In recent months, over 120 mass graves were found near Tarhuna, Libya. The victims were killed by a local militia called the Kuniyat. Many of the victims were shot execution style: blindfolded, kneeling, with hands tied behind their backs. Women and children were found. The militia was led by seven brothers, the Kani family, who ruled Tarhuna with terror. One even kept a pride of lions to burnish his brand image.
The Kuniyat were a poor family until Muammar Qaddafi, the Libyan dictator, was ousted in 2011. Then they began killing off rivals and perpetrators of perceived slights. They had enough anti-Qaddafi credibility to convince revolutionary forces to trust Tarhuna to them. Then they entered organized crime: taxing human smuggler and fuel smugglers, collecting protection money, and seizing companies. They used their funds to grow a militia that ran into the hundreds. Because Tarhuna lies at a strategic point south of Tripoli, the government hired the Kuniyat to keep the gateway secure from rivals. When the Libyan Attorney General’s Office, prime minister’s office, Interior Ministry, tribal leaders, and even the United Nations were notified of the brutal regime controlling the town, they did nothing. The government was more interested in having a partner that kept the southern route to the capital secure.
Without a nation-state government, militias rise to power. The UN ousted Qaddafi without a plan for restoring the nation itself. When he was forced out, any semblance of governance went with him. The people reverted to a chiefdom-level of existence, where warlords and militia rule.
In April 2019, the Kuniyat switched loyalty to the anti-government warlord Khalifa Hifter. Last summer, government forces pushed Hifter and the Kuniyat out of Tarhuna. The townspeople wasted no time in raining mortars down on Kuniyat family houses and burning them to the ground. Now, with the Kuniyat gone, they turn to finding the graves of their missing loved ones.
Source:
Sudarsan Raghavan, “Mass Murder and the Sin of Silence,” Washington Post, 9 May 2021, A1; see also https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2021/libya-tarhuna-kaniyat-mass-graves/
Photo: Washington Post
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