Watching Libya September 2, 2011

Although the international media will focus for a couple of days on yesterday’s Paris meeting, where the great powers of the world – flanked by representatives of sixty countries and international organisations – discussed Libya’s political and economic tomorrow and, in the wings, lobbied for the lions’ share of the economic benefits they hope to reap in the years ahead – it is principally in and around Sirt that the future of Libya is being decided.

Although there is no doubt that Sirt will fall, how it falls will make a difference to the effort to reconstruct a new Libya in the coming months and years. If most of the inhabitants of this town mid way between Tripoli and Benghazi – once proposed by Gheddafi as the capital city of a United States of Africa and within whose limits is the hamlet of Gasr Abu Hadi, his own place of birth – decide not to tie their fate to that of the irreducible core of military and paramilitary loyalists in the town (and to any of the Gheddafis who might still be there) – then the taking of Sirt may be less bloody than if its population were to stand four square behind the regime’s last defenders.

We say “may be less bloody” because even a couple of hundred determined desperados vowed to fight to the end may involve thousands of innocent inhabitants in a final tragic mayhem. It is not enough, therefore, for a sizeable majority of Sirt’s citizens to refuse to take up arms against the TNC in Gheddafi’s name, to avoid massive bloodshed amongst the population. What is needed is either for this majority to stand up to the loyalists – itself a risky and potentially bloody scenario – or for the loyalists themselves to accept that it is indeed endgame and to lay down their weapons.

The news that the Transitional National Council (TNC) has decided to postpone by one week the previous September 3 deadline for the surrender of Sirt, suggests that negotiations conducted through tribal networks with the town’s citizens are not hopeless. A surrender is, therefore, still possible. As many, possibly most, of Sirt’s present inhabitants belong Gheddafi’s own Gadhadhfa tribe, a surrender would confirm what some have already suggested, namely that either Gheddafi’s own  tribe is no longer as resolutely for their ‘son’ as they might have been when the regime seemed invincible, or that divisive tribal discourse is in the process of becoming subordinate to a national patriotic discourse.

If this is the case, the Libyan Spring – a national popular uprising against a ruthless authoritarian regime that paid lip-service to the 'people' and to national unity but was in fact disconnected from the overwhelming majority of citizens and discriminated between them on the basis of tribe and geography to the advantage of a ruling family and its cronies – will have served to modernise Libya’s political culture.  If the negotiations succeed and a critical mass of Gadhadhfa accept that there can be a good future for them in Libya without Gheddafi, then the period of reconstruction will be socially and politically more stable than would otherwise be the case, and therefore the economic development goals that the TNC is beginning to articulate in some detail will be easier (though not easy) to achieve.

A peaceful winning over of Sirt to the ‘cause’ of democratic reconstruction does not depend only on the wisdom of the Gadhadhfa elders in Sirt or elsewhere in Libya but on the TNC’s ability to reach out to them as well as to any other tribe or tribal subdivision on Libyan territory. This will not work unless the Gadhadhfa are not only made to feel that they have nothing to fear in post-Gheddafi Libya, but that they can participate in and benefit from its reconstruction. What will also not work is a wholesale dismissal of tribal networks and the simplistic identification of the regime with Libya’s ancient tribal system.

Libya’s tribal networks can be harnessed to further the ‘cause’. The regime’s much vaunted deference to Libya’s tribes ignored the country’s “real, fluid tribal structures”. Its  “conception of the tribe consisted of concentrated executive power, free from popular support, in the hands a few individuals, who would eventually come to constitute a ruling family.” (Bamyeh, 2011). The tribes can and have been loci of communal solidarity – as opposed to being extensions of a police state as under Gheddafi's regime – and they have not historically been incompatible with national solidarity. Indeed, to quote again from an excellent essay by Mohammed Bamyeh in Muftah: “This combination of an abiding patriotism with a pragmatic tradition of fluid tribal solidarity points in the direction of a nascent flexibility in Libya’s civic and social organization, which will likely be critical in a post-Qaddafi era.” Read Bamyeh’s essay.

Of course, the credibility of the TNC's reaching out to those tribes that have not yet abandoned Gheddafi will depend on its ability to bring together those tribes, regions and towns that not only abandon him but that actually led the fight against the regime from the very beginning of the uprising. That this is not easy can be seen from the issue of the position of defence and security commander for the capital, Tripoli. Al Barrani Shkal, a former army general, is unacceptable to the fighters from Misratah, whilst Abdel Hakim Al Hasadi, aka Abdelhakim Belhaj, is not acceptable to the secularists. Tripoli's security and defence is fragmented with, for example, the militias from Zintan who control Tripoli International Airport and those from Misratah 'in charge' of the harbour and the Central Bank. The various groups appear to be uncoordinated. Consequently the city’s territory is not seamlessly monitored and, as disturbing, possible overlaps between zones controlled by non-communicating groups may lead to friction and flare-ups. Also, how can the TNC hope to convince the country and the world that Tripoli is safe when its top leaders have yet to establish themselves there?