“A disaster caused by man.” While the death toll from the apocalypse in Derna continues to rise – with some sources predicting up to 20 thousand deaths – Libyan analysts point the finger at the incompetence and delays that would have amplified the numbers of the tragedy caused by the passage of storm Daniel on north-eastern Libya. Unlike Morocco, devastated last Friday by a powerful earthquake, “this disaster – denounced Anas el Gomati, director of the Sadeq Institute, a think tank in Tripoli – was written by man, who has blood on his hands”.
“Libya, even when approached from its most advanced cities like Tripoli or Benghazi, is not equipped” for natural disasters, said Jalel Harchaoui, an associate researcher specializing in Libya at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London, adding that the situation is aggravated by the fact that the floods hit the “most neglected municipality” (Derna) in Cyrenaica. Even after General Khalifa Haftar regained control of the city in 2018, which had been an ISIS stronghold for four years, reconstruction plans were never followed up and the infrastructure remained in ruins.
According to Gomati, among other things, the problems go beyond the political divisions between East and West, with one government in Benghazi and one in Tripoli, and point to the total unpreparedness of Cyrenaica. Not to mention, some Libyan sources tell Adnkronos, that the event would have been underestimated to the point that Haftar would have blocked the evacuation of Derna.
The day before Storm Daniel arrived, the office of the head of the eastern government, Osama Hamad, issued a warning to citizens of Derna and nearby cities, something it had done three days earlier, on September 9, also the Ministry of the Interior of Abdul Hamid Dbeibah’s government of national unity. But according to Osama Aly, spokesperson for the emergency service in Libya, it would not have been sufficient and there would have been negligence on the part of the authorities in preparing the response. “The weather conditions were not assessed well – Aly told CNN – The families who were along the path of the storm were not evacuated”.
Derna’s violent past and difficult relationship with Haftar’s administration have worsened the disaster, Harchaoui said, saying authorities had made “serious miscalculations” in responding to the crisis. Errors that the spokesman of the Libyan National Army (LNA), General Ahmed al-Mismari, denied: ever since the arrival of the storm was reported, “we have been ready to limit losses as much as possible”. Among other things, the LNA men themselves, missing and dozens dead, were victims of the floods, a complaint to Mismari, which speaks of a minimal response from Tripoli.
But analysts and aid workers from the East are throwing their accusations back at the government. What happened is the result of “the incompetence of these individuals, these political elites, who are responsible for clinging to power instead of giving Libyans the right to vote for the last ten years,” accused Gomati.
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