Photo: AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Gaddafi Was Very Astute In Sharing Command Among Countless Tribal Factions
By John Hamilton
6:26PM GMT 23 Feb 2011
Courtesy Of "The Telegraph"
One of the most common observations in recent days, as Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's dictatorship has approached its violent nemesis, is that Libya has "descended into chaos". Yet the key to understanding the country, and its current convulsions, is that chaos is not just a fact of life, but the essence of Gaddafi's corrupt and brutal regime.
Throughout his 42-year reign, the "Brother Leader" has created a thicket of rival institutions, which he has played off against each other to prevent any competitor from emerging. And even though he initially made the abolition of tribalism one of the core tenets of his revolution, he has increasingly used inter-tribal rivalries to maintain his grip on power.
According to the philosophy outlined in Gaddafi's Green Book, Libya is ruled as a jamahiriya, meaning "state of the masses". Theoretically, parliamentary sovereignty lies in the hands of the General People's Congress, a sclerotic and despised body that supposedly represents the views of every single Libyan, via a branching network of local committees that everyone is supposed to attend, but nobody does. (It is telling that the congress's headquarters was one of the first buildings in Tripoli to be torched.)
In the mid-1970s, Gaddafi also established the Revolutionary Committees, feared and hated bodies which play a role similar to the Communist Party in the Soviet system. In the mid-1990s, he added another layer of complexity, creating People's Social Leadership Committees, whose members come from the heads of families, tribes and regional structures. Below these are innumerable overlapping ministries, institutions, authorities and funds, which run the country from day to day.
Even before the current crisis, this system had led the infighting to intensify to a debilitating extent. From the outside, this has sometimes been characterised as a struggle between reformers and conservatives – but it is better seen as a struggle for control of lucrative positions in a corrupt system. A WikiLeaks cable from January 2009 showed how Gaddafi used the main anti-corruption committee as a tool for exerting patronage and control, making sure that "entities headed by regime loyalists administer particularly plum contracts, ensuring that they are well-positioned to extract rents [and bribes] from foreign companies". This has allowed officials up to and including the ruling family to accumulate vast fortunes, and hide them in foreign accounts.
This administrative chaos was damaging enough – but the pattern of divide and rule did not end there. Gaddafi created a huge number of intelligence and state security bodies, so his people could never know who might be informing on them. The army is a weak and fractured institution, which Gaddafi has never trusted and has always kept at arm's length: its commander, Major General Abu Bakr Yunis Jabir, is reportedly under house arrest after refusing to order troops to fire on protesters.
The consequence of this haphazard, overlapping structure is that, unlike in Egypt or Tunisia, there is no single group with the authority and resources to depose the dictator – which is precisely what Gaddafi intended. To complicate matters even further, he stuffed the lists of regional military governors, Republican Guard leaders and Revolutionary Committee members with members of his own tribe, the Qadhadhfa. Because of its relatively lowly status in the hierarchy, it is unlikely that the majority of the population would accept another of its members wielding power in Gaddafi's place: that means the entire regime has its back to the wall, not just its leader.
One encouraging sign is that the million-strong Warfalla tribe, largely based in the west, appears to be allied with the protests. The Warfalla have long been a bulwark of the regime: they provided many members of officers' movement which backed Gaddafi's 1969 coup against King Idris Sanussi. The other tribe which is strongly loyal are the Megraha, whose number includes the Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi – hence the importance of his repatriation.
One of the worst-case scenarios for Libya is a partition into east and west regions, as tribes from each seek to revenge themselves on their enemies. Although often characterised as Islamist, the opposition in the east has also been deeply tribal: the old monarchy was supported by the tribes of Cyrenaica's Green Mountains, who have maintained a low-level insurgency against Gaddafi's rule.
If Gaddafi is to be toppled without a long and bitter conflict, it may require one of his closest circle, sometimes referred to as "the men of the tent", to turn against him. Among this circle are his brother-in-law Abdalla Senoussi and foreign minister Musa Kusa, the senior officials largely responsible for internal and external security respectively. Failing that, one of the senior military figures will have to step into the breach – although any units that join the rebellion in the east could face the elite and well-equipped 32nd Reinforced Brigade of the Armed People, led by Gaddafi's sixth son, Khemis. With Libya's dictator digging in, the denouement is likely to be bloody.
John Hamilton is a Libya expert and a director of Cross Border Information
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