When the Gaddafi regime was toppled in 2011, it left behind a security
vacuum. Rather than a national police force, army or security service, powerful
regional militias have taken over management of their own territories and the
security of the people residing there. The visceral refusal by the regions to
obey any government in Tripoli flows from the weak political and institutional
tradition inherited from the Gaddafi era. Muammar Gaddafi, following the
example of the previous Libyan government, shaped Libya’s power structures
according to a tribal configuration. Rather than having a strong central army,
as seen in many other Arab states, Gaddafi relied on paramilitary forces and
managed a delicate configuration of regional and tribal power centres.
Today, more than 200,000 men serve in regional militias. Only a small
fraction of that number supports the central government in Tripoli. The central
government believes that too much responsibility for order and security has
been left to the militias, but these regional militias are convinced that the
central state can never be an autonomous agent protecting its territory and
inhabitants. A resolution to this impasse may come through the institutionalisation
of the regional militias, rather than their elimination, setting the stage for
cooperative dialogue between the regions and Tripoli. Patient management of
such a process can help Libya avoid major armed violence and potentially
develop a cooperative system of decentralised federalism.
Several factors have contributed to destabilising Libya: a very weak
political and institutional tradition inherited from the authoritarian ideology
of Gaddafi’s regime; a popular defiance towards the state as a result of the
monopolisation of public resources by the clans of the former regime; and the
visceral refusal by the peripheral regions to obey Tripoli. The Gaddafi regime
was a dramatic experience for Libya in that it not only deprived its people of
political freedoms but also worked towards systematically destroying all sense
of belonging to a state. The tribalisation of power has generated a rejection
of the symbols of power – the state and its security apparatus. The Libyan
militias are convinced that the state can never be an autonomous agent taking
care to protect its territory and inhabitants, and have therefore taken over
management of their own territories and the security of the people residing there.
When the Gaddafi regime was toppled, it left an anxiety-inducing
security vacuum: no more police force, army or security services. And without
security, the political transition is doomed to fail. Building a new security
apparatus will require a minimum of trust between the victors of the
revolution, and a maximum of constraints so as to enforce any agreements.
However, the government has neither trust nor the power to enforce. It has
neither army, nor police nor security services. Unlike Iraq’s post-Saddam
government, the Libyan government cannot even rely on the support of a foreign
army while constructing its own security apparatus. It is subservient to
militias that act as security forces and block, through their political
partners, any government initiative that might lead to the creation of a
national guard. To understand just how completely the post-Gaddafi Libyan state
lacks a security apparatus, and to be able to remedy the situation, one must
understand the historical mechanisms that led to Libya becoming a state without
army or national police force.
Revolutionary regime and paramilitary forces: a
poisoned inheritance
In contrast to states such as Algeria or Egypt, Libya has never relied
on its army but rather on its paramilitary forces. Those forces ensured that
Gaddafi’s ‘Jamahiriya’ survived until 2011. From 1987 onwards, the people’s
militias became more important than the army, which fell into disgrace after
failing in its interventions in Chad and in its efforts to prevent US
bombardments in 1986. International sanctions (1991-2003) deprived the Libyan
army of the means of maintaining its military equipment and its 45,000 men lost
what little importance they still retained. In 1991, the Ministry of Defence
was abolished. The army was not mobilised to suppress armed Islamist dissidents
(1993-1998). Its attempted coups d’état between 1993 and 1995 definitively
disgraced it; the Revolutionary Guard and the regime’s paramilitary defence
structures benefited from the army’s weakness.
Between Gaddafi’s death in late 2011 and the elections in mid-2012,
militias replaced the former security apparatuses, thus reproducing the
militia-based character of the Libyan state inherited from the Gaddafi regime.
This had been founded on a balance between paramilitary forces, composed of a
skilful mixture of the “tribes” that had sworn allegiance to the regime,
enabling them to be represented and participate in governing. The army was
perceived as a threat to be neutralised, even if it meant weakening it and
making it militarily incapable. The army was thus unable to promote its own
values and interests as a body or institution – unlike other military
institutions in the region. Nor could it develop its own economy within Libyan
society that might have allowed it to recycle its staff or form a network of
influence.
The political determination to sabotage the development of the Libyan
army can be explained by the complex, subtle and contradictory relationship
between the Libyan Jamahiriya and the state. In the philosophy of the
Jamahiriya, the state was destined to disappear to make room for local
political structures in which tribes played a fundamental role. Gaddafi’s
revolutionary Libya was based on the model of a “just society” inspired by a
“tribal” political model. In his Green Book, Gaddafi revealed that the tribe
was “a natural social umbrella” and that “through its traditions, it guarantees
its members social protection”. By contrast, “the state is an artificial
political, economic and at times military system that has nothing to do with
humanity”. Society must therefore not be based on the state, but on the tribe.
For Gaddafi, “the tribe is a family that has become extended through
births. The tribe is a large family. The nation is an extended tribe.” In fact,
this tribal imagery was the product of contemporary political transformations:
Gaddafi’s Libya was part of a longer continuity for the Libyan state, shaped by
its tribal configuration ever since acquiring independence in 1951.
Indeed, as historian Ali Abdullatif Ahmida shows, the kingdom of King
Idris, ruler of Libya from 1951 to 1969, was founded on a religious order, but
was also profoundly influenced by the tribal configuration in Cyrenaica in the
east of Libya.
From this point of view, the army and state looked like the two
obstacles to the success of the revolution. These perceptions of the state and
army remain unchanged among today’s militias.
Are today’s militias the products of Gaddafi’s revolutionary philosophy,
according to which Libya was duty-bound to remain in a “state of permanent
tension”? The Jamahiriya supported the theory of “people in arms” so that “each
town might be transformed into a barracks where the inhabitants would train
each day”, and was duty-bound to maintain this “tension” through revolutionary
committees.
In 1995, so as to conform to this principle, Gaddafi announced that the
army had been dissolved for the benefit of the people’s brigades, which were
now supposed to ensure the protection of the nation against all forms of aggression.
After Gaddafi’s fall, tens of thousands of combatants gathered into brigades
linked to towns or neighbourhoods and occupied the public spaces that had been
deserted by the former regime’s security forces to protect the revolution.
The militias had derived revolutionary legitimacy from their struggle
with the Gaddafi regime, but they were increasingly challenged by the holders
of political legitimacy obtained in the elections of 7 July 2012. For the
political representatives of transitional Libya, disarming the militias and
integrating them into the security forces is a major challenge.
In the immediate aftermath of the elections, the Libyan authorities gave
the militias an ultimatum: “The mobile national force under the command of the
chief of staff asks all armed individuals, groups and formations occupying army
barracks, public buildings or the properties of members of the former regime or
of Muammar Gaddafi’s children in Tripoli or surrounding towns, to evacuate
these sites within 48 hours.”
Clearly it will take much longer than two days for the government to be
obeyed, probably several years, until a security apparatus emerges that is
independent from the militias.
The new Libyan Army uparmored
NIMR II during its presentation parade in Tripoli, Libya on February 9, 2013.
Multiple and entangled security apparatuses
In post-Gaddafi Libya, reconstructing the security apparatus is a
priority for Ali Zeidan’s government. It has not wavered from its belief that
too much responsibility for order and security has been left to the militias.
In March 2013, the interior minister repeated that the militias and armed
groups must leave “villas, houses and buildings in the next few days, or we
will take action. We will not allow our towns to be taken hostage. The state
must impose its will, and I ask public opinion to support us on this.”
For many Libyans, the excesses of certain militias have become
unbearable; they are at times seen as hubs of debauchery, insecurity and
terror, encouraging aggression, theft and kidnapping. While the National
Transitional Council initially put up with the militias, or even encouraged
them to keep their arms, fearing the return of the Gaddafists, the government
elected on 7 July 2012 now intends to reinforce the programme of militia
disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration.
Estimates vary, but more than 1,700 groups gathered into 300 militias
are believed to have participated in the insurrection. More than 150,000
Libyans were considered armed in 2012; in 2013 there were between 200,000 and
250,000. For the authorities, the militias – who had made it possible to
maintain a certain level of order in the immediate aftermath of the fall of
regime – must eventually be disarmed and join either the new Libyan army or the
security forces of the Ministry of the Interior. However, military chiefs
insist that 70% of the new Libyan army – which paraded in Tripoli on 9 February
2013 in its new NIMR II and Mitsubishi L200 vehicles – must be made up of
recruits from outside the militias, so as to guarantee the army’s independence.
In theory, its new format is estimated at 100,000 men, and its philosophy is to
be “an intelligent army”, according to Adel Othman, the Ministry of Defence
spokesperson. Meanwhile, the army uses auxiliary forces (the Libyan Shield
Forces), made up of militias that act – at least in principle – under the
command of the Supreme Security Council (SSC) and the revolutionary coalitions.
The instructors and trainers of the new army are made up of some of the
officers who served the former regime but resigned before its fall or refused
to fight the insurgents.
In contrast with Iraq, the Libyan authorities have not struck off and
excluded all staff linked to the former regime, despite the temptation to do so
– far from it! Minister of Interior Ashur Shuwail has revealed that there are
more than 120,000 police and 40,000 administrative staff in his ministry, but
that many of them have not worked for four or five years, despite continuing to
receive their salaries.
In fact, two years after the
regime was toppled, the numbers of army soldiers and policemen are derisory
compared to those of the battalions and brigades which make up the SSC and the
Libyan Shield Forces: about 200,000 men with fluctuating loyalties. The army is
believed to be 6,000 men strong, divided into four brigades (one of commandos
and three of infantry), and only 1,000 men are supposedly ready for operations!
Rather than join the army or police force, more than 76,000 militiamen have
preferred to start a company or business while keeping their arms.
The government is too weak to enforce obedience: the authorities
permanently have to negotiate their own survival, being under threat by those
who were not elected by voters but whose commitment to the revolution
recommends them – the militias. The state is a virtual one, without authority;
it is the militias who control Libya and not the government, as recognised by
many experts and Libyan academics. Parliament has become the seat of militia
representatives, not of voters’ representatives. In fact, the problem is not so
much that the militias “control Libya” – many Libyans acknowledge that, without
the militias, Libya would have slipped into general chaos – but rather that the
majority of militias do not trust the government, in particular, and political
institutions in general, and that some militias are drifting into becoming
mafia-style organisations. The militias project onto the state the same
reticence as Gaddafi. Previously, Gaddafi’s tribe had exclusive control over
Libya’s oil resources; now, it has been replaced by dozens of militias, sometimes
backed by “tribes”.
The militias have blocked the export of hydrocarbons and cut the
government’s resources so as to impose their own political agenda – as have the
militias in Cyrenaica, who aspire to separate from the Libyan state and create
an autonomous region.
The impossibility of creating a security apparatus capable of making
Libya safe – and thus the impossibility of creating new political institutions
– underlines the determination of those who participated in the revolution
(militias and political parties) to work towards the construction of a
decentralised federal state. The regions (Cyrenaica, the South, the Berber
region of Djebel Nefoussa, etc.) aspire to autonomy both in terms of finances
(control over oil ports and borders) and security. They have literally
strangled Tripoli, causing the collapse of hydrocarbon exports and forcing the
government to acknowledge its own weakness. For the international community,
Tripoli’s directives are so insubstantial as to make the revolt of the regions
look like chaos. In fact, this chaos has produced a new federal and
decentralised state – the state for which Libyans carried out the revolution.
Libya is no exception in the region, where local populations from northern Mali
to southern Algeria to the southern provinces of Morocco aspire to autonomous
and decentralised forms of managing their own territories. The era of “national
armies” controlling territories is being challenged. Yesterday’s Libya has
ceased to exist and today’s Libyans will use all means – including civil war –
to prevent the return of a central authority to their territory. Some Libyan
regions believe themselves capable of coping – like Kurdistan in Iraq – within
a federal framework. The apparent disorder in Libya is in fact a historical
moment of reconfiguring affiliations: the militias will join security
apparatuses only if the latter have a perimeter that is restricted to regions
or even towns. The Libyan government and its international partners need to
understand that the Libyan revolution is a revolution of the regions and rural
areas against a central authority, an authority which has been perceived for
the last half-century as being abusive and arbitrary.
Reconstructing
the bonds that unite Libyans will take time. A dynamic must be found that will
make it possible to reverse Libyans’ historic defiance against state security
apparatuses and allow them to flourish.
For Libya, gaining control over its borders symbolises the hope of a
return of the state, but the situation is different for each country in North
Africa. In Algeria, the discourse on border insecurity after the Arab Spring
highlights public fears about the implosion of Algeria and strengthens the
state agencies responsible for security. In Morocco, border insecurity is
reflected in the development of a project to build a wall of barbed wire at the
border with Algeria, highlighting the exceptionality of Morocco in this region.
As for Tunisia, facing terrorist violence, the government emphasises
that “the Algerian experience of the (anti -terrorist) fight is interesting.”
Tunisians discovered with horror, after the battle in Jebel Chaambi near the
Algerian border in 2013, that Tunisia has become a sanctuary for jihadist
organisations. In May 2013, the Tunisian National Guard and the Algerian
Gendarmerie Nationale established an “experience exchange” program. While it is
easy to observe convergences in the security field between Algeria, Tunisia and
Libya, it is more difficult to analyse the impact of the Tunisian democratic
experience on the region, as each country has its own characteristics and
history. The Tunisian experience seems more like a lesson to learn from than a
model to follow, though the compromise reached by Tunisians regarding the new
constitution offers hope of seeing consolidation of the first democracy in
North Africa.
The conditions that have allowed Tunisia to succeed while Libya has
struggled are not so much related to differences in economic levels as to a
prerequisite that had been stressed by Dankwart Rustow: national unity.
The
confrontation among Libyan elites (whether in militias, tribes or government)
does not lead toward a democracy like Tunisia because the stakes of the
conflict relate to the reconfiguration of state sovereignty over the territory,
rather than simply to new rules for establishing a representative government.
In Algeria, Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal stressed that Algeria had managed
to close the windows to the intrusion of the Arab revolutions, referring to
them as mosquitos, for which insecticides were readily available. The official
discourse in Algeria is based on stability and security and corresponds to that
of Ben Ali in Tunisia. Regional instability is a reality and Algeria has the
military means to secure its territory. However, using the regional threat as
an excuse to prevent citizen involvement in the management of state affairs is
a poor argument. The authorities fabricate the story of Algeria as a victim of
potential plots and call for the people to join with the regime. It seems that
the authorities fear that the change in Algeria cannot be done except with
violence. Democratic forces must display education and maturity in reassuring
national leaders that the worst is still ahead if they don’t recognise that through
their own actions they are creating conditions for the chaos that they fear.
While the
stability of Algeria is in question, in Libya it is the very existence of the
state that is at stake. The dynamics of territorial logic favour the emergence
of a political entity that not only avoids the authorities in Tripoli, but
develops empowerment strategies enabling them to survive and grow beyond the
national framework. Maintaining the Libyan state thus requires a federal
construction, the only form of organisation that can banish the spectre, not of
civil war, but of a war of secession between regions that feel they no longer
have any interest in accepting central authority. The offer of a constitution
establishing a decentralised federal state is the only alternative to war that
is looming in Libya
questions you want answered about the crisis in Libya
Security forces on vehicles with heavy
artillery stand guard on the road leading to the parliament building in
Tripoli, Libya, after troops of Gen. Khalifa Haftar targeted Islamist lawmakers
and officials at the parliament on Sunday, May 18, 2014.
Libya is currently in the grip of perhaps its worst crisis yet since the
bloody 2011 civil war, when rebels, backed by NATO airstrikes, eventually
captured and killed long-entrenched dictator Moammar Gaddafi and toppled his
regime. The current standoff is shrouded in confusion, with many Libyans
themselves unsure of the state of play on the ground. Here's what you need to
know.What's happening?
On Monday night, Libya braced for further clashes between rival, powerful militias after a mysterious, maverick military commander, Gen. Khalifa Haftar, launched strikes on Islamist groups in Libya's main eastern city of Benghazi last week, which led to 7o reported deaths, as well as an offensive on the country's parliament in Tripoli this weekend. Haftar and his supporters, flying the banner of their self-proclaimed "Libyan National Army," say they want to purge Libya of "terrorism" -- taking aim at a number of Islamist factions who have risen to the fore in Gaddafi's wake.
But, excuse me, why did they attack parliament?
Gunmen loyal to Haftar stormed parliament on Sunday; the assembly was soon declared "dissolved." (Parliament intends to convene on Tuesday.) It is assumed Haftar and his allies considered some of the country's politicians in Tripoli to be too close to Islamist elements. The post-Gaddafi Libyan government remains a fledgling, fragile institution, prone to collapse and dependent on a hodgepodge of regional militias to keep the peace. Libyan Prime Minister Abdullah al-Thani branded Haftar's cadres as "outlaws" and claims Haftar is attempting to launch a coup -- something Haftar denies. The Libyan army chief called upon other brigades in Tripoli and elsewhere to rally to the government's cause.
Why are there all these militias?
According to a recent RAND Corp. report, Libya's militias number in the "low hundreds" -- and that's a conservative estimate. The rebels who fought the Gaddafi regime were never a united, cohesive force. They were at best a loose alliance of various, motley factions: tribal bands, army and regime defectors, armed groups that emerged during certain intense uprisings -- such as those in the port city of Misrata and the towns of the Nafusa Mountains, for example -- which then became power brokers with guns in the chaotic aftermath that followed Gaddafi's overthrow. Meanwhile, in the security vacuum, Islamist groups once repressed or marginalized gained traction, launching a string of attacks and assassinations on government officials and other factional rivals in major centers such as Tripoli and Benghazi
Well, the U.S. did get involved in all this, right?
The Obama administration famously "led from behind" in 2011, letting Europeans take the public lead in quashing the Gaddafi regime with a campaign of NATO airstrikes largely coordinated and supplied by the U.S. military. After Gaddafi's death, President Obama delivered an address from the Rose Garden hailing "the end of a long and painful chapter for the people of Libya who now have the opportunity to determine their own destiny in a new and democratic Libya." While elections have taken place, political infighting dogs Libya's path to democracy -- not to mention the routine, endless rounds of skirmishes between rival militias. The RAND report argues that NATO countries, especially the United States, "could have done more" to safeguard the transition, but, in their desire to avoid another imbroglio like those in Iraq and Afghanistan, refused to deploy an international peacekeeping force that could have played a more active role in controlling Libya's many armed groups.
Who is Haftar?
A former general in the Gaddafi regime who split with the dictator, he lived in the United States for a spell in the 1980s. Hauslohner unpacks the little that is certain about his career since then:
In 1988, he broke with Gaddafi and established the Libyan National Army, described as a rebel group based in Chad. Haftar claimed publicly that he had U.S. backing.
In a 2011 interview with CNN, Libya’s former ambassador in Washington, Ali Aujali, who supported the anti-Gaddafi uprising that year, declined to confirm whether the CIA had bankrolled the Libyan rebel group established years earlier by Haftar. But he said, “The Americans know him very, very well.”
He added: “I think working for the CIA for the sake of your national interest is nothing to be ashamed of.”
When The Post asked in 2011 about Haftar’s possible connections to the CIA, a senior intelligence official said the agency policy was not to discuss such issues.
Haftar had struggled unsuccessfully to gain control over Libya’s disparate rebel forces during the early months of the 2011 uprising. After Gaddafi’s ouster, he had gradually faded from the Libyan political scene, until recently.
Haftar is winning the support of an array of factions and units in the country's west and east. His strikes on opponents in Benghazi last week were carried out by sorties scrambled from an air base in Tubruk. In the west, he has the firm support of brigades from the town of Zintan.
So is this a battle between American-backed secularists and Islamists?
No. There's no clear evidence pointing to a foreign hand in the recent events. And while Haftar's forces may style themselves as anti-Islamist, they are not up against a uniformly fundamentalist bloc. The Misrata militias, which are reportedly en route to confront Haftar's fighters -- and have long warred with the Zintanis -- are no more Salafist than the fighters they may soon battle. Ultimately, as The Post reports here and here, the clashes are about turf, land and power.
What are some of the effects of the current crisis?
Embassies have been closed and foreign workers, including some at foreign oil companies, have been recalled. On Monday, global crude oil prices rose as a result of the violence in Libya, home to considerable energy reserves that had just started to flow after months of bickering and militia-imposed blockades. Algeria also reportedly shut down its land border with Libya. The war in 2011 spawned a well-documented trail of tumult across the Muslim world: radical Libyan fighters have popped up in Syria; Libyan weapons from the looted arsenals of the Gaddafi regime spurred insurgencies and militancy across the Sahel. Libya's neighbors can only dread further instability.
