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National Transitional Council (NTC) spokesperson Guma Al-Gamaty announced on 2 September that a constitutional council of approximately 200 members would be elected in eight months, to draft a new constitution to be put to a referendum within the following year. Al-Gamaty told BBC Radio, “We have outlined a clear road plan, a transition period of about 20 months. Hopefully by the end of about 20 months, the Libyan people will have elected the leaders they want to lead their country." He was speaking even as Tripoli was not yet fully secure, Qadhafi remained at large, and forces loyal to the deposed ruler vowed to begin a guerrilla war.
How wise is it for Libya’s new rulers to set timetables they will likely have to revise? The answer depends on balancing the costs of dithering at a decisive moment versus the risk of struggling to deliver on those commitments. Given the immediate implications of the former, the NTC may be forgiven for attaching greater weight to stating a bold vision and making a firm commitment.
Still, the long road ahead is uncharted, and in truth the NTC’s “road plan” is more a schedule of milestones along the path of transition than a map of the terrain to be traversed between an uncertain present and an aspired future.
The Destination
The fluid ease of the NTC’s vision belies the challenge. After 42 years of autocratic leadership, the entire political system must be overhauled. Designed to materialize Qadhafi’s patchwork theory of direct democracy, the General People’s Congress is distorted, lethargic and irrelevant, the judiciary lacks legitimacy, and the executive hardly bears mentioning. In short, there is little of Libya’s political infrastructure worth retaining, and little of it would be helpful in the interim.
[inset_left]The immediate challenges include shortages of food and water, shelter, medication, sanitation, and fuel.[/inset_left]
Crucially, whatever shape and form an overhauled political system takes, it must come from Libyans and be shaped to their needs and interests. These go beyond the minimums of rights and freedoms. Libyans will expect economic policies that create decent work and affordable living, social policies that meet their health and education needs, and competent and efficient administrative capacity. Given that these were key factors stimulating the uprising, Libya’s new rulers would be well advised to address them sooner rather than later.
Add to this the physical and psychological destruction of the war and the desperate security situation facing Libyans today, and something of the challenging road ahead comes into focus.
The Road Ahead
Although the NTC’s compass points to representative governance and policy coordination in the national interest, the uncharted terrain between today and twenty months hence is mined with challenges and competing interests.
The immediate challenges include shortages of food and water, shelter, medication, sanitation, and fuel. Disarming fighters on both sides, collecting and securing tens of thousands of light and heavy weapons, and establishing a civilian police force accountable to a civilian authority present further pressing challenges. Beyond that, infrastructure must be repaired, and neighborhoods, towns and cities rebuilt.
Although these challenges are considerable, the NTC is not without resources. For starters, there is the $15 billion of Libya's frozen assets released to the NTC at the Friends of Libya summit in Paris on 1 September. This is only a small portion of the estimated $170 billion in assets Libya secured abroad during Qadhafi's rule. Libya is also not short on technical skills or competence, although it will take time to lure back skilled workers from among the 860,000 people reportedly estimated by Ban Ki-moon to have left Libya since February. The NTC also has at its disposal an enormous store of goodwill with foreign governments, although it would be naïve to think the parade of well-wishers at the Paris summit do not expect their measure of reward.
Herein lies the rub. Although Al-Gamaty pointedly noted the incompatibility of democratic accountability with favoritism in awarding contracts, and David Cameron has implied the same (“It is their revolution, it is their change”), Vitol, the world’s largest oil trader with links to the UK’s International Development Minister Alan Duncan, is reportedly leading the field in securing oil contracts. Of the $700 million of Libyan assets released by the US at the Paris summit, $300 million reportedly went directly to Vitol in payment for fuel delivered to Benghazi rebels during the uprising.
What started as an uprising is now a successful revolution, and business in Libya has seldom looked more favorable, especially for NATO member states. But non-NATO states still have influence. In early September, an NTC spokesperson suggested China was delaying recognizing the council as Libya's new government until the NTC committed to honoring China’s Qadhafi-era contracts. At the time of writing, Russia is the only one of the BRICS governments to recognize the NTC as Libya’s new government.
With the NTC now in government, changing priorities and competing interests will test the unity of the erstwhile rebel movement in the months and years ahead. Like Saddam Hussein, Qadhafi is a metonym for an arrangement of interests that conflate personal, private, business, and security with family, aids, advisors, ministers, and government officials. During the uprising, these interests extended to Benghazi where defectors included former judge and justice minister Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, former cabinet minister and ambassador to India Ali Al-Isawi, and Abdel-Fatah Younes, the assassinated rebel army commander who until his February defection held the rank of Major General in Qadhafi’s army.
Not casting aspersions on the NTC leadership, this observation is only to note that objections to Qadhafi-era figures in a post-Qadhafi government are already overruled. How that fact plays out in practice may be an ongoing test for NTC Chairman Abdel-Jalil, especially as more figures are co-opted into the new national project.
On the military side, there is the problem of what to do with fighters from both sides. How should they be integrated into a single unified command? Is this possible? What should be done with prisoners? Is the fighting over for Islamist elements among rebel forces? What about foreign mercenaries? What about the hundreds and possibly thousands of African migrant workers detained on suspicion of being mercenaries? What about the missing and dead? All these questions and more speak to the challenges of reweaving the social fabric after a brutal and bloody war. It may be a long time before former neighbors are willing to break bread again.
A final observation about the road ahead is that the conflict is not yet over. At the time of writing, the NTC does not have control over all of Libya and Qadhafi is still at large, a fact that suggests he still has supporters and capacity inside Libya. Qadhafi must be captured, killed, or turn up in exile before the NTC can claim the post-Qadhafi era has begun, although which of those options actually transpires will have divergent implications that are difficult to comprehend in advance.
Map is not territory
The timeframe to which the NTC has committed itself itemizes specific milestones against which progress can be measured. Although the NTC’s vision and commitment is laudable and its timing in the week of the Paris summit was necessary, it was arguably premature to frame it in terms of measurable outcomes and a schedule of ‘due by’ dates. With a timeframe now set, the NTC needs to move quickly.
Reconstruction and meeting the challenges this entails is urgent, but revolution is a long game. Tentative lessons from the incomplete and stuttering revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia caution that popular legitimacy has a short shelf life, hence the NTC’s rush to ration theirs into 20 equal portions. If the NTC pays as much attention to bolstering the legitimacy of the constitution-drafting process as it does to the stabilization and reconstruction effort, then it will be improving where Egypt and Tunisia have stumbled. The NTC also will have made a store to sustain it in the plausible circumstance that timetables must be adjusted.
Particularly, the NTC can clarify the procedures for electing constitutional council members, where these councilors will be drawn from, who has nominated them, and their mandate. If these questions and more are addressed transparently and well in advance of the eight months mark, the transition is less likely to become mired in controversy at the first milestone.
At the same time, the NTC will have to balance demands for constitutional reform of the kind they have committed to, with demands for more substantive (and less easily deliverable) structural reforms of the economy and society. These reforms do not necessarily compete, but their respective champions and opponents might.
Building unity and sufficient consensus to match is the art of the long game, but it requires a kind of double vision that keeps one eye on the road ahead and another on the rocky ground under foot. Focusing exclusively on either will put the NTC in the back foot and see it responding to events rather than directing them.
