Synopsis:

Libya was only ever associated with one face: Gaddafi’s. But in February 2011 it suddenly arrived on the world stage with many. 

Women played a key role in the Libyan revolution, initiating the first protests, lobbying, smuggling arms and cooking food on the frontlines. In the first national elections, women were voted in as key decision makers. However, after this hopeful first step, the country took a different path and women have now been squeezed out of the equation yet again. Civil war, on-going assassinations and the rising presence of war lords and extremism is not the Libya these women, or anyone, had fought for…

Freedom Fields is the story of three accidental activists and their team. The three women play for their country’s female football team. They are friends, coming from different social and political backgrounds, different tribes, different classes and living in an environment plagued by war, paranoia, social constraints and corruption. 

“Freedom Fields is a film about having the power to dream, to have a choice to carve your own future, against privilege, and to impact those around you, even if just for 90 minutes on a field.” – Naziha Arebi

Contreras travelled through the complex tribal society of post-Gaddafi Libya from February to June 2016, photographing the brutal reality of human trafficking. His photographs lay bare an unfolding humanitarian crisis in which migrants, refugees and asylum seekers are at the mercy of militias who exploit them for financial gain. Held in detention centres for illegal migrants, they are subjected to inhumane conditions including overcrowding, lack of sanitation and vicious beatings.

Throughout this report, Contreras weaves a compelling narrative to show how, instead of being a place of transit for migrants on their way to Europe, Libya has actually become a trafficking market where people are bought and sold on a daily basis.

The purpose of the Carmignac Photojournalism Award supports a photojournalist in undertaking a photographic and investigative assignment exploring zones where human rights and freedom of speech are violated. Endowed with 50,000 euros, the Carmignac Award logistically supports and enables the laureate to report on a selected theme, and funds a touring exhibition of the project and the publication of a monograph.

Chair:

Emeric Glayse was appointed Director of the Carmignac Photojournalism Award in 2015. Since joining the Fondation Carmignac, he has organized the exhibitions and published the books Blank pages of an Iranian photo album by Newsha Tavakolian (2015), Colony by Christophe Gin (2015) and Libya: A human marketplace by Narciso Contreras (2016) and he curated the Photojournalism Award Retrospective at the Saatchi Gallery (2016) – the most visited photojournalism exhibition in the world in 2016. This year, Glayse and the Fondation Carmignac took a particular attention within the frame of the 7th edition in order to ensure that, in collaboration with consultants and NGOs, all necessary tools are gathered to successfully carry out the investigation.

Speakers:

Narciso Contreras is an award winning documentary photographer born in Mexico City. Narciso’s work in Syria was awarded with one of the Pulitzer Prizes in 2013, and received recognition in Pictures of the Year International. He has contributed to magazines and media outlets around the globe including TIME magazine, The Guardian, The New York Times, Paris Match, RT TV, MSNBC News, AP Associated Press, Los Angeles Times, Foreign Policy, Der Spiegel, Newsweek, Al Jazeera, The Daily Beast, National Geographic, The Sunday Times magazine, The Telegraph, The Washington Post, CNN and many more.

Sir Richard John Dalton  was a senior member of the British Diplomatic Service until he retired in 2006. His assignments included British Ambassador to Libya and Iran. He was an Associate Fellow at Chatham House’s Middle East and North Africa Programme where he led from 2011 – 2014 on Libyan affairs. He is a regular commentator for UK and overseas media on Middle East issues.

Harriet Agerholm sat down with The Guardian‘s migration correspondent and author Patrick Kingsley to discuss his latest book, The New Odyssey: The Story of Europe’s Refugee Crisis.

Filmed and edited by Adam Barr.

The Hetherington family and the Tim Hetherington Trust invite friends, colleagues and everyone interested in Tim’s extraordinary life to spend an evening at The Frontline Club exploring his dynamic legacy through the work of artists and journalists who continue to expand his innovative approach to visual media. The evening will introduce new work by some familiar friends, as well as some hitherto unknown voices who are bringing fresh energy to today’s media.

We will present a first look at the virtual reality project ‘The Ark’ by Eline Jongsma and Kel O’Neill, produced with support from the Tim Hetherington Trust and premiering simultaneously at Tribeca Film Festival in New York. The Trust will unveil the revised Tim Hetherington Fellowship, developed in association with the World Press Photo, and the evening will culminate with presentations by the five newly short-listed artists for the Visionary Award from the Tim Hetherington Trust. Frontline guests will be the first to learn the identity of this year’s winner, with an opportunity to question the jurors and the artist about the forthcoming project.

This event – taking place on the eve of the fifth anniversary of the mortar attack that took the lives of Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros in Libya in 2011 – will introduce some new reflections on their lives and will offer dynamic insights into the work of a new generation of storytellers who are challenging our expectations of visual journalism in 2016.

Conflict, economic crisis, and depleting environmental resources are driving increasing numbers of people to attempt the treacherous journey across the Mediterranean to Europe. At least 1,500 migrants have died so far in 2015 on route to Europe – at least 30 times higher than last year’s equivalent figure.

Those Who Feel the Fire Burning, Morgan Knibbe‘s innovative and genre-blurring film, places viewers in the perspective of a person who has begun a dangerous and desperate journey to Europe. From its opening seconds, the film throws us into chaos as a boat carrying families of hopeful migrants plunges into rough waves during the night. While death is presumed for all aboard, one man continues his journey onto European shores as a ghost. Through his narration and observations of immigrants navigating new lives in Europe, we are faced with the reality that even those who survive the voyage arrive to a hostile world.

Skillfully shot and edited by Knibbe, Those Who Feel the Fire Burning includes swooping, dreamlike drone cinematography to capture the everyday lives of immigrants struggling in Greece and Italy. By employing unconventional documentary methods, Knibbe creates a humanistic and conscious-raising portrait of the individual lives at stake in the migration crisis.

Directed by Morgan Knibbe
Produced by BALDR Film
Duration: 71′
Year: 2014

The greatest peril comes not from a lack of analysis but from a lack of imagination.”
– Sir William Patey, British Ambassador to Saudi Arabia (2007-10)

Is Saudi Arabia a kingdom in peril? This was the key question under discussion at a packed event held at the Frontline Club on Monday 27 April. Following the accession of King Salman and the ongoing conflict in Yemen, a panel, chaired by journalist Owen Bennett-Jones, discussed the potential destabilisation of the regime and the possibility for change within the country.

Robert Lacey, an author who has covered Saudi Arabia for almost 40 years, said that although talk of its imminent demise and the collapse of the House of Saud had been repeatedly anticipated, these predictions failed to take into account “the Saudis very sophisticated system” that operates extremely effectively within the country.

Carool Kersten, senior lecturer in the study of Islam and the Muslim world at King’s College London, agreed that while in the past the Saudi states have been threatened, the dynasty has always demonstrated an “elasticity” which has “enabled it to bounce back.”

For former ambassador to Saudi Arabia Sir William Patey (2007-10), it boiled down to a question of external perception versus a very different internal reality.

“From Whitehall it was almost a dialectical argument, that [Saudi Arabia] would collapse under its own internal contradictions. But Saudi Arabia is different [from regimes and systems like the Soviet Union]; namely that it is run by the Al Saud who have survival in their DNA. It’s a very cautious, a very slow moving system operating by consensus. But the times when they move quickly are when they are in peril.”

From dealing with the threat of Nasserism in the 1960s to the assassination of King Faisal and the siege of the Grand Mosque in the 1980s, which saw the regime develop a more Islamist approach, the Al Sauds have “a history of doing just enough, just in time,” said Kersten.

On whether there was the potential for regime change in the kingdom, Patey described his experience of the Iranian revolution. From a diplomatic view, the failure to anticipate the overthrow of the Shah “was not a failure of analysis but rather a failure of imagination. We failed to imagine what the Middle East would be like without him.”

In relation to the current context, Patey offered a note of caution: “just because we don’t like the look of the Middle East (and especially the Gulf) without the Al Saud, let us not close off our imagination to the possibility.”

Safa Al Ahmad, a Saudi freelance journalist, said that it is not a question of collapse but a question of peril. Saudi Arabia is entering a new phase of existence and will need to deal with the changing geopolitical and regional realities.

“Saudi Arabia at the moment is too big to fail,” said Kersten. “This is even the view of the population who have too much to lose to really rise up. I think the Al Saud are masters, and have been for 250 years, of playing to this fear and doing the right thing just in time.”

This is represented not only in the often contradictory suppression of opposition and internal dissent – be it of the Shia minority, liberals or online activists (Saudi Arabia has the highest number of Twitter users per capita in the world) – but also through the co-opting of Saudi citizens by the government who play on the turmoil of the Arab spring, which has seen Saudis less willing to take a risk with regime change.

For Kersten, the difference with many of the surrounding countries is that Saudi Arabia is not ruled by a single dictator but by “a dynasty with 3000 potential pretenders to the throne.”

“The country’s not called Saudi Arabia for nothing. It’s a Saudi State, there is no Saudi nation – rather five countries with regional and ethnic differences internally. The Al Saud have capitalised on that to present themselves as the only people who could hold it together.”

On the question of where and how change could originate, the panel were divided. Kersten suggested that it could come from the economic elite who have the means and influence but cannot develop under the Al Saud as they would in other countries, while Al Ahmad reasserted that “the worst case scenario is to have that change come from the outside.”

Citing post-Gaddafi Libya, Al Ahmad said that within Saudi Arabia “everybody wants reform but not to the extent of removing the royal family… the idea of the House of Saud not being there is the scariest option of all.”

For Patey there is no single thing that would bring Saudi Arabia down, but rather a combination of factors.

“There would have to be a perfect storm. A threat from political Islam, a regional crisis, and economic crisis, crucially a division within the Al Saud… all of those things could potentially produce Saudi Arabia in peril, but any one of them on their own is not enough.”

In a week in which Egypt sent F16 jets into Libya in response to the broadcast of an Islamic State video showing the execution of at least a dozen Egyptians, the Frontline Club held a timely event examining the reasons behind Libya’s slide into civil war.

The event was held on 18 February, a day after Libyans marked the fourth anniversary of the revolution that brought an end to the regime of Muammar Gaddafi after almost 42 years in power.

Mary Fitzgerald

But there is little for Libyans to celebrate.

“The speed of Libya’s unravelling has been quite extraordinary,” said Mary Fitzgerald, a journalist who has reported from Libya since February 2011, and contributor to a recently published collection of essays entitled The Libyan Revolution and its Aftermath.

In a debate chaired by BBC journalist Mohamed Madi, the panelists spoke of the polarisation of today’s Libya, in which two separate governments and hundreds of militias compete for influence.

Mohamed Madi

“The poison of polarisation has seeped into Libyan society,” said Fitzgerald. “Regions, communities, even families are fighting each other.”

Elham Saudi, co-founder and director of Lawyers for Justice in Libya (LFJL) and associate fellow at Chatham House’s International Law Programme and Middle East and North Africa Programme, said that justice and governance had been replaced by a single concept:

“If you’re with us you’re with us, if you’re against us you’re dead.”

These deep divisions have created a need for reconciliation, but this will be a long process, said Peter Cole, former International Crisis Group Libya analyst and editor of The Libyan Revolution and its Aftermath.

“Reconciliation and amnesty takes a generation,” he said. “It’s not the work of a few politicians in six months.”

Rule by law

The concept of rule of law has been lost in favour of rule by law – or lawmaking for political ends – said Saudi. Only 10% of those in prison have been charged, she said.

Abdul Rahman al-Ageli

For Abdul Rahman al-Ageli, co-founder of the Libyan Youth Forum and former security coordinator in the Libyan prime minister’s office, Libya’s governance problems stem from the fragmentation of the three factors that make a state: international recognition; monopoly on the use of force; and direct control over the territory.

Only one of the governments claiming to represent Libya has any of these three factors: the Tobruk-based administration can claim only the first, and that in Tripoli can claim none.

This is not going to change until there is a “mass reform of the state,” said Al-Ageli.

“All sides of the political spectrum believe that the exclusion of those they consider to be their opponents would be the solution to the country’s problems.”

Power vacuum

Guma el-Gamaty, a Libyan politician and National Transitional Council (NTC) envoy to the UK during the 2011 revolution, said that the root of Libya’s troubles was the power vacuum left by Gaddafi.

“Physics tells us that vacuums have to be filled, and what was it filled with? It was filled with militias,” he said.

Guma el-Gamaty

Bringing these militias into the government’s pay was the “biggest mistake the NTC made,” added El-Gamaty, as it took the number of militia members “from 25,000 to 250,000.”

There was no shortage of institutions after the 2011 revolution, argued Al-Ageli, but these institutions were “toxic and destructive.”

“The state incentivises counter-productivity, it rewards corruption, and it punishes efforts to reform,” he said.

The rush to seek remuneration for militia membership was only explained by Libya’s social history, said Al-Ageli.

“People feel that they have a right to receive a salary from the state,” he said. “There was an audit of armed groups, and 250,000 people turned up and said they were revolutionaries. They just wanted a salary from the state.”

Libya’s current political divisions are fuelled by fear, said Al-Ageli.

For each side, there’s a “fear of being marginalised by their opponent if their opponent wins, so they’re stuck in a zero-sum game,” he said.

“There is no rational reason for a conflict in Libya at the moment – it’s all emotional reasons.”

Elham Saudi

In the absence of the rule of law, concepts of justice have become warped, said Saudi.

Crime is “related to who did what to whom, not the action,” she said.

In hundreds of interviews carried out to establish what people in Libya understood by the word ‘torture’, 67% of those asked defined torture “by who had committed it,” said Saudi.

As Libya enters a fourth year of conflict, Libyans must remember what they fought for in February 2011, said El-Gamaty:

“Sometimes they say you have to trade freedom for security, but this is very, very dangerous. I have another name for that, and it’s dictatorship.”

Copies of the book the Libyan Revolution and its Aftermath can be purchased from Hurst publishers.

Watch and listen back:

Four years ago, Libya dominated the headlines as the country struggled to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi. Now, despite the fact that this country of vital importance in the region is sliding into civil war, it has all but disappeared from the news.

As well as the violence, the people of Libya are also facing chronic power shortages and escalating prices of basic everyday goods. The local media that flourished after the revolution has been killed off and human rights organisations have left the country. Now with foreign powers backing different factions the conflict looks set to take on new dimensions.

In a new book, The Libyan Revolution and its Aftermath, leading journalists, academics and specialists trace the journey from the outbreak of protests in Benghazi in February 2011 to the subsequent conflict. Some of its contributors and other experts will be joining us to offer an insight into what led to the current crisis and how Libya might be able to rebuild itself.

Chaired by BBC journalist Mohamed Madi.

The panel:

Guma el-Gamaty is a Libyan politician and was National Transitional Council (NTC) envoy to the UK during the 2011 revolution.

Abdul Rahman al-Ageli is co-Founder of the Libyan Youth Forum. He also worked as a security coordinator in the Libyan prime minister’s office.

Mary Fitzgerald is a journalist who has reported from Libya since February 2011 and lived there throughout 2014.

Elham Saudi is co-founder and director of Lawyers for Justice in Libya (LFJL) and associate fellow at Chatham House’s International Law Programme and Middle East and North Africa Programme.

Peter Cole is a former International Crisis Group Libya analyst who has also worked for the UN mission in Libya.

On Wednesday 17 September, a panel chaired by Channel 4 News’ international editor Lindsey Hilsum, came together to discuss the current plight of Libya; what has gone wrong since the 2011 revolution, whether it really is on the brink of becoming a failed state, and what role the international community should play in pulling Libya away from this fate.

The discussion began with an attempt to untangle the complexities of Libya’s warring factions, which are divided by regional, religious and political differences. These difficulties were described by Hilsum as “sort of three-dimensional chess”. Hassan al-Amin, a human rights activist and founder of Libya al-Mostakbal (The Future Libya) observed:

“I don’t really call it a revolution; I think to me it is an uprising, because revolution, usually, would have leaders, would have some thoughts, some ideas, some kind of organisation, but this didn’t. We have people coming from everywhere.”

The panel agreed that the blanket use of the term ‘Islamist’ was, in many cases, both inaccurate and problematic, creating unnecessary divisions within the Libyan people.Libya Correspondent for The Guardian Chris Stephen, expressed similar sentiments, adding that, “This [recent] election has simplified things. You now have two sides, those with the parliament and those against the parliament.”

Next, the problem of the ‘Gaddafi vacuum’ was addressed. The panel discussed the difficulties that Libya has faced in rebuilding a nation in his wake. Huda Abuzeid, a filmmaker and TV producer, reiterated that:

“Gaddafi was the state. Once you removed Gaddafi, there was no state. What the failure has been is building that state. I think to say it’s a failed state after three years is, really, unfair.”

The Political Isolation Law, implemented in May 2013, was criticised for exacerbating this problem. Hilsum pointed out that, “For 42 years you have one man in charge, and if you’re going to work in government there’s no-one else to work for.”

The isolation law, therefore, has created a dearth of experienced government officials in Libya. Ghazi Gheblawi, editor of el-Kaf online newspaper, pointed out a secondary consequence of this law:

“Lots of people who were active in government and were doing good things . . . found themselves overnight just isolated completely.”

The panel also touched upon the role that the international community has played. Hassan al-Amin criticised international diplomacy efforts: “They don’t have any coherent strategy; what they have is, in my opinion, incompetence on all levels.”

This ‘incompetence’, according to al-Amin, was due in part to the failure of NATO countries to work together after the 2011 revolution; instead, they started going individually their own way. Al-Amin also emphasised that the failure of the international community to work with Libya was a double-edged sword:

“The Libyans . . . have never come up with a clear plan, a road map for what Libya actually wants from the international community, and at the same time the international community never actually helped Libya in trying to come up with some ideas.”

However, the panel agreed that it was too early in Libya’s development to write off the nation, with Abuzeid praising the country’s ‘amazing’ civil society.

Thanks to @frontlineclub and @reportingLibya @almostakbal @hudduh @lindseyhilsum for an energetic inspiring panel on #Libya

— Ghazi Gheblawi | غازي القبلاوي (@Gheblawi) September 17, 2014

Watch and listen back here:

Is Libya on the brink of becoming a failed state? Three years after Nato-backed rebels overthrew Muammar Gaddafi and the country was held up as the success story of the Arab Spring, Libya is deeply divided.

The fragile government, which has seen three prime ministers since March, has been unable to impose authority on militia groups who refuse to disband. Power, fuel and water shortages disrupt daily life, the economy has not been restored, and the planned new constitution remains as yet unwritten.

As Libya’s parliament calls for foreign intervention to protect civilians from deadly clashes between rival militia groups, we will be asking what has gone wrong in the country. Where do the divisions lie and what can be done to pull the county away from becoming a failed state? We will be examining what the role of the international community should be in supporting Libya in its transition to democracy.

Chaired by Lindsey Hilsum, international editor at Channel 4 News and author of Sandstorm; Libya in the Time of Revolution.

The panel:

Huda Abuzeid is a filmmaker and TV producer who has been based in Libya since the start of the revolution in 2011. She is currently the director of the Rashad Foundation, a Tripoli based NGO, which initiates projects to support Libya’s transitional process.

Chris Stephen, Libya Correspondent for The Guardian and author of Judgement Day: The Trial of Slobodan Milosevic.

Ghazi Gheblawi, a writer, surgeon, public speaker and the editor of el-Kaf online newspaper on Libyan affairs.

Hassan al-Amin, a human rights activist and founder of Libya al-Mostakbal (The Future Libya). He is a former member of Libyan General National Congress and head of its Human Rights Committee.

Photograph: rm / Shutterstock.com