How can a young Libyan woman convince armed militia members to stop fighting?

PART ONE

How can she help other women grab opportunities that weren’t there before the war?

And why is political apathy in Europe causing mayhem in Libya?

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28-year-old Asma Khalifa, a young Libyan feminist, answers these and other questions. Just like Rida Al Tubuly, She is one of the courageous Libyan activists supported by Cordaid’s Women and Youth as Bridge builders program. We’re proud to share the portrait of a sharp and disarmingly open young leader. “I say no to your assumptions, no to your judgements, no to war, no to violence. That’s what I stand for.”

Asma Khalifa is an Amazigh, one of Libya’s ethnic minorities. “An oddity in Arab dominated Libya”, she says. By the age of 16 she took care of herself and raised her own income. “To free myself from my father, who was a dominant and abusive patriarch”, she explains.

I will still be an activist when my hair has turned completely white.’

Early on in the war, in 2011, after she volunteered as a field nurse and saw the atrocities committed by all sides, she joined civil society initiatives that promoted women’s and youth’s rights. In 2015 she co-founded Tamazight Women Movement. It was the first indigenous women’s movement in Libya. It still is one of the few feminist organisations in the country. She lived in Tripoli when it was besieged and bombed by NATO forces for 8 months. “Yes, I survived that”, she says with a faint smile.

What is your activism about?

It’s about resisting, about saying ‘no’. No to violence, no to war, no to exclusion, no to assumptions. It’s very much inspired by the Suffragette movement. I read about the suffragettes as a young teenager in the school library – in many ways I was raised by books, more than by my parents. The Suffragettes were both upper-class women and factory workers who joined hands. Women who, more than a century ago, couldn’t take the injustices anymore and said ‘no’. Who took responsibility for their actions, never gave up and went to prison for what they believed in.

What is it that you are saying ‘no’ to?

Mainly war. As a teenager I read a lot of books about the second world war. I had the image of war as dead bodies, loss of life, destruction. And it is all that. But no one ever speaks about the people who survive it.

The ones who continue to love, marry, have children. Those who lose trust in each other, are torn apart, never feel safe. The ones who are not at home any longer. The children who pick up arms and kill. All these human beings and their experiences are not talked about.

So, my resistance to war is not just resistance to destruction and killing. It is still trying to build up things, amid destruction and loss, that make life continue. Because life does continue. Even when we know the next neighbourhood in Tripoli could be bombed any time, we still go out and meet for coffee and pancakes. Or we watch a movie and turn up the volume to drown out the sounds of the blasts outside.

I want to resist war deeply. I seek structural transformation that creates societal structures that do not actively exclude certain groups, like women, indigenous people, people of colour. They live in oppressive structures.

If we remove active warfare, but the structures that are anti-women, anti-indigenous people, anti-people of colour remain, then to me we haven’t stopped war. You just press the snooze button on a ticking bomb.

Have structures in Libya changed because of the conflict?

Very much. Not to compliment war, but one of its effects is that it enables women. You do lose your partner, your son, your father, your husband and at the end you need to rely on yourself.

I see that now in Libya. I see more boldness, more women taking charge. They are not protected and shielded anymore. War exposed that. Not war itself is creating opportunities, but the lack of system, caused by war.

Life does continue. We watch a movie and turn up the volume to drown out the sounds of the blasts outside.’

But maybe people are not aware of it. Just like during and after WW1 and WW2 in Europe. These wars massively impacted the social structures. Women went out, joined the labour forces, even the military.

But society still thought that a woman was this feminine delicate thing that should be a reproduction tool and return to the kitchen. In the case of today’s Libya, I want people to be aware that things are never going to be the same anymore.

Is this also the message you share with women in Libya?

Yes, I bring this in wherever I go. I always tell them things are never going to be the same. This is our opportunity. In terms of civil society activism, we did not inherit much from the 40 years of Qaddafi regime.

We lived in an artificial state. Now the structure of the dictatorship is gone, new structures are very weak. This is the opportunity for us, civil society, to build something.

What are the main opportunities for women in war-torn Libya?

To be able to implement without having anyone oppressing us. Of course, we have the militias, the violence and the targeting to deal with. But in a way, as women we have opportunities. Men take us lightly.

They don’t think of us as serious. When we’re implementing projects they probably think we’re dealing with women’s health care – not that that is not an important topic. Them taking us lightly is very stupid, but it’s a huge advantage.

We are challenging their ideas of war. I ask them ‘What are you going to do after the war? Even if by then you are 30, 40, 50, 60?’

Don’t get me wrong, I do see the effect of war on young people and women. I see them fed up with war, up to a point that the suicide rate among women has gone up. I see the restrictions of movement forced upon women because of the war, the constant fear something will happen to you or, worse, your loved ones.

But I also see more and more women who become entrepreneurs. They create businesses, jobs, stimulate commerce. In catering, in the healthcare sector, as hair dressers, as interpreters, as consultants. They contribute to society with their own money.

One woman started as a hair dresser in Tripoli. Now she has a chain of these shops all over Libya. She was able to finance the rebuilding of an entire hospital surgery section in Tripoli. They are not just empowering themselves, they contribute socially.

As economic structures have collapsed in Libya, women and young people are creating a parallel informal economic structure. And they are doing that on a much bigger scale than before the war.

How do you resist the war, I mean the actual warfare?

I work on so many programs of non-violence, with many other civil society activists. I put a lot of emphasis on disarmament. But you need to work on different things at the same time. You can’t work on one thing and wait for the other to be resolved, because issues and root causes are connected.

Allowing armed militia’s to participate politically is giving them an opportunity to stop using violence.’

What we are seeing now, especially in the western part of Libya, is a military fatigue among young men and armed groups. They have lost many of their friends and see the political process going nowhere. Young men still pick up arms and join militias, but they are less willing to fight. In a way, this is what I try to encourage, with the ones who are willing to listen and to talk to me. In many of our civil society projects we invite young members of the militias. They help us in discussing how integration of militia members into society after leaving the armed struggle can be done. A lot of them don’t want to leave the militias, especially the heads, the older ones, because they feel responsible for the younger ones. They don’t want to have them sucked up by another bigger militia that would abuse them in a worse way.

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