Leonid Issaev and Andrey Zakharov
Dr. Issaev is with the Laboratory for Monitoring the Risks of Socio-Politcal Destabilization of the National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow. Dr. Zakharov is in the faculty of history, politics and law at the Russian State University for the Humanities in Moscow.
A meeting in Berlin in January 2020 dedicated to a settlement in Libya — unlike the failed international conference held in Palermo in 2018 — leaves a slight hope for the implementation of conditions laid out in its final document. The essence of the proposals is to fix the state of things established in Libya at the end of last year. The meeting in Istanbul between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan that preceded the negotiations in Berlin implied the same thing. Their joint statement after the talks on January 8, 2020, stressed the impossibility of a unilateral solution to the Libyan problem: “Seeking a military solution to the ongoing conflict in Libya only causes further suffering and deepens the divisions among Libyans.”1
The fact that the commander of the Libyan National Army, Khalifa Haftar, actually sabotaged the meeting on Libya in Moscow, held under the auspices of Russia and Turkey, and refused to sign the final document based on the results of the Berlin Conference, should not be misinterpreted. Haftar is bargaining for the most favorable conditions before the start of an inclusive negotiation process, testing the limits of his opponents.
It is worth recalling the failed attack on Tripoli by the Libyan National Army (LNA) in April 2019. Not only did Haftar fail to overcome the resistance of the Government of National Unity; the more tangible the prospect of the fall of the capital to the LNA became, the fewer were his allies within Libya itself. Apparently, despite the complexity of the conflict, a more or less stable system of checks and balances has developed that does not allow any of the forces to occupy a dominant position in the military-political system. The 2020 Berlin meeting, like the 2018 Palermo conference, also showed that outside players in the Libyan conflict not only directly influence events; they are used for personal gain by leading military-political groups within the country. The main object of their bargaining — even now, almost eight years after the overthrow of the dictatorship of Muammar Qadhafi — remains the redistribution of powers in a future state structure, if one can be created at all. “Despite the extreme vagueness of the contours of the future, nearly all Libyan actors reject the excessively managerial model of the Jamahiriya:
After decades of harsh and highly centralized rule under Muammar Qadhafi, policymakers, scholars, and civil-society activists are contemplating how to unpack state authority to empower cities and regional development.2
Such near unanimity can be considered a fundamental starting point for building some realistic plans. Moreover, in the apparent hopelessness of the Libyan situation, the inability of either side to unequivocally take over and subjugate the rest, paradoxically, contributes to peace.
METASTASES OF DECAY
The success of the settlement is facilitated by the important fact that the Libyan split, in contrast to civil conflicts in other Arab countries, contains far fewer ingredients that stimulate intransigence and bitterness. In Libya, antagonists do not fight each other for the sake of affirming high religious, political or ethnic truths, but for prosaic goals. The authors of a recent report on the decentralization of Libya note,
Libyan militias and political actors do sometimes have tribal proclivities, but they generally lack the kind of toxic ideological or sectarian motivations that worsen cycles of violence in much of the region. They are driven more by competition for their share of the state’s wealth, as well as control of the neighborhoods and cities that matter most to them.3
Equally weak in the Libyan drama is naked tribalism. Despite the presence in the country of 140 tribes and clans, only about 30 of them possess any noticeable political weight. Material benefits have long outweighed blood relations in the realization of tribal or clan influence.4
Involuntary federalization is increasingly mentioned among options that can bring a country exhausted by endless civil conflict to a solution of fundamental problems. Recently, in July 2019, the African Union, an influential association of more than 50 members, proposed an even wider global conference on the Libyan settlement under the auspices of the United Nations. Along with the theme of general elections that the international community wanted to hold in fall 2019, the meeting would discuss the option of a federal state. It might have been possible, as a result, to outline concrete steps and measures leading to it. However, despite the solid preconditions pushing for federalization, such an outcome has been hindered by ill-conceived external intervention, which foreign and local analysts have been persistently warning about.5 Russia could be one of the main initiators and organizers of such an intervention.
The balance of power prevailing in Libya does not allow any of the main warring groups to achieve an unambiguous military victory. The country is extremely divided by local players into zones of responsibility: “Dozens of militias throughout the country have claimed authority over their pieces of land,”6 but none is economically self-sufficient. Most fields, oil pipelines and terminals are under the influence of the LNA, led by Haftar, the leader in Cyrenaica who is traditionally armed by Egypt and the United Arab Emirates and supported by Saudi Arabia. He has recently also established close relations with Moscow. However, despite the fact that he controls the largest military-political group, numbering up to 25,000 regular military personnel, militias and mercenaries, and its own air power,7 normal operation of the economic infrastructure is impossible without agreements with other internal Libyan forces.
The distribution of economic power leads to predictable political consequences. Thus, there is no reason to expect the near-term collapse of the Libyan state, which was anticipated by experts after the inglorious abolition of the Libyan Jamahiriya and at times seemed inevitable against the backdrop of ever new rounds of civil war. When analyzing the statements of local elites about self-determination since the Arab Spring, their real desire for administrative autonomy must be separated from the conversations they use to put political pressure on their local or regional counterparts. The differences between political rhetoric, which takes shape in flowery Arabic, and modest political action are especially wide in the Libyan case and can mislead even a sophisticated observer. Meanwhile, two major factors are working against the collapse of Libya today.
First, as noted above, despite the heterogeneity of the local landscape, “the Libyan national identity has been spared the ethnic and religious rifts that often make civil wars absolutely rampant.” In contrast to Lebanon or Syria, with which Libya is often unfairly compared, ethnicity and religion manifest themselves mainly in local conflicts, while “the main driver of the civil war at the national level was nonetheless political in nature: who would be allowed to define and lead the post-revolutionary state in Libya?”8 As a result, the struggle of numerous “antagonists” is sluggish and quite fraternal. This is also indicated by statistics of the number of deaths in armed conflict around the world: for example, in 2017, when the civil war was continuing, 2.7 times fewer people died in Libya than in Yemen, and 46.7 times fewer than in Syria (981 against 2,670 and 45,878, respectively).9 The Libyan drama, despite its apparent hopelessness, is a low-intensity conflict unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.
Second, a move toward actual secession by any part of this troubled country, justified by administrative-territorial, cultural-historical, ethnic or any other reasons, does not fit into the strategy of rational choice that involved all the actors in the Libyan drama. The hypothetical independence of any segment of the national territory could only worsen the situation of the elites in a particular region, forcibly but inextricably linked with other local elites. Consequently, despite the fact that “it is very unlikely that Libya’s civil war will end in a definitive military victory for either side in the foreseeable future, as they are evenly balanced and both enjoy external support,”10 its participants will continue to conduct business as usual. It is impossible to extract rent separately in the Libyan context; therefore, life itself requires a certain cohesion among those involved. Appropriate mechanisms will be worked out to ensure the necessary alignment.
Outwardly, however, metastases of decay can seem more than frightening. After the collapse of Qadhafi’s dictatorship, Libya fell apart into several large territorial centers of organized violence, sometimes even claiming to be states, and countless small entities guarded by urban or rural militias. The lines of disintegration fell along the administrative borders of the three regions developed back in the Ottoman era and confirmed in the 1930s by the Italian colonialists, although not limited to them.
THE WEST, EAST AND SOUTH
As soon as March 2012, a few months after the collapse of the Jamahiriya, the Transitional Council of Cyrenaica, uniting the local tribal, military and political leaders, met in Benghazi and demanded the widest autonomy for that area and a return to the federal constitution of 1951, which established the union of three territories: East (Cyrenaica), West (Tripolitania) and South (Fezzan). For the initiators of the action, Cyrenaica’s leadership seemed natural. With the declaration of independence of this Italian colony by Emir Idris Al-Sanusi on June 1, 1949, the United Kingdom of Libya was created under British patronage, which ended two years later. Since the main city of Cyrenaica was liberated from Qadhafi’s troops at a time when fighting continued around the capital of neighboring Tripolitania (and the entire Jamahiriya), the idea arose among some local revolutionaries of using the power vacuum to transfer the capital from Tripoli to Benghazi. For many inhabitants of Cyrenaica, “the 2011 uprising was as much a revolt against Tripolitanian hegemony as it was a revolt against the Qadhafi regime.”11
The Libyan East was able to maintain its historical identity even during the period of Italian occupation; the locals never identified themselves with the population of the Libyan West. Limited communication and the fragmentation of Libya’s political space in the Ottoman era resulted in the fact that the eastern possessions of the Sultan gravitated toward Egypt, while the western one was drawn to the Maghreb, especially Tunisia. Cyrenaica was also the homeland of the Sufi order of Sanusiyyah, which was the main socioeconomic force of the Sahara-Sahel region since the end of the nineteenth century, as well as giving the country its first and only monarch.12 The Qadhafi regime, therefore, never trusted the local elites. After the 1969 coup, elite units based exclusively in the loyalist communities of Tripolitania were based in the capital of the Benghazi region. The conflict between West and East smoldered throughout the four decades of the Jamahiriya. Of course, after the collapse of the dictatorship, contradictions could not but surface. The privileges and liberties demanded in Benghazi were based not only on the resistance to the Italian occupation, but also on more weighty arguments. This region, which accounted for about half of the Libyan territory and more than a third of its population, was also the location of the country’s largest and most productive oil fields — the font of three-quarters of national income. Not surprisingly, it was in Cyrenaica after 2011 that the loudest voices insisted on federalization. According to post-revolutionary sociological data, 15 percent of citizens in this area were united in favor of the restoration of a federal state, while in Libya as a whole, only 8 percent supported it.13
After the National Transitional Council, established in Tripoli in 2012, categorically rejected this “constitutional restoration” plan, accusing the federalists of trying to ruin the country, clashes began on the streets of Benghazi between supporters of federation and its opponents. In the Libyan West, the post-revolutionary projects of decentralization and autonomy were immediately regarded as suspicious, “attempts by traditional elites in the East … to reclaim and consolidate their lost national influence after the 1969 coup.”14 Moreover, regional devolution was rejected, and not only in the capital; it was opposed by such influential players as the supreme mufti of Libya, the conservative Sheikh al-Sadiq al-Ghariani and the Muslim Brotherhood organization. In addition, the federal project had many opponents in Benghazi itself. The result of these disputes was that the revolutionary authorities of Cyrenaica refused to recognize those of Tripoli, weakening the already weak central government. Due to this conflict, the internationally recognized parliament (the Libyan House of Representatives) still does not convene in Tripolitania, the national capital, but in provincial Tobruk in the territory of Cyrenaica (the 12th most populous city in the country). It was this body that, in February 2015, approved Haftar as commander in chief of the Libyan National Army, a move strongly opposed by the government in Tripoli.
Tripolitania, which lies in the east of the country, has always been a special region. Even during Ottoman rule in Tripoli, a small but influential stratum of intellectuals promoted the ideas of Arab nationalism and Islamic reform, which matured during the modern era in the entire Middle East and North Africa. At the beginning of the Italian invasion before World War I, the elites of the Libyan West were distinguished by republican sentiments that contradicted the dynastic projects of the Sanusiyyah order that was popular in the East. It is not surprising that it was in this part of the country that the short-lived Tripolitan Republic was formed, from 1918-22, “the first attempt at a republican form of government in the Arab world.”15 The Italians were only able to eliminate it with the rise to power of Benito Mussolini. The revolutionary uprising against Qadhafi in the metropolitan area also had its own specifics:
In Tripolitania, the administrative structures of the previous regime were destroyed during a fierce and bloody campaign in which various Islamic militias took an active part. In Cyrenaica, on the contrary, there was nothing of the kind, since in the very first days of the riots the key figures and organizations of the Jamahiriya began to go over to the rebels in large numbers.16
If, in the West, a high degree of violence caused the incitement of armed Islamic radicals, in the East, where the change of elites took place rather peacefully, the Islamists were faced with tangible opposition and then with a violent rebuff that did not allow them to unify.
After the overthrow of the dictatorship, the revolutionaries who settled in Tripoli failed to consolidate power. In addition to the UN-recognized government of National Accord led by Fayez al-Sarraj, the Libyan capital also has the Supreme State Council under the leadership of Khalid al-Mishri, an advisory body established in accordance with the 2015 Libyan Political Agreement to promote the Cabinet of Ministers from Tripoli and the parliament from Tobruk. These structures do not get along with each other, and none is able to exercise its powers even within the metropolitan region, not to mention the country as a whole. The government, which relies on several armed forces — a total of about 6,000 soldiers — looks more powerful, but its potential is nullified by the 25-30 armed groups that have divided Tripoli among themselves, four of which are considered the most powerful.17
Currently, neither Tripoli nor the western part of the country as a whole has any central authority. It is here that the problem of the autocracy of uncontrolled militias is seen most clearly; the number of fighters not only did not decrease with the fall of the old regime, it is constantly multiplying. “‘The total number of revolutionaries who fought Qadhafi across the entire country was less than 40,000,’ said a prominent militia leader. ‘We fought from day one of the revolution in Misrata, and we know our estimate is very accurate. We don’t understand how the number has reached 200,000. We don’t know where that 160,000 came from.’”18 The explanation lies on the surface: the armed police are a profitable business that simply has no competition in modern Libya.
Finally, after Cyrenaica and Tripolitania, the post-revolutionary Libyan periphery also considered isolation. The southern region of Fezzan, inhabited mainly by nomads, also declared its autonomy in 2013. It created the Fezzan Supreme Council, which was entrusted with the formation of a regional army, the maintenance of the judicial and police system, the protection of provincial borders, and control over the oil and gas fields. According to the local elders, the first step toward federalization was a response to the weakness of the central government and its neglect of the needs of southerners. The initiators of this political demarche, which had no visible consequences, were the tribes that had previously worked closely with the government of Qadhafi: Gaddaf, Magarh and Tuareg.19 The Libyan part of the Sahara, in addition to Fezzan, which includes the southern outskirts of Cyrenaica, was generally considered the stronghold of the regime during the years of the Jamahiriya (as were the global Nafusa Mountains, discussed below). But, if the Fezzan Arabs and Tuaregs easily found mutual understanding with the Qadhafi authorities, the third component of the south’s population, the Tebu people — numbering about 50,000 in the southwest of the country — were severely marginalized. Wishing to isolate themselves from the new regime, they did not support the loyalists’ initiative. These dark-skinned nomads, most of them settled in neighboring Chad and Niger, had tired of the droughts of the late 1970s and early 1980s and often sought refuge in wealthy Libya. Local authorities, however, subjected them to aggressive Arabization, suppressing their culture and language.20 The anger of the Tebu also derived from the fact that their lands had become a battle zone during the decade-long border war launched by Qadhafi against Chad from 1978-87.
These circumstances help to explain why, in 2011, the Tebu rose to revolt without help from other centers of resistance. Neither Tripoli nor Benghazi could provide effective assistance, but Sudan helped them shortly before the revolution, outraged by Qadhafi’s attempts to intervene in the conflict in Darfur. As a result, the armed Tebu police even managed to take part in the protection of the oil fields located on the territory of Cyrenaica. In recent months, Tebu militias have become an important aid to Haftar’s LNA, which in January 2019 began to “clean up” the country’s southern regions and regain control of local oil facilities. According to press reports, “before the operation in Fezzan, the LNA command secured the support of the High Council of Sheikhs and elders of the Tebu tribes living in these places and appealed to the local population to provide all possible assistance to the army units taking part in the operation.”21 An irony of history is that, in the last century, Haftar was one of the heroes of the war with Chad, which left the Tebu with unpleasant memories.
Such an interaction cannot but cause discontent among the southern Arabs and Tuaregs, who traditionally compete with the Tebu for territories, resources and trade routes. The Tuaregs reacted with hostility to the rise of the Tebu, who, with the departure of Qadhafi, lost an influential defender to mediate disputes between their fellow tribesmen and the governments of Niger and Mali.* In former times, the Tuaregs emphasized their loyalty to the regime and were gladly recruited into the elite troops of the Jamahiriya, gaining Libyan citizenship in return. During the civil war of 2011-12, some Tuareg leaders tried to recruit mercenaries for Qadhafi and were put on the UN sanctions list.22 In fact, thanks to their support, key figures of the regime during the same period were able to escape to Niger. Although the Libyan Tuaregs do not desire independence, they have their own armed militia, which mainly solves economic problems. Along with the Zintan brigades, discussed below, they control the flows of migrants, weapons, drugs and consumer goods coming from Fezzan through the Nafusa Mountains to the Mediterranean coast. Haftar himself shares a common language with the Zintan militias.
MONOPOLY ON VIOLENCE
The cacophony of armed groups and militias, defending certain local interests but disagreeing among themselves, prevented the maturing of a new power core in post-revolutionary Libya. “The regime’s overthrow left a power vacuum that has been filled by, among others, transitional governments, revolutionaries, political parties, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) which have competing agendas and no history of cooperating with one another.”23
In this regard, the experience of Tripolitania is instructive. In 2011-13, several centers of influence took shape there at once, making it unnecessary to deal with the revolutionary politicians sitting in Tripoli and their armed detachments, who also rely on military force and are often at odds with each other. This role was played by (a) the third-largest Libyan city of Misrata (500,000 people); (b) the Nafusa Mountain range adjacent to the border with Tunisia, in which the city of Zintan is located, along with a half-million Libyan Berbers (Amazighs); and (c) the port city of Sirte, between Tripoli and Benghazi. Each of these places has its own armed core that has actively used violence to advance its own interests. Sirte, however, has recently lost independent significance, since the only stronghold of the Islamic State that has settled in Libya has been completely destroyed by the combined efforts of other Libyan groups and international players.
The Misrata Military Council, which, according to some sources, now has 6,000 to 8,000 combatants at its disposal, was formed during the siege of this strategically important city by Qadhafi’s troops. During the fierce battles for the possession of this deep-sea port, the main center of foreign and domestic trade and, accordingly, the most important economic asset, its civil and military leadership showed more cohesion and political determination than any other local militia. At the height of the 2011-12 confrontation, 30,000 fighters from 200 different splinter-groups were in the Misrata brigades. This means that the local armed forces, despite their current declines in numbers, retain great mobilization potential.24
Due to the fact that the Libyan Muslim Brotherhood has chosen the city as its base, its military-political structures receive assistance from Qatar and Turkey, traditional sponsors of the Muslim Brotherhood. This, accordingly, means that local militias consider their main opponent to be Haftar and his LNA, which, as noted above, has completely different sponsors. Finally, it was the Misrata Military Council that played the most prominent role in the seven months of street battles in 2016 for the liberation of Sirte from the Islamic State; 700 soldiers were killed and 3,200 wounded.25
The fighting spirit of the local army also has a flip side: during the battles with units of the Jamahiriya and the liberation of Tripoli, militiamen from Misrata were extraordinarily cruel, torturing and shooting former loyalists. The collective repression to which they subjected the city of Tawergha, 35 kilometers south of Misrata, also gained wide popularity. Regardless of gender and age, 42,000 of its residents were expelled from their homes after the Misrata Military Council accused their tribal group of aiding Qadhafi’s troops and raping women from rebel families. For a Muslim country, the last charge is unprecedented. According to Salah al-Marghani, Libyan minister of justice from 2012-14, “The Libyan legal system knows how to deal with individual cases of rape, but it is powerless where one city accuses another city of mass rape.”26 Today, the city of Tawergha is completely devastated, its residential, commercial and industrial infrastructure undergoing systematic and targeted destruction, making the return of residents impossible. These persecutions became a manifestation of tribal and even racial hostility, not uncommon for Libya. The Tawergha is traditionally inhabited by dark-skinned Libyans, whose ancestors came from regions deep in Africa, while light-skinned descendants of Arabs, Turks and Circassians predominate in Misrata. It is believed that in the old days, the former were enslaved by the latter.
After the fall of Qadhafi and subsequent rise of his enemies in Tripolitania, Misrata challenged the small city of Zintan (about 20,000 inhabitants), located in the Nafusa Mountains. Two advantages of this mountain range — relative isolation, which provided the region with peace even during the most acute phase of the war, and direct access to the borders with Tunisia, Algeria and Niger — allowed the Nafusa region to become an independent center of influence. However, the communities living in this mountain range differ not only politically, but also religiously and ethnically. If the surroundings of Zintan, inhabited by Sunnis, were considered a bastion of loyalist sentiment under Qadhafi, the Berber minority (Amazigh), who settled down compactly in the mountains, was persecuted during the years of the Jamahiriya. Libyan Berbers profess Ibadism, a sect that is markedly different from both Sunnism and Shiism. From the beginning, they hardly fit into the unifying religious-nationalist narrative promoted by the “young officers” following the 1969 revolution, constantly experiencing pressure from the government. Unlike Zintan’s notables, the leaders of the Amazigh had no doubt whether to support the rebellion against Qadhafi.
However, if Zintan hesitated, it was not for very long. Qadhafi was respectful of the city, as local natives had replenished his officer corps for years, and the elite troops of the regime augmented the local recruits. However, when representatives of the Jamahiriya tried to persuade Zintan to suppress the 2011 uprising, they did not find support. City leaders had established the Zintan Military Council, which did not allow Qadhafi’s troops to take the mountains of Nafusa under their control or approach the border with Tunisia, which has strategic importance for the warring parties. At the same time, Zintan refused to transfer its militia to the Tripoli-based National Transitional Council, which had also fought the dictator. Zintan brigades participated in the liberation of the Libyan capital, where they became famous for looting and robbery. At the same time, their fighting efficiency and close ties with the former secret services of Qadhafi allowed the Zintan Military Council to take control of Tripoli airport (though not for long) and, more important, the main oil fields of southwestern Libya (Elephant and Sharara). An important trump card in the political bargaining that Zintan conducted with the National Transitional Council was Qadhafi’s son, Saif al-Islam, who was captured by his militias and held in a local prison for several years until his release in 2015. Currently, Zintan’s brigades, comprising from 3,000 to 6,000 soldiers, are an important ally of Haftar and the LNA in the western part of the country.
As for the Libyan Berbers, numbering about half a million people, the Supreme Amazigh Council, which they formed during the uprising, relies on the 6,000-strong militia and protects this national and religious minority. Its main slogans remain the termination of the policy of “Arabization,” Berber language equality and a guarantee that they may participate in the forthcoming development of the national constitution. Protesting against what they consider a low quota for ethnic minorities — established during the election of the Constitutional Assembly in February 2014 — the Berber communities almost completely boycotted the vote. They persistently expressed dissatisfaction with the interim Constitutional Declaration of 2011 due to the fact that, as in the days of Qadhafi, the document does not pay due attention to linguistic equality for national minorities.27 The Libyan Amazighs are quite actively supported by their co-religionists from the Sultanate of Oman, where Ibadids make up about half of the population.
A TRICOLOR CANVAS
Despite dissatisfied colonial appetites, Europeans (and Americans) took an active part in drawing up a new political entity on the world map. According to Libyan specialist Dirk Vandewalle, “In a sense, the United Kingdom of Libya was an accidental state: created by, and at the behest of, Great Power interests and agreed to by the local provinces who feared other alternatives.”28 Of course, the margin of safety of this artificial structure was initially small. At the time of independence, the country was not just a pauper, but extremely poor: the average income per capita in the early 1950s was $25 a year. Child mortality was 40 percent, and 94 percent were illiterate.29 It is clear that, when the lion’s share of national income is provided by the delivery of scrap armor from World War II and the rent for two NATO military bases, it is difficult to expect prosperity.
Second, the newly appointed monarch and head of the Sanusiyyah order, Idris al-Sanusi, did not seek the burden imposed on him. The emir of Cyrenaica was a modest Islamic scribe, always burdened by state duties. He did not allow his portrait to be placed on new banknotes or his name on the airport. Until the end of his life, Tripoli thought in clan, tribal or, at best, religious terms; modern ideas about statehood were alien. Any manifestation of political diversity seemed to the king and his entourage to be alarming absurdities. This allowed them as early as 1952 to dissolve all Libyan political parties and, in 1963, to abolish the federal project itself.
The main problem with the federation was not this, however. The provinces that suddenly were put into a single state in the early 1950s fundamentally did not trust each other. During the development of the state project, Cyrenaica and Fezzan loudly insisted on federalization, fearing that Tripolitania would crush them under the unitary scheme. In Tripolitania itself, by contrast, federalism did not arouse any enthusiasm.30 Such attitudes look quite understandable considering that, by the time independence was declared, the population of Tripolitania was 750,000, Cyrenaica, 300,000 and Fezzan, 60,000. As a result, in the course of constitutional discussions preceding the formation of the union, its future participants disagreed on almost everything.
Nevertheless, under pressure from international curators, an agreement was reached and constitutionally framed: federation was born. One of its features was the joint power of the center and regions; this provided the provinces with a wide range of rights. To avoid unnecessary political jealousy, two joint capitals were established with equal status. The national parliament alternately met in Tripoli and Benghazi, the main cities of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica, respectively. As befits any federation, a bicameral parliament was created, consisting of a House of Representatives, where the regions were allocated a number of seats proportional to their population (Tripolitania, 35; Cyrenaica, 15; Fezzan, 5), as well as a Senate, to which each region delegated eight representatives. Of course, the federal structure favored the sparsely populated Cyrenaica and Fezzan provinces, which during the period of the monarchy significantly strengthened their political potential.
However, almost immediately all the flaws of the new state system came to the surface. Until the abolition of the federation, weakly connected centers of power constantly clashed over a variety of issues, including taxation, electoral politics and economic projects. There were too many managerial structures, since the functions of the federal bureaucracy were duplicated in the regions. In fact, four governments functioned in the country at the same time — the federal and three regional governments — each of which had its own leader, legislature, cabinet ministers and administrative services. Not surprisingly, in terms of the number of civil servants per capita, the poor royal Libya led the world. In 1959, 1,200 officials worked in the federal bureaucracy in a country of little more than a million people, compared to 6,000 and 4,000 in Tripolitania and Cyrenaica, respectively. Paying the wages of the central and regional bureaucracy consumed 12 percent of gross national product.31
In 1959, however, the world’s richest oil deposits were discovered in Libya, and everything changed. In just a few years, the country became the world’s fourth-largest producer of hydrocarbons. Almost immediately, it became clear that federalism and oil do not mix. Modernization, accelerated with the beginning of the oil boom, required a concentration of power; it was necessary to streamline the distribution of resource rents. Two main complaints were brought against the federalist scheme. First, the sudden infusion of more and more new oil deposits required long and difficult negotiations with the provincial authorities. Second, if oil revenues were distributed as prescribed by the federalist constitution, the rich and strengthened provinces could afford too much. This would undermine the central authorities and possibly turn into political challenges. As a result, in 1963, King Idris transformed Libya into a unitary state, and the federal experience became the subject of sharp criticism.
The Jamahiriya era that began in 1969 did not at all favor federalist experiments; decentralization became irrelevant, and direct contacts between regions were rigidly suppressed by the center. In other words, if modern Libya returns to the federal model, it will be a new type of federation. Along with the political ambitions of regional clans, economic interests will become the driving factor in its formation. Politics in the new state will be subordinate to the economy, not vice versa. Thus, the path of Libya is truly bizarre. If half a century ago, the acquisition of oil wealth ended the decentralization of power, today that oil again forces the Libyans to disperse power. Moreover, this process is often accompanied by the resuscitation of the federalist narrative, clothed in a glorious historical myth: at least the tricolor flag of royal Libya was very popular among the insurgents who overthrew Qadhafi, especially in Cyrenaica although not only there.
CHAOS AND FEDERATION
The Libyans are now again becoming federalists, though involuntary ones. This time, unlike in the middle of the 20th century, the demands of Libyan life itself, rather than foreign powers, are pushing them to rethink the nature of their own statehood. The main factor stimulating this process is an undeniable military-political fact: not one of the armed groups operating in Libya is able to monopolize control of the country’s hydrocarbon wealth. Moreover, a new round of civil war, which started in 2014 and split the country into two coalitions — “Libyan Dignity” and “Libyan Dawn” — has not changed anything in this respect. In Libya, unlike in Syria or Iraq, the fuel and energy infrastructure were not destroyed, despite many years of internal confrontation and external intervention. During peaceful interludes it was immediately restarted, generating considerable funds for its owners.32
Of course, in each case, someone controls Libya’s oil and gas facilities. But the key detail is that there are too many such controllers; some groups control extraction of raw materials, others processing, others delivery. The full cycle is not yet available to anyone because the warring parties do not have enough strength to manage the whole production chain. This creates the prerequisites for an effective deal, federal in nature, that in the end will be concluded, despite the variety and number of the participants. Studying the experience of federal construction in the United States, American historian Charles Beard put forward a hypothesis at the beginning of the 20th century: politicians’ inclination toward federal decisions is fueled primarily by economic prerequisites, specifically the desire of all parties to become richer.33 Over the past century, this point of view has been criticized more than once,34 but the current Libyan experience seems to underscore its truth.
As noted above, access to the oil and gas infrastructure of Libya today is shared among several military-political groups concentrated in different regions of the country or operating throughout its territory in very complex relationships. They all have their share in the oil and gas sector, and some, using their influence in a region or even a city, are nevertheless able to announce themselves at the national level, thanks to control over at least a piece of the pipeline passing through their lands. The number of bayonets in the Libyan national army exceeds the number of fighters on the Supreme Council of Amazigh by three times, but quantitative indicators are not a measure of the political power of a particular association.
In addition, the seemingly indisputable territorial and numerical superiority of the Libyan National Army should not be misunderstood. Its internal composition is so heterogeneous —from foreign mercenaries to moderate Islamists — that there is little doubt of the situational nature of this military-political alliance. Despite the widespread opinion that the LNA is exclusively secular, up to a third of its troops are militants of various Islamic groups associated with Saudi Arabia. For the most part, they are followers of Saudi theologian Rabee al-Madkhali, who in 2016 issued a fatwa about the need to support Haftar. Their alliance with the LNA is primarily due to inherent contradictions with ideological competitors represented by the Muslim Brotherhood and other supporters of political Islam who support the Government of National Accord.
Of course, as observers rightly point out, “The presence of Salafi troops in the same camp with the LNA undermines Haftar’s reputation as an uncompromising fighter against jihadists.”35 Another factor that does not favor Haftar is the presence of foreign mercenaries, such as the Sudanese Liberation Army or the Front for Change and Consent in Chad.36 It was they who played an important role in the military seizure of some key oil fields. In other words, factions of the LNA do not hesitate to change allies if it seems profitable. In essence, it is a colossus with feet of clay. Of course, the “unifier of the nation,” the marshal from Benghazi, is acutely needed by a society exhausted by war. “If General [Haftar] didn’t exist, the Libyan people would have created him,” writes one of the researchers. “His emergence shouldn’t be surprising, given the country’s disarray. If anything, it’s surprising that he, or someone like him, didn’t appear much sooner.”37
Finally, it is appropriate to emphasize that the absence in Libya of any ideological component potentially facilitates the task of federal construction. In Libya, unlike some other Arab countries affected by the Arab Spring, the antagonism of ideological or religious attitudes does not appear at all in the bargaining process that usually precedes the formation of a federation. This will reduce the distribution of competencies and powers to technicalities. This favors the conclusion of a federal treaty, making it economically feasible. Federation in Libya, despite the chaos prevailing today, seems closer to implementation than, for example, the federalization of Syria or Yemen. Sometimes, given the rejection with which some respectable political players have reacted to similar projects, federal reorganization can be carried out indirectly, in the form of decentralization. According to the observations of a political scientist studying state building in post-revolutionary Libya, federalism and decentralization are not equivalent. If decentralization means the transfer of part of the capital’s institutions and state bodies from Tripoli to other cities, federalism symbolizes the provision of wider independence to historical regions.38 It is clear that agreeing on the first is much easier than on the second, but decentralization is likely to entail the beginning of federalization.
CONCLUSION
What could prevent Libya from agreeing on the conditions for the dispersal of power? First of all, external intervention. If one of the participants in the Libyan game, hoping to tip the scales in its favor, explicitly tries, as in 2011, to engage allies from outside, this will rekindle civil unrest. The appearance on Libyan territory of regular formations or private military companies from third countries cannot but raise alarm. Starting in 2015, when the LNA began to receive obsolete Russian weapons from Egypt, its representatives emphasized the enormous role of these deliveries in strengthening the LNA’s position in Cyrenaica in particular, and the boost for “Libyan dignity” as a whole.39 But the direct involvement of the Russian Federation in the civil confrontation was still not discussed, despite Moscow’s bows to Haftar. Recently, however, more and more information has appeared about the involvement of military specialists from Russia, either traveling to Libya or already there.40 Of course, the power vacuum, in combination with the wealth of the country, creates alluring opportunities. Russia has attempted to gain a foothold in this part of Africa and acquired a full-fledged naval base there. After the end of World War II, the Soviet Union unsuccessfully tried to participate in the division of the Italian colonial inheritance and asked the international community for a mandate to manage part of Libyan territory. Historical precedents cannot be decisive in current politics, of course, considering the chaos they can sometimes lead to.
Potential Russian intervention in Libya will be determined not only by domestic but also by third-party decisions. Much will depend on the peacekeeping efforts by the countries of the European Union and NATO. Their policy, however, has so far been characterized by inconsistency and lack of unity. Italy has recently recalled its former world role, causing some of its neighbors to be wary, if not irritated. Meanwhile, given the warm ties between populists in Rome and the Kremlin, both sides can, theoretically, play together in the Libyan field. However, how complex and predictable the game will be only the future will reveal.
* This work was implemented within the framework of the Basic Research Program, National Research University Higher School of Economics supported by the Russian Science Foundation in 2020 (project # 18 18-00254). 1 “Joint Statement by the Presidents of the Republic of Turkey and the Russian Federation,” President of Russia official website, January 8, 2020, http://en.kremlin.ru/supplement/5470.
2 Duncan Pickard, “Decentralization in Libya,” Atlantic Council, October 1, 2013, http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/menasource/decentralization-in-lib….
3John Allen et al., “Empowered Decentralization: A City-Based Strategy for Rebuilding Libya,” Foreign Policy at Brookings, February 11, 2019, http://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/FP_20190213_libya.p….
4 Ramazan Erdağ, Libya in the Arab Spring: From Revolution to Insecurity (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 26.
5 Guma El-Gamaty, “How Can Libya Be Stabilized?” Al Jazeera, August 31, 2018, www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/libya-stabilised-180830151116488.html.
6 Ibrahim Fraihat, Unfinished Revolutions: Yemen, Libya, and Tunisia after the Arab Spring (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016), 26.
7 The data presented in this article on the military potential of the Libyan National Army and other armed groups have been extracted from Kirill Semenov, “Whom Does Libya Belong To?” Russian International Affairs Council, November 8, 2018, http://russiancouncil.ru/analytics-and-comments/analytics/komu-prinadle….
8 Jacob Mundy, Libya (New York: Polity Press, 2018), 178.
9 “Uppsala Conflict Data Program,” Uppsala University, accessed April 3, 2019 https://ucdp.uu.se/#/year/2017.
10 Fraihat, Unfinished Revolutions, 33.
11 Mundy, Libya, 114.
12 Dirk Vandewalle, A History of Modern Libya (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 18-20.
13 Nadine Schnelzer, Libya in the Arab Spring: The Constitutional Discourse since the Fall of Qadhafi (Wiesbaden, Germany: Springer, 2016), 75.
14 Mundy, Libya, 118.
15 Vandewalle, Modern Libya, 27.
16 Mundy, Libya,133.
17 Ravil Mustafin, “From ‘Revolutionists’ to Mafia: The Future of Libya Is Now Defined by a Man with a Gun,” Nezavisimoe Voennoe Obozrenie, August 24, 2018, http://nvo.ng.ru/wars/2018-08-24/1_1010_future.html.
18 Fraihat, Unfinished Revolutions, 27.
19 Schnelzer, Libya in the Arab Spring, 75.
20 Karlos Zurutuza, “Tebu Cultural Awakening: ‘We May Not Be Arabs, But We Are Libyan,’” Al Jazeera, October 13, 2018, http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/10/Tebu-cultural-awakening-arabs-lib….
21 Mustafin, “From ‘Revolutionists’ to Mafia.”
22 Mundy, Libya, 113.
23 Fraihat, Unfinished Revolutions, 23.
24 Mundy, Libya, 101.
25 Ibid., 196.
26 See Human Rights Watch, “Libya: Militias Terrorizing Residents of ‘Loyalist’ Town,” Human Rights Watch, October 30, 2011, http://www.hrw.org/news/2011/10/30/libya-militias-terrorizing-residents…; and Fraihat, Unfinished Revolutions.
27 Mahmoud Abdelwahed, “Libya: Amazighs Demand Language Be Recognized in Constitution,” Al Jazeera, May 25, 2018, http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/05/libya-amazighs-demand-language-re….
28 Vandewalle, Modern Libya, 40.
29 Ibid., 42.
30 Ibid., 46-47.
31 Ibid., 42.
32 Erdağ, Libya in the Arab Spring, 2.
33 Charles A. Beard, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States (New York: Macmillan, 1913).
34 William Riker, Federalism: Origin, Operation, Significance (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1964), 17-19.
35 Mustafin, “From ‘Revolutionists’ to Mafia.”
36Semenov, “Whom Does Libya Belong To?”
37 Fraihat, Unfinished Revolutions, 31.
38 Schnelzer, Libya in the Arab Spring.
39 Schnelzer, Libya in the Arab Spring.
40 “Private Military Company ‘Wagner’ Is Traced in Libya,” Lenta.Ru, March 4, 2019, https://lenta.ru/news/2019/03/04/chvk_livia/.
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