ANALYSIS:The Gadafy regime is almost done; now for the hard part
WITH THE fall of Tripoli almost complete, Libyans can congratulate themselves on having achieved the end of the beginning. Now they face the much harder tasks of mopping up the remnants of the old regime and constructing for themselves a new state that will genuinely offer them a future free from fear. For it was fear that characterised the 42 years of Col Muammar Gadafy’s rule.
Living inside the jamahiriya – Libya’s “stateless state” – considered the perfect model of social governance by its founder also meant criticism was construed as heresy, punishable by imprisonment and death. To that end, Col Gadafy’s Libya spawned a vast system of arbitrary oppression that, in the end, affected almost everybody who lived there. And, of course, the colonel’s rage now is conditioned on his awareness that the very people for whom he constructed perfection have rejected it, thus demonstrating themselves to be less than men – the “rats” to whom he referred in his final broadcast speech, just as Tripoli fell.
Now that his system is gone, Libya’s National Transitional Council is presented with an opportunity that is almost unique in the annals of revolutionary change – a clean slate on which to impress a genuinely fair and free political system without the clutter of past failure. The question is whether or not the council can rise to the task.
Allied to this are other questions: to what degree will other states and organisations be prepared to help it do so, and what would the costs of failure be? We have some idea of what to expect – and a growing awareness of what the impediments might be.
In its presentation to the international contact group of countries in Istanbul last May, the council made it clear it intended to construct a transitional government within 30 days of the collapse of the Gadafy regime. It was first determined to restore law and order and, to that end, intended to retain the existing administrative apparatus. It had already contacted senior security officials and hundreds from the police service to provide a new security force.
Once the transitional government was established, a new constitution would be drawn up and the council would dissolve itself as Libya began its course towards a democratic future. At the same time, the economy, particularly the oil industry, would be rehabilitated so that, eventually and with the help of the country’s unfrozen assets, Libya could, once more, begin to pay its way in the world.
The plans seem modest, realistic and eminently achievable, and they have received the endorsement of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) coalition, the European Union and the United Nations, as Nato begins to step down its operations. There are, however, a number of potential problems that could transform this optimistic picture into something less attractive.
Firstly, the actual costs of rehabilitation and reconstruction are going to be considerable, and Libya will itself be unable to meet those costs for some time. Unfrozen assets will help but the unfreezing process can be notoriously slow, and Libya’s need for ready cash is extremely urgent. The UN will have limited resources, so the burden will fall on Europe – but Europe’s own economic crisis makes it unlikely that states will furnish what is required.
Yet, delayed reconstruction will breed discontent and frustration, both of which could promote a radicalism that would have little time for the measured approach the council wishes to take. Europe has already seen what economic failure in the wake of revolution could mean, in terms of the flood of migrants that arrived from Tunisia earlier this year – and the flows from Libya could be far greater. Even if migration was controlled, popular anger inside Libya might demand more radical solutions than the council could offer.
Apart from that, the final battle to eliminate the Gadafy regime is not yet won. There are still the regime’s redoubts of Sirte and Sabha to reduce, quite apart from the remnants of resistance in the Jefara Plain around Tripoli and the clandestine pro-Gadafy groups that have plagued security in Benghazi for weeks past.
Allied to that is the question of how irredentist supporters of the old system – they are not insignificant in number – are to be persuaded there will be a place for them in the Libya of the future.
Mustafa Abdel Jalil, the president of the National Transitional Council, has called for reconciliation, but there are many in Libya who may prefer revenge. If the council cannot impose its writ, vengefulness on the part of many may dominate the immediate future.
And that, in turn, could spur even greater resistance from the irredentists – and even inter-tribal warfare. Tribal ethos, after all, was part of the nature of the Gadafy regime, setting the tribes of central and southern Libya against the east and the Berbers of the Jabal Nafusa (Western Mountains).
Another key concern is whether the council can really rely on the loyalty of those groups that conquered Tripoli; the Berbers and the heroic resistance in Misurata and Zawiya, not to speak of those who endured six months of repression in Tripoli before launching the uprising that finally undermined the regime.
Western Libyans say they accept the council’s leadership, but their agendas for the future may soon differ; the Berbers are almost certain to seek a federal future for the state – and it will be very difficult to deny them.
But perhaps the greatest problem in the short-term lies in the coherence of the council itself. It was always a heterogeneous body, made up of tribal, Islamist and intellectual cohorts drawn first from Cyrenaica and then, it claims, from Tripolitania too. Later it was joined by exiles returning from prolonged residence in Europe and the US, all with their own agendas for the future.
The potential disputes were highlighted by the assassination of rebel commander Gen Abdul Fattah Younis at the end of July. That emphasised the need for the council to ensure its own internal coherence and cohesion, assert control over the militias making up its military forces, and restructure its governance apparatus.
None of this has been fully achieved, so questions hang over whether the council has the competence to carry out the constitutional programme it has set itself, quite apart from the question of whether the Gadafy regime has been finally vanquished.
In short, given the range of problems Libya still faces, a considerable period may pass before a new government can achieve the modest objectives the council has set itself.
George Joffé teaches at the Department of Politics and International Studies in the University of Cambridge, where he specialises in the politics of North Africa