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By Jamal Adel.
Tripoli, 26 November 2013:
Media reports that a Tebu militia is the latest to hand over its base by vacating . . .[restrict]the massive Wegh airbase in southwest Libya are untrue, a senior Tebu military figure has told the Libya Herald.
“We would be willing to hand over the massive, strategic airbase to the army but only if the government is willing to pay genuine attention to our terms and conditions,” said Barka Wardoku, the head of the Murzuk Military Council and a member of the Committee Monitoring the Southern Frontier.
“We seriously want to integrate into the army but the government had not yet offered up a realistic plan,” he said, adding: “We’ve already pulled back from Murzuk towards the frontiers – to Wegh, Wawannus and Al-Tum.”
Wardoku also claimed that none of his forces had ever been paid or given clear-cut instructions for them to give up their role and their weapons.
He accused the government of ignoring Tebus who had played a major part in the revolution.
“We’ve been excluded from rebuilding the country,” he said. “Worst of all, we’ve been portrayed as wild, unwanted, vicious and ungrateful militiamen. But it is the government that is reluctant to integrate us. Instead, it is strengthening regionally and ideologically based militias.”
Wardoku insisted that there were only two brigades in the region that could be considered legitimate revolutionaries: the Desert Shield, which he founded, and the Oum Al-Aranib, founded by Sharfadeen Barka. The latter was the first revolutionary brigade in the whole south, founded in August 2011, he said.
True revolutionaries all over the country were being largely forgotten by the authorities, he complained. Instead, new militias, “with a variety of unpatriotic agendas” were taking over the political scene in Libya.
He said that he and Barka had sent “a thousand letters, if not more” to the previous and the present governments detailing the difficulties they had to face – illegal immigration and drugs mafias who were now widely active on the Libyan-Algerian and Libyan-Nigerean borders.
For his part, Sharfadeen Barka said that he would not be giving up the Al-Tum military compound close to the Nigerean border because the country was in a state of absolute chaos.
“We, as true revolutionaries, want to preserve the whole frontier intact and confront any outside threat,” he said. “Besides, we haven’t seen any genuine intention on the part of the government to integrate us into the national army.”
Members of the army who were in the base, he added, were also fed up with the government’s neglect of the region which, he claimed, was deliberate.
He too spoke of being left to deal with the problems of illegal immigration. “We’ve caught more that 23,000 people from all over Africa,” he recounted. Keeping them alive, housed and fed was a massive challenge.
He added that his forces had captured large quantities of smuggled alcohol and drugs. He said he wanted the Libyan and international press to come and see it being destroyed. [/restrict]
