In eight months of war in 2011, Nato’s jets destroyed dozens of civilian homes and killed more than 70 people in Libya.
The aim was to support the rebels who eventually toppled the Qaddafi regime, but in doing so, dozens of civilians were killed – most of whom have since been forgotten.
In Bani Walid, for instance, the entire family of Fathi Jafara were killed in their sleep when Nato aeroplanes struck their home at dawn on August 29, 2011. In Sirte, a 15- month-old child along with three other children and three women were killed in a family home on September 25, 2011 in another air raid.
UN experts, human rights groups, and journalists who conducted on-site investigations confirmed there were civilian deaths. Amnesty International, in its March 2012 report Libya: The Forgotten Victims of Nato Airstrikes, described in great detail the deaths of civilians as a result of strikes all over Libya.
In May that year, Human Rights Watch published a long report detailing the civilian deaths in Libya while in a separate statement it called upon Nato to investigate those casualties. The international rights group stated that Nato “has failed to acknowledge dozens of civilian casualties from airstrikes during its 2011 Libya campaign”, in which “over 70 civilians including 24 children and 20 women” were killed.
To date, Nato has only acknowledged one case as an error but refuses to accept any responsibility and claim it only bombed “legitimate” military targets.
It is not only Nato who are denying the civilian deaths. Even worse, it’s the Libyan government, making the quest for justice even harder. Families of those victims who ask what was the intended target of Nato when it bombed their homes and why their loved ones were killed receive no answer.
The Libyan government does not recognise even the mere existence of civilian deaths as result of Nato air strikes, nor has it raised the issue with its western allies to find a way to settle the matter.
Such a position is clearly politically motivated, as it was Nato’s firepower that helped the new regime take over in Libya. Domestically, the victims’ families are deprived of any possible assistance in their search for the truth.
The issue remains taboo in Libya and raising it at any level could land you in trouble. The moment you mention it you are immediately tagged as pro-Qaddafi – since, after all, the airstrikes were helping the rebels.
Such a tag is very dangerous, as it means you are anti the “February revolution” and of course this is enough to have you jailed, if not harmed, on the spot. Even a simple discussion of the issue over a coffee could turn into an accusation. In 2012, a lawyer friend of mine tried to represent some of the victims’ families and take their case against Nato. He was threatened by a group of pro-government militia. The security service quietly asked him to give up the subject, which he did out of fear for his own safety.
Yet when I met him in Paris last summer, he was still determined to raise the issue once circumstances improve. He thinks once a credible government is in place things will change. That, however, could mean years, given the volatile situation in the country.
Outside the government, the families of victims have even less luck in their search for the truth. Despite the existence of hundreds of NGOs in Libya today, enjoying significant support from the government, not a single one of them that deals with the tragedy of Nato victims has been allowed to operate openly.
Even individual efforts by the victims’ families are usually coordinated in complete secrecy and mostly handled by individuals outside Libya.
Even Libya’s newly founded free media hardly raise the matter, completely ignoring Nato’s role and the civilian casualties it caused. The country’s transitional legislature, the General National Conference, has never discussed it.
Worse still, Libya today has a ministry called the Ministry of Martyrs and Missing Persons to handle compensations, medical help and a range of other benefits to those who fought the Qaddafi regime. However, Nato victims are excluded from any benefits, be it simple psychological support, financial compensation or subsidised housing for those who lost their homes in the raids. In fact the ministry does not recognise them at all.
The very existence of such a government department is another dividing issue, further pushing Libyans away from one another. It is actually naked discrimination from the very “revolution” many Libyans hoped will bring them freedom and more equality.
Even the new religious authority in the country, represented by the Mufti, does not recognise those civilians killed by Nato as “martyrs” further depriving their families of any public sympathy they might otherwise have been offered.
Libyans must come to terms with the fact that the 2011 war was indeed a civil war rather than a war between the regime and its opponents.
It might have started as a civil rebellion against the regime but quickly became armed with different countries intervening in what could have been a domestic affair.
More than half the country was against the rebellion, which they saw as a threat to the unity of Libya. Those people did not necessarily support the Qaddafi regime but were against foreign intervention in their country.
It is untrue to claim that such huge numbers of Libyans who fought against the rebels only did so out of love for the former regime. Many of those people, including larger tribes, never benefited from the regime, and instead fought in defence of themselves against what they believed was rebellion instigated and encouraged by foreign countries. This is not an unfounded claim, given the large amount of information that came out about the role played by foreign secret agents in what became known as the Libyan revolution of 2011.
Indeed, those Libyans who had opposed Nato’s air campaign against their country – and there were many – are not necessarily defenders of the former regime. Nor are they somehow less Libyan than those who supported Nato. On the contrary, they see themselves as defenders of Libya against foreign invasion. Even among the rebels who benefited from Nato’s intervention there are those who believed that foreign intervention only complicated the situation in Libya.
Libya needs to face its immediate past if it is to successfully tackle the long-term challenges facing it. Settling recent grievances can’t be achieved without bringing the truth into the open, by launching a genuine national reconciliation process. Accountability and forgiveness should be priorities for my countrymen before they can tackle the role played by foreign countries such as that of Nato. Unless such issues are tackled head-on it is difficult to see how the country could bring its people together again.
Mustafa Fetouri is a Libyan analyst at IHS Global Insight, an author and a freelance journalist
