Libya's new acting ambassador has no office, no budget, almost no staff and a phone ringing off the hook. One of his first challenges is recovering a half-dozen embassy cars from a boat sailing across the Atlantic.
Just before leaving Canada, the expelled diplomats at the old pro-Gadhafi embassy in Ottawa had the mission's expensive Mercedes and fleet of newish Toyotas packed on a container ship to Tunisia. Now, Abubaker Karmos, Libya's new chargé d'affaires, is working to have them sent back.
This is diplomatic Ottawa's little microcosm of the new Libya, undergoing a chaotic transition with muddled information and little money, and a touch of the which-side-are-you-on mistrust that lingers after the toppling of paranoid dictator Moammar Gadhafi.
Mr. Karmos's predecessors didn't hold the door open. The rented embassy offices were closed. "Basically, they packed up everything and they dumped it here in the basement," Mr. Karmos said in an interview at the still-unoccupied Libyan ambassador's residence in Ottawa's leafy Rockcliffe Park neighbourhood.
The 47-year-old father of two young daughters quit the embassy in February as Colonel Gadhafi moved to repress rebellions, and found the cars missing when he came back to represent the new transitional government. It's not clear how – there are rumours among Libyan-Canadians that the expelled diplomats transferred ownership to their own names – but Mr. Karmos learned they were on a boat to Tunis. By the time the cars were shipped, the proceeds from their sale were unlikely to flow to the crumbling Gadhafi regime.
"It won't go to the Libyan treasury, it won't go to the government or to anybody there. It will go to the individuals who sell those assets," Mr. Karmos said. He contacted the former diplomats who arranged the shipments, and with a new regime in place in Libya, they agreed to turn them back.
"They would say they had instructions to ship the cars to Tripoli," he shrugs. "Okay. But even if Gadhafi gives you instructions, or a deputy minister, or somebody, they have no right," Mr. Karmos said. "These are Libyan assets. And where are you taking them? You know, Libya was [under a] naval blockade, there was sanctions. They know they're not going to take the cars back to the foreign ministry."
It isn't the biggest challenge that post-Gadhafi Libya faces. Mr. Karmos notes his problems don't amount to much next to the suffering Libyans have endured in recent months.
"Money is the issue right now. It's the issue here, and especially in Libya," he said. The National Transitional Council is waiting for billions of dollars in frozen assets to be released to meet the demands of a long-suffering population that in many places lacks fuel, running water and power. They feel they have defeated a dictator, and need to get something soon, Mr. Karmos said: "The longer it takes, the more frustrated people will be."
And then there will be longer-term efforts to build infrastructure, health care, education, the economy, and a new democracy. Mr. Karmos, who praised Canada for its role in military intervention, said he is confident it will be a leader in rebuilding.
But the new ambassador is already facing pressure here, from a Libyan-Canadian and expat community with expectations. Libyan students who relied on cheques from relatives or the government are turning to him. "But I have nothing," he said.
He now has a multimillion-dollar residence, but not yet the time to move in. The portrait of Col. Gadhafi has been taken down, but it's perhaps symbolic of Libya's transition that his own family still fears the dictator's eyes are present: when his mother congratulated him, she added: "but make sure they don't know where your house is. Make sure they don't know where you live."
Here in Canada, there is still a little suspicion, too. Mr. Karmos quit the embassy in February because, he said, no one in the right state of mind could stay given Col. Gadhafi's actions. Libyan-Canadian groups have offered public support – but there were initial questions about the choice of a former diplomat under the Gadhafi era, and some say they are waiting to see how he does. Mr. Karmos re-hired "one or two" of the Canadian staff who worked for the embassy before, but some Libyan-Canadians have urged him to get rid of them, and start fresh.
"I know some people, they have, like, a grudge, or something [against] people who worked for the regime," Mr. Karmos said. "But you must know that this country, for 42 years, was hijacked by this man. Libya was him, he was the regime. If you worked, you worked for the regime."
For Libyans, he said, there are two sets of issues: pursuing those with blood on their hands, and those who stole millions of dollars of Libyans' money. "Apart from that, you have to start a reconciliation process," he said.
Campbell Clark