CAIRO – Red, white and green flying flags and ornamental lights were erected on buildings and lampposts around Libya’s capital, Tripoli, this month to mark the 10th anniversary of the uprising that toppled its dictator.
There seemed to be reason to celebrate: after a decade of struggle and instability, a new interim government was formed, promising to unify the country and hold democratic elections by the end of the year.
Outside the banks, where some customers waited in six-hour lines to claim their wages, at gas stations, where fuel was only available intermittently, and in the suburb of Tripoli, Ain Zara, where Ahmed al-Gammoudi lived without electricity for two months last year, the festive lights seemed little more than a mockery.
“I’ve been listening to all this election talk for eight years and nothing has changed, except that we’re getting older,” said al-Gammoudi, 31, who works 14-hour shifts at a Tripoli cafe to finance repairs to his home, which was damaged during the Libyan civil war. “Every year the situation gets worse and every government that comes says that it won’t take more than two years to have elections, but what happens is exactly the opposite. The only thing that happens is war. “
His cynicism is rooted in experience.
Since the overthrow of its dictator, Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi, during the Arab Spring uprisings that swept the Middle East a decade ago, Libya has seen its hopes for change and greater freedom fall into a cycle of rinse and repeat diplomatic progress. followed by stalemate followed by war – and, despite everything, profound misery for the Libyans themselves.
But diplomats and analysts say the government created by United Nations-mediated negotiations in Geneva this month, while there is no guarantee of peace or stability, represents an advance.
Negotiated by 74 politicians, power brokers and representatives of many regional Libyan factions and tribes, the transitional government aims to be the next step in uniting the oil and gas-rich country after a ceasefire in October in its civil war.
Until a few months ago, it would have been difficult to imagine this group coming together to vote for a new leadership, said Claudia Gazzini, Libya expert at the International Crisis Group. The provisional government has also managed to claim endorsement, whether lukewarm or robust, from most of the main players in the tangle of Libya’s political factions, commercial interests, geographical rivals and foreign powers.
“I would not have bet a penny on this UN dialogue forum,” she said, recalling how previous attempts had exploded as a result of foreign spoilers or disputes between Libyan factions. “But we haven’t seen these aggressive reactions and that’s why I say that all of these factors together bode well. It may not work, but as long as we do not have an immediate military response, it is good news. “
In part, cautious acceptance has to do with Abdul Hamid Dbeiba, the man chosen, after a surprise vote, to serve as interim prime minister.
A wealthy businessman from the coastal city of Misurata, Mr. Dbeiba, for many, represents the “culture of corruption” of the el-Gaddafi era, as one analyst said. Among the Libyan elite, however, he is seen as a non-ideological negotiator with whom all sides can negotiate, analysts said.
“Dbeiba, just the family name, leaves a bad taste in the Libyans’ mouth,” said Tarek Megerisi, a Libyan analyst at the European Council on Foreign Relations. Still, he said, the new leaders “technically have the keys to the safe and, since everyone wants access to the state coffers and so on, they will try to work with it.”
Mr. Dbeiba did not respond to an interview request.
Other analysts were less optimistic, noting that the United Nations-sponsored political forum failed to produce a set of provisional leaders with ties to Libya’s most important political constituents, as well as its three main regions, as it intended to do. Instead, the forum led to a group considered to be aligned with Turkey, one of the main foreign powers with influence in Libya.
During the recent 15-month civil war, Khalifa Hifter, the eastern military commander who sought to overthrow the internationally supported government in Tripoli, had help from Russia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt. It was Turkey’s intervention on behalf of the Tripoli government that forced Hifter’s withdrawal and led to the end of the war.
But Hifter, whose forces still control most of eastern and central Libya, has publicly welcomed the new government, a surprise endorsement that may mean that Hifter sees an opportunity: although he was at risk of marginalization after his defeat in the last year, the new government will need your support to succeed.
The interim government – Dbeiba and a three-man presidential council – is weak on its own.
The group of 74 Libyans who chose him “is hardly representative,” wrote Wolfram Lacher, a senior associate at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin, and Emadeddin Badi, senior researcher on the Atlantic Council program for the Middle East.
Instead of transcending Libya’s divisions, they wrote in an article for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the result may allow rival factions to “seize the opportunity to share the spoils of Libya’s oil wealth and strengthen their respective clientele and groups. armed – as much as they did under previous Libyan governments. ”
The designated government must first produce a cabinet accepted by the various factions, in no way a lost result, and then obtain approval from the House of Representatives, which is divided into eastern and western factions and so far cannot even agree to meet at the same town .
Even though the provisional government faces these challenges, it faces the task of reuniting Libya’s central bank and other institutions, whose divisions have paralyzed the country and deprived its economy and public payroll of its own huge oil revenues. A new electoral law, a new constitutional framework and national elections are expected to take place by December.
For many tripolitans, these are distant concerns. What matters to them are the dishonest militias that control the capital, intermittent electrical blackouts, hospitals affected by the coronavirus and lack of medicines and the increase in the price of basic products, including rice, milk and tomato paste. In some places, gasoline can only be found on the black market; in almost all, due to a liquidity crisis, long queues stretch out at banks every day.
Outside a Tripoli bank on Friday, where the queue had dozens of customers and some waited six hours to withdraw money, there was little hope that this year would be any different.
“Many governments have come and gone, and all of them initially promise to improve the situation,” said Amina Drahami, 42, who hoped to withdraw her father’s salary for him. “But you can see the situation in front of you yourself. And these crises have been going on for years. “
Mrs. Drahami’s father suffers from cancer, but none of the public hospitals she tried had the drugs he needed. As long as his family survives, foreign forces and mercenaries remain scattered throughout Libya, in violation of a United Nations arms embargo and a January deadline for withdrawing from Libya.
“It is as if we are paying the price for all this,” said Drahami, “with our pockets, our health and our lives.”
Vivian Yee reported from Cairo and Mohammed Abdusamee from Tripoli, Libya.