RICH AND POOR
Key Question : Why is it so difficult to escape poverty ?
Work on your vocabulary
https://quizlet.com/fr/325699107/rich-and-poor-the-big-picture-flash-cards/?i=oxtpk&x=1jqt
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Then read the following texts
Libya’s divisions made for an unnatural disaster
From Sunday Herald / 17 September 2023
Looking back now there was so much optimism despite the obvious dangers and challenges the revolution had thrown up. From Benghazi in the east to the capital Tripoli in the west, most ordinary Libyans back in 2011 were simply glad to see the back of the old regime. “This revolution is not a revolution of starving people or those who want money, this revolution is one of free souls, this revolution says we want freedom from Gaddafi,” I recall one young man called Mohammed Sallah, a 23-year-old medical student, telling me at the time.
From the very first day 12 years ago when the uprising against Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s decades-long rule began, so many ordinary Libyans had taken to the streets prepared, if necessary, to forfeit their lives for the cause in which they so passionately believed. “All my life I’ve worked on the oil rigs in the desert for little pay while Gaddafi makes a fortune,” Ahmed Raza, a 42- year-old driver, who had volunteered to join the rebels, told me. In their filthy clothes, he and a group of other rebel fighters had made camp by the roadside in the desert west of Benghazi under a truck on top of which sat a huge rusting artillery cannon.“ I haven’t got a wife, I haven’t got a house, I haven’t got a car and nothing in the bank because I’m paid so little – all of this I got from Gaddafi,” Ahmed Raza explained.
Back then, during those heady days of the so-called Arab Spring uprising, those like Mohammed Sallah and Ahmed Raza, along with so many other Libyans, firmly believed their country was now destined for better, more peaceful, times. But in the 12 or so intervening years that have passed, however, Libya has never really been fully at peace. Across the country, chaos has gripped this vast oil-rich North African nation that has natural riches to rival the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Throughout this process, time and again this country of almost seven million people has lurched from crisis to crisis, its citizens struggling to access basic services, while a fractured and ever-feuding political elite have carved up the country into personal fiefdoms.
The Unimaginable Has Happened in Libya in The New York Times
From the New York Times By Ethan Chorin / 17 September 2023
This week, the worst storm in recent memory pounded the Green Mountains in eastern Libya with rain, pushing two poorly maintained, half-century-old dams to their limit. Just before 3 a.m. on Sept. 11, the first dam collapsed. An enormous wall of water surged into a riverbed that bisects the coastal city of Derna. It stalled briefly at the second dam eight miles downstream and then scooped that and everything else up in its path, tossing the debris into the sea. By dawn, a third of the city was gone, leaving thousands missing. The minimum number of dead is likely to be at least 10,000 but could be double that, local officials say.
Many people in Libya are calling what happened a tsunami, not a flood, to attempt to capture the physics and power of the devastation. Derna's nearly 100,000 residents, now stranded, urgently need shelter, food, water and medical care. They need temporary bridges to replace those that were washed out and engineers to rebuild all the roads and fix parts of the city's operational but battered port. They need cellphone service to reach family members and friends and body bags for the corpses being pulled out of the sea. Thousands are homeless, and officials fear other dams in the area may also burst.
The scale of destruction would be daunting for any well-run and well-equipped country to handle. For Libya it will be impossible, given the disaster zone's sudden isolation, lack of equipment and depth of the country's political dysfunction. Since 2014, Libyans have lived with two competing governments locked in a power struggle that will almost certainly slow the large-scale recovery effort to come. On Wednesday the Egyptian military was on its way with heavy equipment, as well as at least one amphibious craft carrier from Italy, Libya's former colonial power. But it's the United States' unique and tragic history in Libya, its technical expertise and depth of resources in the region, that create a moral obligation for America to step into this breach.
One need look no further than the city of Derna for proof. Famous in Libya for its natural beauty, waterfalls and azure waters, Derna in the 1950s and '60s was a center for education and the arts. But by the late 1990s, under Mr. Gaddafi's repressive rule, Derna had become a hot spot for radical opposition. It was no surprise that the Qaeda-affiliated group that participated in the 2012 Benghazi attack was from Derna or that two years later, ISIS briefly set up what it called an Islamic emirate in the city. Since then, residents of Derna and eastern Libya as a whole have felt -- as they have historically -- abandoned, especially when it comes to infrastructure, like the dams, which many feared would fail them one day.
At a time of profound need, the Derna catastrophe affords the United States a rare opportunity to once again take a side -- not with one or the other of Libya's political factions but with the Libyan people. It is a chance for Washington to return to the grounded idealism that once motivated the United States to join NATO in the first 2011 intervention: a desire to protect civilians from harm.
While some international aid is now on the way, no other country is currently able to provide the same degree of relief as the United States, whether now or two weeks from now. There are risks associated with any aid mission -- radical groups, for instance, remain active in the region -- but those risks can be managed. What Washington can provide immediately and over the coming weeks is technical know-how, embodied by groups like the Army Corps of Engineers and the Seabees, and heavy equipment like landing craft and helicopters to move large amounts of aid into Derna by sea and air. The United States may have lost its opportunity to be a first responder, but the reconstruction needs will continue for weeks, months and even years.
After years of treating Libya as a problem to contain and keep at bay, the United States has an opportunity, now, through this disaster, to re-engage directly with the Libyan people. We should embrace it, first and foremost for Libyans' sake but for our own long- and short-term regional interests, as well.
Answer the following questions :
Text 1
1. What was the attitude of most ordinary Libyans towards the old regime in 2011?
2. How has Libya fared since the Arab Spring uprising began 12 years ago?
3. What are some of the challenges that Libya has faced in the aftermath of the revolution?
4. How have political elites contributed to the current state of chaos in Libya?
Text 2
1. What happened in Derna, Libya on September 11th?
2. Why are some people calling what happened in Derna a tsunami instead of a flood?
3. Why will it be difficult for Libya to handle the scale of destruction caused by the flooding?
4. Who is currently providing aid to Derna, and why is the United States uniquely positioned to provide relief?
5. What was Derna like in the 1950s and '60s, and how did it change under Gaddafi's rule?
6. What opportunity does the author believe the Derna catastrophe presents for the United States?
7. What risks are associated with providing aid to Derna, and how can they be managed?
Finally structure a complete essay around the following quote:
“After years of treating Libya as a problem to contain and keep at bay, the United States has an opportunity, now, through this disaster,
to re-engage directly with the Libyan people.”
To go further : https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/15/libya-and-morocco-two-very-different-responses-to-catastrophe
World news
Libya and Morocco: two very different responses to catastrophe
Rupert Neate with Peter Beaumont
15 September 2023
The Guardian
© Copyright 2023. The Guardian. All rights reserved.
The aftermath of an earthquake in Morocco and flooding in Libya has shown up the state of the two nations
Not one but two disasters have struck in recent days – the earthquake in Morocco and devastating flooding in
Libya.
At least 2,900 people are known to have died in the 6.8-magnitude earthquake that struck in Morocco’s High
Atlas mountains a week ago, and the authorities say the death toll will rise.
Three days later, on 11 September, intense flooding in Libya led to the collapse of two dams that unleashed
a torrent of mud and water into Derna, destroying large parts of the eastern city.
On Friday morning, the Libyan Red Crescent said the number of people who had died in the city had risen to
11,000 and was expected to rise further as rescue teams arrived and helped to retrieve more bodies from
the mud. Officials said 30,000 people were missing.
The full scale of the disaster may be far greater, as few international aid agencies or news reporters have
been able to reach the flood-hit area. This area is controlled not by the government in Tripoli but by a rival
warlord.
Morocco and Libya may be geographically relatively close to each other – just a 2,000km hop across
Algeria – but they could not be two more different countries. This has had a huge impact on their ability to
respond to the disasters.
Peter Beaumont, a senior Guardian international reporter, has spent this week in the Atlas mountains and is
a veteran of several reporting trips to Libya. He says: “Libya is a failed – or semi-failed – state that has been
caught up in a protracted civil war since 2011, which has obviously had a massive impact on the country’s
infrastructure and social cohesion.
“Morocco, on the other hand, is a functioning modern state. The place works – Marrakech, Tangier, Rabat
are all modern cities. Ordinary people have been mobilised on a mass scale, and there is a very strong
sense of nationhood.”
The difference between Libya and Morocco
Beaumont arrived in Morocco on Sunday and was able to drive directly to above the epicentre near Adassil.
“Within an hour, I was at an earthquake-hit village and speaking to people affected and those providing
help.”
He says it would be a totally different story if the news desk had sent him to report on the Libyan flooding.
“One of the challenges of covering disasters that coincide with conflict are fractured lines of control: it’s not a
question of just flying to Tripoli and getting a car. I have worked in Libya and it is an incredibly difficult place
to work.”
Firstly, you need a visa. But there’s no telling if one would be granted, or how long it would take to come
through. If a visa was granted, it would be for the western areas controlled by the government in Tripoli. But
the flooding is in Derna, in the eastern region controlled by Gen Khalifa Haftar of the Libyan National Army,
who has been supported by Egypt and helped by Russian mercenaries from the notorious Wagner group.
“Reporting from Libya was one of the most dangerous jobs I’ve ever done,” says Beaumont, who was last in
Libya to cover the toppling of its previous dictator, Col Muammar Gaddafi, in 2011.
These safety concerns, and crumbling infrastructure since the death of Gaddafi, have made it very hard for
international aid agencies or reporters to get a real sense of the devastation in Derna.
“As nasty, autocratic states go, Libya under Gaddafi functioned and it had a huge amount of money from oil.
It was a place that worked – in a horrible way with no rights or freedoms, but it had decent infrastructure. Not
so much now.”
The World Meteorological Organization said the huge death toll could have been avoided if Libya, a failed
state for more than a decade, had a functioning weather agency. “They could have issued warnings,” said
Petteri Taalas, its secretary general. “The emergency management authorities would have been able to carry
out evacuation of the people. And we could have avoided most of the human casualties.”
Libya’s attorney general has been asked by senior politicians to launch an urgent inquiry “to hold
accountable everyone who made a mistake or neglected by abstaining or taking actions that resulted in the
collapse of the city’s dams”.
Beaumont says: “We still don’t really know the scale of the disaster. Is it 20,000 dead, as the mayor of Derna
says? It could be more.”
International aid only started to reach Derna on Wednesday afternoon, two days after the catastrophe. It
may now be too late to save lives. The mayor, Abdulmenam al-Ghaithi, said: “We actually need teams
specialised in recovering bodies.”
A search team director, Lutfi al-Misrati, told Al Jazeera: “I fear that the city will be infected with an epidemic
due to the large number of bodies under the rubble and in the water. We need bags for the bodies.”
Another official said the number of dead people could increase significantly as the “sea is constantly dumping
dozens of bodies”.
While it is much easier to get international aid to Morocco, the government has been criticised for not
accepting more assistance. So far only search and rescue teams from the UK, Qatar, Spain and the United
Arab Emirates have been allowed in. Offers of help from the US, Tunisia, Turkey, Taiwan and, significantly,
the former colonial power France have not been accepted.
The king of Morocco, Mohammed VI, has refused support from Paris, which ruled Morocco as a colony
between 1912 and 1956, after years of fraught relations. It led the French president, Emmanuel Macron, to
post a video saying: “There is the possibility of supplying humanitarian aid directly. It is clearly up to his
majesty the king and the Moroccan government, in a manner entirely befitting their sovereignty, to organise
international aid.”
Despite the king’s apparent dislike of the French government, he spends much of the year in a 10-bedroom,
€80m (£68.7m) mansion near the Eiffel Tower, complete with a swimming pool, spa and hair salon. He also
owns Chateau de Betz, an 18th-century castle about 30 miles north-east of Paris.
Beaumont says the furore over Morocco rejecting aid may have been overblown, and it is unclear if Rabat
needs much more international support because of the specific nature of this tragedy. Most of the houses
were built of mud bricks rather than concrete, he says, so people “either died or survived”.
Moroccans have reopened most of Route Nationale 10, the main road through the High Atlas mountains, to
Talat N’Yaaqoub, about 12 miles (20km) from where the earthquake struck. “It’s a pretty incredible
achievement to have reopened a road where large sections had been blocked by rockfall just days earlier,”
he says.
As Beaumont was coming back down route 10, thousands of ordinary Moroccans were driving aid up the
mountain. Among them he met a group of 16 young men in three vans, all supporters of the Raja Casablanca
football team.
“It’s taken us all day driving to get to Talat N’Yaaqoub,” Ziko, the driver of one of the vans, told him. “We
have food and clothes and money we’ve collected for the victims of the earthquake. We felt we needed to do
it.”
In a reversal of roles, Beaumont was stopped by a local journalist who asked to interview him. “What she
really wanted to ask was: ‘Aren’t you impressed with what we’ve been able to do?’” he says.
“And I was. It was genuinely impressive to see ordinary Moroccans do this. It’s how humanity should be – not
politics but the community helping the community. In a couple of years’ time, I think, when people ask me
what I remember about the Morocco earthquake, it is not just going to be the sadness and devastation, it will
be how ordinary people responded. That is hugely positive, and given that I cover a lot of grim stories, it says
a lot.”
Keys for the vocabulary exercise :
1. d
2. n
3. a
4. e
5. j
6. i
7. h
8. b
9. l
10. g
11. f
12. c
13. m
14. k