The Never Ending Libya Nightmare: Civil War, Benghazi and Beyond

The Never Ending Libya Nightmare: Civil War, Benghazi and Beyond

May 21, 2014 09:05 am | Paul R. Pillar

Paul R. Pillar
Security, Libya
Just when one might have thought the mess in Libya could not have gotten worse, it has.  The latest round in the multidimensional chaos that has prevailed since the overthrow of Muammar Qaddafi was initiated by an ex-general named Khalifa Hiftar, who was trained in the Soviet Union, participated as a junior officer in the coup that brought Qaddafi to power in 1969, later broke with the Libyan dictator, and lived for years in the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC, where he apparently became a U.S. citizen.  Hiftar returned to Libya after Qaddafi was ousted.  Now he has put together a force he calls the “Libyan National Army” and aims at removing the interim parliament in Tripoli.
Saudi Arabia and several other Arab states have evacuated their diplomats from Libya, the United States is preparing for possible evacuation of U.S. personnel, and the country appears on the brink of a larger civil war.  In any such war it would be difficult to keep score, or to know whom to root for.  The mélange of militias that have provided what has passed for law and order in most of Libya are choosing sides in no particular pattern.  Those in Libya closest to being called secular liberals seem to be associated with military officers of the old regime.  The current chief of staff of the Libyan army—at least that's his title, not to be confused with whatever actual power he wields—has “ordered” Islamist militias to confront Hiftar's force in the capital.
Those who would like to blame the now-deceased Muammar Qaddafi for this muddle would have a basis for doing so, in that during the four decades of his personal rule whatever could have formed the institutional basis for a healthy civil society and pluralistic politics was destroyed or allowed to wither.  We also need to hold responsible, however, all those who blithely overlooked this fact, who refuse to believe that political culture and recent political history have anything to do with the prospects for building a stable political order, and who think that getting rid of a despised dictator is all that is needed to bring such an order into existence.  We do not know exactly what would have been the course of the revolt against Qaddafi had outside states not intervened.  We do know that several states, including the United States, did intervene forcefully, and for that reason they share some responsibility for the situation in Libya today.
Read full articlehttp://nationalinterest.org/blog/paul-pillar/the-never-ending-libya-nightmare-civil-war-benghazi-beyond-10503