the elderly and the children. Yes, some Tawerghans did bad things but it was a minority. The whole town shouldn’t have to suffer as a result.” Those Tawerghans who managed to escape the wrath of the Misuratans are now languishing in camps across the country. Some 15,000 are in central Libya, others in Sabha to the south and Benghazi in the east. Several thousand are in displaced camps in Tripoli. Tawerghans in the capital complain that they continue to be harassed by militias, and many have reported serious abuses.

On February 6th, seven people, including three children and two women, were killed at a camp for some 2,000 displaced Tawerghans in Tripoli after heavily armed fighters from various militias, including some with Misuratan markings on their vehicles, entered the camp to search for weapons and capture suspects. When camp residents took to the streets to protest, they were fired upon.

A commission of inquiry on Libya appointed by the UN Human Rights Council recently concluded that Misurata militias had committed crimes against humanity in their torture and killings of Tawerghans. “The Misurata thuwar [revolutionaries] have killed, arbitrarily arrested and tortured Tawerghans across Libya,” said the report, which was released on March 2nd. “The destruction of Tawergha has been done to render it uninhabitable.”

It is not unusual to hear Misuratans, themselves wrestling with the physical and emotional scars of last year’s siege, insist Tawergha will never exist as a town again. Part of the problem is that no one really knows what and how much happened in Misurata, particularly when it comes to the accusations of rape.

Some Misuratans put the number of cases in the tens, others more than a hundred, but it is hard to pin down given the stigma attached to the crime in this highly conservative society. “It is a very sensitive issue for us,” says Mabrouk Misrati, who works with the local military council. “And it is impossible to forgive.”

Someone who knows more than most is Ali Mohammed Zubeidy, who says he led more than 1,000 men to Misurata as commander of Tawergha’s local security forces. “We were told to come because there were armed gangs causing trouble in the city. I did not receive or give any orders to rape nor did I witness any of these violations. There may have been some cases but they were isolated incidents,” he says, sitting in the Misurata detention centre where he has been since August. “We regret what happened. I was following orders and did not think of the consequences. This has been a tragedy, a catastrophe, for Tawergha.”

Late last month, efforts by a reconciliation committee set up by Libya’s interim government led to Tawergha tribal leaders issuing an apology to Misurata for crimes committed by members of their community. They called on those who carried out such crimes to surrender themselves.



“This is some progress,” Mustafa Abdel Jalil, head of the interim government, told The Irish Times . “All those responsible for these crimes should be handed over to face justice and the people who are not accused of anything should be allowed to return to their town.” But many in Misurata are in no mood for forgiveness, and there is little sympathy for the Tawerghans in Libya. “If I point out to my friends that the plight of Tawergha’s civilian population is a stain on our revolution, we end up having a huge argument,” says Ayman, a student in Tripoli.

“Many Libyans believe they are getting what they deserve for supporting Gadafy.” Some Misuratans talk of building a new city for the Tawerghans in another corner of Libya. “It would be better to resettle them somewhere else, perhaps in the south,” says Mohammed el-Fortia. “It is a very difficult situation and these wounds may never heal. Many here believe it would be better for everyone if they stayed as far away as possible.”

via Irish Times