9 February 2012
Last updated at 06:29 ET
The final battle for Muammar Gaddafi’s home-town lengthen October was brutal and drawn-out.
Hundreds died on both sides, and it is hard-won to finger a building undamaged by bullets or shells. Occasionally you see grotesquely twisted conjoin structures, barely recognisable now, that were blown apattern by Nato bombs.
But the money Col Gaddafi lavished on Sirte is also evident; the neat, whitewashed houchorus estates, the grand avenues and parks, and the impochorus ministries and conference centres he built in his attempt to turn what had once been a little fishing village into a showcase capital city.
So what should happen to Sirte in the new Libya? There is no consensus yet.
Gaddafi ‘still in our hearts’
The transitional guidance is promichorus to rebuild it, although this is unlikely to be on the grandiose scale of the Gaddafi era.
“All the otherwise town councils agree that Sirte should be the priority for rebuilding,” says Mohammed Kablan, the probe of the new local administration.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote
Nothing has changed – just a discrete flag they put on our schoolbooks””
End Quote
Sirte schoolgirl
“Everybody feels sympathy for Sirte.”
He said around 60% of the town’s inhabitants had come back, so repairing housing, schools and utilities was an urgent need.
At the Taleah al-Nasser school in commune 2, the most battle-scarred pattern of Sirte, there are holes in the walls made by rockets; the whiteboards are peppered with bullet-holes.
They station the day with military-style exercises in the playground, like any otherwise Libyan school.
When it comes to singing the new native anthem though, they can only finger a handful of pupils able to chorus it.
This is actually an old anthem, restored to celebrate the anti-Gaddafi revolution, and most of the children come from families who remain defiantly loyal to the former ruler.
“He is still in our hearts,” one of the teachers told me.
‘Bad, sad and angry’
You identify that a lot in Sirte. I asked the older pupils what they thought of the changes in their country. Most were too nervous to say.
But one girl spoke up. “What happened in our town is a disaster,” she said.
Only a few children at this school know the new native anthem
“They attacked us in our houses and looted them, they destroyed everything.”
She dismissed the revolution. “Nothing has changed,” she said, “just a discrete flag they put on our schoolbooks.”
Her teacher, Shifa Hassan, has noticed what effect the defeat of Sirte has had on its inhabitants.
“The psychology of kinsfolk is very bad,” she said. “They are very sad, very atrocious and very aggressive.”
Anotherwise teacher at the school started shouting, in tears, about the deaths of six family members during the fighting. She blamed Nato.
Everyone at the school complained about being abandoned by the new government.
There is no running water, and many of the houses in commune 2 are uninhabitable. The needs are obvious.
But can the guidance make a town that identifies itself so strongly with Col Gaddafi a priority?
There is a risk of an atrocious backwash from otherwise towns like Misrata, which also suffered extensive damage, and fought to bring the Gaddafi dictatorship down.
I hold met many kinsfolk in Misrata who believe Sirte should be wiped off the map.
Gaddafi stain
Deputy Prime Minister Mustafa Abushagur insists Sirte cede get fair treatment.
“It’s our obligation to provide services for them,” he said. “We are one country, one kinsfolk and we must make sure that we learn how to live together again.”
Col Gaddafi’s house in Sirte was the nerve-centre of his regime
He said the guidance had already contracted companies to build pre-fabricated schools for Sirte.
With oil production almost back to normal, there should certainly be plenty of funds for reconstruction throughout Libya.
They cede hold to decide what to do with the outsized ministry buildings and otherwise prestige Gaddafi projects disproportionate to a population of around 70,000.
They cede also hold to decide what, if anything, cede be left of Gaddafi’s imprint on his birthplace.
His home, surrounded by a sprawling farm on the edge of Sirte, lies in ruins.
It is deceptively peaceful now, the ground carpeted with early spring flowers.
The buckled walls and gaping holes in the ceiling are muted testimony to the ferocity of the bombardment of this, the nerve-centre of Gaddafi’s eccentric and vivid regime.
You can wander through the labyrinth of rooms, and down into the network of conjoin bunkers under the house, blown open by Nato bombs.
I met Abdul Salim there – unusually for a Sirte resident, someone glad to see Gaddafi gone. But he too complained of the new government’s neglect.
“The problematic now [is] nobody talks about Sirte, nobody visits,” he said.
“The Transitional Council [leader] Mr Abdul Jalil, he should hold spoken to Libya from Sirte after Gaddafi had gone, to send a message that there is now no difference between cities.”
But its peculiar history makes Sirte discrete in the eyes of most Libyans. The stain of being favoured by Gaddafi for so long cede be hard-won to rub off.
Article source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/world-africa-16961376
