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Libya's
Descent into Chaos
North
African Turmoil
by Yehudit Ronen
Middle East Quarterly
Winter 2016 (view PDF)
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Western
intervention in Libya helped topple the 42-year rule of dictator
Mu'ammar al-Qaddafi, seen here at the African Union meeting in February
2009, but it seems to have done so at the expense of the Libyan
nation-state and surrounding nations of the Maghreb and north-central
Africa.
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The overthrow of Libya's long-reigning dictator Mu'ammar al-Qaddafi by
an international coalition in the summer and autumn of 2011was hailed at
the time as paving the way for a "New Libya." Instead, the country
rapidly slid into widespread anarchy and violence as a kaleidoscope of
tribal, ethnic, religious, political, economic, ideological, and regional
interests, powerfully suppressed by the fallen regime, tore the country
apart.
Nor has the violent chaos stopped at Libya's borders. With groups tied
to the global jihadist community stepping into the fray in strength,
political-religious militancy and a sea of sophisticated weaponry has
spilled over to Libya's African and Arab neighbors, with dramatic implications
for Europe as well. Anti-Western terrorist organizations affiliated with
the global jihadist community have been the chief beneficiaries of the
turmoil, destabilizing bordering areas and, in turn, injecting strong
doses of belligerence and terror back into Libya. Escalating fighting,
rampant lawlessness, and a power vacuum have turned Libya into an
attractive arena for the aspirations of the Islamic State (IS), which by
late 2014 to early 2015 had established a power-base in the country's
eastern and central areas.
The collapsing Libyan state has become a textbook example of the law
of unintended consequences. A review of how things fell apart—and what
challenges lie ahead—may thus offer clues for how to approach similar
situations.
The Qaddafi
Regime Succumbs
Throughout the spring of 2011, a coalition of Western non-ground
forces and Libyan rebels scored a series of military successes against
Qaddafi and his loyalists. Rebels advanced westward from eastern Libya
along the Mediterranean coast in an effort to seize the oil and gas
fields, refineries, and export terminals and to inflict a fatal blow to
the regime's power-center in Tripoli. By that point, there were growing
cracks within the top political and military leadership of the Qaddafi
regime. Eight thousand soldiers had already deserted during the initial
phase of the uprising, including forces associated with the Zintan tribal
group of the western mountainous regions. Musa Kusa, Libya's foreign
minister and a Qaddafi confidant, had already defected in March. As of
June 2011, the Libyan military "had shrunk to somewhere between
10,000 and 20,000 (from its original 51,000),"[1] yet the Western-rebel military
coalition was unable to achieve a decisive victory.
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Militia
members celebrate a victory. In the absence of any effective central
authority, an estimated several hundred militias in 2012 had grown to
approximately 1,700 by early 2015. Funds from various sources, such as
the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated "Libya Shield Force," have
enhanced their recruitment potential and diminished the power and
effectiveness of the national army.
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This changed in early June when U.S., British, and French forces
initiated air attacks on targets in built-up urban areas. The devastating
impact on Qaddafi's army was soon apparent despite its reinforcement by
devoted Sahelian Tuareg soldiers mainly from Mali, who fought fearlessly
for "Brother Leader" as well as for their own survival. In
early August, NATO stepped up its military pressure, concentrating its
air assaults on the area surrounding Tripoli and paving the way for the
rebels to storm the capital later that month.
On October 20, 2011, Qaddafi was captured and executed by the rebel
militia of Misrata, a city on the Gulf of Sirte. Three days later, the
National Transitional Council (NTC), the representative organ of
authority established earlier that year by the rebels and, at that point,
recognized by most countries as Libya's government, formally proclaimed
the country's liberation. It was both "the end and a
beginning,"[2]
opined one writer, but what kind of beginning soon became abundantly
clear.
The Slippery
Slope to Civil War
Soon after the regime's collapse, Libya was further wracked by turmoil
and chaos, unprecedented in scope since gaining independence in 1951. The
elimination of Qaddafi's iron grip, which had held together the diverse
and often contentious elements of the fragmented Libyan society,
unleashed with volcanic force the long-restrained effects of cruel
political-religious oppression, chronic economic neglect and deprivation,
and social and tribal marginalization.[3]
Alongside these long-repressed rivalries, there were the additional
stresses to the state's formal, yet weak, institutions of governance in
the form of secessionist threats to Libya's territorial integrity in
Cyrenaica in the east and, to a lesser extent, in Fezzan, the southern
region. What economic opportunity existed was shattered by the sharp
decline in oil and gas exports, which had been practically the sole
source of foreign currency. The NTC and forces allied with it were no
match for the violent power struggles taking place among rival armed
militias, nor could they do anything to stand up to the empowerment of a
large-scale criminal economy based on illegal trafficking of drugs,
migrants, and arms, which affected the security of Libya as well as
Africa and the Middle East.[4]
The Western nations had no stomach for nation-building in the wake of
their traumatic experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq. Deliberately staying
aloof from the nascent anarchy, they watched as Libya descended into the
all-too-familiar pattern of a failed military intervention, with the
nation turning into a cauldron of jihadist fanaticism and domestic and
regional strife. The ex-rebel forces and other armed militias took
advantage of the newly created power vacuum to promote their political
and religious aspirations and, at the same time, redress their
chronically socioeconomic grievances. It was not long before these groups
amassed enough strength to become the dominant players on the Libyan
stage and a threat to the new state's fragile organs of authority. Moreover,
the militias' connections with a wide gallery of regional and
international players also redrew the map of the country's foreign
relations, which in turn, played a crucial role in exacerbating the
fighting and in accelerating Libya's plunge into the abyss.
The numbers tell it all. In the absence of any effective central
authority, by early 2013 an estimated several hundred militias operating
in the immediate wake of the intervention had grown to approximately
1,700.[5] Funds
from various Libyan and non-Libyan sources bolstered both the militias'
prestige and financial solvency, enhancing their recruitment potential
and further widening the gap between their power and that of the
ineffective national army. For example, the Islamist-affiliated Libya
Shield Force, operating in Benghazi under the command of warlord Wissam
Bin Hamid, received funding from the powerful Islamist bloc within the
General National Congress (GNC), Libya's parliament and successor to the
NTC following elections in June 2012.[6]
Misrata and
Zintan Fuel Chaos
Within the chaotic landscape of multiple rival armed forces, the clash
between the Misrata and the Zintan militias stands out as a major
catalyst to the dissolution of the state. These two groups initially
developed a tactical alliance during the 2011 uprising against Qaddafi.
Prior to that, the people of the city of Zintan, about 140 kilometers
southwest of the capital, had been traditionally linked by kinship bonds
to the Warfalla, Libya's largest Bedouin tribal group, which together
with the Maqarha tribe and the dictator's own Qaddafa clan composed the
regime's backbone.[7]
As noted however, Zintan soldiers from the state army defected en masse
in 2011, regrouping with the anti-Qaddafi coalition of urban coastal
tribes, including rebels from the Misrata.
This Western-backed alliance ultimately crushed the regime's last
bastion in the capital: Qaddafi was captured and executed by Misrata
militiamen while Zintan irregulars played a similarly significant role in
extracting Saif al-Islam, Qaddafi's son and right-hand man, from his
hiding place in November 2011 and holding him prisoner, despite
persistent NTC demands to surrender him. (In late July 2015, still in the
hands of the Zintan militia, a court in Tripoli sentenced Saif al-Islam
to death in absentia).
The Misrata camp was closely
affiliated with Islamist groups; the Zintan affiliated with the more
secularist and nationalist groups.
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It was hardly surprising, therefore, that each militia, controlling
substantial arsenals of weapons, perceived itself as having the right to
reshape the state. By mid-November 2013, their alliance had collapsed.
The trigger was a demonstration in Tripoli by the Zintan militia, viewed
by the Misrata as a provocation. In response, Misrata militiamen opened
fire on the demonstrators, killing forty and wounding 150.[8] These armed hostilities were
intertwined with fierce political tensions as both militias expanded
their respective coalitions. At one end of the reinvigorated conflict
stood the Misrata camp, which was closely affiliated with Islamist groups
politically active in the General National Congress, most notably the
Muslim Brotherhood. At the other end, stood the Zintan camp affiliated
with the more secularist and nationalist National Forces Alliance (NFA)
that had gained a slight majority in the 2012 GNC elections. Both
militias, however, used whatever legal or illegal measures at their
disposal to gain the upper hand.[9]
Soon the GNC itself became irrelevant. Due to a lack of financial
resources, the state had no ability to recruit and build effective
defense and security organs, certainly in comparison to the militias. In
the ensuing chaos, there were frequent abductions and assassinations of
politicians, policemen, military commanders, soldiers, judges, human
rights activists, journalists, and foreign diplomats. Main road
intersections, police stations, and government buildings came under
attack. People were imprisoned in clandestine detention centers run by
the militias, and the militias attacked state prisons, releasing both
criminals and political prisoners affiliated with them. Even Prime
Minister Ali Zeidan was briefly abducted in October 2013 after a failed
no-confidence vote against him in the parliament; by spring 2014, he had
fled the country.
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Contemporary
Libya is less a nation than a geographical construct populated by
competing and often interlocking tribes and clans. The Zintan (here
Zentan) of the western regions and the Misrata (here Misurata) are
perhaps the most prominent today locked in a deadly battle for control
of the country and its resources.
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The General National Congress's decision to remain in office until
December 24, 2014, instead of ending its session earlier as scheduled,
further exacerbated the state's break up. Elections to a new GNC, in
fact, the government, were eventually held in June 2014, but its first
sitting took place two months later in the port city of Tobruk on the
country's eastern Mediterranean coast, intentionally far from the capital
where Islamists had refused to dissolve the existing government,
insisting on its legitimacy. The Tobruk-based government—internationally
recognized as the exclusively legitimate one—was supported by Zintan
militias and their allies while Islamist-affiliated Misrata militias and
their respective supporters backed the one in Tripoli. As one commentator
put it: "What was one single weak regime has now turned into two
regimes, each of which claims legitimacy for itself and denies it to the
other."[10]
Further military unrest accompanied this political turmoil. In May
2014, Operation Dignity was launched by a newly established national army
under the command of former army general Khalifa Haftar, who had defected
from Qaddafi's army as early as 1987. Haftar's ambitious campaign was
aimed at "cleansing" eastern Libya and, particularly, Benghazi
and Derna of its Islamist and jihadist groups and at generating sweeping
changes in the state's top political organs on behalf of the
anti-Islamist camp.[11]
The Islamist militias in eastern Libya responded by forming a tactical
alliance, declaring jihad against the "infidel" opponents. The
Islamist alliance included the Ansar al-Shari'a Brigade, infamous for its
role in the September 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.[12]
Unfortunately for Haftar and his supporters, Operation Dignity failed
to produce the desired results. The militias of eastern Libya were
fiercely motivated by their religious vision, their long-harbored
secessionist aspirations, and their claims on oil resources. Moreover,
renewed fighting in Tripoli gnawed at the resources available to Haftar's
war in the east.
Regional and international involvement in Libya peaked in late August
2014. The Tripoli government backed by the Islamist Misrata forces
maintained ties with Qatar, Turkey, and Sudan, which provided them with
political, financial, and military support.[13] They also received support
from Libya's former grand mufti, Sadiq Ghariani, who, from the comfort of
his refuge in Britain, used an Internet channel to urge Islamist forces
to widen their anti-government revolt in a "Libya Dawn"
campaign in Tripoli.[14]
The rival Tobruk-based government, backed by the Zintan camp, was backed
by Algeria, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Egypt, France,
and other Western states. France was especially concerned with the
potential spillover of Libyan chaos and terror into its former colonies
in the Sahel and the Maghreb, including Mali, Niger, and Algeria, where
it had strategic, military, and other interests.
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By
early 2015, fighters from the Islamic State had established beachheads
in centrally-located Sirte and in Derna (pictured here) in eastern
Libya for the new caliphate that they envisioned. In an effort to
promote its expansionist and jihadist goals aggressively, the group
launched a series of terrorist attacks, including the horrific
beheading of twenty-one abducted Egyptian Copts.
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Providing a further twist on foreign involvement, mysterious air
attacks struck Misrata-held sites in Tripoli during the second half of
August 2014. Many believe them to have been Egyptian aircraft supported
by planes from the UAE while others implicated Tunisia, Italy, and
Belarus.[15]
Whatever the bombers' identity, the battles between the two political and
military camps over control of the country exacted a heavy toll on the
civilian population. In the end, however, Misrata forces claimed victory
signaled by their control over Tripoli International Airport and
effective command over air traffic to, from, and within Libya.
By late 2014, a new belligerent actor had entered the scene—the
Islamic State (IS, or ISIS as it was previously known)—which quickly
began to establish beachheads in Derna and Benghazi in eastern Libya and
in centrally-located Sirte for the new caliphate that it envisioned. Soon
the Sirte branch of the Ansar al-Shari'a militia had pledged its
allegiance to the newcomer as did the former dictator's own tribe, the
Qaddafa. In an effort to promote its expansionist and jihadist goals, the
Libya-based IS launched a series of terrorist and military attacks,
including one on the Mabruk and Ghani oil fields in the first half of
2015 in tandem with the horrific beheading of twenty-one abducted
Egyptian Copts as well as of Ethiopian and Eritrean Christians captured
while crossing through Libya's territory in their illegal migration
toward the shores of Europe. There could be little doubt now that Libya
had turned into a failed state where competing domestic and international
parties, notably the Islamic State, used their positions to exact bloody
revenge and seek further aggrandizement.
Conclusion
The Libyan state has been characterized in the non-Libyan media as a
"pestilential swamp"[16]
where the state and its society "have gone beyond the point of no
return in its precipitous slide into civil war."[17]
Libya turned into a failed state
where competing parties used their positions to exact bloody revenge
and seek further aggrandizement.
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Calls by the Tobruk-based government for "international
intervention" by the U.N. Security Council[18] have gone unheeded yet
prompted the hard line, Tripoli-based, Islamist bloc and its jihadist
allies to unequivocally reject "any measure that would bring foreign
troops onto Libyan soil."[19]
Writing in the Los Angeles Times, former U.S. diplomat Mieczyslaw
Boduszynski and Middle East expert Kristin Fabbe described the two
conflicting militias as both "a cause and a consequence of state
weakness."[20]
Shortly after this observation was made, the Islamic State took many
observers by surprise by its rapid consolidation of power in Libya and
the attendant change of both the country's political, religious, and
military map and its immediate geostrategic environment.
There are effectively four main state, sub-state, and non-state local
and foreign actors, most of them heterogynous and inconsistent in their
affiliation, vying for control of Libya and its economic resources while
changing the country's territorial map. These are the Tobruk government
backed by the Zintan militia, the Tripoli government backed by the
Misrata militia, the IS in Libya, and a broad and diverse coalition of
local and foreign non-state groups, including non-Libyan rival jihadist
groups fighting alongside their Libyan political and ideological camps.
The self-proclaimed Islamic State, including its Libyan offshoot,
inebriated by rapid successes, has even launched a social media campaign
on Twitter to mobilize supporters from outside the state to
"immigrate to Libya [to] guarantee your place in the gateway of the
conquest of Rome."[21]
It is no accident that the Libya of 2015 is frequently awarded the
dubious title of the "True Somalia" or the "Somalia of the
Middle East."[22]
By rushing heedlessly into battle in 2011 with no clear, long-term
strategy, the Western powers have helped create a Frankenstein monster
out of the corpse of Libya, a creature that may before long wage jihad
against both Europe and the Middle East.
Yehudit Ronen is a professor in
the department of political studies, Bar-Ilan University. Her research
focuses on Libya, Sudan, and the Sahel seam-line between the Arab and
African worlds.
[1]
Florence Gaub, "The Libyan Armed Forces between Coup-proofing and
Repression," The Journal of Strategic Studies, 2 (2013): 233,
235.
[2]
Ethan Chorin, Exit Qaddafi (London: Saqi, 2012), p. 253.
[3] For
Libya's ethnic fabric, see Youssef Sawani and Jason Pack, "Libyan
Constitutionality and Sovereignty Post-Qaddafi: The Islamist,
Regionalist, and Amazigh Challenges," The Journal of North
African Studies, 4 (2013): 536-40; for the growing sectarianism, see
Daniel Byman, "Sectarianism Afflicts the New Middle East," Survival,
1 (2014): 79-100.
[4]
More specifically, Mali, Algeria, Chad, Sudan, Nigeria, Lebanon, Syria,
Egypt, the Sinai Peninsula, and the Gaza Strip.
[5] Gaub,
"The Libyan Armed Forces between Coup-proofing and Repression,"
p. 238; Farouk Chothia, "Why Is Libya Lawless?"
BBC News (London), Jan. 27, 2015.
[6] Asharq
al-Awsat (London), Aug. 6, 2014.
[7]
Gilbert Achcar, The People Want: A Radical Exploration of the Arab
Uprising (London: Saqi, 2013), p. 202.
[8] Al-Ahram
Weekly (Cairo), July 24-30, 2014.
[9] See
Karim Mezran, "What
Is Going on in Libya?" Al-Jazeera TV (Doha), July 31, 2014.
[10]
Muhammad Kureishan, "Sliding towards the Abyss in Libya," al-Quds
al-Arabi (London), quoted in Mideast Mirror (London), Aug. 28,
2014.
[11]
Khaled Hanafi, "Unpicking the Haftar Drive," al-Ahram Weekly,
June 5-11, 2014.
[12] BBC
News (London), June 13, 2014.
[13]
Mohannad Obeid, "What's
Happening in Libya?" al-Akhbar (Beirut), Aug. 26, 2014;
al-Arabiya News Channel (Dubai), Sept. 2, 2014; Sudan Tribune
(Khartoum), Sept.
6, 2014.
[14] The
Guardian (London), Aug. 31, 2014.
[15]
Andrew McGregor, "Egypt,
the UAE and Arab Military Intervention," Terrorism Monitor,
Jamestown Foundation, Washington, D.C., Sept. 5, 2014.
[16]
Al-Ahram Weekly, Aug. 21-27,
2014.
[17]
Ibid.; Abdullah al-Bakoush, in al-Ahram Weekly, Aug. 14-20, 2014.
[18] RT
network (London), Aug. 13,
2014.
[19] Al-Ahram
Weekly, Aug. 21-27, 2014.
[20]
Mieczyslaw P. Boduszynski and Kristin Fabbe, "What Libya's militia
problem means for the Middle East and the U.S.," Los Angeles
Times, Sept. 23, 2014.
[21]
"ISIS
Recruitment Campaign on Twitter," Jihad and Terrorism Threat
Monitor, The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI),
Washington, D.C., Feb. 16, 2015.
[22] See,
for example, Maha Sultan in Tishrin (Damascus), quoted in Mideast
Mirror, Nov. 18, 2013.
Related
Topics: Libya, US policy | Yehudit Ronen
| Winter 2016 MEQ
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