June 17th, 2011 by Oman Views

BENGHAZI, Libya – At first, the responses to the questionnaire about the trauma of the war in Libya were predictable, if tragic: 10,000 people suffering post-traumatic stress, 4,000 children with psychological problems. Then came the unexpected: 259 women said they had been raped by militiamen loyal to Moammar Gadhafi.

Dr. Seham Sergewa had been working with children traumatized by the fighting in Libya but soon found herself being approached by troubled mothers who felt they could trust her with their dark secret.

The first victim came forward two months ago, followed by two more. All were mothers of children the London-trained child psychologist was treating, and all described how they were raped by militiamen fighting to keep Gadhafi in power.

Sergewa decided to add a question about rape to the survey she was distributing to Libyans living in refugee camps after being driven from their homes. The main purpose was to try to determine how children were faring in the war; she suspected many were suffering from PTSD.

To her surprise, 259 women came forward with accounts of rape. They all said the same thing.

“I was really surprised when I started visiting these areas, first by the number of people suffering from PTSD, including the large number of children among them, and then by the number of women who had been raped from both the east and west of the country,” Sergewa said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Rape has been a common weapon of war throughout the ages, most recently in conflicts from the Balkans in Europe to Sri Lanka in Asia and in sub-Saharan Africa, where Congo has been described as the epicenter of sexual crimes.

Across the world, rape carries a stigma. But it can be a deadly one in conservative Muslim societies like Libya, where rape is considered a stain on the honor of the entire family. Victims can be abandoned by their families and, in some cases, left in the desert to die. Speaking to a journalist is out of the question.

Sergewa’s questionnaire was distributed to 70,000 families and drew 59,000 responses.

“We found 10,000 people with PTSD, 4,000 children suffering psychological problems and 259 raped women,” she said, adding that she believes the number of rape victims is many times higher but that woman are afraid to report the attacks.

The women said they had been raped by Gadhafi’s militias in numerous cities and towns: Benghazi, Tobruk, Brega, Bayda and Ajdabiya (where the initial three mothers hail from) and Saloum in the east; and Misrata in the west.

Some just said they had been raped. Some did not sign their names; some just used their initials. But some felt compelled to share the horrific details of their ordeals on the back of the questionnaire.

Reading from the scribbled Arabic on the back of one survey, Sergewa described one woman’s attack in Misrata in March, while it was still occupied by Gadhafi’s forces.

“First they tied my husband up,” the woman wrote. “Then they raped me in front of my husband and my husband’s brother. Then they killed my husband.”

Another woman in Misrata said she was raped in front of her four children after Gadhafi fighters burned down her home.

“She ran away with her children and tried to escape to the port, but then they started shelling the port. In the chaos, she was separated from the children,” Sergewa said.

“She was distraught when I interviewed her, not knowing if her children were dead or alive. I wish I knew the end of her story, but I don’t know what happened to her.”

Doctors at hospitals in Benghazi, the rebel bastion, said they had heard of women being raped but had not treated any. The first international airstrikes on March 19 saved the city from falling into the hands of Gadhafi forces who were advancing in columns of tanks.

However, a doctor in Ajdabiya, 100 miles (150 kilometers) south of Benghazi, said he treated three women who said they were raped by Gadhafi fighters in March when the town was invaded.

“These women were terrified their families would find out – two were married, one was single,” Dr. Suleiman Refadi said. “They only came to me because they also were terrified that they may have been infected with the AIDS virus.” He said they had tested negative but doubted they would return for follow-up tests.

Gadhafi’s fighters were forced out of Ajdabiya weeks ago and the town now is largely deserted but for the rebels.

In a highly publicized case in Libya, Iman al-Obeidi burst into the hotel housing foreign journalists in Tripoli in March and accused pro-Gadhafi militiamen of gang-raping her because she is from rebel-held eastern Libya. Her anguished disclosure was captured by Western cameras and shown around the world.

Earlier this month, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Luis Moreno-Campo, said he has “strong evidence” of crimes against humanity committed by Gadhafi’s regime, including serious allegations of “women arrested and gang raped.”

One of Libya’s leading psychiatrists, Dr. Ali M. Elroey, told the AP that he has set up three mobile teams to treat trauma victims of the war in their homes or in temporary shelters: one for PTSD, one for other psychological problems and one for rape survivors.

Elroey said they need to reach out to people in their homes because the stigma associated with psychiatric care is leaving large numbers of patients untreated.

His outpatient clinic at Benghazi’s psychiatric hospital has treated more than 600 patients in two months, many responding to radio and newspaper advertisements offering psychiatric help for war trauma. He said most were women, though none had acknowledged being raped.

Sergewa said she has interviewed 140 of the rape survivors in various states of mental anguish, and has been unable to persuade a single victim to prosecute. None would speak to the AP about her ordeal, even with a promise to hide her identity.

“Some I diagnosed with acute psychosis; they are hallucinating,” Sergewa said. “Some are very depressed; some want to commit suicide. Some want their parents to kill them because they don’t want their families to bear the shame.”

Some already have been abandoned by their husbands and fear seeking treatment could get them ostracized or cast out of their communities. Others have kept the rapes a secret for fear of retribution from spouses. “They fear their husbands will take them out to the desert and leave them there to die,” Sergewa said.

It is likely more rapes could occur as the conflict drags on, Sergewa said.

“They are using rape not just to hurt women but to terrorize entire families and communities,” Sergewa said. “The women I spoke to say they believed they were raped because their husbands and brothers were fighting Gadhafi.

“I think it is also to put shame on the tribes or the villages, to scare people into fleeing, and to say: ‘We have raped your women,’” she said.

Sergewa says women will continue to be targets of the militiamen, and this makes it all the more urgent to finish her study and get it published.

“We must throw light on what is really happening in Libya and fight to bring justice for these women, to help heal them psychologically,” she said.

By MICHELLE FAUL, Associated Press. Mike Corder contributed to this report from The Hague.

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June 14th, 2011 by Oman Views

OTTAWA (AFP) – NATO air strikes have forced Libyan strongman Moamer Kadhafi into hiding, making it increasingly difficult for him to communicate with his troops, a Canadian general said Wednesday.

“We now realize that Kadhafi is forced to hide (from NATO air strikes) and so it’s become more and more difficult for him to communicate with his troops and to order attacks on civilians,” Brigadier-General Richard Blanchette told a briefing.

NATO began to turn up the heat last month with almost daily strikes in and around Tripoli, including an evening air raid on April 30 that the regime says killed one of Kadhafi’s sons and three grandchildren. NATO has not confirmed the deaths.

As alliance jets blasted Libya’s capital on Wednesday, Blanchette said NATO had flown 8,100 missions over Libya, including 3,100 air strikes since the start of the campaign to pressure Kadhafi to quit after 42 years in office.

Canadian fighter jets dropped 240 laser-guided bombs on the country, said the Canadian military’s spokesman.

“What you heard perhaps is that there has been increased pressure in Tripoli,” he said, disputing suggestions bombardments across Libya had also been ramped up.

Libyan rebels scored a major victory mid-May by taking control of the Misrata airport about 200 kilometers east of Tripoli, placing the strategic hub beyond the range of government guns after two months under siege.

“If you look at what happened in Misrata, for example, we’re convinced that we’ve positively influenced the situation, a large number of civilians have been protected… and the Kadhafi regime’s artillery batteries, which were bombarding the city daily, have been pushed back,” Blanchette said.

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May 5th, 2011 by Oman Views

TRIPOLI (Reuters) – Libyan rebels said on Friday they repulsed a government assault on the besieged city of Misrata but prospects faded for a military overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi.

NATO leaders acknowledged the limits of their air power, which has caused rather than broken a military stalemate, and analysts predicted a long-drawn out conflict that could end in the partition of the North African oil producer.

Alliance officials expressed frustration that Gaddafi’s tactics of sheltering his armor in civilian areas had reduced the impact of air supremacy and apologized for a second “friendly fire” incident on Thursday that rebels said killed five fighters.

Misrata, a lone major rebel outpost in the west of the country, has been under siege by Gaddafi’s forces for weeks. On Friday insurgents said they had pushed back an assault on the eastern flank of the coastal city after fierce street battles.

“The attack from the east has been repelled now and the (pro-Gaddafi) forces have been pushed back,” rebel spokesman Hassan al-Misrati told Reuters by telephone.

The only active front in the war, along the Mediterranean coast around the eastern cities of Brega and Ajdabiyah, has descended into stalemate for a week with both sides making advances and then retreating behind secure lines at night.

On Friday rebels at the western boundary of Ajdabiyah, gateway to their Benghazi stronghold, fled from an artillery bombardment but there was no sign of a government advance.

The head of U.S. Africa Command, General Carter Ham, said the conflict was entering stalemate and it was very unlikely the rebels would be able to fight their way into Tripoli.

POLITICAL SOLUTION

Early hopes that air attacks on Gaddafi forces would tip the balance in favor of the rebels have now evaporated and Western leaders are emphasizing a political solution.

NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen took a similar line to Ham on Friday. “There is no military solution only. We need a political solution,” he told Al Jazeera television.

NATO spokeswoman Oana Lungescu spoke of the difficulties facing alliance pilots because of Gaddafi’s tactics. “The fact is they are using human shields and parking tanks next to mosques and schools so it is very hard to pinpoint any military hardware without causing civilian casualties,” she said.

Analysts predicted an extended conflict leading toward possible division of the country between east and west.

“The opposition forces are insufficient to break this deadlock and so as things stand the march on Tripoli is not going to happen,” said John Marks, chairman of Britain’s Cross Border Information consultancy.

“This standoff looks like it could go on pretty much forever … for now we have a stalemate so we are looking rather more at a de facto partition.”

Geoff Porter of North Africa Risk Consulting agreed. “It is increasingly unlikely that the rebels will get anywhere close to Tripoli,” he said.

The confusion on the desert battlefield has caused “friendly fire” incidents, increasing anger among the rebels, who said they lost five men on Thursday when NATO planes bombed a column of 20 tanks brought out of storage to bolster the eastern front.

REBEL RETREAT

The strike sent the rebels into a confused retreat back toward Ajdabiyah.

It was the second time in less than a week that rebels had blamed NATO for bombing their comrades by mistake after 13 were killed in an air strike not far from the same spot on Saturday.

Rebels in Ajdabiyah painted the roofs of their vehicles bright pink on Friday to identify them better to NATO planes.

“NATO is an alliance against the Libyan people,” said Alaa Senudry, a rebel volunteer on the edge of Ajdabiyah.

At the same time as expressing anger about the attacks, the rebels have accused NATO of being too slow to order air strikes to support their rag-tag army, a charge denied by the alliance.

Misrata, Libya’s third city, rose up with other towns against Gaddafi in mid-February and has been under siege for weeks after a crackdown put an end to most protests in the west.

Rebels say people in Misrata are crammed five families to a house in the few safe districts, to escape weeks of sniper, mortar and rocket fire. There are severe shortages of food, water and medical supplies.

The insurgents have used containers filled with sand and stone to block roads and break supply lines to Gaddafi forces including snipers in Misrata, the rebel spokesman said.

Ashour Shamis, a U.K.-based Libyan opposition activist, said the coastal town was key to breaking the stalemate.

“The reason is that Misrata has a big port that acts as a key supply route of food and medicine for Tripoli, and Sirte as well. To keep Tripoli going, Gaddafi needs Misrata.”

By Maria Golovnina. Additional reporting by Alex Dziadosz in Ajdabiyah, Michael Georgy in Benghazi, Mariam Karouny in Beirut, Hamid Ould Ahmed and Christian Lowe in Algiers and Marie-Louise Gumuchian in Tunis, Phil Stewart in Washington, Justina Pawlak in Brussels, William Maclean in London; Writing by Barry Moody; editing by David Stamp)

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