The long battle to place Libya on a more stable and humane footing begins next   month when the country goes to the polls to elect a 200-strong national   assembly, whose task it will be to draft the national constitution. This   will be followed by full elections, which will probably be held next year.   The emergence of parliamentary democracy should, in theory, legitimise the   creation of a Libyan state with a strong national army that can absorb or   confront the militias. 

 But for the time being the politicians are still figureheads, and the power is   exercised by armed gangs. The government is desperate for these militias to   return to civilian life before the elections, and has embarked on a hugely   expensive programme to buy off fighters with cash payments worth   approximately £1,000 each. But this programme is open to corruption.

Hours after our arrival, we came across a roadblock manned by fighters. We got   out of the car and walked towards the gunmen. There were about a dozen of   them, young men with AK-47 machine guns, all in an excitable state. They had   set fire to wooden furniture they had placed in the road. One of them knelt   down and aimed his gun at the camera – the first of a number of occasions we   had guns aimed at us during the trip.  

 We asked what they were doing. 'We are revolutionaries. We have saved Libya,   we want to be paid,’ they said, claiming that they had been excluded from   the cash payments. At that moment a police convoy, lights blaring, came   hurtling down the road. The militiamen let loose a volley of warning shots.   The police swiftly turned round and drove away.

In Libya, by contrast, Western visitors are made welcome, and as Britons we   were frequently thanked for our role in bringing down Gaddafi. We were able   to walk safely from the hotel where we stayed in central Tripoli to the Old   Town where the best restaurants are to be found. And after we returned to   Britain we heard the Zintan militias had indeed handed over the airport.   Al-Qaeda is not operational in Libya, and there have been none of the   suicide bombings and sectarian attacks that caused such horror in Iraq. We   were impressed by the testimony of visiting British businessmen in our   hotel. They told us that every time they returned to Tripoli, Libya had got   that little bit more stable and prosperous. The elections next month will   mark an important step in the creation of a new Libya out of the wreckage of   the old regime. 

 'Unreported World: My   Week with Gunmen’ is on Channel 4 on June 1 at 7.30pm

It’s 12 months since I was in Libya visiting hospitals where people injured in the war to oust Mu’ammar al-Gadafi were being treated.

Many were civilians hurt during indiscriminate shelling of residential areas by forces loyal to the ex-Libyan leader in their desperate but doomed attempt to cling to power.

I am now back in Tripoli, months after the “Declaration of Liberation”, which officially signalled the end of hostilities after al-Gaddafi’s capture and killing on 20 October 2011.

But here I am again visiting hospitals talking to men, women and children shot or injured in mortar attacks.

Six-year-old Moussa Bakr Ibrahim was playing with relatives when his home in the southern city of Kufra was hit 23 April 2012.

He sustained shrapnel injuries to his left arm and leg. Moussa had lost his father on 11 February 2012, during an earlier shelling of the Tabu neighbourhood of Qudrufai.

Many black Libyan Tabus told me that they welcomed the “17 February Revolution”, hoping it would put an end to the discrimination they suffered under al-Gaddafi’s rule when they were denied identity documents, faced forced evictions, and were at risk of arbitrary detention if they dared to complain.

But even now, Libyan Tabus continue to feel marginalized, and complain of neglect by the Libyan national authorities.

During recent armed clashes between militias in Kufra, Tabu residential neighbourhoods were shelled by Arab militias leading to deaths and injuries among the population.

Seventy-year-old Jum’a Senoussi Abdallah received severe shrapnel injuries to his stomach on 20 April and is now being treated at the Tripoli Medical Centre.

“I had just finished my prayers, when I heard an explosion… that’s all I remember… Now I am here, and in a lot of pain… I don’t know why they are shelling us. We are just peaceful residents trying to go about our daily activities.”

At the same hospital, nine-year-old Amina is recovering from two operations to her stomach, barely able to speak. Her sister told me:

“Amina, another younger sister, and my mum were at home in Qudrufai when the shelling started… In a panic, they ran out of the house looking for shelter and Amina was shot in the back; the bullet ripped through her stomach. Who would do this to a child?”

“ Our situation is very difficult in Kufra even now that the shelling is over, but we are too afraid to leave our neighbourhoods… Schools are closed, there is no work…Under al-Gaddafi we suffered, and now we are suffering again…We can’t live normally when every now and then our neighbourhoods are shelled.”

Her frustration was shared by Abdelrahman Sharaf Eddin, whose 18-year-old brother was killed when their home in Qurdufai was shelled in April. Abdelrahman was himself injured in the arm, and is determined to seek justice for his brother’s death.

He lamented that during al-Gaddafi’s time, the Tabu community faced discrimination. Now, he says, their situation is further exacerbated by lawlessness and the widespread availability of weapons.

On the next bed, Idriss Jumaa Mohamed is awaiting an operation on his right leg, broken during the shelling of his home in Qudrufai.

Idriss’ father, Jumaa Mohamed, was killed in February, when clashes between Tabu and Arab militias left about 100 people dead before reconciliation efforts and the involvement of the Libyan National Army temporarily put a halt to the violence.

“Our whole family of seven was at home, when we heard explosions at a distance. The explosions started getting louder, and then the glass of our windows shattered. I counted about five explosions until my father was wounded. I ran to help him and tried to drag him out of the house, when another explosion hit, injuring me in the leg… We came to Tripoli for treatment, but my father didn’t make it.”

The National Transitional Council (NTC) is struggling to rein in the hundreds of militias who commit serious abuses in a climate of total impunity.

Until now, there has been no investigation into the violence in Kufra and no measures have been taken to prosecute those responsible for the reckless use of fire in residential areas.

Instead, the NTC passed legislation in early May granting immunity from prosecution for members of armed militias if they acted to “protect the Revolution”.

This law prevents victims from obtaining justice and redress, and contradicts the objectives of the “17 February Revolution” to put an end to four decades of repressive practices and injustice.

Bin Khayyal said unrest in the Sahel desert region of Libya's south, as well as violence by armed factions or former fighters who mounted the 2011 insurrection that toppled Muammar Gaddafi, were raising concern ahead of elections next month.

Terzi said it would be "unacceptable" for regional stability if Libya were to relapse into general bloodshed. He said the new government must come up with an adequate response in cooperation with foreign partners including Italy.

"On security, the spread of arms in the wake of the Libyan revolution is a source of concern for us, given the destabilizing effects it has within the country and the consequences for neighboring countries," he said.

Terzi said Italy was stepping up cooperation to improve monitoring and border controls and would seek a bigger contribution from European Union partners when he attended a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels next week.

"Immigration is a big, urgent issue to be tackled at European level," he said. "We need to get conditions in place rapidly to finance and make available the instruments the EU has, in partnership with the Libyan government."

Gunfire could be heard in the background of both testimonies.

On Friday, Wissam Ben Hamid, head of the Shield Libya brigade, said that fighting erupted after Zwai tribesman shot dead a Toubu man.

"The Toubu reacted by firing on every car passing near their neighbourhood," Hamid told AFP, adding three of his men were wounded.

"We asked them to pull back in vain," he said.

On Saturday, Colonel Fradj Bushaala, a local representative of the defence ministry, told AFP that fighting had stopped and "negotiations were underway between tribal leaders to settle the problem once and for all."

In February, the clashes pitting Toubu against Zwai tribesmen in Kufra that cost more than 100 lives also displaced half the population, according to UN figures.

Libya's nascent army intervened by sending a brigade of former rebel fighters to uphold a hard-won ceasefire between the two camps.

Kufra, a town of about 40,000, is located in a triangle where the borders of Egypt, Chad and Sudan meet.

The Toubu, who are dark-skinned and present in southeast Libya as well as in Chad, Sudan and Niger, faced discrimination under toppled Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi's regime.

Misrata officials said that the number of prisoners in the city was much less than the figure reported by Human Rights Watch.  They also said they were happy to invite national and international organisations to visit prisons in the city. They added that the local security forces were willing to hand prisoners over to the justice ministry at any time agreed with Ali Humaida Ashour, the Minister of Justice.

Misrata deputy council leader Mohamed Al-Jamel added that the treatment of prisoners in Misrata was relatively good at the present time and that they were being held in proper prisons run by the civil authorities. He also said that a security committee had been appointed to supervise such prisons and prevent any violation of civil rights in them.

The local council also stated that if there were breaches and violations, then they were committed by individuals, not planned by brigades and it could not be held resposnsible for such violations.

Al-Jamal also denied the ethnic cleansing of people from Tawergha , saying that they could return back to their hometown, While reconciliation between the two towns was probably impossible at the moment, he said that there needed to be some alternative solution for the Tawergha people.

Given all of this, an impressive showing from Khawaja would certainly be a coup. He ran a 44.98 in the 400 meters at the African Championships in Kenya; that time would have been a fifth-place finish at the 2008 Beijing Games. Besides bringing home a medal, Khawaja’s dark skin could help ease some of the racial strife that many dark skin Africans felt so helpless against during the war.

This brotha may not bring home the gold, but let us hope his performance can help bring his nation some much needed joy and unity.

That is the real prize.

"Their words are just ink on paper. I haven't seen any action," the 29-year-old electronics dealer said as he sat near a mosque in the embattled city of Sirte, where scores of men, women and children who fled their home town of Tawargha have found a precarious refuge.

The families could not go home, they said, out of fear of reprisal attacks by anti-Gaddafi fighters from nearby Misrata who have accused them of harboring the ousted leader's troops and committing atrocities during a brutal, months-long siege.

Tawargha, once home to thousands of people, is now almost entirely deserted, its windows smashed, its stores looted and its walls speckled with gunfire. Its inhabitants have scattered across Libya, many to cities such as Benghazi and Tripoli.

The fate of the town, about 40 km (25 miles) from Misrata, has posed a disquieting challenge for Libya's new leaders in the interim National Transitional Council (NTC) as they try to reunify the war-scarred country and impose the rule of law.

Adding to the issue's sensitivity, Tawargha's residents are overwhelmingly black, a legacy of the town's history as a transit point in the 19th-century slave trade, locals say.

Many young fighters have treated dark-skinned people with suspicion during the revolt because of reports Gaddafi hired mercenaries from sub-Saharan Africa, but the feud between Tawargha and Misrata appears to be about more than just race.

The NTC's handling of the crisis will test its ability to rein in Libya's many largely independent militias and prevent reprisals that could fuel bloodshed and recrimination.

"Those who committed crimes should be brought to justice, but it's important not to generalize," NTC spokesman Jalal al-Gallal said, adding that the council favored the return of Tawargha's residents, but that this would take time.

"At the moment it's a very, very sensitive topic," Gallal said. "The Misratans are still simmering."

REPRISALS

The derogatory graffiti covering Tawargha's walls makes it clear where many local fighters stand on the question of return.

"Tawargha, you dogs, 3,000 km this way," reads one message spray-painted on a road sign, beside an arrow pointing south into the Sahara desert. "Formerly Tawargha," says another.

Many of Tawargha's erstwhile residents say they see little hope of returning home, partly because their dark skin makes them obvious targets for vengeful fighters in the area.

"It's about the color of the skin. That's why they have problems with Tawargha," Samia Taher, a light-skinned Libyan woman born in Illinois who married into a Tawargha family, said as she rested near the mosque where families sheltered, a couple of km (miles) from the heart of Sirte, besieged by NTC forces.

She was interrupted by a burst of tank fire from a nearby hill. Women in brightly-colored headscarves gasped and children flinched as the boom echoed through the lot, where mattresses and blankets were piled up and men rested in the shade.

"I just want to get the family out of here. We're in the middle of a battle here in Sirte," Taher, speaking in American-accented English, said of the struggle for Gaddafi's birthplace.

Many NTC fighters deny their feud with Tawargha is about race. But they are openly hostile toward the town, which they say supported Gaddafi in return for money and services.

Even before the war, Misrata residents disparaged Tawargha, calling its young people criminals and drug addicts, or accusing its menfolk of marrying often and working little.

Scorn turned to outright hostility after Gaddafi's forces assaulted Misrata with rockets, snipers and artillery to try to quash the uprising there in February, using Tawargha as a staging ground for a siege that killed more than 1,000 people.

With the help of NATO air strikes, anti-Gaddafi rebels were able to break the siege and take control of Tawargha. The charred husks of tanks, unexploded rockets and bullet casings on the outskirts of the town testify to the battle's ferocity.

Many in Misrata accuse men from Tawargha of looting homes and raping women in Misrata during the siege, claims that are impossible to confirm, but display the depth of their enmity.

As evidence, one resident offered a cell phone video he said was found on a slain Gaddafi soldier. It showed scores of black men in green military jackets with assault rifles marching down a tree-lined road he said led from Tawargha to Misrata.

NO RETURN IN SIGHT

Tawarghy and other residents admit that support for Gaddafi ran strong in their town, but are quick to add that this does not justify demonizing and punishing an entire community.

Some of those who have taken refuge in cities along the Mediterranean coast say their homes in Tawargha have been burned and that relatives or neighbors have been abducted or attacked.

The group of about 135 sheltering near Sirte ricocheted for months from town to town in search of a haven, only to end up in the crossfire of one of the civil war's last battles.

"It's all very tragic. We lack security and safety, and we have to worry about food," Tawarghy -- the name he gave meaning one from Tawargha -- said. "All this and you're calling for freedom? What kind of freedom are you seeking?"

Gallal, the NTC spokesman, said he expected residents who had not committed crimes to return to their homes eventually.

"The other solution would be mass relocation of people. That's hardly an ideal solution. Things are tense at the moment, but I think in time they will fall into place," he said.

Any such restitution is sure to be complicated. Much of Tawargha is in ruins. The charred skeletons of cars, busted electronics and garbage cover the streets between bullet-scarred apartment blocks. Goats and camels wander amid the wreckage.

Green flags, a symbol of support for Gaddafi, still flutter over many buildings, more than a month after the deposed leader's forces were pushed out of the capital, Tripoli.

Despite NTC assurances, many in Misrata say it would only lead to more violence if Tawargha's residents were allowed to return, even if some were innocent. The crimes against Misrata were just too many and too heinous, they say.

"To avoid the recurrence of any future problems, we should separate the two groups," said a Misrata man named Saleh as he stood near a Tawargha apartment block being used as temporary shelter for non-Tawargha families fleeing fighting in Sirte.

"They should be compensated for their land and houses, and they should find a new area to live elsewhere."

A man standing nearby echoed that view. "Even if someone didn't do anything, his nephew or his cousin might have. Maybe 95 percent of people in Tawargha supported Gaddafi," he said. "It's better if they find somewhere else, far from Misrata."

A Reuters team that flew with the prime minister to Sabha, about 750 km south (450 miles) of the Libyan capital, said a ceasefire appeared to be holding between the Tibu ethnic group and the Sabha militias with which they had been clashing.

Smashed windows at a conference centre and burned-out vehicles in a Tibu-controlled neighborhood bore testimony to the fighting over the past days, some of the worst since a revolt last year ousted Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

Asked about the situation in Sabha, Prime Minister Abdurrahim El-Keib told Reuters: "It's much better than I thought."

He said he wanted to show the opposing sides in Sabha that the new Libya had a place for all tribes and ethnic groups.

The Tibu have black skin and some have ties to neighboring Chad, while their opponents are lighter-skinned ethnic Arabs who see the Tibu as outsiders.

"Every Libyan is important to us. We're going to take care of them like we do take care of any other Libyan, like our brothers and sisters," Keib told Reuters after addressing about 500 local people from the non-Tibu camp.

"This problem has a historical background ... The past regime has used and abused this problem," he said, in reference to Gaddafi's tactic of playing up tribal differences to weaken any opposition against him.

Keib was then heckled by a man who was shouting that the government was late in acting to stop the clashes and called on the military to deal with the Tibu.

Keib tried to talk to the heckler but his security detail ushered him into a car to head onto his next meeting, with Tibu elders.

As his convoy drove through Tibu-controlled neighborhoods, fighters from the tribe lined the roads, with rifles in their hands. They shouted "Allahu Akbar!" (God is greatest), and smiled and waved at the prime minister's motorcade.

"We need to find a solution for this, I am here for that," the prime minister told the Tibu elders, at a two-hour meeting conducted on mats laid on the ground, after they set out their grievances.

"We do not want the Tibu to be in need, we want things to go well ... It's not Tibu and the rest of Libya. It's all our country," Keib said.

REGIONAL SECURITY

Restoring order in Sabha is not only important internally for Libya but also for stability in the wider region.

In the chaos that followed Gaddafi's fall, the south has been used as a smuggling route for weapons which are reaching al Qaeda in the Sahara and fanning a separatist rebellion by Tuaregs in northern Mali.

Earlier on Sunday, on the journey to Sabha from the airport where he landed, the prime minister's motorcade was accompanied by a heavy security escort, which included vehicles mounted with anti-aircraft guns.

At the entrance to Sabha, militia men from the coastal city of Misrata stood guard. They had been dispatched by the government to help restore order. The prime minister was joined in Sabha by Youssef al-Mangoush, chief of the new national army.

There was a separate incident on Sunday that also illustrated Libya's ethnic divisions, in the Mediterranean coast town of Zuwara near the border with Tunisia.

Fighters from the nearby town of Al-Jumail had detained 25 members of the Zuwara local militia, leading to a tense stand-off between the two groups, a representative of the Zuwara council and an Interior Ministry official told Reuters.

"The origin of the problem was that there was a group from Zuwara hunting in the area near Al-Jumail and they shot and killed someone from Al-Jumail by mistake," the Interior Ministry official said.

Zuwara is inhabited mainly by members of the Berber ethnic minority, who fought to overthrow Gaddafi. The town is though surrounded by ethnic Arab settlements, some of which backed Gaddafi in last year's revolt.

Telecommunications were also cut off, Mansur said, and added that "several" members of his tribe were killed on Friday.

Mohammed al-Sawal, the national security chief in Sabha, confirmed to television channel Libya Al-Ahrar that the power station had been hit.

Sawal added that a 24-hour truce agreed on Thursday was broken at 0930 GMT after fighters on both sides rejected it, and that renewed clashes broke out.

According to a mediator, Ridha Issa, Sabha tribes broke the ceasefire by using heavy artillery to bombard the Toubou Tayuri district of the city.

Issa said Sabha fighters also refused to pull back from Ghodwa area, 20 kilometres (12 miles) south of Sabha, between Toubou positions and those of Arab tribes, to let neutral forces from the north serve as a buffer.

Eight people were reported killed and several wounded in clashes in Sabha on Thursday.

The first clashes erupted Monday after Arab tribesmen accused the Toubou of killing one of their people. The first three days of clashes cost more than 70 lives, Libyan government spokesman Nasser al-Manaa said on Wednesday.

The Toubou say they are defending themselves against attack by Arab tribesmen in the region, and have accused the Libyan authorities of backing those gunmen as part of a campaign of "ethnic cleansing."

The Toubou are black oasis farmers by tradition who also have connections beyond Libya's borders. They live in southern Libya, northern Chad and in Niger, and have previously denied having separatist ambitions.

The Toubou have also been involved in deadly clashes with another tribe in the Saharan oasis of Kufra, where ethnic groups are locked in a standoff over smuggling.

Kib held a joint news conference on Saturday with Yussef al-Mangush, chief of staff of the new Libyan national army that is currently being formed, defence minister Osama Juili and health minister Fatima al-Hamrush.

"Now the situation is calm, and defence ministry forces are securing strategic zones and installations, notably the airport," Mangush said.

Hamrush gave a toll of at least 147 killed and 395 wounded by late on Friday.

"The number of people killed is 147," she said, adding that the toll included casualties from both sides.

Hamrush said 395 people had been wounded, including 129 who were brought to the capital for treatment.

The toll did not include those killed on Saturday - eight on either side, according to sources in Sabha.

A doctor at Sabha hospital, treating Arab tribal casualties, said eight people were killed and another 50 wounded in fighting between the early morning and noon. A Toubou tribal source said eight of their people were also killed.

"We haven't slept since yesterday. The Toubou have been attacking Sabha since three in the morning, and they very nearly took the city. All the residents have taken up arms to defend it," Dr Abdelrahman al-Arish told AFP.

Adem al-Tebbawi, a local Toubou official, spoke of eight dead and "several wounded" on his side.

Local sources said Toubou fighters who had been pushed back several kilometres (miles) south of Sabha launched a counter-attack early on Saturday in a bid to re-enter the city.

The first three days of clashes cost more than 70 lives, Libyan government spokesman Nasser al-Manaa said on Wednesday.

Ex-rebel forces dispatched from the north to try to impose a ceasefire and act as a buffer between the two sides failed initially to quell the violence.

Juili said on Saturday a war room had been set up to deal with the situation in Sabha and that aircraft were carrying out reconnaissance missions in the area.

"We will not permit any party to violate the ceasefire," he said.

The Toubou accuse the authorities of backing the other Arab tribes, who in turn denounce government "inaction" and "passivity" in the face of a "foreign invasion" in the absence of an organised national army able to restore order.

Other tribes accuse the Toubou of including foreign fighters among their ranks, notably from neighbouring Chad, a charge the Toubou deny.

"The Arab tribes are stopping African immigrants working in the town and presenting them to the press as Toubou fighters come from abroad," Tebbawi countered.

"We have respected a truce and we want reconciliation, but the other tribes - especially the Awled Suleiman - have not stopped attacking us for several days. We have been deprived of both water and power," he said.

On Friday, Toubou chief Issa Abdel Majid Mansur accused Arab tribes in Sabha of bombarding a power station providing electricity to several parts of southern Libya including Qatrun and Morzuk, both areas with a strong Toubou presence.

The former opposition activist against the ousted regime of slain dictator Moamma Gadhafi also called for international intervention to halt what he called "ethnic cleansing" of the Toubou.

The Toubou say they are defending themselves against attack by Arab tribesmen in the region, and have accused the Libyan authorities of backing those gunmen as part of a campaign of "ethnic cleansing."

The Toubou are black oasis farmers by tradition who also have connections beyond Libya's borders. They live in southern Libya, northern Chad and in Niger, and have previously denied having separatist ambitions.

African ambassadors and diplomats say they are already starting to feel the impact of the shift in power from Gaddafi to his enemies. Many feel frozen out by Libya's interim rulers, the National Transitional Council (NTC). Some suspect the new government is even going to want some of Gaddafi's gifts back. Whatever happens, Gaddafi's vision of a united Africa -- always quixotic -- is gone.

"He made us feel important," one told Reuters. "But there aren't so many of us being invited to sit and break bread with NTC leaders. They think that we sided with Gaddafi."

PRIORITIES

That perception has arisen in part from a belief among NTC and western officials that the African Union's attempt to mediate during the civil war was designed to protect Gaddafi. For Libya's new leaders, the western allies who helped them to power will be more important.

"The new administration in Tripoli will want to set relations with the AU off right," said Mark Schroeder, sub-Saharan Africa analyst at consultancy Stratfor. "But the AU will only be a smaller actor they will establish priorities with."

Western diplomats have become more visible in Tripoli, shuttling back and forth between the two luxury hotels where most meetings with NTC officials take place. Some even wear wristbands in the revolutionary colors, their drivers flashing the "V" for victory sign at checkpoints run by NTC forces.

African diplomats are more rarely seen out and about in a capital where fellow non-Arab Africans can risk arrest, and worse, as suspected pro-Gaddafi mercenaries.

TRACTORS, HOSPITALS, MOSQUES

With Gaddafi gone, others also feel vulnerable.

"There was a sense that we were supporting him at all costs just so that we could protect his investments in our countries," one sub-Saharan African ambassador in Tripoli told Reuters. While some African leaders may indeed have been keen to keep Gaddafi's cash, others saw the West's action in Libya as "an act of colonial aggression," he said.

Whatever African leaders' motives in supporting Gaddafi, now could be payback time: "The poorest on the continent will pay."

He invested widely in projects from donated tractors in Gambia to $90 million telecoms deals in Chad, in what most political analysts saw as an attempt to buy clout on a continent he aimed to unite with anti-colonial rhetoric. Entire hospitals and mosques bore his name.

He gave Gambian President Yahya Jammeh aid and huge herds of camels. Al-Madar, a state-owned Libyan mobile phone operator owned or controlled telecoms operations with assets worth over $100 million in eight other African countries.

There is real fear in African capitals that the NTC is going to want to take that money back, though it has not yet outlined official policy on the issue.

"Such investments as exist in sub-Saharan Africa are likelier than not to come under pressure to liquidate in order to secure the funds to rehabilitate the war-torn country," agreed Peter Pham, an analyst with U.S. think-tank the Atlantic Council.

PERSONAL CLUB

The African Union, which replaced the Organisation of African Unity, held its inaugural meeting in Gaddafi's hometown of Sirte in 1999. Gaddafi tried in vain to have it move headquarters there from the OAU's base in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa. But he nonetheless treated the Union like a personal club.

Many African heads of state were already tiring of his attempts to dominate them. Uganda's Yoweri Museveni was seen arguing with Gaddafi at a Kampala summit in 2010, after the Libyan's personal guard, trying to bring concealed guns into the meeting hall, had brawled with the Ugandan president's own security.

Gaddafi, apparently trying to deflect blame, then slapped his own foreign minister across the face in full view of a group of journalists.

"For us, there was some good and some bad," an African Union official told Reuters. "But, overall, we won't miss him."

Plenty of rebels-turned-presidents -- including South Africa's Jacob Zuma and Uganda's Museveni -- have made a point of remembering how Gaddafi supported them during their days fighting in the bush. With Gaddafi, who himself took power in a military coup in 1969, they would salute each other and talk with pride of being Africa's "revolutionary" leaders.

So their initial impulse was to close ranks and defend him, even as his forces were attacking demonstrators; and they ensured the African Union dithered as NATO acted.

Since his fall, most have been conspicuously silent. They are trying to build ties with an NTC that seems little interested, beyond calling on its southern neighbors not to shelter the Gaddafi loyalists Libyans want brought to justice.

"Why are you asking me about Gaddafi's legacy?" one African Union official said in response to a question. "Stop associating us with him. We cannot afford it."

But Toubou tribesmen said rival Arab tribesmen from Sabha were "surrounding" them in the Tayuri and al-Hijara neighbourhoods and shelling them since the early hours of the morning.

 "Al-Hijara is surrounded from all sides. All the Arab (tribes) are against us. They are bombarding us using all sorts of rockets indiscriminately. It is a real massacre," said Karima Jaber, a Sabha airport employee.

 Toubou chief Issa Abdel Majid Mansur said earlier this week that 40 members of his tribe had been killed, and accused Libyan authorities of using warplanes and tanks against his community.

 Speaking to AFP, Mansur denounced what he said was a plan to "ethnically cleanse" his people, and raised the threat of a separatist bid.

"We announce the reactivation of the Toubou Front for the Salvation of Libya, an opposition group active under the former regime) to protect the Toubou people from ethnic cleansing," Mansur said.

 "If necessary, we will demand international intervention and work towards the creation of a state, as in South Sudan," he said.

 Ali al-Dib, a former rebel, said the clashes erupted in the city centre when the Toubou refused to hand over to local authorities one of their men accused of killing a member of the Bussif tribe.

 The Toubou are black oasis farmers by tradition who also have connections beyond Libya's borders. They live in southern Libya, northern Chad and in Niger, and have previously denied having separatist ambitions.

 The Toubou have also been involved in deadly clashes with another tribe in the Saharan oasis of Kufra, where ethnic groups are locked in a stand-off over smuggling.

The town of Kufra in Libya's distant southern desert is a long way from anywhere - historically it was a key trading station and place of rest for travellers between central and northern Africa. It has also long had a reputation for smuggling and in recent years that cargo has increasingly been human beings.

Although there was relatively little fighting in this dusty, run-down town during last year's uprising against Libya's former leader Col Muammar Gaddafi, there have been violent clashes in recent weeks in which more than 100 people have lost their lives.

The fighting has been between local Arab Zwia groups and the Tabu - black Africans associated with the smuggling trade from Chad and further afield.

The Tabu have been accused of fomenting violence and instability to keep the border tense and their smuggling routes open.

Perhaps predictably, caught up in the middle are thousands of refugees and economic migrants from sub-Saharan Africa.

Migrants seeking jobs and a better life or fleeing violence in their home countries have often moved through Libya and used Kufra as a staging point.

But the new Libyan government says the situation along its southern border is becoming unmanageable.

To be more exact the concerns and complaints come from local officials in the Kufra region - there is no sense of any central authority here in the desert, and that is part of the problem.

At an old abandoned police station in the centre of Kufra we found more than 800 African refuges and migrants. They were mainly men but some women also from Somalia, Chad, Sudan and beyond.

Most of the men I spoke to had paid large sums of money to unscrupulous traffickers to facilitate the long journey across the desert. Many, like one young man from Somalia had then been robbed of everything he had left.

"It was a really long, difficult journey," he told me as he sat, crammed in the dusty courtyard, shoulder to shoulder with hundreds of others.

"Near the border [with Chad] we were held and beaten for many days. Everything we had was taken from us."

The refugees say they are being well looked after by the local council in Kufra.

Conditions are basic and cramped but a large pot of pasta and vegetables, cooking on the open fire, suggested they were being fed and given basic shelter.

Although a small number of aid workers from the International Committee of the Red Cross come and go to check on the condition of the refugees, local officials say it is not enough.

Ali Abdulrahim is the new Libyan government's security chief in Kufra. His sparse office overlooks the courtyard crowded with quiet, stoical but almost expressionless migrants.

"We need much more help from the aid agencies, but these people cannot stay here," says Mr Abdulrahim.

"We have to do something about our open borders."

Local officials and Arab (Zwia) fighters say that armed men, often coming from Chad, are hiding in among the migrants and trying to penetrate Libyan territory, keeping the smuggling trade going.

At one checkpoint outside the city I saw a truck with assorted rifles and machine guns that, soldiers said, had been confiscated from African migrants.

Sub-Saharans are often accused in Libya of being paid fighters. Most, including the vast majority of people we came across, had nothing whatsoever to do with the fighting. They were clearly frightened and desperate people.

With little evidence of a co-ordinated approach to the problem from a non-existent central authority in distant Tripoli, the local official showed me the new, desperate, approach to containing the crisis.

"This is how we're going to keep the refugees out," says Mr Abdulrahim, showing me a small mountain of old, wrecked cars some already loaded into trucks.

The plan was simple - but almost certainly unworkable. A 150km (93 mile) "barrier" along part of Libya's border with Chad, five metres high and made from nothing but old cars.

Desperate times bring desperate measures.