Man demonstrates against militia power, carrying a Libyan flag.

Militias Become Power Centers in Libya
By Reese Erlich, The Progressive, September 2012

Dressed in military fatigues and carrying AK-47 assault rifles, the Zintan militia surrounded the building in Tripoli and entered without a fight. They weren’t seizing the last remaining Qaddafi stronghold; they were taking an oil company CEO hostage. The militiamen were demanding money for protecting the CEO’s oil fields during Libya’s civil war.

There was only one problem. The company had already paid $600,000 for those services and wasn’t about to pay again.

A month earlier, a different armed group seized the offices of the same company demanding protection money. Employees didn’t know which militia carried out that raid.

“The police are useless,” one middle-level company employee told me. “There’s a new Libyan mafia.”

Forty-five miles away from the foreign oil company offices, the Zawiya refinery was producing gasoline and other fuels at 102 percent of capacity. Because each faction during the civil war figured it would be the eventual winner, much of the country’s oil infrastructure has remained intact. Overall oil production hit 1.5 million barrels per day in May, close to the 1.77 million mark under Qaddafi. British Petroleum announced it will resume exploration. France, Italy, Spain, Great Britain, and the United States are getting their crude, while near chaos reigns in the rest of the country.

The Western-backed National Transition Council (NTC) operates a weak and ineffective government. Some sixty militias are the real power centers. Unable to suppress the militias, the council uses some as auxiliary forces to be called out in time of emergency. Others are signing up among the various political parties, a dangerous trend.

Nevertheless, the Obama Administration sees Libya as a great success for its policy of “humanitarian intervention.” NATO removed a dictator hostile to the United States, the argument goes, without the death of any U.S. soldiers and with the cost to the Pentagon of a mere $1.1 billion. (The costs incurred by the CIA, State Department, and other government agencies have never been made public.)

I asked a State Department spokesman in Washington about the invasion’s political aftermath. He minimized the problems, arguing that the American colonists who expelled the British also fought among themselves after the Revolutionary War.
“In 1787, there was major conflict between the groups that fought,” he told me.
But Libya’s situation is far more unstable. I don’t believe there are any recorded cases of disgruntled American revolutionaries engaging in cannon and musket battles in front of the American government headquarters with George Washington trapped inside. That’s the equivalent of what happened in May when one militia used anti-aircraft cannons and rocket-propelled grenades to fight a two-hour gun battle outside the prime minister’s office in Tripoli.

Granted, any post-Qaddafi government in Libya was bound to face serious problems. The former dictator had suppressed independent political parties, trade unions, and the media. Libyans are building civil society institutions from the ground up.
But the NATO invasion made conditions much worse because the United States allied with militias and politicians most likely to ensure Western dominance, not those most determined to build democratic institutions.

Washington sought allies among the ex-Qaddafi military leadership and the newly minted militia leaders. The Obama Administration first backed Major General Khalifa Haftar, who reportedly had CIA ties while living in the United States for many years. He became commander-in-chief of the National Army until he was ambushed and wounded by the Zintan militia. Shortly thereafter he was demoted. The United States also backs Osama Al-Juwali, current minister of defense and former leader of the Zintan militia.

Libyan revolutionaries fear that such men will become U.S.-backed autocrats, similar to those who rose in Afghanistan.
“Some leaders here in Libya are trying to get Western backing to become the next Hamid Karzai,” says Elhabib Alamin, a famous poet and official with the Ministry of Culture. “We don’t want another Iraq or Afghanistan here in Libya. Those wars didn’t result in improvements for the people.”

The United States and the International Monetary Fund also are imposing cookie-cutter solutions for Libya’s economic future, leaning on the council to privatize state-owned companies and eliminate state subsidies.

Under their tutelage, for example, the Ministry of Economy studied how to eliminate food subsidies and other state-sponsored services that protect poor Libyans from the impact of inflation and unemployment. Economy Minister Ahmed Alkoshli acknowledged that complying with western dictates won’t be easy. “It’s very difficult to suddenly cut the subsidies,” he told me. “People will complain.”

The IMF will also face strong opposition from Libya’s nascent trade union movement, which has organized dozens of strikes so far this year. Workers at the Sirte Oil Company struck last October and forced the removal of the company president.
Mabrouk Othman, vice president of the Sirte union, tells me workers would never allow privatization of government oil fields and refineries. Profits from oil and gas should help pay for health care, education, and other public services as they do now, he says, adding that privatization of the oil industry is “a redline that can’t be crossed.”
Libya’s future economic policies are supposed to be determined through free elections for a national assembly, which will appoint a new government and oversee writing a new constitution. The elections will take place July 7.

But as experience in Afghanistan and Iraq shows, one or two elections do not a democracy make. In a particularly dangerous development, political parties are now allying with the strongest of the militias. The Muslim Brotherhood’s Justice and Development Party has a militia. Jihadist leader Abd al-Hakim Belhadj ran for the assembly while maintaining his Tripoli militia.

The alliances of parties and militias can quickly develop into a system of warlords, with politicians illegally siphoning off government funds to pay for the salaries and arms of their allied forces. Libya seems destined for a prolonged period of instability.
Despite these clouds, Alamin remains upbeat. “I’m optimistic,” he says. Just because the United States has a plan to rule Libya doesn’t mean it will actually happen, he contends.

The popular revolution that overthrew Qaddafi will not accept another strongman—at least not without a fight.
Foreign correspondent Reese Erlich reports regularly for The Progressive and is currently writing a book on the Arab Spring. A version of this article will appear in the September issue of The Progressive. Erlich’s most recent book is “Conversations with Terrorists: Middle East Leaders on Politics, Violence and Empire.” Visit reeseerlich.com

http://www.progressive.org/libya_militias.html

Poet and activist Elhabibe Alamin continues to fight for the princples of the Libyan uprising.

by Reese Erlich, Latitude News, June 14, 2012

 http://www.latitudenews.com/story/libyan-poet-fights-western-militias/

BENGHAZI, LIBYA – Not every poet gets to argue the inner meanings of his poems with an interrogator from the Libyan intelligence service. Elhabib Alamin did.

The writer and poet actively opposed dictator Muammar Gaddafi for years. Last year, he published “Me and My Burning Oven,” a poem fraught with metaphors about the Libyan people’s heated resistance to Gaddafi. The secret police hauled him in for questioning.

Alamin, who looks a bit like Adrian Brody crossed with a rock star, assured his interrogator that the poem was really about cooking. “Luckily,” Alamin told me, “the Arabic language has a lot of double meanings.”

Doing time, not meter

He wound up in jail soon after as the Gaddafi regime cracked down on the opposition movement here in Benghazi, where Alamin lives. Alamin spent seven months in prison, earning his freedom only when the people of Benghazi expelled Gaddafi’s forces. These days, Alamin heads Benghazi’s cultural department and is an official in the national Culture Ministry.

But he remains a political activist by necessity. Having fought hard against Gaddafi, he like many Libyans feels concerned that western powers will abandon Libya’s struggle for democracy. Foreign governments are happy that oil production is almost back to pre-war levels, he noted, but armed militias have more power than the central government.

“I don’t want Libya to become an ATM for western oil companies while they abandon the people of the country,” he told me.

U.S.-backed militias go rogue

The U.S. and NATO allied with local militias to defeat Gaddafi. The militias were supposed to dissolve months ago and join the national army. But so far, more than 60 have not. Some have become extortion racketeers. Still others push their political demands through armed force.

On May 8th, a Berber militia drove to the prime minister’s office in Tripoli demanding payment for their service in the anti-Gaddafi struggle. They also wanted the government to send wounded veterans abroad for medical treatment.

The militia began firing anti-aircraft cannons and rocket-propelled grenades at the office, trapping the prime minister for two hours before militias allied with the government arrived and fought off the attackers.

On June 4th, yet another militia seized control of the Tripoli airport to demand release of its arrested leader [click on the 6-5-12 tab]. Militiamen blocked the runways and forced passengers off commercial planes. Pro-government militias forced out the militiamen. The national army and police never showed.

Waiting for a government

The National Transitional Council, the coalition set up with blessing of the U.S. during the anti-Gaddafi campaign, has a tenuous grip on power. The NTC appointed an interim government earlier this year. In an interview, Minister of Economy Ahmed Alkoshli sounded almost apologetic about the attack on the prime minister’s office.

“They wanted things they deserved,” he said, referring to the Berber militia. “But it was not the right way to do it. Libya is seeking to be a country of laws with transparency.”

He emphasized that the transitional government has limited powers. “The next government will decide all important issues,” he told me. “We are setting the laws and stabilizing things for the next government to take action.”

Libyans were scheduled to go to the polls June 19th to elect a National Assembly, which in turn would select a new government and appoint drafters of a new Constitution. But the interim government postponed the elections until July 7th. Many Libyans say elections, when they do happen, won’t solve the country’s problems.

Arab sprung

The elections may worsen the militia problem. Militias have begun to ally with political parties. People like poet Alamin fear those parties will siphon off government funds to pay for militia weapons and salaries, leading to a system where warlords and a pro-Western autocrat vie for power, as happened in Iraq and Afghanistan.

 “Those wars didn’t result in improvements for the people of those countries,” said Alamin. “I think some leaders here in Libya are trying to get western backing to become the next Hamid Karzai.”

Alamin continues to write poetry and is getting tired of paper shuffling at his Culture Ministry job. He hopes to go back to political activism and writing full time.

He feels freer to write than he has in decades.

Tags: audio, Benghazi, Elhabibe Alamin, libya, militias, oil, poetry, rogue militias, U.S.-backed militias

Me and my burning oven
Elhabib Alamin

Oh grains of the valleys, who planted you and waited for months,

We are children of the earth, which has been grieving since the dawn of history

We rest ourselves in our toiling, waiting for the sun to ripen,

And the seasons of abundant grain.

Oh wheat mill who carved you?

Who sifted the flour and tossed away the chaff?

And who produced the brown loaf of barley?

I am the first wise man…

Translated from the Arabic by Razzaq al-Saiedi