Good evening and welcome to this week's Zoome Weapon off from the Middle East centre. This week's topic is Libya. Past, present and future. And I'm delighted to invite you to hear two fantastic speakers who are beaming in from abroad, not exactly from Libya at the moment. They are Mary Fitzgerald, A.l Komati. Libya's 2011 uprisings offered an early example of the dangers of the regional upheavals when met with the military might of a recalcitrant dictator.
The civil war that ensued and ultimately led to the killing of Gadhafi in October 2011, not the beginning of a challenging transition that has been held up by repeated setbacks, complex civil wars, wars by proxy and shaky cease fires. The future remains uncertain, but deserves our attention. Our two speakers for this evening, Larry Fitzgerald and Anas Komati. Mary is a researcher specialising in euro Medicare in the euro Mediterranean region with a particular focus on Libya.
She's reported on and researched Libya since February 2011 and lived that in 2014. An associate fellow of CSR King's College, London. She has conducted research on Libya, the International Crisis Group, the European Council on Foreign Relations CFR, the United States Institute for Peace USCAP, amongst many others. Previously a journalist. Her reporting on Libya has appeared in publication, including in The Economist Foreign Policy. The New York Financial Times.
And she's also the contributing editor to an edited volume on the Libyan revolution and its aftermath with Oxford University Press. And assume Giamatti is the founder and director of the Tripoli based Saddiq Institute, the first public policy think tank in sorry. The first public policy think tank in Libya's history established in August 2011.
He has held several positions in the region and Europe as a visiting fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Centre in Beirut, a visiting lecturer at the NATO Defence College in Rome. And he is a frequent contributor on Libya and manage affairs on Al-Jazeera, BBC, France 24 and Sky News. Many of us have watched him on a regular basis as a commentator on these on these channels.
He's the author of Libya's Islamists and Salafi Jihadists The Battle for a Theological Revolution in the edited volume The Arab Spring Handbook, published in 2011 by Routledge. And so it gives us great pleasure. Here in the Middle East centre to invite the two of you to speak. I have committed to mention myself and somehow Azami on the department lecturer in contemporary Slavic studies, and it gives me great pleasure to call Mary first.
If you can give us your take on how we should look at Libya today in light of a decade of revolution. Thank you very much, Osama. And thank you very much to the Middle East centre for organising this event. The week before, Libyans will mark the anniversary of February 17th, the day many Libyans consider was the beginning of the uprising that ultimately brought about the end of the Gadhafi regime.
And in 2011, those at the protest that started on February 17th, February 15th, actually a couple of days before with the arrest of a terrible lawyer who represented families of the victims of the Abu Salim massacre, a massacre in the Abus to be in prison, the most notorious prison in Gadhafi's Libya, which had taken place in 1996 in which around 1200 prisoners were killed by regime forces, according to Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and other human rights organisations.
Those anti regime protests that started and snowballed in Benghazi, Libya's second city, soon tipped in to an armed uprising. And I think it's interesting to compare what happened in Libya in early 2011 with what had already happened in Egypt, neighbouring Egypt and Tunisia, in that in Libya, those anti regime protests very quickly became an armed uprising against the regime, partly to do with the regime's own response to those gathering protests that had happened in February.
And also, as we know, that armed uprising then later brought about, it led to a NATO led intervention mandated by the U.N. resolution. So all of that made Libya quite distinctive in terms of what happened early on in 2011 and obviously made it very different to Tunisia and Egypt. I arrived in Benghazi about 10 days after those very first anti regime protests started.
And what was striking at that time, this was just before the opposition announced the formation of the National Transitional Council, the body that was to be the international community's interlocutor on the part of the opposition throughout that year.
And what was really striking for me in Benghazi in those early days and weeks before the U.N. resolution mandating the NATO intervention, was this sense of a fear, sense of fear in terms of what how the regime had already responded to those protests and how the regime may respond as those protests started to quicken. And, of course, that was what was behind the whole push for an intervention, the whole push for that U.N. resolution mandating that intervention.
As we as we know, the uprising continued. The rebels took control of Tripoli, the capital, in August, and Gadhafi was caught by rebels and killed at the hands of rebels in October that year. One thing I was really struck by in late 2011 and early 2012 was how optimistic many of the Libyans who supported the uprising were about the future. And many internationals who are looking at Libya at that time also were quite optimistic.
There was a sense that on paper, at least, Libya had all the signs of possibly being one of the success stories of what at that time many people were collectively terming the AAB spring on paper and Libya could appear deceptively straightforward country of just six million people, an urbanised population predominantly in comparison with, say, Syria and Iraq, homogenous, relatively homogenous society with not so much the pronounced ethnic cleavages of Syria and Iraq,
none of the sectarian cleavages of Syria and Iraq and an educated population. None of the literacy challenges of neighbouring Egypt, for example. And then, of course, on top of all of that, Africa's largest oil reserves. So on paper, Libya appeared to have many of the ingredients that could lead to a success story. But I think what what wasn't discussed enough at that time was the fact that you were lifting the lid on 42 years of rule by Moammar Gadhafi and Gadhafi's Libya.
Wasn't your common garden variety autocracy, if you like. This was a very unique and very idiosyncratic experiment in autocracy. So when Gadhafi's regime collapsed, it soon became more apparent what the nature of that regime was, how Gadhafi ruled, how his 42 years in power had shaped Libyan society, had shaped the way Libyans dealt with each other, interacted with each other, had shaped the institutions of the state.
And I think that at those early stages, there wasn't enough understanding of that, of that of that. And that internationals, I would say as well, that between 2011 and 2014, a couple of fateful decisions were taken. That really helped set the course for the turbulence of post Gadhafi Libya. The first fateful decision was to basically give a state salary to those who claim to have been fighters and during the uprising, anti Gadhafi fighters during the uprising.
That led to a situation that from 2012 on, you had over two hundred thousand men, honest, who were armed on state salaries. And that continues today. And that led to the situation from 2014 when Libya tipped into a civil conflict where you had belligerents on both sides, fighters on both sides drawing state salaries and the other. And of course, that dynamic also helped and encouraged the growth of more armed groups.
So we saw the armed groups that had emerged during the uprising against Gadhafi. They grew in size. And then we saw the emergence of new groups in the post 2011 period. So that militia dynamic was something that emerged from that fateful decision to award state salaries and is fed by it still today.
The other fateful decision was in 2013, when a mix of a zero sum and politicking in the first elected parliament of the of the post Gadhafi peerage that was elected in summer 2012, a mix of Zero-Sum politicking inside that parliament and threats of force by the various armed groups pushing for this.
At the time brought about a sweeping lustration law and the so-called political isolation law, which barred whole swathes of officials who had connexions with the previous regime, thereby hollowing out at a lot of expertise in the machinery of the state institutional expertise in one fell swoop. But it also made the whole question of reconciliation in the post Gadhafi period all the more difficult. And it created it fed those tensions.
And what has been striking to me in recent years is in conversations with some of with people who were some of the strongest proponents at the time of that lustration law, many of them now regret that it was as sweeping and as it turned out to be. They believe it was actually a mistake at that time. So it is interesting to to talk to Libyans who played key roles either during the 2011 uprising and in the critical period between 2011 and 2014 to see how they look back on it.
Now, the mistakes that were made, how what they would have done differently, how they would have done it differently. But I would also add that what is interesting in the last couple of years and indeed concerning, is the amount of revisionism we're seeing creep in to the conversation on Libya, whether it's the Libyan conversation about what happened in 2011 and and since or indeed the international conversation on Libya.
So to give one example, I've noticed over the last year or two and I see several references in different places to media references, et cetera, researchers references to Libya's 10 year long civil war, which to me is an extraordinary assertion to make because many would describe what happened in 2011 as a civil war. But Libya between 2011 and 2014 was not in a state of civil war. There were skirmishes throughout the country and there were certainly tensions.
But at that time. Libyans didn't talk about their country being in a state of civil war. So I think we have to be really careful in terms of how we look back at what happened in 2011, what happened particularly between 2011 and 2014. I see 2014 as the critical year in the post Gadhafi period. And we'll we'll talk about that later in terms of what happened that year.
But, you know, 2004, I think between 2010 and 2014, we have to see that examine that separately and then look at 2014 as this pivotal year. A couple of things about 2014. One thing I think is very important, too, to bear in mind about that year is the impact on Libya of what had happened in Egypt in 2013. And by that, I mean the military coup to oust the government of Mohamed Mursi. And then, of course, what followed there.
And it's interesting to see that Libya, in its post 2014 trajectory, tipped more towards echoing what had happened in Egypt than, say, what had happened in Tunisia, where an undoubtedly fragile transition. But Tunisians managed to forge a sense of of consensus and their political conversation. They managed to have conversations about the past, transitional justice, conversations, et cetera.
That didn't happen in Libya. And I think that the impact of what happened in 2013 in Egypt on Libya in terms of certainly and I lived in Libya in 2004 14 and the Libyans who wanted a repeat of what had happened in Egypt to happen in Libya and the Libyans who were fearful that a repeat of what had happened in Egypt in 2013 would happen in 2014 happened in Libya that year.
So that created a very febrile atmosphere in Libya early 2014, an atmosphere that was really ripe for for someone or something to come along and tip the situation, tip the transition as it stood at that point, and that someone did come along. And Khalifa Haftar, who I think when we look at the last decade in Libya, stands alone as a singular figure and a singular figure in terms of his ambitions, in terms of his actions and critically.
And I think this is really important in terms of the conversation about where Libya's is at today and in the future in terms of his backing from an array of external actors, which unfortunately has become a key aspect of the Libyan conflict since 2014. So I would end there with those opening remarks because I think they lead to a wider conversation about what's happened since.
Thank you so much, Larry. Really been a really comprehensive sweep, given how short a time you are given or allotted for this. And it really gives us a sense. Right from the beginning of 2011 down to the present, the sorts of challenges that we face in a place like Libya. The hopes that existed, the polarisation that brought was brought about, in a sense, in the post 2013 context and the emergence of the precipitating, in a sense, Libya's second civil war.
And I think also you highlight something which is very important, which is that people don't pay attention to Libya. And so they will make these sort of offhand remarks, even reasonably informed observers, that Libya has been in civil war for 10 years. And, of course, you made very clear that that wasn't the case and that the second civil war emerged out of this sort of effort to imitate what happened in Egypt on the part of some of them.
I think now is an opportune moment for us to hand it over to us to give perhaps a perspective on what the future holds. And, of course, this speaks with considerable experience living within Libya for many years, although he joins us, interestingly enough, from Turkey. So unless the floor is yours. Thank you so much. Thank you very much for hosting us today. And thank you again to the Middle East. Also, your. I think I don't want to draw in too much from what Mary has said.
I concur with Mary's kind of timeline. But I think the interesting points that Mary has made, no talking to where I want to pick up from this, but I will say something about the past. Because we are approaching that decade anniversary and I think it's important because there are so many that watch Libya. There are so many that right on Libya, so many that analyse Libya that are essentially in this conundrum.
How do you describe the conflicts in Libya? How do you describe the, you know, the binary if you want to go for for that? Now, there has been several attempts there unless that tried to describe Libya as a battle between Islamists and secular secularists. There were those that tried to define it between its regions, their historic rivalry between the west and the east of Libya when they were there are new attempt to try to define it by the greed of the actors ideology.
The history, the regionalism plays no role in this. And that is really just about. About dollar bills, essentially. So I think with all of that in mind, I found myself in this conundrum pondering it for the last year, really, whilst I've been writing various papers for the institute, whilst I've been analysing the situation from afar. And it's given me a perspective that we can't wrench Libya from its context. But we certainly got mentioned from its context and doesn't LeBon.
And we can't we can't wrench it from its context in the broader region. And what I mean by this is that if we tried to understand what happened in 2011 and the series of almost Kalac cardiac arrests of this these kind of moments that have shaken the system in Libya but have also drawn thousands of people to the fight. And I agree with what Mary was saying earlier on. There were skirmishes.
Many of these moments can be characterised by certain flickers between certain camps and to be certain regions in Libya, certain elements of greed that pertains to some of the actors that are that are making their way into political life. But in my view, I would say that there are two irreconcilable visions of the state today in Libya. And broadly speaking, that is a war that is ravaging the entire region, is a war that has been going on for many years.
That also encompasses what Mary was trying to illustrate about the events in 2013 and the knock on events that took place in May of 2014 with the emergence of Khalifa Haftar. Now we can get rooted down in the personalities. We can say to us of, well, Libya's complicated. And, you know, there are so many differences amongst people amongst its different categories of fighters and armed groups from all over the country.
But if we matter, if we think of the of the times that matter. There are three essential moments. 2011, the moment that galvanised thousands of Libyans, hundreds of thousands of Libyans across the country to either demonstrate or go to the front lines and fight the very same moment that took place again in 2014 with the emergence of the first civil war after Halifa, those emergence in 2014. And the latest chapter in that civil war. She doesn't write. Or April four thousand nineteen.
With the emergence of Khalifa Haftar in western Libya trying to overthrow the last UN backed government, the government of National Accord. Why do these moments matter? Because they galvanise or they were, in my view, this kind of political lightning rod moments. They weren't straight line skirmishes. They weren't neighbourhood localised fights. Tens of thousands of civilians, many of whom dropped their weapons in 2011, picked their weapons up again, either in 2014 or later on.
The latest chapter in 2019. They left their small local communities from across the country and made their way to the capital. Why? And I think part of this reason is also trying to describe this event to Libyans is also trying to describe the experience of Libyans. Libyans have experienced military rule in the past. They experienced the Jamahiriya. Now we can again go into the analytical rigour of which groups, from which cities and so forth.
But the perception on the ground matters because it's what that perception provoked so many thousands of people to turn to the front lines. And what I mean about this all in the kind of grand scheme of things, is that there's two irreconcilable visions are at the roots of the diplomatic efforts today to unify the country. And I think that's we've been down this road before. We've seen that film before in 2014 and 15 in Libya's first civil war.
And I think the essence of that for me and the relevance of this is that there was an inability to acknowledge the differences between the two camps. And I think you can find yourself looking at the emergence of Khalifa Haftar and saying, well, could we find an alternative? Could we find someone that's different? Could we find someone without such a chequered history?
But if we monitor or look from where Mary left off in thousand fourteen fifteen and look at the subsequent years of negotiations since at least 2016 to 2019, we see that there has been one consistent demand from Khalifa Haftar side. And that demand has been to reconfigure the presidential council of this U.N. backed government. Now, the presidential council is more than just a symbolic figure or symbolic position.
It's the supreme commander of the armed forces. That position is a defining characteristic. It's the defining hallmark of democratic states. It defines the character of your state. If you have a civilian presidency, that can assure the neutrality and. Subservience of your military. Then it's one clear marker, not the only marker, but it's the clearest marker of living in a free and fair society or democratic states.
If you have the inverse where it's the military that are in control of your presidency, as you find is the model in these old I'm living in Turkey at the moment. I'm staying in Turkey. This Turkish word asked the Arabic word Ascoli, the Turkish Turkish word for a soldier, ascaris states where essentially you can think of 1952, Egypt as one of those models and models across the region where the state is so finally intertwined with the military that you can't pull one of the other.
Those are military states. And the real hallmark of those states is the presidency, a position that should be held by a civilian, is controlled by the military. And if you do not have that separation of power, if you don't have a subservient military, then essentially you live in a military military state. And that is what is essentially being offered by after after it's at the heart of the negotiations that we've seen over the last four or five years.
And it's a central line that divides not only Libya and not only the permanent cease fire line that today stands in the centre of Libya and in the city of Sirte, the city where Gadhafi died in October 2011. What is so important about that aspect is it almost divides the region east of Sirte. You find that a lot more gulf, at least in the Gulf and in the Mashariki, you find military states west of Sirte towards the Maghreb.
You find that states have accommodated for this, have bridged this, have gone through that the maturer and they can accommodate for other challenges. Some of them are constitutional monarchies. Some of them are civilians, states, democratic states like Tunisia. And then you have states like Algeria that are undergoing trends, a major, major transformation, but are still negotiating that since the 1990s. So I think for me, that is like Libya's Iron Curtain.
And I think that's what for me is the only way to describe Libya and not wrench it from its initial context. So I think I'm not going to go on too much because I think Mary has already given us so much substance from the earlier period. But I think that's the only way to describe it. And I would say, and I have called this, it is almost like a political culture. War is ravaging the Middle East and North Africa right now. And it's funny that we're there now in 10 years.
But I can't shudder to think what the future holds, because I think given that Libya has resisted or Libyans have resisted for the last two civil wars, this model, I find it interesting that we're in a new conundrum where that model still hasn't been spoken about in negotiations or at least within the UN framework for negotiation. So I'll leave it to you or somewhat to provoke more more questions and elicit better answers from from you.
From Mariem, from Isokawa. Thank you so much. And I send I mean, it's I think you touch on a number of very important points. Your closing remark highlighted the UN's involvement. You have also yourself then both of you been in touch with the UN actors in the region. And also, in a sense, there's so much background to sort of give to the Libyan context. Mary, you did a wonderful historical overview.
And unless you sort of pointed out some very important aspects of the current Libyan situation, but in a sense, you presupposed a bit of knowledge in the sense that people aren't always aware of the East-West divide in Libya, the fact that the Western government is backed by the UN and in essence, Khalifa Haftar, who we've spoken about, has loomed large, very large in the last decade of Syria, although his sort of style seems to be waning considerably in the present and potentially
being replaced by other comparable actors to himself and who have the support of his backers, as it were. The the challenge with someone like him who is getting so much international support, in fact, including from Western states, but who represents hostility towards a U.N. based, UN backed government. And so we have this, in a sense, a contradiction in the way in which supporters outside the country are interacting with the Libyan situation.
And this is you know, I would like to ask both of you in a sense that to a certain extent, is it the way in which policymakers and international observers and powerful actors in the international community approach Libya in this very contradictory fashion, which has allowed it to perpetuate its civil war? Well, to put it in the plural, it's civil wars without proper resolution. And what could they do differently and why aren't they doing it?
This is kind of the deep question about Libya right now and then putting it to you at the beginning. I want to let everyone know you can ask questions. Walter Armbrust will be very sort of kindly sort of curating then and sharing them in just a moment. But I just want to start off this conversation by asking both of you this question. You know, how how do we how do we address the Libyan conundrum in light of the international contradiction in many respects in the.
Well, Mary, if you'd like to give us and then. Thank you, Asama. Well, again, I think it's instructive to go back to that very early period after the end of the uprising. And again, look at what was done, what could have been done differently, how the trajectory might have turned out differently. And in terms of the international engagement, Libyans from a very early stage at the end of the uprising told the U.N., told other internationals, we can do this.
We want a light footprint, a U.N. mission. You know, we will be able to oversee our our transition. And they were very forceful in that argument, very forceful in their insistence on that. It is interesting now to have conversations with with Libyans who insisted that at the time, who now regret that and believes that that was actually a mistake. In hindsight, one of the many regrets and in that one of the key challenges in the three years of the post 2011 period, those critical years was.
And did your how you deal with these revolutionary brigades and the other armed groups that were starting to spring up in the environment. I outlined earlier how you deal with them. You know, one of the challenges of Gadhafi's legacy was that after his fall, the Libyan army, as it was at that point, had been utterly hollowed out by Gadhafi. Gadhafi came to power in a military coup in 1969, and he was terrified that somebody would plot a coup against him.
And there were attempts over the 42 years of his regime. So what he did was he emasculated the army to ensure that it was not capable of of a coup against him. Instead, what he did was he empowered brigades led by his own son. So there was that familial loyalty there. But it meant that after the fall of his regime, security was a major challenge.
You had all of these revolutionary groups, many of them regionally based, based in cities and towns, loyalties to their communities, loyalties to their tribes, loyalties to political currents, et cetera. And no one was able to kind of pull that together. So, again, going back to how right Libya was in early 2014 for someone or something to come along, that was a key part of it.
And, you know, when Khalifa Haftar came along and in February 2014 and, you know, issued a video, basically he was accused of of attempting a coup at that time. People laughed at that early stage. But when he emerged again in May in Benghazi, he managed to gather a substantial support base. Why? Because Benghazi was a city that was plagued by insecurity, plagued by assassinations, played by. Plagued by bombings, etc., So there was an opportunity there.
And Heffter came along and took it. Looking back at 2014 again and talking about the kind of international approach to Libya and particularly on the role of external meddlers in the country, which is, you know, a key part of the conflict. Since 2014, there was an effort to impose narratives on Libya that fit other regional realities outside Libya. But we're totally at odds with with Libyan realities.
And as I mentioned earlier, the you know, this false idea of a secular versus Islamist and conflict conflict in Libya. That's not the case. You know that this is not that kind of ideological battle. In fact, since 2014, if there if there is one driving force in the Libyan conflict, it is a struggle to control Libya's resources, its its oil wealth. That's essentially what much of this boils down. Other aspects of the conflict since 2014 are merely ancillary to that.
So I think we've we've seen regional powers since 2014 who are involved in their own regional power struggles that have then played out in Libya. And then more widely, you see countries that are allied with those regional powers, be they France, for example, in Europe, close to the UAE, which is one of the key meddlers in Libya. So all of that has kind of had a knock on effect on Libyan dynamics.
So we can talk about the role of the U.N., what the U.N. could have and should have done better since 2011. But also, I think the role of the external actors, specifically the external meddlers, those countries that have been violating the U.N. arms embargo on Libya blatantly since 2014. And no one has managed to to rein them in properly. Thank you very much, Mary. And I'd just like to remind everyone that you can sort of put in your questions. And we hope to get to them straight after you.
And his response to the question about international engagement that. And perhaps you can also tie it in with the point that you made about in a sense, this is a challenge of how we confront military dictatorship as a model that is being appealed to by certain international actors. And Mary kind of highlighted the fact that the chaos that in a sense is precipitated in the context of war. Some people actually yearn for that sort of authoritarian stability.
And they said in some respects may problematic phrase that reminds us of things like Oriental despotism. And perhaps he could comment, you know, make those two sort of aspects of the question. But certainly. Well, I think I mean, I want to also touch on this one, because I think it's it's an interesting model. You know, Mary has spoken about how Gadhafi gutted the army after he came to power in 1969 following a military coup. He had done that for the first several decades.
But in the early 1990s, he began to realise that there was there were challenges from Libyans of all stripes. And I think one of the things that he did in 1993 following an attempted coup in the town of Bani Walid in central Libya, was to try to bleed into the lower tier army, which is essentially what it was called under the Gadhafi regime. It's causational Bucca named after Boubacar Yunis, the former defence minister of Libya.
He bled into it, tribal loyalty. One of the reasons for that is that Libya's Libya's revolution is also a giveaway as to why this was the case. It wasn't just a national civil war. It wasn't people rushing from east to fight in the western west to fight in the east. They were intercommunal battles. Libya was truly a fragmentation of the local community level, and it was neighbours fighting against neighbours.
One of the reasons for this is that Gadhafi had selected particular tribes that lived on the peripheries of certain cities to blend them into the lower lower army, not an army that was designed to fight. There was an army that was designed to acquire a certain amount of social and political privilege and a certain amount of power. But in a sense, coup proof the regime by extending the regime into the bloodlines of local tribes.
This was one of the ways in which he felt that he could avoid uprisings, because if there was to be an uprising or a coup or a a protest against his rule, it would be neighbouring communities that would put it down. He wouldn't have to do it from the central level. He reserved his own power, his own Praetorian Guard, essentially, that was led by his own sons. He was out of that for external opponents, but then had to start fighting on the local level. In 2011, it was a very chaotic time.
And that model essentially is what Khalifa Haftar has mimicked since 2014 with the support of countries like Egypt, countries like the United Arab Emirates, France and Russia. And the architecture of that is exactly the same. There is a tribal army, for example, in the east of the country. It's often quoted that the East supports Haftar. Which segment of the East? I often find that people say we'll have to represent something in the east.
If we look at the tribes that are represented in the east, it's 12 percent of the tribes or the inhabitants of the east are represented in the senior command of helicopters army. It's 88 percent of the population are not represented. So there is something that is going on. It's ironic that only a small portion of the society represented in an army that often calls itself the Libyan National Army.
Now that that framework, that architecture is so important because it's concealed behind the narratives that Mary was talking about. It's concealed as a Libyan national army that is fighting against, you know, a national threat. I mean, they're Islamists and terrorists, a narrative that was imposed essentially from the outside. And it's quite funny because when you look at the journalists that came to eastern Libya in 2014 and asked what is happening here?
Who are you? Well, where are the army and where fighting ISIS or al-Qaida in Arabic. That wasn't the case. If you look at Arabic media, they would often say, well, where the Bedouin were fighting the Jews and the Turks over there. Often find that peculiar because it would often that that kind of rhetoric that conceals it's easy to conceal it in English. It's not so easy to conceal it in a local language.
And any anthropologist would have picked up on this in 2014 and any anthropologist would pick up on this the structures, the embedded tribalism within these structures that is being carved out now for the last six, seven years. Now, I think it's funny that the need for a narrative to impose itself on that was important because they're playing from the same the same playbook.
Haftar also has a Pretoria and God, led by his own sons and a son in law with a very kind of sweet loyalty to the father or fatwah. So you have his sons and a son in law or you have radical Salafi medicalise from Saudi Arabia who follow a fatwah from the from there the emir or sorry, who follow a fatwa from the primal Mythili in Saudi Arabia, who has designated the Haftar as the as the ruler of Libya since doesn't everything. It's a very peculiar branch, a very peculiar architecture of an army.
But it is one that Libya has an experience with. That's that for me was the hallmark of the Jamahiriya under Gadhafi. So I think that's where I pick up on this, where I leave the subject of the of the military. But it also gives you an idea about if that's what's been going on for the last seven years. Khalifa Haftar has not been able to. Has not been legitimately the head of an army since 2015.
December 17th, 2015. How has he been able to go from a small foothold in the east of the country to trying to overthrow the UN backed government in Tripoli within four years? And I think what's been so peculiar about this and why it's so relevant to a decade on is that in 2011, when the U.N. passed Resolution 1973, there were skirmishes at the UN Security Council. Russia abstained. China wasn't happy, but they passed that legislation and it gave a green light to NATO to intervene in April 2011.
If we go 10 years later. States that were that were worried, particularly regional states like the United Arab Emirates, like Saudi Arabia, who were fearful of the Arab Spring at that time, they wised up, and especially the UAE, who have transformed from a small a medium power to one of the most aggressive and activist powers the region has ever seen. And the way the way they've been able to accomplish that is through something that no one, I think, really predicted and doesn't live in.
Essentially very simple to procuring diplomatic veto at the U.N. Security Council level and at the European Union level by bridging and forging alliances with France. Has a very crucial role in being both the EU member states and as a member of the U.N. Security Council, but also Russia, who also play that role with them at the U.N. Security Council and by being able to do that.
They've not only been able to, you know, break international norms, and I'm saying because they've got social such little time to go through with this. But an example of that is that when you think of the ways in which not only wars are fought, but how wars are funded, the most peculiar aspect of the past decade for me is something that's quite banal.
Russia funded Khalifa Haftar by counterfeiting or printing counterfeit Libyan currency in their own national mint kozelek and sending around 10 billion dollars worth to the east of Libya. No country on the planet would be able to do this apart from Russia by able to being being able to break those kind of norms, international financial norms in the way that it has. So to give it to.
Just to summarise this kind of point, by being able to erode those norms and being able to conceal the actions of a power like the UAE or Egypt or Khalifa Haftar, you know that procurement of a diplomatic veto was so crucial because Khalifa Haftar wasn't only able to just launch that war. He was able to launch on April 4th, 2009, seen in the presence of the chief of the UN, Antonio Guterres, who had just arrived in Tripoli to announce a national reconciliation conference.
It's baffling, but it's only now, given it's been a decade that we can cannot absorb such a major, major transformations and not only in Libya, but in the international order that we rely upon to give us stability and the security. Can I interject a couple of questions now? We've had a large number of questions coming in and we're not going to have time to get through anywhere near all of them. But let me ask a couple.
One is from Patrick Jeffrey, who is the EU International Relations and to play of international relations and diplomacy studies. And his question has to do with something you just mentioned, which is that the Russian forces remain in the city of Giuffre access following the January deadline for their departure and trying to the nationwide cease fire. And his question quite generally is what does Russia hope to gain from its involvement in Libya?
What is their end game? And let me throw out another question to you as well, because we're going to run out of time. And this one is from Peter MILIT, who was the British ambassador to Libya from 2015 to 2018. And his question is that the U.K. is often seen by Libyans as an important player. But in recent years, the British government has been preoccupied by its own problems with Brexit and with coded questions.
What role can the U.K. government play now to bolster the U.N. agreement and to support a possible unity government and help build stability in Libya? So two questions. One to do with Russia. The other to do with the U.K. To both of you, I think if you would like to take the. Yeah, sure, I'll take that quickly and then I'll let you take the second question, Mary, but in a nutshell, I would say that the Russia's playing a very intriguing game.
And I would say that the only way to understand that is by looking at the other players. The other players are playing Chequers. They have a very binary set of choices in front of them, either that is trying to support the UN backed governments and establishing a a essentially a civilian democratic state. I would say or they're trying to, you know, return Libya to a military led or a military or to return Libya to military rule.
And there are very strict binary choices and binary objectives in what they're doing in Libya. Turkey, perhaps, is the it is the peculiar actor in that it has geostrategic ambitions, given that there is the eastern Mediterranean gas base in there. But Russia Russia is not playing Chequers, Russia. Russia is playing chess. Russia has been able to carve out a space instead of juffer out that is more important than just Libya, Libya and the southern Mediterranean.
Is that the southern flank of NATO? And by by being able to just forge and carve out that role, we can't only just see in the context of the repositioning of that in the last six months or in July of 2020. But go back to Watford and December 8th, 2020. Go back to the comments of Emmanuel Macron at the last NATO conference. He called NATO Brain-Dead and said, I don't want, you know, essentially, quote, called into question why NATO's alliance exists.
Why should we be anti Russian? Russia is going to be a crucial partner for a country like France in the end in sub-Saharan Africa, where France has a very clear interest in making sure that has a foothold in southern Libya into the Sahara and SA health base. But when you look at the way that NATO has brought interaction, it's it's you know, it's a long and it's a very old machine.
And the logic is, you know, there are different logics that underpin each state within within NATO, its eastern flank, its Baltic states feel Russia's presence every single day. They see a Build-Up of a community. They see an aggressive Russia moving, whether it's in its actions in Georgia and in Ukraine and Crimea. But then you have states that are in the Mediterranean or in the western and southern flank of NATO that don't see Russia and don't feel that problem.
And Russia has been able to carve out a space right in the southern Mediterranean and really call into question two key actors, Turkey, who supports the Jenay. And France, who support Haftar and the Libyan national army, the LNA and the Fusion, or the massive fissure that has erupted between those two key member states of NATO is essentially, I think, really what Russia's end goal is. This isn't about Libya and it isn't about having a decisive win. They had a decisive win in Syria.
They could have called. I think, and had a decisive win in Libya. But a protracted conflict really plays into Russia's hands. And I would say just watch it in that sentence. Everyone else is playing Chequers. But Russia continues to play chess to our detriment. OK. What about the role the UK is the role of the U.K.? Affairs. Well, I think what I'd like to do is bring the conversation back to what's what's happening in Libya today and what's happening on the ground in Libya.
Because they think very often the conversation on Libya has become a very geopolitical conversation that is quite disconnected from what's going on on the ground in terms of some of the dynamics shaping Libyan society at the moment. And right now, we have just had U.N. and led dialogue forum that elected a new executive authority to put together a cabinet and oversee the country for the next 10 months until planned elections in December.
Parliamentary and presidential elections are what are planned, and these elections will be the first elections that Libya has experienced since 2014. Libya has actually only had three sets of national elections since the fall of Gadhafi. One parliamentary election in 2012. Then there were elections to try to form a constitutional committee, a committee tasked with writing Libya's first constitution in decades. And then in 2014, the second set of parliamentary elections.
And one thing I think many are wondering about, you know, if we reach a stage where in December elections can take place and there are all kinds of caveats about that, because a lot of things can happen in the in the 10 months in between. But say we do reach that point. There are many people wondering, first of all, what kind of turnout we might see in those elections.
And it was very striking to watch what happened to the kind of euphoria, if you like, about democracy, a democratic transition amongst Libyans in 2012. There was an enormous turnout for those first elections. I was in Libya for that election day. I was in Benghazi. There was a euphoria. There was a sense that Libya had gone another important step in its transition. Fast forward to 2014 and the turnout plummeted.
It was it was a tiny turnout and something that undermined the legitimacy of the resulting parliament. There are real concerns that we may face into another low turnout in December. Some of the elections more recently in Libya for municipal councils have shown a low turnout. So there is a question as to whether Libyans as a society are basically not so and armoured with the idea of of democracy.
And that, of course, raises real concerns in terms of what kind of trajectory Libya might be on, in terms of its own, in terms of its transition. Know, Haftar spoke to a significant percentage of the Libyan population that felt that their most important priority was security. They felt they wanted what Haftar presented, which was caused by military rule, if you like, or at least that model. He aspired to the Egyptian model in many respects. And that spoke to a lot of Libyans.
I think the the question now goes back to what Ana said earlier is, you know, the competing visions for what Libyans would like to see as the Libyan state. What does the Libyan state look like in the future? Will it be a a democratic civil state? Will it be some kind of quiescent attempt at a cois I am military will have to remember is in his mid 70s. So that I think that's worth bearing in mind as well.
The question of what may be left once Haftar is no longer on the scene in terms of what he has constructed in eastern Libya, the forces he has built up, the forces he and his supporters call an army. What will the legacy of that be and the polarisation we've seen within Libyan society over the last six years, that the deep wedge that has formed between East and west Libya, driven by media narratives, driven. You know, there has been an intense war of narratives in Libya over the last six years.
So I think looking forward, this question of what does a future Libyan state look like? What kind of state do Libyans want at this point? After the last decade where they have experienced democracy, at least in the form of minimally of elections, what did they want now and what do they aspire to? I often remember in 2011, after the uprising, Libyans were many Libyans told foreign journalists, you know, just wait. Within five or 10 years, Libya will be like a Dubai on the Mediterranean.
That's what we aspire to. Other. Said they wanted to be Switzerland on the Mediterranean. Ten years on. I think the question of what a future Libyan state will look like, what Libya will look like 10 years hence, I think that's the interesting question in terms of what kind of state will will actually emerge from.
From what we see now. I also had a question from Michael Willis in relation to one of the neighbouring states, which I don't think has been mentioned once in the whole evening, but argued which arguably has a significant stake in Libyan affairs, which is Algeria. Can either of you say anything about the role of Algeria and the current Libyan situation?
I'll make this very brief. In fact, where we're publishing, hopefully in the next week a publication called The Great Game and looking at the 12 powers that have shaped Libya over the past decade, Algeria being one of them. And I think I think actually the author actually is in the room with us as events. So I think I'll probably defer to him to speak about this.
But having looked at Algeria over the past decade, Algeria is undergoing its own its own transformation with the headache over the past 18 months. And I think despite those changes, you know, it's I think Algeria is true. Role has been often called that hidden giant. I think that's that's a very easy kind of statement to make. But I think Algeria had played a diplomatic role in Libya's last civil war.
But I think going forward, you know, Algeria is concerned with two things power, politics and the regional the regional interference, particularly by Egypt and their own struggle to to have to reshape the hegemony over the African Union over North Africa following the fall of Gadhafi. But, you know, there's a lot that hinges on Algeria's own domestic changes. But, you know, it's it's still too really early.
I think Algeria could have played its hand many, many years ago and has decided, given its long history of non-interference, it's the sort of that it prefers diplomacy over, you know, interfering in the state of another domestic affairs of a neighbouring states. Mary, do you have anything to add to that? So it was kind of just pick up very quickly on Mary's last points. Yes. That's very important as we are moving towards elections over the next 10 months.
I think what's so important and what's so interesting about Libya is experience with the last decade is the degradation of daily life. And I think what's so fascinating about about that is it's a very it's a very, very lived experience. It's such a brutal experience. The Danish Refugee Council in the summer during Koban at its peak, said that living conditions in Libya were apocalyptic.
You know, if you're just just think about that for a moment and think what that means, daily water cuts or water cuts to three million people at one point during the last civil war, there are electricity cuts that are already intermittent now, but our entire blackouts in some places of the country for days. The inability to get cash, physical cash and Libya as a cash economy. The inability to get cash frequently, conveniently or predictably for nearly a decade.
Just think what that does to the political psyche of your average person, to any person, in fact, in the country. And think about what that does to your decision making when you move towards elections. We often think about ourselves in Europe or in the UK. You know, thinking about the decision making that was taking place during Brexit, you know, irrespective of which way one stands on, that was on the discussion, it was the way in which people really believed that their lives were at risk.
And it was the way in which they believed their lives needed to change. But their daily living conditions hadn't changed at that point. If we look at what's happened in Libya over the past decade, there has been a major transformation in that. And what concerns me is that when you are living in such quote unquote apocalyptic conditions, how do you decide soberly how do you make such a good decision and do you not get more drawn?
And do you not become more ripened to making quite extreme decisions? Do you not become more ripened to listening to quite simple ideas, very simple lethal ideas about explaining a very complex phenomena, fiscal service delivery, geopolitics? And you start saying, well, why did we just give it to someone? So why don't we give it to the side of that side? And I think to go back to what Mary was saying, that experience is something that I think essentially didn't need to happen,
irrespective of the disputes and the conflicts in Libya over the last six years. Why has electricity not been managed? You don't need a prime minister from the east or for the West to have your electricity infrastructure repaired. Not something that really concerns Libyans. I'll leave this on an anecdote. I was in Spain last year and the Spanish Foreign Ministry, to their credit, who don't have much bandwidth in Libya, asked what could we do to help Libyans?
Could we support the UN mission? Can we talk on diplomacy? Can we talk on national reconciliation? And I thought, you don't have the bandwidth. But I did joke an injustice. I said, if you want every single Libyan east western side to love, you have a conference about delivering electricity in Libya or delivering water in Libya. They will love you for that, you know. Just break the mould of the continuous conversations and essentially respond to very desperate needs that Libyans are living under.
That, I would say indirectly have shaped the minds of many Libyans that today, as Mary was saying or asking themselves, who should we support and making quick binary decisions on things that are quite complex. Thank you. That's very helpful. And actually, we have had a number of questions. I'll just summarise them.
We're close to the end anyway, asking about asking for more information about the local dynamics of what's going on in Libya, both in terms of what's going on now, in terms of the balance between any attempt that somebody might make for state building as opposed to security, but also in the longer term, if the social conditions leading up to the fall of Gadhafi. I don't know if we have time for any more discussion, but if I could just, you know, make a few final points.
I think following on from what I said about the discontent to Libya over and living conditions and, you know, last August, we saw the biggest demonstrations, the biggest nationwide demonstrations in Libya since 2011. They were basically driven by grievances over widespread corruption, poor living conditions, and just the frustrations that come from all of that. One final point. If you look at the demographics of Libya.
Libya is a predominantly youthful population. Some two thirds of the population are under the age of 30. We're now looking at a younger generation that has no real lived memory of the Gadhafi era. So talking about the Gadhafi era and, you know, framing what's happening now through that particular lens doesn't resonate with that generation. It's a generation that has been shaped by the experience of 2011 and by the experience of the last decade.
And I think we really need to to think a little bit more about that generation that is emerging, how it sees the Libyan state, how it sees its future, its demands, its grievances, the very real frustrations it feels right now. And one final word in terms of those including the U.K. and other countries that are wondering what they can do in terms of supporting this new transitional periods should it succeed after this new executive has been established?
I think thinking about Libya in those terms, those future terms and looking at that younger generation and looking at what it's demanding, how it has been shaped. I think that's key because it's obvious. It's often something that is missing in the conversation on Libya, just that useful segment and how they may view things very differently from the older political figures that international interlocutors are dealing with.
Thank you very much, Mary Ann. This has really been an amazing conversation, a very wide ranging conversation, and it's nice to sort of end on a note of youth, youthful hope. You could say, because in a sense, the youth represent the future of the of this country going for decades. And I think it's entirely sort of to the point to highlight, including the policymakers in the audience and the people involved in thinking about how Britain or other countries should engage in the region.
That that aspect of the region be highlighted. I'd like to thank you both, Mary and A. I'd like to thank Walter for sort of handling the questions. I'd like to apologise to those who whose questions we didn't get to. But this has really been a wonderfully informative evening about a very challenging subject and one which I hope we will try to give more attention to.
It's one of the topics that Libya doesn't get as much attention as many of us would like, and it persists in facing a number of challenges as a consequence, I think. So with that, I'd like to wish you all a wonderful evening and a wonderful weekend in advance. And see you in a week's time in a week. We will have. Actually, I I'm not entirely certain who will be presenting next week. So if one of my colleagues could very kindly perhaps jump in and inform us that we will be welcoming.
Vitaly Naumkin and Alexi Vasiliev will be speaking about Russia in the decades since the Arab uprisings of 2011. How opposites attract. After a discussion on Libya. So we would love to have you there in a week's time. Until then, good evening from Oxford.