On 15 April, Middle East Eye published an article by Samira el-Saidi entitled ‘The armed militias bringing terror and turmoil to Libya's desert south’. In the article, Saidi looks into horrifying accounts of murder, torture, kidnapping, looting, and human trafficking in southern Libya. She speaks to local witnesses and survivours of the armed attacks, who point their fingers at the Janjaweed, the infamous Arab militias who came to prominence in Darfur in the early 2000s. According to the locals, the militias who helped eastern commander Khalifa Haftar capture key southern bases in 2017 ended up controlling an estimated 300 km stretch of territory from Sabha in the south to Jufra in central Libya. Saidi also examines the local resistance attempts targeting the Janjaweed and the Wagner Group mercenaries spread across the South, some of which have managed to ‘chase away some kidnapping and robbery gangs and have been able to liberate family members’.
Read the full article here.