Aid is needed to stamp out dictators

ColONEL Muammar al-Gaddafi’s murderous regime is now finished even if, by the time you read this, the colonel himself has not been arrested or killed. Support for him has evaporated like dew in hot sun as rebel forces, despite being disorganised and poorly equipped, have swept into Tripoli and surrounded his enclave. So what’s next for the Libyan people?

The risk is that, like Iraq immediately post-Saddam Hussein, Libya descends into anarchy. There are some obvious similarities between the two regimes. Libya’s government has been heavily centralised around the personality cult nurtured by Gaddafi. Power has been concentrated on himself, his family, and a favoured few admitted into the ruling elite who have been mostly drawn from his own tribe.

The lesson of Iraq is that when this elite disappears, a vacuum is created into which all manner of folk rush in order to claim a piece of power or to exact revenge for wrongs they have suffered, real or imagined. Unlike Tunisia or Egypt, but ominously like Iraq, Libya has no political parties and hardly anything in the way of civil institutions distant from the regime which people can trust and which can help maintain some sort of order.

The risk of instability and lawlessness, which can make many people feel that things were better under Gaddafi, is extremely high, simply because up to five different sources of disorder can be identified.

First, futile though it may seem to outsiders, there may be continued violent resistance by pro-Gaddafi elements who feel that they have nothing to lose as, without the regime, they have lost anyway. As with the Saddam fedayeen, some may be prepared to attack important installations – government offices, power and oil plants, secret police bases, perhaps even hospitals and schools.

Second, the bulk of the population in Tripoli have been oppressed from within the city and besieged from without. Probably lacking in food, fuel, and desirable commodities, the urge to go out and loot while the usual authorities of the police and the military are absent, may be overwhelming, particularly if there are nearby businesses or homes of people which are thought to have gained from the regime.

Third, the Libyan people are anything but united. The National Transition Council, based in Benghazi, is an uneasy patchwork of regime defectors, liberals, democrats, Islamists, returning expatriates, and a variety of tribes. The glue holding them together has been opposition to Gaddafi, but once he and his clique are gone, disunity may rapidly appear. Already, serious divisions within these ranks have been signalled by the killing in July of General Younis, a former interior minister who had gone over to the rebels.

Fourth, people who have suffered from the excesses of the regime, whose family members have been killed or had property confiscated, may seek to exact revenge. The police, the much-despised revolutionary committees, the security apparatus, and even the military may become targets, threatening a tit-for-tat cycle of violence.

Fifth, criminality is a serious threat, not just from ordinary burglars and muggers. Those who worked for the regime may be tempted to “liberate” state-owned assets. Some Islamic extremists and terrorists are believed to have been released by the regime early in the conflict in order to create chaos. More may get out if there is an amnesty for people imprisoned by Gaddafi. Weapons and drug dealers can be expected to move in to profit from the insecurity.

Beyond these short-term problems, there is the medium-term problem of there being no impartial justice system in which people can have confidence that criminality will be dealt with and rights to property, including belongings which may have been confiscated by the regime, will be upheld.

There is also the matter of the more than one million refugees forced out by the conflict. They will want to come back, but may be returning to destroyed homes and despoiled land.

These are not just challenges for the Libyan people, but also for the countries which supported the rebellion. Again, the lesson from Iraq is clear – when military action has all but ceased, social or nation-rebuilding action has to step into high gear.

The immediate priority is to make sure that food, water, and medical services are provided. Most Libyans are poor; the country’s oil wealth was hoarded by a minority elite. Thus the kind of international aid effort normally associated with drought and war-stricken sub-Saharan Africa is now needed in Libya.

Much of this effort should be led by European countries, especially those who have invested military effort in toppling Gaddafi. There is self-interest here – a chaotic Libya will mean a renewed wave of people trying to emigrate to Europe to escape the violence. Escapees to neighbouring Tunisia and Egypt will only add to the problems of those countries struggling to establish their own post-dictatorship societies.

After that, building a more liberal and democratic Libya should be primarily led by the Libyans themselves. A mistake made by the US in Iraq was to disband the army and much of the police too early. While some senior people in these institutions will need to be removed, police and some of the new militias in parts of rebel-held Libya have successfully worked to restore order.

But this does not mean that an external peace-keeping operation, preferably under the auspices of the UN and involving military or para-military personnel from other Arab and African countries, should be ruled out. Again, there is a mutual self-interest in this. Libyan people need the revenue from oil exports to pay for reconstruction; western countries need restored oil flows to reduce the crude oil prices.

Involvement of western countries is also needed to encourage the National Transition Council to start the urgent task of building civil institutions needed to steer into lawful activity the kind of tensions mentioned above. It is also important to keep encouraging movement towards an open, democratic, and accountable system which is the ultimate guarantee for a peaceful and stable Libya.

Politicians in Europe and America, pre-occupied with their own problems of over-stretched armed forces and stressed budgets, may well baulk at undertaking any of this. But again, there is an awful lesson from Iraq. Limited early intervention and assistance is less expensive and less costly in lives than the kind of chaos which ensued in Iraq once Saddam Hussein had been deposed.