> April 2015 , pages 12 and 13

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Behind the opposition between nationalists and Islamists, multiple fault lines

In Libya, it's not chaos, it's war

In a context of violence between rival factions, General Khalifa Haftar's offensive against the
Islamists is worsening the fractures dividing Libyans. If the negotiations started under the aegis of
the United Nations continue, the presence of groups affiliated with the Organization of the Islamic
State reinforces the possibility of a foreign intervention, with more than uncertain consequences.

by Patrick Haimzadeh 

Q
ui still remembers the lightning visit to Libya by MM. Nicolas Sarkozy and David Cameron,
September 15, 2011  ? In front of the crowd of Benghazi, the French president then called
on the population to "  show a new courage, that of forgiveness and reconciliation  ( 1 )  ". For
the French media, this triumphalist speech consecrated the success of the war waged by the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) against the troops of the regime of Muammar
Gaddafi.

Almost four years later, it is time for disillusionment and worry. In the grip of political instability and
armed clashes between rival factions, Libya appears to be on the verge of implosion. Public security
continues to deteriorate there. France thus had to evacuate its embassy at night, and under the protection
of its special forces, in July 2014. Since then, the Minister of Defense, Mr. Jean-Yves Le Drian, and his
Italian counterpart, Ms. Roberta Pinotti, evoke regularly the prospect of a new military intervention to
annihilate the groups having made allegiance to the Organization of the Islamic State (OIS). For their
part, many journalists, who can only make very short stays on site, now use the term "  chaotic  ".to
describe the situation. After the use of the binary terms “  democracy against dictatorship  ” in 2011, then
“  militias against civil society  ”, or even “  Islamists against liberals  ”, this semantic choice stems from
the inability - or the refusal - to apprehend the events. It also testifies to the absence of an analytical grid
taking into account the identities of the actors involved and the rational logic of their strategies and
modes of action.

Any reflection on the future of Libya requires looking back on the events that led to the disappearance of
Gaddafi - what official history qualifies as a "  revolution  ". If one cannot deny the occurrence of a
revolutionary moment in February 2011 in several cities, including Benghazi, the reality is that, after a
few days of a rapidly militarized popular uprising, the country fell into civil war. Eight months of
fratricidal conflict, coupled with the direct involvement of a foreign coalition, resulted in the collapse of
the regime. This fall, the only consensual political objective of the insurgents of the time, can at best be
qualified as a "  revolutionary outcome. ". But no stable socio-political order, let alone any State, has been
able to emerge. This is due to the return in force of “  primary identities  ”, shaped and defined by local
affiliations and the particularisms specific to each group, or sub-group, ethnic or tribal.

Tobruk versus Tripoli

Despite its political practice based on clientelism and regionalism, the Gaddafi regime, with its
nationalist and anti-imperialist rhetoric, had contributed to the construction of a national identity. The
latter was shattered during the civil war. With the fall of the regime, old local rivalries, revived by the
conflict, were added to the internal divisions in the insurrection and to the traditional opposition between
center and periphery. The dissemination of weapons of all caliber and the use of violence as a means of
resolving the conflict have worsened the situation. The embryos of state and regular army erected under
Gaddafi's reign vanished with him. No official structure with a legitimate monopoly on violence has been
able to set up, due to competition between cities, factions and regions. The political weight of these
entities was only measured by the number and armament of theirkatiba (fighting unit), with a strength of
between one hundred and five hundred men.

Barely a few weeks after Gaddafi's death on October 20, 2011, a multitude of limited clashes broke out
across the country. The revolutionary or post-revolutionary militias, then evaluated at eighty thousand
men, compete for local power, control of territories and income from cross-border trafficking. Successive
governments have no choice but to rely on these brigades to make up for the absence of an army and
police. The most powerful of them, foreign to local conflicts, are sent there to limit the level of violence,
with very uneven success.

Apart from these recurring local armed clashes, a struggle is being played out in Tripoli within the
General National Congress (CNG), the Parliament elected on July 6, 2012. It is a battle for central power
between two factions which are radicalizing gradually. The first, self-proclaimed "  liberal  " or "  nationalist
 ", is also qualified as "  secular  " by the Western media. It mainly consists of businessmen, executives of
the former regime close to the "  reformist  " movement initiated by Mr. Saif Al-Islam (second son of
Gaddafi) from 2005 and officers who defected in the early days. of the insurgency. The second faction, "
 Islamist According to its opponents and the foreign press, is not limited to the Islamist movement, that is
to say to a political current calling for the establishment of a Constitution whose main source would be
the Sharia. Since the Islamists were the main structured opposition under the old regime, this current
includes a large number of long-standing opponents. But it also includes representatives of Misrata, a city
with a strong revolutionary legitimacy  ( 2 ) , and other cities of the Tripolitan coast with a trading
tradition, in particular Zaouia and Zouara.

Beyond the cleavage between religious and secular, another line of fracture is emerging: elites having
served under the old regime and old nationalist exiles against a new generation of Islamist opponents
from inside and outside. The two factions are each supported by powerful militias: those of the town of
Zintan for the “  nationalists  ” and those of Misrata for the “  Islamists  ”. Each paramilitary formation
occupies strategic sites in Tripoli, such as the airport, downtown crossroads or around official buildings
and large hotels. It can use this hold to put pressure on the decisions of the CNG or the transitional
government.

The year 2014 begins in this context: a weak and bipolarized center, a periphery where local logics
dominate. The country is divided into a multitude of entities administered by local councils and military
councils, generally linked to the militias. The large ethnic groups - Tuareg populations from the south,
Amazighs from Jebel Nefoussa, Toubou from central and eastern south - act according to their interests
while sometimes themselves being divided, as was already the case during the 2011 civil war. Thus the
internal fault lines and allegiances to one or the other of the rival factions in Tripoli emerge according to
local, even microlocal criteria.

As in 2011, generational logic also operates. For example, in the Berber-speaking communities of Jebel
Nefoussa, the village chiefs refuse to take sides with one of the two rival factions in Tripoli, for fear of
subsequently suffering reprisals from the Arab majority. But they cannot prevent many young people from
joining the National Mobile Force, a powerful, predominantly Amazigh militia supporting the so-called “
 Islamist  ” faction . This commitment is not explained by their adherence to any form of political Islam,
but by the antagonism existing between the Amazigh populations of the djebel and their powerful Arab
neighbors in the city of Zintan.

A general returned from the United States

Superimposed on the others without necessarily intersecting them, an additional dividing line has
gradually emerged between populations of Bedouin origin, or who recognize themselves as such, and
populations of urban and commercial tradition. Among the former, traditional clan and tribal structures
are more prevalent, political Islam is not deeply rooted, which leads them to ally themselves mainly with
the "  liberal  " faction . As for the latter, the national construction project put forward by political Islam is,
by tradition, better established there, which pushes them to opt for the “  Islamist  ” camp . This rivalry
aggravates the confrontations sometimes within the same district. In Benghazi for example, 40 % of the
population comes from the merchant towns of Tripolitania (Misrata, Zaouia, Tripoli). The  remaining 60
% consider themselves to be of Bedouin origin and belong mainly to the nine historic tribes of Cyrenaica,
known as Saadian. Such a cleavage, determined by the origin and the anteriority of the presence on the
spot, pushed inhabitants claiming to be of the Bedouin tradition to join the current "  nationalist  " by
rivalry with the populations originating in Misrata, mainly favorable to the camp "  Islamist  ”. This
proximity rivalry was only waiting for a trigger to turn into violence, even "  ethnic cleansing  " in some
cases.

The catalyst appears in the person of a 72-year-old former general: Mr. Khalifa Haftar. This former
Gaddafi officer defected in 1983 to settle in the United States. He returned to Libya in March 2011, after
the start of the insurgency. On May 16, 2014, undoubtedly inspired by the coup by Marshal Abdel Fattah
Al-Sisi in Egypt, the general launched an operation called “  Dignity  ” (Al-Karama), with the stated
objective of “  eradicating the Islamists  ”.The same day, he bombed the positions of a brigade in Benghazi.
It relies on the city's special forces battalion and the air force, mainly made up of executives from the
former regime who defected in 2011, brigades recruited from the large Saadian tribes and related katiba.
to the autonomists of Cyrenaica. The offensive begins in Benghazi against the militias attached to the
various currents of political Islam. First immediate consequence: these militias, some of which were rivals
until then, declare the union sacred against their common enemy. In Tripolitania, the militias of Zintan
rally for their operation "  Dignity And stormed the CNG on May 18, thus putting an end to the already
fragile process of political construction initiated two years earlier. Reacting quickly to this attack, the
anti-Haftar camp is structured around the majority “  Islamist  ” faction within the CNG. This is based on
a coalition of forces called Dawn of Libya and mainly bringing together the great “  revolutionary  ”
brigades of Benghazi, Tripoli, Zaouia, Ghariane and Zouara.

At the local level, the political and military actors as well as the communities take up a new position
according to their own interests and their old rivalries. This is how the Machachiya tribe, traditional rival
of the Zintan, opts for Dawn of Libya. Other tribes of Tripolitania who had long constituted Gaddafi
strongholds in 2011 (Warshafana, Nawil, Siaan) joined General Haftar for reasons again essentially local,
which also intersect the dividing line of the 2011 war between insurgents and loyalists. . In the South,
part of the Toubous having taken a position for General Haftar, certain Tuareg groups are determined by
reaction in favor of the opposing camp. With the exception of the great Qadhafi strongholds that were
the cities of Sirte and Bani Walid,fitna (“  division  ”), which many feared as early as 2011, is spreading
across the country. Far from restoring order, as he had initially announced, General Haftar quickly
precipitates the country in a "  second civil war  ". As in 2011, each entity sets itself the goal of total victory
over the other.

Favor a diplomatic solution

On June 25, 2014, a month after the launch of General Haftar's operation, legislative elections were held
under pressure from the “  international community  ”, which saw in this a possibility of legitimizing an
elected body. The official participation rate is only 18 % (probably less, in reality). Initially scheduled to sit
in Benghazi, the new Assembly finally moved to Tobruk, in the stronghold of Mr. Haftar. Out of a
workforce of one hundred and eighty-eight deputies (out of two hundred theoretical), only one hundred
and twenty-two attended the inaugural session of August 4, some elected officials from areas opposed to
the general boycotting it. The Assembly appoints a provisional government which then settles in El-
Beida, another bastion of the general. At the same time, in Tripoli, controlled by the Dawn of Libya
coalition since August 23, 2014, the members of the ex-CNG designate their own government of “
 national salvation  ”, accusing —not unfounded — the elected Parliament of being rallied to General
Haftar by settling in Tobruk.

The June elections only worsened the crisis, with each of the two parties now able to claim legitimacy. As
in 2011, the Western States and the Arab allies of General Haftar (Egypt and United Arab Emirates,
which support him militarily, Saudi Arabia) quickly chose their camp. Thus, no protest was made against
the “  eradicating  ” action of May, with the exception of a call from the American ambassador to Libya to
“  spare the civilian populations  ”. In addition, all of these countries have recognized the Parliament of
Tobruk as the only "  legitimate representative  ".of the Libyan people from August 4. This bias runs the
risk of exacerbating tensions and encouraging extremists on both sides.
Ten months after the start of this second Libyan civil war, the situation does not call for optimism. If the
balance sheet of the fighting is difficult to establish at the national level, the figures communicated by the
medical authorities in Benghazi show more than seven hundred dead and five thousand wounded since
August 2014. For a city of eight hundred thousand inhabitants, and taking into account of the many
missing, some of whom were probably killed, this figure is considerable.

In addition to the intensity of heavy weaponry between militias, it can be explained by the emergence of “
 local  ” violence between inhabitants of the city, or even of the same neighborhood, depending on their
origins. As for the number of internally displaced people in Libya, it is estimated by the United Nations
refugee agency at around four hundred thousand people.

For its part, the OEI, many of whose Libyan fighters returned from Syria in the fall of 2014 to fight
General Haftar, is strengthening its presence in Derna to the detriment of the local Islamist militias who
left to fight in Benghazi. It also succeeded in implanting combatants in the former Gaddafi stronghold of
Sirte, deserted by the tribes of Misrata who had occupied it since October 2011. Little by little, this
organization took advantage of the civil war to develop, even if to date it has only an extremely limited
social base in Libya.

The prolongation of this conflict which neither side is able to win and the resulting destruction of the
social fabric threatens the future of Libya as a nation. Even if no one officially calls for a partition, one
may wonder how the Libyans will rebuild a common life project. Contrary to the arguments of the
supporters of a new foreign military intervention, which would only worsen the civil war, one of the
avenues to be explored lies in the action of the United Nations Special Representative, Mr. Bernardino
León. With patience, and within the limits of the mandate given to it by the Security Council, the latter
tries to include all parties, including local actors and some militia leaders, in the sessions of its national
dialogue.

Patrick Haimzadeh
Independent researcher specializing in Libya. Author of In the heart of Gaddafi's
Libya, Jean-Claude Lattès, Paris, 2011.

( 1 )  Le Monde, September 17, 2011.

( 2 )  In October 2011, Misrata had 36,000 combatants for a population of approximately 300,000 inhabitants (interview with
Mr. Salem Joha, commander-in-chief of the rebels in the city during the 2011 war, Misrata, June 2012 ).

Mot clés:
NATO
Islam
Conflict
Violence
Terrorism
Diplomacy
Nationalism
Geopolitics
Fundamentalism
International Relations
Libya
Arab World
North Africa