Libya has come to exemplify the tortuous route out of dictatorship in North Africa. Establishing how donors and multilateral agencies might best help in this process requires more than a standard set of guidelines to political transition. This paper illustrates the need to base strategy on a deep, context-specific understanding of different political and armed groups, the interests that motivate them, and the ways in which they might differ or agree around efforts to strengthen the state and a coherent security system.
It finds that:
- Statehood with a unitary authority and an inclusive political settlement remains to be built. Post-colonial Libya had been an accidental state, and Qadhafi created institutionalized statelessness. Qadhafi’s system functioned through the informal rule of a small group of leaders, and relied on oil-funded patronage and repression to ensure quiescence. The revolution brought down this system, and now faces the task of state-building.
- The revolution spawned a strong fragmentation of distinct groups and interests – tribes, cities, regions and various Islamist orientations, with individuals having multiple loyalties. These constituencies now make up Libyan politics within the General National Congress. Small parties and non-party politicians predominated in the Congress, which is the primary vehicle for elite infighting. The new political establishment is thus faced with new cleavages and recalcitrant spoilers. The hardline revolutionaries, aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood, seem to have a fragile and contested command of the state.
- The new rulers have turned towards patronage to ensure political stability, by using the oil and gas sectors and trying to include all the main groups in ministerial appointments. However, this system has not always been responsive to the revolutionaries’ grievances and ambitions. Estranged armed factions, such as brigades from the north-west city Zintan and federalists, may be looking to protection rackets as the only means to get what they want from the state. Political inclusiveness is also complicated as armed groups have tried to force the exclusion of former members of the Qadhafi regime in 2013.
- There is currently a breakdown of security. Fragmentation has also diminished the legitimacy and reach of the national security forces. Hundreds of revolutionary armed groups and other militia have taken their place. Armed groups include not only revolutionary brigades (e.g. in Misrata and Benghazi), but also pressure groups linked to political groupings. Some factional militias have sought control over smuggling routes, adopted Jihadist ideology, carried out terrorist attacks and shot at civilian protesters. These militias seem to have growing connections to transnational Islamist groups (mostly al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and its offshoots). Territorial power gained by armed force has become an essential part of the Libyan political system.
