The Economist April 9th 2022 Middle East & Africa 43received the money as “an expert in kick
backs, bribery and corruption”. vtb, a Rus
sian bank which was also involved in the
deals, agreed to pay $6m to regulators.
None of that money has gone to the
people of Mozambique, although Credit
Suisse has said it will waive $200m of the
unpaid debt that it is trying to recover. That
would be scant compensation for the crisis
that the scandal caused. When the debts
were revealed in 2016, donors halted aid to
the government, the imfpacked its bags,
the currency collapsed and growth slowed.
A study by cipand Chr. Michelsen Insti
tute, a Norwegian research outfit, estimat
ed that if these indirect effects are includ
ed, then the cumulative costs of the loans
add up to nearly $11bn, almost as much as
Mozambique’s gdpin 2016.
The debt itself is still outstanding.
Some of it is now in the hands of investors
who were not involved in corruption. Fio
na Huntriss of Pallas Partners, a lawyer for
some of them, says that “innocent lenders”
should be paid “what is long overdue to
them”. The government of Mozambique
counters that it should not have to pay be
cause the state guarantees for the debts
were issued illegally. That question will be
settled in yet another court case, due to
start in London next year, in which virtual
ly every party to the matter is suingevery
one else. The legal proceedingsmayrum
ble on, but justice remains elusive.nW
henlayla(notherrealname),an
Egyptian woman, got divorced in
her mid30s, her parents assumed she
would move back home. But she wanted
to share with female flatmates. “What are
we, Americans?” her mother wailed. No
woman in her family had ever lived on
her own, widows included, or with in
dependent female friends. For an un
married woman in Egypt, fleeing the nest
can be tricky. It helps if she is wily, or
rich, or lives in a neighbourhood that
caters to foreigners.
Persuading the family is usually the
first hurdle. Arguing simply for freedom
would be valiant but often unwise. Better
to cite the bad traffic as your reason. That
helped convince Layla’s mother, because
they both tend to be car sick. Having her
own flat would shorten her commute.
Finding an amenable landlord can be
awkward, too. Few let to single women,
since that may damage the building’s
reputation or ruffle its other residents’
moral feathers. Some let on condition
that a lone woman must have no visitors.
Once an unmarried woman clinches a
rental deal, she must often fend off nosy
neighbours and doormen, says Basma
lah, another singleton, who also spoke
under a false name. Boyfriends some
times have to sneak in when the door
man is on a coffee break. Hers took the
stairs, since the lift would give away the
floor he was stopping at. Luckily one of
her doormen mistook her for a foreigner:
she did not disabuse him. They tend to
wink at those looseliving Westerners.
Some women simply fork out for
freedom. Landlords in affluent neigh
bourhoods are often more liberal. Brib
ing the doorman may be the way to keepSexisminEgyptWhat would the neighbours think?
CAIRO
Why single women find it hard to rent a flathim out of your hair. Paying for your own
furniture can help, too. Egyptian police
routinely question people living in rent
ed flats in big cities. They keep a closer
eye on furnished ones, says Layla, since
journalists, political activists, foreigners
and people selling sex are too transient
to have their own furniture. Layla lugs
around a futon: it buys a bit of privacy.
Single Egyptian women often help
each other navigate their country’s mo
res. They have been known to have mon
ey sent to a stranger through social
media groups if she gets kicked out of her
place and needs a hotel room. When a
woman leaves a flat that permits singles,
she may make sure that a friend is next in
line. Basmalah knows the names of all
the women who lived in her flat for the
previous ten years. She and her best
friend made a pact always to live in sep
arate flats. If one gets chucked out, she
will have a place to go to. Libya’ssecondcitySmashed and
forgotten
T
he gold-leaflanterns on the railings
around the tomb are modelled on those
that embellish Buckingham Palace. The
crenellated walls glimmer with Italy’s fin
est marble. A huge chandelier within hails
from Egypt. The shrine to Omar alMukh
tar, Libya’s anticolonial scholarcumwar
rior hero, has been handsomely restored,
two decades after a jealous Muammar Qad
dafi dumped it in the desert.
But peer out through its arched win
dows and all you see is the surrounding
ruin of Benghazi, Libya’s second city. Much
of what was once a charming Italian city,
with cafés, artdeco cinema and royal pal
ace, is a smashed ghost town. The court
house where Libyans rose up against Qad
dafi in 2011 is awash with sewage. “Lost
homeland”, reads a graffito on a chipped
colonnade adorning the old Bank of Rome.
Services have collapsed. Rubbish is piled
up in the streets. Waste flows into the sea.
Schools recently had to close after they
were flooded in a storm. War profiteers and
smugglers have moved in.
Like those other fine cities of the Mid
dle East—Aleppo, Mosul and Raqqa—Ben
ghazi was sacked in order to wrest it from
Islamist rule. For three years Khalifa al
Haftar, a former general turned warlord
who commands the selfstyled Libyan Na
tional Army (lna), shelled this capital of
Libya’s eastern region (once called Cyrena
ica) from land, sea and air, until it fell to
him in late 2017. Egypt, France, Russia and
the United Arab Emirates all lent him a
hand, then left him to run it as his base.
The unhas proposed no recovery plan
for Benghazi. On March 21st the Italian gov
ernment hosted an architectural jamboree,
which many participants attended by vid
eo, calling for the city’s regeneration. How
ever, Libya’s power brokers in Tripoli, the
country’s capital in the west, are preoccu
pied with arguing over oil revenues and
who should be prime minister. “There’s no
real will to rebuild our city,” laments Atif
alHasiya, a Benghazi engineer.
Mr Haftar nonetheless promotes him
self as its protector. “With one hand we
build, with the other fight terror,” reads a
slogan on a sheet flapping in the wind
along the corniche. Locals speak only of
the terror, inflicted mainly by Mr Haftar’s
men, and say he squanders funds on mili
tary ventures and salaries for his fighters,
who claim to number 127,000. In 2018 the
unreported that a brigade led by one of hisB ENGHAZI
No one seems willing or able to save it