Conflict in Libya

Griffith student Abdullah Neihum recently returned from Libya, where with the organisation Libyan Emergency Aid he and fellow student Neil Darcy set up, delivered much needed aid to the stricken country. In the latest issue of Griffiti, Jonathan Keane speaks with Abdullah about the journey over there and what is next for him and Libyan Emergency Aid. Prior to his departure, Abdullah also spoke with student Peter McKeever before leaving for Libya.

So tell us Abdullah what’s the story, what are you going over to Libya for?

Abdullah: It’s part of an aid convoy we’ve set up over the last two weeks, Libyan Emergency Aid we’ve called it. It’s part of the LSSA (the Libyan Social Solidarity Association) which is a registered charity, to send over aid and to collect donations of aid from hospitals around the country and maybe even buy pharmaceuticals at cost value and send them over to Libyan hospitals through Egypt from the east. So far it’s been really good we were able to send over a good few containers. I’m actually going over there myself in a couple of hours to meet the containers once they reach Cairo.

And how did you put it together?

Abdullah: I was in Griffith College and I got in touch with Ann Daly – one of the lecturers here – and she passed on a number to Neil Darcy, who basically met up with me and we started plotting out how we were going to do it, what we’re going to do with the haulage, what hospitals are available for us or what hospitals are going to be giving donations to us. Between myself and himself within about four days we were able to send a forty foot and a twenty foot container really, really quickly and really efficiently so that was good.

What are you expecting to find when you get to Libya?

Abdullah: Well we’re going through Egypt first so once we get to the border we’ll assess. I mean it’s going to be another two days before we’re going to come up to the border. Hopefully on the way we’re going to be interviewing people involved with aid convoys already there, and once we reach the border we’ll assess if it’s safe enough to go in. We’ll go in with the convoy all the way to Benghazi and hopefully interview actually members of the new government, that’s the sort of mission at the moment. We know that the aid is already going in there we just want to interview the people involved and the new government if we can get in touch with them.

We hear you have family in Benghazi have you heard anything from them?Abdullah: Yeah my grandmother is in her seventies and is on Skype to us most of the time. She’s a little worried you know, she’s homebound, but Benghazi is nowhere near as bad as what’s going on in the west, which is going to be our next sort of point of interest ‘cause there’s already enough aid going to the east. A lot of people are doing okay, well you know relatively, compared to what’s going on in the west. In the east it’s going fine you know they’ve already formed the new government and it’s been recognised by a number of major countries around the world. It’s just a matter of sort of spreading that sort of control across to the west as well.

Do you think the US, the UK, and France have reacted in time to this?Abdullah: I think they reacted very . . . calculatingly. When the Americans didn’t do or say anything for a week everybody was going “why weren’t they doing or saying anything?” It felt like they didn’t really care, just sort of hid away from the situation. What was going on was they were actually taking Americans out of Libya before making any announcements in fear of any Americans being held hostage by Gaddafi. So that was the case and there was a certain level of, you know, things that they have to get right first. There is a good reaction from the Americans at the moment.

How bad is the humanitarian situation over there?Abdullah: People are getting picked off in the street. Snipers are just shooting randomly in the west and they’re getting civilians who are protesting. [Civilians] are being shelled by tanks walking in the streets. I was talking to a Libyan businessman about twenty minutes ago and he was saying that the situation in Az-Zawiyah, the town outside of Tripoli, is actually a war zone. Try and imagine that civilians in the city, a city that’s in a war zone itself. There’s Libyans shooting Libyans and mercenaries. It’s Gaddafi killing his own people.

What was Libya like under Gaddafi?
Abdullah: Not too unlike this. This is the kind of tyranny Libyans are used to. This has been going on for forty years, it’s just now this is at a peak where it’s just a massacre. But there is a sense of fear. Libyans have just been quiet for so many years. People who opposed him (Gaddafi) just disappeared, or were even publicly hung. When he first took over, people were in fear the whole time but now I think the only difference is that Libyans are going out there and they’re not afraid anymore, you know. They go out there with their lives at risk and they know that there’s a very good chance that they would die but they’re actually going out to do it. Whereas before there was very quiet acceptance of the oppression in Libya it’s just gotten to the stage now where, because of what happened in Tunisia and what happened in Egypt, I think it sort of built up.

Are you nervous going over? Is the adrenaline taking over?
Abdullah: Nervous. Two days ago, definitely nervous, I think you kind of accept it. We’ve been in touch with quiet trustworthy people who are totally in control who are going back and forth between Egypt and Libya that we know. We know that were in good hands going back and forth.

How does your family feel about you going over? Are they nervous to see you leave?
Abdullah: Yeah I suppose. My mother is a very driven person; she’s an activist as well. She’s a doctor over in the Lourdes and she’s the one who, along with myself and Neil Darcy, worked together to make sure that we could get this aid. It was her contacts mainly that I led from for the donations to happen. She’s worried but if you’re a Libyan and your watching this happen and you have an opportunity to do something and you don’t, then you’re at fault. So I’m sitting here and I know I’ve so many opportunities to do something right and help people out, I have to take it.

When – hopefully – Gaddafi is ousted from power what kind of Middle East would you like to see in the future?
Abdullah: There are a few obstacles I think. There’s a wide range of interests, you know, particularly in the Arab world. There are liberals like myself and my family, but there are also religious conservatives. They’re a personal concern for me, like most people would be accepting the Muslim Brotherhood have done some great things for us. They’re not a danger as such but they are extremely conservative. I wouldn’t see eye to eye with that type of Islam, but again, they have done huge amounts of work for the Arab world and that’s why they have been a threat to the likes of Gaddafi, Mubarak, and Ben Ali. They’re held in such high regard by Muslim people, but there has to be a middle ground. You can’t just have this Islamic sort of take over. The idea would be to have a democracy that we can think and vote for what we want to vote for and do what we want to do.

How do you feel the media have handled the situation?
Abdullah: I was more informed in the first week because I had Twitter; I had feeds straight from Arab countries. The media was very slow and – I was saying this to a friend yesterday – mainly because Libya was in a state of blackout that you couldn’t confirm any stories and obviously the media has to asses things before they can actually report it. So there’s a lot of things coming out that could’ve been rumours that had to be assessed so it took two or three days to confirm things such as death tolls, you know, you never knew what was true or not until a couple of days later.

You can the read the accompaniment interview in the new issue of Griffiti.