While standing in front of his brother’s house in Derna—eastern Libya— early one morning, retired colonel Abdullatif Muzaini, 71, was shot three times by unknown men in a drive-by shooting.
The motives for killing Muzaini, who had opened revolutionary training camps at the outset of the revolution in 2011 were unclear.
The same scenario happened with Officer Fathi Amami, Commander of the air rescue force of Martuba base, 20 kilometers east of Derna, where anonymous persons shot him as he was opening his mobile phone store. The culprits again escaped unseen.
While standing in front of his brother’s house in Derna—eastern Libya— early one morning, retired colonel Abdullatif Muzaini, 71, was shot three times by unknown men in a drive-by shooting.
The motives for killing Muzaini, who had opened revolutionary training camps at the outset of the revolution in 2011 were unclear.
The same scenario happened with Officer Fathi Amami, Commander of the air rescue force of Martuba base, 20 kilometers east of Derna, where anonymous persons shot him as he was opening his mobile phone store. The culprits again escaped unseen.
Assassinations and killings in Derna started on day one of the revolution, widely reaching former leaders and members of the former security apparatus— whether or not they supported and joined the revolution, stayed home, or fled Libya and later returned, only to face death.
Anonymous culprits
The perpetrators are always unknown. “The culprits usually ride a black Chevrolet with opaque glass that everyone is afraid to pursue,” says a resident of Derna. Since the city does not have any security apparatus to investigate such incidents, no results have been reached about the more than 50 assassinations in two years, all registered against unknown persons.
But all fingers, says Ahmad Salem, a Derna resident point to Salafist Jihadism. “Citizens in Derna marvel at the state’s failure to find any solutions for the bad security situation in the city. The list is getting longer and the perpetrator is still unknown.”
Islamists to blame?
“Islamists differ in terms of the adopted approach,” says Omar, 31, a former prisoner in Abu Salim Prison and a field leader in the revolution against Gaddafi’s regime. “Calling anyone who practices killing, explosions or assassinations an Islamist or a Salafist is wrong.”
Omar stresses that Salafism itself varies between Salafi Jihadism and missionary Salafism. Those who are killing and detonating bombs in Derna, says Omar, “have nothing to do with al-Qaeda as rumor has it. They might be ideologically linked to al-Qaeda, but not organizationally.”
Once moved to Syria with a group of young men from Derna to fight against the regime of Bashar Assad after the fall of Gaddafi’s regime, Omar says: “Those killers in Derna represent neither Islam nor Salafism. Their reckless and individual acts de facto harm Islam and do not support it as those adolescents think.”
Desperate youth
Ibrahim, a 21-year-old college student, concurs with Omar’s views. “Those who kill in Derna are a bunch of adolescents whose circumstances of emptiness, ignorance and unemployment have thrown them into the arms of extremism.”
Ibrahim however believes they are also “victims” and holds the state accountable for the situation they are in, describing Derna as “the most marginalized city in the country.” He also holds the media partly responsible. Many media outlets, claims Ibrahim, fabricate tales about Derna, especially with regards to extremism and al-Qaeda. “But they never take the trouble to visit the city that has experienced the largest share of marginalization for decades.”
Outcome of disappointment
“Terrorism in Derna must be considered within the social and cultural context of the city that has been directly linked to the emergence and formation of this phenomenon, especially since it has not showed in the same shape in other areas or cities,” says Ramadan Ben Taher, a social researcher and a member of the teaching staff of the Faculty of Letters at the University of Omar Mukhtar.
The demands to apply Islamic Sharia in Derna after the revolution, says Taher, “took the form of organization that aims at applying Sharia and compelling others to abide by it,” and was not limited to the peaceful call to apply specific ideas. “Since those young men were revolutionaries who took part in toppling the old regime, they found that the new regime should be built ideologically, constitutionally and as a state on Islam,” he argues.
Taher however attributes the spread of violence and religious extremism in Derna to the marginalization of the city at all levels. “The status quo is due to disappointment, which leads to violence and hostility against the state and the official society with all the figures representing it. This violence has taken religion as a legitimate framework, and it is likely to grow even worse if the marginalization of the city persists,” claims Taher.
At an official level
Walid Huneid, a member of Derna’s Local Council, suggests that the council was the first to establish a security chamber headed by Muhammad Hassi, a former officer in an anti-drug apparatus, but he was killed by unknown persons.
When the Abu Salim Martyrs Brigade that was securing the city joined the Ministry of Interior, says Huneid, it was considered godless by extremists who then declared the killing of its members lawful on the pretext that it “works under a state that deals with infidels and signs pacts and agreements with infidel states.” This led many of the brigade’s members to quit in order to save their lives.
Huneid stresses that the security situation in Derna is complicated. “In addition to the absence of a state with its security apparatus, the role of the tribes is also absent, unlike its neighboring cities like Tobruk and Bayda where tribes have an important counterweighing role in terms of security, while the social fabric in Derna is weak and fragmented for several historical reasons,” he argues.
Awareness and discourse
There is an urgent need, says Taher, “to raise awareness, reform religious discourse, promote services and create job opportunities and housing for young people. In other words, it is necessary to correct the minds that produce these problems and improve the circumstances which cause the spread of such phenomena.”
The assassinations in Derna target security figures and revolutionary leaders, especially those tasked by the state with the establishment of formal institutions. These incidents have been on the rise so much so that any security project that may control this fragile situation is doomed to fail.
Muhammad Saltani, 41, spent over eight years in Abu Salim Prison for being a member of the banned Islamic groups under Gaddafi. In 1990, he went to Afghanistan to fight against the communists; he was only 18 years old back then and says that the groups that fought in Afghanistan varied; they included the Egyptian Jihad Group led by al-Zawahiri, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Salafists and the Hizb ut-Tahrir.
“Derna, in specific, had been greatly oppressed under Gaddafi, and many of its citizens were subjected to crackdowns and some of them were even killed in the streets. All these memories about the security apparatus in the minds of Derna’s citizens stirred the will to take vengeance from their prosecutors in the name of Jihad,” says Saltani.
“The spread of arms following the Libyan Revolution encouraged Jihadists to harm the godless army, which was repressing Islamists, and damaging those who defend it even if they were Islamists, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, Missionary Salafists and Sufis, which differed with Salafist Jihadism over the use of violence in their preaching and political project where only the Muslim Brotherhood accept the rules of the democratic game.”
