Libya’s black hole sucks in the neighbours

The dynamic that is driving Libya towards a renewal of the civil war that, three-and-a-half years ago, ended the Qadhafi regime seems irresistible. The country has two governments, each situated at opposite ends of the country, each with its complement of armed militias and each with seemingly irreconcilable objectives which neither is prepared to compromise.

Outside powers, particularly in Europe, are loathe to interfere despite the fact that Libya has become a pathway for massive illegal migration from the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa into the northern shores of the Mediterranean and energy supplies, particularly to Italy are

The jamahiriyah was the perfect dictatorship. It meant that the country never developed a proper administrative bureaucracy.

being adversely affected. Only the United Nations and its special representative for Libya, Bernardino Leon, struggle manfully on, trying to bring the two sides together in the hope of mediating a solution to the crisis.

The causes of the crisis

Three factors lie at the root of Libya’s misfortunes. One undoubtedly comes from the way in which the Qadhafi regime ruled the country for the forty-two years it was in power. This was truly ‘the colonel’s’ personal fiefdom: the jamahiriyah, the ‘state of the masses’, Muammar Qadhafi’s ideal of perfect democratic rule, allowed no space for dissent which he saw as treason, thus turning it into the perfect dictatorship. It also meant that the country never developed a proper administrative bureaucracy. What bureaucracy there was essentially serviced his highly personalised regime and the whims of himself, his family and their close circle of advisors and supporters.

When the regime ended so abruptly in October 2011 therefore, there was no institutional structure through which a successor regime could effectively administer the country. Nor was there any viable security apparatus either. The police and the army had been dissolved by the civil war, being replaced instead by a mass of militias reflecting ideological, tribal and regional imperatives, none of them with a coherent vision for a future Libyan state. Over time, those militias have coalesced into two dominant groups – Libya Dawn and Libyan Dignity – but around them are hundreds of fragmented groups, each seeking its own objectives.

Allied to this is another problem; governance has been captured by the spontaneous security structures that have emerged which are themselves allied to other interests. Thus, the militias associated with Misurata, now ‘Libya Dawn’, felt unfairly treated by the outcome of the legislative election last June. They therefore refused to accept the result, keeping the previous assembly, the General National Congress (GNC) in being, while the new assembly, the House of Representatives (HoR), retreated to Tobruk in Cyrenaica.

Libya Dawn is linked to moderate Islamist groups although their interests are as much regional as ideological.

The governments that each assembly subsequently appointed now reflect these regional imperatives, one being pro-Islamist, the other being more secular in approach. The authority of each is restricted to Tripolitania (GNC) and Cyrenaica (HoR). And, now, the HoR has ‘Libyan Dignity’, its own militias under General Khalifa Haftar who promises to eliminate Islamist influence throughout the country.

These divisions over governance and power have now erupted in conflict, first over control of Tripoli last August and now over the control of Libya’s oil sector – which, after all, drives the economy on which both depend. It is difficult to see how Leon is going to bridge this massive and widening divide which is increasingly articulated through violence.

The widening chaos

The third factor is the widening circle of chaos and extremism driven by the increasing failure of the Libyan state. In part this arose because of the lack of control over the vast arms dumps of the Qadhafi regime in the immediate aftermath of its collapse. More important, perhaps, was the advent of political and religious extremism, first expressed in the assassination, in July 2011, of Abdelfattah Younis al-Obeidi, the former interior minister under the Qadhafi regime and the first commander of the forces opposed to him in Cyrenaica. That assassination was carried out by members of the notorious February 17 Brigade, which was linked to Ansar al-Sharia, itself a pseudonym for al-Qaeda.

Since then a plethora of extremist and violent groups have emerged, culminating in the appearance of the Islamic State in Derna. But the violence extends down into the Fezzan where it links into the smuggling networks of the Sahara and westwards into the extremist redoubt in Mali as well. Surrounding states have begun to take alarm and Algeria has quietly sought to intervene in the south, not least after its gas plant at In Amenas was attacked in January 2013.

The consequences are obvious; Libya has, for all intents and purposes, split into two with an uncontrolled hinterland in the Sahara. It has become a source of regional instability and it seems set to become a battleground as its two incipient states seek control of the oil sector. Inevitably surrounding states are being drawn in. Egypt is increasingly openly supporting the HoR in Tobruk and General Haftar’s anti-Islamist campaign linked with it. Behind Egypt stands the United Arab Emirates that has helped with airpower. The GNC looks to Turkey and Qatar for support and material aid. Tunisia and Algeria worry over Libya’s extremist violence spilling over their borders.

Yet the real victims are Libyans themselves, as violence erupts in the streets, as it did last week in Tripoli in an attack on the Corinthia Hotel and as it has done daily on the streets of Benghazi for the past two years. Poor Leon; poor Libya.