CAIRO – Fluttering flags and lights in red, white and green rose on buildings and lampposts around the Libyan capital Tripoli this month to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the uprising that its dictator overthrew.
There was apparently reason to celebrate: After a decade of fighting and instability, a new interim government was formed that promised to unite the country and hold democratic elections by the end of the year.
Outside the banks, where some customers waited in six-hour queues to claim their salaries, at petrol stations, where only occasional fuel was available, and in the suburb of Tripin, Ain Zara, where Ahmed al-Gammoudi spent two months lived without electricity. last year, the festive lights seemed little more than a mockery.
“I have heard all this talk about elections for eight years, and nothing has changed except that we are getting older,” he said. Al-Gammoudi, 31, said he was working 14-hour shifts at a cafe in Tripoli to repair his home, which was damaged during Libya’s civil war. ‘Every year the situation gets worse, and every government that comes says that it will not take more than two years before we have elections, but the exact opposite. The only thing that happens is war. ”
His cynicism is rooted in experience.
Since his dictator, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, driven out during the Arab Spring uprising that swept the Middle East a decade ago, saw Libya see its hopes for change and greater freedoms plummet in a wash-and-repeat cycle of diplomatic progress . followed by stalemate, followed by war – and, through it all, deep misery for Libyans themselves.
But diplomats and analysts say the government created by the United Nations marketing conference in Geneva this month is a breakthrough, though it is no guarantee of peace or stability.
The transitional government is being negotiated by 74 politicians, power brokers and representatives of the numerous regional factions and tribes of Libya.
Until a few months ago, it would have been difficult to imagine this group coming together to vote for new leadership, said Claudia Gazzini, a specialist in Libya at the International Crisis Group. The provisional government has also managed to demand endorsements, whether lukewarm or strong, from Libya’s biggest players in its clutter of political cliques, business interests, geographical competitors and foreign powers.
“I would not have bet a penny on this UN dialogue forum,” she said, recalling how previous attempts had been blown up due to foreign corruption or strife between Libyan factions. ‘But we have not seen these aggressive reactions yet, which is why I say that all of these factors are well predicted. It may not all work out, but as long as we do not get an immediate military response, it’s all good news. ”
In part, the cautious acceptance has to do with Abdul Hamid Dbeiba, the man elected after a surprise vote to serve as interim prime minister.
A wealthy businessman from the coastal city of Misurata, Mr. Dbeiba, for many, represents the “culture of corruption” from the el-Qaddafi era, as one analyst put it. Among the Libyan elite, however, he is seen as a non-ideological agreement with which all parties can negotiate, analysts said.
“Dbeiba, just the family name, leaves a bad taste in the mouths of Libyans,” said Tarek Megerisi, an analyst in Libya at the European Council on Foreign Relations. He said the new leaders “technically have the keys to the safe, and because everyone wants access to the state coffers, etc., they will try to work with him.”
Mr. Dbeiba did not respond to a request for an interview.
Other analysts were less ominous, noting that the United Nations-sponsored political forum had failed to draw up a set of interim leaders with ties to Libya’s key political constituencies as well as its three main regions, as it did not intend. Instead, the forum led to a group considered to be in line with Turkey, one of the major foreign powers swinging in Libya.
During the recent 15-month civil war, Khalifa Hifter, the eastern military commander seeking to oust the internationally backed government in Tripoli, enlisted the help of Russia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt. The intervention of Turkey on behalf of the Tripoli government has led to the withdrawal of Mr. Hifter forced and led to the end of the war.
But Mr. Hifter, whose forces still control most of eastern and central Libya, has publicly welcomed the new government, a surprising endorsement that could mean Mr. Hifter sees a chance: although he was in danger of marginalization after his defeat last year new government will need his support to succeed.
The interim government – Mr. Dbeiba and a presidential council of three men – are weak in themselves.
The group of 74 Libyans who chose it is ‘hardly representative’, said Wolfram Lacher, a senior associate of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin, and Emadeddin Badi, a senior fellow in the Middle East program of the Atlantic Council, written.
Instead of exceeding the divisions of Libya, they write in an article for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the result could allow rival factions to ‘seize the opportunity to share the spoils of Libya’s oil wealth and strengthen their respective clients and armed groups – just as they have done in previous Libyan governments. ”
The designated government must first set up a cabinet that is accepted by the various factions, by no means a forgotten result, and then win the approval of the House of Representatives, which is divided into eastern and western factions, and so far can not even vote to meet in the same city. .
Even as the interim government navigates these challenges, it faces the task of reuniting Libya’s central bank and other institutions, whose divisions have paralyzed the country and starved its economy and public wage of its own enormous oil revenues. A new electoral law, new constitutional framework and nationwide elections are supposed to follow by December.
For many Tripolitans, this is far from worrying. What matters to them are the rogue militias that control everyone but the capital, alternating power outages, coronavirus – strained hospitals and a shortage of medicines, and the rising price of basic products, including rice, milk and tomato paste. In some places petrol can only be found on the black market; due to a liquidity crisis, almost everyone sticks out hour-long lines at the banks every day.
Apart from a Tripoli bank, where the dozen customers were long and some waited six hours to withdraw cash, there was little hope that this year would turn out differently.
“Many governments have come and gone, and everyone initially promises them to improve the situation,” said Amina Drahami, 42, who was waiting to withdraw her father’s salary for him. ‘But you can see the situation in front of you yourself. And these crises have been going on for years. ”
Me. Drahami’s father suffers from cancer, but none of the public hospitals she has tried have the necessary medication. As her family scraps past, foreign forces and mercenaries remain scattered throughout Libya, in violation of a United Nations arms embargo and a January deadline to withdraw from Libya.
“We seem to be paying the price for it all,” she said. Drahami said, “from our pocketbooks, our health and our lives.”
Vivian Yee reports from Cairo, and Mohammed Abdusamee from Tripoli, Libya.