How Libya became a breeding ground for jihadists

In August 2011, I was in Sabratha, the latest city on the road to Tripoli to fall to the rebels. After months of fighting, there was now a clear sense that the endgame was approaching in Libya’s bloody civil war: the trap was closing around Muammar Gaddafi. While admiring an ancient basilica in Sabratha, a Unesco heritage site – built on rich layers of Phoenician, Roman and Byzantine history – an American colleague and I were approached by an armed fighter dressed in combat fatigues. He was Akram Ramadan, from Manchester, who had given up his job as an MOT inspector to join the revolution in the country of his birth. Ramadan wasn’t the only one to have made the journey from the north west of England: we met other fighters, many from Manchester. There was banter about Libyan sunshine and Manchester rain, United and City. Eventually, my American colleague, losing patience, asked me: ‘Hey, do you think there is any chance at all of speaking to someone who is not from Manchester?’.