Oil, Guns, and Tribesmen: Will Libya’s Militias Lay Down their Arms?

Stockpile of ammunition and supplies in Ras Lanuf checkpoint (Courtesy of Al Jazeera English’s Flickr account)

Libya’s failure to collect weapons and bring militiamen into the rank-and-file of the defense and interior ministries not only endangers the democratic transition in the oil rich country, but also threatens to destabilize neighboring countries and conflict zones in the Sahel region.

In recent months, Tunisia, for example, has seen a surge in seized weapon caches and incidents involving the illegal use of firearms. We knew that post-Gaddafi Libya became the largest open arms market in the region. So I decided to pay a visit to old friends, whom I met during the six months leading up to the fall of Tripoli, to assess efforts by Libyan authorities to collect freely circulating weapons.

As my cab plodded through Tripoli’s endless traffic, I was surprised to see that billboards, which were plastered over with advertisements of telecommunications companies, shampoos, and pasta during the Gaddafi era, were now covered with martyrs’ faces as well as their names and dates of death: a reminder that Libya still has a long way to salve the wounds from the brutality of a decades-long dictatorship.

My driver says safety has improved a lot in the past two years, and that he does not have to carry his gun around anymore. He keeps two handguns and a dozen of Kalashnikovs at home.

The government’s attempt to collect weapons was not successful. Even though it saw a rise in arms collections after the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, the number of retrieved weapons remains well below total estimates of arms currently circulating in Libya.

“There’s an estimated 50 million bullets in Zintan alone,” said Ahmed Bara, a former Libyan diplomat. “This will be a major challenge for Libya.”

Mabrouk, a senior security official, admits that this dilemma cannot be fixed within a year or two.

“People do not have trust yet. They want to make sure they can defend themselves if need be – including myself. I am keeping 25 Kalashnikovs back home,” he said.

Mabrouk points out that Libyan weapons can be found as far away as Syria, not to mention neighboring countries.

“The same weapons that France delivered to us during the revolution to bring down Gaddafi were used recently to bring down French planes in Mali,” he added.

For Mabrouk, it makes more sense for the government to integrate those holding the weapons rather than to try and take the arms away from them. A deadline to join the army and the police forces was put forward on March 7 to all armed men.

On March 3, after clashes broke out in the gas plant of Mellitah between militias from Zuera and Zintan, Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zeidan, along with eight cabinet members, declared that he would not allow any illegitimate armed groups to exist anymore.

“Joint government forces will move into rebel compounds to arrest them,” said the prime minister, specifying that the operation would start in Tripoli and expand to all regions in Libya.

The majority of weapons used by rebels during the Libyan uprising have yet to be collected by authorities (Courtesy of Magharebia’s Flickr account)

There is an estimated number of 1,700 militia groups across the country, and especially in the north. All of them are in possession of large amounts of weaponry. While government officials are hopeful this operation will succeed, a field commander leading one of Tripoli’s strongest militias said he is unlikely to join, and that the operation would not succeed.

“The government is too weak and could not even intervene the clashes that occurred in Mellitah,” he said. The commander went on to express his dislike for the current government, which, according to him, should step down for its alleged collaboration with Gaddafi in the past.

Further south, it has become a major challenge to control the borders in the vast Libyan desert of which the only masters are those who can find their way around the sand dunes.

On January 11, French forces attacked Jihadists in northern Mali, but a French expert declared to Jeune Afrique magazine that strangely the Jihadists did not incur many casaulties as if they had an exit plan. There was only one exit route for them: the Libyan desert through northern Niger and southern Algeria.

On January 16, Jihadists staged a four-day siege of the In Amenas gas plant, which is only 20 km away from the Libyan border. Jeune Afrique reports that Algerian authorities believe that some of the Jihadists were former members of the Tripoli brigade under the command of Abdulhakim Belhaj. As a result, Algeria has banned him from entering the country.

North Africa has changed dramatically in the last couple of years. Today, the future of the countries north and south of the Sahel is extremely dependent on how well Libya addresses its security challenges and whether it is able to control its territory. On February 22, President Barack Obama revealed that about a hundred American experts are deployed in Niger to help the country control its north.

Yet, my cab driver exclaims, “Everything in Libya is under control.”