EU Strategic Interests in Post-Qadhafi Libya: Perspectives for Cooperation

Since the fall of Muammar Qadhafi in 2011, a legitimate monopoly over the means of violence has not been in the hands of the Libyan state. The military confrontation between the regime and what the international media called the "rebels," supported by the NATO no-fly zone, ended in October 2011. However, in 2012 and especially in 2013, Libya witnessed an escalating conflict pitting the democratically elected government and the Libyan state against armed groups and militias. For the EU, this is a challenge to its strategic interests, primarily security in the Mediterranean and secondarily migration and the development of Libya.

Libyan exports to Europe are predominantly fossil fuels and related products, which in 2010 accounted for 97.1 percent of overall Libyan exports.¹ Obviously, it is extremely important for Libyan recovery that the production and export of oil and gas reach prewar levels. The Libyan resources are huge, so a solid income from the oil industry should ideally form the basis for the country's progress. For the new government, it is also important to begin dealing with other problems inherited from the Qadhafi era. The most serious is high unemployment, a result of the country's small and inefficient production sector and a lack of foreign investment.

Added to that, the war of 2011 left behind a deeply destabilizing element: large numbers of nonstate armed groups that are challenging the democratically elected General National Congress (GNC). Some of these groups are revolutionary brigades formed during the fighting against Qadhafi's army, many of them organized under umbrellas — the Libya Shield and the Supreme Security Committee (SSC) — related to the state and the national army but outside official structures.² Some are brigades that have broken away from "official" Libya; others are autonomous militias.³

According to a European Commission memo, a rapprochement between the new Libya and the EU was underway in 2012. The EU Election Assessment Team covering the parliamentary elections of July 7, 2012, concluded "that the electoral process had been efficiently administered and pluralistic and was overall conducted in a peaceful manner."⁴ Since the fall of Qadhafi, the EU has supported the Libyan authorities with funding for projects dealing with public administration, civil society, health and education as well as on security and technical and vocational education and training. The EU has also been discussing Libya's possible full participation in cooperation agreements with a Mediterranean perspective, of which the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) has been mentioned as the most relevant.

QADHAFI'S "STATELESS SOCIETY"

A parliament is a misrepresentation of the people and parliamentary governments are a misleading solution to the problem of democracy.
        - Muammar Qadhafi: The Green Book, Part One: The Solution of the Problem of Democracy

Muammar Qadhafi's philosophical thoughts functioned for decades as an ideological cover-up for one of the world's most repressive states, in which the "popular congresses and peoples committees"⁵ were dominated by the small elite around the dictator himself. At the same time, the ideas constituted attempts to legitimize a state that in its institutional makeup differed from the large bureaucracies seen elsewhere in the region. The Libyan state was inefficient, corrupt and repressive, but it was relatively undeveloped, partly due to the wishes of the leader.

According to Dirk Vandewalle, the public sector in Libya was already under-developed before the coup against King Idriss in September 1969.⁶ The king had never seriously worked on establishing a transition toward a more modern society. Rather, he led a passive rentier-state structure in which oil revenues were spent on privileges for the royal family and the elite around them. Few observers in the region, according to Vandewalle, were surprised when the actual takeover occurred,⁷ although it had been anticipated that senior officers would be the ones to carry out the coup. But young officers, inspired by the Arab-nationalist ideology of Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser, were in charge of the takeover. Qadhafi was appointed chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council, which at the start had to make decisions about what to do with the rentier economy, which still hadn't reached a level of economic surplus.

Qadhafi wrote his Green Book in 1975 for the purpose of building a state based on his ideas. The system described in the three volumes was implemented over the first decades of his rule and developed through a permanent revolutionary process. According to Matteo Capasso, the effects were disastrous.⁸ Furthermore, as mentioned by Vandewalle, the "pursuit and implementation of statelessness could not disguise that the Popular Congress and Committee system, as well as the General People's Congress, possessed no real power."⁹

Right after 1969, some populist legitimacy might have been attached to the Qadhafi regime, as it replaced that of the unpopular King Idriss. However, most of its 42 years involved arbitrary detention, torture and assassinations; few are fighting to restore what existed before 2011. The contradictions in post-Qadhafi Libya between the weak state and the stronger leadership in the SSC might partly be explained by the relatively undeveloped state apparatus and, of course, the existence of power structures related to the militarized groups, which during 2011 fought against the Libyan army and its mercenaries.

SECURITY PERSPECTIVES

When NATO issued its "Operational Media Update" on October 25, 2011, stating that their project was very close to completion,¹⁰ they left behind a Libya that was no longer threatened by Qadhafi and his army. Five days earlier, the dictator had been killed while attempting to flee the "rebels." The military action that had started in March 2011 was launched based on UN Security Council Resolution 1973 to "protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, including Benghazi, while excluding a foreign occupation force of any form on any part of Libyan territory."¹¹ There is little doubt that the NATO action prevented an attack by the Libyan army on Benghazi, which could have developed into a massacre of the anti-Qadhafi rebels and perhaps "retaliation" against the inhabitants of the large eastern city.

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppé presented UN Security Council Resolution 1973 at UN Headquarters in New York, referring to the potentially tragic situation on the ground in Libya. He included considerations of a different scope, mentioning that the world was experiencing "a wave of great revolutions that would change the course of history."¹² Security concerns were an important issue in relation to the dramatic developments in Libya. On one side, Europe (and the West) did not want a civil war to unfold south of the Mediterranean that could destabilize the region. On the other side, a NATO action might also over time lead to a situation in which a different (and in an ideal context stable and democratic) regime could be the outcome.¹³ As such, the intervention in Libya through the establishment of the no-fly zone can also be interpreted as an attempt once and for all to get rid of an unpredictable and unreliable authoritarian leader.

In recent years, the pragmatic EU foreign policy of working together with authoritarian regimes in the MENA region included Libya, which had entered a more moderate course following the final compromise on the Lockerbie affair.¹⁴ The general softening of Libyan foreign-policy signals was an attempt to gain access to foreign expertise for the purpose of maintaining and developing the oil infrastructure and attracting foreign investments. The EU leaders claimed from time to time to have confronted Qadhafi with his poor record concerning human rights; French President Nicolas Sarkozy claimed he had brought up the issue in connection with Qadhafi's visit to Paris in 2007. According to Ronald Bruce St John, Qadhafi later denied that the issue had been mentioned at his meeting with Sarkozy.¹⁵

Added to this, Qadhafi had common interests with the EU in the establishment of a security environment in the Mediterranean, in order to prevent terrorist groups from gaining a foothold in the region and to deal with the security threat relating to migration. The EU was also concerned about energy security, and the reliable delivery of Libya's light sweet crude is, of course, essential. When the EU launched the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership in 1995, Libya did not become a member. Nor did it in 2004, when the European Neighbourhood Program was established, again despite the lifting of UN sanctions against Libya in 1999. According to George Joffé, Libya was never interested in becoming a member.¹⁶ The primary goal of the EU was to make Libya a part of the external setup for securing Europe's southern borders against illegal migration from both the Maghreb and sub-Saharan Africa.

An important strategic issue for the EU had been to secure itself from the threat of Libyan weapons of mass destruction, renounced by Qadhafi in December 2003. This, more than anything else, secured the gradual acceptance of Libya by the international community.¹⁷ In 2009, the EU published the so-called Country Strategy Paper and National Indicative Program 2011-2013,¹⁸ establishing a framework for relations between the EU and Libya. The document claims that the most important aim is "to consolidate Libya's integration in the rules-based international political and economic system."¹⁹ The strategy paper mentions a wide range of activities, most of which planned for the 2011-13 period but were thwarted by the revolt against Qadhafi in February 2011. The intended areas of cooperation are not described in detail but appear to remain relevant to a post-Qadhafi situation.

As mentioned in the EU-Commission memo of February 8, 2013, "Almost from the very first days of the Arab Spring, EU leaders, including the President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy/Vice President of the Commission (HR/VP) Catherine Ashton made frequent visits to the region to express the EU's political commitment."²⁰ In May 2011, Ms. Ashton officially opened an EU office in Benghazi and, after the fall of the regime in November 2011, she opened one in Tripoli as well. As emphasized by Marlene Gottwald, one of main purposes was to ensure the safety of European nationals and the delivery of EU humanitarian aid. Immediately after the victory for the anti-Qadhafi forces, the EU started to focus on development cooperation. At first, funding was provided for the building of administrative capacities and civil-society and education programs.²¹ At the Paris conference on Libya in September 2011, the EU was assigned the assessment of border management, civil society and the media. The aim is to support the building of a new political culture in a country that had no experience of free media, independent NGOs or a vibrant civil society.²²

Furthermore, the EU became involved in security-sector reforms. In March, the EU sent a mission to Libya to deal with border management. The EU funded some of the activities they initiated, but one of the ways to provide Libya with the financial means for reconstruction and development was by "unfreezing" Libyan assets in foreign banks. As described by Barah Mikail, it was decided at the Paris conference, prior to Qadhafi's death, to unfreeze $15 billion. Added to that, the EU decided to unfreeze assets worth $97 billion belonging to the Central Bank of Libya and the Libyan Arab Foreign Bank. It was estimated that, at the time of the regime's fall, up to $160 billion were held by foreign partners.²³ Obviously, this sum is large enough to finance a considerable number of reconstruction and developmental projects.

The EU is, as stated at the EEAS homepage covering Libya, "currently running a €30 million program in Libya to address some of the most pressing needs. Activity includes support in the fields of reconciliation, elections and respect for human rights; public administrative capacity; media and civil society and promoting the involvement of women in public life; migration, health and education."²⁴ It seems rather unlikely that the program will succeed in creating significant progress within these areas. The fact that the activities take place expresses the ambition to establish a kind of political and social normalcy in Libya. All things being equal, this is perhaps the most important aspect of this cooperation.

A number of projected activities are described on homepages, such as that of the EU Neighbourhood Info Centre focusing on civil society. EU assistance packages are mentioned that deal with education, administration and civil society; support for "security, technical and vocational education and training, economic development, migration and further support to civil society."²⁵ According to the EU Commission memo of February 8, 2013, Libya has announced its ambition to join the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) as an observer. However, it seems unlikely that an EU institution such as the UfM, which so far hasn't produced significant results in fulfilling its 2008 ambitions, would be able to help Libya deal with its many grave challenges.²⁶ As long as the current problematic circumstances exist, institutional relations between the EU and Libya will not change significantly.²⁷

The EU has significant foreign- and security-policy interests concerning Libya, in connection with which the new regime has a significant role to play. It is important that the brigades and militias be disarmed as much as possible, though the security and control apparatus is still operating at a relatively low level. Some of the agreements related to oil and gas production, export and trade will have to be renegotiated, and the maintenance and repair of fossil-fuel production facilities must also be taken care of. Furthermore, institutional cooperation between Libya and the EU authorities should be dealt with; work on it has started but still, as shown, has a long way to go. Libya has not been integrated into any of the cooperation arrangements with the EU that other MENA states have been part of.

MEDITERRANEAN MIGRATION

As a large oil-producing country, Libya has hosted a significant number of migrant workers from its neighbors Egypt and Tunisia, as well as from African countries from south of the Sahara. Following the entry into force of joint naval patrols with Italy in May 2009, the number of illegal migrants arriving in Italy and Malta from Libya fell very sharply.²⁸ When the fighting started in early 2011, an enormous exodus of migrant workers took place, creating, as described by Dina Abdelfattah, a significant migration crisis, "considered the largest since the first Gulf War in 1990."²⁹ According to IOM sources, up to one million workers had left Libya by November 2011.

The UNHCR and the IOM have organized repatriation programs, but with the discontinued oil and gas production, especially in 2013, the situation concerning migrant workers is unclear. Sub-Saharan Africans constitute the largest group of stranded migrants in Libya. They are the most vulnerable group and have always been exposed to harsh policies. Libya has had the status of a "migration corridor," as Sylvie Bredeloup and Olivier Pliez describe it. This might continue to be the case in post-Qadhafi Libya.³⁰

As mentioned in an EU-Commission report, "The eruption of the conflict in Libya as of mid-February provoked the displacement of around 800,000 persons of many different nationalities towards the neighboring countries, in particular Tunisia and Egypt."³¹ The international financial crisis of 2008 resulted in declining opportunities in the low- and middle-income MENA states, so the oil-producing states (including Libya) became the main destination for migrant workers. Perhaps even more important, the post-revolutionary slowdown in Tunisia and Egypt created very difficult circumstances for returning workers. As Abdelfattah sums up, most of the "workers escaping the unrest lost their jobs and income, and often had to leave behind their assets and some of their savings. Some never received their last wages and others saw their money and valuables taken by the Libyan forces."³²

The conflict in Libya started with demonstrations in Benghazi at the beginning of February 2011. At that time, the country was home to between 1.5 and 2.5 milion foreign nationals, many of them refugees who were treated as irregular migrants by the Libyan authorities. The registered refugees in Libya came from countries like Côte d'Ivoire, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Iraq, Somalia and Sudan. The war added hundreds of thousands of internally displaced Libyans and created a complex and chaotic situation. Qadhafi had used migration as a political tool to put pressure on Europe.³³ Obviously, his fall has not stopped the flood of migrants from sub-Saharan states trying to reach Europe via Libya, though the fighting in 2011 probably reduced the flow.

As mentioned by Mikail, the EU could help Libya by improving its migration policies through control of the Mediterranean Sea in cooperation with the new Libyan government: "The 'Arab Spring' has created a deeply insecure regional situation due to the insufficiency or even lack of controls at the borders of countries undergoing transitions (Libya and Tunisia, and their borders with Egypt). Radical elements have been able to spread in the region ... A stronger involvement of Libya's international partners to help strengthen border controls would considerably reduce regional threats."³⁴ The international community, through the NATO intervention that helped the Libyans overthrow Qadhafi, involved itself in the security environment in the Mediterranean, but the Arab revolts in the short term have resulted in more chaotic migration tendencies, which the EU has to learn to cope with.³⁵ In the long run, the former commonality of interests between the EU and the authoritarian leaders in the MENA region in connection with transit migration from south of the Sahara will need to be renegotiated, in the security interest of both the EU and Libya.

The war in Libya from early 2011 onwards meant, at least temporarily, the effective suspension of former agreements and cooperative activities between Libya and the EU. The UNHCR in Tripoli is calling for "burden sharing" in the Mediterranean, arguing that the EU should accept some resettlement of refugees in Europe itself.³⁶ It is a controversial issue, already used by Qadhafi to pressure the EU. According to Abdelfattah, Qadhafi exaggerated the actual number of irregular migrants to Europe, making it appear much larger than the true situation, and even, following the NATO attacks of 2011, threatening that "if the Europeans continued to support the protesters, he will open the floodgates, and … send boats filled with migrants from North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa to the European coasts."³⁷

Migration is a highly significant geostrategic phenomenon, and the development of the EU Mobility Partnership agreements could evolve into a part of EU-Libyan cooperation.³⁸ Obviously, the migration pressure towards Europe is less intense regarding the Libyan population as such. Rather the role of Libya will continue to be a question of working together with the EU to reduce transit migration through Libya from the Sahel region and Africa south of the Sahara. The incentives for Libya are to obtain "external help to tackle its significant domestic security challenges, and to build state institutions from scratch," according to Kristina Kausch.³⁹

There is a commonality of interest between the EU and Libya on transit migration. ⁴⁰ The EU in 2013 established the Integrated Border Assistance Mission in Libya (EUBAM Libya), aimed at "improving and developing the security of the country's borders."⁴¹ The mandate of EUBAM Libya is limited to the borders of Libya, but the initiative should, from the EU side, be seen in the wider regional perspective. The official idea behind EUBAM, working closely together with the EU's Frontex agency, is to motivate Libya toward regional and international cooperation, but it also indirectly expresses the European strategic interest in controlling the migration phenomenon.

"NOT FREE" TO "PARTLY FREE" — AND BACK?

Libya succeeded in holding free and fair elections in July 2012, a reason the country was registered for one of the most significant improvements in the history of the Freedom House reports — from decades of "not free" to "partly free." When Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zeidan visited Washington in March 2013, Secretary of State John Kerry said in a speech, "The community of nations is very, very proud that we helped to give the Libyan people a fighting chance for their future." What seemed, in spite of everything, to be a relatively promising transition process in 2011-12, and even at the beginning of 2013, has changed markedly. The challenges now seem overwhelming. There is no doubt that Libya, for both the United States and especially the EU, is strategically highly important. A successful transition could transform Libya into a significant trading partner, an important actor in regional cooperation, and a bulwark that can help "to combat growing regional terrorist networks, to prevent destabilizing flows of loose arms to the Middle East and to avoid an influx of refugees to Europe."⁴²

After the demonstrations in Benghazi in February 2011 and the rapid escalation in the early months of the conflict into civil war, the situation from both sides, as described by Charles Tripp, appeared to develop into a zero-sum game: "Each recognized that the survival of the one was only to be bought with the destruction of the other."⁴³ And when the logic of war took over, something of a stalemate developed, finally broken by the combined power of NATO and the increasingly well-armed Libyan rebels. By October 2011, the war was over and the Qadhafi regime was history. The tormented nation then actually went through a democratic process resulting in the election of a legislative assembly, the General National Council, which selected a prime minister and a cabinet.

The general situation in Libya seemed positive, except for the confrontations between the newly elected leaders and semiautonomous armed groups and militias, partly organized in a system of security committees.⁴⁴ According to Sharqieh, "The 'unofficial state,' led by the SSC and other military councils in the country, holds the real power."⁴⁵ They receive funding from the state even though they are outside the formal state structure. Beside this body, an array of revolutionary brigades and militias seem to have developed that in some parts of Libya are functioning as a local leadership, based on the fact that they are (sometimes heavily) armed. Cooperation, however, among local armed groups seems to be relatively limited.

In April-May 2013, a confrontation erupted in Tripoli, where militiamen besieged key Libyan ministries, insisting that the government pass a law barring senior officials from the former regime from becoming members of parliament or officials in the new state institutions. The two-week siege organized by a group calling itself the Higher Council of the Revolutionaries blockaded the foreign and justice ministries. A group calling itself the Libyan Shield Force, allegedly taking orders from the Defense Ministry, joined the blockade of the Foreign Ministry.⁴⁶ It seemed to be a highly complex situation. Some of the brigades on one side seemed to express a strong ambition to take part in the political process. Others were undemocratic and rejected the relevance of the skills and qualifications of former officials in connection with the reconstruction process. Thirdly, some brigades and militias were local warlords operating for their own benefit to gain power in specific areas of the country.

After the first week of the siege of the ministries in Tripoli, the fragile situation in April-May 2013 ended with the passing of a law (the "Political Isolation Law") that met the demands of the brigades. The law has been criticized by international observers and Libyans. Outsiders have criticized it for being unfair and not serving the Libyan need for reconstruction of the public sector, institutions, civil society, etc.⁴⁷ Internally, the fear has spread that the brigades, having seen the results of their actions, may resort to threats of violence again in order to accomplish wider political goals. According to Al Jazeera, "The SSC, the umbrella group of former rebel fighters under the command of the interior ministry that has led the siege, is now better armed and more powerful than the police."⁴⁸

The situation in Libya may develop into a dual-power arrangement similar to that in Lebanon between the government and Hezbollah.⁴⁹ According to informants in Libya, the situation cannot be compared with the realities in Lebanon.⁵⁰ The brigades — the Libya Shield and the SSC on top of a powerful complex mass of small and medium-sized groups — are potentially able to roll back political progress in Libya, if that is what they want. Still, the comparison is not exact. The Libya Shield and the SSC and their affiliated brigades are not represented in the GNC, whereas in Lebanon the elected government contains members of Hezbollah, and the organization has for decades played a dominant role in politics and the broader society. Furthermore, the brigades in Libya — contrary to the situation in Lebanon, where Hezbollah has well- defined political goals — do not seem to have a specific political or religious agenda. Finally, the Libya Shield, the SSC and the brigades do not seem to be backed by foreign allies, in contrast to the Iranian and Syrian alliance with Hezbollah.

Perhaps the most interesting question is the degree to which the Libya Shield and the SSC can be seen as a kind of undemocratic corrective to an elected, but imperfectly functioning, government and administration. Some demonstrations against the intervention by the Libya Shield, the SSC and the brigades have taken place. It seems difficult to determine whether the Libya Shield and the SSC have some kind of informal popular legitimacy. Can the developments be seen as political participation for a population that has never lived under democratic rule? Or will the protesting groups develop sympathy for non-democratic solutions and even revert to autocracy?

According to the classic work by Vandewalle, A History of Modern Libya, neither regionalism nor federalism played a significant role after the takeover by Qadhafi in 1969. The question is whether this still is the case after his fall. Vandewalle assessed this in autumn 2012: "The federalist movement in Cyrenaica, now consolidated around a political party, has attracted few supporters and is fragmenting as time passes."⁵¹ Furthermore, he emphasized that "the need to market the country's oil through an integrated physical infrastructure and unified bureaucratic management has, as in the past, tied Libya closer together."⁵² It should be underlined, however, that this assessment was based on the situation in late 2012. Vandewalle at that stage assessed that the power of the brigades was slowly eroding, but this seemed not to be the case from the spring of 2013 onwards. The armed groups, rather than being integrated into national institutions through an ambitious training program, have not agreed to lay down their arms. This has dashed the hopes of both the new Libyan authorities and the external actors, not least the EU.