Zwara, Libya

I first visited Zwara on August 23 of last year, just as the local revolutionaries were liberating their city from the now deposed regime of Col. Muammar Qaddafi. Today, the yellow, blue, and green Berber flag, forbidden under Qaddafi, flies alongside the new Libyan flag, and there’s a local radio station broadcasting in Tamazight, the Berber language. One year after the revolution, things are looking up in Zwara—but it’s clear that both the local understanding of democracy and the national government are very much works in progress.

Though non-Arab, Zwara is experiencing some of the same ugly growth pains as the rest of Libya, including the destruction of important Sufi sites in the center of Tripoli and Zlitan by Islamic extremists prefigured by similar vandalism at a Zwara tomb. (At least in Zwara, the activities were confined to furtive acts at night in an area distant from the town itself.) Here, as elsewhere, these Salafis also defaced the photographs of female candidates for elected office.