Transformations from Armed to unarmed Political Activism
The upcoming symposium “From Bullets to Ballots: Transformations from Armed to unarmed Political Activism” held by the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies will take place on 3-4 November 2018, in Doha.
The symposium will focus on cases where armed political movements have laid down arms to undertake political activism, drawing upon examples from around the globe.
The symposium will examine 26 cases of armed organisations transforming into political parties or nonviolent social movements.
The studies will be presented by a range of specialists, including scholars, experts, politicians and leaders of these transformations.
These cases hail from four continents, covering examples from the Middle East, North and Sub-Saharan Africa, Western and Southern Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean.
Speakers will travel from Algeria, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Egypt, Palestine, Spain, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, The Central African Republic, Uruguay, Turkey, Chile, South Africa, Cuba, Colombia, Mali, the United Kingdom and Nicaragua.
The symposium will host a group of leaders of these transformation processes and their testimonies about the reasons behind these processes and the obstacles they faced.
This symposium is the first of its kind in the Arab region, whereby the research content will be documented in the first Arabic book dealing with the subject of shifts from armed to unarmed movements using an academic approach.
The sessions will pose important intellectual and political questions in the Arab world after the 2011 uprisings:
How do the transformations occur?
Why do they occur?
What are the conditions for sparking the transition towards nonviolence?
What are the conditions for the continuation of nonviolent political activity?
What different paths do the transformations take?
What stimulates a transformation after a military victory, a military defeat, or a stalemate in an armed conflict between a rebel group and an existing authority?
The participants in the symposium include Dr. Azmi Bishara, general director of the ACRPS, former Minister for Intelligence Services in South Africa, Ronnie Kasrils, Chief Negotiator in the Peace Talks with FARC and Former Minister of State in Colombia, Frank Pearl and the conference coordinator, Critical Security Studies program director at the Doha Institute, Dr. Omar Ashour.
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Cases from Libya
1 – Anes Al-Sharif was a former member of Libyan Islamic Fighting 
Group (LIFG) who spent 20 years in exile opposing the Gaddhafi regime.
He was a member of the editorial board of Al-Fajr magazine in London (the official propaganda magazine issued by the LIFG between 1995 and 2003).
During and after the revolution, Al-Sharif became the spokesperson of Tripoli Military Council (August and November 2011), the political-military body that ruled parts of Tripoli after the defeat of Gaddhafi’s forces.
The Transformations of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group
The onset of the Arab Spring in early 2011 ignited a glimmer of hope for real change and the overthrow of dictatorships that had reigned for decades.
This coincided with jihadi groups running out of options in their attempts to bring about change through armed action, which had repeatedly been thwarted by state security and military forces.
The popular uprising against dictatorships - not an option prior to December 2010 - thus represented a golden opportunity for armed movements to re-strategize and change their worldview.
Indeed, members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group both in Libya and abroad played a key early role in all the peaceful activities that led to the “February 17 Revolution”.
2 – Abdelhakim Belhaj is a Libyan politician and a former paramilitary leader. He was the emir of the defunct Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG).
He is the now leader of the conservative al-Watan Party and former commander of Tripoli Military Council, the political-military entity that controlled parts of the city.
From the “Fighting Group” to the “Homeland Party”: Observations on the Transformations in Libya
Belhaj provides a testimony and reflections on his own experience transforming from a leader of an armed organisation to a leader of political party vying in elections.
He reflects on the challenges of sustaining that transition.
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