Exit the Colonel (51 page)

One of the main responsibilities of the future nontransitional Libyan government is to create a sound plan for investing in and stewarding Libya's oil resources. To avoid future wrangling over who owns what Libyan oil, the new government would do well, as suggested in a piece broadcast by National Public Radio, to look at the case of Norway, one of the few countries that did manage its oil transition well.
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Farouk Al-Kasim, the Iraqi geologist who proposed the idea to the Norwegian government in the 1960s, said, “The Norwegian miracle is that . . . all the parties in parliament agreed on a policy, and they agreed among themselves that they will never use oil policy as a subject during elections.” In Norway's case, this was made possible by an initiative that predated knowledge of just how extensive the country's hydrocarbon resources really were. In Libya, the magnitude is known, but the rebuilding of government apparatus and the rewriting of the social contract could offer an opportunity for Libya to address one of the fundamental sources of instability head on. Al-Kasim is not sanguine about Libya's chances in this regard—purely on the historical record—but the idea keeps coming up in other guises: the International Monetary Fund recommends that Libya needs to urgently “set up a clear macro-fiscal policy framework with a consistent fiscal rule reflecting the country's economic objectives and the volatile nature of hydrocarbon based revenues, and to integrate this plan assets controlled by the Libyan Investment Authority, Libya's largest Sovereign Wealth fund.”
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One of the most urgent needs for Libya, as a wide-scale and massive retraining/retooling effort gets underway, is to provide for a social safety net for those injured, without jobs, and without access to essential services. Tribal and religious affiliations and regional militias are filling this role and, as in other such situations, will continue to gain strength in providing
for basic needs. Early proposals by private businessmen to get money back into the hands of the people and to provide basic stipends for
thuwwar
were greeted enthusiastically, of course. The proposals soon proved to be major bones of contention as the lack of a system for identifying (voter rolls, so much for BPCS) eligible persons and distributing this money led to corruption, which then led the NTC to stop payments, which led to retaliation and more outrage.

One thing is painfully clear. Libya is at a crossroads: substantial progress has been made, yet serious problems remain. If these problems continue, and people continue to loose faith, the door is wide open for internal and external forces to roll back hard-won gains. It is easier to destroy institutions and political and knowledge-driven gains than to build them up.

For anyone who spent time in Libya prior to February 2011, surely one of the most encouraging, heartening results of the February 17 revolution was the explosion of free speech and the strong participation of activist women. Throughout the revolution, youth and women joined men in support, becoming the equivalent of World War II's “Rosy the Riveter,” working as lookouts, cooks, logistics agents, and medics. Afterward, women were heavily involved in creating the first NGOs, whether in the field of medicine, advocacy for the rights of women (particularly with respect to war-related and domestic violence), and their own community assistance groups and newspapers.

Reading copies of
Miyadeen,
one of the first postrevolutionary magazines (printed in Cairo, as Gaddafi had bombed the radio stations and printing presses),
Al Libi
(
The Libyan
), or
Sawt
, one is struck by the fact that the turgid, meaningless language of the Revolutionary Committees, which controlled practically all media before the revolution, has been replaced by thoughtful, eloquent, provocative articles criticizing NTC members, and debating the relevance of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists. The newspaper
Arus Al Bahr
, launched in August 2011, announces itself as a publisher of direct commentary and brazen criticism “even if it hurts or shocks.”
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Attempts to control speech, whether through intimidation by militias or individuals, or even members of the government unhappy with what people are writing (there have been a few cases of militia members showing up at the editorial offices of publications that have printed
unflattering stories about them), have been met with a flurry of editorials insisting that Libya's healthy political future is intimately and inextricably bound with freedom of speech.
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In another of many inspirational acts, a group of teenage youth (boys and girls) in Benghazi created a radio station called Tribute FM that broadcast messages and songs to the rebel frontlines, as Gaddafi's troops were at the city limits. Within a month of the fall of Benghazi, the first fourteen radio stations, the majority of which were centered in Benghazi. There are now twelve TV stations (originally in Benghazi, most now based in Tripoli) and forty-three newspapers in Libya, covering a range of topics, but still very much focused on the revolution and postrevolution.
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While some complain that the militias are emerging as a new force to threaten press freedoms, on the whole this seems to be a minor consideration for those who write. Those who run most of Libya's new crop of printed media say that the main barriers are cultural and technical—creating a culture of reading, not just for critical information—as well as the availability of printing presses and technical assistance.

For an outsider, this media renaissance is one of the most inspiring and hopeful consequences of the Libyan revolution. Where previously, one had a choice between reading one of two turgid government-run papers,
Al Zahf al Ahdhar
(
The Green March
), run by the Revolutionary Committees, and
Al Jamahiriyya
, there are now several high-quality, highly informed publications, which—reports of militia interference notwithstanding—express a range of views and challenge almost everything. Though many in the current climate might prefer temporary stability to chaos, and security to freedom of speech, these are freedoms Libyans wanted for decades and that many died to obtain, both before and after the revolution.

Despite Western-Libyan fears of Benghazi going rogue, in early June 2012 the city appeared to have undergone a transformation or maturing process that the rest of the country had yet to experience. National and local papers pointed to Benghazi as a sign of the country coping and as a model for national elections and the process of educating people about the political process. The skittishness and nervousness that pervaded the city in the wake of the killing of Abdelfattah Younes—still unsolved—are largely
gone and replaced by a determination among large segments of the people to get their own affairs and municipal affairs in order, while waiting for the center to sort itself out.
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Prominent citizens dismissed the so-called Benghazi autonomy movement as marginal or even crackpot, while stressing that foreign interests were behind much of it—from Egypt coveting Libyan oil and real estate by encouraging federalism, to Qatar funding Islamist elements.

In the lead-up to elections for Benghazi's local governing council, held May 17, there were fears in both the west and the east that Benghazi might see deeper violence. Two car bombs went off near the Benghazi courthouse, which had acquired fame as the kitchen of the revolution. There was an attempted assassination of NTC member Khalid Assayih (another member, Fathi Baja, was in the car), as they drove into Benghazi from the airport on May 15.
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On May 17, Benghazi held the first ever elections for its local council, electing forty-four representatives to run the administrative affairs of the city—eleven of these will be seconded to the NTC until it is disbanded after the National Assembly appoints a new government, when they will return to serve the local council. To the surprise of many, elections proceeded in a peaceful and orderly fashion, with only isolated acts of violence and minimal need for oversight or protection of polling sites. The top vote getter was a female university professor, Najat Al Kekhia, a cousin of Mansour Al Kekhia, a former Libyan minister of foreign affairs-turned-dissident whom Gaddafi had “disappeared” in Cairo in 1993. A political novice, Al Kekhia beat forty-three candidates from the region of Berka, to become, effectively, the first female mayor of Benghazi.

It was rare to see anyone in Benghazi whose right index finger was not stained with the residue of voting ink.
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The national (former dissident) paper
Libya Al-Youm
ran an article on May 28 extolling the Benghazi elections as a case study for the national elections.
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This kind of positive story was dwarfed by the coverage of a homemade bomb that exploded near the US consulate in Benghazi a few days later.

Libya's position is somewhat anomalous to that of the other states of North Africa; rich in oil, it does not need grants and international loans, at least in the mid- to long term. This is reflected in the fact that international
lending organizations, like the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), have not allocated assistance budgets for Libya, which they have for Tunisia and Egypt. Libyans are the first to say they do not need money; they need expertise.

Several initiatives have been set up to provide technical assistance to the Arab Spring states, in particular, Tunisia, Libya, Morocco, Jordan, and Egypt. These include the G8's Deauville Partnership created in May 2012, and a number of small-scale USAID-funded initiatives to support such priorities as employment creation, economic and social inclusion, private-sector expansion growth, regional and global integration, governance, rule of law, anticorruption, and postconflict health (rehabilitation, emergency medicine, etc.), some of which are funded by the US State Department's Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI). G8 countries have also committed to form a Financial Services Advisory Corps, to advise states in transition (including Libya) on good governance and fiscal management.

A USAID circular published in summer 2012 says the US government is “particularly focused on engaging marginalized populations, youth, and women, and increasing opportunities for their voices to be heard and their interests to be considered in decision-making that will shape Libya's future.”
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As of summer 2012, USAID had committed $29 million of a total of $91 million spent specifically on humanitarian assistance—about a tenth of the total US contribution to the military component of the NATO effort.
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Press releases aside, the record of international, postconflict humanitarian interventions is often mixed. Before the end of the campaign to oust Gaddafi, nascent Libyan NGOs and institutions in transition complained that a large percentage of the international consultants were not useful, as they had neither the requisite language nor technical skills. The US government did bring a small number of war wounded to a Boston hospital (the effort was not an unmitigated success).

Some foreign entities have developed strong local followings. Creative Associates—one of the USAID contractors running MEPI grants and capacity-building programs in Tripoli and Benghazi, and agencies engaged by USAID to support small-scale rehabilitative and governance trainings—appears to have made a strong name for itself, in terms of the usefulness of its grant-making processes and outreach. Karama, a Cairo-based women's rights organization, has been supporting a number of democracy-awareness-building, lobbying, and organization campaigns in Tripoli, Misurata, Benghazi, and Derna, through local partners such as the women's
platform for peace (
manbar al marrat al libiyya min ajl assalaam
).
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These efforts are important for giving women and youth the strategic communication tools required to articulate individual and party platforms, but also to lobby on behalf of legislation relevant to the electoral process itself, such as the geographic spread of National Conference seats.

Despite pockets of foreign goodwill, many mainstream Libyans feel they are fighting a simultaneous battle against time and money they cannot win. As the head of a Benghazi community group complained, “Most of the NGOs are very weak and not properly managed—they are not getting sufficient support from the government, which of course is preoccupied with a million other crises, and they all want to become political parties, which means they're not doing the work they set out to do.”
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In the two weeks before July 7, 2012, however, the national mood seemed to lift, as reflected in mass voter registrations and a rise in interest in the actual process behind the elections. As of May 15, 2012, roughly 1,833,000 of Libya's 6-million-odd citizens, close to 80 percent of those eligible, had registered to vote.
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On election day itself, the polling experience largely mimicked what took place in Benghazi a month and a half before: 62 percent of voters cast their ballots for more than 3,000 candidates in a process that appeared to be both free and fair—and, a few incidents notwithstanding, orderly. There were reported instances of Libyans forming human cordons to protect polling places from possible attacks or disruptions to the vote.
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For many Libyans, both inside and outside the country, the election was one of, if not
the
most emotional experience they had had since the outbreak of the Arab Spring. Many said they felt it was a tangible sign that Gaddafi was gone and that the country had a future as a result. To the surprise of many, Mahmoud Jibril's self-described “centrist” party—Jibril took pains not to say “secular”—the Alliance of National Forces, took a plurality in the National Assembly, thirty-nine seats, versus seventeen seats for the Muslim Brotherhood, and none for Belhaj's Nation Party. At the time of this writing it appeared Libya would be “unique” in being the first Arab Spring country to elect a non-Islamist-dominated government.
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One commonly heard explanation in Libya for why the Islamist parties did not do better was that many Libyans felt the Muslim Brotherhood and similar groups were trying to present themselves as “more Islamic” than everyone else, while allowing themselves to become instruments of the Qataris and the Saudis. While it will take weeks if not months to parse the character of the new government, given the large number
of individual candidates with unclear tribal and religious affiliations—not to mention connections to the former regime—developments are positive, and appear to confirm the “uniqueness” of Libya's experience.