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By Libya Herald reporter.
Tunis, 27 July 2017:
Younger members of the Mashashia tribe in the Jebel Nafusa have complained that tribe has been ignored and threaten undisclosed action unless a member of the PC starts immediately talking to the tribe’s council of elders and wisemen. In an angry letter yesterday addressed to the Presidency Council (PC), they claim the neglect is deliberate and say that action will start within three days of there is no response.
They are particularly bitter that there has been no offer of help for displaced members of the tribe to return to their homes in Awiniya, less than 20 kilometres east of Zintan, and surrounding villages.
Complaining that of the PC’s 500 resolutions last year and the 640 so far this year none mentioned the Mashashia, they say the only support that the community has had has come from the state electricity company GECOL and a number of charities.
Since the revolution when it supported the Qaddafi regime, the tribe has been involved in ongoing struggles with the Zintanis as well as with the Qantrar tribe in the town of Mizdah. Heavy fighting in 2012 and 2013 in Mizdah between the Mashashia and Qantrar resulted in several deaths, a major evacuation by residents and a deep and abiding inter-communal sense of enmity.
There have been tentative peace moves between the Mashashia and Zintan, with the Zintanis freeing a number of Mashashia prisoners in 2013, but this was later followed by tit-for-tat abductions. The tribes’ displaced have never been assured of the security they need if they are to return.
