This article looks at how al-Qaida-linked groups focus on the local struggle in Libya, how they have shaped their strategies and activities in the country, and what impact this has had on the communities where they are active. It explores how al-Qaida-linked groups have adapted their strategies differently in the eastern cities of Benghazi and Derna and draws out the main implications for Libya’s future and the future of al-Qaida-linked groups in Libya. It argues that in Libya, al-Qaida-linked groups have done a better job than their ISIS-linked counterparts at staying rooted to local concerns, local actors, and evolving country dynamics, and that this has allowed them to mimic and replicate local and traditional power structures. The Libyan authorities’ failure to delegitimize the underpinning ideology of al-Qaida-linked groups, the normalization of violence and extremism within society, and a pervasive zero-sum mentality have all contributed to the longevity of these groups. The core conclusion is that the rise of Salafi-jihadism in Libya is a symptom of broader, deeper governance problems and that without sustained, unified political and social efforts to address these problems, al-Qaida-linked groups will continue to maintain a presence in the country.
Justice and Development Party (JDP) came to power in Turkey at a time when the “responsibility to protect” appeared as a concept on the international agenda. Emphasizing multilateralism and humanitarian diplomacy among the principles of “new” Turkish foreign policy, JDP has constantly supported the concept on international platforms, mostly referring to the “responsibility to prevent” as the most important pillar of it. When the Arab Spring reached Libya with anti-government demonstrations in February 2011, forceful actions of Gaddafi regime against the protestors showed that the crisis would not end up with a peaceful democratic transition. Alarmed by the Libyan opposition to become “the saviour”, the international community did not hesitate to invoke the “responsibility to protect” through Resolutions 1970 and 1973. Yet these decisions had challenging repercussions on Turkish foreign policy. Turkey increasingly felt the pressure of its bilateral relations with Libya, its claim to be a regional power, and its responsibilities under international law. This paper aims to analyse Turkey’s responsibility to protect policy in Libya and whether its policy was in tandem with that of international community. For this purpose, Turkey’s policy vis-à-vis the Libyan crisis is examined through a qualitative analysis of official discourse by Ministry of Foreign Affairs and National Security Council together with the statements of policymakers to the foreign press. The study concludes that Turkey has fulfilled its responsibility to protect in Libya and acted in the spirit of “responsibility to protect” even at times the international community explicitly failed to so. For this reason, Turkey’s policy was not in line with the international community in every pillar of the norm. Yet Turkey’s insistence to design and lead the process in line with its own foreign policy preferences prevented Ankara from being the “quarterback” in Libya.
In Libya and Yemen, the political transitions heralded by the Arab Spring devolved into civil wars. As a consequence of these devastating civil wars, constitutional reform processes which were intended to cement political transitions from authoritarianism to democracy were instead held hostage by the armed perpetrators of the protracted civil conflicts. As the political transitions in Libya and Yemen devolved into civil war, the constitution-making processes also devolved into conflict over the same outcomes that armed elites sought on the battlefield by force. These armed actors discovered a new battlefront in Yemen and Libya’s constituent debates. Comparative constitutional scholarship has emphasized the importance of participatory constitution-making as a post-conflict tool for political transition. However, ongoing violent conflict frustrates open, transparent, inclusive and participatory processes—the hallmarks of participatory constitution-making. The violent intensity of the civil conflicts in Yemen and Libya undermined the conciliatory objectives of participatory constitution-making in both countries. The undermining of conciliatory processes, in turn, imperiled the creation of consensus constitutional texts and risked the creation of “conflict constitutions” that would prolong, rather than remedy, the sources of conflict. In this article, the author develops a conceptual theory of “conflict constitution-making” that assesses the impact of civil war on constitution-making processes and the resultant constitutions, and applies that theory to the events in Libya and Yemen. The author’s theory of conflict constitution-making draws from comparative constitutional scholarship and posits that civil war transforms constitution-making processes from zones of conciliation into zones of conflict. During civil war, unless a political détente can be reached that commits armed actors to a consensual and participatory constitution-making process, armed power brokers exploit the process and drive constitution-makers away from accommodation and into conflict. Such a conflict constitution-making process produces a “conflict constitution” that enshrines rather than ameliorates the sources of conflict. An exploration of the impact of violent civil conflict on constitution-making is critical because, although best practice calls for the creation of a constitution only after the cessation of hostilities, political transitions are often fluid and constitution-making processes undertaken during periods of relative peace may continue during periods of extreme violence (as seen in Libya and Yemen). A better understanding of the impact of violence on constitution-making processes will better enable citizens, scholars and practitioners to assess, and if necessary, reform those processes as well as the constitutions created by them. While participatory constitution-making is the aspirational ideal, conflict constitution-making may increasingly become the reality in transitioning states. Accordingly, an understanding of how to best remedy a “conflict constitution-making” process is one of the goals of this piece.
The beheading of 21 Egyptian Copts working in Libya, as shown in video footage released by the Islamic State on February 12, 2015, made headlines across the world. The story was variously framed as one more vicious murder of Middle Eastern Christians by militant Islamists, one more index of chaos in post-Qaddafi Libya and one more opportunity for an Arab state, in this case Egypt, to enlist in the latest phase of the war on terror. What was left unaddressed was the deep and long-standing enmeshment of the Libyan and Egyptian economies, embodied in the tens of thousands of Egyptian workers who remain in Libya despite the civil war raging there. There is a history of maltreatment of Egyptian migrants in Libya spanning more than 60 years. The abuses date back to the organized migration of Egyptian teachers, bureaucrats and other professionals under Gamal Abdel Nasser, and have continued with increasing brutality until the present. From the beginning, whether under King Idris, under Muammar al-Qaddafi or following the colonel’s downfall, the causes of the violence have been distinctly political, with Egyptians in Libya always vulnerable to the vicissitudes of Egyptian-Libyan state relations as well as to regional crises. The welfare of these workers has always been subordinate to strategic concerns in the calculations of both states.
In early 2011, mass protests erupted throughout Libya, political elites defected to form the resistance National Transitional Council, and the international community eventually intervened in the conflict. The result was the ouster of long-ruling leader Muammar Gaddafi and the beginning of considerable political change in Libya. Following the Gaddafi regime’s overthrow, the regional militias that displaced him refused to surrender arms to the interim government and continued to perpetrate illegal detentions, displacements, rapes, and summary executions. This Note assumes that events in Libya constitute an ongoing revolution, and locates the violent episodes associated with it in a historical tradition of violence inherent in revolutionary periods. While revolutionary violence may be politically justifiable ex post, given the network of international and regional law it is no longer legally justifiable. As such, interim Libyan leaders and their successors should ensure both revolutionaries and former Gaddafi supporters are held accountable for their crimes. A hybrid approach, starting with a truth commission with eventual limited prosecutions, is the best way to bring a stable peace to Libya.
This paper examines two recent events in which people on the move making their way from Libya to Europe across the Mediterranean were either abandoned to die at sea or ‘pushed back’ (Hirsi case). It argues that these two cases are not incidental or isolated but rather part of a broader situation of concern in the Mediterranean. The paper highlights this situation and also connects it to Europe’s response to migratory flows during the Arab Spring. On the basis of independent reports, case law and first-hand accounts, it attributes these tragedies to two fundamental structural deficiencies in Europe’s approach to people on the move in the Mediterranean: 1) a general lack of accountability, among the most salient of which are the lack of legal clarity for SAR (search & rescue) and disembarkation obligations as well as a lack of monitoring of what actually happens in the Mediterranean and 2) a lack of solidarity amongst European states as well as across the Mediterranean. The paper then goes on to propose recommendations to correct those cross-cutting deficiencies.