Modern nation-states have armies in order to protect themselves against foreign danger. Those are supposed to perform essentially the same task as our immune system which protects our health against foreign bodies. However, in certain situations, the army turns against its own nation, overthrows its constitutional government, and sets up a brutal dictatorship over the people. Something similar occurs when the body’s own immune system attacks its healthy tissue, resulting in considerable damage to one’s health and wellbeing. That is lupus, a disease caused by a combination of an inherited predisposition to it and an environmental trigger (e.g., infections, sunlight, or medication.) This is what happened in Libya in 1969 when the army, led by then captain Qaddafi and helped by the United States, overthrew the constitutional government of King Idris. Libya’s resultant political malaise was thus brought about by a combination of an inherited predisposition to political lupus (Middle Eastern-style military takeovers) and an environmental trigger (America’s crucial assistance to Qaddafi’s coup.) What followed was the gradual decline and fall of Libya over a forty-two-year period of hellish existence for many Libyans.
King Idris’s Libya and that of Qaddafi could not have been more different: The government of King Idris was based on consent and was constitutional; Qaddafi’s was a vicious dictatorship, pure and simple. The government of King Idris executed only one person in its entire lifespan of eighteen years- the Libyan Queen’s nephew who had murdered the King’s closest aide in broad daylight; Qaddafi’s executed thousands simply for being opposed to the regime. The government of King Idris did not persecute people for expressing unfavourable views of the Libyan monarchy; Qaddafi’s arrested, imprisoned, tortured, and killed numerous Libyans on the mere suspicion that they did not want his governance. The government of King Idris had an increasingly competent administrative system with proportionally lower levels of corruption; Qaddafi’s was an extremely inefficient and highly corrupt administrative system. The government of King Idris invested huge sums of its very limited budget into quality education, healthcare, and infrastructure; Qaddafi’s neglected education, healthcare, and infrastructure in spite of disposing of immense revenues from the sale of oil. The government of King Idris made it possible for all Libyans to improve their standard of living considerably; Qaddafi’s made such an improvement impossible except by becoming one of his sycophants or getting mired in corruption- for example, shortly before Qaddafi’s coup d’état, the annual income of a Libyan university professor was the equivalent of the price of two brand new Volkswagen Beetle cars; in the 1990s, a Libyan university professor’s annual income (including overtime) was the equivalent of the price of one ten-year-old Nissan car, and all this despite the fact that on average, Qaddafi’s Libya earned much more money from the sale of oil in a single year than King idris’s had done in its entire eighteen years of existence. The government of King Idris had such excellent relations with the rest of the world that Libyans could travel to many countries without needing a visa; Qaddafi’s messed up Libya’s foreign relations to such an extent that Libya increasingly turned into a pariah state and Libyans found it difficult to travel anywhere. In a nutshell, King Idris’s was the healthy, able-bodied Libya; Qaddafi’s was the lupus-stricken Libya.
Enter the Arab Spring. The Zine Al-Abidine government of Tunisia was the first to be overthrown in 2011, followed shortly by the downfall of the government of Hosni Mubarak of Egypt. Soon after, massive anti-Qaddafi demonstrations took place in Libya, sparking off a bloody civil war in that country. Angst over what could happen if Qaddafi’s forces entered the eastern city of Benghazi led to a swift French-led NATO intervention in March 2011. Thanks to exclusively Libyan boots on the ground, backed up mainly by French and British aerial support, Qaddafi’s regime was overthrown by the end of that year. Libya had apparently been cured of its lupus…but….not of other ailments.
Having inherited in 1969 a Libya that was based on the rule of law and competent public institutions, Qaddafi gradually set about vitiating such institutions and turning the country into a one-man show. By the time of the Arab Spring uprisings, Libya had no functioning institutions to speak of, nor did it have the kind of government machinery that could have smoothed out the rocky process surrounding the transfer of political power. Consequently, once Qaddafi’s regime had collapsed, the country went into a tailspin and fragmented. The power vacuum created by the end of Qaddafi’s rule gradually gave rise to two governments; one in the western part of the country_ linked to the Tripoli-based General National Congress, or GNC_ and another in the eastern part_ associated with the Tobruk-based, internationally-recognized parliament_ both directly or indirectly linked to militias or their equivalents, all as follows: (1) Pro-GNC forces comprise (a) Libya Dawn controls the area from the western city of Misrata to the Libyan-Tunisian border and has considerable weight in cities and towns like Ghiryan, Nalut, and Jadu; (b) Libya Shield is made up of (i) Central Libya Shield which was part of the GNC’s Ministry of Defence, and (ii) Libya Shield Force 1 in Benghazi, led by Islamist Wissam Ben Ihmaid who had fought on the side of the late Muhammad Al-Zahawi who in turn was the head of the Islamist Ansar Al-Sharia; (c) Battalion 166 which fought with Libya Dawn against the Islamic State group (IS) in Sirte; (2) Petroleum Facilities Guard (PFG) is led by Ibrahim Jadhran; it allegedly protects oil facilities in central Libya, has fought with IS, but has more recently distanced itself from the east-based government due to its reservations about the Libyan National Army’s (LNA’s) military commander Khalifa Hefter; (3) Pro-Tobruk forces consist of (a) LNA; (b) Al-Sa’iqa (special forces); (c) Tanks Battalion; (d) Zintan Battalion, Al-Sawa’iq Battalion, and Al-Qi’qa’ Battalion; and (e) Salafis; and, finally, (4) Jihadis who are made up of (a) Islamic State (IS); (b) Benghazi Revolutionaries Shura Council (comprising Ansar Al-Shari’a, 17 February Martyrs Brigade, and Rafallah As-Sahati Brigade); (c) Derna Mujahideen Shura Council (an Al-Qaeda affiliate which has fought against and expelled IS from Derna), and (d) Ijdabiya Revolutionaries Shura Council (led by Muhammad Az-Zawi, an IS sympathizer, although other members have said that they are not.)
This convoluted picture has now been made even more complicated by the recent emergence of a third government, namely the Government of National Accord (GNA) which was supposed to replace the GNC, although the latter has now been reinvented as the Government of National Salvation (GNS) and is still led by the same political figure, i.e. Al-Ghwail. The GNS is apparently allied with the controversial Tripoli-based mufti, Al-Ghiryani, and seems to be in sympathy with a new Islamist group known as Defence of Benghazi Brigade which has lately been fighting along with Ijdabiya Liberation Operations Room against anti-Islamist forces in Ijdabiya. Libya has thus developed a case of political schizophrenia.