Tawergha is a Libyan coastal town about 30 km east of Misrata on the road to Sirte. It is home to approximately 30,000 people, mainly black Libyans. When the revolt against the Gaddafi regime spread to Misrata, Tawergha became the de-facto front line between the rebels and the army fighting for the regime. Today Tawergha is a ghost town: its homes looted, farm land destroyed and some of its inhabitants forcefully displaced or simply vanished. A couple of thousand people fled to Bani Walid, while the rest dispersed to cities as far away as Benghazi or Tripoli.

However, that did not save them from humiliation and imprisonment where ever the rebels could reach them. The Internet is full of videos showing glimpses of the misery the people of Tawergha suffer even after they have fled their own homes. In some videos, black Tawergha men were forced to eat the flag of the former regime while others were forced to say "we are slaves" and other self-humiliating phrases. They are being called "n-----s" and all sorts of dehumanizing names. I saw a video in which 10 of those people, with their hands tied behind their backs, were shouted at, insulted, and then shot dead in cold blood.

The Tawergha people's fate is only one example of what is taking place in Libya nowadays. It is "tribal" cleansing in the most despicable sense of the word.

Bani Walid, home to the Warfalla tribe and my hometown, was under siege from January to March 2012 just because its tribal leaders, fearing unrest, looting and lack of security, refused to let the rebels enter the city. The town was left without any medicine, fuel or food supplies for almost three months, pushing it to revolt against the rebels and the loose interim government. Failing to force their way into the city, rebels camped on the highway and started to pick up any person, including women, they thought was a "loyalist." When that failed to make the city surrender, militias in Tripoli started to pick up natives of Warfalla wherever they could find them.