The oil-rich eastern region of Libya has surprised the rest of the country by declaring itself to be autonomous, even though its leaders say that they still recognise the National Transitional Council (NTC) as the national government of Libya. The NTC's interim leader Mustafa Abdul Jalil and Prime Minister Abdul Rahim Al Keeb have flatly rejected Cyrenaica's federalist proposal as a throwback to the past.
The oil-rich eastern region of Cyrenaica is based on Benghazi, and for years it was marginalised by Libya's western region based on the capital Tripoli. The NTC is well aware of the problem but its solution is a country-wide programme of decentralisation, which would create more than 50 local councils with considerable decision-making powers and discretionary budgets. This idea has the benefit of not making the east a special case, and following a structured process of covering all of Libya.
But despite its good ideas, the NTC has been disastrously slow to act. It has failed to take control of the country, and even though it has money and the support of many former rebel groups, its inaction has allowed tribal and regional groupings to seek to grab power for themselves. The best way to deal with Cyrenaica's proposal is to appeal to the people of the east to back the national government and its decentralisation programme.
But to succeed in gathering such popular appeal, the NTC will have to show that it is able to deliver. Its present hesitancy will not help its case, and can only allow the threat of secession to grow because even though the Benghazi-based proposal is clear that it supports the NTC, its unilateral nature means that it could easily slip into secession. The worst case would be for the NTC to threaten armed repression of the eastern idea, and start to take Libya back to civil war.
