Competitive Statehood in Libya: Governing Differently a Specific Setting or Deconstructing its Weak Sovereign State with a Fateful Drift Toward Chaos?

Abstract

Libya in 2011 witnessed a real process of political change, though different from all the policy-oriented jargon equating transition with a teleological transition to democracy. Due to the resilience of the Qadhafi regime in power and with the essential role of NATO intervention, the process was eased out by a eight-month civil war. Governance in post-Qadhafi Libya was not done through the rebuilding of centralized authorities. But it took the specific form of the emergence of multiple non-state actors embedded in local dynamics and then connected with weakened central authorities that had access to the huge Libyan resources. That raised complex questions about the quality of this mode of governance, especially at a time of pressing problems for Libya and its neighbors, whether direct ones (Tunisia, Egypt, Mali) or farther countries across the Mediterranean sea: terrorism with the expansion of Da’esh into the country and flows of refugees crossing Libya’s uncontrolled borders and flowing into Italy and then Europe by thousands.

Keywords:

• Libya
• areas of limited statehood
• state building
• localized non-state actors
• militias

Notes

1. Anderson, “Contested Sovereignty in Libya”.

2. Krasner, Sovereignty.

3. Anderson, The State and Social Transformations In Tunisia and Libya.

4. “Libyan Political Chronicles” in Annuaire de l’Afrique du Nord, Aix en Provence : éditions du CNRS from 1969 on.

5. Roumani, “From Republic to Jamahiriya: Libya’s Search for Political Community”; Mattes, “The Rise and Fall of the Revolutionary Committees”.

6. Davis, Libyan Politics.

7. International sanctions put the Libyan economy and society to its knees and the Jamahiriyya in a state of decrepitude. People were forced to have recourse to black markets to get basic stuffs; young people were travelling to Jerba or Malta to sell Libyan subsidized goods and buy other goods re-sold in Libyan black markets; other smuggling networks were connected with Western Africa. The regime was closing its eyes, in a kind of breathing space left to society.

8. Ouaness, «Sociologie d'une révolte armée: le cas de la Libye».

9. Cole and McQuinn, The Libyan Revolution and its Aftermath.

10. Qadhafi never developed a national military, but he built various praetorian forces (called ‘security brigades’) and paramilitary forces. After the 2011 uprising, the resulting implosion of the military and security system did not allow the birth of a rebel army or police.

11. McQuinn, “After the Fall, Libya’s Evolving Armed Groups”.

12. Shaw and Mangan, Illicit Trafficking and Libya’s Transition; Lacher, Libya’s Fractious South and Regional Instability.

13. Lacher, “Fault Lines of the Revolution.

14. Vandewalle, Libya Since Independence.

15. Risse, Thomas, Governance Without a State.

16. Obeidi, Political Culture in Libya.

17. In March 2014, when the Cyrenaican federalists announced the formation of their own Libyan Oil and Gas Corporation and tried to export a North Korean-flagged tanker with 230,000 barrels of crude oil, US forces took over the vessel and returned it to government-controlled port of Zawiya.

18. Mampilly, Rebel Rulers: Insurgent Governance and Civilian Life During War.

19. Droz-Vincent, “Libya’s Tentative State Rebuilding: Militias’ ‘Moral Economy,’ Violence, and Financing (In)Security”.

20. Ellis, The Mask of Anarchy; Richards, Fighting for the Rain Forest.

21. Up until the end of 2014, extremists in Libya such as Ansar al-Sharia operated without displaying transnational characteristics. That setting changed when a jihadist group in Derna (parts of the Ansar al-Sharia’s branch in Derna) pledged loyalty to Da’esh in October 2014 and, following the arrival of Islamic State envoys in Libya. Da’esh received pledges of loyalty from Libyan groups in the area of Syrt, Ubari, Benghazi, Sabratha or in the periphery of Tripoli. It even carried out spectacular attacks against oil terminals in Ras Lanuf and Sedra in January 2015, then January 2016.

22. Freely borrowed from Wendt, “Anarchy is What States Make of It”.

23. Wherey, Ending Libya’s Civil War.

24. Neither of the short-cut explanations, i.e. liberals vs. Islamists, Zintan vs. Misrata for economic and political leverage in Tripoli, former Qadhafi-era technocrats, retired or long-serving officers vs. self-proclaimed revolutionaries, was fully valid to describe political alliances.

25. Former Prime Minister in 2011 Mahmud Jibril was in the UAE where he has had strong support and media access; a key figure in his party is Abdelmajid Mlegta, whose brother Uthman Mlegta is the leader of the powerful al-Qaqa' brigade from Zintan; also close from this network is Libya's ambassador to the UAE Aref Nayed.

26. Western powers tried to safeguard the integrity of Libyan financial institutions as mentioned by the UNSC resolution 2259 (23/12/2015) or the communiqué of the P5 in May 2016; see the NOC director Sanalla, “How to Save Libya from Itself” and the two-day conference Protecting Libya’s Oil near London in October 2017.

27. All the process went sour in October 2015 with revelations tarnishing the reputation of the UN as an honest broker Ramesh, “UN Libya Envoy Accepts a 1000£-a-day Job from Backer of One Side in Civil War”.