Libya is evidently disintegrating as the daily escalation of violence is aimlessly continuing and it seems that there is no hope insight for a ceasefire of some sort. The situation is getting progressively from bad to worse, by the hour, as Libya is quickly heading back almost to the time of pre-unification of the country in the middle of the previous century. Many observers are rushing to history books to inquisitively review that part of Libya’s past in an attempt to understand what is currently happening in the country and in which direction is it going.
One day in late 1991, my brother-in-law, the late Mansour Rashid Al Kikhya, first foreign minister of Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya, briefed me about that period of his country’s history, which he and a few hundred other young Libyans had aspired to build. They had in their sight the task of rebuilding a modern Libya, free from British and American military influence, which King Idris I, the first leader of an independent Libya, had failed to address. He led me down to the basement of his house in the outskirts of Paris and unwrapped a delicately covered, huge and wonderful portrait painting of the first — and the only — King Libya had ever had: Idris I (Mohammad Idris Bin Mohammad Al Mahdi as-Senussi; March 1889-May 1983).
“This is the real and only unifier leader of Modern Libya,” Mansour said. “Without his wisdom and farsightedness, Libya would have still been divided into three tribal provinces.” The provinces in questions were Cyrenaica (Barqa) in the east, Tripolitania in the west and Fazzan in the southwest. Equally important, the late King, whose reign lasted 18 years (1951-1969), also held a highly spiritual position, which he had inherited, as the Chief of the Senussi Muslim Sufi order. While in Turkey for medical treatment, Idris was deposed in a coup d’etat in 1969, led by the then lieutenant Muammar Gaddafi.
Al Kikhya, who was the leading figure in the Libyan opposition movement and one of the many victims of the former dictator, explained that he intentionally saved the only known self-portrait of the King from the vicious campaigns by the so-called “People’s Committees”, haphazardly launched by Gaddafi in late 1970s and early 1980s “to cleanse” Libya from all traces of its national heritage. Al Kikhya, who was then Head of Libya’s Mission at the United Nations, had secretly managed to smuggle the portrait to Paris after he fell out with Gaddafi and before the latter’s “Committees” could lay their hands on it. Al Kikhya was kidnapped by Gaddafi’s agents from Cairo in December 1993, tortured and left to die. His body was stored in a freezer and kept in a cave under one of Gaddafi’s many palaces in Tripoli. His remains were found and verified in December 2012.
King Idris had apparently read the future well when he decided to put all his eggs in the British Military Administration of Cyrenaica basket against the fascist Italian occupying forces, which collaborated with Nazi Germany during the Second World War. The Senussi tribes were instrumental in the intelligence network that helped defeat the invading German forces led by General Erwin Rommel. Idris was rewarded and proclaimed as Emir of the independent Emirate of Cyrenaica in 1949. Subsequently, he was also invited to become Emir of Tripolitania. Idris immediately began the process of uniting Libya under a single monarchy. A constitution was enacted in 1949 and adopted in October 1951. A national Congress elected Idris as King. This paved the way for him to declare the independence of the United Kingdom of Libya as a sovereign state on December 24, 1951. From Benghazi, the heart of Cyrenaica, Idris led a team of Libyan personalities to negotiate with Britain and the UN over independence, which was eventually achieved on December 24, 1951. It marked the proclamation of the Federal United Kingdom of Libya, with Idris I as king.
In 1961, the country’s constitution was vigorously revised and Libya became a unitary state as the Kingdom of Libya. Idris I had the same principles that formed part of his Sufi heritage, widely endorsing peaceful coexistence, tolerance and the principle of “live and let live” — similar to the principles of past great men such as Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela. Idris went into exile in Egypt after Gaddafi’s 1969 coup and lived in Dokki, Cairo, till his death in 1983. He was buried at Jannat Al Baqi, Madina, Saudi Arabia.
The call to divide Libya along the federal system of 1951 resurfaced again as recent as 2013 when the people of Benghazi, who consider their city as the place where the 2011 revolution was born, called for a greater autonomy. Complaining that the central government in Tripoli was deliberately sidestepping Benghazi and its people, federalist leaders named, in November 2013, former air force commander Abd Rabbo Al Barasi Prime Minister of the Eastern Region and immediately assigned him with a single mission: The division of Libya into three self-governing regions based on the three historic administrative entities: Cyrenaica, Tripolitania and Fezzan.
In view of the current bloody events, it is feared that Libya may be heading down that divisive route. With the obvious absence of a central leadership, this possibility is real.
Mustapha Karkouti is a former president of the Foreign Press Association, London.
