Understanding the disunity of the contemporary Libyan state: democratic transitions and the shadow of past legacies (original) (raw)

This paper attempts to answer the question: To what extent are past legacies and grievances relevant in understanding the failures of Libya’s post-2011 transition? In contrast to the resilience of Gadhafi’s authoritarian regime (1969-2011) and the so- called ‘stability’ that it brought about for decades, Libya since 2011 has been the theatre of a wide range of tumultuous events; from revolutionary uprisings to the death of Gadhafi, from democratic elections to the outbreak of civil war and unrest. Today, Libya is deadlocked in its’ ability to further the democratic goals advanced in 2011. The democratic process has been in fact hijacked by many particularistic interests - from the “revolutionary” militias who are not willing to give up arms until they can trust the government to rule and protect its’ citizens, to individuals and extremist groups who have been benefitting from the weakness of the state and the absence of the rule of law - whether financially or in the form of increased power and prestige - notably through the smuggling of oil and migrants. This paper focuses on an explanation of current grievances that is based on an analysis of the internal dynamics that have been pervasive in the Libyan state’s modern history throughout the 20th century. It thus looks at how enlightening past legacies are, insofar as they allow us to make sense of the challenges of today’s “failed” transition. In fact, Cole & McQuinn (2015), quoting Marx, provide us with a helpful representation of the overarching argument: “Men make their own history within the structural constraints of the past”. Accordingly, the aim of this project is two-fold; On one hand, it identifies and analyzes the impact of two main dynamics. Thus, it first focuses on the legacy of state formation from colonial domination to Libya’s independence and beyond - or rather the historical absence of a strong and centralized state - and more specifically, how the bureaucratic and institutional vacuum was severely exacerbated by Gadhafi’s rather whimsical political experiments. The significance of this legacy has been strongly argued for, as this research will show, by many analysts and historians inside and outside of Libya. The second major dynamic described pertains to the continued prevalence of informal and decentralized power structures, whereby tribalism and regional/local identities have been revived “as political identities of last resort” (Anderson, 2014). In that sense, the second dynamic emerged as a direct response to the continued impairments that the first one entailed: Libyans revert back to such identities as a result of the historical mismanagement and neglect of the Libyan central authority. As such, this research paper attempts to establish a robust connection between both dynamics, so as to show how they represent well established and mutually reinforcing grievances that have plagued the post- 2011 climate. On the other hand, this paper also attempts to address two significant failures of the post- 2011 transition - the political and security failures - by linking them to the dynamics mentioned above. The political failures mainly relate to the mistakes of the transitional justice process, which can be exemplified in the complete absence of real dialogue between the different stakeholders and an outright unwillingness to initiate national reconciliation. In regards to the security failures, the concern pertains to the absence of real demobilization (DDR) of the “thuwwar” from the early days of the transition, which have instead been concerned with score settling and have found considerable interests in sustaining the instability. Thus, I find that both failures had a direct impact on the insidious rise of winner-take-all politics and a revitalization of tribes and other peripheral, regional and local affiliations. These dynamics are more generally instantiations of Libyans’ inherent trust deficit towards the state and towards each other, which are, to a certain extent, consequences of Gadhafi’s attacks on the Libyan state and the Libyan nation. The analysis thus combines structure and agency explanations through a historical lens.