34 The Economist December 18th 2021
Middle East & Africa
LibyaOn your marks, get set, now what?
F
or weekendrelief 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 first race for president is
proving far messier. There is no commonly
accepted legal framework for the election,
scheduled for December 24th. Candidates
have been disqualified, then readmitted.
The unofficial who was supposed to help
oversee the process, Jan Kubis, resigned in
November. With the vote likely to be post
poned, warlords are flexing their muscles.
On December 15th militias briefly sur
rounded government offices 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 between 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 ceasefire 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.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 fired the first 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 offers to join Lib
ya’s interim governments, spoiled past ef
forts to unite the country and has no ecoB ENGHAZI AND TRIPOLI
Libya’s first presidential election was meant to unite the country.
It is not going as planned→Alsointhissection
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