Reflections on Non‐State Actors and State‐Building in Pre‐Qaddafi Libya

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The ISPI online papers are also pub The opinions expressed herein are strictly personal and do not necessarily reflect the position of ISPI.

1 Sherine El Taraboulsi REVISITING THE NARR (1911‐1969) STATE‐BUILDING IN PRE‐QADDAFI LIBYA REFLECTIONS ON NON‐STATE ACTORS AND Analysis

Sherine local history of Libya during that period and of indigenous con as second The past, and can only be viewed as an obstacle to its future. This it. for chosen is sociocultural identity, firmly embedded within its tribal and r or chooses it form assumptio whichever in first The historically: challenged institutional history or memory and that Libya post‐Qaddafi is be can but whi assumptions present two on premised are gaps those decision‐making; literature on Libya the in existing gaps of be cognizant and to reshaped, it is important to view the current transition as par narrati history of Libya within the period between 1911 and 1969. As Li the challenging and unpacking to related questions pose presents a discussion of ongoing research; so instead of provid t repercussions past in order to provide a reliable basis for state‐building pr global and regional has Libya in unrest Current

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After 42 years of confinement, Libya is back on the map, spawning a rise in scholarly interest in present debates on state building in post-conflict Post‐Qaddafi Libya has societies. Post-Qaddafi Libya has witnessed the launching of two witnessed the launching of interdependent processes: state building and nation building with two interdependent expectations fastened on the “democratic process” and a newly elected processes: state building leadership as the main conduit through which both processes would be and nation building with realized. Under the gaze of the international community, quick wins were expectations fastened on made at the beginning; in July 2012, a General National Congress (GNC) the “democratic process” was elected and was followed by the swearing in of PM Ali Zeidan who and a newly elected launched his term in office assuring that: “… this government will give its leadership as the main utmost best to the nation based on the rule of law, human rights, conduit through which democracy, rights, and the belief in God, his Prophet and a state based on both processes would be Islam”1. After the ceremony, Zeidan was presented with a plaque in the realized shape of the map of Libya.

That emphasis on maps may be accidental; but within the context of Libya’s history, it is significant. Libya has been on and off the map a number of times across its history. The fact that Libya is a map-less land has been both its curse and blessing; without maps, it could be easily violated, but it also remained the land of infinite possibility2. Qaddafi had taken Libya off the map for decades; now it is back with the opportunity to carve out its own space on the global map, geographically as well as economically and politically. The process of getting back on the map has been problematic nevertheless. A lack of an institutional infrastructure; a history of fragmentation and the existence of a wide gamut actors that are unaffiliated with state apparatus and yet constitute a key determining factor in the path towards state and nation building, as recent events have demonstrated, continue to jeopardize any vision that does not include them. A state building strategy without including non-state actors does not seem feasible. Calls for federalism, such as those announced in Benghazi, are not the first3. The mushrooming of militias, now with over 200,000 members, each with Three interconnected its allegiance to a tribe or region further continues to complicate already non‐state actors have existing fragmentation. Three interconnected non-state actors have stood stood out since 2011: out since 2011: tribal confederations, civil society organizations (formal tribal confederations, civil and informal) and religious groups (Muslim Brotherhood)4. The centrality society organizations (formal and informal) and

1 See S. ZAPTIA,, Zeidan Government Sworn, “Libya Herald”. November 14, 2013, religious groups (Muslim http://www.libyaherald.com/2012/11/14/zeidan-government-sworn-in/#axzz2onBZbmn4. Brotherhood) 2 See S. EL TARABOULSI, A State in Purgatory – Libya and the Logic of Statelessness,

“Libya Herald”, December 1, 2013, http://www.libyaherald.com/2013/12/01/opinion-a- state-in-purgatory-libya-and-the-logic-of-statelessness/#axzz2onBZbmn4. 3 See J. GLUCK, Debating Federalism in Libya, United States Institute of Peace. March 2012, http://www.usip.org/publications/debating-federalism-in-libya. ©ISPI2013 4 For an analysis of the impact of sociopolitical transitions (2011-2013) on the mobilization of

of those actors has its root in Libya’s past and yet remains untrodden in analysis especially as related to efforts directed towards state formation. Recent events have On the contrary, most existing literature on Libya seems to suggest that demonstrated that within the existence of those actors is an impediment, a hurdle to state and those actors lies Libya’s nation building5. salvation as well as challenge. Violence Recent events have demonstrated that within those actors lies Libya’s erupting in Tripoli in salvation as well as challenge. Violence erupting in Tripoli in November November 2013 is an 2013 is an example. Militias from Misrata opened fire at peaceful example. Militias from protestors in Tripoli who were calling for the departure of militias and Misrata opened fire at restoration of peace. According to one account more than 40 were killed peaceful protestors in 6 and 400 were wounded in the clashes . The GNC and government froze Tripoli who were calling and it was only through the intervention of local councils and civil society for the departure of 7 that an end of violence was reached . As described by the reporter: “There militias and restoration of was a tense calm in Tripoli on Sunday after more than 48 hours of peace bloodshed. Civil-society and community leaders abided by a general strike that coincided with a national mourning period for those slain. Shops were shut and normally busy commercial streets were devoid of traffic on the first day of the working week, witnesses reported.” The elected government is developing ways to join forces with the local councils because the only way forward seems to combine both; local as well as newly developed structures of governance. The history of those local The elected government is structures needs to be addressed; an understanding of the present developing ways to join requires a step into the past. As Libya’s political landscape gets reshaped, forces with the local it is important to view the current transition as part of a continuum of councils because the only transitions, and to be cognizant of existing gaps in the literature on Libya way forward seems to which seem to be mirrored in decision-making; those gaps are premised on combine both; local as well two assumptions which may be valid in the present but can be challenged as newly developed historically: The first assumption is that Libya has no institutional history structures of governance

resources and citizen engagement in Libya, see S.EL TARABOULSI – S. AHMED, “Libya.” Giving in Transition and Transitions in Giving: Philanthropy in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia (2011-2013). Cairo, John D. Gerhart Center for Philanthropy and Civic Engagement, the American University in Cairo, May 2013. 5 See C.N. MYERS, Tribalism and Democratic Transition in Libya: Lessons from Iraq, “Global Tides”, Vol. 7, Article 5, 2013. Available at: http://digitalcommons.pepperdine. edu/globaltides/vol7/iss1/5; A. BRAHIMI, Libya’s Revolution, “The Journal of North African Studies”, vol. 16, no. 4, December 2011. Brahimi follows Bruce St. John’s argument that Qaddafi’s Jamhirriya theory was a reflection of “tribal ethos” and thus further entrenched statelessness. 6 See C. STEPHEN, Militia Attack on Tripoli Protestors Raises Fear of Fresh Conflict in

Libya, “The Guardian”, November 16, 2013, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/16/ libya-militia-attack-tripoli-fears-conflict. 7 See B. DARAGAHI, Militias Accede to Demands to End Violence in Tripoli, “Financial Times”, November 17, 2013, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5e1695ba-4f98-11e3-b06e-00144 ©ISPI2013 feabdc0.html#axzz2ooYdKOwv.

or memory and that Libya post-Qaddafi is a tabula rasa ready to be shaped in whichever form it chooses or is chosen for it. This assumption sees institution building as the solution to Libya’s problems. Proponents of this viewpoint make a comparison to other countries of the Arab Awakening, such as Egypt and Tunisia; unlike those countries, Libya does not have the institutional baggage, and, in turn, constraints that it would need to disaggregate; the structure of domination, it is understood, fell with the fall of Qaddafi. Libya would thus need to develop institutions for a democratic political life and for stability8. Exchanges between Egypt, Italy and England as related to Libya, especially in the period of the Second World War, challenge that assumption. They underscore the existence of active civil society institutions that had a system of governance and that was actively calling for its rights under the allied occupation of Libya. Correspondence from 1959 includes information on movements by trade unions in Libya and the existence of federations that Libya’s sociocultural called for instituting a new labour law. In a letter to A.G. Wallis, Minister identity, firmly embedded of Labour, a preliminary survey of trade unions in Libya was conducted. within its tribal and To which the Foreign Office inquired regarding “measures that may be religious landscape, desirable to increase Western influences in Libyan trade union circle”. belongs to the past, and is further compounded by The second assumption is that Libya’s sociocultural identity, firmly the fact that Libya is a embedded within its tribal and religious landscape, belongs to the past, rentier country, relying and is further compounded by the fact that Libya is a rentier country, heavily on oil revenues as relying heavily on oil revenues as the lifeblood of its national income. the lifeblood of its national Arturo Varvelli describes this as a “trilemma”9 and suggests the income impossibility of a “democratic order in a rentier country where Islam is the dominant religion, and at the same time, the main source of popular identity”. He holds that the persistence of those identities in the present is a major impediment to state and nation building processes. While this may be true at present, the closest Libya got to constructing a state and a national imaginary seems to have been as a Sanusi monarchy which essentially emerged out of a socioreligious order. George Joffe, in his article titled: “Reflections on the Role of the Sanusi in the Central Sahara”10, argues that “in terms of the historical record and of Islamic constitutional law- the Sanusi Order really did act as a government in control of a vast desert region and that something approximating to a ‘Sanusi state’ did exist there” (26). While the Sanusi Order would not have satisfied the criteria provided by the Montevideo agreement, it did fulfill

8 See Y.H. ZOUBIR - N.R. ERZSEBET, The End of the Libyan Dictatorship: The Uncertain Transition, “Third World Quarterly”, vol. 33, no. 7, 2012, pp. 1267-1283. 9 See A. VARVELLI, Trilemma: Islam, Democracy and the Rentier State, “Caucasus International”, vol. 3, no. 1-2. Spring-Summer 2013, http://cijournal.org/pdf/Arturo%20 Varveli.pdf. 10 See Joffe, George. “Reflections on the Role of the Sanusi in the Central Sahara.” The ©ISPI2013 Journal of North African Studies, 1;1, 1996: 25-41.

the requirements of “Islamic constitutional theory in order to determine whether or not it satisfied the definition of a government and a state” (27). He relates how they mobilized resources to build an infrastructure for state building, gaining “effective political and economic control of the whole eastern half of the Sahara” (33). By the start of the twentieth By the start of the century, the zawiyas were becoming more independent and acquired twentieth century, the political status as a result of Italian occupation and especially when “the zawiyas were becoming Italians treated its then head, Sayyid Idris, as the Libyan political more independent and representative” (34). His conclusion is as follows: “As a focus of power, acquired political status as however, it is not possible to argue that the eastern Sahara was a region a result of Italian that was terra nullius before the French conquest. The Sanusi Order was occupation and especially the power in the land and, as such, provided the government to the when “the Italians treated rudimentary state it had created.” (40). its then head, Sayyid Idris, as the Libyan political That same narrative seems to emerge in analysis that tackles the Italian representative” colonial period in Libya. In his seminal book, A History of Modern Libya, Dirk Vandewalle describes its rulers as pursuing “statelessness” (1) and goes on to explore the history and environment within which this statelessness continued to exist under the Ottomans, the Italian occupation, the Sanusi kingdom and Qaddafi. This argument, however, needs to be placed in context. When Italy invaded Libya in 1911, it had only been “unified” for fifty years (24) and this is significant because while colonialism generally benefits from and often seeks to divide and rule; Italy could not provide a model of statehood to which the Libyans might have aspired to after liberation; it did not have much experience in state building itself so it had little to contribute to an existing non-state. Related to the state building inquiry is the question of Libyan nationhood and/or nationalism. Old political wisdom holds that “the territorial boundaries of a state must coincide with the perceived cultural boundaries of a nation” (Stepan 50)11. According to this logic, “every state must contain within itself one and not more than one culturally homogenous nation, that every state should be a nation and every nation should be a state” (Stepan 50). The wide expanse of lands with little communication in-between its sprawling spaces granted Libya much fluidity, making it difficult to grasp such boundaries, and this was reflected within the political and cultural space. Libya became what Homi Bhabha calls “a space of translation” in which both mapping and erasure of identities and boundaries became one of its definitive features (Piper 113)12. The Libyan nation-state was both produced and destroyed during the colonial period;

11 See A. STEPAN – J.J. LINZ – Y. YOGENDRA, The Rise of ‘State-Nations’, “Journal of Democracy”, vol. 21, no. 3, July 2010, pp. 50-68. 12 See K. PIPER, Air Control, Zerzura, and the Mapping of the Libyan Desert, in Cartographic Fictions: Maps, Race and Identity. NJ, Rutgers University Press, 2002, pp. ©ISPI2013 95-131.

the name “Libya” was, in fact, revived by the Italian colonialists in 1911(Ahmida 76)13. What is referred to as “Libya” in the nineteenth What is referred to as century is not the Libya of today but is, instead, the Ottoman regency of “Libya” in the nineteenth Tarabulus al-Gharb. Interestingly enough, the ancient Egyptians applied century is not the Libya of the term “Libya” to a Berber tribe inhabiting the area, and the Greeks today but is, instead, the used the word to refer to the land west of the Nile River. Ottoman regency of Tarabulus al‐Gharb. In 1911, Italian rule of Libya began, inheriting a rather problematic state Interestingly enough, the structure. Lisa Anderson relates how in the middle of World War I, it ancient Egyptians applied became clear that the Ottoman Empire could no longer “provide a genuine the term “Libya” to a alternative to the Italian regime in Libya” and as a result, the Libyan elite Berber tribe inhabiting the attempted to establish local governments. This, according to Anderson, area, and the Greeks used “constituted the only genuine attempts to forge national sentiment on a the word to refer to the local level before independence after World War II, and both the efforts land west of the Nile River themselves and their ultimate failure illustrated the ambiguities of local Libyan nationalism” (Anderson 66)14. After 80 years of Ottoman rule and the rise of European capitalism that resulted from trade, the old tributary social structure gave way to the rise of new class configurations that differed from one region to another. Ahmida identifies three different sets of configurations: “Tripolitania had an urban notable class, peasantry and tribal confederations, while Fezzan was dominated by tribal confederations, land-owning clans, and After 80 years of Ottoman sharecropping peasants. Cyrenaica had no peasantry and the formation of rule and the rise of the Sanusi state integrated tribal factions into one cohesive social force.” European capitalism that (20) He contends that to the Italians, those distinctions and class resulted from trade, the configurations were ignored and that the Libyans were perceived as one old tributary social monolithic whole composed of “an agglomeration of tribes or tribal states structure gave way to the that were isolated from the larger social and economic structures of the rise of new class region” (20). configurations that The trials and tribulations of Italian rule did not allow any space for differed from one region to Libyans to reflect on their identity; in 1922, the Fascists launched what another they called the riconquista of Libya and for a decade sought to actively consolidate their power, “over half the entire population and virtually all the educated elite of the province died or fled into exile” (Anderson 67). During the interwar period and while the Egyptian, Tunisian and Palestinian nationalist movements were active on the ground, “the Libyans were fighting for their lives, less concerned with their definition of identity than with their survival” (Anderson 67). Libyan independence in 1951 established the beginnings of a Libyan state without a Libyan

13 A.A AHMIDA, Forgotten Voices: Power and Agency in Colonial and Postcolonial Libya. NY: Routledge, 2005. 14 L. ANDERSON, Religion and State in Libya: The Politics of Identity, Annals of the ©ISPI2013 American Academy of Political and Social Science, 1986, pp. 61-72. Web.

nation; dominated “by tribal shaykhs and urban notables, the monarchy faced the heavy task of building nationhood and interacting with the Libyan independence in international system” (Ahmida 77). 1951 established the beginnings of a Libyan Italian rule left Libya with “an infrastructure of roads, agricultural state without a Libyan villages, and other public works” but without an “informed and politically nation; dominated “by active citizenry” (St. John 19)15. The Libyan people were not given the tribal shaykhs and urban tools to understand or practice political participation or citizenship. While notables, the monarchy the non-existence of citizenship does not preclude the existence of faced the heavy task of nationalism, it did not help provide a sense of political unity or solidarity building nationhood and necessary to nationalism. A divided land simply by virtue of its geography, interacting with the lack of political participation further fed the fragmentation. Left to their international system” own resources, they resorted to the institutions they knew best and that seemed to be more cohesive: the city, the tribe and the family. Using “divide and rule” policies, Italian fascism also hit hard at the beginnings of developing state structures in Cyrenaica, Tripolitania and Fezzan. In Cyrenaica, it attempted to destroy the Sanusi order, “abolishing traditional tribal assemblies and weakening the authorities of The Libyan people were established leaders”. And in other places they sought to dissolve local not given the tools to authorities, “replacing the precolonial administration with an exclusively understand or practice Italian one in which the local population was not allowed to participate” political participation or (St. John 19). The exclusion of the indigenous inhabitants prevented them citizenship. While the from opening up to the world and forced them to look inwardly, too non‐existence of inwardly, in fact; their understanding of the nation suffered giving way to citizenship does not regionalism. preclude the existence of That said, it can be argued that it is not that Libyan leaders pursued and nationalism, it did not help thus consigned Libya to statelessness but that Libya is and has always provide a sense of political been a state in purgatory; there is a need to revisit its past without unity or solidarity presupposing statelessness as a point of departure but to unearth and necessary to nationalism understand local attempts to establish a state that were thwarted leaving behind the debris of a would-be state, a state and a nation in becoming. Every state that was mapped was effaced and so follows the rhythm of subsequent periods in Libya’s history.