Militia rivalries threaten new war in post-revolt Libya

When gunmen snatched Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zeidan from his Tripoli hotel two weeks ago, it was a rival armed militia he thanked for his rescue hours later.

Even for Libyans accustomed to their democracy’s unruly beginnings, the drama at the Corinthia Hotel was a startling reminder of the power former fighters wield two years after they ousted Muammar Gaddafi, and the dangers of their rivalry.

Police and troops from Libya’s nascent army were at the scene, but the former militiamen showed they are the arbiters in a struggle between rival tribal and Islamist leaders over the post-revolution spoils of the North African oil producer.

Between them, they have edged Libya close to a new war that threatens the democratic gains of the NATO-backed revolt.

Too weak to take back control of a country awash with Gaddafi-era weapons, Libya’s central government has been forced to co-opt militias into semi-official security services over which it exercises little control.

“We want to build a state with an army, police and institutions, but there are some people who want to obstruct this,” Zeidan, still in his pyjamas, told reporters after his release, referring to critics in parliament who had been planning a vote of no confidence, accusing him of failing on security.

Tripoli has been spared the major militia clashes seen in the eastern city of Benghazi. But the standoff is evident; gunmen from two rival groups sit in pick-up trucks mounted with anti-aircraft cannons in different parts of the capital.

In the east, the Libya Shield Force and Islamist militias drawn from anti-Gaddafi fighters based in the country’s fertile coastal areas and their commanders from Misrata city are entrenched at the Mittiga air base.

Across the city, powerful tribal Zintan militia, part of a loose alliance of mostly secular Bedouin groups from the desert interior, once recruited into Gaddafi’s security forces, control an area around Tripoli’s international airport.

The militia rivalries mirror a struggle within Libya’s fragile government, where the secular tribal alliance controls the defense ministry and the Islamist-leaning Libya Shield Force works under the interior ministry.

Parliament is split on similar lines, with a secular National Forces Alliance at loggerheads with the political wing of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood over Libya’s future.

Zeidan’s captors, allied to the Shield Force, said they were motivated by anger over a US raid to capture a top al Qaeda suspect in Tripoli. The premier, freed by a defense ministry-allied militia, called his abduction an attempted coup.

Tensions with the Islamists have risen since the premier’s September visit to Egypt, where they accused him of endorsing the military’s ouster of Islamist president Mohammed Mursi.

“The political outcome of the revolution hasn’t been finalized and people still think there are things to be won and things to be lost,” a Libya-based Western diplomat said.

Revolution to be finalised

Zeidan had been held in a government office by gunmen from an Islamist militia allied to the Shield Force. Details of his release are still hazy, but a loyal militia fired rocket-propelled grenades outside the office just beforehand.

Riccardo Fabiani, a North Africa analyst with Eurasia Group said militias appeared to be using their muscle for specific demands. But that might spin out of control if accusations Zeidan’s political foes orchestrated his abduction proved true.

“That would significantly alter the outlook and could plunge Libya into chaos, as other groups would have a reason to rise up against an attempted coup.”

In Benghazi, regional capital of the oil-rich eastern Libya, where Islamist militants attacked the U.S. embassy a year ago, militiamen backed by the army clashed earlier this year with the Libya Shields Force. More than 30 people were killed.

For months, militiamen commanded by a former security chief have held key ports in the east, halving the oil exports of the OPEC member, Africa’s third largest producer and a key supplier to Europe. A powerful western tribal militia has kept Gaddafi’s captive son in its desert stronghold.—Reuters