Opinion: Why Have We Forgotten About Libya?

All civilians deserve protection, but some civilians deserve more protection than others. Or so it seems in Libya today.

Two years ago, the U.N. Security Council authorized a military operation by NATO with a mandate to protect civilians who were under attack by Moammar Gadhafi's forces. That operation led to Gadhafi's fall.

Today, long after the fighting has stopped, those who are rightly or wrongly perceived to have supported Gadhafi are under threat. Thousands of women and children have been displaced from their homes and living in camps, often harassed. Men have been detained, tortured and killed. They need protection, but the nations that intervened two years ago have done virtually nothing on their behalf.The most pressing case involves the former residents of the town of Tawergha, which had a pre-war population of about 42,000.

Tawerghans formerly enjoyed Gadhafi's financial and political support, and the town became a military staging ground during the 2011 war. Many fighting age men from Tawergha joined Gadhafi's fight.Some of these men allegedly committed atrocities during the war in the nearby city of Misrata, which suffered from a brutal, two month siege in which hundreds of civilians died. Misratans say that Tawerghan fighters committed killings and rapes in their city and that now it is time to take revenge.

And revenge is what the anti-Gadhafi militias of Misrata have been taking, forcing all Tawerghans from their town. Spread across Libya, Tawerghans have been hunted down, detained, tortured and killed. Satellite imagery analyzed by Human Rights Watch corroborates what we saw on the ground: the systematic destruction of the town's residential, commercial and industrial structures after the fighting had stopped in an apparent attempt to prevent returns.

The Misratans demand justice for the crimes committed against them, and this is their due. But justice is not served by punishing an entire community for crimes committed by some of its members - that is collective punishment.But while the U.N. Security Council and its powerful members jumped to protect Libyan civilians when Gadhafi was the enemy, they have not taken serious action against the revenge attacks that Tawerghans and other displaced communities in Libya are suffering from today - about 60,000 people in all, according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.