Ruined Libya town shows danger of post-war vendetta | Reuters

"(Reuters) - Cast out of his home and with nowhere left to flee, Aboulharef al-Tawarghy laughs when he thinks of the Libyan fighters who toppled Muammar Gaddafi calling for freedom and justice.

"Their words are just ink on paper. I haven't seen any action," the 29-year-old electronics dealer said as he sat near a mosque in the embattled city of Sirte, where scores of men, women and children who fled their home town of Tawargha have found a precarious refuge.

The families could not go home, they said, out of fear of reprisal attacks by anti-Gaddafi fighters from nearby Misrata who have accused them of harbouring the ousted leader's troops and committing atrocities during a brutal, months-long siege.

Tawargha, once home to thousands of people, is now almost entirely deserted, its windows smashed, its stores looted and its walls speckled with gunfire. Its inhabitants have scattered across Libya, many to cities such as Benghazi and Tripoli.

The fate of the town, about 40 km (25 miles) from Misrata, has posed a disquieting challenge for Libya's new leaders in the interim National Transitional Council NTC.L as they try to reunify the war-scarred country and impose the rule of law.

Adding to the issue's sensitivity, Tawargha's residents are overwhelmingly black, a legacy of the town's history as a transit point in the 19th-century slave trade, locals say.

Many young fighters have treated dark-skinned people with suspicion during the revolt because of reports Gaddafi hired mercenaries from sub-Saharan Africa, but the feud between Tawargha and Misrata appears to be about more than just race.

The NTC's handling of the crisis will test its ability to rein in Libya's many largely independent militias and prevent reprisals that could fuel bloodshed and recrimination.

"Those who committed crimes should be brought to justice, but it's important not to generalise," NTC spokesman Jalal al-Gallal said, adding that the council favoured the return of Tawargha's residents, but that this would take time.

"At the moment it's a very, very sensitive topic," Gallal said. "The Misratans are still simmering."

REPRISALS

The derogatory graffiti covering Tawargha's walls makes it clear where many local fighters stand on the question of return.

"Tawargha, you dogs, 3,000 km this way," reads one message spray-painted on a road sign, beside an arrow pointing south into the Sahara desert. "Formerly Tawargha," says another.

Many of Tawargha's erstwhile residents say they see little hope of returning home, partly because their dark skin makes them obvious targets for vengeful fighters in the area.

"It's about the colour of the skin. That's why they have problems with Tawargha," Samia Taher, a light-skinned Libyan woman born in Illinois who married into a Tawargha family, said as she rested near the mosque where families sheltered, a couple of km (miles) from the heart of Sirte, besieged by NTC forces.

She was interrupted by a burst of tank fire from a nearby hill. Women in brightly-coloured headscarves gasped and children flinched as the boom echoed through the lot, where mattresses and blankets were piled up and men rested in the shade.

"I just want to get the family out of here. We're in the middle of a battle here in Sirte," Taher, speaking in American-accented English, said of the struggle for Gaddafi's birthplace.

Many NTC fighters deny their feud with Tawargha is about race. But they are openly hostile toward the town, which they say supported Gaddafi in return for money and services.

Even before the war, Misrata residents disparaged Tawargha, calling its young people criminals and drug addicts, or accusing its menfolk of marrying often and working little.

Scorn turned to outright hostility after Gaddafi's forces assaulted Misrata with rockets, snipers and artillery to try to quash the uprising there in February, using Tawargha as a staging ground for a siege that killed more than 1,000 people.

With the help of NATO air strikes, anti-Gaddafi rebels were able to break the siege and take control of Tawargha. The charred husks of tanks, unexploded rockets and bullet casings on the outskirts of the town testify to the battle's ferocity.

Many in Misrata accuse men from Tawargha of looting homes and raping women in Misrata during the siege, claims that are impossible to confirm, but display the depth of their enmity.

As evidence, one resident offered a cell phone video he said was found on a slain Gaddafi soldier. It showed scores of black men in green military jackets with assault rifles marching down a tree-lined road he said led from Tawargha to Misrata.

NO RETURN IN SIGHT

Tawarghy and other residents admit that support for Gaddafi ran strong in their town, but are quick to add that this does not justify demonising and punishing an entire community.

Some of those who have taken refuge in cities along the Mediterranean coast say their homes in Tawargha have been burned and that relatives or neighbours have been abducted or attacked.

The group of about 135 sheltering near Sirte ricocheted for months from town to town in search of a haven, only to end up in the crossfire of one of the civil war's last battles.

"It's all very tragic. We lack security and safety, and we have to worry about food," Tawarghy -- the name he gave meaning one from Tawargha -- said. "All this and you're calling for freedom? What kind of freedom are you seeking?"

Gallal, the NTC spokesman, said he expected residents who had not committed crimes to return to their homes eventually.

"The other solution would be mass relocation of people. That's hardly an ideal solution. Things are tense at the moment, but I think in time they will fall into place," he said.

Any such restitution is sure to be complicated. Much of Tawargha is in ruins. The charred skeletons of cars, busted electronics and garbage cover the streets between bullet-scarred apartment blocks. Goats and camels wander amid the wreckage.

Green flags, a symbol of support for Gaddafi, still flutter over many buildings, more than a month after the deposed leader's forces were pushed out of the capital, Tripoli.

Despite NTC assurances, many in Misrata say it would only lead to more violence if Tawargha's residents were allowed to return, even if some were innocent. The crimes against Misrata were just too many and too heinous, they say.

"To avoid the recurrence of any future problems, we should separate the two groups," said a Misrata man named Saleh as he stood near a Tawargha apartment block being used as temporary shelter for non-Tawargha families fleeing fighting in Sirte.

"They should be compensated for their land and houses, and they should find a new area to live elsewhere."

A man standing nearby echoed that view. "Even if someone didn't do anything, his nephew or his cousin might have. Maybe 95 percent of people in Tawargha supported Gaddafi," he said. "It's better if they find somewhere else, far from Misrata.""

The slaughter of civilians, the bombing, shelling and misslie attacks on civilian occupied areas, by the crusader coalition and the TNC terrorists, areas continue.

The UNSC version of humanitarian aid. State sponsored ethnic cleansing and genocide supported by the crusader coalition.