INTERNATIONAL SATURDAY, MARCH 21, 2015

In Tripoli, hope survives on busy streets

TRIPOLI: Armed convoys, checkpoints and Tripoli’s port. Petrol is still cheap and the at controversial army chief Khalifa Haftar, At Mitiga airport to the east of the capital, sporadic exchanges of gunfire are still com- Libyan dinar is stable at 1.36 to the dollar. who was recently appointed by the interna- Raja, an affluent businessman, is returning to mon in the Libyan capital, but residents are Power cuts are becoming rare and electronic tionally recognised government and has live and work in the city. He fled Tripoli a cou- flocking back to the streets and surprisingly goods are becoming cheaper as imports from vowed to take on Islamists. ple of years ago following an altercation with hopeful of a brighter future. Sitting in a newly China rise. “There has been some unrest, peo- Anas El-Gomati, an analyst with the Libya- gunmen in a grocery store. “They came into opened cafe overlooking the blue waters of ple momentarily deserted the area, but now based Sadeq Institute think tank, said that the store and kidnapped the owner as they the Mediterranean, Mohammed, a 19-year- they are coming back,” said Anas, who works although Libyans differ on politics, they still beat me and threatened to kill me. After that I old student, said that while fear remains, in a restaurant in the neighbourhood. He said want a political solution. “It would be near left the country immediately,” he said. “I left Tripoli’s residents are trying to get on with the shops and restaurants were abandoned impossible to generalise as to what Libyans then because of fear, but now I have decided life. “Tripoli is a city that loves life and wants during the deadly summer clashes but life is want. What they certainly don’t want is more to return because I love my city and I believe peace and peace must find her,” he said. returning to normal. “That’s not to say that war. Any peaceful solution to the current civil that peace will prevail soon. But I will never Since the ouster of dictator Muammar people are totally reassured. They fear for the war is desperately needed,” he said. go to a grocery store ever again.” —AFP Gaddafi almost four years ago, rival militias future, they are afraid of explosions and fight- and administrations have battled for power ing that could happen any time,” he said. in the oil-rich North African country. The city was seized in August by the Islamist-backed Peace ‘Desperately Needed’ General National Congress after weeks of Armed convoys patrol Tripoli’s roads dai- bloody fighting with forces backing the inter- ly, often erecting checkpoints. This is reassur- nationally recognised government. That trig- ing for residents, but few venture out after gered an exodus of foreign residents and dark. “Some people go out at night, but most prompted most diplomatic missions to close. stay at home because we can’t identify who is The rise of the Islamic State group, which on the checkpoints,” said Anas. “It is difficult has claimed several attacks in the country, to know who we are dealing with these has also raised fears but the city’s residents days.” On the short drive to the city centre are adapting as best they can. Some even from Gargaresh, pictures of killed militia fight- sense a changing tide. In the coastal neigh- ers adorn the big metal billboards that once bourhood of Gargaresh, shops, designer bou- displayed commercial advertising. tiques and restaurants stretch for some three The facades of the old town display revo- kilometres (two miles) along the seafront. The lutionary graffiti and slogans of the NATO- streets are crowded with pedestrians and backed uprising that drove Kadhafi from traffic. Women in colourful scarves, men and power in 2011, such as “Free Libya” and children are busy socialising and shopping. “Tripoli: Citadel of Free Men”. But new slo- TRIPOLI: Libyan women shop in the old part of the capital on March 17, Almost nothing is missing from stores gans are encroaching. “Yes for Libya Dawn, 2015. —AFP that continue to import goods through No to the Murderer Haftar,” reads one aimed

Warning over US military chief ‘victory’ against grapples with Boko Haram LAGOS: Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan yesterday said the military hopes to recapture towns seized by Boko Haram within a month, in what would be a swift victory after six years of bloody con- Dempsey drawn in again flict. But experts warned against any premature declaration of victo- ry, with the militants still proving capable of carrying out deadly hit- WASHINGTON: For much of the past two the onslaught of the Islamic State group has the capital by helicopter, he noted the Shiite and-run strikes and indications of coalition lapses. Jonathan, who is decades the US military has been waging war in drawn him - and US forces - back to Iraq again. banners flying over buildings, referring to “the seeking re-election on March 28, said Boko Haram was “getting Iraq. And one US Army officer has been there for And the echoes of the previous war are plethora of flags, only one of which happens to weaker and weaker every day”. “I’m very hopeful that it will not take just about every painstaking step of it. General never far away. This month, Dempsey flew to be the Iraqi flag.” us more than a month to recover old territories that hitherto have has experienced firsthand Baghdad and found himself confronted by a More than 10 years ago, Dempsey led the been in their hands,” he told the BBC. America’s tortuous history in Iraq, from the 1991 problem that vexed him in the past - the coun- 1st Armored Division in Baghdad, just as Sunni- Nigeria has claimed major gains against the Islamists with the Gulf War’s swift victory to the troubled occupa- try’s volatile sectarian split. After a full day of Shiite violence exploded. Later, he was put in help of coalition partners , Chad and , achieving in tion after the 2003 US invasion. As Washington’s meetings, a weary-looking Dempsey said his charge of training the Iraqi army. But the Shiite- just over one month what for years it had failed to on its own. Two top-ranking officer, Dempsey, 62, expected to conversations were all too familiar. “This was led government’s exclusion of Sunnis was a out of three of the worst-hit northeast states - Yobe and Adamawa - leave Iraq behind to focus on new threats. But like deja vu for me,” he said. After flying over recurring frustration. Now, as chairman of the have been declared “cleared” while the third, Borno, is expected to US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Dempsey brings his be liberated “soon”, the military said this week. Major towns such as sobering experience from years past to the Bama and Dikwa are among some 36 localities recaptured, with just new mission in Iraq. And he is urging a new three said to be still in rebel hands. National security advisor Mike government led by a new prime minister, Omeri said on Wednesday that “the final onslaught” was under way. Haider Al-Abadi, to make good on its promises to bridge the sectarian divide. “I got a lot of Greater Urgency assurances,” Dempsey said. “But I made it clear More than 13,000 people have lost their lives in the conflict and that chief among our campaign assumptions is the main opposition candidate, former military ruler Muhammadu the establishment of a national unity govern- Buhari, has campaigned hard on the government’s security record. ment.” Mark Schroeder, vice-president for Africa analysis at security risk con- sultants Stratfor, said announcing victory before March 28 made ‘Things Fall Apart’ political sense for Jonathan as part of the election campaign. “The Iraq has dominated Dempsey’s career and risk he runs, however, is that the insurgency is not really defeated, those of a generation of American officers. For only disrupted temporarily and for political posturing,” he told AFP. the soldiers who served during the eight-year “It would be akin to the ‘Mission Accomplished’ declaration by (US) occupation until 2011, the Iraqi army’s abject President (George W) Bush in 2003 that was a premature symbol of defeat at the hands of Islamic State jihadists victory in Iraq. “Clearly, Iraq is still today struggling with an Islamist last year was painful to watch. “The experience insurgency.” was difficult when we were there,” said Peter Until this year, Nigerian troops had appeared unable - even Chiarelli, a retired army four-star general who unwilling - to tackle the better-armed militants, who have allied In this March 8, 2015 photo, Gen Martin E Dempsey (left), US chairman of served in Iraq at the same time as Dempsey. themselves with the Islamic State group in and Iraq. Jonathan “But the experience has been just as difficult acknowledged to the BBC that a lack of resources was to blame. the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Gen Pierre de Villiers, French Chief of after we went home to watch this thing fall Defense, confer aboard the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle in the Nnamdi Obasi, senior Nigeria researcher at the International Crisis apart,” said Chiarelli, a close friend of Group, attributed the sense of urgency to the prospect of defeat by Arabian Gulf. —AFP Dempsey’s. —AFP Buhari. —AFP