News stories by Karlos Zurutuza, page 10

It's been almost a year since Benghazi launched its uprising against former Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi and three months since he was killed, but there is a growing sense of frustration in eastern Libya with the National Transitional Council. Two weeks ago, a group of protesters attacked the Council’s Benghazi headquarters as chairman Mustafa Abdeljalil was inside, forcing him to flee through the back door.

'I’d say there are around 5,000 of us in the country, but if you ask me next week we may well be under 3,000. After twenty centuries of history in Mesopotamia, we Mandaeans, are about to vanish.' Anxiety about the future of his people is more than evident in the figures given by Saad Atiah Majid, chairman of Basra’s Mandaean Council.

'They would call you a Gaddafist if you drove one of those 4 X 4 cars,' says Bashar, emerging from one of those traffic jams in Tripoli. 'Today almost every rebel commander has one.'

Omar Embarka crumbles when she sees the pictures of the Libyan city where she was born and lived until two months ago. 'We will be back in Tawargha one day,' the 25-year-old repeats to herself. The images say otherwise.

The announced introduction of Islamic law in post-Gaddafi Libya has drawn strong opposition from women, the non-religious and the Amazigh minority.

'We’ve walked all the way here to tell everybody that we are being treated like dogs,' said 23-year old Hamuda Bubakar, among a couple of hundred black refugees protesting at Martyrs Square in Tripoli. 'I’d rather be killed here. I wouldn’t be the first, or the last.'

'A crossroads of history, continents and ancient empires; a place where history comes alive through the extraordinary monuments on its shores', reads a well- known tourist guidebook about Libya. It’s all still there, but the tourists aren’t there to see it.

Suleyman and Rasool have come to the University of Bani Walid, in western Libya. If they are lucky they might find some chemistry notes and, perhaps, a computer that works. Unfortunately it is not likely, since NATO reduced the campus to rubble.

'The war is over and Gaddafi already buried. What else could we possibly ask for?' says Adnan Abdulrafiq at his busy street restaurant in Omar Mukhtar street in downtown Tripoli. But troubles may not have ended with the war.

'This is probably the most important day ever for us, the Basque people, since the death of (dictator) Franco in 1975,' journalist and historian Urko Apaolaza told IPS.