What explains Libya and Morocco’s very different responses to catastrophe?

Good morning. The world has been struck by not one but two natural disasters in recent days – and today, we take a look at the local and international responses to the earthquake in Morocco and devastating flooding in Libya.

At least 2,900 people are known to have died in the 6.8 magnitude earthquake that struck in Morocco’s High Atlas mountains a week ago today, and the authorities warn the death toll will rise higher.

Three days later, on Monday 11 September, intense flooding in Libya led to the collapse of two dams that unleashed a torrent of mud and water into the eastern city of Derna destroying large parts of the city.

This morning the Libyan Red Crescent said the number of dead in the city has risen to 11,000, and it is expected to grow as rescue teams arrive and help retrieve more bodies from the mud. A further 30,000 people are missing, officials said.

The full scale of the disaster may be far greater, as few international aid agencies or news reporters have been able to reach the flood-hit area which is the eastern region controlled not by the government in Tripoli but a rival warlord.

For today’s newsletter, I spoke to Peter Beaumont, a senior Guardian international reporter who has spent this week in the Atlas mountains and is a veteran of several reporting trips to Libya. More, after the headlines.

Five big stories

In depth: ‘Libya is a failed state – Morocco, on the other hand, is functioning and modern’

They may be geographically relatively close to each other (it’s just a 2,000km hop across Algeria), but Peter Beaumont says Morocco and Libya could not be two more different countries – and this had a huge impact on their ability to respond to the disasters.

“Libya is a failed – or semi-failed – state that has been caught up in a protracted civil war since 2011, which has obviously had a massive impact on the country’s infrastructure and social cohesion,” Peter says.

“Morocco, on the other hand, is a functioning modern state. The place works – Marrakech, Tangier, Rabat are all modern cities. Ordinary people have been mobilised on a mass scale, and there is a very strong sense of nationhood.”

The difference between Libya and Morocco

Peter arrived in Morocco on Sunday and was able to drive directly to the epicentre near Adassil. “Within an hour, I was at an earthquake-hit village and speaking to people affected and those providing help.”

He says it would be a totally different story if the news desk sent him to report on the Libyan flooding. “One of the challenges of covering disasters that coincide with conflict are fractured lines of control, it’s not a question of just flying to Tripoli and getting a car. I have worked in Libya, and it is an incredibly difficult place to work.”

Firstly, you need a visa. But there’s no telling if one would be granted, or how long it would take to come through. If a visa were granted, it would be for the western areas controlled by the government in Tripoli. And the flooding is in Derna, in the eastern region controlled by general Khalifa Haftar of the Libyan National Army, who has been supported by Egypt and helped by Russian mercenaries from the notorious Wagner group.

“Reporting from Libya was one of the most dangerous jobs I’ve ever done,” says Peter, who was last in Libya to cover the toppling of its previous dictator, colonel Muammar Gaddafi, in 2011. “There would be hard questions about whether to send a reporter there.”

These safety concerns and crumbling infrastructure since the death of Gaddafi, have made it very hard for international aid agencies or reporters to get a real sense of the devastation in Derna.

“As nasty, autocratic states go, Libya under Gaddafi functioned and it had a huge amount of money from oil. It was a place that worked, in a horrible way with no rights or freedoms, but it had decent infrastructure. Not so much now.”

The World Meteorological Organization said the huge death toll could have been avoided if Libya, a failed state for more than a decade, had a functioning weather agency. “They could have issued warnings,” its secretary-general Petteri Taalashe said. “The emergency management authorities would have been able to carry out evacuation of the people. And we could have avoided most of the human casualties.”

Libya’s attorney general has been asked by senior politicians to launch an urgent inquiry “to hold accountable everyone who made a mistake or neglected by abstaining or taking actions that resulted in the collapse of the city’s dams”.

“We still don’t really know the scale of the disaster,” Peter says. “Is it 20,000 dead as the mayor of Derna says? It could be more.”

International aid only started to reach Derna on Wednesday afternoon – two days after the catastrophe. It may be too late now to save lives. The mayor, Abdulmenam al-Ghaithi, said “we actually need teams specialised in recovering bodies”.

Lutfi al-Misrati, a search team director, told Al Jazeera: “I fear that the city will be infected with an epidemic due to the large number of bodies under the rubble and in the water. We need bags for the bodies.”

Another official warned that the number of dead could increase significantly as the “sea is constantly dumping dozens of bodies”.

The role of Morocco’s king

While it is much easier to get international aid to Morocco, the government has been criticised for not accepting more assistance. So far only search-and-rescue teams from the United Kingdom, Qatar, Spain and the United Arab Emirates have been allowed in. Offers of help from US, Tunisia, Turkey, Taiwan, and, significantly, former colonial power France, have not been accepted.

The king of Morocco, Mohammed VI, has refused support from Paris, which ruled Morocco as a colony between 1912-1956, after years of fraught relations. It led French president Emmanuel Macron to post a video stating: “There is the possibility of supplying humanitarian aid directly. It is clearly up to his majesty the king and the Moroccan government, in a manner entirely befitting their sovereignty, to organise international aid.”

Despite the king’s apparent dislike of the French government, he spends much of the year in a 10-bedroom €80m mansion near the Eiffel Tower, complete with a swimming pool, spa, and hair salon. He also owns Château de Betz, an 18th-century castle about 30 miles northeast of Paris.

How Morocco’s communities responded

Peter says the furore over Morocco rejecting aid may have been overblown, and it’s unclear if Rabat needs much more international support due to the specific nature of this tragedy. Most of the houses were built of mud bricks, rather than concrete, he says, so people “either died or survived”.

Moroccans have reopened most of route nationale 10, the main road through the High Atlas mountains, to Talat N’Yaaqoub, about 12 miles (20km) from where the earthquake struck. “It’s a pretty incredible achievement to have reopened a road where large sections had been blocked by rockfall just days earlier,” he says.

As Peter was coming back down route 10, thousands of ordinary Moroccans were driving aid back up the mountain. Among them he met a group of 16 young men in three vans, all supporters of the Raja Casablanca football team.

“It’s taken us all day driving to get to Talat N’Yaaqoub,” Ziko, the driver of one of the vans told Peter. “We have food and clothes and money we’ve collected for the victims of the earthquake. We felt we needed to do it.”

In a reversal of roles, he also got stopped by a local journalist who asked to interview him. “What she really wanted to ask was ‘aren’t you impressed with what we’ve been able to do?’.

“And, I was. It was genuinely impressive to see ordinary Moroccans do this. It’s how humanity should be – not politics but the community helping the community,” he says. “In a couple of years’ time, I think, when people ask me what I remember about the Morocco earthquake, it is not just going to be the sadness and devastation, it will be how ordinary people responded. That is hugely positive, and given that I cover a lot of grim stories, it says a lot.”

What else we’ve been reading

What happened when two ex-England internationals of different genders swapped social media accounts? Jill Scott and Gary Neville tried it, and the misogyny Neville faced sadly comes as no surprise. Toby Moses, head of newsletters

A former foreign minister, who became infamous in 2018 for dancing with Russian president Vladimir Putin at her wedding, has moved to St Petersburg – along with her ponies which were flown in on a Russian military plane. Rupert

Pop Culture with Chanté Joseph returns with a timely look at Naomi Campbell’s controversial team-up with fast fashion retailer PrettyLittleThing. She talks to Guardian fashion journo Chloe Mac Donnell about why it’s caused such anger among fans. Toby

Nicola Kelly spends a day shadowing food app delivery driver Shaffi on a shift deliverying £84 sashimi and crab rolls from Nobu to office workers but not collecting any tips. It reminds me of the week I spent as an Uber cycle courier in New York – until my bike got stolen. Rupert

Emine Saner interviews Danny Robins, host of hugely successful paranormal podcasts such as Uncanny and the Battersea Poltergeist. The secret of his success? Living in dark times … “If you look at the points in time when horror becomes very popular, it’s like the more extreme that society gets, the more extreme it needs its art to be.” Toby

Sport

Cricket | Nat Sciver-Brunt celebrated her 100th ODI by striking an astonishing 120 from 74 balls as England eased to a comfortable victory over Sri Lanka and secured a 2-0 series win. Sciver-Brunt’s knock broke a record which had stood for 11 years, with her 66-ball century becoming the fastest ever by an Englishwoman in the 50-over format.

Rugby | Scotland hooker Dave Cherry has been replaced in the country’s World Cup squad after he suffered a concussion in a hotel accident on Monday. The 32-year-old slipped down stairs at the team hotel on a day off. He is now following return-to-play protocols, which render him unavailable for at least the next 12 days and likely end his tournament.

Football | Players in Spain’s women’s football league have called off their strike after reaching an agreement on minimum wages. The players went on strike at the start of the month before the first two fixtures of the season after failing to reach an agreement with the league on better conditions and pay.

The front pages

The Guardian is leading with “Starmer criticised by left and right over plan to end small boats crisis” while the Telegraph’s top story is “Pupils to isolate for 21 days as measles cases rise”. The Times splashes on “A&E delays put patients in danger, says doctor”.

The Daily Mail says “Even in grief we are banned from saying her name”, referring to a 19-year-old involved in a legal fight with doctors. The Mirror splashes on the latest “HS2 shambles”, headlining its story “The final betrayal” and the i leads with “NHS waiting lists set to grow as PM blames doctors for missing pledge”.

The Metro’s top story is “7.7 million wait for NHS slot” while the Financial Times says “Arm shares leap 20% in biggest US IPO for 2 years”. The Express leads with “Dirty deal! Suella slams Labour’s EU migrant plan”.

Something for the weekend

Our critics’ roundup of the best things to watch, read and listen to right now

TV
Living Next Door to Putin (BBC iPlayer)
This is an insightful, delicately handled portrait of eastern Europe’s anxieties and the ramifications of existing on the potential frontline of Vladimir Putin’s westward expansion. While Ukraine is engulfed in warfare not seen in Europe since the second world war, the journalist Katya Adler spends this two‑parter looking at the practical and existential impact this has on Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland and Norway. Leila Latif

Music
Mitski: The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We
There are an awful lot of singer-songwriters around exploring the kind of subjects Mitski (above) touches on here: disillusionment, isolation, broken relationships, overindulgence. But it is questionable whether anyone else is doing it with this much skill, this lightness of touch or indeed, straightforward melodic power: in the best possible sense, Mitski feels out on her own. Alexis Petridis

Film
Fremont
London-based Iranian film-maker Babak Jalali has crafted this droll, ruminative, engaging indie picture in luminous black-and-white featuring deadpan, dead-slow dialogue exchanges with more than a little of early Jim Jarmusch. This is the kind of movie whose amiable directionlessness and romantic gentleness generate a lot of warmth; it’s the kind of independent film which we haven’t seen a lot of lately, endowed with intimacy and a kind of dreamy charm. Peter Bradshaw

Podcast
Pop Culture With Chanté Joseph (Widely available, episodes weekly)
“Naomi Campbell and Pretty Little Thing – is there any hope for sustainable fashion?” The collaboration that has rocked the fashion world is the topic being unpicked by Chanté Joseph in the return of this pop culture podcast. She’s joined by Guardian fashion journalist Chloe Mac Donnell and sustainability consultant Emma Slade Edmondson. Hollie Richardson

Today in Focus

Cartoon of the day | Sarah Akinterinwa

The Upside

A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad

Less than two weeks after the parents of Martha Mills, who died in 2021 after hospital doctors failed to admit her to intensive care, began their campaign for “Martha’s rule”, the UK government has committed to introducing it in England. The proposed measure would make it easier for patients and their families to get a second medical opinion if the patient’s condition is worsening and they believe their concerns are not being taken seriously by medical staff. A similar measure enforced in Queensland in Australia has been shown to have saved lives.

Merope Mills and Paul Laity have both written about their experience after their daughter died at the age of 13 after developing sepsis while under the care of King’s College hospital NHS foundation trust in south London. A coroner previously ruled that Martha, who would have been 16 last week, would likely have survived if doctors had identified the warning signs and transferred her to intensive care. Merope Mills welcomed the announcement, saying: “Our incredible daughter Martha lost her life needlessly, far too young. We hope this new rule will put some power back into the hands of patients and prevent unnecessary deaths.”

Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday

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