First Few Tourists Visit Libya but Security Threats Remainhttps://english.aawsat.com/home/article/3279321/first-few-tourists-visit-libya-security-threats-remain
First Few Tourists Visit Libya but Security Threats Remain
An empty passageway is pictured outside a mud-brick house, within the enclosed Libyan desert oasis town of Ghadames, a designated UNESCO World Heritage site, April 20, 2013. (Reuters)
First Few Tourists Visit Libya but Security Threats Remain
An empty passageway is pictured outside a mud-brick house, within the enclosed Libyan desert oasis town of Ghadames, a designated UNESCO World Heritage site, April 20, 2013. (Reuters)
Italian student Edoardo Arione felt “a little afraid” when he joined a rare tourist group trip to Libya this month but he said he soon enjoyed the visit to desert cities and Roman ruins in a country unsettled by years of chaos.
Libya has had little peace and few tourists since the 2011 NATO-backed uprising against Moammar al-Gaddafi that unleashed a decade of violent unrest as armed groups seized control of territory and battles raged in its cities.
“My impression is the country is amazing. The landscape is just beautiful and so different from place to another,” said Farina Del Francia, 64, another of the tourists.
Libya has a rich heritage, including desert architecture in the south some of the Mediterranean region’s finest ancient remains along its coastline.
The tour group visited the southern city of Ghadames and the Acacus mountains, site of ancient rock art. Half the group also visited the Roman city of Sebratha. A trip to Leptis Magna, the best-known of Libya’s Roman sites, may feature on a future visit, the organizers said.
Despite a UN-backed peace plan, and a ceasefire since last year between the main eastern and western factions, however, any more widescale return of tourism seems unlikely.
Before Libya fell apart in 2011, difficult visa regimens meant only up to 25,000 tourists visited a year. Since the revolution, hardly any have risked a trip.
Fighting between the myriad armed forces sporadically erupts in various cities and the wider prospects of a political agreement to underpin stability remain highly fragile.
An election planned for December is still the subject of wrangling, and any major delay to the vote or dispute over its validity could plunge Libya back into full-blown civil war.
For Arione and the other tourists in his group, however, the visit was a success.
“Tourists can come to Libya and stay comfortable and not be afraid,” said Arione, 25, who was one of 70 mostly French and Italian visitors on the arranged trip.
Libya is home to five UNESCO World Heritage sites, but in 2016 it said they were endangered due to instability and conflict.
Tourism and Handicrafts Minister, Abdulsalam Al-Lahi thinks the decision was wrong, saying “archaeological sites or tourists are not in this degree of threat”.
The travel agency that brought the tourists, Murcia, said it had been working to arrange the trip since 2018. In a sign of how difficult such visits remain in Libya, it had to postpone it because of war in 2019.
An American Tradition: Defeated Candidates Attending the President-Elect’s Inaugurationhttps://english.aawsat.com/features/5101063-american-tradition-defeated-candidates-attending-president-elect%E2%80%99s-inauguration
Vice President Kamala Harris talks to reporters after overseeing the ceremonial certification of her defeat to incoming President-elect Donald Trump, at the US Capitol in Washington, Jan. 6, 2025. (AP)
TT
TT
An American Tradition: Defeated Candidates Attending the President-Elect’s Inauguration
Vice President Kamala Harris talks to reporters after overseeing the ceremonial certification of her defeat to incoming President-elect Donald Trump, at the US Capitol in Washington, Jan. 6, 2025. (AP)
In January 1981, Jimmy Carter nodded politely toward Ronald Reagan as the new Republican president thanked the Democrat for his administration's help after Reagan resoundingly defeated Carter the previous November.
Twenty years earlier, after a much closer race, Republican Richard Nixon clasped John F. Kennedy's hand and offered the new Democratic president a word of encouragement.
The US has a long tradition of defeated presidential candidates sharing the inauguration stage with the people who defeated them, projecting to the world the orderly transfer of power. It's a practice that Vice President Kamala Harris will resume on Jan. 20 after an eight-year hiatus.
Only once in the television era — with its magnifying effect on a losing candidate's expression — has a defeated candidate skipped the exercise. That candidate, former President Donald Trump, left for Florida after a failed effort to overturn his loss based on false or unfounded theories of voter fraud.
With Harris watching, Trump is scheduled to stand on the Capitol's west steps and be sworn in for a second term.
Below are examples of episodes that have featured a losing candidate in a rite that Reagan called "nothing short of a miracle."
2001: Al Gore and George W. Bush Democrat Al Gore conceded to Republican George W. Bush after 36 days of legal battling over Florida's ballots ended with a divided Supreme Court ruling to end the recount.
But Gore, the sitting vice president, would join Bush on the west steps of the Capitol a month later as the Texas governor was sworn in. After Bush took the oath, he and Gore shook hands, spoke briefly and smiled before Gore returned to his seat clapping along to the presidential anthem, "Hail to the Chief."
A disappointed Gore accepted the outcome and his role in demonstrating continuity of governance, former Gore campaign spokeswoman Kiki McLean said.
"He may have wished, ‘I wish that was me standing there,’" McLean said. "But I don't think Gore for one minute ever doubted he should be there in his capacity as vice president."
Hillary Clinton smiles wide as she and former President Jimmy Carter, from left, former first lady Rosalynn Carter, former President Bill Clinton, former President George W. Bush, and former first lady Laura Bush wait for the start of the inauguration ceremony to swear President-elect Donald Trump as the 45th president of the United States, at the Capitol in Washington, Jan. 20, 2017. (AP)
2017: Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump Democrat Hillary Clinton was candid about her disappointment in losing to Trump in 2016, when — like Gore against Bush — she received more votes but failed to win an Electoral College majority. "Obviously, I was crushed," she told Howard Stern on his radio show in 2019.
Calling Inauguration Day "one of the hardest days of my life," Clinton said she planned to attend Trump's swearing-in out of a sense of duty, having been first lady during her husband's presidency from 1993 to 2001. "You put on the best face possible," Clinton said on Stern's show.
2021: Mike Pence (with Trump absent) and Joe Biden Trump four years ago claimed without evidence that his loss to President Joe Biden was marred by widespread fraud. Two weeks earlier, Trump supporters had stormed the Capitol in a violent siege aimed at halting the electoral vote certification.
Instead, then-Vice President Mike Pence was the face of the outgoing administration.
"Sure, it was awkward," Pence's former chief of staff Marc Short said.
Still, Pence and his wife met privately with Biden and his wife to congratulate them in the Capitol before the ceremony, and escorted newly sworn-in Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband out of the Capitol afterward, as tradition had prescribed, Short said.
"There was an appreciation expressed for him by members of both chambers in both parties," he said.
1993: George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton Bush stood on the Capitol's west steps three times for his swearing-in — as vice president twice and in 1989 to be inaugurated as president. He would attend again in 1993 in defeat.
He joined Bill Clinton, the Democrat who beat him, on the traditional walk out onto the east steps. Bush would return triumphantly to the inaugural ceremony eight years later as the father of Clinton's successor, George W. Bush.
1961: Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy Nixon had just lost the 1960 election by fewer than 120,000 votes in what was the closest presidential contest in 44 years. But the departing vice president approached Kennedy with a wide grin, a handshake and an audible "good luck" just seconds after the winning Democrat's swearing-in.
Nixon would have to wait eight years to be sworn in as president, while his losing Democratic opponent — outgoing Vice President Hubert Humphrey — looked on. He was inaugurated a second time after winning reelection in 1972, only to resign after the Watergate scandal.
President-elect Ronald Reagan applauds as outgoing President Jimmy Carter waves to the crowd at Reagan's inaugural ceremony, in Washington, Jan. 20, 1981. (AP Photo, File)
1933: Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt Like Bush, Hoover would attend just one inauguration as a new president before losing to a Democrat four years later. But Democrat Franklin Roosevelt's 1933 swearing-in would not be Hoover's last. Hoover would live for another 31 years, see four more presidents sworn in, and sit in places of honor at the two inaugurations of Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower.
1897: Grover Cleveland and Benjamin Harrison Cleveland, the sitting Democratic president, lost reelection in 1888 while winning more popular votes than former Indiana Sen. Benjamin Harrison. But Cleveland still managed to hold Harrison’s umbrella while the Republican was sworn in during a rainy 1889 inauguration.
Elected to a second, non-consecutive term in 1892, Cleveland, however, would stand solemnly behind William McKinley four years later at the Republican's 1897 inauguration, leaving the presidency that day after losing the 1896 nomination of his own party.
Cleveland was the only president to win two non-consecutive terms until Trump's victory in November.
