Tripoli was the scene of massive bloodshed on Friday when militias from Misrata, 200km to the east, opened fire on demonstrators protesting against the proliferation of militias in the capital. According to official Libyan Ministry of Health figures cited by the interim government in a press conference on Sunday, 48 civilians were killed and more than 460 were wounded in the carnage. In response to a call by Al-Sadat Al-Badri, chairman of the Tripoli municipal assembly, thousands of peaceful demonstrators converged in the city's central squares to demand the departure of the militias that have been running rampant in the capital. Libyan news sources have reported that more than 27 militia groups now operate in various parts of the city and that the conflicts between them, which are shaped by different political, tribal and regional affiliations, have steadily increased since the fall of the Gaddafi regime in October 2011. The tragedy that occurred in Tripoli on Friday is not the first of its kind in Libya, even if it has set a precedent in terms of the numbers of civilian casualties. A similar incident occurred in Benghazi in June in front of the headquarters of the Libyan Shield militia, which Libyans charge is also affiliated to another group in Misrata that is said to operate seven militia regiments deployed in many other parts of the country. More than 30 people died in the Benghazi bloodshed perpetrated by this militia against demonstrators who were also protesting against the proliferation of militias and militia violence. The repercussions of the massacre on Friday were greater than those of the Black Saturday killings in Benghazi, however, As Tripoli is the capital, rivalries between the militias there are more intense, and the Misrata militia and another from Zintan have divided control over districts in the east and west of the capital. In its first official reaction, the Libyan interim government called on all militia groups to leave the capital and to remain outside of residential boundaries so as to avert any repetition of clashes with civilians such as those that had occurred on Friday and again on Saturday. In a press conference on Sunday, Prime Minister Ali Zeidan said that he had contacted all militia units in the capital to notify them of resolutions 27 and 52 adopted by the General National Council (GNC), which were intended to rid the capital of all manifestations of armed groups and militia activity. He pledged that within a few days Tripoli would be free of all manifestations of armed organisations apart from the official police and the army. The Misrata-based Nusur (Eagles) militia, which opened fire on demonstrators on Friday, has charged that certain parties in the capital, especially Al-Badri, have been bent on fuelling latent civil discord on the basis of regional or other affiliations. The militia has complained that it has been singled out among all the other militia groups in the capital as the target of the demonstrations. Demonstrators had not gone near the areas controlled by the Zintan militias, for example, it said. Sources in the Libyan capital who spoke to Al-Ahram Weekly on condition of anonymity in view of the sensitivity of the situation, also suggested that the Nusur militia had not been the intended target of the anti-militia demonstrations. The Nusur had lost their leader in skirmishes with another militia in the Friday Market area of the capital, which was near the area where last Friday's massacre occurred. According to these sources, the person who had called for the Friday demonstrations had had as his first target for expulsion from the capital the Qaaqaa militia that hails from Zintan and that is the Misrata militia's strongest and foremost rival. The sources also charged that certain Islamist parties had been behind the tragedy on Friday. These parties had had a different militia in mind when the call for demonstrations had been initiated, but they had been compelled to bow to the will of the demonstrators, who contrary to their expectations had marched against a militia that was allied with the Islamists. Official statements with regard to the arrangements that will be put into effect in the wake of last Friday and Saturday's violence have been conflicting. Some officials have stated that the government will authorise the Libyan Shield forces to take over the areas that had been controlled by the Nusur militia in Gharghur, while others have denied this and said that the government has yet to decide who will guard the area where the Friday events took place. On Sunday, the Ministry of Defence announced that army and police regiments would be assigned the task. Gharghur, where the recent events took place, is an upscale neighbourhood in the Libyan capital noted for its modern and luxurious apartment blocks and villas that were built by foreign firms for foreign employees in the petroleum sector in Libya. The Gaddafi family and its close associates also owned villas and mansions in this district, which were taken over by the Misrata militias after the capital was liberated. Some Libyans believe that the reason why the Misrata militias are so adamant in their refusal to leave the district is that they regard the elegant properties that they have seized there to be spoils of war that they earned through the battle to liberate the capital. When they first entered the capital during the revolution, the Misrata militias seized the famous statue of a fist grabbing a jet fighter that had been commissioned by Gaddafi to commemorate his victory against the US airstrike against the capital in 1986. In like manner, the Misrata militias' rivals from Zintan took as one of their spoils of war an elephant from Gaddafi's son Seif Al-Islam's private zoo. Al-Taher Pasha, the commander of the militia that opened fire on the peaceful protesters, issued a defiant statement on one of the Libyan TV channels. “Tripoli has not seen war yet,” he declared, vowing that the Misrata militias would not leave the capital until after the country's new constitution had been drafted and ratified, even if it cost them their lives. This threat naturally sent ripples of fear through the capital. The anxieties would not have been relieved by the attempts to restore calm because even if some officials succeeded in persuading the municipal, military and shura councils in Misrata of the need to withdraw their militias from Tripoli, the Misrata municipal council moved to freeze the membership of their representatives in the Zeidan government and the GNC until a solution was reached to the problem. Unfortunately, this problem has grown more acute and intractable than ever. One reason is that the locus of the problem in western Libya is also the scene of no fewer than eight tribal conflicts, most of them opposed to Misrata due to resentments and accusations related to Misrata's growing influence and clout in the post-Gaddafi period. Another reason is that the Libyan government is weak and unable to curb the deterioration in the state of security in the country.
