Moises Saman for The New York Times - Displaced people from the western Libyan town of Tawerga took shelter recently at an abandoned naval academy in Tripoli.

September 24, 2011

SURT, Libya — On the edge of this city where Libya’s war goes on, several men from the town of Tawerga sat on the patio of a mosque, having fled their homes and traded one war zone for another. Rockets fell nearby, but that was just one of their problems. Men with guns, their former neighbors from the city of Misurata, stood above them, accusing them of grave betrayals.

Tawerga was used to stage Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s bloody assault on Misurata, when more than 1,000 people were killed. The Misurata fighters who resisted the siege have become legends in Libya, a status that has made them comfortable asserting their authority in the new order. They say the men of Tawerga did far more than host an army. They fought alongside the Qaddafi forces, the fighters and Misurata residents say, committing atrocities including rape.

More than a month ago, as Qaddafi forces retreated from their town, virtually all of Tawerga’s estimated 30,000 residents, fearing their neighbors’ wrath, fled the city, leaving their clothes, their passports and their family albums behind. Since then, some Misuratans have made a mission of revenge, burning or looting the emptied shops and homes. As the Tawergans have sought safety in other cities, including Surt and Tripoli, they say Misurata’s fighters are stalking them and rounding up their men.

At the Surt mosque this week, a Misuratan fighter pointed his finger at a man from Tawerga whose children played nearby. "It wasn’t two of you. It wasn’t three of you. It wasn’t four. It was thousands," he screamed. "All of you are with Qaddafi!"

The feud is rolling across western Libya, one of the conflict’s many reckonings that are posing an early challenge to the country’s new leaders. Race has made this fight especially toxic: Tawergans say Misurata has ignored betrayals by its other neighbors, singling out Tawerga because most of the residents are black. Graffiti on their emptied homes deepens their conviction: "Misurata’s slaves" appears on many walls. Fighters from Misurata say race had nothing to do with it. The Tawergans’ crimes were unforgivable, they said, and as far as they were concerned, the town had ceased to exist. On Thursday, a spokesman for the transitional government said Misurata had officially softened its stance and would allow residents of Tawerga without blood on their hands to return home.

The Tawergans are looking for safety elsewhere and finding little. Two weeks ago, 85 Tawergan men were rounded up in Tripoli by fighters from Misurata, and have not been heard from since, their relatives say. In recent days, the mayor of a southern oasis town told more than 1,000 Tawergans to leave by sunset, according to several people who said they had been forced out.

Many Tawergans acknowledge that men from their town collaborated with the Qaddafi army, but said that the response has amounted to collective punishment. "Thirty-five thousand people didn’t rape their women," said Hussein Salah, who found shelter at a camp in Tripoli. Former rebel fighters from Benghazi and Zintan are protecting them from the Misurata fighters, they said.

The camp, a former naval academy, has no running water. On Wednesday evening, women scavenged wood from bushes and cooked meals on outdoor fires. A group of men left the crowded rooms to their families and slept on cardboard near a concrete wall. They said that since Aug. 11, when they left Tawerga, they had moved their families from town to town and camp to camp.

Two weeks ago, at another camp in Tripoli’s Abu Salim neighborhood, the fighters from Misurata found them, several witnesses said. Eight of the distinctive black pickup trucks favored by the Misurata brigades came to the camp and arrested 85 men, putting some of them in the trunks of their own cars that the fighters drove off. Abdullah Abdulsalem said he was away from the camp when the men came and arrested his brother, Mohammed Abdulsalem, 25. Hussein Salah’s wife, Umm Ishnaf, said she watched the Misurata fighters arrest three of her sons, Haytham, Bassam and Essam Salah. Like the other relatives, she had no idea where they were taken.

Some men said that their troubles with Misurata were new. Tawergans had worked and settled in the larger, wealthier city to the north for years, without problems. Others said there was a long history of tension and recriminations. Misuratans were angry about Colonel Qaddafi’s attempts to curry favor with Tawerga, visiting frequently, building new homes and drawing up plans to redesign the city.

Tawergans resented their treatment as workers in Misurata, saying they were relegated to menial jobs and subjected to racial slurs. "The problem is that we are black," Mr. Salah said. "They hid this in their hearts. After Feb. 17th, it came out," he said, referring to the beginning of the Libyan uprising.

In another part of the naval academy, Salah Aqeel Zaid, 51, a teacher, said he had just arrived from the oasis town of Hun after a 12-hour journey. He said a local official had told more than 1,000 residents of Tawerga who were staying there that they had to leave by sunset.

Asked about the Tawergans’ support for Colonel Qaddafi’s troops, he was unapologetic. "Even if we did, what’s the problem? We’re free," he said.

Evidence of the Qaddafi forces’ time in Tawerga is scattered all over the abandoned city. They left behind their fatigues, spent ammunition cases and large containers that they used as bomb shelters dug in mounds of dirt.

Sheep wandered down streets emptied of everything but a few burned cars. Closets were full of clothes, and dishes were still caked with food. Green flags still waved among many houses, a sign of support either offered or coerced. In a school hallway, someone wrote, "Oh Tawerga, city of agents and goats." On the wall of an apartment occupied by young fighters from Misurata, someone else had scrawled, "Don’t buy slaves without a stick."

One day last week, four buildings burned. A group of fighters from Misurata who escorted reporters through the streets of Tawerga blamed the fires on land mines that the Qaddafi fighters left behind, or the hot weather. One of the fighters started to say more, but his colleagues told him to be quiet.

On a commercial strip in Tawerga, Salem Hussein Kanemo, an official from Misurata, supervised the loading of several trucks with flour and furniture to be taken to Misurata. The flour belonged to Qaddafi troops, he said, and the furniture had been stolen from Misurata. He said there were discussions under way about buying the houses from the former owners in Tawerga. "They can’t live next to us," he said.