Relief activist Anwar Al-Zway said the situation of the displaced Sudanese nationals in the city of Kufra was awful, in light of the presence of hundreds of displaced people stranded in the middle of the desert, and in the border triangle area between Libya, Sudan, and Chad.
Al-Zway expected in statements to Al-Araby Al-Jadeed website that “the situation will get worse in Kufra for several reasons, including that the municipality’s capabilities are small and decreasing day after day with the increasing number of displaced people, while the municipality has not received any real support to cover the size of the crisis.”
He talked about other reasons that are likely to worsen the crisis of Sudanese immigrants in Kufra, including political tensions and exchanged statements between Khalifa Haftar’s forces, which control the southern Libyan region, and the political leadership in Sudan. There are great fears that it will become a card for political bargaining and pressure.
Regarding the videos published by media outlets close to Haftar showing security patrols being conducted in the Kufra desert, receiving people displaced from Sudan and providing them with aid, Al-Zway considered this “an indicator that raises concern and major questions regarding the allegations of providing aid.”
"Haftar’s forces are using the issue of the displaced for political bargaining and to show that they are providing aid within the framework of media marketing only. With the intervention of the security authorities, the activity of volunteers and city officials who are aware of the dangers of the issue turning into a security issue for political bargaining will decrease,” he says.
"Videos of the reception of the displaced reveal the truth. They did not receive any assistance except for the columns of desert security vehicles that received them at the border gate before a small number of them reached Kufra.” He adds.
Al-Zway believes that “political exploitation of the immigrant issue will greatly affect services, especially with regard to isolating them and providing treatment and relief to them, and it is possible that the security authorities will manage their file.” He adds that “the migration movement has begun to head to other areas beyond Kufra, for several reasons, including the city’s overcrowding and poor health conditions, noting that displacement to other areas that do not host large numbers of displaced people will have better living conditions, like northern regions of Jalu, Ojla and Ajdabiya.”
Al-Zway said international organizations are good at nothing more than publishing statistics that do not mention their sources, while they must contribute to developing solutions before the situation explodes, as Kufra is no longer able to receive more displaced people.”
He said there were other ways for the displaced to arrive, “particularly through Chad, reaching Murzuq and Al-Qatrun, southwest of Libya, and there were also a number of displaced people who had been suffering from several problems. The solution is for these organizations to establish camps to receive the displaced, provide help with food and medicine to the afflicted, and stop marketing relief propaganda that does not go beyond announcing numbers."
A report issued by the Displacement Tracking Program at the International Organization for Migration in Libya said that “the Sudanese represent 18% of the total number of refugees in Libya due to the high waves of people fleeing the war in Sudan to the city of Kufra in particular, which is subject to what looks like an invasion by Sudanese searching for safety.”
