A weekend of bloodshed in the Libyan capital represents merely the latest wake-up call for that country’s authorities, and officials elsewhere, that the situation is rapidly getting out of hand.
There is no need to spell out what is going wrong; anyone who’s read anything about Libya over the past year will be fully aware of the problem: a lack of strong state security institutions and an effective national army.
Statement after statement by Libyan and non-Libyan officials point to these serious challenges, but no one appears to have come up with a feasible solution. It isn’t that the Libyan authorities have done nothing to bring the situation under control – they have announced deadline after deadline for militiamen to return to the fold of the state, but the fact that they have had to announce deadline after deadline means the policy hasn’t worked.
The only thing new in the situation in Libya is the brazen and horrific sight of militiamen gunning down dozens of people – who had come out to peacefully protest against the militias Friday – in cold blood.
The rest of the weekend saw more violence, as well as the disappearance, and presumed kidnapping, of a senior state security official, at the hands of a militia.
Libya’s post-Moammar Gadhafi political class is in the grip of these militias, which means that it’s easy to understand how politicians have failed to rein them in. But Friday’s explosion indicates that while politicians might prefer to stall and hope for the best, the Libyan people have reached the end of their rope.
The other “newsworthy” event in Libya these days is the country’s growing infamy for being a launching pad for desperate migrants willing to risk their lives to travel to the other side of the Mediterranean, and again, Libya’s unscrupulous militias are involved.
Libyan officials aren’t in an enviable position. They face the threat of Al-Qaeda-inspired militants active in North Africa and African countries bordering the region, as well as their own, long-standing national problems of how to incorporate feuding regions, tribal groups and the Berber minority into a durable national political system.
But if they are to continue in office, they must find a solution, and quickly, or else step aside for others to do the job. One point of view in the Middle East holds that there is a “plot” underway to divide countries like Libya into smaller entities; many people might dismiss the conspiracy-theory brand of analysis, but the performance of Libyan officials raises serious doubts as to whether this trend isn’t actually underway already.
The international community offered either verbal or material support to the rebels who ended the Gadhafi era, and it should also do everything possible to halt and reverse the state of affairs in Libya today, because conditions there will have repercussions for a whole range of anxious neighbors.
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