Author - ab_mnbr

Arezki Daoud

The North Africa Journal

What is happening in Syria cannot leave us insensitive to the plight of the Syrian people, who have endured decades of abuse from the Assad family and its cronies. From the father Hafad al-Assad to his son Bachar al-Assad, the Syrian people experienced some of the most brutal treatments in modern history. But as of this past Sunday, the Assad dynasty is done and over with and while I am rejoicing for the Syrian people for getting rid of a brutal regime, many observers, including myself, fear that the next two decades will be extremely hard on Syria, unless a miracle happens.

As of today, the Islamist-led coalition, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), declared further consolidation of control in eastern Syria. HTS has named Mohammed al-Bashir, a former leader in Idlib, as Syria’s caretaker prime minister until March. Efforts are underway to stabilize the capital Damascus and HTS said it has seized Deir al-Zour.

The likelihood of a stable Syria is possible but unlikely given the geopolitics of the region. Somehow, a dreadful scenario that resembles that of Libya, but many times more severe, could take place. Externally, the country is surrounded by aggressive nations, from Turkey, Israel, Iran and the Gulf countries with their own conflicting agendas and perpetual feuds. Global powers also have conflicting agendas and are not likely to agree on a common strategy for Syria. And so Syria could now be the next Libya but on steroid.

Internally, the country has long been the victim of deep divisions, with feuding parties influenced by foreign interests. It does not require a savvy political analyst to conclude that Syria is on the break of a multi-decade upheaval.

With European leaders showing no capacity to positively influence global geopolitics, a Russia stuck in a costly war in Ukraine and an upcoming US president, Donald Trump, who has been advocating for more isolation for the US, the Syria crisis promises to blow up the entire region if it is not controlled immediately. And despite their extreme wealth, Gulf nations should be extremely concerned about their own regime survival as tensions in Syrian reach their peak.

On the ground, the entry of the rebels into Damascus accelerated the demise of the Assad regime, but it is also creating another cycle of a humanitarian crisis. While the Assad family finds shelter in Russia, hundreds of thousands of people fled the Syrian capital and other regions, in what promises to start another wave of displacements and mass migrations, likely to also affect the already destabilized neighboring countries like Lebanon, weak nations like Jordan and Iraq and Europe itself.

But is there any hope for Syria to stabilize? Well, we should hope that the exit of Assad could usher in a new era of stability, even if foreign nations would not likely allow such a thing to happen. Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani, the man who has led HTM to Damascus, is attempting to rebrand himself as a trustworthy dealmaker, distancing himself from the Jihadist ideology to a nationalist one. He told the media that all ethnic groups in Syria should be protected. The Western media now says he is a hero. But will his rehabilitation by the West translate into stability in Syria? Only time will tell.

For many analysts, the lightning speed of the anti-Assad offensive led by the HTS is suspicious, arguing that it may have been part of a grand scheme to reshuffle the deck in the region. They believe there is a strong likelihood that some deal involving key foreign powers active in the region was reached to remove the Assad clan and send it to Russia. This is because all of a sudden, al-Jawlani became accepted and acceptable to the very western media that vilified him for years and labeled him a terrorist. The HTS fast offensive, they say, could align with broader geopolitical agendas, such as shifting alliances, or strategic repositioning by regional or global powers. But without explicit evidence or credible reports, this remains conjectural for the time being.

For now, though, HTS is signaling its willingness to play by the book and be more constructive. Al-Jawlani is following the same playbook, seeking to reassure the Syrian people and the international community by insisting that “the country is not ready for another war.” In his first statement in Al Jazeera, the man picked to lead the transition, Mohammad al-Bashir, has been promising to restore stability and Syrians’ “confidence in their institutions”. He assured that the interim government will strive to maintain the continuity of institutions and avoid the disintegration of the state. “It is time for the Syrian people to regain calm and stability,” he said.
Following those moves, US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, has pledged to support a future inclusive government, while the European Union has warned of future challenges, hoping to avoid the mistakes of transitions in Iraq, Libya, or Afghanistan.

Among some of the most significant moments of this event was the release of the prisoners held by the Assad regime in the Saydnaya prison. Thousands of prisoners had disappeared, and Syrians are trying to find lost relatives in a prison system marked by decades of brutal repression. Rights activists estimate the number of people who were killed inside Syrian prisons to exceed 100,000.

While the HTS offensive appears to signal some hope for a stable Syria, the geopolitics of the region suggests that the country is not likely to experience the stability needed to bring normalcy any time soon. Syria’s neighbors have long been on a war path for one reason or another, and they will play a significant role in shaping the future of Syria.

Obviously, Iran is the country that the west tends to single out as the most disruptive one with its backing of the Assad regime. Iran has been supporting the Assad regime politically, militarily, and economically. So it is normal that the fall of the regime would be a significant geopolitical setback for Iran. Teheran has been using Damascus to secure regional influence in countering U.S., Israeli, and Saudi influence in the Middle East. Iran’s routes and supply chain system used to channel weapons and personnel to its proxies are now deeply disrupted, a situation that will also affect Hezbollah. Iran has long sought to prevent the dominance of Sunni powerhouses Saudi Arabia and Turkey in the region, but the fall of Damascus means these two regional powers will benefit from these events.

Russia, although not neighboring Syria, has been a major source of support to Assad and holds many levers needed to stabilize the country.

Israel has been carrying out air strikes in Syria, saying it wants to prevent the military sites from falling into the hands of terrorist elements. News sources say Israel conducted 350 airstrikes since Sunday, targeting weapons sites and destroying Syria’s naval capabilities. The Israeli army has also positioned itself in the buffer zone of the Golan to establish a secure area, a situation that promises to create more tensions when the dust on Damascus settles.

Turkey has been extremely active in Syria and will remain so primarily to prevent the establishment of an autonomous Kurdish region along its southern border, fearing it could embolden Kurdish separatism within Turkey. Turkey has been working to crush the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), dominated by the YPG (People’s Protection Units), which Turkey considers a terrorist organization linked to the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party). While Turkey officially designates HTS as a terrorist organization due to its origins in Jabhat al-Nusra, a former al-Qaeda affiliate, in practice, it tolerated its dominance in Idlib province, as part of its strategy to counter Syrian government forces. Now with HTS in Damascus, Turkey will want to influence any political settlement that would favor a government that limits Kurdish autonomy and counters the influence of rivals like Iran.

Where things get complex, despite backing opposing sides, Turkey and Russia have also been cooperating through diplomatic frameworks like the Astana Process. They have brokered agreements to manage tensions and avoid direct confrontation. On one hand, they compete, on the other, they cooperate. This is while the United States supports the Kurds of the SDF/YPG because they fight against ISIS. And of course the Gulf countries, each with their own agendas.

What’s ahead is a lot of uncertainty, and so while there is hope of bringing peace in the country, the most likely scenario at this stage is that Syria could be shredded into pieces. If that’s the case, watch how the crisis in Lebanon would further deepen. Lebanon is stuck between its southern border with Israel and now its northern border with Syria. The country borders a Sunni region in the north where some of the inhabitants sympathize with the Syrian rebel and the jihadist movements. But further south, it borders a region with a Shiite majority loyal to Hezbollah and Iran, which fought alongside the Syrian army. That’s guaranteed to rekindling tensions between Sunnis and Shiites in Lebanon.

In this unfolding drama, Libya or even Yemen may be templates of what Syria could become. The Gaddafi regime was toppled in 2011 and the country is still in deep trouble, 13 years later, without any sign of things getting better. All ethno-religious groups are expected to move to their corners and get ready to engage in an existential fight. The Kurds will retreat into their own state. The Alawites, who form the core support system of the al-Assad regime, will feel under siege and will hurdle in the coastal areas. The Druze will confine themselves into their mountainous southern regions. And then there are the multiple jihadist groups, from Daesh and ISIS.

______________________

MARK ALMOND

By the end, the psychopathic dictator Bashar al-Assad was everybody’s enemy. His hardcore supporters who haven’t managed to flee the country will be doing all they can to distance themselves from his toppled regime and the rest of Syria will be partying riotously.

Rebel leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani has tried to keep things calm, ordering his fighters not to celebrate by loosing bursts of automatic fire into the air. But as Assad’s palaces, the properties of cronies and the Iranian embassy were looted, that command has been frequently disregarded.

Once the party is over, though, Syria will suffer a hangover that could well last for years. All too often, the fall of a Middle Eastern strongman is followed not by stability but anarchy. The lawlessness and infighting that came in the wake of the 2011 overthrow of Colonel Gaddafi in Libya, for instance, is a terrible warning from history. 

Jolani heads a small army of no more than 20,000 soldiers. They are heavily armed, fanatically motivated and highly experienced, the veterans of battles against many foes, from Assad’s army to the Islamic State, Russia and the US. What they have achieved in a very short space of time – dislodging a deep-rooted regime and taking control of all Syria’s major cities, including now Damascus – is testimony to their remarkable discipline and organisation.

But it is one thing to oust a dictator, quite another to maintain a grip on power. Even after waves of civil war and an exodus of refugees, Syria’s population is close to 20 million – a thousand times larger than Jolani’s army. And it has one of the world’s biggest stockpiles of weapons, amassed not only by Assad but by many rebel factions and even civilians. It’s no exaggeration to say that guns in Syria are more commonplace than umbrellas in England.

More worrying still are the arsenals of artillery, mortars, rockets and even chemical weapons. Israel carried out numerous air strikes on ammunition and weapons depots in Syria over the weekend in a bid to stop them falling into enemy hands, but it will not have destroyed them all. Jolani has sought to present himself as a moderate, courting Western governments and media, and even speaking to the Israeli press.

As far as the outside world is concerned, his brand is anti-Iran, anti-Hezbollah and anti-terrorism. But having laid his hands on power, at the cost of so much blood, he will find it hard to become a conventional politician. He might want peace, but the warriors who back him do not. They have fought in extreme conditions against the heaviest odds for many years. After all the sacrifices they have made, they do not think in terms of truces and tolerance.

So many factions will be competing for influence in Syria’s future, many of them from opposing ideologies and religions, that prolonged internal unrest looks inevitable. Jolani commands Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the Organisation for the Liberation of the Levant, which grew out of the Al Qaeda-linked Front for the Conquest of the Levant.

Meanwhile, Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan is backing the Syrian National Army – which used to be called the Free Syrian Army – to repress the Syrian Democratic Forces, drawn from the Kurdish people straddling the border. Then there is, of course, Islamic State and various Druze militias, including the Men Of Dignity Movement and Mountain Brigade Gathering.

All this may have grim echoes of Monty Python’s Life Of Brian and the endless variations on the People’s Front Of Judea, but infighting among these groups can make life a misery for locals. For Western Europe, the immediate fear is two-fold: terrorism and organised crime. No one knows how many foreign jihadis are in Syria, mercenaries driven by fanatical Islamism rather than money. 

Some come from former Soviet republics such as Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, others from China and Afghanistan, but most are from Muslim areas of Russia: Chechnya and Dagestan. Unlike Then there is, of course, Islamic State and various Druze militias, including the Men Of Dignity Movement and Mountain Brigade Gathering.

All this may have grim echoes of Monty Python’s Life Of Brian and the endless variations on the People’s Front Of Judea, but infighting among these groups can make life a misery for locals. For Western Europe, the immediate fear is two-fold: terrorism and organised crime. No one knows how many foreign jihadis are in Syria, mercenaries driven by fanatical Islamism rather than money.

Some come from former Soviet republics such as Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, others from China and Afghanistan, but most are from Muslim areas of Russia: Chechnya and Dagestan. Unlike Jolani, their ambitions go beyond deposing Assad. Indeed, some are already talking about taking the fight eastward to China.

As Jolani may be looking for powers such as China to support his government at international forums like the UN in the months and years to come, he may well want to get rid of his lunatic fringe. If they are expelled, some are likely to head for Britain and the EU, where they will try to continue their war against Western civilisation.

Jolani, their ambitions go beyond deposing Assad. Indeed, some are already talking about taking the fight eastward to China. As Jolani may be looking for powers such as China to support his government at international forums like the UN in the months and years to come, he may well want to get rid of his lunatic fringe.

If they are expelled, some are likely to head for Britain and the EU, where they will try to continue their war against Western civilisation. Syria is also a major source of drugs to the Middle East and increasingly to the West, and whoever gains control of the trade in narcotics – a business once run by Assad’s younger brother Maher – will have a major stake in Europe’s illegal drugs market, which is often supplied via refugee routes. The combination of several-sided power struggle and organised crime means that Syria’s chaos will soon spread beyond its borders.

***

Mark Almond is director of the Crisis Research Institute in Oxford 

_____________

Miral Sabry AlAshry

The Telegraph’s analysis of air bases in Libya reveals the presence of military transport aircraft, updated runways, reinforced perimeter defenses, and new buildings. Russia is now landing military aircraft in Libya on newly refurbished runways as part of its rapid expansion in Africa.

The analysis conducted by The Telegraph at three Libyan air bases indicates the presence of Russian military transport aircraft, updated runways, reinforced perimeter defenses, and newly constructed buildings. Russia’s military presence in Libya is growing significantly due to the developing partnership between General Khalifa Haftar, who commands the eastern and southern regions of the country, and the Russian president.

The refurbishment of the airstrip has enhanced the base’s ability to efficiently receive and launch military aircraft. Russian air operations are ongoing at the Brak al-Shati and al-Jufra bases, with satellite imagery showing active aircraft movements and frequent operations, suggesting a continuous transfer of supplies.

The al-Qardabiya base is currently undergoing extensive renovations, including runway improvements and reinforced defenses, indicating a strategic move to expand and strengthen its defensive capabilities. Libya serves as a pivotal location for Russia’s expanding operations in Africa, opening up opportunities for further access to countries such as Sudan, Mali, Chad, and the Central African Republic.

By establishing military control in Libya, Russia can extend its sphere of influence from the eastern Mediterranean, where it already holds coastal positions in Syria, to the southern Mediterranean through Libya.

Diplomatic relations between Moscow and Tripoli began on September 4, 1955. In December 1991, when Libya announced its official recognition of Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union, relations began to develop after Muammar Gaddafi took power. Relations were based on establishing projects in late 1990, and political contacts between the two countries became active.

Gaddafi visited the Russian Federation in 2000 and 2001. Relations developed in April 2004 with Saif al-Islam Gaddafi. On October 31, 2008, the first visit of the leader of the Libyan revolution, Muammar Gaddafi, to Moscow took place to conclude an agreement between the Russian and Libyan governments in the field of using nuclear energy and establishing a joint bank.

Russia’s position emerged after the February 17 revolution, as the Russian Foreign Ministry called on all parties in Libya to find a peaceful solution through national dialogue to put an end to the violence. Russia also criticized the military intervention led by NATO in the Libyan civil war, although it chose not to use its veto in the UN Security Council to prevent this.

The Russian Foreign Ministry announced on September 1, 2011, that Moscow recognized the Libyan National Transitional Council as the current authority in the country.

Legal contracts and agreements began, such as signing the agreement on trade, economic, scientific and technical cooperation and the agreement to form a bilateral government committee on trade, economic, scientific and technical cooperation, and they cooperated in the field of oil and gas, while military cooperation came after the revolution.

Alexander Fomin, head of the Russian Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation, announced on June 27, 2012, that Russia is counting on resuming the supply of weapons and military equipment to Libya and other countries with which military-technical cooperation was interrupted due to the deterioration of the political situation there.

Tripoli – The strengthening of military cooperation between the Libyan National Army, led by Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, and Russia raises great American and Western concerns about the penetration of Russian influence in North Africa, in particular, and the conclusion of joint military agreements, as well as talk about Moscow’s intention to establish a naval base in the east of the country.

Russia has intervened in the Libyan crisis for years, as it supported the Libyan National Army forces in the fight against the National Accord forces, a support that raised Washington’s concerns and was among the reasons that thwarted efforts to control the capital, Tripoli, and liberate the western region from the influence and dominance of the militias.

Wagner elements, whose numbers range between 2,000 and 2,500, are stationed in several military sites in Libya. Russia established a military naval base in Libya, which has raised concerns in the West.

Russia is providing expertise to strengthen the sovereignty and independence of the Libyan state and its armed forces.

Within the framework of this cooperation, 250 students and officers were sent to study in military academies in the Russian Federation, including 100 students and officers in Russian naval academies.

Russia has bolstered its military presence in Libya by incorporating the Wagner paramilitary forces into a broader strategy. Moscow aims to create a more open defense industry with the Libyan parties as part of a plan to destabilize the southern wing of NATO.

Washington emphasizes its efforts to enhance military cooperation with Libya to combat terrorism, organized crime, and smuggling. A military expert close to the situation commented on these developments, stating, “Russian moves indicate a long-term strategy to strengthen Russian influence in the region, focusing on developing crucial air capabilities for military and geopolitical balance. Renovation operations at Russian air bases like Brak al-Shati and Jufra are key in maintaining Russian logistical operations and their role in the Libyan military scene.”

Russia has strategically utilized Libya as a new location, taking advantage of governance issues and corruption. Satellite images, local investigations, and interviews reveal Russian forces upgrading facilities at the Brak al-Shatti military base. Russian military planes have been landing at Brak and making maritime deliveries through the port of Tobruk. The European Council on Foreign Relations estimates thousands of tonnes of weapons have been delivered to the al-Jufra facility.

Russian forces have fortified the al-Qardabiyah air base, revamping runways, and enhancing perimeter defenses. They also train Gen Haftar’s forces at the base. Russian troop numbers, which peaked at 3,000 in 2020, are now around 2,000 personnel, with a return to previous levels expected.

Ultimately, Russia stands to gain significant military cooperation, political power, status, and recognition through engagement in Libya, increasing their overall strength.

***

Prof. Miral Sabry AlAshry is Co-lead for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) at the Centre for Freedom of the Media, the Department of Journalism Studies at the University of Sheffield.

____________________

Jalel Harchaoui and Colin Powers

CONCLUSIONS AND

RECOMMENDATIONS

Libya’s public sector, since the 1970s a cornerstone of the national development model and primary channel for redistributing oil wealth, is today struggling to fulfill its historic functions. It is not only failing to deliver quality services and output growth—it also performs poorly as a distributive mechanism, excluding the young and those in peripheral areas while leaving many of those fortunate enough to have a public job unable to cover their bills.

At this stage, a holistic restructuring has become necessary. This should commence with a redefinition of mission. Rather than treat the public sector as a distributive mechanism—it has, at this stage, proven a relatively ineffective one—restructuring should prioritize commitments to performance: Enhancing the quality of public services and the commercial performance of state-owned enterprises need be elevated as primary objectives.

Amongst other things, reform will entail the adoption of meritocratic hiring and promotion practices along with the upgrading of compensation packages for public servants. By definition, it will also entail ending existing arrangements that have allowed political elites to use public sector jobs as a means for purchasing loyalty and building personal power. Success on any of these fronts will assume the advance of genuinely democratic governance.

Without transparency in the conduct of government business and public control of decision making, addressing the corruption that presently corrodes Libya’s public sector will be impossible. Naturally, ending state and institutional partition is sine qua non of reform, too.

So to ensure that the shift in public sector mission does not create adverse social effects, the development of alternative income and wealth distribution mechanisms will be essential. Policies like a universal basic income should be considered, and the state’s role as creditor and investor to local businesses and social ventures should be scaled up.

The state’s presence as a service provider, creditor, and investor must be expanded in peripheral areas of the country especially. Deepening the public health and educational infrastructure in these spaces—and therefore training and hiring more doctors, teachers, social workers, and administrators—should not be foregone simply because of the bloat of the public sector.

To grow demand in the labor market (and thereby reduce reliance on public sector opportunities), efforts to further develop the private sector should also be undertaken. Reforming the legal and regulatory environment will be key, as will buttressing the judicial system. Finding ways to allocate capital resources to small and medium-sized enterprises which can service local markets, particularly in peripheral areas, should be considered a priority.

So too the development of large, export-oriented manufacturing firms: these firms are essential not only for driving labor demand, but for facilitating productivity gains and technological transfer. Lastly, given the recent record, all outsourcing and privatization strategies involving stateowned enterprises should be reassessed, and existing arrangements be subjected to public scrutiny.

In Libya as anywhere else, reforming the public sector and the wider economy will always be matters of politics. Any hope for change ultimately hinges on resolving state partition, challenging the dominance of armed actors and self-serving elites, enhancing transparency, and establishing a truly democratic system with regular pluralistic elections.

As such, the international community clearly has a big role to play going forward: It must actively support a democratic transition, and it must be far less complacent in the face of the large-scale economic crimes committed by Libya’s incumbent rulers. While the current political landscape makes enacting changes difficult, it is the only way to ensure a sustainable future for the majority of Libyans.

******

A holistic restructuring of the Libyan public sector is essential, beginning with a redefinition of its mission.

Rather than treating the public sector primarily as a distributive mechanism, the focus should shift towards enhancing performance and improving the quality of public services.

Elevating the commercial performance of state-owned enterprises must be prioritized as a core objective.

Public sector reform should include the implementation of meritocratic hiring and promotion practices, as well as the upgrading of compensation packages for public servants.

Furthermore, it must end the current arrangements that enable political elites to exploit public sector jobs for purchasing loyalty and consolidating personal power.

A key condition for successful reform is the establishment of democratic governance and transparency.

Additionally, reforming the legal and regulatory environment to support private sector employment is essential for creating decent work opportunities.

In particular, small and medium-sized enterprises in peripheral areas should be actively promoted.

To ensure that the shift in the public sector’s mission does not result in adverse social effects, developing alternative mechanisms for income and wealth distribution will be essential.

Policies such as a universal basic income should be considered, and the state’s role as a creditor and investor in local businesses and social ventures should be expanded.

The state’s presence as a service provider, creditor, and investor must be increased, particularly in peripheral areas of the country, as well as in public health and educational infrastructure.

***

Jalel Harchaoui is a political scientist specializing in North Africa, with a particular focus on Libya. Before joining the Royal United Services Institute as an Associate Fellow in 2022, he worked with the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime and the Clingendael Institute in The Hague. His research primarily centers on Libya’s security sector and political economy.

Colin Powers is the Scientific Coordinator and Chief Editor of Noria Research’s Middle East and North Africa Program. He earned his doctorate from Johns Hopkins SAIS in 2020 and was a postdoctoral researcher at Sciences Po Paris in 2022. A political economist by training, his work focuses on issues of development, distribution, finance, and power.

___________________

Sophia Yan

Telegraph analysis of air bases in Libya found military transport planes, upgraded runways, bolstered perimeter defences and new buildings.

Satellite images of the air base upgrades suggest Russia is significantly ramping up its military presence in Libya

Russia is landing military aircraft on newly refurbished runways under its control in Libya as the Kremlin quickly expands its footprint in Africa, satellite images show.

Telegraph analysis of three Libyan air bases found Russian military transport planes, upgraded runways, bolstered perimeter defences and entirely new buildings – changes that all occurred this year.

The upgrades suggest that Russia is significantly ramping up its military presence in Libya, thanks to a growing partnership with Libyan warlord General Khalifa Haftar, who controls the eastern and southern parts of the country.

Libya serves as the core for Russia’s fast-expanding operations in Africa, paving the way for greater access to countries including Sudan, Mali, Chad, and the Central African Republic.

Experts say military control in Libya also allows Russia to draw an arc of power from the eastern Mediterranean – where it already controls coastal positions in Syria – down to the southern Mediterranean via Libya.

On Tuesday last week, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, Russia’s deputy defence minister, visited Libya to meet with Gen Haftar in his sixth visit since August 2023, underscoring deepening relations.

Russia has been using Libya as a strategic foothold to project power across the rest of the African continent,” said Charles Cater, the director of investigations at The Sentry, a Washington DC-based nonprofit that focuses on corruption.

Details in the satellite images were corroborated with The Sentry, which draws on its local investigations and interviews with insiders and eyewitnesses.

“By capitalizing on fractured governance and rampant corruption as well as the apparent complacency of regional and international powers, Moscow has increasingly entrenched itself militarily and economically within Libya,” Mr Cater said.

Russian forces began to revamp facilities at Brak al-Shatti military base in central Libya at the start of this year. Upgrades meant that by April, Russian military aircraft were able to land at Brak on an airstrip that had gone unused for years.

In April, Russian forces managed four maritime deliveries through the port of Tobruk in north-eastern Libya, close to the border with Egypt. Equipment that arrived – military vehicles and ammunition – later ended up at Russian-controlled bases in Libya, including at Brak, according to experts at The Sentry.

Russian military planes continue to land at and depart from Brak, indicating supply deliveries are ongoing. An Ilyushin-76, a Russian military plane, was confirmed on the ground in mid-September, as shown in a satellite image provided to the Telegraph by Maxar Technologies.

As recently as early November, an Ilyushin-76 was also captured via satellite images at the al-Jufra air base, situated in central Libya, roughly 200 miles north of the Brak facility.

Military cargo planes routinely land at al-Jufra, as well as MiG-29 fighter jets and Su-24 bombers – Russian combat aircraft that help Gen Haftar keep control over his territory.

Experts say while the military equipment arriving remains at Haftar’s disposal, some supplies are also moving to other African countries.

Tarek Megerisi, a senior fellow who specialises on Libya at the European Council on Foreign Relations, estimated that thousands of tonnes of weapons had been delivered over the past year.

Further north to the al-Jufra facility is the al-Qardabiyah air base, near Libya’s Mediterranean coast. Al-Qardabiyah has undergone the most extensive renovations over the last year out of the three bases examined by The Telegraph.

Russian forces have fortified the base, adding new installations, revamping runways and bolstering perimeter defences. Several new buildings have been constructed, visible in satellite images from November, compared to a year ago. More vehicles are also now present at the base.

The Russian military has become ubiquitous at al-Qardabiyah, where it also trains Gen Haftar’s forces. They’ve become so rooted that experts at The Sentry say Gen Haftar’s brigades must seek permission to access the Russian-controlled bases on Libyan soil.

Russian troop numbers had dwindled significantly from their 3,000-strong peak in 2020 partly due to the Ukraine war, but are starting to return to those levels. Some expert estimates now put the total figure at around 2,000 personnel.

An increased footprint in Libya gives Moscow the ability to impact political, security and economic stability along NATO’s southern flank, whether that means flexing military muscle or disrupting energy markets by manipulating Libya’s role as a major exporter of crude oil.

“With money and presence and military troops comes also political standing,” said Chiara Lovotti, a research fellow who focuses on Russia’s foreign policy in the Middle East and North Africa at the Italian Institute for International Political Studies.

“It’s all a way for Moscow, for the Kremlin to make money,” she said. Taken together, Russia’s growing power “poses a threat to Europe’s presence – Nato’s presence”.

Continuing to have access to Libya is so important that Moscow has also made overtures to the country’s UN-recognised government, headed by Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh, the prime minister – an apparent move to hedge its bets with Gen Haftar.

Gen Haftar, who is thought to have received military training in the former Soviet Union, has allowed Russia access to extract natural resources and by handing over control of strategic oilfields.

The partnership began as a “marriage of convenience,” said Ms Lovotti. “Haftar needed some international support back then when he came to power”, after the fall of and death of former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

“The Russians were there; they were looking for an entrance to the country, and Haftar gave them this opportunity.”

For Russia, Libya has become a key customer for its energy products, banned by nations including the UK and US after sanctions were announced following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Despite having vast oil resources, Libya lacks the ability to refine crude oil, forcing the nation to buy fuel from abroad – most recently in vast quantities from Russia.

Oil deals between Russia and Libya have also been smoothed over given Gen Haftar’s influence over Farhat Bengdara, named in 2022 as the chairman of Libya’s National Oil Corporation, a vast state body that oversees the country’s oil industry.

“The fact is that Russia, another near-peer adversary like China, is seeing an open goal in Libya given the West’s disengagement, and using Libya to further its interests, which in this case involves access to discounted oil,” said Alia Brahimi, a non-resident senior fellow who specialises in the Middle East and North Africa at the Atlantic Council.

Private mercenary group

The increased flurry of Russian activity in Libya follows a reorganisation of the private mercenary group Wagner after its leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, died last year.

Prigozhin died in a plane crash in August 2023, just two months after his failed coup attempt against Vladimir Putin, the Russian president.

Shortly after, Wagner’s operations in Africa, which had waned in recent years as Russia moved resources to support its invasion of Ukraine, suddenly began to expand again – this time, under a new name: Africa Corps.

Last December, a Haftar-controlled brigade held an official ceremony with 500 Libyan soldiers, visible in satellite images. The high-profile event at the al-Qardabiyah air base was aimed at giving the false impression that Gen Haftar controlled the base, not Russia, according to The Sentry.

“The end game is very precise: One, it’s extracting the most from the country in terms of military cooperation… of making money,” said Ms Lovotti. “The other is bigger, broader and more geopolitical – its power, status, recognition; if they engage in Libya, the Russians become more powerful.”

_____________________

Habib Lassoued

The eastern region has its territory, its borders and government as well as its army, parliament, regional and international relations and sources of wealth.
The Presidential Council’s attempt to hold a referendum on the status of House of Representatives will only accelerate division.

Libyan Prime Minister Abdulhamid Dbeibah, left, and head of the Presidential Council of Libya Mohamed al-Menfi arrive for a conference in Paris, November 12, 2021. AP

The head of the Presidential Council, Mohamed Younis Al-Menfi, seemed to be acting under the influence of his advisors, who revolve around Prime Minister Abdulhamid Dbeibah, when he decided to establish the High Commission for Referendum and National Survey.

His undeclared aim was to unleash a showdown with the House of Representatives and destroy the remaining bridges of communication between Tripoli and Benghazi.

Someone speaking on his behalf explained that his objective was to push for a popular withdrawal of confidence from the House of Representatives through an electronic referendum, as if he really believed that the parliament could self-dissolve if the people voted against it.

What is certain is that the authorities of the eastern region are eager to exploit any mistake by the Presidential Council and its backers in Tripoli. They want to forge ahead with the shaping of a new political landscape by reversing all decisions aimed at unifying Libyan institutions.

They are pushing for a referendum among inhabitants of the eastern and southern regions to establish a federal mode of government and a system of distribution of wealth, which would be consistent with the current trends in Benghazi, where the features of an independent state are already emerging.  The eastern region has its territory, its borders and government as well as its army, parliament, regional and international relations and sources of wealth.

The best tool to accommodate this trend may be a federal system according to the 1951 constitution. The Presidential Council’s attempt to hold a referendum on the status of House of Representatives will only accelerate division.

The head of the Government of National Unity, which controls only about 20 percent of Libya’s geography, came out a few hours after the successful the municipal elections, to announce the merger of some of the municipalities by turning them into branches of other municipalities.

The head of the Benghazi-based government appointed by the House of Representatives, Osama Hamad, accused Dbeibah of “attempting to destabilise the country and spread chaos”.

Hamad called on all public bodies and institutions “not to implement or disseminate the decisHabibions as they are legally null and void,” urging the High Elections Commission to “complete the organisation of elections of the remaining municipal councils according to the administrative districting of the municipalities and their affiliated branches.”

In principle, Dbeibah’s decision will not be carried through except in a small part of the western region. It will not be heeded in the east and south of the country, thus adding to dozens, if not hundreds, of decisions issued by the GNU over the past few years which ended up in the trash can due to their author’s lack of means to enforce them.

Moreover, Dbeibah’s decision, which was announced a few hours after municipal elections, which everyone saw as successful, whether in terms of security and organisation or in terms of voter turnout, was a deliberately disruptive move  that raises many questions about his political intent.

All Libya watchers find themselves observing an essentially amateurish political elite that is only professional in conspiring to ensure its survival and preserve the privileges of power.

There is a face-off today between two figures competing for the presidency of the State Council, despite the fact that they were elected in 2012 as members of Libya’s first parliament, the General National Congress, and later maintained that membership by recycling the Islamist movement through the Skhirat Libyan Political Agreement concluded in December 2015.

We are facing a House of Representatives, which was elected in 2014 and continues its activities without any qualms, although new elections were supposed to be held five years ago.

The Presidential Council and Dbeibah’s  GNU came to power based on a political agreement concluded in November 2020 and which set a deadline of eight months for them from March to December 2021 to  hold presidential and parliamentary elections under the supervision of the United Nations.  At best, their legitimacy expired after 18 months of their election by the Political Dialogue Forum.

Everything that was supposed to be temporary in Libya ended up being permanent.  All emergency decisions have become a fixed rule. All of Libya is now in the hands of a group of people who behave as if the country is their family property.

***

Habib Lassoued is a Tunisian writer.

_____________________

Jalel Harchaoui and Colin Powers

The Privatization of Public Asset

Management

Another worrisome development in recent times has been the state’s and SOEs’ turn to politically connected subcontractors in oil extraction and infrastructure development. Our field investigations established that in April 2024, the National Oil Corporation assigned management of an oil field named NC4 in the Hammada area (not far from Ghadames and the Algerian border) to a private contractor called Arkenu.

Arkenu is reportedly linked to Saddam Haftar, arguably the Field Marshal’s most powerful son, and has allegedly partnered with an obscure Swiss-based firm called Pars Holding for the NC4 contract.

Regretfully, more privatization-type arrangements of this kind appear to be in the offing. The NOC has allegedly been lobbying major international oil services firms such as Halliburton and Honeywell to partner with another new private firm called Isnad, whose ownership is opaque, for subcontracting more field management.

The changes signaled in the NOC’s recent privatization-related moves are not only problematic due to the heightened potential for corruption. We also need to consider how subcontracting public asset management to firms such as Arkenu and their external partners affects job creation.

The relationship with job creation derives from the fact that subcontractors such as Arkenu seek to optimize profits by keeping local staff costs low. Typically, firms like this rely on small teams of foreign experts provided by their external partner (in Arkenu’s case, Pars Holding) to run the actual oil extraction, while they themselves collect rents as the gatekeeper of oil field access. For the communities near the oil fields, this translates to fewer work opportunities.

Changes in Public Sector Management since 2021: Challenges of Armed Actors

Public sector management since the demise of the Qadhafi regime has never been wholly consistent.39 Between 2011 and 2021, it was affected by war, the shifting field of power, and the vagaries of political calculation. This resulted in both lulls in hiring and times of rapid payroll expansion.

For the period as a whole, the trend was one of volatile public sector growth. Since Dabaiba’s ascent to the prime ministership in 2021, underlying trends have largely been preserved, with a few notable changes. In the earliest days of Dabaiba’s tenure—when relations with CBL Governor Sadiq Kabir were at their strongest and when Libya briefly had a single recognized government—the policy emphasis was on salary increases, integrating the workforce in the east, and unifying the wider public sector’s payroll. Concerning the former and with a view to boosting the popularity of his governance, Dabaiba announced both universal and institution-specific pay raises on a number of occasions.

Regarding the second two tenets of his policy, in June 2021, Dabaiba’s government officially incorporated onto the state’s payroll the approximately 400,000 individuals who had been hired by the eastern-based, Haftar-aligned government of Abdullah al-Theni over the previous seven years.

The Haftar-led camp had made most of these hires during 2014–2021, not only within the security sector but also for the purpose of staffing duplicate ministries and creating redundant bureaucracies from scratch in eastern Libya. In addition, Dabaiba’s government agreed to honor the monthly salary increases which the Theni government had instituted for the 300,000 public sector employees in the east who had already been on the state’s books prior to 2014.

With these moves, Tripoli regularized the employment status and benefits of nearly 700,000 people. It also, at long last, reunified the state’s payroll. The effect on the lives of people in the east was palpable, especially when it came to salaries being paid on time.

Unfortunately, these early steps toward public sector payroll harmonization proved short lived.

In September 2021, the eastern parliament withdrew its confidence in Dabaiba’s government. In the months that followed, the coalition of armed groups operating under the banner of Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA) also began alleging that Dabaiba’s government in Tripoli had halted salary payments.

The claims of Haftar’s men were misleading. The reality was that by requiring verification of identity and citizenship in order to issue salary payments, the Ministry of Finance in Tripoli ended up making financial transfers to the LNA that were less than Haftar et al. had expected: The latter had assumed it could bill salaries for both nonexistent and foreign fighters.

Regardless, the resulting scandal ultimately forced Dabaiba to buy peace with the Haftar clan. He did so by agreeing to drop identity-related procedures and instead granting the LNA the desired lump-sum transfers for the payment of salaries. This increased Tripoli’s public sector salary expenditures in the east and by extension, added to the government’s fiscal strains.

More significantly, it further corroded the regulatory integrity of Libya’s public finances and undermined whatever progress had been made in terms of government unification during the March–September 2021 period.

Things only got worse when a new alternative government was established in the east in the winter of 2022. At its own discretion, the new eastern government launched hiring campaigns for the public sector and resumed issuance of public debt, which in practice meant borrowing from the eastern branch of the CBL and, to a lesser extent, commercial banks in eastern Libya.

In the west , Dabaiba was also spending freely, empowered to do so through his then close alignment with the CBL. A few months later, the damage was done. Public sector spending was marked by opacity, off-budget transfers, and east-west divisions once again. And in an environment of political tensions, jobs and salary hikes were primarily being doled out to purchase loyalty.

Examples of the latter included Speaker of the eastern-based House of Representatives Agila Saleh implementing salary increases for Ministry of Justice employees in April 2024.49 Just as significantly, they also include Prime Minister Dabaiba’s pledges of increased payouts to specific quasi-state armed groups in 2023.

Dabaiba made those promises without amending the annual budget law or consulting the Ministry of Finance, thereby giving the state’s payroll commitments a new degree of ambiguity.

***

Jalel Harchaoui is a political scientist specializing in North Africa, with a particular focus on Libya. Before joining the Royal United Services Institute as an Associate Fellow in 2022, he worked with the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime and the Clingendael Institute in The Hague. His research primarily centers on Libya’s security sector and political economy.

Colin Powers is the Scientific Coordinator and Chief Editor of Noria Research’s Middle East and North Africa Program. He earned his doctorate from Johns Hopkins SAIS in 2020 and was a postdoctoral researcher at Sciences Po Paris in 2022. A political economist by training, his work focuses on issues of development, distribution, finance, and power.

___________________

Over four years after al-Kaniat armed group was ousted from the Libyan city of Tarhouna leaving mass graves in its wake, justice and adequate reparations remain elusive for survivors and relatives of victims of its merciless reign of terror involving mass unlawful killings, torture and enforced disappearances, Amnesty International said in a new report published today.

“Every day we die a thousand times”: Impunity for crimes against humanity in Tarhouna.

Libya finds there to be reasonable grounds to believe that al-Kaniat committed the crimes against humanity of murder, torture, enforced disappearance and unlawful imprisonment,  as part of their planned, systematic and large-scale attack against the civilian population of Tarhouna between 2015 and 2020, in the aim of maintaining their control over the area. 

In an important step towards justice, in October 2024, the International Criminal Court (ICC) announced arrest warrants against six people for their alleged responsibility in war crimes in Tarhouna, but they remain at large and/or yet to be surrendered to the court.

“Four years after the ousting of al-Kaniat from Tarhouna, people are still reeling from the armed group’s campaign of terror. Survivors know such crimes could not have been committed without the complicity of successive governments, de facto authorities, powerful militias and armed groups in Libya,” said Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty International’s Deputy Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa.

“The Libyan government and Libyan Arab Armed Forces (LAAF) must publicly apologize to survivors and victims’ relatives and ensure that all receive full reparations, including financial compensation, without discrimination, and cooperate in the arrest and handover of suspects to the ICC. Members of the international community should press the Libyan authorities to stop integrating members of armed groups or militias into state institutions without individualized vetting to exclude those reasonably suspected of crimes under international law, pending criminal investigations, and ensure that horrific crimes like those committed in Tarhouna will not be repeated.”

Al-Kaniat’s crimes were enabled, first by the then internationally recognized Government of National Accord (GNA), and subsequently by its rival, the self-proclaimed LAAF, both of which provided them support, legitimacy and funding.

Between February 2022 and October 2024, Amnesty International interviewed 74 individuals, including former detainees, victims’ relatives and forensic experts. Based on their testimonies and other evidence collected during visits to Tarhouna and Tripoli, the organization documented the cases of 159 individuals from 23 extended families, who were abducted by al-Kaniat between 2012 and 2020, and later unlawfully killed or remain forcibly disappeared.

Families torn apart through murder, enforced disappearances and forced displacement

Al-Kaniat maintained their brutal stranglehold over Tarhouna by eliminating any actual or potential rivals and critics, and targeting their entire extended families.

Al-Kaniat would abduct and unlawfully kill all the men in a family. Then, at gunpoint, order the rest of their extended families to leave Tarhouna, an abusive practice amounting to forced displacement. Al-Kaniat would then seize all their property and assets. The majority of abductions were carried out between April 2019 and June 2020 when al-Kaniat were operating under the LAAF.

According to the General Authority for Search and Identification of Missing Persons(GASIMP) most of the 343 bodies recovered and examined after al-Kaniat’s defeat bore gunshot wounds, mainly to the head or upper body, and most had their hands tied behind their back and/or were hooded or blindfolded.

The evidence available to Amnesty International also suggests that, in addition to crimes against humanity, many of the acts perpetrated by al-Kaniat, including murder, seizure of property without military necessity and forced displacement, also violate international humanitarian law and constitute war crimes.

The fate and whereabouts of at least 68 people seized by al-Kaniat remain unknown to date, according to the Tarhouna Victims Association (TVA).

The suffering of families of victims has been compounded by the failure of the Libya authorities to grant them adequate reparation. Only 37 families received financial support from a state body mandated to support “martyrs”.

Other families told Amnesty International that their efforts to secure compensation were met with bureaucratic obstacles, delays or refusals.

Women and children not spared

Most of those abducted and unlawfully killed were civilians, including at least four women and three children.

Al-Kaniat abducted Abdelali al-Fellus and his four sons from their home on 3 April 2020, unlawfully killing him and three of the boys – Mohammed, 10; Abdelmalik, 14; and Abdelrahman, 15.

Their mother, Ghazal Miftah, learned of the killings from her surviving child, then eight-year-old Mouadh: “They [al-Kaniat] put them against the fence and shot them dead, all four of them, and little Mouadh was forced to watch… He remains traumatized to this day.”

On 5 April 2020, al-Kaniat abducted three sisters from the Harouda family: Hawa (known as Rahma), 46; Leila (known as Salma), 45; and Reem, 37, a mother of four who was pregnant at the time. Their relatives believe they were targeted due to their brother’s involvement with anti-Kaniat militias.

The sisters’ bodies were found together on 22 January 2021 in a mass grave. The family did not receive any financial compensation, despite winning a court case ordering the Tripoli-based government to pay the family LYD 1.5 million (USD 310,623).

Torture

Al-Kaniat subjected those they abducted to torture and other inhumane acts, including beatings with water pipes, whips and rifle butts; sexual violence; and electric shocks.

In February 2022, Amnesty International visited “Boxat”, an agricultural compound that was used as a makeshift detention facility. Detainees were forcibly placed inside small, box-like structures without access to toilets and enough food. Al-Kaniat fighters lit fires on top of the structures, exposing detainees to extreme heat and suffocation from fumes.

“Malek”, who was detained at the Judicial Police prison in Tahouna, said that al-Kaniat fighters used a torture method known as “balanco” which involved hanging him by the wrists before violently dropping him to the ground: “They started giving me electric shocks, to my body, to my genitals… I told them everything they wanted to hear.”

Justice

Since the capture of Tarhouna by GNA forces in June 2020, the Tripoli-based prosecution announced investigations and the issuing of 400 arrest warrants. However these investigations did not examine the role, complicity and command responsibility of officials and militia leaders who remain in power.

At least 29 individuals, only five of whom are detained, have been convicted and sentenced to death or prison terms following unfair trials by civilian and military courts in western Libya for a range of crimes related to al-Kaniat’s reign.

The notorious Deterrence Apparatus for Combating Terrorism and Organized Crime militia, which has a well-documented record of involvement in torture and other serious violations, has been involved in evidence collection and the detention of suspects, including of Abdelbari Al Shaqaqi, wanted by the ICC, which risks perverting the course of justice. 

_____________________

Jalel Harchaoui and Colin Powers

In 2021, the International Labour Organization estimated that the unemployment rate for people aged between 15 and 24 was 51.4%, and considerably higher for women in this age bracket.

Labor market conditions for those slightly older (26 to 30) are also poor. A 2021 survey administered by Asma Khalifa as part of a joint effort between the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Kantar Public, and the University of Leipzig found an unemployment rate of 26% for individuals in this prime age cohort.

Moreover, as already mentioned, the relative retreat of the state from the job market has also led to lower levels of labor force participation among younger generations. Though comprehensive labor market surveys have not recently been conducted, data released by the Libyan Bureau of Statistics revealed that a third fewer 15-to-24-year-olds were economically active in 2015 (48.6%) as compared to 2012 (72.3%).

In light of the subsequent deterioration of the security situation, it can be assumed that youth economic disengagement only worsened in the years that followed. In addition, interviewees from younger cohorts working or seeking work in a number of different locations and sectors testified to how the scarcity of public sector jobs has increased the salience of political connections, or wasta, for securing employment.

Other problems exacerbating the hardship faced by young recruits in the public sector, particularly in domains such as healthcare and education, are wage theft and the non-payment of wages. Concerning the former, interlocutors in Sebha and Muzruq reported that it is not uncommon for a high-ranking employee to confiscate a new hire’s salary for their first year of employment, conceiving this as a payment of sorts for offering the position.

Although this behavior is not institutionalized, the phenomenon is widespread enough to cause significant concern in peripheral areas, particularly in southern Libya. As for the non-payment of wages, multiple sources reported the experience as being fairly common, and being a function of bureaucratic inefficiencies. Put simply, many new hires begin working as soon as they receive an offer, fearing the job might be taken from them.

The problem is that there are often delays in the employer issuing official employee numbers. Until these numbers are registered, which can take months, no salaries are paid.

As intimated, public employment also shows geographic biases. In relative terms, new public sector job creation continues to be concentrated in privileged coastal cities such as Tripoli, Misrata, and Benghazi. The reproduction of this long-standing pattern post-2011 derives from Libya’s highly centralized institutional structures.

Empirically, its effects can be seen from a review of unemployment statistics, disaggregated at the regional or municipal level. Metrics like unemployment rates can be relied on because, as established, employment and unemployment in Libya are largely functions of public sector hiring, due to the enduring stunted development of the private sector.

As such, geographic discrepancies in employment and labor force participation may be attributed to the state’s uneven geographic reach.

Calculations based on the Libya Labor Force Survey of 2012 revealed that before civil war in Libya, the percentage of those unemployed in marginalized places such as Ghat, Jbel Gharbi, Wahat, and Sebha were already far above national averages, ranging from 20–29%.

Due to where resources were concentrated within the war economy, which subsequently consolidated, these preexisting disjunctures in labor market conditions only worsened. The effects of this have been felt most acutely by the young men and women living in the Libyan periphery, especially in the deep south. In Sebha, surveys conducted in 2022 by the REACH Initiative revealed that only 44% of the municipality’s 18-to-29-year-olds were economically active, and that 42% of those who were active were unemployed.

Put differently, a mere 18% of this cohort has a job, be that public or private sector. Just as distressingly, the survey found that 65% of Sebha’s youth classified as NEET (not in employment, education, or training), a troubling forward-looking indicator if ever there was one.

The Tribalization of Wasta

Public employment in Libya today is not only troubled by high fiscal costs and declining social returns: It is also being compromised by tribalized forms of corruption. Indeed, the latter is increasingly seen within SOEs and the civil service alike. When it comes to SOEs, data gathered about the oil industry near Ajdabiya in Libya’s east revealed a distressing picture.

Following Farhat Bengdara’s appointment as Chairman of the National Oil Corporation (NOC) and Massoud Slimane’s appointment to the NOC’s board in July 2022, virtually all hiring decisions have been decoupled from economic considerations. Instead, they have been driven by patronage and determined on the basis of tribal affiliation.

The biggest beneficiaries of the current policy in and around Ajdabiya have been Slimane’s Magharba tribe as well as those affiliated with the Awaqir and Aqjilah tribes. For the NOC itself, in contrast, wasta-led employment policies have led to a host of issues. Non-essential, politically motivated hiring campaigns have caused liquidity shortages on a number of occasions, resulting in delayed salary payments. Higher personnel costs also led to the canceling of a continuing education program that had been provided to the workforce.

The effects of tribalized wasta for the civil service are every bit as pernicious.

Interlocutors in Fezzan noted that the Ministry of Health under Ramadan Abu Janah’s leadership has become rife with this kind of corruption. Hiring of administrative and medical personnel at the Ministry has been used to reward those from Abu Janah’s Hasawna tribe in particular.

Moreover, unsurprisingly, wasta-led hiring has been much to the detriment of public service quality. Indeed, politicized hiring decisions resulted in acute shortages of competent personnel at public hospitals.31 Such shortages and the hiring practices which cause them have had a number of second-order effects, too.

Most directly, they have forced doctors and patients to seek private alternatives for their employment and healthcare needs, respectively, and pushed up out-of-pocket healthcare expenditures for families across the south.

Further, there are grounds for thinking the link between wasta and declining public service quality extends well beyond the Ministry of Health. The excellent research by Mohamed Elmagbri, Heba al-Sheikh, Lamis Ben Aiyad, and Rima Hamidan established how the combination of political conflict, civil war, hierarchical bureaucracy, and corruption have undermined waste management, electricity provision, and water supply services in recent years.

The tragic flooding of Derna, which cost more than 20,000 lives in 2023, revealed the degree to which corruption plagues infrastructure maintenance. The extensive investigations conducted by the Bertelsmann Stiftung between 2021 and 2023 also documented how corruption has compromised the Ministry of Education and the administrative state more generally.

Of course, the issue of underperforming public services predates the post-2011 period in Libya, and is not something that was solely caused by wasta. Nevertheless, our research suggests that wasta’s increasing grip, itself a function of the political classes’ attempts to purchase legitimacy, is today one of the key factors driving corruption and attendant declines in the commercial performance SOEs and public service quality.

***

Jalel Harchaoui is a political scientist specializing in North Africa, with a particular focus on Libya. Before joining the Royal United Services Institute as an Associate Fellow in 2022, he worked with the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime and the Clingendael Institute in The Hague. His research primarily centers on Libya’s security sector and political economy.

Colin Powers is the Scientific Coordinator and Chief Editor of Noria Research’s Middle East and North Africa Program. He earned his doctorate from Johns Hopkins SAIS in 2020 and was a postdoctoral researcher at Sciences Po Paris in 2022. A political economist by training, his work focuses on issues of development, distribution, finance, and power.

___________________

Jalel Harchaoui and Colin Powers

The Weak Social Returns of Contemporary Public Employment

Despite public employment’s sizable fiscal footprint— most years, it represents more than 50% of state expenditures—its effects on social welfare are underwhelming ndeed, the reality is that as grand as the budget line is, it fails to fund a decent quality of life for a large share of those collecting a state salary.

Three variables explain the underwhelming social return on investment of public employment in Libya. The first is the devaluation of the Libyan dinar. As a result of fractious politics and a divided government, the interventions of dueling central banks in the post-2013 period led to significant increases in the money supply—and to significant (and not fully accounted for) increases in the volume of physical banknotes in circulation. Russia’s printing of billions of unauthorized currency in 2019–2020 (and again in 2024) is responsible for the latter. The effect has been to lower confidence in the value of the Libyan dinar and to decrease the currency’s purchasing power. By extension, this has reduced the quality of life that can be sustained on a public sector salary.

The second variable is imported inflation. This was largely set in motion by the supply shocks and commodity price jumps triggered by the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic and Russia’s war on Ukraine. (The official devaluation of the currency in 2021 did not help matters, of course). Measured against the Minimum Expenditure Basket—which considers the prices of essential goods and services—inflation topped 10.5% in 2021 before jumping to 21.1% in 2022. Price increases were worst in the west, and for food products.

The third variable is inherited from the Qadhafi era. Though public sector workers were entitled to significant nonwage benefits such as housing, utilities, and food allowances under the former dictator, salaries were relatively depressed by a rigid and fixed wage system.

By 2012, the average wage of those working in the public administration was just LD 755 per month (USD 600 at the time), and the average of those employed by SOEs was only LD 934 (USD 741). In subsequent years, salary increases were implemented. Nevertheless, state wages remained relatively low. This is evidenced by the fact that it is not at all uncommon for public sector workers to either take on a second public sector job, operate an informal business, or borrow to cover essential expenses.

The inadequacy of the state wage for a large share of today’s public workforce is illustrated by comparing public sector wages with average household spending. When it comes to earnings, official figures reported by the Central Bank in 2023 determine an average public sector wage of LD 2,272 per month and a minimum public sector wage of LD 900.

At current exchange rates, these wages translate to USD 470 and USD 186, respectively. Median wages in the public sector cannot be calculated without access to the Central Bank’s data. An estimate in the area of LD 1,700–2,000 per month seems generous, however. With regard to household spending, the Bureau of Statistics and Population Census—a division of the Ministry of Planning—documented average household expenditures of nearly LD 3,100 in 2023.

It therefore just takes a simple calculation to establish that a public sector salary is not enough to cover a family’s bills at this point in time. As such, regardless of the enormous fiscal burden generated by public employment policies, it is clear that the state’s spending is not yielding a commensurate social return.

This is of grave importance. Even if we ignore the implications of public employment policies for economic development—the opportunity costs of allocating such significant shares of annual budgets to public sector salaries are immense—the weakness of the social return on investment alone would justify the need for reform.

Public Employment’s Uneven Geographic and Demographic Reach

Making matters worse, public employment’s efficacy as a social policy is also not demographically or geographically consistent, with younger people and those living in peripheral regions of the country having comparatively less access public. These social groups are therefore disproportionately excluded from one of the main systems by which oil rents have been, and continue to be, redistributed within the country.

One may question, of course, the wisdom of making public employment a social policy in the first place. That the state should be directly responsible for ensuring the welfare of the population by providing employment indeed seems a dubious proposition in this day and age.

Be that as it may, the proposition in question is one that is supported by a wide segment of the Libyan population, and with good reason: The Libyan state has dominated the national economy since the Qadhafi era. It is also the case that for many decades, the Libyan state proudly accepted the responsibility of acting as an employer of first and last resort. Both of these historical facts anchor popular expectations today when it comes to public employment:

According to Wave VII of the Arab Barometer—based on survey data from the spring of 2022—62% of Libyans want the government to create public sector jobs, and 69% express a preference for public sector employment. The extent to which the current government is fulfilling its responsibility as employer of first and last resort—and the extent to which different segments of the population benefit from public employment—is therefore essential to understanding the contemporary social and political dynamics in Libya.

Regarding the demographic unevenness of public employment, the data establishes that public sector opportunities are disproportionately limited for younger generations. This can be seen by examining aggregate measures such as growing youth unemployment and labor force participation rates.

We can rely on these non-discriminating statistics because, due to the weakness of private sector labor demand, the public sector employs an estimated 85% of salaried, formally employed people in Libya (and 75% of the national workforce). Consequently, unemployment rates of specific social groups and age cohorts is predominantly a function of access to public sector jobs.

***

Jalel Harchaoui is a political scientist specializing in North Africa, with a particular focus on Libya. Before joining the Royal United Services Institute as an Associate Fellow in 2022, he worked with the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime and the Clingendael Institute in The Hague. His research primarily centers on Libya’s security sector and political economy.

Colin Powers is the Scientific Coordinator and Chief Editor of Noria Research’s Middle East and North Africa Program. He earned his doctorate from Johns Hopkins SAIS in 2020 and was a postdoctoral researcher at Sciences Po Paris in 2022. A political economist by training, his work focuses on issues of development, distribution, finance, and power.

___________________

Jalel Harchaoui and Colin Powers

INTRODUCTION

Modern Libya’s trajectory has been set by the formulae determining the distribution of the country’s oil rents. Since crude oil was first discovered in 1959, it is these very formulae that underlie the forms of power, state-society relations, and social organization observed.

The same formulae are also responsible for drawing Libya’s developmental horizon. The fall of 2011 famously brought an end to the Qadhafi regime. Due to political disarray in the years that followed, however, many Qadhafi-era arrangements for managing the distribution of Libya’s oil income were kept in place. Institutionally, pillars such as the National Oil Corporation (NOC), Central Bank of Libya (CBL), CBL-owned commercial banks, and the Ministry of Finance remain preeminent.

When it comes to the tools used for distributing oil revenues across the population, public employment, public procurement and tenders, the CBL’s selective extension of letters of credit to individuals and firms, and the subsidization of essential goods remain favored. Concerning the former, public sector hiring was scaled up considerably post-2011, driven by unchecked patronage networks, the influence of armed groups, and local officials’ exploitation of weak central authority. This research report centers it concerns upon public employment in the post-2011 period. A mixed methods approach was adopted for conducting the research. To capture the lay of the land, authors first gathered and analyzed all available state-published quantitative data on public employment.

These data were, however, insufficient for deriving high-confidence conclusions for a number of reasons. First, the open source statistics that are released by institutions responsible, namely the Central Bank of Libya and Ministry of Finance, are neither consistent nor fully reliable. In addition, documentation regarding off-budget spending, including the resources allocated to cover the compensation of militias, is not publicly unavailable. Discrepancies between the expenditures announced and those actually disbursed by the Benghazi-based Government of National Stability confuse the picture further.

Dis-aggregating salary data at the firm or industry level for those employed by Libya’s 2,000 SOEs —a category of worker estimated to include 175,000 people in 20123 — is now not technically feasible. Last but not least, the books of quasi-state entities, such as the Libyan Arab Armed Forces’ Military Investment Authority (MIA), the Haftar-family controlled Military Authority for Investment and Public Works, and the Tariq bin Ziyad Agency for Services and Production4 are fully sealed.

In view of the limitations of official statistics, quantitative analysis was combined with qualitative forms of inquiry. The latter included a comprehensive literature review covering government reports, media articles, and specialized publications related to Libya’s political and economic situation. It also consisted of semi-structured interviews with a diverse sample of Libyan citizens. Mindful of the uneven geography of Libyan public sector employment, interlocutors were selected based on them living in more peripheral areas of the country: namely, Fezzan, the west coast, and the environs of Ajdabiya. The report is organized as follows. It begins with a macro overview of public employment policy.

Beyond establishing baseline empirics, this opening section considers public employment’s most salient fiscal and social consequences. Situated in this way, the report then narrows the focus to examine post-2011 changes in the public employment practices. Here, analysis centers on the rise of tribalized wasta in hiring, the privatization of public asset management, and the enduring effects of the Libyan state’s partition between east and west. The report then concludes by laying out a number of policy recommendations.

The Big Picture

Establishing the facts regarding Libyan public employment is no simple undertaking. In view of the limitations in the data—the causes of which go beyond those discussed in the introduction—any investigation into public employment must proceed in the knowledge that official figures cannot be fully trusted. Approaching the data with a necessary degree of skepticism does not mean we should discard the official figures altogether, however: They can still help us create a useful sketch of the current situation.

In terms of the guiding metrics, the Libyan Ministry of Finance asserted in November 2023 that the government workforce amounted to 2.1 million people. A ministerial review of the public sector salary structure conducted at a slightly earlier date put the number of people employed by the state bureaucracy at 2.2 million. Set in temporal context, these (slightly divergent) numbers indicate that the government workforce has more than doubled since 2012. Set in a population context, they indicate that approximately one-third of all Libyan nationals residing in their country of citizenship are notionally employed as civil servants.

It is important to note that this does not account for those on the payroll of Libya’s SOEs, its Social Security Fund, or its Solidarity Fund. Estimates from a credible interlocutor place the current number of salaried employees working for Libya’s SOEs alone at 500,000. This is roughly three times more than the figure reported in 2012, a jump driven to no small degree by the rise in “ghost” employment. At the General Electricity Company of Libya (GECOL), for instance, payroll has leapt from 18,000 to 60,000 on the back of the firm doling out jobs to individuals never expected to come to work.

For a country with a total population of 7 million, where about 3.6 million are of working age and 500,000 retired, official data suggests that more than 2.6 million are employed by the state. Paying the salaries of these millions of employees naturally translates to a sizable public sector wage bill. For the first four months of 2024, the Libyan state spent LD 20.4 billion (USD 4.2 billion) on wages. The rate of spending is broadly in line with expenditures from the previous year: Official reporting from the Central Bank presents a public sector wage bill of LD 63.9 billion for 2023, including National Oil Corporation salaries.

This was equivalent to approximately 25% of Libya’s GDP. As with reporting on employment, it is important to be mindful that the sum in question does not factor in the salaries of those employed by all SOEs, the Social Security Fund, or the Solidarity Fund.

***

Jalel Harchaoui is a political scientist specializing in North Africa, with a particular focus on Libya. Before joining the Royal United Services Institute as an Associate Fellow in 2022, he worked with the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime and the Clingendael Institute in The Hague. His research primarily centers on Libya’s security sector and political economy.

Colin Powers is the Scientific Coordinator and Chief Editor of Noria Research’s Middle East and North Africa Program. He earned his doctorate from Johns Hopkins SAIS in 2020 and was a postdoctoral researcher at Sciences Po Paris in 2022. A political economist by training, his work focuses on issues of development, distribution, finance, and power.

___________________

Hafed Al-Ghwell

Over the past decade, Libya has spiraled into a curious form of governance, aptly termed “dysfunctionism” — a state in which political gridlock, kleptocracy, and perpetual crisis have become not the symptoms of collapse, but the very framework of governance. This peculiar status quo has not only impeded progress, but has also entrenched a ruling elite that thrives on systemic inefficiency.
The roots of Libya’s “dysfunctionism” lie in the political fractures that emerged post-2011, following the fall of Muammar Qaddafi.

Competing for control, various factions have entrenched themselves within the central institutions of the country, with the Central Bank of Libya emerging as the latest battleground, much like the frictions at the National Oil Company, or the growing interest in wresting control of the Libyan Investment Authority. The bank’s dual role as both monetary policy setter and fiscal distributor has made it a coveted asset in the political tug-of-war, illustrating how critical state functions have been repurposed to sustain the power of ruling factions rather than serving the Libyan people.

In essence, Libya’s political elite has managed the bizarre — i.e., the effective institutionalization of gridlock to the point where it has become a deliberate governance strategy. By maintaining control over the central bank and other pivotal resources, for instance, warring factions are now well placed to weaponize instability, holding Libya’s economy hostage as the standoff between the Tripoli-based government and eastern authorities continues to metastasize in a deliberate perpetuation of crisis. Each side’s refusals to concede are no longer mere administrative rows but calculated strategies to fuel a paralyzing status quo from which both derive significant benefits.

Chaos and inefficiency have become the currency of power in Libya. The dysfunctional situation enables key actors to manipulate resources, secure loyalties, preserve patronage networks, and keep potential reformers at bay. For instance, the partial shutdown of oil production by eastern authorities, retaliating against the appointment of a new central bank governor by Tripoli, illustrates how economic sabotage is used to maintain leverage. The ensuing turmoil deters foreign investment, disrupts daily life, and keeps Libya tethered to external negotiations — a perfect breeding ground for corruption and rent-seeking.

Libya’s predicament is a testament to how entrenched dysfunction can become a deliberate mode of governance. Provided the ruling elite benefit from this chronic instability, its members have little incentive to support genuine efforts for a stable, pluralistic society. The international community’s sporadic interventions, though well meaning, often get entangled in Libya’s internal contradictions, ultimately bolstering the dysfunction they aim to dismantle.

Hence, “dysfunctionism” continues to define Libyan governance — an alarming example of how systemic crises can become the bedrock of political survival. Another striking example was an Aug. 5 decision to shut down Libya’s largest operational oil field by Saddam Haftar in a calculated move to “punish” Europe following his detention in Naples. This was no isolated incident but part of a larger trend where state resources have been transformed into currency for personal and political gain.

Moreover, Libya’s political economy, fragmented by foreign influences and internal rivalries, is unsuitable even for its leaders, and incapable of constraining them, perennially unable — by design — to meet the needs of its citizens. The closure of oil fields, military flare-ups, institutional paralysis, and political standoffs are symptoms of a system engineered to permanently malfunction, reinforcing the power of a kleptocratic elite. 

However, when the international community attempts to “restart” Libya’s broken system, it always ends in temporary fixes that never target nor address the underlying issues crippling it. This cyclical process of crisis and reset only perpetuates dysfunction. Clearly, Libya’s political deadlock is not just a consequence of endless internal power struggles; it is fueled by the international community’s short-sighted strategies and reluctance to engage deeply.

By repeatedly endorsing quick fixes and temporary measures, global actors have played into the hands of Libya’s ruling elite, who exploit these interventions to maintain their grip on power. This “input-output” dysfunction ensures that while interim solutions are continuously proposed, the deeper structural reforms necessary for long-term stability remain unaddressed.

Access to Libya’s vast oil revenues remains the foremost prize in this standoff, worsened by the international community’s failure to enforce stringent economic measures or foster comprehensive political dialogue. The Central Bank of Libya, the repository of tens of billions of dollars in oil revenue, has also become a focal point in this same struggle.

Yet, international financial institutions still failed to impose firm penalties on the Libyan factions for their manipulative use of these resources, allowing the ruling elite to divert funds at will, reinforce their power bases and grease palms, all while the general population suffers from chronic instability.
However, foreign governments remain wary of their own economic and strategic interests — often avoiding taking decisive action that would disrupt their transactions with Libya, ultimately bolstering a kleptocratic cabal that is all too thrilled when potential intervening actors look the other way. A collective reluctance to impose asset freezes or more stringent financial controls out of fear of losing access to Libya’s oil and markets only deepens an existing divide.

Meanwhile, instead of driving progressive change, the UN’s involvement has — at times — magnified the dysfunction. For instance, the UN-backed preliminary deal to appoint a new central bank governor demonstrates how international mediation often becomes a pawn in the local power game. Although the agreement aimed at resolving fiscal disputes, the competing factions manipulated the process to gain a stronger foothold, thus perpetuating the status quo. This illustrates how international actors, despite their well-meaning attempts, have facilitated a system where state capture and political inertia thrive.

Libya’s version of “dysfunctionism” goes beyond mere inefficiency — it is a self-propagating governance model that systematically blocks any meaningful reform. As state institutions crumble and moribund laws are manipulated, armed militias and a disengaged international community keep public outrage at bay. This absence of accountability solidifies the ruling elite’s hold over the country which is characterized by cyclical crises without resolution.

It is imperative to recognize that until this system is uprooted, Libya will remain trapped in a cycle of collapse and pseudo-reconstruction, staving off democratic transition and entrenching corrupt rule. This country, on the brink of a democratic miracle a decade ago, has seen that vision swallowed by “dysfunctionism” — a grim testament to the intractability of entrenched power.

***

Hafed Al-Ghwell is a senior fellow and executive director of the North Africa Initiative at the Foreign Policy Institute of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C.

_____________________

Khaled Mahmoud

Ordinary Libyans Pay the Price of

the Power Struggle

By 2023, the Libyan crisis had entered a phase of stagnation and failure. In May, Bashaga was replaced by Osama Hammad, a bureaucrat with no political ambitions, Hamad followed Haftar and Saleh’s directives, as reflected in his public statements. Dbeibah and Hammad symbolised the dual power structure that has plagued Libya’s institutions, with two rival authorities constantly disputing legitimacy, to no avail.

Storm Daniel, which struck the eastern cities and caused the worst disaster in Libya’s history, was not enough to push the political players to negotiate and resolve their differences. On September 9, the people of Derna woke up to a disaster. The torrent coming from the Derna Valley swept away neighbourhoods along its banks and caused great destruction in the city centre.

Eyewitnesses spoke of an indescribable event, saying they heard an explosion late at night, followed by a second one about fifteen minutes later. Minutes after that, floodwaters rushed through the centre of the city, destroying everything in their path. Martin Griffiths, the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, stated that “climate and capacity have collided to cause this terrible, terrible tragedy.” Meanwhile, the Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization, Professor Petteri Taalas, shed light on the situation in Libya by saying: “The tragedy in Libya highlights the devastating and cascading consequences of extreme weather on fragile states.”

The struggle for power between the rival GNU and GNS, along with the lack of central authority, shaped the entire disaster. Ordinary Libyans paid the price for the failure of their political leaders. The storm caused catastrophicflooding, with 4,333 people confirmed dead and about 8,540 missing, including 930 migrant workers. Many of these workers lived in the hardest-hit areas of Derna, suggesting that the real death toll is likely higher than reported.

Unlike the divided political leaderships competing for power, Libyans responded in unity and answered the call for relief in the affected areas. In this way, the floods seemed to dissolve the divisions between them. However, this disaster was not an isolated incident. After nearly a decade of chaos and conflict, the political fragmentation in the country had already severely weakened the infrastructure and worn down state institutions.

Political Fragmentation

The existence of about 140 government institutions, split between the east and west, aggravated the situation. While Libya had never faced a disaster of such magnitude before, the political divisions further complicated both the response and relief efforts, hampering a unified and effective recovery. Wolfram Lacher, a Libya specialist at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), noted that the government in the east, the GNS, was weak and lacked the mechanisms to respond to the disaster. Meanwhile, the UN-supported government in Tripoli had no authority in the east due to political divisions.

The disaster failed to unite the rival powers, even when it came to reconstruction efforts. The GNS called for an international conference to oversee the rebuilding of Derna and other areas devastated by Storm Daniel. Meanwhile, the GNU, confident that local resources were enough, officially sought assistance from the World Bank to manage the reconstruction funds for the affected regions.

The situation became worse when the High Council of State (a consultative body based in Tripoli) refused to approve a budget for storm recovery, citing national security concerns. The head of the UN mission at the time, Abdoulaye Bathily, saw his appeals for an end to the chaos go unanswered. He expressed concern about conflicting initiatives from various Libyan factions for the reconstruction of Derna and other affected areas.

However, no one heeded his repeated warnings that these unilateral efforts would backfire, further deepening the divisions within the country, obstructing reconstruction, and going against public opinion. Amid the complexities surrounding reconstruction and compensation, the authorities have ignored both local and international calls for an independent investigation into the failures in managing the disaster, with no effective international mechanism in place to pursue such inquiries.

Amnesty International highlighted that the two rival authorities mishandled the response, failing to investigate the responsibilities of those in power to protect the people’s rights to life, health, and other human rights, as part of criminal investigations into the disaster. Bathily realised his efforts to engage the main parties in a new political dialogue had failed, and he resigned abruptly, leaving the UN mission in disarray once again.

Ongoing Instability

Since 2011, the Libyan conflict has had an astronomical cost, affecting every part of the economy. Growth has not only slowed but has become highly volatile. Mouin Kikhia, chairman of the Libyan Democratic Institute, believes this is the moment to stop foreign interference, suggesting that now is the time for outsiders to step back from imposing their directives.

Hopes for Egyptian-Turkish mediation, following nearly a decade of diplomatic crisis, had once offered a glimmer of optimism for resolving disputes in Libya. However, this hope has since faded. The core issue preventing elections in Libya is that those who currently hold wealth and power through their theoretically temporary positions have no incentive to negotiate their exits or subject their positions to the risks of an electoral process. The disparity between the West and the East of the country exacerbates internal instability and raises the risk of regional conflict in the Mediterranean.

Central Bank Crisis

Libya’s political deadlock deepened when Central Bank Governor Siddek Elkaber clashed with the GNU over government spending. This conflict escalated when Mohamed al-Menfi, head of the Presidential Council, who had seldom involved himself directly in Libya’s internal crisis, unexpectedly dismissed Elkaber in August 2024. Both the Tobruk-based parliament and Haftar’s forces in the east opposed the move. The dispute led to a halt in oil production, affecting global oil prices and threatening to escalate into the worst crisis in years.

International diplomatic efforts have centred on preserving the independence and integrity of the National Oil Corporation (NOC) and the Central Bank. However, this has become increasingly uncertain after the dismissal of the NOC chairman in 2022 and the crisis over control of the Central Bank. After mediation by the UN mission, both governments in the west and in the east reached an agreement to appoint Naji Muhammad Issa Belqassim as new governor to the bank. Despite the fact that oil production was restarted ever since, many challenges remain over the handling of oil reserves in the divided country.

Despite Libya’s substantial oil reserves, the economy remains in dire straits. Internal conflicts have led to frequent closures of oil fields and ports, reducing production and government revenue, which has further weakened the economy.

________________________

Jalel Harchaoui and Colin Powers

The Critical Need to Shift from Patronage to Performance

• Salaries of public sector are no longer sufficient to cover average household expenses, and job creation is too weak to integrate younger generations and communities in peripheral areas.
• Tribal bias in public sector hiring practices has worsened in recent times.
• Along with the pervasiveness of ghost employment, tribal biases have undermined the quality of public services and of the commercial performance of state owned enterprises
• Outsourcing the management of key state assets, including in the oil sector, is a deeply troubling trend.
• Policymakers’ deliberations are not subject to public scrutiny, inviting corruption and favor trading.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The social, political, and economic trajectory of modern Libya has been determined by the manner with which the country’s oil rents have been distributed. Public employment has long been key to the country’s distributive schemes. This research report considers the state of public employment in the post-2011 period.

Based on field and desk research conducted during the winter and spring of 2024, the analysis advances four main claims.

The first is that public employment is becoming increasingly inadequate as a welfare measure. Despite interim Prime Minister Dabaiba introducing salary hikes between 2021 and 2023, steep rises in the cost of living mean that the wages of most of those on the government’s books are insufficient for meeting the needs of a family.

The second claim is that the transitional rulers’ tethering of public employment to political and/or distributive concerns, a practice inherited from their predecessors, is driving a decline in the quality of public services and in the performance of state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Across sectors, from education and healthcare to infrastructure maintenance and electricity provision, the Libyan state is providing its citizenry with substandard services. Weighed down by corruption and ghost hires, SOEs show declining commercial performance.

The third claim is that the paramilitarization of politics and state—and the attendant emergence of securitized dynamics within policy deliberations—is intensifying the socially and geographically uneven distributive effects of public employment. Since the outbreak of civil war, many public sector jobs have been doled out with the aim of buying or retaining the loyalty of particular tribes or armed groups. The effect has been to exclude the groups and places that lack the political influence necessary to extract work opportunities from the state.

The fourth claim is that reversing public employment-related policy failures requires a wider resolution of the prevailing political situation and the restoration of democratic governance. As long as existing power structures remain in place, it will be difficult to conceive of how public employment might be reoriented toward social and developmental objectives.

MAIN FINDINGS

(i) Political dysfunction in the post-2011 period worsened the performance of the Libyan public sector, which has declined across social, developmental, and commercial metrics. The public sector today is characterized by irregular hiring practices, ghost employment, and delayed salary payments. It also provides services of increasingly poor quality.

(ii) Attempts at rationalizing the public sector were launched in the summer of 2021. These efforts proved short lived, however, quickly faltering as rulers in the west and east once again succumbed to factionalism and institutional division.

(iii) Despite consuming an outsized portion of the state budget, public sector employment has diminished in its effectiveness as a redistributive mechanism. Although state-funded jobs continue to be created, the Libyan people are deriving fewer social gains than in the past.

(iv) In relative terms, younger cohorts and those from peripheral regions have access to fewer public sector opportunities. This not only deprives these populations of a potential source of income, but excludes them from the social and health security that public sector employment provides.

(v) Public sector hiring decisions are increasingly mediated by considerations of power and wasta. Today, jobs are doled out as spoils by the country’s political and military elite. Tribal affiliation and place of residency are often the primary hiring criteria.

(vi) A new generation of private companies, controlled by Libya’s political and military elite and linked with foreign firms, has emerged and inserted itself into both public procurement processes and the management of public assets such as the country’s oil reserves. The firms’ business operations are opaque, create relatively few jobs, and may contribute to increasing inequality by allowing large transfers of public wealth.

***

Jalel Harchaoui is a political scientist specializing in North Africa, with a particular focus on Libya. Before joining the Royal United Services Institute as an Associate Fellow in 2022, he worked with the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime and the Clingendael Institute in The Hague. His research primarily centers on Libya’s security sector and political economy.

Colin Powers is the Scientific Coordinator and Chief Editor of Noria Research’s Middle East and North Africa Program. He earned his doctorate from Johns Hopkins SAIS in 2020 and was a postdoctoral researcher at Sciences Po Paris in 2022. A political economist by training, his work focuses on issues of development, distribution, finance, and power.

___________________

Khaled Mahmoud

Local and external factors have pushed Libya into a phase of political and institutional failure to rebuild the state that collapsed in 2011. As of 2024, the situation of disorder and insecurity shows no signs of abating. Ordinary Libyans bore the brunt of the chaos, highlighted by two major events that struck the country.

Introduction

Amid rising political and military divisions, the ousting of the governor of the Central Bank of Libya (CBL) Siddek Elkaber in August 2024 led to a temporary halt in oil production, a lifeline of the economy. Despite the appointment of a new governor a month later, uncertainties remain over disagreements on how to handle Libya’s oil revenues through the CBL.

This chaos and sustained insecurity are part of the political disorder and the absence of a unified state. Late 2023, a natural disaster struck the country, the aftermath of which reflected this disunity. Meanwhile, the situation on the ground suggests that fighting could erupt at any moment in Tripoli between rival armed militias and Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar’s forces, who seeks control of the country and make an end to the chaos.

Emerging from the Shadows

In 2022, Libya remained trapped in the same confusion and turmoil it had experienced since the fall of Gaddafi’s regime during the 2011 NATO-backed popular uprising. Abdul Hamid al-Dbeibeh, head of the Government of National Unity (GNU), strengthened his hold over Tripoli and the western region, despite efforts by the House of Representatives (HoR), based in Tobruk, to remove him from power.

Meanwhile, the HoR placed its hopes on Fathi Bashagha, known as “the tyre-man” among Libyans, and appointed him as prime minister of the rival Government of National Stability (GNS) in February 2022. Bashagha was a former member of the Misrata Military Council, which rose to prominence during the conflict against Gaddafi.

Bashagha presented himself as a veteran politician, having previously served as minister of Interior in the Government of National Accord (GNA) led by Fayez al-Sarraj. He resisted Sarraj’s attempts to remove him and aimed to convince the public of his seriousness in dismantling the militias controlling Tripoli. Bashaga’s promises were never realised.

Bashagha, whose family is of Turkish origin and, like Dbeibah, hails from Misrata, shifted from fighting Haftar’s forces in their failed 2019 attempt to control Tripoli to allying with him. Bashagha believed that Haftar’s backing would enable him to seize power, not as a minister but as the head of government.

After being appointed by the HoR, which had stripped Dbeibah’s government of its powers due to delays in holding the 2021 presidential and parliamentary elections, Bashagha planned his entry into Tripoli. He aimed to prove to the international community that whoever controls the capital is the most powerful. Bashagha infiltrated the city, relying on the loyalty of the Nawasi Brigade. He claimed to have entered the Brigade-guarded gates of Tripoli, in civilian cars without any incidents and without guards.

Prime minister Bashaga, now a rival to Dbeibah based in Tripoli, attempted to win over the militias that Dbeibah depended on to maintain his government. He reached an agreement that he thought could pave the way for his entry into Tripoli. The Nawasi Brigade (the Eighth Force) announced the entry of Bashagha’s government into Tripoli, but violent clashes soon followed with forces loyal to Dbeibah’s GNU.

Despite Nawasi Brigade’s defection to the rival prime minister, Dbeibah retained the loyalty of other armed factions, allowing him to thwart the infiltration of Tripoli. After around seventeen hours in the city, Bashagha was forced to leave, sneaking out with his aides and a small force of militants, claiming that he wanted to “prevent bloodshed.”

Dbeibah quickly reaffirmed his authority by visiting the sites of clashes, describing Bashaga’s infiltration as an “outlaw armed group sneaking in under cover of darkness to spread fear and chaos.” He praised the security forces for “handling the situation with professionalism.”

Victim of Haftar’s Ambition

After the military confrontation ended, Bashagha lost favour with Haftar and the HoR, who realised he was not the right man for the job. They realised that depending on him to control Tripoli was just as unrealistic as Haftar’s failed 2019 war.

The Tobruk-based parliament abandoned Bashagha following his failure and called for his investigation, effectively ending his political career as quickly as it had started. Bashagha “the tyre-man,” who once proudly spoke of his expertise in the car tire trade, became another victim of Haftar’s relentless ambition to control Tripoli.

Haftar, who remains in good shape despite his age, understands that staying in his base in al-Rajma near Benghazi is not enough to fulfill his dream of making history by becoming Libya’s president. In his political and military moves, Haftar misjudged both Dbeibah, head of the GNU, and Mohamed al-Menfi, head of the Presidential Council. Both were brought to power in October 2020 by a UN-backed agreement following the ceasefire in Tripoli.

Emerging from the Shadows

The end of the war in 2020 had marked the start of a new phase, where the UN mission briefly regained control, overseeing the political and military situation through a troika composed of Dbeibah’s government and al-Menfi’s Presidential Council. This new leadership seemed to be made up of men who had suddenly been thrust into power like footballers charging forward to score.

Neither al-Menfi nor Dbeibah were widely known before being selected in Geneva by a 75 member UN-appointed committee during the political dialogue. Despite concerns of bribery and financial corruption surrounding the Geneva process, Haftar and his ally Aguila Saleh, the speaker of the HoR, in the presence of al-Menfi and Dbeibah reluctantly accepted the fait accompli imposed by the Geneva dialogue.

As a result, Haftar, a veteran military leader, found himself saluting the civilian Mohammed al-Menfi, who had never served in the military, but now served as the new supreme commander of the Libyan army. Egypt advised Haftar and Saleh not to oppose the new authority.

Haftar met al-Menfi once, but it was not a positive experience, and they never met again. Dbeibah also distanced himself from Haftar and refused to meet him, even though he took the oath before the HoR as head of the new government in March 2021, until that brief cooperation soon ended.

By the end of 2022, Dbeibah still controlled Tripoli as the head of the internationally recognised government (GNU), while Bashagha’s weak parallel government, the GNS, only operated in areas controlled by Haftar’s forces in the east and south. Throughout 2022, many oil fields and ports were shut down due to local conflicts and pressure by armed groups, severely affecting oil exports, the backbone of Libya’s economy.

_______________________

Marieke Wierda

Transitional justice and reconciliation are hotly debated topics in Libya. In this piece, Marieke Wierda draws on her experiences in Libya and beyond to propose four key policy questions that may require further discussion in Libya.

Transitional justice has been under discussion in Libya for at least 12 years, starting with the original draft law published by the NTC in 2011. The vision document that was published by the Presidential Council in 2022 is very inspiring and progressive and shows a political commitment that is absent in many countries.

Libya’s eminent experts have built a lot of knowledge on these issues over the years, and the latest draft reconciliation law has many areas of improvement over earlier versions. Still, four important policy questions may require more discussion in the Libyan context.

First, the vision of reconciliation in the draft law in Libya is rather legal. In its vision document the Presidential Council refers to using the law as the pathway to deal with conflict, in order to have long-term impact. This raises the problem of scale. 

The mechanisms suggested in the law, and in particular the Truth Commission, are too focused on resolving individual cases. In the case of Libya, both perpetrators and victims of 42 years of dictatorship followed by over 10 years of conflict could be in the hundreds of thousands. It is half a century worth of violations.

In general, Transitional Justice should focus on addressing root causes. It cannot address all individual cases. It should focus just on the who and the how, but on the why. The focus should be on structural causes and patterns of violence, or on “incidents” that are important to the collective memory (the Abu Salim massacre being a prominent example). It can also look at groups of victims who were particularly victimized, or regions (groups are referred to in the draft law).

This is a different approach than looking at each individual case. It will also require a different way of working and requires significant investigative capacity. It cannot just be left to individuals to come forward.

The vision document of the Presidential Council that “national reconciliation is dependent on members of society’s awareness of the need for it.” This is extremely important. Transitional Justice needs to be primarily a social rather than legal process. The public (including women and youth) must put their trust in the process and the mechanism.

Participation is voluntary and should therefore be based on trust. The current vision on appointing a Board of Directors, and the criteria for appointment, are not sufficient to guarantee trust in their independence. In many countries, the appointment process to a TRC makes the difference to it being trusted (a prominent example is the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, which was chaired by Bishop Tutu) and not trusted (there are different negative examples of this such as Liberia, DRC).

The social stature of persons who are appointed in this role is very important and the appointment process has to be elaborate and transparent, in order to guarantee this trust. A communications strategy for Transitional Justice mechanisms is also very important, including social media.

Secondly, the problem of scale raises particular challenges on reparations. The current law may go too far in raising the expectations of victims. It also leaves too much of the burden of pursuing justice on them. The law implies that victims will be compensated proportionally to their loss, but this will be a huge drain on the Libyan state budget.

Again, this raises huge problems of scale. Which victims and how many? For instance, what about all the Law Number 4 victims? Lessons can be drawn from the mechanism that was set up to compensate victims of September 11 in the US. The Sept. 11 Fund had USD 9.4 billion in it (circa), and victims were paid a range of compensation from $500 – $8.6 million each.

This is more than victims are likely to receive in Libya. Yet the issue was hugely divisive among victims. How do you value the life of an investment banker against the life of the cook in the restaurant in the World Trade Center who also died? Is earning potential the most important criteria?

In this respect, while reparations should be seen to support reconciliation, it is important to be aware of their divisive potential and think of ways in which it can be approached to promote cohesion, including symbolic ways of acknowledging victims in ways that contribute to reparation (memorials, museums, etc.).

The current draft law refers to collective reparations which may be a step forward. Libya has its own experience with the divisiveness of compensation, through the Mistrata-Tawergha reconciliation committee. In the end, it did not succeed because the state did not want to fund the compensation that was agreed by the committee.

Thirdly, on criminal justice for (alleged) perpetrators, the problem of scale also applies. It is impossible to try all the perpetrators, since there may be too many. If there is no selection (and no statute of limitations), the courts will become entirely congested with these cases. Many acts qualify as war crimes, and crimes against humanity (which are not a part of Libyan law at the moment) by definition have many perpetrators.

In a Transitional Justice process, countries seek to balance accountability and reconciliation, but they can never try everyone who may be guilty of crimes. Even a single trial can be very complicated and last months or years. This is why in different countries there was a choice to focus on those with the most responsibility, and to decline prosecuting other cases (Colombia, Sierra Leone).

Amnesty can be a useful tool for reconciliation, particularly for financial crimes. In Libya, some prominent former regime figures were already tried – would they be tried again under this law? That may violate non bis in idem/ prohibition on double jeopardy. These are issues that remain to be resolved.

Fourth, it is important to consider from the outset the issue of capacity. Some countries, including Colombia but also South Sudan, concluded peace agreements that provided for extremely elaborate and complicated Transitional Justice mechanisms.

These can be very difficult to implement in practice. In many countries, professionals are not trained on applying transitional justice since these are not part of the ordinary justice system. Conducting investigations for a truth commission, in order to compile a historical record, is a very complicated exercise that requires advanced skills.

The same can be said for vetting, deciding on reparations, or conducting prosecutions. While Libya may have many able lawyers, they may not have this specific experience and the process needs much more than lawyers. If the mechanisms cannot be properly staffed, the process will not be professional and fair. It is important to think about starting to build capacity before the process is implemented.

As Libya embarks on the journey of national reconciliation, it will hopefully draw on its own context, in terms of its history, culture and society, to innovate and to adopt unique methods that will make it an example to other countries.

***

Marieke Wierda is Deputy Ambassador at The Netherlands Embassy to Yemen.

___________________

Amy Addison-Dunne and Marwa Koçak

Italy’s policies on migration reveals the ugly truth of the country’s pushback tactics. Italy’s strict migration policies, supported by the EU, have led to serious human rights abuses for migrants, as they face violence and pushbacks to Libya. Recently, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer praised Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni for her country’s efforts in combating “irregular migration.” He stated, “You have made remarkable progress, working with other countries along migration routes as equals.” He also noted that “irregular arrivals to Italy by sea are down by 60% since 2023.”

To achieve this, Italy and the European Union (EU) have invested millions in the Libyan coastguard. This funding aids in patrolling the Mediterranean Sea and provides essential training and equipment. According to Doctors Without Borders (MSF), over 341,000 people attempted to cross the Mediterranean in 2023, with more than a third being intercepted and sent back to Libya. Fulvia Comte, who leads an MSF search and rescue team, shared distressing accounts from migrants about being pushed back multiple times over two years and facing violence and torture upon their return to Libya. “They are taken back to the same circle of violence and torture — of killing, of rape, and kidnapping,” Fulvia stated.

She further explained that while the Libyan coastguard threatens civil rescue fleets with dangerous manoeuvres, boarding their ships and trying to prevent rescues, the situation is far worse for migrants when search and rescue (SAR) vessels are absent.

Personal migrant accounts

Personal stories collected by The New Arab reveal the challenges migrants have faced due to Italy’s implementation of pushback tactics. Syrian refugee Amjad says he has never interacted with the Italian authorities, yet he has experienced the country’s border tactics, which reveal that the plan is working: migrants are being stopped before they can reach Italian waters. He recalled, “The Libyan coastguard intercepted us 100 km from Greece and tricked us into thinking they were British, so we would feel safe and approach them.” Amjad added, “Then, we were transferred to their ship.”

Displaced in northern Syria in 2018 due to threats from the Assad regime, Amjad paid $3,500 for a dangerous journey on a rubber boat with 30 others to try to reach Europe. After being picked up at sea by a group calling themselves the “Frogmen,” Amjad shared his experiences, explaining that he and others were forced to “sing songs” praising the coastguard to receive water. He also revealed that their money and belongings were taken, and some were tortured for steering the boat.

“There were 43 of us in a space no larger than 7 square metres,” he further explained. “We suffered from a lack of ventilation, water, and food, as well as from inadequate medical care, all while dealing with numerous skin infections.” When they finally reached the port, Amjad reported being detained. After three days, a convoy of police cars arrived from the Illegal Immigration Control Department.

Amjad recounted, “The police car took us far from the city centre. And there, a broker sent by the smugglers came and took us. The whole thing had been arranged with them beforehand.” Each person paid $300 to be released. Despite assurances that the Libyan coastguard is tackling traffickers, Amjad’s experience shows how they gain profit and feed people like him back into the meat grinder.

After this ‘nightmare’ experience, Amjad familiarised himself with maps, learned their route, and obtained waterproof bags for his devices, noting that the satellite phone given to him had enough credit for one call. Facing rough seas with three-metre-high waves, Amjad managed to contact a Syrian named Ghaith, who operates an emergency service to assist boats in distress. “He contacted the Greek coastguard and advised us to move 20 kilometres closer, as the Libyan coastguard would take over seven hours to reach us. We had no choice but to accept the risk and continue,” Amjad revealed. Eventually, after reaching out to a commercial ship, the boat was finally rescued.

The Piantedosi Decree

Currently, Italy is increasing its efforts to block rescue missions. In 2019, former Sea-Watch captain Carola Rackete was charged with helping illegal immigration after her crew and passengers waited two weeks in a heatwave for permission to dock in Lampedusa. The judge sided with Carola and dismissed the case, marking an embarrassing defeat for the Italian government. As of last year, Italy introduced the Piantedosi Decree, named after Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi.

This rule says that search and rescue (SAR) missions can only respond to one call for help before they must return to port. With this new decree, NGOs often get fined, and their ships are detained for trying to help more than once. Fulvia commented on the decree and told The New Arab about the current reality: ships are redirected to distant Italian ports, which wastes time and adds days to their return for continued operations. With so few rescue vessels available, this time away puts lives at risk. Fulvia elaborated, “The problem is the (SAR zone) is less covered by ships that can perform rescues…”

She added, “We spend more than one-third of the time navigating from the area of operation to the port, and so far since we started, we have spent (the equivalent) of going more than twice around the planet.” A Sea-Watch spokesperson also weighed in on the matter, stating that this hinders the mission and leaves no option to go to a nearer port. “You have to go to the port assigned, and if you don’t, this is a breach of Italian law and leads to your ship being blocked.”

Outsourcing migrants

As Italy tightens its grip on rescue missions with measures like the Piantedosi Decree, the country has also started outsourcing its migrant crisis to other countries. In northwest Albania, the village of Gjadër, once home to a Soviet military base, has been transformed into Italy’s migrant processing camp — a project that has caught the attention of Starmer.

Migrants first arrive at a reception centre in Shëngjin, where their claims are processed before being moved to Gjadër to await their fate. According to journalist Kristina Millona, the building isn’t finished yet, and the details are quite shady. The reception centre in Shëngjin is surrounded by a five-metre perimeter fence and monitored by 40 security cameras. To add to the concerns, the project is managed by Medihospes Cooperativa Sociale, a company that has previously been investigated for mismanagement of public funds, migrant centres, and mafia infiltration.

Locals seem unaware of the harsh realities of the processing centre. Coming from a country where the government is corrupt and rife with trafficking gangs, there is hope that migrants will be treated well in these centres due to the perception of the EU as a bastion of human rights and democracy.

Kristina isDespite assurances that the Libyan coastguard is tackling traffickers, Amjad’s experience shows how they gain profit and feed people like him back into the meat grinder. After this ‘nightmare’ experience, Amjad familiarised himself with maps, learned their route, and obtained waterproof bags for his devices, noting that the satellite phone given to him had enough credit for one call. Facing rough seas with three-metre-high waves, Amjad managed to contact a Syrian named Ghaith, who operates an emergency service to assist boats in distress.

“He contacted the Greek coastguard and advised us to move 20 kilometres closer, as the Libyan coastguard would take over seven hours to reach us. We had no choice but to accept the risk and continue,” Amjad revealed. Eventually, after reaching out to a commercial ship, the boat was finally rescued.

No regrets

In reflection of Italy’s pushback tactics, Fulvia tells The New Arab that she envisions a world where the services of smugglers and human traffickers are no longer needed. “Our struggle is not to exist; our struggle is actually being able to disappear as civil search and rescue vessels,” she shared. Reflecting on his journey, Amjad has no regrets, stating that he would still have migrated. “Syria not only lacks security but also the elements of a decent life,” Amjad says of his home country. “It lacks an authority that respects the citizen and the elements to build my future as I aspire.” Ultimately, it is the most vulnerable who pay the price — a truth that Starmer must grapple with.

***

Amy Addison-Dunne is a freelance digital journalist with an interest in the Middle East and British politics. She has written for the Daily Mirror, Morning Star.

Marwa Koçak is a journalist and translator with an interest in politics and human rights in the Middle East. She speaks Arabic, English and Turkish. She has written for Middle East Eye, Al-Jazeera.

___________________

Ezzedine Enaya

The expatriate intellectual grows like a wild seedling searching for a presence in a soil other than his own, and in a climate where he is not accustomed to growth.

Therefore, the different reality often forces the immigrant intellectual to live on the outskirts, on the margins of the new reality, far from the center and the controls of the institution. He is content to maintain his physical existence, postponing his dreams and ambitions to an unknown date. The journey of searching for integration may be long or short, and may never come, as many of those who are tempted to immigrate do not know the consequences of what the days hold.

It is not only the illegal immigrant who gives up on dreams, but the intellectual and the student share it. It is striking that the temptation of immigration blurs awareness and underestimates the consequences. I have noticed this in many university and non-university colleagues, who work in the field of culture, who are motivated to immigrate as if the process is a passing outing.

In the diaspora, there are many wandering intellectuals, forced by the new living conditions to change course and give up what was on their minds before departure. Because the battle to settle residence permits, arrange legal status, and find decent work is a fierce and renewed battle that may drain the immigrant and take the last of his remaining energy and determination.

It is easy for the floating intellectual to become an additional asset in the world of the marginalized in the West, so his main concern becomes the morsel with which he satisfies his hunger and the shelter he seeks in the social shelters that the marginalized resort to when their paths are stranded. Many imagine that immigration is the ultimate achievement, while the immigrant is faced with difficulties every time he goes a long way.

Dreamers often collide with an unimaginable reality that robs them of their remaining ties to the world of culture and intellectuals, and “Covid” has made matters worse with the coldness in relations, stagnation in communications, and stagnation in the work of administrations. It is noticeable that most intellectuals who dream of immigration come to the West carrying purist visions of the world of research, creativity, writers and studies, devoid of realism and sometimes filled with naivety.

On the basis that this environment is free from the disadvantages of exploitation, opportunism, discrimination and frenzied competition, and that talents and abilities are appreciated and capabilities are welcomed, due to the prevalence of many myths about the welcoming West and the repellent East.

It is enough for a person to be a university graduate, poet or writer to be welcomed and revered. Therefore, the dreaming intellectual hopes for a quick integration into the circles of Western intellectuals working in the fields of journalism, teaching, cultural circles, artistic fields and the like.

In fact, those who control these sectors, as soon as one of them becomes aware of the fragility, need and poverty of the newcomer, turn him into a prize in his eyes. It is brought closer to the extent that it adds to the improvement of their writing, research and academic projects, and at this point another journey begins for the immigrant intellectual with blackmail, which is sometimes coercive and imposed.

Few escape from this miserable situation, because cultural exploitation is worse for the intellectual than material exploitation, in which he suffers the worst types of forced labor.

Among the Western contractors in the field of culture, especially those who invest in the culture of the East, are those who produce translations, studies and research for them, and they may raise you to the position of editor-in-chief or include you in the advisory boards in research centers and periodicals. So that the ignorant person may think that his cultural contribution is based on respect and appreciation for him, as a partner in the achievement.

With the accumulation of experiences and the multiplicity of facts, he becomes aware of the horror of exploitation and the baseness of morals in a field that he thought was innocent of faults. In fact, the fragile Eastern intellectual is nothing but a bridge to pass over, and a facade for display only. Even if those in charge of these institutions tell you at length about their universal leftist convictions, and that all free people, in the East or the West, are one front against savage capitalism and against the commodification of knowledge.

Many cultural contractors in the West occupy the orientalism and Arabism departments, and many fields of archaeological and anthropological research and the like, and their names are on everyone’s lips and their fame is widespread at home and abroad, but dealing with them closely reveals to one that they are men of contracting and profitable deals, not owners of scientific research projects or civilizational dialogue, as they repeat whenever they have the opportunity to ascend high platforms.

You see them hunting for generous awards in the East, and some of them submit one request after another, without shame, begging for such and such an award on the grounds that they are the most deserving of it. There are those who invent fake cultural projects (magazines, research institutions, translation works, holding seminars) to create a false pretense to blackmail the good people of the East under the pretext of serving Arab, Chinese, Persian or other cultures.

This suspicious situation prompts the immigrant intellectual to pause and reflect, in an attempt to take stock of what is revealed to his eyes of the entrepreneurial work in the cultural sector, in which interest prevails and creativity diminishes. There are Western names in the field of Orientalism, and in the field of Arabic literature studies and translation from Arabic, who in the last stage of their academic journey turn into godfathers rather than flags and references, arranging deals between the interior and the exterior and nothing else.

Based on the accumulated credit of fame in the past years, their undertaking of any cultural achievement becomes based on a material evaluation, and is often transferred to collaborators, assistants and students. I once attended a verbal altercation between an Arabized Arab godmother and a hired Arab translator. Because the godmother was not paying attention, her name was dropped from the completed work and did not appear on the main cover, which led to a major catastrophe.

The question arises: what role does the expatriate intellectual have?

In fact, this intellectual should not be burdened with what he cannot bear, nor should he be burdened with commitment, or asked to become a bridge for ideas and news to cross, but a sincere testimony from him about a reality whose secrets we have always lacked from within is sufficient.

***

Ezzedine Enaya – Professor at the University of Rome – Italy

_______________________