my comment ; Some people must be missing the Colonel "you know who " days when there was peace and prosperity in Libya ! I had some relatives who ran away from Saddams Iraq and had some years of peace in a refuge called Libya ...
A Facebook War: Libyans Battle on the Streets and on Screens
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By Declan Walsh and Suliman Ali Zway
CAIRO
— When a new bout of fighting between rival militias engulfed the
Libyan capital in recent days, badly shaking the fragile United
Nations-backed government, some combatants picked up rifles and rocket
launchers and headed into the streets.
Others logged on to Facebook.
As
rockets rained on parts of Tripoli, hitting a hotel popular with
foreigners and forcing the airport to close, and 400 prisoners escaped
from a jail, a parallel battle unfolded online. On their Facebook pages,
rival groups issued boasts, taunts and chilling threats — one vowing to
“purify” Libya of its opponents.
Some
“keyboard warriors,” as Facebook partisans are known in Libya, posted
fake news or hateful comments. Others offered battlefield guidance. On
one discussion page on Thursday, a user posted maps and coordinates to
help target her side’s bombs at a rival’s air base.
“From
the traffic light at Wadi al Rabi, it is exactly 18 kilometers to the
runway, which means it can be targeted by a 130 mm artillery,” the user,
who went by the handle Narjis Ly, wrote on Facebook. “The coordinates
are attached in the photo below.”
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Social
media enjoys outsize influence in Libya, a sparsely populated yet
violently fractured country that is torn by a plethora of armed groups vying for territory and legitimacy. They battle for dominance on the streets and on smartphones.
But Facebook, by far the most popular platform, doesn’t just mirror the chaos — it can act as a force multiplier.
Armed
groups use Facebook to find opponents and critics, some of whom have
later been detained, killed or forced into exile, according to human rights groups and Libyan activists. Swaggering commanders boast of their battlefield exploits and fancy vacations, or rally supporters by sowing division and ethnic hatred. Forged documents circulate widely, often with the goal of undermining Libya’s few surviving national institutions, notably its Central Bank.
Facebook
is coming under scrutiny globally for how its platform amplifies
political manipulation and violence. In July, the company began culling misinformation from its pages in response to episodes in Sri Lanka, Myanmar and India where online rumors led to real-life violence against ethnic minorities.
On
Wednesday, Facebook’s chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, will
defend the company’s efforts to limit disinformation and hate speech
before the Senate Intelligence Committee, where she will testify along
with Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s chief executive.
Facebook
insists it is assiduously policing its raucous Libyan platform. It
employs teams of Arabic-speaking content reviewers to enforce its
policies, is developing artificial intelligence to pre-emptively remove
prohibited content, and partners with local organizations and
international human rights groups to better understand the country. A
spokeswoman said: “We also don’t allow organizations or individuals engaged in human trafficking or organized violence to maintain a presence on Facebook.”
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Still, illegal activity is rife on Libyan Facebook.
The
New York Times found evidence of military-grade weapons being openly
traded, despite the company’s policies forbidding such commerce. Human
traffickers advertise their success in helping illegal migrants reach
Europe by sea, and use their pages to drum up more business. Practically
every armed group in Libya, and even some of their detention centers,
have their own Facebook page.
Facebook removed several pages and posts after The New York Times flagged them to the spokeswoman on Sunday. But others remained.
“The
most dangerous, dirty war is now being waged on social media and some
other media platforms,” Mahmud Shammam, a former information minister,
said last week as fighting ripped through the Tripoli suburbs. “Lying,
falsifying, misleading and mixing facts. Electronic armies are owned by
everyone, and used by everyone without exception. It is the most deadly
war.”
Mr. Shammam made his declaration, naturally, on Facebook.
A Force for Unity, Then Disunity
Facebook
helped Libyans unite in 2011 to oust Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, who for
decades had forbidden people to buy fax machines or even printers
without official permission.
Even then, the platform was prone to abuse.
A
vicious hate campaign directed at suspected Qaddafi supporters, and
which was fanned by incendiary social media posts, led to African
migrants being jailed or lynched, and caused all 30,000 residents of a
town called Tawergha to flee for their lives. Today, most Tawerghans live in refugee camps.
“The
social media echo chamber played out in deadly ways for them,” said
Fred Abrahams, an associate director at Human Rights Watch.
Facebook’s
influence today is largely a product of Libya’s dysfunction. The
country has no central authority and most of its TV stations and
newspapers are tied to armed groups, political factions or foreign
powers like Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
Many
Libyans spend long hours stranded inside their homes because it can be
dangerous to go out. The electricity can be off for 12 hours a day. So
they turn to Facebook to find out what’s going on.
“The
phone might be the only thing that is working,” said Jalel Harchaoui, a
Paris-based analyst with North Africa Risk Consulting. “People are
traumatized after the years of fake news under Qaddafi. They thirst for
truth.”
Some 181 million people use
Facebook every month across the Middle East and North Africa, the
Facebook spokeswoman said. She replied to questions by email on
condition of anonymity in line with Facebook policy, which the company
said was mainly for security reasons. For Libya’s armed factions, that reach makes the platform a powerful tool for propaganda and repression.
In the eastern city of Benghazi,
which is dominated by the strongman Gen. Khalifa Hifter, a special
online unit affiliated with his militia, the Libyan National Army,
scours Facebook for signs of dissent or for suspected Islamists. Some
have been arrested and jailed, and others forced to flee the city,
according to human rights groups.
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There are similar pressures in Tripoli, where the Special Deterrence Force,
a militia led by a conservative religious commander, Abdulrauf Kara,
patrols Facebook with a moralizing zeal reminiscent of Saudi Arabia’s
once-feared religious police.
Last
year his militia detained 20 participants in a Libyan version of
Comic-Con, the comic book conference. The militants said they were
outraged by photos
on Facebook showing young Libyans dressed as characters like Spider-Man
and the Joker. Some detainees said they were beaten in custody.
In August 2017, a writer named Leila Moghrabi was hit by a blizzard of Facebook attacks
over a collection of short stories and poetry she edited. “I wish you
get killed, not arrested,” read one typical message. Three Muslim
clerics denounced Ms. Moghrabi in thundering sermons that circulated on
Facebook; next came word that the Special Deterrence Force was coming to
arrest her.
She leapt into a car
with her husband and children and drove to Tunisia, where they live in
exile. “We literally left everything behind,” she said by phone.
Others
never made it to the border. Jabar Zain, a 30-year-old activist who was
prominent on Facebook, has not been seen since he was abducted by a
militia in September 2016, according to Amnesty International, which
said he was targeted because of statements he made on Facebook. Amnesty has documented several such cases.
In
2014, suspected Islamists in Benghazi shot dead two secular teenage
activists, Tawfik Bensoud and Sami al-Kwuafi, after their names appeared
on a hit list that circulated on Facebook.
A Fight Foreshadowed
The
fighting in Tripoli over the past week was the worst in years, leaving
at least 47 people dead, including children, and over 130 wounded,
according to health officials. At least 400 prisoners escaped from a
jail on Sunday after inmates overpowered guards. The chaos poses a
growing threat to the United Nations-backed unity government, which has
declared a state of emergency in the capital.
Online boasts and threats foreshadowed the fighting.
Although
Tripoli seemed calm this year, public unease grew toward the four big
militias that control the city under the umbrella of the fragile unity
government, which is headed by Fayez Seraj. The militia commanders are widely viewed as unaccountable and corrupt,
using their access to the Central Bank to buy United States dollars at
the official rate, which is five times cheaper than the street price.
One
commander, Haitham Tajouri, drew attention by posting photos to
Facebook flaunting his lavish lifestyle — foreign vacations, designer suits and an armored S.U.V. — at a time when many Libyans were wallowing in economic hardship.
Such
ostentatious displays helped fuel resentments among rival groups
seeking to share in the pie. They boiled over last week when a militia
known as Kaniyat from a town called Tarhouna, 45 miles southeast of
Tripoli, launched an assault on the capital.
As
Kaniyat’s fighters engaged in artillery battles in the southern
suburbs, it sought to tap into public anger by denouncing its rivals as
the “Islamic State of public money” and promising to “cleanse” them from
Libya.
Libya’s
factions are motivated by more than what they see on Facebook, said Mr.
Harchaoui, the analyst. But, he added, “it can be the final straw.”
On
Monday afternoon, Facebook suddenly went down in Tripoli. The local
internet provider, Libya Telecom and Technology, which insisted it had
not blocked Facebook, said it was investigating.
Beating the Moderators
Facebook
employs Arabic-language reviewers who weed out illegal and forbidden
content on its Libyan pages — part of a global team that works in over
50 languages, the company says.
“We
work hard to keep Facebook safe and to prevent people from using our
tools to spread hate or incite violence,” the spokeswoman said. The
company engages with academics and civil society groups to “better
understand local issues and context so we can take more effective action
against bad actors on Facebook,” she added.
But
Libyans are adept at circumventing such controls. Users often take
screenshots of contentious posts, and redistribute them as images if the
original text is removed by Facebook’s moderators.
Although Facebook prohibits firearms trading
between individuals, numerous pages present themselves as online
weapons bazaars. On the page “Libya’s Weapons Market,” sellers advertise
machine guns, antiaircraft guns and artillery shells. Last month, for
instance, one user posted an image of a Russian PM machine gun. “Message me if you are serious about purchasing,” the message said.
On
Monday, Facebook said it had removed those posts, as well as two other
pages cited by The New York Times that advertised the services of human
traffickers sending illegal migrants by boat to Europe. “We are
investigating to understand why we didn’t take action sooner,” the
spokeswoman said.
Facebook has
developed tools that scan for prohibited content, which human moderators
can then remove. These programs flagged 85 percent of the “violent
content” that was removed or given a warning label in the first three
months of 2018, the spokeswoman said. But the programs struggle to
identify subtler violations such as hate speech or violent threats,
which are mostly reported by everyday users. This can make removal slow,
particularly in areas where locals may be less inclined to report the
posts.
In 2011, Facebook reflected
the “extraordinary” opening up of Libyan society after four decades of
dictatorship under Colonel Qaddafi, said Mary Fitzgerald, an independent
researcher on Libya. ”Everyone was on Facebook. There was a very
rambunctious conversation, and a lot of debate.”
But
as the years went on, the people driving the conflict began to “talk
about how social media is one of their most important weapons,” she
said. That bred a deep ambivalence among many Libyans toward the media
they consume so voraciously.
“So many
times over the past seven years,” she added, “I heard people say that
if we could just shut down Facebook for a day, half of the country’s
problems would be solved.”
Follow Declan Walsh on Twitter: @declanwalsh.
Declan Walsh reported from Cairo, and Suliman Ali Zway from Berlin. Max Fisher contributed reporting from London.
Declan Walsh reported from Cairo, and Suliman Ali Zway from Berlin. Max Fisher contributed reporting from London.
A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Libyan Fighters Wield Facebook Like a Weapon. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
Libyan Factions Agree to Elections Despite Deep Divisions
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PARIS
— The leaders of rival Libyan factions agreed Tuesday to work together
on a legal framework for holding presidential and parliamentary
elections this December in a deal being pushed by France’s president to
bring stability to Libya and stem the flow of migrants to Europe from
its shores.
It was latest of numerous
international efforts to find a political solution to the chaos
plaguing Libya since the ouster of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi in 2011. But
analysts said the election timetable was extremely optimistic and that
the agreement, as with previous efforts, risked being undermined by
opposition from armed groups on the ground.
Under the terms of the agreement,
the Libyan leaders will set election rules by mid-September, hold the
vote on Dec. 10 and ensure that voters and candidates will be safe. The
leaders also agreed to eventually streamline their parallel government
structures and merge their armed forces and other security entities.
Power
in Libya is divided between two rival governments, in the east and west
of the country, and a plethora of armed groups that pledge allegiance
to either administration, or none.
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President
Emmanuel Macron of France described the agreement as “historic” and
essential to the “security and stability of the Libyan people.” The
French president has tried to carve out a role for himself as a mediator
in the Middle East and a proponent of multilateral agreements.
Getting
the leaders in the same room was an achievement, analysts said, but
translating that into concrete efforts to rein in armed groups and
stabilize the country remains a daunting task.
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In
a sign of the difficulties ahead, none of the leaders in Paris signed
Tuesday’s agreement. When asked about it, Mr. Macron said the leaders
wanted to discuss it with their supporters back home. But then he cut
through the diplomatic language to acknowledge a larger issue.
“You
have here the presidents of institutions that do not recognize each
other,” Mr. Macron said. “Each and every one denied the existence of the
institutions that the others represented and their legitimacy. That is
the difficulty of Libya’s current situation over the past months.”
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The
factional leaders in Paris included Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj of
the United Nations-backed unity government in Tripoli; Gen. Khalifa Hifter,
whose forces control much of the country’s east; Khalid Mishri, the
newly elected head of the High Council of State, which is an advisory
body to the Government of National Accord led by Mr. Sarraj; and Aguila
Saleh Issa, the speaker of the Tobruk-based House of Representatives.
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United
Nations officials — who have been working with a wider group on a plan
to adopt a new constitution, call elections and bring stability — also
participated in the Paris meeting, as did representatives of 20
countries, including Libya’s neighbors and regional and Western powers.
“Today’s
meeting was inclusive,” said Dorothée Schmid, who leads the Middle East
and North Africa section of the French Institute for International
Relations. “France is backing the U.N. process, and that is progress,”
she said, noting that when Mr. Macron began his effort on Libya last
year, he was not working with other countries and organizations.
A report
issued this week by the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based
research organization, pointed to the difficulties in bringing the
Libyan factions together.
“Libya
remains a fragmented polity with multiple potential spoilers,” it said.
“These four individuals do not capture the ideological, tribal and
political rifts that run through the country, and indeed have done much
to deepen them.”
Claudia Gazzini, who
studies Libya for the International Crisis Group, noted that the Libyan
Constitution did not include the post of president, and that a new
constitution had not yet been put to a referendum. So a Dec. 10 date for
elections, she said, could be contentious.
“We will have to see what the constituencies say,” Ms. Gazzini said.
A
faction from Misurata in western Libya declined an invitation to the
Paris meeting, saying it was not being treated in the same way as other
delegations.
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France
and other European countries want to stabilize Libya to stem the flow
of migrants leaving Libya’s shores for Europe. Libyan seaports near
Tripoli are just 180 miles from the Italian island of Lampedusa. While
the flow of migrants has slowed over the past couple of years, thousands
still make it to Europe through dangerous smuggling networks.
The
United States has taken a back-seat role in Libya’s political process
in recent years, concentrating instead on counterterrorism operations
against militants from the Islamic State and other extremist groups. In
2016 the United States conducted nearly 500 airstrikes on the coastal
city of Surt as part of a Libyan-led military operation that ousted the
Islamic State from the city.
Under
the Trump administration, the United States has carried out at least
nine airstrikes on targets in the country’s lawless southern deserts.
Declan Walsh contributed reporting from Cairo.
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