'Libya's best friend': American teacher in Benghazi killed while jogging

Ronnie Smith, a chemistry teacher from Austin, Texas, was shot just steps from the burnt-out US diplomatic compound in Benghazi where Ambassador Stevens was killed.

An American chemistry teacher out for a morning jog was shot and killed in Benghazi, Libya, Thursday, just steps from the burnt-out US diplomatic compound where Ambassador Christopher Stevens died in a firebombing in September 2012.

The killing of Ronald Thomas Smith II, a much-loved teacher at Benghazi’s English-language International School, puts the violent and splintered oil port city – which gained household familiarity in the US after the attack that killed Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans – back in the news.

Again, the portrait is emerging of an American living in a hostile environment, yet who spoke of the special place in his heart for Libya and was doing what he loved when he was killed.

“Libya’s best friend” is how Ronnie Smith described himself to acquaintances and on social media.

And again, as in Stevens’ death, the hand of Islamist extremists who control portions of a city that was the birthplace of Libya’s revolution against the regime of Muammar Gadhafi is suspected in the killing of Mr. Smith.

Smith, who was from Austin, Texas, was planning to return home to visit family when he was killed, according to officials at the International School.

US officials refused to speculate on why Smith, a popular teacher who had come to Libya last year from a teaching job in Egypt, would have been targeted.

“We are working with the Libyan authorities to ascertain the facts of this tragedy,” said State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf at a press briefing Thursday.

But the Libyan press and Libyans commenting on social media were not shy about pointing fingers. Some noted, for example, that on Sunday Adam Yahiye Gadahn, the American-born Al Qaeda operative and spokesman, issued an audio statement in which he called for striking at Americans and American interests.

Mr. Gadahn said he was issuing the call in retaliation for the Oct. 5 kidnapping by US special forces of suspected Al Qaeda operative Abu Anas al-Libi outside his home in Tripoli, Libya’s capital.

Smith was thought to be one of the last Westerners still in Benghazi, a city that was abandoned by Western consulates and other foreign operations after the US diplomatic compound attack and amid an accelerating deterioration in security.

The State Department issued a travel warning for Libya on June 7 “and advised against all travel to Benghazi,” Ms. Harf said, noting that the advisory warned of “extremely insecure areas” of the city.

Libyan authorities have been attempting to “regularize” members of eastern Libya’s varying militias into the Libyan security forces. But Benghazi remains a city divided into fiefdoms controlled by warring groups, including Ansar al-Sharia, the radical Islamist group suspected by US authorities in the firebombing of the US compound.

Dozens of Libyan security forces have been gunned down in Benghazi and eastern Libya over the past year. Indeed, Libyan press reports of Smith’s killing noted that three security officers were also killed in Benghazi on Thursday.

Despite Benghazi’s sprawling size, Smith would have been known as one of the last foreigners and perhaps the last American in the city. He may also have raised eyebrows with occasional rants on his Twitter account in which he blasted the Islamists for the havoc he saw them wreaking on average Libyans.

But mostly Smith spoke about his love for Libya and the warmth of its people – as Stevens had, in commentaries on his pre-ambassadorial days as the US envoy to the Libyan opposition in Benghazi.

And that warmth was returned. As the news of Smith’s killing spread in Benghazi, students and in some cases their parents took to social media to express their feelings of loss.

“Thank you, sir, for believing in our Libyan children when half of their own country had given up on them,” wrote one. Said another: “You’re the first teacher I ever cry about, you were a great friend of mine & i already miss you, may god rest your soul.”

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to 'Libya's best friend': American teacher in Benghazi killed while jogging
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Security-Watch/2013/1205/Libya-s-best-friend-American-teacher-in-Benghazi-killed-while-jogging
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe