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Tarek Mitri's bleak report to the Security Council on the troublesome state of affairs in post-Gaddafi Libya

UN Special Envoy Confirms Dire Situation In Libya



Tarek Mitri, the United Nations Secretary General’s Special Representative for Libya, delivered a dose of reality to the UN Security Council in his briefing on June 18th regarding the bleak political and security conditions in that beleaguered country. While he does not think that Libya was in imminent danger of complete collapse and that opportunities remained for progress through inclusive political dialogue, Mr. Mitri believes there are very serious problems that require significantly more assistance from the international community to help resolve.
“The political and security challenges that now face the country may well be the legacy of decades of authoritarian rule, dysfunctional state institutions and confusion around political norms,” Mr. Mitri told the Security Council. It was now clear, he said, that the piecemeal approach to state-building had fallen short of achieving good results, particularly in the security sector where the needs were huge and immediate. When I asked Libya's UN Ambassador Ibrahim Omar Dabbashi for his comments on Mr. Mitri's report, he agreed that there was a political crisis in Libya caused by resistance to the authority of the central government in some quarters and lack of strong institutions. Tarek Mitri praised "the speed with which last year’s elections to the General National Congress took place so soon after the cessation of hostilities." However, the road to democracy is not as simple as these speedy elections would imply, he added. Managing Libya’s democratic transition is bound to be difficult, Mr. Mitri said, since "the Libyan people will continue to endure for the foreseeable future the heavy legacy bequeathed to them over decades of brutal rule." Mr. Mitri noted the recent violence in Benghazi, which led to “considerable” loss of life. Indeed, Libyan special forces clashed with gunmen outside a military base in Benghazi during attacks last weekend, in which six soldiers were killed and at least five others were injured.

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Earlier this month, some 20 people were killed and nearly 80 wounded when a militia, also in Benghazi, opened fire on a group of protesters. Efforts to integrate the revolutionary brigades more tightly into official state military institutions, such as a newly created national guard, are proving to be difficult. Violence is still being used as a tool to force the central government to accede to particular "revolutionary" groups' own political agendas in a very fractured society. For example, Mr. Mitri mentioned the recently adopted law on political isolation, which demands the exclusion of figures associated with the former regime from public service even if they had not themselves committed any human rights abuses. He criticized this law, which was passed by the General National Congress under duress amidst escalating violence. Commencing in late April, a number of revolutionary groups laid siege to several government ministries in an attempt to force through the adoption of that law. Although the law was adopted on May 5th, Mr. Mitri pointed out, the siege continued for a few more days with more political demands being voiced. The siege only ended after Prime Minister Ali Zeidan committed to address some of the numerous requests. The law on political isolation contains criteria for exclusion from serving in public office which, Mr. Mitri said, "are arbitrary, far-reaching, at times vague, and are likely to violate the civil and political rights of large numbers of individuals.” In the context of Libya’s transition and the legacy of weak state institutions, the law’s implementation risks weakening those bodies further. Mr. Mitri also pointed to border security as a particularly vexing problem that required more help from the international community to successfully address. Neighboring countries will need to cooperate in closing their porous borders, including in particular Chad, Niger, and Algeria. Finally, Mr. Mitri noted in his report the continuation of serious human rights violations in Libya. Up to 8,000 detainees are still waiting to be charged or released. Many are being held in sub-standard facilities. Some of these facilities are not under official state control, but rather are run by revolutionary brigades which follow their own leaders' orders rather than those of the central government. Torture has occurred in some of these prisons on more than an isolated basis, resulting in as many as nine prisoner deaths. The members of the Security Council, during their closed consultation session following Mr. Mitri's briefing, took note of the alleged incidents of torture. However, they did not engage in any extensive discussion about the allegations, according to Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant, President of the Security Council and Permanent Representative of the United Kingdom Mission to the UN. He said there was "a lot of concern about the number of armed militias who remain outside the control of the central government, the question of border security, the question of detainees held by non-governmental bodies" and "a lot of discussion also about the importance of maintaining political momentum, managing the impact of the Political Isolation Law and moving forward to make progress towards a new constitution for Libya." Ambassador Grant told reporters that he raised the possibility of a Security Council visit to Libya, perhaps around the turn of the year, but that a decision on whether to visit Libya or other global hot spots remained a matter for future discussion. It so happens that on the same day Tarek Mitri delivered his status report on Libya to the Security Council and asked for more international assistance during Libya's transition to democracy, leaders at the G-8 summit held in Northern Ireland issued a communiqué in which they urged "continued and sustained engagement by the international community, coordinated by the UN Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL)," which is headed by Mr. Mitri. "This engagement should support the Libyan Government’s efforts to increase the effectiveness and capacity of its security and justice sector institutions, to complete a successful transition to democracy, and, following four decades of mismanagement, to develop the Libyan economy and to improve the provision of public services," the communiqué said. A number of the G-8 countries also indicated that they will be assisting in training Libyan security forces. The Syrian crisis, not surprisingly, was much more on the minds of the leaders attending the G-8 summit than Libya. However, UN Special Representative for Libya Tarek Mitri's bleak report to the Security Council on the troublesome state of affairs in post-Gaddafi Libya should serve as a warning regarding the far more serious unintended consequences likely to arise from the rat's nest of a post-Assad Syria.


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Joseph A. Klein, CFP United Nations Columnist -- Bio and Archives

Joseph A. Klein is the author of Global Deception: The UN’s Stealth Assault on America’s Freedom.


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