Khaled Aswad has not yet thought about buying back his stolen BMW from its thieves after an armed group stopped him near Jafara Plain between Zawiya (40 kilometers west of Tripoli) and Tripoli, and forced him to flee to a nearby house, fearing for his life.

Khaled Aswad has not yet thought about buying back his stolen BMW from its thieves after an armed group stopped him near Jafara Plain between Zawiya (40 kilometers west of Tripoli) and Tripoli, and forced him to flee to a nearby house, fearing for his life.

Security has become the basic concern of Libyans as well as state legislative and judicial institutions, as both became vulnerable due to absent security. Many individuals and groups have taken advantage of the state’s dissolution, disintegration and the weakness of its intelligence and security systems, leaving car jackings an easy way to make money.

Muhammad Fathi was another victim of a fake checkpoint positioned along Tripoli-Zawiya highway. On his way back to Zawiya, he was stopped at a shady checkpoint where armed men asked him to get out of the car, and harshly beat him when he refused.

 “While I was going back from Zawiya, a group of armed men stopped me in Sayyad area exactly by a fuel station. I thought they were security members at a checkpoint, and when they knew I was from Zawiya they ordered me to get off the car.”

Once Fathi realized that the men were not real security guards, he refused to get out of the car and asked them to identify themselves and for whom they worked. “Then, an armed man opened the door and hit me with the butt of a rifle on the head,” Fathi recalled.

Fearing going back to Zawiya, Muhammad remained in Tripoli until his friends told him that the dangerous checkpoint disappeared and was no longer seen on that road.      

Lawlessness in Derna

Derna is not unfamiliar with such crimes. Not a single manifestation of security is there to indicate that the city is under the sovereignty of the Libyan state or the control of its government. Holdups of cars have become daily occurances.

Security expert Fa’eq Ben Ghasheer believes that the number of crimes committed after the fall of Gaddafi in 2011 are less than expected, given the huge proliferation of all kinds of light, medium and even heavy weapons among groups and individuals.

Ben Ghasheer points out to the degradation of civil and military security apparatuses after the revolution as well as to their division between pros and cons of it, which, as a faits accomplis, has caused the entry of armed people as a key player, whether positive or not.

Nevertheless, Ben Ghasheer says he is optimistic about the approaching end of insecurity since the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Interior (MoI) are currently cooperating to merge their security apparatuses and armed battalions under a rehabilitation plan based on negotiations with these battalions.

 

Ahmed Whishi from Zawiya, Libya also contributed reporting to this story.