Episode description
BBC reporter Tim Whewell, who covered the 2011 uprising, returns to the country to ask why plans to integrate the militias into a unified national army came to nothing. He talks to past and present militiamen - including the young man Wadah al-Keesh, who later left his group in disgust - and Mohammed al-Durat, truck-driver turned police commander, who has reunited with a band of friends to fight in every major battle over the last ten years - and believes he will in future too. Tim talks to revolutionary politician Abdul-Rahman al-Suwayhli and famous brigade commander Salah Badi about the lead-up to civil war - and hears too about its human cost from a young woman, Rasha Akhdar, who lost her father in fighting around Tripoli. Back in Britain, he learns the inside story of the UK's failed attempt to train a new Libyan fighting force from senior military officer Hugh Blackman - and asks former foreign secretary William Hague whether foreign powers could have adopted different policies to help stabilise Libya.