Hope Among The Ruins

The fortress was once believed to have been impregnable. But the walls of Bab al-Aziziyah and almost all its buildings have been pulverized into a wasteland. It is as if Libya poured 42 years of rage into the 6-sq-km space. All that remain are mounds of ruin, twisted metal and smashed concrete. Some areas have become garbage dumps; others, pasture for sheep. And in place of its old master — the equally pulverized and deceased Muammar Gaddafi — there are new residents, squatters who have moved in to claim Bab al-Aziziyah for themselves. Khadija Mohamed is one of them. She was born the year Gaddafi came to power, but, even in the messy months after his fall and death, she is still incredulous at the achievement. "We can speak," she says. "We can express our ideas. Before, we couldn't even say we were suffering."

Libyans still feel giddy about their revolution, the most thorough of the Arab Spring and perhaps in all modern Arab history. "Nothing has changed in Egypt, where the military stayed in charge," says Saad Abdel Ghader, a resident of Benghazi, the birthplace of the rebellion. "Here we got rid of everything! The Libyan revolution turned out the best." But it was a violent upheaval and there are still guns — lots of them — everywhere, though they aren't fired as often as they used to be. The Libyan capital, Tripoli, is relatively, sometimes surprisingly, sedate nowadays. The space formerly known as Green Square, the scene of many Gaddafi rallies, has been renamed Martyr's Square and is a breezy gathering place for families. Couples pose for pictures. Vendors hawk cotton candy. Teens cruise by on in-line skates. At the same time, however, the country — with no experience of democracy — is hurtling toward a national election in June. Meanwhile, regional militias continue to sit on huge caches of weapons, the tribes talk divisively of federalism and everyone worries how Libya's enormous oil and gas resources are going to be shared.

To find out if Libyans think their revolution has been worth it — and whether the changes so far promise a future worth suffering for — I went on a 1,600-km road trip with photographer Yuri Kozyrev, traveling the cities and towns we traversed while covering last year's revolution. We started in the eastern city of Tobruk near the Egyptian border, carried on through the Green Mountains, Benghazi, Sirt, Misratah and Tripoli, and ended up in the western Nafusa Mountains and Zintan, not far from Tunisia. The journey took us through different tribal territories, meeting with winners and losers in the struggle for the country, through desert, lush hill country and oil refineries, past old battlegrounds and new grave sites. The main question I sought answers for was this: If the old Libya of Gaddafi has been so thoroughly purged, what is the new Libya going to be built on?

The Federalists
Hamad Esbak sees potential. In his hometown of Shahhat, ancient Greek and Roman columns, temples and amphitheaters seem to sprout from the hills almost as ubiquitously as the trees — picturesque vistas just waiting for tourists to explore. He looks out from the top of the highest cliff in the ancient city of Cyrene, onto the verdant hills and pastures and waves his hand saying, "Look at this — all open space. If we had good people with money in charge, we would build this into something better than Lebanon or Dubai." Esbak's paradise lies in the Green Mountains of eastern Libya. Like most of his neighbors, the property owner took up a gun last year to fight the Gaddafi regime, mostly because the dictator did nothing for the region, in fact, letting it rot with malignant neglect. "We were marginalized," Esbak says. The towns of eastern Libya are crumbling, despite the fact that the region holds some 80% of the country's proven oil reserves. Farmers must still use rutted roads to bring their crops to market. As for tourism, there is not a single hotel in Shahhat to house any would-be sightseers.

But, in the months since Gaddafi's fall, the residents of the Green Mountains are shifting blame. The dead dictator cannot be held entirely responsible for the problems of the living. Impatient for a reinvestment of what they feel are the profits of their oil riches, eastern Libyans are now criticizing the transitional authorities in Tripoli and calling for a federal system that splits the country into semiautonomous states. It is an idea that has some people — both supporters and opponents of federalism — warning of violence if either side of the argument gets too pushy.

Oil is the basis for eastern Libya's wanting its fair share of the national wealth. And that promise keeps gushing. Libya has been quite successful in rehabilitating its vast network of oil fields and refineries in the wake of the civil war. The town of Ras Lanuf, one of the country's most important refinery and export points, sat on one of the most lethal front lines. The infrastructure changed hands at least six times. But when we stopped there on our way across the country, the oil workers were proud that, in a matter of months, they had already improved their functionality from zero to 80%. "You can see the mosaic of people working here — from Tobruk, Zintan, Sirt, the south," says Hasan Murtaza, a Turkish engineer at the Harouge Oil Operations export terminal. Some of his employees even fought on opposite sides of the war but most have deemed oil too important to neglect after the battles were over. "I'm really surprised by how calm and friendly people became after the revolution," he says. "Can you imagine being in a civil war with both sides losing lives, and now they're coming together and working together? There isn't any tension at all."

Even federalists like Esbak insist that, despite their desire to win more autonomy, they have no intention of monopolizing oil the way Gaddafi did. "Oil is national income and it belongs to all Libyans and the central government," says Ahmed Zubeir al-Senussi, the leader of the federalist cause. "We may create &militiaacute; to protect it, but if you're talking about selling, that's for the country to decide."