After Gaddafi

http://www.smh.com.au/world/after-gaddafi-20111021-1mc8t.html
After Gaddafi 
Anthony Ham
October 22, 2011 

Muammar Gaddafi attends the Food and Agriculture Organisation Food Security Summit in 2009. Photo: Reuters

IN THE post-euphoric world of Libya's revolution, the grim certainties of life under Muammar Gaddafi have yielded to the altogether messier realities of building a state from scratch. Nearly two months after the fall of Tripoli, dozens of armed militias, laws unto themselves, continue to roam the streets of the capital. The unity and celebrations following Gaddafi's death aside, Libya's transitional authorities are plagued by infighting.

Into Tripoli's at times dangerous power vacuum has stepped a well-organised group of self-proclaimed Islamists who dominate the city's military and municipal authorities. Elsewhere in the country, while the transitional authorities scramble to restore basic levels of governance, the mosque has provided both a rallying cry for unity and a reassuring symbol of continuity.

These are stories that have played out everywhere that the Arab Spring has taken hold: Islamist parties and militias - drawing on the certainties of a people's faith at a time of unsettling instability, and tapping into networks that have often proved more effective than governments in providing basic services - have quickly stepped into the space left by deposed dictators.

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And whenever a dictator has fallen, the spectre of radical Islamists ascending to power has sent ripples of fear through Western capitals: the role of Islam remains the great unanswered question of the Libyan revolution, and of the wider Arab Spring.

But Libyan history suggests that we may have more to fear from an unstable and divided Libya than we do from the Islamists that would seek to unite the country.

Islam has always been close to power in Libya, either as its dominant force or its unquiet conscience. The religion itself has deep roots in Libyan soil: the country has been Islamic since the armies of Islam swept across north Africa in the 7th century, and Libya was later ruled by a succession of Islamic dynasties.

During the colonial period - first under the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century and during Italian rule in the 20th - Islam provided the guns for resistance, and the unifying impetus behind calls for Libyan independence.

When Libya became independent in 1951, its first leader, King Idris, was the head of the Islamic sect that had - with words and guns - led the ultimately successful resistance against both Ottoman and Italian rule. He was an inept administrator, but he was a great friend of the West and a symbol of moderate political Islam.

Whatever was happening in the halls of Libyan power, the most popular form of Islam in the country has always derived from the Maliki rite of Islamic thought, a strain of Islamic teaching that preaches tolerance and the primacy of the Koran.

Islam as tolerance, as a faith of rebellion and Libyan power: from this Islam, the West has little to fear.

But where Libya's Islamic story becomes complicated - and indeed where most Libyan stories become complicated - is when Colonel Gaddafi seized power in 1969. Among his first edicts was to strip most Islamic clerics of their powers and put in their place compliant imams who supported his rule.

At the same time, he extolled the virtues of Islam and, in the absence of a formal constitution, declared the Koran to be the country's official constitution. The Colonel professed to be a devout Muslim, made frequent reference to Islam in his speeches, and promoted Koranic studies.

For Gaddafi, Islam was a tool of legitimacy. But it would also prove to be his greatest weakness.

For most ordinary Libyans, their Islam differed from that of Gaddafi and it became a refuge from the caprices of his rule. Today, 97 per cent of Libyans are Sunni Muslims. Most strictly observe the tenets of the holy month of Ramadan. Most obey the Koranic tenet to pray five times a day. And most profess allegiance to the tolerant Islam of their forebears.

At the same time, a handful of Libyans followed the long-standing Libyan tradition of resisting what they considered to be godless rule. Throughout its 42 years in power, the Gaddafi regime battled sporadically against Islamic opposition groups. Many of those who took up arms against Gaddafi in the name of Islam had been forged into soldiers on the battlefields of Afghanistan. These are the men who seek to lead the new Libya.

It is not yet clear whether the moderate Islam professed by many Libyans will temper the more militant urges of the former Islamist rebels who were radicalised under Gaddafi's rule. But the early pronouncements of the latter provide many reasons for hope.

One of the most prominent figures in Tripoli in the post-Gaddafi era has been Abdel Hakim Belhaj, the head of the Tripoli Military Council, which serves as the de facto ''national'' army in the capital. Belhaj is a former leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which was once aligned with al-Qaeda; he was handed over to the Libyan authorities by the CIA in 2004 and was held in Tripoli's Abu Salim prison until last year.

And yet, Belhaj has promised to lay down his weapons and join the democratic process once the situation in the country stabilises. He has also promised to work for ''a civil state that respects the law and rights''.

One of Belhaj's closest lieutenants is another avowed Islamist, Sheikh Khaled Sherrif. Despite having publicly rejected democracy and advocated jihad in the past, Sheikh Khaled recently told the BBC that ''dialogue is the best way … The Libyan people need space to choose the kind of government they want. We will be with them on this journey. No one should force anything on the Libyan people.''

Sheikh Khaled admits to having met Osama bin Laden, but does not shy away from his controversial past: ''We knew Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan but all we had in common with him was that we were in the same country. We discussed his attacks on the West, but we did not contribute to it. We kept our independence and our own views.''

And despite a deeply troubled relationship with the West - he was held for two years by the Americans at Bagram air base in Afghanistan and claims to have been tortured during his imprisonment - Sheikh Khaled has shown a remarkable willingness to seek reconciliation with the international community.

''All Libyans thank God that the international community took the side of the Libyan people against the dictatorship,'' he said recently.

''All the Libyan people appreciate that.''

Another prominent Islamist, Ali Sallabi, a powerful orator and respected Islamic scholar, is considered by many Libyans to have been the spokesman for Islamic opposition to Gaddafi during the revolution.

In mid-September, he told The New York Times that ''it is the people's revolution, and all the people are Muslims, Islamists. Secularists are our brothers and they are Libyans. They have the right to offer their proposals and programs. And if the Libyan people choose them I have no problem. We believe in democracy and the peaceful exchange of power''.

Whether such statements are genuine or just clever politicking, the US government has, in public at least, taken the statements at face value. Though cautious, US officials have pointed to Libya's tradition of moderate Islam and praised Islamists, including many former enemies of the US, for their apparent commitment to democratic principles.

During a recent visit to Tripoli, Jeffrey Feltman, assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, expressed optimism: ''Based on our discussions with Libyans so far,'' he said, ''we aren't concerned that one group is going to be able to dominate the aftermath of what has been a shared struggle by the Libyan people.''

Not all Libyans share his confidence. One former Islamist, who fears for his life since turning his back on the group, warned that Ali Sallabi's statements could not be trusted. ''He is just hiding his intentions. He says one thing to the BBC and another to Al-Jazeera. If you believe him, then you don't know the Muslim Brothers.''

The good intentions or otherwise of Islamists may have become one of the most pressing issues in the aftermath of liberation, both in Western capitals and on the streets of Tripoli. But the secular-Islamist divide is only one fault line among many that threaten to destabilise the new Libya.

Arguably the deepest division is one that centres not on philosophies and faith, but rather regions and the unpaid debts of war.

The gunmen who still maintain checkpoints across Tripoli remain in the capital largely to ensure that the region they represent receives its due. Their approach is summed up eloquently by Dr Abdulwahab Ez-Zintani, an elder in the town of Zintan in the Jebel Nafusa, whose fighters are credited with having tipped the balance in favour of anti-Gaddafi forces in the battle for Tripoli.

Zintan, a town of 50,000, is one of few Arab towns in the predominantly Berber mountains that rise up from the coastal plain in the country's north-west, and has become accustomed to fighting for its share. Dr Ez-Zintani, a former ambassador, heads the town's political committee and has demanded at least two ministries in any new government. He told the BBC: ''If you have played the major role in the liberation of the country you have to have a good piece of the cake. We believe that because of our sufferings, our losses [the town lost more than 250 men in the fighting] we have to have a place, our share.''

The sense of each region protecting its own is also felt keenly in Misrata, scene of a devastating siege; its heroic resistance ultimately helped to turn the tide against the Gaddafi regime. Abdulbaset al-Haddad, a revolutionary leader from the city, assured the BBC that Misrata had no intention of relinquishing its weapons just yet: ''It is still too early to do this because of what the Gaddafi troops did, all the destruction in Misrata, the criminal acts, the killing and raping of our women. No Misrati wants to give up weapons until there is a united government and a national army.''

Thus it is that the solidarity across regions that maintained Libya's revolution appears to have evaporated. Says Ez-Zintani: ''You cannot put on the same boat the people who fought and who lost so many things, our sons, our animals, our buildings, with another city where the people are sitting comfortably with their airconditioning on.''

Viewed within such a context of rampant regionalism, the Islamists could equally be seen as a positive force, a rare and more enduring source of unity that transcends the anti-Gaddafi passions that held the revolution together.

By maintaining their discipline, announcing their support for democracy and rising above the divisions that threaten to tear Libya asunder, Islamists have also set the standard to which all other political groupings must aspire.

According to Aref Nayed, co-ordinator of the interim authorities' stabilisation team, the message to anyone complaining about the sudden dominance of Islamists is simple: ''You must be as articulate as they are and as organised as they are.''

It is still too early to predict whether the Islamists will prevail, or whether their statements of democratic intent are sincere. But whatever happens, Islam is looking ever more likely to be the country's kingmaker, just as it has been throughout Libyan history.

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