The West’s “intervention” in Libya has been the most significant international event since the invasion of Iraq. Tom Rollins speaks to Libyan students in Sheffield about the road ahead.
Libyans protesting in Misurata city centre last month
Libya is a nation in turmoil. Its cities are being bombed and battered by Gaddafi forces, while foreign armies defend its people with ambivalent motives and debates fill the news over justifications for their actions.
But young Libyans studying abroad in the UK are left very much in the dark. Here they are, in a foreign country, scouring the news channels with no word from home other than the impersonal and faceless dispatches of some British reporter or another.
“The humanitarian situation is dire”
Ahmed Elmedhen, 21, is a Mathematics undergraduate in his final year at the University of Sheffield. He was born in Misurata, Libya’s third city in the north-west of the country, and moved to the United Kingdom when he was two-months-old. His family – uncles and aunties, grandparents and cousins – still live there today.
“I missed lectures for something like two weeks, just watching the news”, Ahmed says. He watched the television as much as he could, to hear whatever he could from home. Real news isn’t easy to get hold of. “The communications are impossible to get through. Just yesterday we managed to get through to our family for the first time in three weeks”.
Ahmed cannot speak to his relatives for more than a minute-and-a-half at a time, and any news from them is scant at best. “We haven’t heard of any casualties to my immediate family”, he says. “My father’s cousin was shot dead in the protests in Misurata, and another died from torture. Many Libyan students have had the same”.
Photo credit: Martin Beek Flickr
Unfortunately this is an all too common experience in Misurata. “The humanitarian situation is dire”, Ahmed says. “Food supplies aren’t getting into the city, the electricity is often cut out and the hospitals can’t facilitate the number of casualties now coming in”.
“Wipe everything out”
The city has been under siege. Reports have emerged that Gaddafi-loyalist forces were ordered to “wipe everything out” in Misurata. Snipers have shot unarmed and innocent civilians, and the indiscriminate shelling by helicopter and fighter jet continues. Words like “desperate” and “dire” keep cropping up, but never quite do it justice.
Ahmed is one of between 75 and 100 Libyan students at the University of Sheffield today. On March 8, Sheffield’s Forge student newspaper reported on an alleged £400,000 exchange deal signed between the University of Sheffield and Omar Al Mukhtar University and Al Fateh University, both state-run institutions in Libya’s capital, Tripoli. The deal allows Libyan students engaged in scientific research, in fields such as medicine, to transfer to Sheffield and study here.
The University has issued a statement: “The University of Sheffield is concerned about the current unrest in the Middle East and our thoughts are with students, academic colleagues and their families. The University has proactively been in contact with all of our Libyan students to offer support during this difficult time”.
Since the crisis began, the university has provided Libyan students with financial and pastoral support. Jo Halliday, SU International Student Adviser, said: “We’ve certainly seen an increase in students coming forward for advice; concerned about family members stuck in Libya, people here that need to get back to Libya, funding, and not knowing how long this will go on for.
“We’ve worked with the university to have financial services geared up temporarily and send messages of support to them”.
“Previous Libya”
However Ahmed presents a more ambivalent view of the relationship between UK universities and the Libyan regime, and the students moving between the two. “The government has done some good things for students in the past. The only thing that I question as a Libyan is who these people are.
“There are people in Sheffield who are still supportive of the Gaddafi regime, because their financial situation depends on it”. These students receive financial help from the regime to study abroad after all. “It is important for them that the regime survives. The ‘previous Libya’ as I like to call it”, Ahmed says. “But the new Libya that will be created will cater for these people too”. Clearly he remains hopeful, despite the enormity of the tragedy he witnesses each day, through the news and distorted phone calls from family in Misurata.
Abdulrauf Zubia, 22, graduated in Engineering from the University of Sheffield in 2009 and now lives and works in Manchester. His family are also from Misurata, whom he last visited at Christmas. His fiancée lives there. He hasn’t spoken to her for days. “There’s no contact, no telephone lines – do you know what that feels like? It’s emotionally draining and painful. It’s just too much”.
Abdulrauf’s uncle, Mohammed Zubia, is English Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the 7th October University in Misurata. His department has its own exchange programme with some English universities. He believes in a relationship of “mutual benefit” between Libya and the UK, in both a student exchange programme or in intervening against Gaddafi. “Many of my friends warn about the unpopular war in Iraq and I understand that argument, but we have no other option. We don’t care about money anymore, we just want our lives back. When the problems started in Libya, it was people against tanks. There’s absolutely no comparison”.
Protests against the Gaddafi government in Misurata last month
But Abdulrauf remains positive. “You have to”, he says. “Things can only get better. We couldn’t have had a worse regime than the Gaddafi regime, and for the last 42 years. Nothing can be worse than the days of Gaddafi”.
Most Libyans would agree. Like Abdulrauf, Ahmed is articulate, and clear on the road ahead for Libya. “There is no room for discussion right now. We need to fight the regime and end it; to create a free, democratic Libya for the future. All Libyans are united on this, at home or abroad”.
No matter what happens in Libya in the coming weeks and months, there will be two young men avidly watching the news somewhere in Sheffield, or beyond, waiting for the day when Gaddafi is deposed and the killing stops. Then the “previous Libya” will end and a new Libya can finally begin.