Libya’s struggle for direction

Country grapples with question of what government will suit it best

SITTING in his café near the spot where the protests against Muammar Gaddafi touched off the Libyan revolution eight years ago, Miftah Atluba is not sorry the dictator has gone.

Yet like many in Benghazi who are tired after three years of street fighting that flattened whole districts, the 45-year-old thinks it’s time to return to the old way of running things.

“Muammar needed to go, but democracy hasn’t worked out in Libya,” he said, sipping coffee in one of the few buildings still standing in a city centre where from 2014 to 2017 war raged between the forces of Khalifa Haftar, a general who turned against Gaddafi, and his mainly Islamist opponents.

Atluba’s café was damaged. But the building survived, unlike the courthouse next door where the families of political prisoners gathered to demand their release in February 2011, triggering the uprising that toppled Gaddafi.

“We’ve had chaos and terrorism. Now we need military rule to build a state,” Atluba said.

The UN wants to hold a national conference to prepare for elections and unite a country that sits on Africa’s largest proven oil reserves and produces just under a million barrels a day.

Currently, political control in Libya is split between rival tribes, armed groups and even administrations. The east has its own government, which is opposed to a UN-backed authority in Tripoli.

But the scars of war in Benghazi show the difficulties of reconciling two rival camps – former soldiers and tribesmen in eastern Libya versus Islamists and urban elites in the west.

Pictures of a sombre Haftar, dressed in uniform, have adorned Benghazi’s streets since his Libyan National Army (LNA) expelled their enemies.

Many Haftar supporters see little point in reconciling with opponents whom they call “terrorists” or “Muslim Brothers”.

That leaves limited scope for moderates who believe Libya can become a civil state without a dominant role for the military.

“In Benghazi, most people would not allow you to criticise the army because they’ve paid a price,” said Jamal Falah, an activist, referring to Haftar’s forces and the battles they fought.

Falah is trying to organise a forum for Libyans from different regions to discuss a political solution that does not involve the UN. He wants to include people in the east who say