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Geopolitics

Libya Revisited: Young People Nudge Benghazi Back To Life

Tanarout is the only cultural center in the city
Tanarout is the only cultural center in the city
Eric de Lavarène

BENGHAZI — They call it the "Café of the Displaced," and it's always full. "It's because my customers followed me here," says Ahmed, a smile on his face as he pours a clever blend of coffee, cream, cocoa powder and sugar.

Everybody's known Ahmed for years. And they know his story, which is also the story of Benghazi — from war and pain to reconstruction. To resurrection.

"My family used to run the biggest coffee shop in town, not far from the waterfront, downtown. Everyone passed through there. Some would sit on the terrace all day. Then the extremists arrived a few months after the revolution and took over the entire street," the 30-year-old says as he leans over his coffee machine. "Our coffee shop was shut down and then it was destroyed. The neighborhood's inhabitants left. We fled and the night fell on Benghazi."

Ahmed says he hasn't been back to the area but that it's recently been liberated. "The fighting is over," he says. "This was the last neighborhood to be recaptured from the terrorists, most of whom claimed to be part of ISIS. But they've hidden landmines everywhere, so it's still too dangerous."

The fighting between groups close to ISIS and militias that fought under the banner of the Libyan National Army lasted more than three years. Following in the footsteps of the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings, Libya had its own "Spring" starting in February 2011. But Benghazi, like the rest of the country, quickly got bogged down in a civil war with unpredictable consequences.

"As a result, Libya is cut in half, with two governments that don't get along and armed factions everywhere," Ali, one of Ahmed's customers, says angrily.

Creative commerce

While a semblance of order has returned in city, allowing people like Ahmed to restart a fragile business, more than 40% of Benghazi's infrastructure and buildings have been affected by the fighting. And some neighborhoods, including the old city center, are literally devastated.

Everywhere else, though, small businesses and shops are flourishing. That, in turn, is allowing young people to rebuild their futures, although because of the faltering economy and of a severe liquidity crisis, they have to be imaginative.

"I opened the only cosmetics school in town and maybe even in the country," says Mawada, 24. The young woman teaches her students the basic rudiments of make-up application, how to apply different colors — from purple to cream — or enhance the eyes with an ebony black.

"Since I didn't have any money, I relied on the landlord to give me a special deal. And my students pay me however they can," Mawada says. One of them pays for classes in cakes she makes in her small bakery. Another offers discounts in her family's shop. A third signs IOUs.

In Benghazi, a whole collaborative economy has emerged from the ruins of war. Despite endemic unemployment, shopping centers are setting up across the city, new shops open every day and some streets are busy until late at night.

Still, this new balance is fragile. And the demons of the past continue to loom over the people of Benghazi, who feel divided — eager to move to, to embrace the future, but also inclined to withdraw.

"A constant battle"

Fatma crosses the city every day to reach Tanarout, the only cultural center in the city. Tanarout opened in 2015, in the middle of the war. The traffic-filled journey takes an hour — through a boring urban landscape made of large but charmless houses, through highways and roundabouts.

The young woman never goes anywhere without her guitar, an incongruous object to have in this city whose streets are often blocked by rogue militiamen who claim, rightly or wrongly, to be part of the Libyan national army. "It's not easy to be an artist in Libya," she says. "Society is not used to seeing a woman singing and playing an instrument. Sometimes I have to hide."

Having arrived safe and sound, we hear the first notes of a rehearsal with percussion instruments, while two young painters are working silently in a corner. The cultural center is located in the vast basement of a house that's still under construction, in a dull new neighborhood, at the end of a dirt street. Musicians, painters, and writers cross paths and rebuild the world, evoking the place of art in the reconstruction of their city.

"We're keeping each other warm," says Fatma, smiling. "We support each other and we move forward by creating. For the moment, we can't really go out, but we hope that one day, art will be on the street."

And yet, the center is hanging by a thread, as Mohamed, one of its founders, explains. "Our society is still suffering and it's difficult for it to accept a place like this," he says. "We are being scrutinized by internal security, which believes that it isn't the right time yet to develop culture. Every day, we are afraid that Tanarout will close its doors."

Mohamed and his colleagues are particularly afraid of the Salafists — there are many of them in the city — who have threatened the group and already forced them to move once. "We had to close and leave overnight," he says. "It's a constant battle. We just want to show that everyone has rights. Rights that were won at a high price in 2011 with the revolution and that we won't give up."

This morning, at the "Café of the displaced," people are talking about a terrorist attack that hit a mosque the previous day and left one dead and more than 140 wounded. It is the second attack on a place of worship in two weeks, proof that as much as things seem to be improving, terror is never far away. The first attack killed more than 40 people. A fragile peace indeed.

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Green

Forest Networks? Revisiting The Science Of Trees And Funghi "Reaching Out"

A compelling story about how forest fungal networks communicate has garnered much public interest. Is any of it true?

Thomas Brail films the roots of a cut tree with his smartphone.

Arborist and conservationist Thomas Brail at a clearcutting near his hometown of Mazamet in the Tarn, France.

Melanie Jones, Jason Hoeksema, & Justine Karst

Over the past few years, a fascinating narrative about forests and fungi has captured the public imagination. It holds that the roots of neighboring trees can be connected by fungal filaments, forming massive underground networks that can span entire forests — a so-called wood-wide web. Through this web, the story goes, trees share carbon, water, and other nutrients, and even send chemical warnings of dangers such as insect attacks. The narrative — recounted in books, podcasts, TV series, documentaries, and news articles — has prompted some experts to rethink not only forest management but the relationships between self-interest and altruism in human society.

But is any of it true?

The three of us have studied forest fungi for our whole careers, and even we were surprised by some of the more extraordinary claims surfacing in the media about the wood-wide web. Thinking we had missed something, we thoroughly reviewed 26 field studies, including several of our own, that looked at the role fungal networks play in resource transfer in forests. What we found shows how easily confirmation bias, unchecked claims, and credulous news reporting can, over time, distort research findings beyond recognition. It should serve as a cautionary tale for scientists and journalists alike.

First, let’s be clear: Fungi do grow inside and on tree roots, forming a symbiosis called a mycorrhiza, or fungus-root. Mycorrhizae are essential for the normal growth of trees. Among other things, the fungi can take up from the soil, and transfer to the tree, nutrients that roots could not otherwise access. In return, fungi receive from the roots sugars they need to grow.

As fungal filaments spread out through forest soil, they will often, at least temporarily, physically connect the roots of two neighboring trees. The resulting system of interconnected tree roots is called a common mycorrhizal network, or CMN.

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