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The Economist December 18th 2021
Middle East & Africa
Libya
On your marks, get set, now what? BE NGHAZI AND TRIPO LI
Libya’s first presidential election was meant to unite the country. It is not going as planned
F
or weekend relief in wartorn Libya, there is little better entertainment than cheering the Arabian steeds at the race track in Tripoli, the capital. The competi tors can be a stubborn bunch. It often takes six men to bundle a horse into its starting box. They place a sack over its head and yank it forwards with a leather belt strapped around its rump. The horses fre quently rear up and dislodge the jockeys. Staging Libya’s fi rst race for president is proving far messier. There is no commonly accepted legal framework for the election, scheduled for December 24th. Candidates have been disqualifi ed, then readmitted. The un offi cial who was supposed to help oversee the process, Jan Kubis, resigned in November. With the vote likely to be post poned, warlords are fl exing their muscles. On December 15th militias briefl y sur rounded government offi ces in Tripoli. The election was meant to pull Libya out of a decade of chaos that began when rebels, with the help of nato, overthrew and killed the country’s ageing dictator, Muammar Qaddafi , in 2011. A disputed election in 2014 triggered a civil war be
tween east and west, each with its own government. Foreign powers piled in: Tur key in the west and France, Russia and the United Arab Emirates in the east. The un tried to establish a “unity” government in 2015, but it did not have widespread sup port. In 2019 Khalifa Haftar, the strongman in the east, launched a siege of Tripoli that lasted 14 months. General Haftar’s foray failed, thanks in large part to Turkey’s intervention. The un then initiated a new political process that led to a ceasefi re in late 2020 and an inter im government, agreed on by both sides, in February. The presidential election was meant to crown this progress. A large por tion of the public registered to vote. But an election law pushed through by the speak er of the parliament based in the east, Agui la Saleh, who is also a presidential candi date, has been rejected by other factions. → Also in this section 26 Iranian saff ronsellers stew 27 Shifting sands in Ethiopia’s civil war
There has been little conventional cam paigning, but armed groups are reportedly trying to strongarm voters. Even if the election goes ahead, few Lib yans imagine it will mark a break with the past. One of the most popular candidates is Seif alIslam Qaddafi , a son of the late dic tator. When he emerged from his hideout in Zintan, southwest of Tripoli, to an nounce his candidacy, he wore a brown tu nic like his father used to. Many Libyans are too young to remember the late Qadda fi ’s brutality. Others appreciate the relative stability of that era, during the latter part of which Seif acted as a sort of prime minis ter. His followers believe Libya’s economy and infrastructure would be stronger had the rebellion never happened. They are not moved by the International Criminal Court’s indictment of Seif for torturing and killing civilians and rebels in 2011. If Seif represents the Qaddafi era, Gen eral Haftar, also a candidate, represents the period that followed. He tried to seize con trol of the rebellion and proclaimed him self commander of Libya’s army after it. His men fi red the fi rst shots in the subsequent civil war, after a largely Islamist adminis tration refused to hold new elections when its mandate expired in 2014. Like Seif, he is accused of war crimes. From his base near Benghazi, Libya’s second city (which he smashed during the war), he lords it over the east—and much of the south and west. He has spurned repeated off ers to join Lib ya’s interim governments, spoiled past ef forts to unite the country and has no eco
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