As fighting intensifies in Libya, troops loyal to Muammar Gaddafi are being accused of rounding up black African migrants to force them to fight anti-Gaddafi rebels.
Meanwhile, the United Nations (UN) has named a new envoy to the oil-rich country. The move could mean an attempt to shore up diplomatic imprints, which have waned in the country following the escalation of the humanitarian crisis. The new UN envoy is Abdelilah Al-Khatib, a former Jordanian foreign minister. He will also act as UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon's special envoy to the Arab country.
The UN information system also said yesterday that the global body is launching an appeal for $162 million to help 600,000 people within Libya who are expected to need humanitarian aid, in addition to a projected total of 400,000 leaving the country in the short term.
And the United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA) Executive Director, Prof. Babatunde Osotimehin has attributed the protests and clamour for change in North Africa and the Middle East to the need for increased political space and democratisation.
Osotimehin who is Nigeria's former Health Minister said in New York at the weekend that the UN agency under his direction would be working with governments in Africa and elsewhere in the global South to ensure that they pay attention to their responsibilities to population dynamics.
Libyan warplanes have been reported to have launched multiple air strikes on opposition fighters regrouping at an oil port on the Mediterranean coast. The attack came yesterday, the second day of a harsh government counter-offensive to thwart a rebel advance toward Gaddafi's stronghold in the capital, Tripoli.
The counter-offensive has halted a rebel attempt that began last week to extend their control beyond the eastern half of the country, in opposition hands since after the revolt to oust Gaddafi began on February 15. The rebels are struggling to maintain supply lines for weapons, ammunition and food, with many living off junk food, cookies and cans of tuna.
In separate accounts at this refugee camp, young African men who fled to Tunisia said they were raided in their homes by soldiers, beaten and robbed of their savings and identity papers, then detained and finally offered money to take up arms for the state.
Those who refused were told they would never leave, said Fergo Fevomoye, a 23-year-old who crossed the border on Sunday.
"They will give you a gun and train you like a soldier. Then you fight the war of Libya. As I am talking to you now, there are many blacks in training who say they are going to fight this war. They have prized (paid) them with lots of money. Africans who are first intimidated and stripped of everything were then offered 250 Libyan dinars to train as fighters.
"They said I should take money and fight. They would give me 250 dinars. I said No. When I told them No they told me I would not go anywhere," he told Reuters.
The Libyan government has denied using foreign nationals to fight the rebels, saying that dark-skinned Libyans serving in its security forces had been mistaken for African mercenaries.
When protests against Gaddafi's government led to violence three weeks ago, rebels spread reports that the Libyan leader had brought in African mercenaries from such states as Chad and Zimbabwe.
But the suggestion that trained, uniformed troops were being flown in to help suppress the revolt has not been proven.
The accounts now emerging of how some black migrants are successfully being forced into taking up arms for the Libyan state may be one explanation of these reports of black fighters.
Whatever the truth, Nigerians and Ghanaians in this transit camp all say they were suddenly very afraid to show their faces in the cities of western Libya where they worked, in case they were taken for mercenaries or dragooned by government troops.
Obinna Obielu, an electrician who had worked in Libya for 12 years and said he had saved $10,000, escaped with his two friends and their wives and two babies in an old Land Cruiser. Obielu said the main road from Zawiyah, 50 km (30 miles) west of Tripoli was too dangerous, and he had driven through the bush close to the frontier.
"I go off, because it is not a good road. Because they are attacking people and sending them back to go and fight in the war," he said. "The car is left back there."
Daniel Chibuzor and Tijanx Sadiki also recounted how they were raided and robbed at home and left with no papers and no money for food, terrified of appearing on the streets, before they decided to risk travelling west to Tunisia.
A baby daughter, Ability, and infant son, Miracle, travelled with the group. Ability needed treatment at the Tunisian Army's mobile hospital for tear-gas inhalation.
Nigerian Ike Emanuel, who made it to the safety of Tunisian territory last week after burying his six-month-old baby in the desert, said he had talked to many of the latest arrivals among his countrymen and heard the same theme: Africans were being trapped and forced to either fight or flee.
Over 105,000 migrant workers have fled from Libya into Tunisia in the past 10 days, most of them Egyptians but also including some 20,000 Bangladeshis. The Egyptians have since been repatriated by airlift, after making angry protests about the Cairo government's alleged inaction.
The Bangladeshis and thousands of west Africans remain in the United Nations refugee agency's transit camp, which is being prepared for a possible influx of refugees the agency fears may be trapped inside Libya but desperate to escape.
Fergo Fevomoye said it was a sympathetic Libyan policeman who eventually helped him escape, "because if not I am going to stay here 20 years, I am going to die here".
Source: Foreigners allege conscription into pro-Gaddafi forces (http://www.guardiannewsngr.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=40897:foreigners-allege-conscription-into-pro-gaddafi-forces-&catid=1:national&Itemid=559)