Another exodus?

The scenes of opposition forces advancing towards a fragile government and citizens scrambling to board any means of transport out of Tripoli have not yet faded. The band of resistance stretched thin in offering a buffer between the main fighting and civilians is a memory all too fresh. Yet, Libya, which saw moments of stability in recent years, seems to be descending into chaos again.

Strongman Khalifa Haftar has launched an assault on Tripoli and the seat of the Government of National Accord (GNA) — the globally-recognised government in Libya.

As a result, around 140,000 Libyans in and around the capital are trying to flee. This influx means that rents have soared in the city. For a while, people found refuge within the city. But as opposition forces draw nearer, the population has retreated further and it now finds itself holed up in abandoned and half-finished buildings — remnants of the last sense of progress in the country before the global housing crisis struck the country and started Libya’s long descent into chaos, starting with the ouster of former dictator Moammar Gaddafi.

Unlike when Gaddafi was ousted, the civil structure in Libya seems to have collapsed. Citizens have been left to fend for themselves. The government, too busy preserving its power, cannot even spare moral support for beleaguered citizens.

The GNA, for its part, was always quite weak, much like the fragile coalitions trying to fill large power vacuums in other countries of the region.

But the ramifications of the latest crisis in Libya are sure to be far-reaching. Already an established route for refugees, one expects a fresh stream of people fleeing conflict to land on European shores soon.

This, thus, merits stronger interventions from neighbouring countries and even from Europe and the United Nations. At the very least, the interventions must offer humanitarian aid to those displaced, who have little to do with any conflict.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 31^st, 2019.

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