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Abu Ahmed at first welcomed the takeover by Isis,

Sunni Muslims in both countries have long felt discriminated against by regimes dominated by rival sects

without an economy that gives people a chance to make a living, many say Isis has little more to offer

“Compared to past rulers, Isis is a lot easier to deal with. Just don’t piss them off and they leave you alone,” says Mohammed, a trader from Mosul. “If they could only maintain services — then people would support them until the last second.”

“They’re operating like something between a mafia, an insurgency and a terror group. Maybe they thought six months ago they were going to function as a state. But they don’t have the personnel or manpower.”

the FT found its attempt at state-building has so far failed to win over locals.

volunteers handing out sacks of wheat stamped with their black and white seal. They even announced plans to issue a currency,

In some cases they say Isis takes credit for systems in place before it seized power. In others, locals say it is stealing the resources of the region it seeks to rule

Travellers must stock up on Iraqi dinars to use in Iraq, US dollars for the road and Syrian pounds once they arrive.

“I’m against Isis with all my heart,” Mahmoud says. “But I can’t help but admire their cleverness.”

Isis struggles to balance its books,

services continue to function because of the money Baghdad still pays to former civil servants in Mosul. Isis taxes those employees at up to 50 per cent of their salaries.

It is as if Isis is financing itself partly through a pyramid scheme, and this has begun to falter.”

Though many now question Isis’s economic management, its military prowess and organisational skills are clear.

Isis allows easy movement through its territories to facilitate trade. Trucks passing through are taxed about 10 per cent of the value of their cargo.

“I may be a Salafi, but I’m not an idiot,” he jokes.

Libya looked like the latest fragile blossoming of the Arab spring

Army commanders, mostly of Arab Bedouin origin, refused orders to shoot the protesters

the revolutionaries cobbled together a National Transitional Council (NTC) claiming to represent all of Libya

Volunteers from students to bank managers took up arms, joining popular militias and only sometimes obeying the orders of defecting army commanders trying to take control

In August Western bombing of government bases surrounding Tripoli cleared an avenue for the revolutionaries to take the capital.

Recognised abroad, popular at home and enjoying the benefits of healthy oil revenues—97% of the government’s income—the NTC was well placed to lay the foundations for a new Libya

he judges, academics and lawyers who filled its ranks worried about their own legitimacy and feared confrontation with the militias which, in toppling Qaddafi, had taken his arsenals for their own.

militia leaders were already ensconced in the capital’s prime properties

The NTC presided over Libya’s first democratic elections in July 2012, and the smooth subsequent handover of power to the General National Congress (GNC) revived popular support for the revolution.

Islamist parties won only 19 of 80 seats assigned to parties in the new legislature, and the process left the militias on the outside

The Homeland party, founded by Abdel Hakim Belhad

tried to advertise its moderation by putting an unveiled woman at the head of its party list in Benghazi

The incumbent prime minister, Abdurrahim al-Keib, a university professor who had spent decades in exile, fretted and dithered

He bowed to militia demands for their leaders to be appointed to senior ministries, and failed to revive public-works programmes

which might have given militiamen jobs

Many received handouts without being required to hand in weapons or disband, an incentive which served to swell their ranks

the number of revolutionaries registered with the Warriors Affairs Commission set up by the NTC was about 60,000; a year later there were over 200,000. Of some 500 registered militias, almost half came from one city, Misrata.

In May 2013 the militias forced parliament to pass a law barring from office anyone who had held a senior position in Qaddafi’s regime after laying siege to government ministries.

In the spring of 2014, Khalifa Haftar, a retired general who had earlier returned from two decades of exile in America, forcibly tried to dissolve the GNC and re-establish himself as the armed forces’ commander-in-chief in an operation he called Dignity

The elections which followed were a far cry from the happy experience of 2012. In some parts of the country it was too dangerous to go out and vote

Such retrenchment has been particularly noticeable among women. In 2011 they created a flurry of new civil associations; now many are back indoors.

Turnout in the June 2014 elections was 18%, down from 60% in 2012, and the Islamists fared even worse than before

Dismissing the results, an alliance of Islamist, Misratan and Berber militias called Libya Dawn launched a six-week assault on Tripoli. The newly elected parliament decamped to Tobruk, some 1,300km east

Grasping for a figleaf of legitimacy, Libya Dawn reconstituted the pre-election GNC and appointed a new government

So today Libya is split between two parliaments—both boycotted by their own oppositions and inquorate—two governments, and two central-bank governors.

The army—which has two chiefs of staff—is largely split along ethnic lines, with Arab soldiers in Arab tribes rallying around Dignity and the far fewer Misratan and Berber ones around Libya Dawn.

Libya Dawn controls the bulk of the territory and probably has more fighters at its disposal.

General Haftar’s Dignity, which has based its government in Beida, has air power and, probably, better weaponry

the Dignity movement proclaims itself America’s natural ally in the war on terror and the scourge of jihadist Islam

Libya Dawn’s commanders present themselves as standard-bearers of the revolution against Qaddafi now continuing the struggle against his former officers

Ministers in the east vow to liberate Tripoli from its “occupation” by Islamists, all of whom they denounce as terrorists

threatens to take the war to Egypt if Mr Sisi continues to arm the east. Sleeping cells could strike, he warns, drawn from the 2m tribesmen of Libyan origin in Egypt.

Yusuf Dawar

The struggle over the Gulf of Sirte area, which holds Libya’s main oil terminals and most of its oil reserves, threatens to devastate the country’s primary asset

And in the Sahara, where the largest oilfields are, both sides have enlisted ethnic minorities as proxies

ibya Dawn has drafted in the brown-skinned Tuareg, southern cousins of the Berbers; Dignity has recruited the black-skinned Toubou. As a result a fresh brawl is brewing in the Saharan oasis of Ubari, which sits at the gates of the al-Sharara oilfield, largest of them all.

Oil production has fallen and become much more volatile

oil is worth half as much as it was a year ago

The Central Bank is now spending at three times the rate that it is taking in oil money

The bank is committed to neutrality, but is based in Tripoli

Tripoli may have a little more access to cash, but is in bad shape in other ways

Fuel supplies and electricity are petering out

Crime is rising; carjacking street gangs post their ransom demands on Twitter

In Fashloum

residents briefly erected barricades to keep out a brigade of Islamists, the Nuwassi

“No to Islamists and the al-Qaeda gang” reads the roadside graffiti

Libya’s ungoverned spaces are growing,

Each month 10,000 migrants set sail for Europe

On January 3rd, IS claimed to have extended its reach to Libya’s Sahara too, killing a dozen soldiers at a checkpoint

The conflict is as likely to spread as to burn itself out.

the Western powers

have since been conspicuous by their absence. Chastened by failure in Afghanistan and Iraq, they have watched from the sidelines

Obama washed his hands of Libya after Islamists killed his ambassador

Italy, the former colonial power, is the last country to have a functioning embassy in Tripoli.

Even under Qaddafi the country did not feel so cut off

Dignity is supported not just by Mr Sisi but also by the United Arab Emirates, which has sent its own fighter jets into the fray as well as providing arms

The UAE’s Gulf rival, Qatar, and Turkey have backed the Islamists and Misratans in the west

If oil revenues were to be put into an escrow account, overseas assets frozen and the arms embargo honoured he thinks it might be possible to deprive fighters of the finance that keeps them fighting and force them to the table

Until 1963 Libya was governed as three federal provinces—Cyrenaica in the east, Fezzan in the south and Tripolitania in the west

The old divisions still matter

the marginalised Cyrenaicans harked back to the time when their king split his time between the courts of Tobruk and Beida and when Arabs from the Bedouin tribes of the Green Mountains ran his army

Tensions between those tribes and Islamist militias ran high from the start.

July 2011 jihadists keen to settle scores with officers who had crushed their revolt in the late 1990s killed the NTC’s commander-in-chief, Abdel Fattah Younis, who came from a powerful Arab tribe in the Green Mountains. In June 2013 the Transitional Council of Barqa (the Arab name for Cyrenaica), a body primarily comprised of Arab tribes, declared the east a separate federal region, and soon after allied tribal militias around the Gulf of Sirte took control of the oilfields.

In the west, indigenous Berbers, who make up about a tenth of the population, formed a council of their own and called on larger Berber communities in the Maghreb and Europe for support

Port cities started to claim self-government and set up their own border controls.

Derna—a small port in the east famed for having sent more jihadists per person to fight in Iraq than anywhere else in the world

opposed NATO intervention and insisted that the NTC was a pagan (wadani) not national (watani) council

Some in Derna have now declared their allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the caliph of the so-called Islamic State (IS) in Syria and Iraq.

In December the head of America’s Africa command told reporters that IS was training some 200 fighters in the town.

30 women were appointed as judges presiding over family courts;

25.7% of top management positions in the state are held by women

49 percent of students enrolled in universities and higher education institutions;

• There was a significant increase in the proportions of mothers assisted at delivery by medical provider - from 61.5 percent in 2000 to 78.6 percent in 2006;

The percentage of women who gave birth at an age younger than 18 decreased from 23.7 in 1992 to 20.4 in 2000 then to 15.8 in 2005.

The total duration in school remains intact, 12 years. The primary cycle of general education has been increased by one year, and is divided into two modules of three years each, while the intermediary cycle was reduced to three years instead of four. The first year of general education's secondary cycle must be considered common for all four different series of instruction, and the second year is common to only two out of four series. Lebanese students are not allowed to enter formal technical education before age 12, which is the age limit of obligatory education. The scholastic year was changed to 36 weeks, and 4 supplementary hours per week were added at the intermediary and secondary cycles.

The new school curricula was launched in September 1998, and the Educational Center for Research and Development had trained 16,000 teachers in public schools and 6,000 teachers in private schools on the new uses and principles of the new program. The new system took into account economic, social, and national perspectives. The principle characteristics of this new system consist of the following:

The Lebanese educational system has usually relied heavily on private schooling to accommodate the evergrowing demand for learning in the country

As to special education concerning handicapped students, there were about 10,000 handicapped people in 1975 (prior to the Lebanese civil war). During the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, this number reached 13,000; it is more than 15,000 in 2001. About 2,500 handicapped people were being educated and made ready to enter the work market.

There are 1508 public and private intermediary and secondary schools for the general instruction program in Lebanon, while there are only 262 schools for the technical and professional instruction program divided between the public sector (29 schools) and the private sector (233 schools).

Education is compulsory until the end of the intermediate cycle, is available to all Lebanese students, and is attended by nearly 95 percent of school-age children

The school year starts in early October and ends in late June. The school day consists of six hours starting at 8:00 a.m. with two hour lunch break and ends at 4:00 p.m. The length of class periods ranges from 50 to 55 minutes. Both public and private schools are supposed to observe official holidays, which are decided by the government; however, Christian-administered, religious private schools take Saturday and Sunday off every week, while Moslem-run religious private schools take Friday and Sunday, and Jewish-run private schools take off all of Saturday and Sunday afternoon only.

In short, the new formal educational system of Lebanon, like in many other countries, divides the years of instruction as follows: 6-3-3 (six years for the primary cycle, three years for the intermediate cycle, and three years for the secondary cycle), followed by the higher education cycle. Primary school education is followed either by a six-year intermediary and secondary program, leading to the official Lebanese baccalaureate certificate, which was originally based on the equivalent French school diploma, or by a three- to six-year technical or vocational training program.

In addition, females appeared to have a slightly higher percentage than males with regard to attending schools and universities. After age 25 male attendance becomes almost double that of female attendance.

the literacy rate was 88.4 percent in 1997

ue to the Lebanese people's negative attitude toward manual work, especially in industry and agriculture, students of lower socioeconomic status enroll mostly in vocational and technical schools. Therefore, there is a big difference between the two major types of instruction, as well as the relative numbers of schools and students enrolled in each of these types

The brevet certificate is only required by public schools, vocational schools, and teacher training institutes. The baccalaureate part I exam has two main tracks: literary and scientific. The baccalaureate part II has four main tracks: literature and humanities, which includes language, literature, history, philosophy, education, arts, and religion; sociology and economy, which includes economic sciences, politics, business and management, law, and sociology; general sciences, which includes mathematics, physics, chemistry, and their applications at the level of engineering; and life sciences, which includes biology and life sciences, chemistry and their applications in the area of medicine, health, agriculture, and other related subjects.

Most institutions of higher education require entrance examinations besides the baccalaureate part II, which is required by law.

The grading system is generally based on scales of 0 to 20 or 0 to 100, with 10 or 60, respectively, as passing grades

he curriculum in Lebanese schools is somewhat rigid, for all students must pursue the same programs in all three cycles

rivate schools can choose textbooks that meet their syllabi, except in the civics area where the Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sport requires them to use the center's textbooks.

rabic and either French or English are the languages of instruction in the Lebanese schools.

The United Nations Reliefs and Works Agency (UNRWA) provides funds supporting a private nonsectarian school system for Palestinian Refugees in the Middle East. This type of private schooling has been very effective in offering education and social services for children of Palestinian Refugees residing in Lebanon

Though girls’ enrollment and primary education completion rates in Yemen have increased substantially over the last decade, the gender disparity remains severe

To address the disparity, in 2007 the Yemeni government, with funding from the World Bank’s Fund for the Poorest Countries (IDA), launched a rural female teacher contracting scheme and has since trained 550 teachers, 525 of which have become certified.  Under an additional project, funded by the Global Partnership for Education, 490 teachers have completed the training program.

A conditional cash transfer (CCT) program, designed to help girls in grades 4-9 in disadvantaged communities in selected governorates, has been effective in encouraging parents to allow girls to attend school.

he cash stipends are conditional on maintaining no less than 80% attendance and a passing grade, with an allowance to repeat the grade only once

Under Yemen’s second basic education development project, approved under a $66 million IDA grant in February, the government  will recruit, train and deploy an additional 700 female teachers in rural areas and continue its conditional cash transfer program for girls’ education, to extend service to an additional 25,000 students.

eeting these lofty goals will require a range of initiatives—repairing infrastructure and building new facilities, providing sufficient learning materials, narrowing teacher-student ratios, and addressing gender disparities—especially in rural areas, where underfunding and conflict have compounded the problems facing schools ther

Mohammad bin Mohammad, a school teacher in Erman Primary School in the Ans area of Dhamar governorate, which accommodates 110 children from first to sixth grade, says many of his students are forced to take their lessons sitting on the ground. “Students don’t study in proper classrooms. Let alone having enough labs, chairs or tables,” he said.

Addressing security concerns and providing necessary infrastructure are fundamental prerequisites, but staffing and improving access to education for girls remain high on the agenda.

Government expenditure on bonuses amounts to YR60 million ($279,000) for the current fiscal year, and is expected to reach 271,696 employees nationwide working in the education sector, according to the Ministry of Education.

In areas where female enrolment and retention in school is significantly lower than the national average, the government also offers conditional cash transfers to families to encourage them to allow their girls to attend school.

n March, Mollet received new authority to act against the rebellion in Algeria from parliament's Special Powers Law, passed in a 455 to 76 vote.

The FLN tightened its organization and began focusing on terrorism in the cities, mainly Algiers.

By 1 January 1957 the French had 308,000 soldiers in Algeria. On 28 January 1957 the UN was scheduled to debate the Algerian question, and for that day the FLN scheduled a one-week Muslim work stoppage in Algiers.

The French showed low ranking guerrillas they had captured documents describing other guerrillas as working for the French, and then they released these guerrillas. Some of those released fell for the trick, resulting in purging within the FLN.

The French military made itself dominant across much of Algeria.

To escape the military, thousands of Algerians fled to Tunisia or Morocco and joined the FLN there.

On July 3, Algeria became officially independent. Meanwhile another big migration was underway. Around 800,000 of those in Algeria of European descent – an overwhelming majority – were moving to Europe.