Rivalries Impede Governing in Libya

A man carries away two crates of ammunition looted from the Khamis Brigade headquarters on the outskirts of Tripoli.

Πηγή: The New York Times
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and KAREEM FAHIM

Sep. 25 2011

TRIPOLI, Libya — When the fighters who ousted Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi find caches of weapons from his arsenals, they do not entrust them to Libya’s new provisional government. Instead, they haul them back to their hometowns, like Misurata, Zintan, Yafran or Rujban. And when they capture members of the Qaddafi government, the fighters say, they cart them home as well.

“Why shouldn’t we?” said Mohamed Benrasali, a Misurata member of the Transitional National Council, the interim governing authority. “We call them the spoils of war.”

Anwar Fekini, a leader from the Nafusa Mountain town of Rujban, agreed: “All of us, we do the same.”

As the former rebels in Libya try to assemble a government to replace the toppled Qaddafi government, the quiet hoarding of weapons and detainees illustrates the fissures of regional rivalry and mutual distrust that continue to impede progress.

It has been almost two months since the leaders of the Transitional National Council promised to assemble a new cabinet, amid recriminations over the still-unsolved assassination of their top military commander, and they renewed that pledge more than a month ago when Tripoli fell.

But after meeting to try again on Sunday, the council’s top officials have still not overcome regional disputes over the composition of the cabinet, even though it is expected to hold power for only the first eight months after the official “liberation” of Libya is declared.

This vacuum at the top is, in turn, holding back efforts to unify the country, exert civilian authority over freewheeling militias, and get control of the weapons that now flood the streets.

Negotiations are deadlocked, council members say, over how to divide power among groups from different regions. Leaders from Benghazi, Misurata, Zintan and other cities all argue that their suffering or their contributions during the revolt entitle them to a greater voice.

Some are also challenging the council’s current face to the world, Mahmoud Jibril, a former University of Pittsburgh professor of political science who has been serving as both the prime minister and foreign minister. He faces especially determined opposition from Misurata, a center of manufacturing and trade whose fighters endured a devastating siege by Qaddafi troops, and emerged as the rebels’ most potent force.

“Misurata, we will never accept Mahmoud Jibril,” Mr. Benrasali, a spokesman for the Misurata fighters, said Sunday.

He faulted the prime minister for spending little time in Libya in the Qaddafi years and almost no time there during the revolt.

“He is a source of tension, and not a unifying figure at all,” Mr. Benrasali said. “He should do the honorable thing and just vanish.” Some in Misurata now want to charge Mr. Jibril with “treason,” Mr. Benrasali said, for weakening the transition by holding on to power.

Many in Misurata are now backing a native son for the post of prime minister: Abdul Rahman al-Swehli, a British-trained engineer from a prominent local family. “The next prime minister has to be a Libyan — a Libyan who doesn’t have a second passport, a Libyan who has lived in Libya for the last 42 years,” Mr. Benrasali said.

But fighters from the Nafusa Mountains — especially from the city of Zintan, which suffered its own brutal siege — want a greater role in the cabinet as well. Noting that the current council president, Mustafa Abdel Jalil, comes from Al Baida in the east, they say that other top posts should go to westerners — from Misurata or the mountains — who they say deserve credit for ending Colonel Qaddafi’s hold on Tripoli.

“Like Misurata, we are the ones who paid the highest price,” said one council member from the mountains, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss private talks. “So there is no question who is going to take the prime minister, the defense minister, the interior minister, the foreign minister, the justice minister — during this transitional phase, they should certainly go to the people who carried the revolution.

Meanwhile, residents of Benghazi, the largest city in the east, noted that they had started the revolt and had worked for months to supply weapons and money by boat and plane to rebels in Misurata and the Nafusa Mountains. “Benghazi carried the weight of the country through this difficult period,” said Shamsiddin Abdul Molah, a spokesman for the council.

He said the council was now “weak” and deadlocked, and he acknowledged that bands of fighters were hoarding weapons and captives. But he said he hoped that elections would ultimately give legitimacy to a new government.

Supporters of Mr. Jibril, meanwhile, say the deadlock results from a power struggle among Misurata, Zintan and the other towns of the mountains, and that Mr. Jibril played a crucial role in the rebellion by building international support. Without NATO airstrikes, they note, none of the rebel brigades could have triumphed.

During a news conference in Benghazi this week, Mr. Jalil, the council president, rejected demands for allotting political power based on the toll of revolt. Though cities like Zintan and Misurata deserved “priority in reconstruction” and recognition by history, he said, “fighting and struggle is not a measure for representation in government.”

“Membership in the transitional national council and the new government is a right guaranteed to all of us,” he added, and the council decided long ago to reserve as much representation for residents of Qaddafi strongholds as for the most rebellious towns. “We have two seats for Surt, same as for Tobruk, regardless of Tobruk’s early support for the revolution and Surt’s delayed support,” he said.

Still, Mr. Jibril has been trying to name a new cabinet since early August, when the top rebel military leader, Gen. Abdul Fattah Younes, was killed in circumstances that appeared to implicate council officials. Summoned to Benghazi on suspicion of betraying the rebels, General Younes and two aides were shot to death — out of revenge, officials said, over the general’s role in suppressing an Islamist insurgency in 1996.

The killing was embarrassing for the provisional government as well as for General Younes’ powerful tribe, and no prosecution has been announced. “It’s in no one’s interest to solve this thing,” a former rebel official said.