BENGHAZI, Libya — A month after the killing of the U.S. ambassador ignited a public outcry for civilian control of Libya’s fractious militias, that hope has been all but lost in a tangle of grudges, rivalries and egos.
Scores of disparate militias remain Libya’s only effective police force but have stubbornly resisted government control, a dynamic that is making it difficult for either the Libyan authorities or the United States to catch the attackers who killed Ambassador Chris Stevens.
Shocked by that assault, tens of thousands of people filled the streets last month to demand the dismantling of all the militias. But the country’s interim president, Mohamed Magariaf, warned them to back off as leaders of the largest brigades threatened to cut off the vital services they provide, like patrolling the borders and putting out fires.
“We feel hurt, we feel underappreciated,” said Ismail el-Salabi, one of several brigade leaders who warned that public security had deteriorated because their forces had pulled back.
Taming the militias has been the threshold test of Libya’s attempt to build a democracy after four decades of dictatorship under Moammar Gadhafi. But how to bring them to heel while depending on them for security has eluded the weak transitional government, trapping Libya in a state of lawlessness.
Now that problem has become entangled in the U.S. presidential race as well, with Republicans arguing that the Obama administration’s failure to protect Stevens illustrates the unraveling of its policy in the region. Mounting pressure on the administration to act against the perpetrators carries its own risks: A U.S. strike on Libyan soil could produce a popular and potentially violent backlash in the only Arab country whose people largely have warm feelings toward Washington.
The militias’ power is evident. In one of Tripoli’s finest hotels, the Waddan, about two dozen militiamen from the western city of Misrata continue to help themselves to rooms without paying, just as they have for more than a year; the interim interior minister, also from Misrata, protects them.
In Benghazi, independent brigades are using tapped telephones to hunt down suspected loyalists of Gadhafi, with the help of his former intelligence services. Even the huge anti-militia protest in Benghazi last month became cover for a group of armed men to attack one of the largest brigades, possibly for revenge.
“Nothing changes,” shrugged Fathi al-Obeidi, the militia commander who led a contingent of fighters that helped rescue the Americans in the besieged diplomatic mission last month.
Some Benghazi residents even say that the militia seen carrying out the attack, Ansar al-Shariah, did a better job than the paralytic government at providing security and even some social services.
“They are very nice people,” said Ashraf Bujwary, 40, an administrator at a hospital where Ansar al-Shariah men had served as guards. Security has been “on shaky ground” since the militia fled, he said.
In some ways Ansar al-Shariah exemplifies the twilight world of post-Gadhafi Libya, in which residents with looted weapons have organized themselves into regional, tribal or Islamist brigades to keep the peace and defend differing visions of Libya. In Bani Walid, near Misrata, the dominant militia is made up of former Gadhafi loyalists who have embraced a local strongman and rejected the new government. Some brigades provide public security or services, others oppose democracy as contrary to Islam; Ansar al-Shariah did both.
In a congressional hearing last week, Eric Nordstrom, the former chief of security at the U.S. Embassy in Libya, said that he had tracked Ansar al-Shariah as a potential threat “for quite some time.” He characterized the brigade as both “extremist” and, in his view, an informal arm of the Libyan government.
Wissam Bin Hamid, the 35-year-old leader of a major Benghazi militia, Libya Shield, said he considered Ansar al-Shariah more of an Islamic “social club” than a fighting brigade.
“Families come to them when they have a problem with a son,” he said, like drug use or bad behavior. Like other Benghazi militia leaders, he said he wanted to see evidence before blaming Ansar al-Shariah for the attack.
Organizers of the march against the militias nonetheless insisted that they had achieved at least a subtle change. The big turnout showed that supporters of a civilian government were in fact “the force on the ground,” insisted Abu Janash Mohamed Abu Janash, 26, one of the organizers. But he also acknowledged that Ansar al-Shariah was not chased from its headquarters, as had been reported. He said the protest organizers had given Ansar al-Shariah a warning to evacuate.
“They were friendly,” Abu Janash said. “We had lunch together.”
Only after the fact did Abu Janash learn that armed men had led the march several miles away to attack a larger militia known for defending the government.
“The march was hijacked,” said el-Salabi, the brigade leader, who was wounded in the attack.
The civilian government responded to the outcry by assigning military officers to help oversee the biggest militias. But the brigade leaders said that they, not the government, would choose their new officers, and that the current commanders would not yet give up control. The militia leaders say they refuse to submit to the national army or the police because so many of the officers used to work for Gadhafi.
“Some fought with us, some fought against us, some stayed in their homes,” Bin Hamid of Libya Shield said.
“The whole government is infiltrated,” el-Salabi said.
Others say egos are also at play.
“You have militia commanders who love the prestige, who have more power than they could ever imagine,” said Zeidoun bin Hamid, the director of operations for Libya Shield. “People like the glorification, and it is hard to take it away from them.”
Even Benghazi militias that work with the government are aligned with rival power bases within it, like the defense minister, military chief of staff and the interior minister.
The interim interior minister, Fawzi Abdel Aali, formerly of the Misrata militia, organized a militia with national pretensions, the Supreme Security Committee. But in an interview at its headquarters in Tripoli, a militia spokesman criticized his ostensible boss. “I will be frank,” said the spokesman, Abdel Moneim al-Hur, “he is not doing his job.”
Al-Hur accused the interior minister of failing to pay the militia’s fighters, who had policed Benghazi, leading them to walk out months ago. And he accused the minister of using the militia as a “pressure group” to squeeze the parliament by asking its fighters to stop their police work.
As for the militiamen in the luxury hotel, the spokesman noted that the freeloaders and the interior minister were all from Misrata.
“He turns a blind eye to what his cousins do,” al-Hur said.
Some militias are eagerly rounding up suspected Gadhafi loyalists. A few weeks ago, fighters from Benghazi’s Feb. 17 Brigade detained a dental student, Firas Ali el-Warfalli, whose father had been on one of Gadhafi’s revolutionary committees. When el-Warfalli’s family and fellow students put up billboards calling for his release, an ally of the militia posted to the Internet a recording of a telephone call on which el-Warfalli referred to supporters of Gadhafi’s green flag as “seaweed like us.” A brigade officer confirmed that the recording came from the Intelligence Ministry.
Telephone surveillance in the hands of independent militias suggests a lack of oversight and raises concerns about eavesdropping on political rivals, said Anwar Fekini, a prominent lawyer. “No government that is worthy of being called a government would allow this,” he said. “But we have a government that exists only on paper.”
Front Section, Pages 1 on 10/14/2012