TRIPOLI – Egypt
is not the only place where the bright hopes of the Arab Spring are fading.
From attacks against Western governments to ethnic clashes in remote desert
oases, Libya’s
revolution is faltering.
The blame for Libya’s
current travails rests largely with the interim government that led the
uprising. The National Transitional Council refuses to make difficult
decisions, instead palming them off to a future elected government. The NTC has
preserved much of the institutional paralysis and knee-jerk behavior typical of
Colonel Muammar al-Qaddafi’s overthrown regime. If the Libyan revolution is to
succeed, the country’s new leaders must make a clean break with the spirit of
the past.
During his 42 years in power, Qaddafi
surrounded himself with advisers who were companions from his youth,
supplemented by a small coterie of technocrats. As a result, the leaders of the
revolt that overthrew him have little government experience. And, in a country
where any political activity was considered treasonous, many expected the
neophyte NTC to stumble early and often. And so it has.
Indeed, the revolution was never a
smooth affair. When fighters failed to defeat loyalist forces on their own,
outside powers were compelled to intervene. Later, the NTC was unable to impose
discipline on the myriad militias that formed to fight Qaddafi’s troops, or
even to direct foreign weapons efficiently to the fledgling Libyan National
Army. When the military chief of staff was assassinated in July under
mysterious circumstances, the NTC could not offer concrete answers to an angry
public. With no access to Libyan assets frozen abroad, it frequently paid
salaries weeks in arrears.
While the battle against Qaddafi was
still raging, Libyans considered it unpatriotic to point out the NTC’s
weaknesses. Today, however, those flaws have been magnified by its paralysis.
The NTC deliberates rather than decides. The two-thirds majority required to
pass legislation means that many bills die after extensive debate.
Many NTC members believe that the
Council lacks the legitimacy to make tough choices. They argue that the NTC
should limit itself to serving as a caretaker government, implementing only the
most essential decisions until elected officials take office. As a result, the
NTC and the cabinet that it appointed, known as the executive committee, merely
want to pass the baton of authority. Hesitant to leave a large imprint in their
wake, some ministries have no budgets, and ministers are reluctant to sign
deals with foreign firms.
But, beyond the question of the proper
role of custodian governments lies the indecisiveness of the NTC’s leaders, who
simply prefer to defer to others. When a colonel recently asked NTC Chairman
Mustafa Abdel-Jalil why he has not moved to merge the militias into a national
army, Abdel-Jalil replied, “I head the legislative branch. You must speak with
the executive (committee).”
Other senior Libyan officials suffer
from the same managerial torpor. The NTC’s first prime minister, Mahmud Jibril,
was praised by the international community for his vision. But much like
Abdel-Jalil, Jibril proved unable to make decisions.
The NTC’s paralysis is clearly
reflected in the trial of Qaddafi’s son, Saif al-Islam el-Qaddafi. Though
considered the most prized captive of the ancien regime, the Council has
made little progress in prosecuting him. Ahmad Jihani, Libya’s
representative to the International Criminal Court, recently told me that, “we
as Libyans cannot begin Saif’s trial. There is no central power to prosecute
him.” The ICC prosecutor echoed his sentiments in a June 5 legal brief, noting
that “the Government of Libya may be unable to move the case forward.” With no
progress toward trying Qaddafi for war crimes, the NTC is holding him on the
innocuous charge of failure to possess a camel license.
Bureaucrats lament ministerial
dithering. “Everyday people come with ideas to demobilize the fighters and
integrate them into society,” notes an official in the Labor Ministry,
referring to the most pressing problem facing the NTC. “But, with no one to
make a decision, all of these plans just sit on our desks.”
One reason for this inertia can be
found in Libya’s
prevailing political culture. For decades, Qaddafi personally reviewed every
agreement worth more than $200 million and often chose which foreign firms
would receive contracts. When he devolved ministerial planning to bureaucrats
in 2008, many were not pleased. “Unused to planning and possessed of limited
human capacity, senior officials in the ministries are very nervous,” an
American diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks reported.
Libya’s
new leaders suffer from something worse than foot-dragging. They are falling
back on the same facile, prefabricated responses that Qaddafi used to demonize
his domestic and international opponents for four decades.
For example, when eastern Libyans
recently announced the formation of an interim regional council as a first step
toward declaring a federalist state, Abdel-Jalil alleged “the beginning of a
conspiracy against Libya”
in the brewing crisis between the country’s provinces. “Some Arab nations,
unfortunately, have supported and encouraged this to happen,” he said. But
Abdel-Jalil named no specific foreign powers and offered no proof to support
his allegations, which sounded much like Qaddafi’s frequent rants against
“imperialist-Zionist plots.”
After an eight-month revolution that
devastated the country, Libyans are demanding real reforms. But, without a new
leadership that is willing to implement them, it will be a long time before Libya
turns a new page.