The Drowning Irony: Libya Laughs While It Sinks!

A few days ago, with the passage of the first weather depression this season   a depression people prayed for both East and West   the streets of Benghazi and some eastern Libyan cities turned into rivers. Cars submerged up to their windows, homes abandoned after being flooded, roads closed and school holidays granted because of drowned streets and classrooms. It is a familiar scene repeated over the years in Tripoli, Misrata, and elsewhere; its repetition today in Benghazi will not be isolated   today, Benghazi, tomorrow another city. The flood is one, and the victim is one; only the mockery varies.

As you scroll through your phone and follow images coming from Benghazi, comments will pour from pages supporting the western government or antagonizing the east. Comments mocking and scoffing at development projects in the east, ridiculing the “achievements” of Haftar’s son’s fund. And the scene is the same, repeated verbatim: circulated by people once in the east, once in the west. When Tripoli was flooding, eastern pages sneered: the “Return to Life Plan” has drowned   where are the billions for rebuilding the capital? And today, when Benghazi is swallowed by water, western pages leap to sneer: look at Haftar’s reconstruction, look at the fake bridges of the development fund, celebrating its failure in the first real test, and glorifying the rain that exposed the lie.

A bitter mockery, exchanged and recycled   and the strange thing is the drowning man himself laughs at another drowning elsewhere. Each sink in the same filth, each pays the same price, yet finds consolation only in the downfall of the other. This is national masochism: rejoicing in disaster because it struck your rival, forgetting that rival and citizen share the same homeland and the same catastrophe.

Whether bridges were built or not, roads paved or not, projects executed or not, the result is the same. Swamps were never dried, billions spent   or rather stolen   will never return. More billions are demanded here and there. Only the names change:  Return to Life Plan in the West, Reconstruction and Development Fund in the East. Different robes, same truth: organized theft and institutional corruption. The same corrupt contractor may work here and there   thieves have no homeland except their pockets.

Meanwhile, the Libyan citizen is nothing more than a spectator in a theatre of destruction and death. Paying the ticket from his livelihood, then watching rivals fight in the arena, laughing, cheering, gloating forgetting that his own blood stains its sand, his sweat built its arches.

 Ironically, those mocking from both sides believe themselves. They imagine that exposing the other is a victory for their side, not realizing they expose themselves. They think a flooded street in Benghazi is a win for Tripoli, and a drowning neighborhood in Tripoli is a win for Benghazi   while they are the ones paying the price repeatedly: paying for fake projects, then for fixing them. Their only consolation: their stolen money did not build anything worthy for their rival to boast of.

Corruption, my people, has no allegiance. Corruption is a cancer with roots everywhere. The one who steals money from a road in Tripoli. and the one who steals from a port in Derna,the one who plunders projects in Misrata,or devours infrastructure funds in Ajdabiya  they are all the same, all your enemies no matter what they pretend.The thief in the west is not a hero,and the thief in the east is not a savior  both are thieves, the only difference is the slogan he raises while looting the treasury.

And the result is always the same:

a people drowning in poverty, collapsing services, declining education, healthcare existing only in name, infrastructure turning into swimming pools with the first rainfall.

And the citizen suffers instead of unifying his suffering to face the thieves, he divides it geographically, as if poverty has administrative borders, or illness has political affiliation.

Children drown in collapsing schools while they still wait for textbooks that haven’t arrived yet. Youth drown in unemployment and are forced to join militias that pay them, only to throw them into death at the first disagreement.

The elderly are consumed by poverty and exhaustion, waiting for pensions that don’t cover even a week.

All this is real and ongoing   but talking about it is not trending.

What trends is mocking flooded streets, because mockery costs nothing and may raise your status with your oppressor, while confrontation requires courage   and courage may cost you everything.

The failed road project in Benghazi is funded by the same people funding the failed sewage project in Tripoli.The dinar stolen here is the same dinar stolen there. The victim is the same but internally divided a victim being beaten with the same stick, yet instead of stopping the beating, debates its brand!

 Behind every sarcastic picture of a sinking car   a human story. Behind every video of a street turned into a river   a suffering family. Behind every mocking comment   pain misguided toward the Libyan brother, not the Libyan thief; toward the neighbor, not the ruler who stole the money.

And the outcome is as clear as the stagnant water in our flooded streets:

as long as Libyans mock each other’s drowning, thieves will keep swimming in oceans of stolen wealth. As long as scoring political points is the priority, everyone will lose. The flood does not distinguish between East and West   the water will drown all,

while only the corrupt   who built lifeboats with our stolen money   will sail safely when the deluge arrives