As Libya struggles down a democratic path beset with violence, western powers are renewing calls for dialogue. But these are now falling on the deaf ears of a country rising up against waves of Islamist-orientated violence, with Libyans increasingly looking towards a military solution.
United Nations Special Envoy Benardino Leon has stressed that dialogue is the way out of Libya’s current crisis. This dialogue — which the West indicates should be between Libya’s democratically-elected parliament and government, now relocated to the eastern town of Tobruk, and rogue institutions set up by militias who have taken control of the capital by force — undermines the very basis of democracy. After all, the illegal takeover of Tripoli was prompted by results of parliamentary elections lauded as free and fair.
Such dialogue would amount to giving equal weight to bullets as to ballots, putting elected MPs on a similar footing to the brute force of militias who resorted to weapons when the ballot box failed to provide the desired results.
In theory, dialogue is a commendable aim, but when those involved include groups that have rejected democratic processes and who will stop at nothing to achieve their goals, it becomes farcical at best and dangerous at worst.
Despite the failures of a UN-backed dialogue initiative earlier this year, the international body is back waving the flag of dialogue.
This is now being bolstered by various western figures including Britain’s Special Envoy Jonathan Powell who showed unacceptable ignorance of the country in a recent interview with the Tony Blair Faith Foundation. He brushed aside the crucial importance of tribes as “some tribal differences left over from history” and the long-standing tensions between East and West Libya as “not actually a huge amount”. Yet this grievance lay behind the significant year-long federalist oil blockade covered by all global news outlets.
Even Powell’s book Talking To Terrorists is a scant credential, in a country where one of the principal battles is against US-designated terrorist organisation, Ansar Al Sharia.
With hundreds of eastern Libyans murdered in individual assassinations over the last two years, Operation Dignity led by General Khalifa Haftar was the closest thing to justice that the East had seen. The popularity of this military movement, supported by civilian volunteers, showed it was deeds not words that could win people over and help wrest Benghazi from the control of Ansar Al Sharia. Powell’s supposed area of expertise has so far failed in Libya. His other credential — as former British prime minister Blair’s chief-of-staff during the wars with Iraq and Afghanistan — should perhaps discount him as an envoy. Along with Blair, he has become another war-mongering politician remodelling himself as a universal harbinger of peace. Although, as former Irish Republican Army member Sean O’Callaghan pointed out in The Spectator: “It is patently ludicrous to promote [Powell’s] drivel in areas of major geopolitical concerns.”
Another individual presented by some as having a role to play in Libya’s future stability is erstwhile leader of the Al Qaida-affiliated Libya Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), Abdul Hakim Belhaj. On CNN, Christiane Amanpour described him as “a former militia leader putting himself forward as national conciliator ... who many say will be key to making peace in Libya”. In reality, Belhaj is a politically unsuccessful figure in Libya, but one who is believed by some to be partly responsible for the current chaos, bolstered by foreign funding from Qatar. Before CNN, his other high-profile appearances were a meeting with US Ambassador Deborah Jones, photos of which were circulated on social media and a speech at a Muslim Brotherhood party conference.
When Amanpour interviewed Powell on CNN he said Belhaj “represented certain tendencies in Libya” and was therefore a “significant player” who should be included in dialogue. Showing further ignorance of Libya, Powell depicted the current conflict as between the legitimate parliament — which he incorrectly claimed moved to Tobruk because they wanted to be in an area controlled by Haftar — and a Misratan militia: An inaccurate description. Although people called this Misratan militia Islamists, he explained: “There are Islamists and Islamists. You have to bear in mind that the Muslim Brotherhood is not Al Qaida ... These are a different sort of Islamists who are basically businessmen interested in getting to a stable society.”
This is a bizarre description of armed militias who have undermined democracy through the use of force. It remains unacceptable to welcome anyone to the table of dialogue who has forced his way there with the barrel of a gun. It is the understated yet determined roles of Libyan figures such as Prime Minister Abdullah Al Thinni and military leaders in the East, including Haftar and Special Forces Commander Wanis Bukhmada, who are taking on the terrorists. Western audiences may not see them interviewed on CNN, but everyone in Libya knows exactly who they are.
The West’s interference and insistence on the benefits of talking to terrorists is one of the reasons why Libya is now spiralling out of control. In our obsession to call for democracy and dialogue, we inadvertently achieve the opposite: We legitimise the intolerant and the anti-democratic.
Richard Galustian is a business and security analyst who has lived in Libya since 2011.
