Milad Elharathi
Changes in Leadership and State’s
Political System
The quick current revolt spread rapidly from Tunisia to Egypt, and then from Egypt to Libya, in one timing date, threatening entrenched regimes and the status quo. For example, Libya’s revolted turned into a bloody civil war, and spilling over of armaments, everywhere in the country.
By the end of 7th of February 2014, the General National Congress ended its mandate, which led into political vacuum in the country. In contrary, there are effectively two rival governments. One is in Tripoli, where is a coalition of Islamist armed groups from (Msrata).
The other is in (Tobruk), where a newly elected Council of Representatives (COR) and a cabinet have convened by the majority of the Libyan people. While, in Tunisia, the Muslim movement (Nahdi Party) led the country into social unrest, only in the end of January 2014, and after four years, Tunis launched its new constitution.
In addition, Egypt and its revolt turned into Christian-Muslim confrontations, and it turned its destination twice (January uprising, 2011 and the road to 30 of June, 2013) with widespread of unrest and instability between the civic moments and the ousted Brotherhood.
This progress led by the military rule under the Commander, Assisi, who called his Egyptian people to march against the Brotherhood presidency, Morsi, in 30, June, 2013, with widespread of unrest and instability between the civic moments and the ousted brotherhood.
As result, this move, also, led to create interim government, and hunting all the brotherhood elites and became under arrest. While many observers have drawn matches with the rising of the American control of the International Order and the domination of the Western alliances, and its major leading role in combating terrorism, and the eastward spread of democracy to Eastern Europe, the outcome of the Libyan revolt is far from bringing political and social stability in this stateless.
This popular revolt has challenged authoritarian rule in the whole region, and highlighted the widespread desire for a responsible government.
Libya, in particular, is an evidential and exclusion example among other Arab revolts, that NTO played a major powerful militarized intervention in the name of supporting Obama’s terminology of “ Arab Spring”. In this regard, Libyan revolt could be described a career of immune factor towards democratic transition and transformation, revolts stolid in, overthrowing some regimes and shaking each other.
Four years (2010/2014) have passed since the arrival of the Arab uprising, turmoil, and leaders and decision-makers have been trying to analyze such historic transformation in order to find traction in the region that has been looking different from bad to worse, with new dynamics, unknown elites and political topography.
Observers noticed, during these events, the timing of the whole changes in leadership and state’s political system, and new elites occupied the political landscape of the region. This would suggest that the external factor was an essential motive in advancing such stages of sudden changes in the region.
Libya’s political development since
the Arab Spring
Libya aſter the assassination of Qaddafi is divided. Since mid-2011, the country has spiraled toward civil war. Rival armed groups are fighting for control of Libya’s capital. In the east, the Libyan armed forces led by a retired general, (Kalifa Haſter) is shelling Islamist armed groups in and around Benghazi for 6 months, during 2014.
By the mid-October 2014 the Libyan military brigades have entered the city heat of Benghazi and declared curfew from mid-noon to the next morning . In addition, there are effectively two rival governments.
One is in Tripoli, where is a coalition of Islamist armed groups from (Msrata). The other is in (Tobruk), where a newly elected Council of Representatives (COR) a cabinet have convened by the majority of the Libyan people.
Libya’s armed forces, both official and unofficial, are essentially at war with one another, with each faction strengthened by an arrangement of tribes and towns. As a result, Libya’s armed forces, both official and unofficial, are essentially at war with one another, with each faction bolstered by assemblage of tribes and towns.
Moreover, we are oſten lured toward a one-dimensional reading of Libya’s turmoil. It is easy to explain Libya’s breakdown as a political struggle between Islamists and secularists: the Justice and Construction Party (JCP) affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) and more jihadi factions like Al-Qaeda versus the secularists. Components of all these dimensions are at play, but none of them alone has sufficient explanatory power, either political solutions to the elusive revolution.
At its core, Libya’s instability is an intensely local and regional affair, stemming from deeply entrenched sponsorship networks batiling for economic resources and political power in a state tortured by a gaping institutional vacuum and the absence of a central mediator with a multitude of force .
In crux, Libya suffers from a balance of weakness among its political factions and armed groups; no single entity can force others to act purely through coercion, but every entity is strong enough to veto the others . The current panorama of political polarization and the broken security sector presents the Western led coalition of 2011 military campaign with profound dilemmas.
A previous approach of supporting state institutions is problematic when those institutions, whether the governmental bodies, are successfully split between two warring factions.
Correspondingly, a long-planned determination to train the Libyan army can only proceed aſter a ceasefire and a political compromise that produces a clearly defined road map toward the reform of security institutions .
Consequently, the eventual solution for Libya’s security anguishes lies in context-specific security solutions, a broad political pact and constitution. This is an area where outsiders can lend advice and measured assistance, but where the ultimate burden must be borne by Libyans themselves, solutions for Libya are only Libya solutions
Too oſten, Libya’s armed groups are thought to be outside of Libyan society and of the state. In fact, they are deeply intertwined into both. One of Libya’s challenges is that nearly all the armed groups claim legitimacy from their affiliation with competing organs of the weak and fractured government.
Government subsidization of these groups arose from the enfeebled state of the formal army and police . The results of this prearrangement in Libya have been mixed and highly dependent on location.
In some homogenous communities where the armed groups enjoyed organic roots and social ties, the forces played a role akin to a local gendarmerie, performing functions like tranquillizers interdiction, guarding schools and hospitals, and even street maintenance.
But in mixed or strategically important locales, namely Tripoli and Benghazi, they have evolved into dangerously parasitic and destructive entities, pursuing agendas that are at once criminal, political, and ideological
Conflicting to some expectations, no one faction is blameless on this front.
Islamists, armed groups have all used force or the threat of force to pressure the country’s elected institutions, capture smuggling, or seize strategic assets like border checkpoints, oil facilities, armories, ports, and, perhaps most importantly, airports.
The Islamist armed groups in the east reflect that region’s longtime alienation from the center and increasing embrace of moral devotion and transparency.
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Milad Elharathi – Visiting Fellow, at Clare College, University of Cambridge UK
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