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In 2010, a plane travelling from South Africa to Tripoli crashed in Libya, leaving a sole survivor in the form of nine-year-old Ruben van Assouw. A total of 103 passengers and crew members, including Ruben's mother, father and older brother, died in the crash. Ruben was found half a mile away, semi-conscious and still strapped into his aeroplane seat.

n New York, the tragedy hit writer Ann Napolitano particularly hard. With two sons (aged one and three) of her own, she began to "obsess" over the story, and in particular Ruben's experience of losing his parents and brother.

"Part of it obsessed me immediately and my sticky writer's interest," Napolitano recalls. "I couldn't read enough about it."

One aspect of the scenario fascinated Napolitano in particular. In 2010, social media was in its infancy, and the aftermath of the crash played out on Facebook and Twitter in ways she had never witnessed before.

"When I was reading everything I could about the crash, that included young girls posting up Facebook pages about how cute he was and how sad they were for him," she recalls. "Elsewhere, aviation aficionados were speculating on how the plane might have crashed, because (authorities) hadn't released this information.

"For the first time, there was this massive event, and it wasn't just journalists reporting on it," she adds. "There was a picture of (Ruben) in the media in his hospital bed, and he was so beautiful and small and broken. How was he going to get out of that hospital bed without his mom and dad and brother, and possibly create his own life?"

The question formed the backbone for Napolitano's third novel, Dear Edward. Here, 12-year-old Edward is the sole survivor of a flight from New York to Los Angeles, where he is relocating with his mother, father and older brother Jordan.

After being discharged from hospital after the plane crash, he is adopted by his sole surviving blood relative, his aunt Lacey, and her husband John. They are weathering their own personal problems, but now have to not only help Edward through his physical and emotional recovery, but shield him from the world's considerable attention.

Edward finds a friend in his new next-door neighbour, a young girl named Shay. One day, he discovers a large bag of letters written to him by the loved ones of those who did not survive that fateful crash.

Ruben van Assouw's new family have done such a stellar job of protecting his privacy that Napolitano never found out much about the fate of the youngster, now 19.

"I needed to know that he was okay, but of course there was no way for me to know that, so for me to believe that somehow the boy was okay, I had to create a set of fictional circumstances. When I started writing the story, my boys were at that toddler age - they don't know who they are, but they were completely devoted to each other and deeply in love since I brought the second one home," Napolitano adds.

"I would have assumed that for a boy like Edward, the loss of his parents would be the greatest loss, but then I started to think that the greatest loss for one of my boys would be if I separated them. You're not supposed to be separated from your sibling. You grow up and move apart from your parents, but the love you have for a sibling bakes itself into you."

In writing the novel, Napolitano has spent much of the past 10 years researching aviation science, not to mention similar tragedies. She read extensively to create the other passengers on the flight, from an ailing billionaire octogenarian to a soldier recently returned from service. Napolitano was keen, too, not to sensationalise the tragedy, and has written about the crash and its aftermath in a measured, wholly affecting way.

"To do otherwise would simply have been disrespectful to those who had gone through a similar situation," she admits. "The pressure I put on myself in that regard was immense."

Dear Edward shot to Number 2 in the Hardcover Fiction category of the New York Times' bestseller list last month, and has become a word-of-mouth sensation. Closer to home, the book has been blurbed effusively by John Boyne and Emma Donoghue, and has been compared to the latter's novel, Room.

"I feel very grateful when writers you really respect even take the time to read it, let alone say nice things," Napolitano notes. "(Boyne's) The Heart's Invisible Furies is one of my all-time favourites, and for people to relate the book to Room that's a real case of 'I'm Done'. Nothing else I could do would possibly top it."

As to how it feels to have a potential global hit on her hands, as predicted by many in the business, Napolitano adds: "Mostly, it's interesting. I feel like I'm playing the role of an author that everyone's excited about. But I can feel that the book has a longer life in front of it than some other books might have. It's not a role I thought I'd play, so I'm curious about it."

Several interested parties have expressed a desire to option Dear Edward for the screen, and now the latest word is that it could soon be made into a TV series.

For now, Napolitano is readying herself to write Dear Edward's follow-up, after letting new characters percolate inside her head for the past year.

"Edward and Shay will be in the next book, too, although it's 10 years later and a much different story," Napolitano explains.

"I'll have to start writing soon. I write for my mental health mainly. It's just part of who I am, so I have to do it to be myself," she adds.

Dear Edward by Ann Napolitano and published by Penguin Random House is out now

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Libyan air crash: 'There was a picture of Ruben in his hospital bed. He was so beautiful and small and broken' - Belfast Telegraph

Progress has been made on many important issues and we have before us a significant number of points of convergence, said the head of the UN Support Mission in Libya, UNSMIL. Is this complete? Certainly not, and that is why we are still working on refining our basic draft and on bridging the gap on a few points of divergencethat still exist between the two delegations.

The talks in the Swiss city form part of a renewed international push for peace in the oil-rich North African country.

In early January, Russian and Turkish Presidents Vladmir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan secured a truce agreement between the UN-recognized Government of National Accord (GNA) and the self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA) - led by commander Khalifa Haftar, who laid siege to Tripoli last April.

Although the truce had been accepted by both sides, Mr. Salam noted earlier in the week that an international arms embargo on Libya has been broken incessantly since 2011, with evidence of increasing foreign interference in the form of weapons and fighters.

During these talks, the negotiators would be certainly helped by more calm on the fronts and by the absence of any act - provocative act - on the military side, the UN official said on Thursday, in reference to ongoing clashes.

While remaining positive about the meetings this week, which precedes separate discussions on the economic aspects of the ceasefire, due to begin on 9 February in Cairo, with political talks on 26 February - also at the UN in Geneva - Mr Salam spoke frankly about the number of difficult issues facing both delegations.

What do you do with the heavy weaponry? How (best) to allow the internally displaced persons to go back to their homes? How to re-civilianize the areas that have been basically a theatre of war? How do you deal with the armed groups, the monitoring of the ceasefire; who should monitor the ceasefire?

Although the ongoing ceasefire talks have not taken place face-to-face so far, this is the least of Mr. Salam concerns, he insisted.

I didnt come to Geneva for a photo opportunity of two people shaking hands, thats not my objective. My goal is to reach an agreement. And if it turns out that it is easier to do this by shuttling between the two (delegations), I have no problem with that. The important thing is the agreement.

UNSMIL on Thursday condemned the destruction of theZawit Bin Issa Sufi shrine,in the city of Sirte, which reportedly took place on Tuesday,as well asthe reported arrest ofa number of Sufis in Sirte.

According to some news reports, the destruction was carried out by members of an armed group who partly demolished the building, reportedly founded in 1930. Sufism is a branch of Islam, rooting in mysticism.

In a statement, theMission recalledthat "the incidents appear to violate the right to freedom of religion or belief and the rightnot to be subjected to arbitrary arrest and detention.

"The destruction of religious shrines is also prohibited by international humanitarian law, and intentional attacks on religious monuments constitute war crimes. UNSMIL calls on the authorities, in control of the city of Sirte,to investigate and bring the perpetrators to justice."

Link:
'Convergence' over lasting Libya ceasefire, as negotiator urges against 'provocative' acts - UN News

In Abu Grein, on Libyas frontline, the militiamens scars read like a rollcall of the wars that have roiled the country since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. One of the fighters, a truck driver named Muhammad, removes his cap to reveal a balding pate etched with shrapnel gashes. From Daish, he says, referring to a 2016 battle he fought against Islamic State in the Libyan city of Sirte.

Now, he says, yet another foe has captured Sirte: rebel militias under the command of a 76-year-old aspiring strongman named Khalifa Haftar. Last Sunday, these militias attacked Muhammad and his men, killing 11 of them, ignoring a shaky truce in a long-running war that started last April with a blitz on the Libyan capital by Haftars forces.

Far from the quick victory Haftar promised, it has been a drawn-out slog that has left more than 2,000 dead

A former army general under Gaddafi who defected in the 1980s and became a CIA asset, Haftar launched his invasion of Tripoli after years of war in eastern Libya, where he built up power. In attacking the weak, internationally recognised Government of National Accord (GNA) in the capital, he claimed he was going to unify the country and put an end to militias. To be sure, the GNA has been unpopular due to its administrative ineptitude and deference to corrupt militias. But a promising UN-brokered process was underway to replace that government and address the militia menace before Haftars offensive scuttled it.

An abiding quest for power has fuelled Haftars rise. When I met him in 2014, he told me even then of his plans to invade Tripoli, promising to eliminate Islamists of all shades through imprisonment, exile or death. In pursuing his ambitions, he has deployed brutal tactics. In 2015, his allied militias in Benghazi admitted to me that they had carried out summary executions and stoked tribal divisions. One of his lieutenants faces a standing arrest warrant for war crimes; Haftar responded to this by promoting him.

The war he launched in Tripoli has caused misgivings among his supporters. Far from the quick victory he promised, it has been a drawn-out slog that has left more than 2,000 dead, including hundreds of civilians, and displaced hundreds of thousands. Most alarmingly, the conflict has drawn in outside powers who have sustained it with hi-tech weaponry all in contravention of a UN arms embargo.

On Haftars side is a bloc of authoritarian and anti-Islamist Arab states: the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. The Emirates role has been especially destructive its drones and fixed-wing aircraft have conducted hundreds of strikes, according to the United Nations, causing scores of civilian deaths. French support is also key. Driven by a misplaced zeal for Haftars virtues as a counterterrorist and stabiliser, Paris has been sending him clandestine military aid for several years.

Added to this are the hundreds of Russian mercenaries who arrived at the Tripoli front last September, helping Haftar break the stalemate. While Moscow is not firmly wedded to the general, its strategy seems to be to egg him on and then reel him in, in order to shape a settlement to its liking. But that has not gone entirely to plan; last month, he walked out of a ceasefire meeting convened by Moscow.

On the other side is Turkey, whose Islamist-led government has long been at odds with the Emirati-led bloc. Not long after Haftars attack, Turkey dispatched armed drones of its own to the GNA and in recent weeks it has sent thousands of Syrian mercenaries, along with Turkish intelligence personnel, air defence systems and artillery. But this came at a cost: Turkeys president, Recep Tayyip Erdoan, is providing this new round of aid only after signing an accord with the GNA that enables Turkey to extend its exclusive economic zone in the eastern Mediterranean.

A much-hyped international summit hosted by the German government took place earlier this month, but it failed to formalise a ceasefire Haftar effectively spurned the talks. And indeed, in recent days, emboldened by the increased flow of Emirati arms, he has effectively restarted the war, bombing Tripolis airport and civilian areas and blockading oil ports, which has caused production to drop dramatically and worsened the misery of Libyans. Its part of a creeping escalation that could embroil the capital in even more bloodshed.

Averting this catastrophe demands a greater role from the one power that might be able to rein in Haftar. Haftar will not accept a ceasefire unless America twists his ear, a GNA commander told me. That may well be right. Washington needs to jettison its tacit and sometimes explicit support for Haftar, epitomised in a phone call in April 2019 by Donald Trump to the general endorsing his attack on Tripoli.

While that enthusiasm has somewhat cooled because of Haftars alliance with the Russians, theres still more that the US can do, especially in areas where Washington has unique leverage. These include halting Haftars illegal effort to unilaterally sell oil on the global market, getting the Emirates to stop arming his forces, and backing a UN security council ceasefire resolution that would include strong provisions against embargo violators and human rights abusers.

In the meantime, its Libyans who suffer: from the constant fear of shelling or air strikes, 16-hour blackouts and the sense that their fates are being decided from abroad. Libyas like a cake, the mayor of Yefren, a town in Libyas western mountains, told me last month. Everybody wants a bite.

Frederic Wehrey is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and author of The Burning Shores: Inside the Battle for the New Libya

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Libyas bloodshed will continue unless foreign powers stop backing Khalifa Haftar - The Guardian

Italian anti-organised crime and special operations police units have seized a freighter and are investigating whether it was used for arms smuggling after a sailor offered information on the role he said the ship played in the illegal arms trade between Turkey and Libya, Italian newspaper Il Secolo XIX reported.

The Lebanese-registered BANA had stopped at the port of Messina in Genoa, northwest Italy, for technical checks when the 25-year-old sailor took images showing weapons that he said he had taken in the ships cargo hold, the newspaper said.

Turkey is the main backer of Libyas U.N.-recognised Government of National Accord, and its shipments of armoured vehicles and drones have helped the Tripoli-based government withstand an offensive launched last April by the eastern-based Libyan National Army (LNA).

Ankara signed a military memorandum agreeing to the deployment of Turkish troops to support Tripoli in November, and both the LNAs attacks and Turkish support have escalated since then.

The French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle spotted the BANA in late January headed toward Tripoli under escort by a Turkish frigate.

The United Nations imposed an arms embargo on Libya, which has seen a string of internal conflicts since its former dictator, Muammar Gadaffi, was overthrown in 2011.

Egypt has long accused Turkey of breaking the embargo, but the Egyptian-backed LNA has also received military support from Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Russia, according to reports.

Read the original here:
Italy seizes freighter accused of smuggling Turkish arms to Libya - Ahval

General Khalifa Haftar and his Libyan National Army (LNA) continue to partly encircle Libya's capital, Tripoli. Not only does the LNA threaten Tripoli, but it is within striking distance of Libya's third-largest city, Misrata. Both Tripoli and Misrata are in the hands of the Government of National Accord (GNA), which is backed by the United Nations and most strongly by Turkey. The second-largest city Benghazi is in the hands of Haftar's LNA. Haftar's LNA is backed by Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Russia. There has always been awhiff of suspicionthat Haftar himself is an old CIA asset having lived under the shadow of the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, for decades. What the NATO war on Libya did to that country is to turn it into a battlefield of other people's ambitions, to reduce Libya into a chessboard for a multidimensional game that is hard to explain and even harder to end.

LNA vs. GNA

On January 19, the United Nations and the German government held a conference in Berlin on the Libyan question. Curiously, the two belligerent parties from Libya were in Berlin but did not attend the conference. General Haftar of the LNA and Fayez Serraj of the GNA stayed in their hotels to be briefed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the UN representative on Libya Ghassan Salam. In 2012, the UN hadsaidthat no conference should be held that is not "inclusive" and does not have the stakeholders at the table. Nonetheless, the point of this exercise was not so much to create a deal within Libya as to stop the import of arms and logistics into Libya. "We commit to refraining from interference in the armed conflict or in the internal affairs of Libya,"agreedthe external parties, "and urge all international actors to do the same." External backers of each of the sides Egypt, France, Russia, Turkey, the United States were all signatories of this agreement. You can imagine that none of them will take it seriously.

Merkel hastened to Istanbul after the Berlin conference tosolidifythe pact she has made with Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdoan, who then flew to Algeria tosaythat he would not appreciate external intervention into Libya. It is not Erdoan alone who sounded bewildering all the other leaders who came to Berlin made similar remarks. You stay out of Libya, they said, but we will have to be involved in any way we think appropriate. Turkey has provided the GNA with arms and logistical assistance, and ithashelped bring a few hundred Syrian jihadis to Libya to assist the GNA-backed militias.

The UN released a statement recently with a clear indication that the deal is not worth its paper. "Over the last ten days," the UNnotes, "numerous cargo and other flights have been observed landing at Libyan airports in the western and eastern parts of the country providing the parties with advanced weapons, armoured vehicles, advisers and fighters." It does not name the countries that continue to violate the embargo, but everyone knows who they are.

Emboldened by his backers, Haftar's forces tested the GNA and its assorted militia groups in the outskirts of Misrata over the past few days. The LNA had taken up positions in al-Wishka, but they made a foray into Abu Grein, which is on the road to Misrata. The ceasefire that was supposed to be honored was violated, as the GNA Army's spokesperson Mohammed Gununusaidon Sunday. Haftar's spokesperson Ahmed al-Mismarisaidthat there is no political solution for Libya; the only solution is through "rifles and ammunition." It is a clear statement that this war is not going to be ended at the UN or in Berlin. It will have to end in Misrata and in Tripoli.

Turkey vs. Saudi Arabia

Several years ago, when it became clear that Libyans who were close to the Muslim Brotherhood might come to power, Saudi Arabia went to work against them. The Saudis have made it clear that they will not tolerate any more Muslim Brotherhood forces coming to power in North Africa or West Asia. The Saudi embargo on Qatar, the Saudi interference in Tunisia, the Saudi intervention in Egypt to remove the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohammed Morsi, and now the Saudi backing of Haftar provides a clear indication of the Saudi intention to rid the region of the Muslim Brotherhood. Turkey and Qatar have been the main sponsors of the Muslim Brotherhood; Saudi Arabia has dented Qatar's ambition, but it has not been able to tether Turkey. The war in Libya is apart from the clueless intervention of the Europeans a war between Saudi Arabia and Turkey, with Russia playing a curious role in between these powers.

Neither Saudi Arabia nor Turkey will relinquish their backing of the LNA and the GNA, respectively. No one makes any public noises about this, although everyone knows that it is these powers that are behind this horrendous new phase of the conflict ever since NATO entered Libya in 2011 and sent the country into a situation of permanent war. The UNhas donethe calculations. Since April, in Tripoli alone there are 220 schools closed and at least 116,000 children with no education. Schools, universities, hospitalsall working on reduced hours or closed.

Oil and refugees

Haftar made his move on Tripoli in April 2019. He felt that he not only had the backing of the most important powers, but that he had already taken charge of several oil fields and squeezed the Tripoli government. His rush to Tripoli, dramatic in the first few weeks, then stalled in the outskirts of the capital. He is obdurate, unconcerned that his war will simply continue the attrition of social life that had begun in the 1990s and accelerated after the NATO war in 2011.

On January 19, the LNA and its allies seized the Sharara and El Feel oil fields; both of them produce a third of Libya's oil, Sharara being the largest single field in this country. Oil production from Libya fell to less than 300,000 barrels per day from over a million barrels per day previous. The Libyan National Oil Company controlled by the government in Tripoli has now forced an embargo on oil exports from Libya. This is a blow to Europe, which relies on the sweet Libyan oil as much as it has relied upon Iranian and Russian energy sources both blocked by U.S.-driven sanctions.

European hypocrisy

Europe wants the oil but does not want the refugees. A UNreportwas recently released on the LNA's bombardment of a refugee detention center in Tajoura on July 2, 2019. That attack, by LNA aircraft, killed 53 migrants and refugees who had come from Algeria, Chad, Bangladesh, Morocco, Niger, and Tunisia. After the jet dropped its bombs on the Daman complex, there were "bodies everywhere, and body parts sticking out from under the rubble. Blood [was] all around." The migrants and refugees who survived remained in the complex. Four days later, they went on hunger strike. There have been several murders since July 2019, mainly of refugees shot by guards as they tried to leave the various detention centers that sit along the Libyan coastline and in Tripoli. There is no proper account of the total number of refugees and migrants in detention.

The European Union (EU) has been paying the Tripoli government and militia groups to hold these refugees and migrants in Libya rather than let them travel across the Mediterranean Sea. Europe has taken no responsibility for its role in the NATO war in 2011, which destabilized Libya; it has, instead, militarized the refugee crisis in Libya by using the militias. Operation Sophia of the EU brought European ships into the Mediterranean Sea to stop oil and refugee smuggling from Libya to Europe; there is now interest in restarting this policy. In Berlin, the EU's High Representative Josep BorrelltoldtheSddeutsche Zeitungthat "Libya is a cancer whose metastases have spread across the entire region." This is the attitude of Europe: how to contain the crisis and let it remain within the Libyan borders. It is a shocking statement.

I have no illness

In the midst of Libya's war against Italian colonialism a century ago, the poet Rajab Hamad Buhwaish al-Minifi wrote a poem"Ma Bi Marad" ("No Illness but This Place")about the torment of his society. This is a poem that is oftenrecited, never far from the lips of Libyans who know their long and difficult history. The line that repeats often in thepoem, "Ma bi marad ghair marad al-Egaila" ("I have no illness but this place of Egaila"), seems apt for Libya today, a people abandoned to this war that will never end, a people buried in oil and fear, a people who are in search of the home that has been taken from them.

The rest is here:
Why the war in Libya will never end - Salon