Washington And The World

Stopping a Civil War in Libya

The country’s on the brink of chaos. And it’s going to take more than a few SEALs to fix it.
By GEOFF D. PORTER
Remember Libya? For five days last week, it looked like the country was headed for civil war. Ibrahim al-Jadhran, the leader of a Libyan militia that has maintained an eight-month blockade of country’s largest oil terminals, had pulled a fast one on the weak central government in Tripoli. With his go-ahead, a tanker of uncertain origin and ownership docked at the port of Es-Sidr, in eastern Libya, on March 10 and loaded a cargo of crude valued at $36 million. Prime Minister Ali Zeidan threatened to bomb the tanker were it to try to set sail with its cargo of stolen oil, but taking advantage of rough weather and the lack of a Libyan navy, the tanker cast off the following day and made for international waters. The small armada of militia vessels that swarmed the ship were overwhelmed by heavy seas. A video has circulated of pick-up trucks mounted with heavy artillery firing wildly from the pitching and rolling deck of a tugboat. But just five days later, the tanker is headed back to Libya, after having been boarded by a team of U.S. Navy SEALs off the coast of Cyprus. The ship’s return averts an immediate escalation of violence in Libya, but what happens next may be no less ugly.
Libya is riven with rivalries of almost every stripe—regional, ethnic, linguistic, ideological or simply historical grievances between cities or towns. These deep divides—ripped wide open by the fall of strongman Muammar al-Qaddafi in August 2011—have produced some surprising alliances of convenience. For example, the powerful militia from the mountain city Zintan competes for national preeminence with the militia from coastal Misrata. The Zintan militia backed Prime Minister Zeidan, not so much because it shared a common bond with him, but simply because Misrata opposed him. Likewise, Misrata, a vibrant commercial hub, got in bed with the local offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, not out of a shared commitment to Islamist politics but because it was hostile to Zeidan.
Jadhran, who is based in Brega and Benghazi, is part of a movement in Cyrenaica, the historical name for eastern Libya, that demands greater autonomy from Tripoli. Whether this means decentralization or federalism or even secession is not clear. What is clear, however, is that Jadhran’s blockade of Libya’s oil terminals has crippled the country’s ability to export crude. Before the blockade, Libya exported roughly 1.5 million barrels per day; after the blockade that number dropped to less than half a million per day. By the end of 2013, the blockade, which began in August 2013, had cost Libya $8 billion, with the costs mounting through the first three months of the new year.
But Jadhran’s blockade is not universally popular in eastern Libya. True, Qaddafi badly neglected the region, starving it of resources that he spent instead on Tripoli and his hometown of Sirte. (Whereas Tripoli has a six-lane highway leading from the airport to downtown, Benghazi’s airport road is four lanes of potholed asphalt.) Qaddafi’s successors in Tripoli today do not seem interested in redressing these regional disparities, but many in the east have questioned the wisdom of Jadhran’s approach. In fact, in December 2013, his tribe beseeched him to end the blockade because it was depriving Tripoli of revenue that ultimately benefited all Libyans. Jadhran ignored these pleas. As the blockade wore on, though, his support dwindled, with some estimates that he had fewer than 1,000 committed militia members left. And then came the tanker.
It was never clear how Jadhran expected to get paid for the oil cargo, but had the deal gone through, it would probably have meant war. Jadhran would have had money to pay his supporters, rallying them to his cause, deepening his hold on eastern Libya and pulling it further from Tripoli’s orbit. Misrata, which does not have access to oil and gas revenue, would never have tolerated Jadhran succeeding—or seceding, as the case may have it. After the tanker left, Misrata, in league with the Ministry of Defense, threatened to attack him and his supporters and began to move fighters and materiel eastward toward his positions.
Geoff D. Porter is president of North Africa Risk Consulting and an assistant professor at the Combating Terrorism Center at the United States Military Academy at West Point. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the United States Military Academy, the U.S. Army, or the Department of Defense.