Future looking brighter for students at Libya's University of Benghazi

A decade after fierce battles reduced much of the University of Benghazi to rubble, students at Libya's oldest and largest university are once again looking to the future with optimism.

After the 2011 uprisings that toppled and killed longtime ruler Muammar Gaddafi, the university became the stage of fighting between jihadist groups and forces led by military strongman Khalifa Haftar.

While its nearly 70,000 students still attend classes in temporary facilities, a brand-new vast campus is set to open in the autumn.

On a recent afternoon, students gathered in the cafeteria and on shaded benches, pouring over textbooks and chatting far from the violence that engulfed the university between 2014 and 2016.

Speaking in a newly completed administration building, the university’s president Ezzedin Younis Eddressi said jihadists who controlled the city “had planted artisanal mines almost everywhere" on campus”.

He said unique manuscripts dating back 700 years were looted and later recovered by the university, while about 90 per cent of the complex was destroyed by jihadists.

But it still held classes for those two years, using schools across the city with children attending in the morning and university students in the afternoon, he said.

Shutting down the university was never considered.

"The university is life itself" for the city of one million inhabitants. "In every household there's a student, a professor or a university employee," Eddressi said.

After jihadists were defeated by Haftar's forces, students gradually returned to campus but were studying in makeshift facilities.

Libya has struggled to recover from the chaos that followed the 2011 unrest and is divided between a UN-recognised government in the west and an eastern rival administration backed by Haftar.

Maryam Alrefadi, a 26-year-old who graduated from the university last year and who now teaches French online, recalled the difficult years.

"What we went through was not easy. We had no idea how we would make it through," she said.

But she said that now, they have security and are able to do anything from travelling, to starting their own projects and businesses.

“You can see young people actually living what they are dreaming of. So if there's someone who dreams, who is ambitious as well, it's easy for them to achieve what they want,” she said.

Ayesha al-Mogassbi, a 19-year-old English student at the university, also recalled hard times.

"At some point, we had nothing," she said. "Libya was at its lowest. We suffered a lot. We suffered bad education, no financial stability."

"So instead of just dreaming of having electricity or drinking water or food (which) are all normal things... we're looking for more, for better," she said. "We know that we can give more."

Rebuilding the university began three years ago and has been overseen by Libya's Reconstruction Fund, headed by one of Khalifa Haftar’s sons.

The fund recently received an additional three billion dollars from Libya's central budget, financed by the country's oil revenues. The Haftars control areas encompassing the country's majority of oil fields.

Spread over 600 hectares, the new complex includes a main building topped by a golden dome modelled after the original structure built in the 1970s.

The campus also includes dorms which Eddressi likened to a "five-star hotel", a massive library replacing the old one, and a state-of-the-art conference centre.

Abdulhamid Al-Gweil, 28, a primary school French teacher, said he noticed the students were already in a better mood:

They "know they will study under better conditions and in well-equipped buildings".

His friend, Ayman al-Qarqouri, 29, who runs a recruitment company, said opportunities for the youth were now "more promising than ever", especially in engineering, construction, and architecture.

“This revolution of construction of the city, is doing a great job for everyone who is graduating from the university to look for a job. This is like a great opportunity to like build yourself, to start a business, or work for international companies,” he said.