Analysis: Cracks opening in Libya reflect failure of NTC to get a grip

LIBYA’S quiet-spoken leader Mustafa Abdel Jalil is not noted for displays of passion but he has suddenly shown his teeth in promising to “use force” to prevent a break-up of the country.

His outburst was in response to the declaration on Tuesday by leaders in Libya’s second city, Benghazi, that they had formed their own provisional government irrespective of the wishes of the ruling National Transitional Council.

The collection of activists, politicians and tribal leaders who have unveiled the self-declared Provisional Council of Cyrenaica, which they have given the Arabic name Burqa, insist they want autonomy, not independence. But many don’t believe them, particularly since the territory which stretches from Sirte on the coast to the border with Egypt contains one fifth of the population and four fifths of the oil.

The autonomy declaration is a reminder also that the roots of a united Libyan state are shallow. Not until 1934 was there such a country as Libya: Before, the provinces of Cyrenaica, Tripolitania and the southern Fezzan were ruled by Italy and before that by the Ottoman Empire.

Add in the fact that the eastern city of Benghazi, 600 miles from the capital, felt marginalised by the 42 years of rule by Col Muammar al-Gaddafi, and you have the ingredients for division.

More than one Benghazian mused about the idea of splitting the country last year, when the East found itself free and locked in a war of attrition with Gaddafi’s forces in western Libya. Any talk of splitting the country failed to get off the ground because the rebellions in the western cities of Misrata and Zintan made a workable partition impossible.

The threat has galvanised the normally placid Mr Jalil into fury, and his speech on Wednesday was virtually a call to arms, as he blamed talk of autonomy on pro-Gaddafi forces and “outside elements” – code for foreigners.

“I call on my brothers, the Libyan people, to be aware and alert to the conspiracies that are being plotted against them,” said Mr Jalil.

Yet while there may be opportunists and pro-Gaddafi elements helping to drive the separatist agenda, the larger cause is an exasperation with Mr Jalil’s government, the NTC. Four months after the end of the war, the NTC has failed to get a grip. Its meetings are secret, it has closed its press office, and a cabinet appointed in November is starved of authority. Instead, the NTC rules by decree, or not at all.

This clumsy apparatus, said to be riven with factionalism, has proved incapable of rebuilding Libya after eight months of war and 42 years of corrupt dictatorship. And Libyans are starting to notice. Misrata, Libya’s third city, is already self-governing, having held its own elections in February.

So too are the militias. The more than 500 militias are rooted in the communities they were formed to protect. Armed clashes continue, mainly because most units won’t accept the NTC’s small National Army, which they see as dominated by Gaddafi-era officers. The problem, in other words, is Mr Jalil’s to solve. Few in Benghazi, or elsewhere in Libya, want independence. What they want is a proper government.