(Tripoli) A year ago, violent floods sowed death and devastation in Derna in eastern Libya, whose rapid reconstruction has turned into a gold mine for the powerful clan of Khalifa Haftar and a means of extending its grip on the country, according to experts.
On the night of September 10-11, 2023, the storm Daniel hits the east coast, causing floods, amplified in Derna by the rupture of two dams upstream. The tragedy leaves around 4,000 dead, thousands missing and more than 40,000 displaced, according to the UN.
The scale of the destruction and the human toll (still undetermined) has caused shock, revealing an abandonment of infrastructure and suspicions of corruption, in a country that is nevertheless rich in oil.
Undermined by rivalries and insecurity since the fall and death of dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, Libya is divided into two antagonistic camps, with in the west a government recognized by the UN, led by Abdelhamid Dbeibah, facing a parallel executive affiliated with the powerful Marshal Khalifa Haftar, who dominates the East and a large part of the South.
Still scarred, Derna, which had 120,000 inhabitants before the disaster, has become in recent months a gigantic open-air construction site, where projects are progressing at high speed, but its reconstruction has escaped the authorities in Tripoli, located more than 1,300 km away.
PHOTO ARCHIVES AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
The scale of the destruction and the human toll (still undetermined) caused shock, revealing an abandonment of infrastructure and suspicions of corruption, in a country rich in oil.
“Blank check”
In February, Aguila Saleh, speaker of the eastern-based parliament, created a “Libya Development and Reconstruction Fund,” headed by Belgacem Haftar, 43, one of his ally Haftar’s six sons.
Mr. Saleh “gave Belgacem Haftar 10 billion dinars [environ 3 milliards canadiens] “which are “a blank check without any control,” Anas el-Gomati, director of the Sadeq Institute, assured AFP.
This Fund is “an impenetrable institution where billions are swallowed up and buildings appear without their quality being questioned, for unknown real costs,” he criticises.
For the expert, the reconstruction should have been supervised by UN agencies and local elected officials, “taking anti-corruption measures.”
Jalel Harchaoui, a Libya expert from the Royal United Services Institute, also believes that “the opacity surrounding these projects raises questions about possible abuse of public funds.” For the experts, the Fund is not just a financial windfall for the East.
“Haftar’s sons are building their political launch pad. Every brick laid in Derna is a springboard for their succession plan. [de leur père octogénaire]financed by the tragedy,” denounces Mr. el-Gomati.
For Belgacem Haftar, who unlike his brothers Saddam and Khaled does not have a military role, “promising to rebuild all of Libya, including Tripolitania, offers the possibility of forging a political identity at the national and international level,” adds Mr. Harchaoui.
“Ineffective and superfluous”
With “its authoritarian governance,” the family as a whole “deploys formidable political and diplomatic capital and presents the government recognized by the UN as ineffective and superfluous,” according to the expert.
On Thursday, during a visit to the south in the presence of AFP, Belgacem Haftar boasted a “70% completion rate of all ongoing projects in Derna”, mentioning 3,500 rebuilt homes and maintenance work on the electricity network, roads and schools.
On the judicial level, the search for responsibilities has progressed a little in a year of investigation.
The Derna dams, built in the 1970s by a Yugoslav company, had received little or no maintenance despite the allocation of a budget.
At the end of July, twelve officials responsible for their management were sentenced to prison terms ranging from 9 to 27 years.
But the National Prosecutor’s investigation did not go any further than the mayor of Derna, who is also Aguila Saleh’s nephew. His house was burned down shortly after the tragedy by protesters angry with the authorities.
Another controversy: the exact number of victims, which the Eastern powers are suspected of wanting to minimize.
The Authority for the Identification of the Missing assured this week that it had “completed 98% of the files of the victims’ families” based on DNA from bodies hastily buried after the tragedy.
But in addition to these 3,800 people buried, at least “10,000 DNA samples from relatives of the missing” were collected in one year, “not counting families with no survivors”, underlines the expert al-Gomati, who estimates the real toll at “between 14,000 and 24,000” victims.