| Egyptians risk their lives to help Libyans trying to oust an oppressive regime. By Hana Zuhair |
| Tarek Shalaby and Aly Azmy drove 12 long hours to reach Salloum, the last Egyptian city before Libya, with LE 45,000 worth of medicine and a burning desire to help their “brothers” in embattled Libya. After making their way across the border, they and their four friends spent three days in rebel-held territory before returning to Cairo.Two weeks after the group returned, they got a chilling phone call — one of the Egyptian volunteers they had met on the Libyan border had been captured by pro-government forces. On February 17, Libyans inspired by the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions rose up against the oppressive regime of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, who is the region’s longest-serving ruler with more than four decades in power. Unlike the Egyptian revolution, during which the military refused to fire on civilians, the situation in Libya has been bloody, with rebels and Gaddafi’s loyal forces battling back and forth across the country. After the fall of former President Hosni Mubarak many Egyptians have strongly sympathized with Libya. Near Mohandiseen’s Moustafa Mahmoud Mosque, blood donation units are set up beneath banners declaring support for Libyans. Protesters have rallied outside the Arab League building and the Libyan embassy, while aid convoys with Egyptian doctors and other volunteers regularly head for the border. According to a March 2 BBC report, one of the most active medical convoys, led by Dr. Gamal Abulazayem, has delivered medicine and 250 tons of food; the group includes more than 50 Egyptian volunteers helping out in clinics and hospitals in the east of Libya. Longtime friends Azmy and Shalaby organized their medicine run to Salloum on their own. Azmy, 25, is unemployed but spends this time volunteering with different community development NGOs in Egypt. Shalaby, 26, works in web design and social media and is a partner in Planet 360 advertising agency. When their friends learned about the mission, four more volunteered to help out. At the end of February, the men collected donations, bought medicine and set out in two cars. They all knew there was considerable risk to their mission, but some things were more important than their personal safety. “Our rulers are the ones who divided us and controlled us, but we Arabs are united,” says Shalaby. “This is why we went.” Shalaby wanted to raise awareness about what was happening in Libya, since there was a nearly complete media blackout at the time. “We wanted to go and help by any means,” he explains. “Citizen journalism was the most important thing for me.” “I wanted to show people what was really happening,” adds Azmy. “And there was no way to do that but to go ourselves.” At Salloum, they encountered their first challenge: none of the six had passports. They managed to cross the border by showing their IDs and paying passport control LE 50 each. At the border, the group met 19-year-old engineering student Abdel Khalek Al Sayyed, who, like them, had made his way to Libya to help in any way he could. “He is a young, active and brave person,” Azmy says. The volunteers, now with Al Sayyed among them, joined up with a convoy of doctors to find a place to deliver their medical supplies. The group first went to Tobruk, where the Libyans greeted them with warm welcomes and wide smiles just because they were Egyptians. As Shalaby recalls, the Libyan people celebrated the Egyptian victory as if it was their own. In Tobruk, the group stayed in the luxurious five-star hotel Maseera for free — an offer extended in gratitude to all the Egyptian convoys. Shalaby also added that drivers took them from place to place without charging them a dime. The group next went to Benghazi. “All the places we went were very festive, at that point Gaddafi only had few cities,” Azmy explains. “People were really happy we were there.” Their biggest challenge, Azmy says, was finding places to deliver the medicine they brought. During their three days in Libya, Shalaby and Azmy say they didn’t witness any particular situation that they felt was dangerous to them, but they did see buildings and vehicles destroyed in the conflict. In the video Libya’s Next Door made by Shalaby and posted on YouTube, there is footage of the damaged main police station in Benghazi, where the “bloodiest battle” took place, as Shalaby describes in the video. Azmy recounts how the bravely “motivated” Al Sayyed didn’t want to leave Libya, even after the group had delivered the medicine to hospitals. The teenager stayed behind as the six Cairenes headed back to Egypt. The next time Shalaby and Azmy saw their young friend, it was on Libyan state TV. The broadcast showed footage of Al-Sayyed wearing an Egyptian military uniform and telling viewers he had been recruited by Al-Qaeda to disturb the “peace” in Libya. The volunteers don’t believe a word of it and are convinced Al Sayyed was forced to make this “confession” by pro-Gaddafi forces. Al Sayyed has no affiliation with the military, they point out, for he is still in university. Currently, Shalaby is trying to raise awareness about Al Sayyed’s plight. His blog Tarekshalaby.com was a platform for him to express his opinion during the Egyptian revolution, and he regularly posted entries, photos and videos about his stay in Tahrir. After finding out about Al Sayyed, Shalaby uploaded raw video footage he had of Al Sayyed on the convoy, along with a link to a YouTube video of the Libyan state TV broadcast. Not long after Egypt Today viewed the Libyan broadcast, however, the state TV video was removed from YouTube. “We have contacted his family, and we are trying to reach the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,” Azmy says. “We desperately need media pressure to get Abdel Khalek back safely." At press time, the fate of Al Sayyed was still unknown. Their concern about Al Sayyed has not stopped Azmy and Shalaby from collecting, again, money for food and other supplies urgently needed in Libya, and the volunteers are calling upon people to support Libyans from the atrocities committed against them. “They need monetary help and now they need food,” says Azmy. He and Shalaby are organizing another aid trip to Libya, but they have not set a date. Azmy feels that the media has been misrepresenting the situation of Libya by portraying it as a civil war; he and his fellow volunteers disagree. They saw happy people fighting for their freedom, and during the Egyptian group’s stay, there was an undeniable festive spirit that swept through the streets of Libya — a feeling that Libya was almost liberated. But the situation deteriorated dramatically after they left around March 1. On March 8, CNN reported that the official death toll had reached at least 1,000, and another 200,000 were fleeing Libya. The death toll is undoubtedly much higher, but updated, accurate figures are hard to verify amid Gaddafi’s attempts to control and intimidate journalists. An Al Jazeera cameraman was killed in an ambush, and several foreign journalists have been arrested over the course of the uprising. After Libyan rebels had captured towns up to the outskirts of Tripoli, pro-Gaddafi forces used artillery, fighter planes and ground troops to push them back toward Benghazi. On March 17, the United Nations approved a no-fly zone over Libya and the use of force to protect civilians. At press time, a military alliance of Western countries and some Arab nations was bombing Libyan targets including tanks, aircraft and air defence sites, while pro-Gaddafi forces reportedly continued to attack rebel-held towns. Despite being worried about their friend, Azmy and Shalaby say such an unfortunate incident wasn’t unexpected. The volunteers were well aware of the danger they might face, yet the Libyans’ quest for freedom was more important to them. As Azmy puts it, “We have to support anyone who is fighting for justice.” |
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