1 00:00:06,610 --> 00:00:11,140 Good evening and welcome to this week's Zoome Weapon off from the Middle East centre. 2 00:00:11,140 --> 00:00:15,010 This week's topic is Libya. Past, present and future. 3 00:00:15,010 --> 00:00:24,140 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. 4 00:00:24,140 --> 00:00:27,550 They are Mary Fitzgerald, A.l Komati. 5 00:00:27,550 --> 00:00:36,430 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. 6 00:00:36,430 --> 00:00:40,960 The civil war that ensued and ultimately led to the killing of Gadhafi in October 2011, 7 00:00:40,960 --> 00:00:50,050 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. 8 00:00:50,050 --> 00:00:59,080 The future remains uncertain, but deserves our attention. Our two speakers for this evening, Larry Fitzgerald and Anas Komati. 9 00:00:59,080 --> 00:01:06,340 Mary is a researcher specialising in euro Medicare in the euro Mediterranean region with a particular focus on Libya. 10 00:01:06,340 --> 00:01:12,940 She's reported on and researched Libya since February 2011 and lived that in 2014. 11 00:01:12,940 --> 00:01:21,250 An associate fellow of CSR King's College, London. She has conducted research on Libya, the International Crisis Group, 12 00:01:21,250 --> 00:01:28,270 the European Council on Foreign Relations CFR, the United States Institute for Peace USCAP, amongst many others. 13 00:01:28,270 --> 00:01:34,690 Previously a journalist. Her reporting on Libya has appeared in publication, including in The Economist Foreign Policy. 14 00:01:34,690 --> 00:01:36,610 The New York Financial Times. 15 00:01:36,610 --> 00:01:43,810 And she's also the contributing editor to an edited volume on the Libyan revolution and its aftermath with Oxford University Press. 16 00:01:43,810 --> 00:01:54,370 And assume Giamatti is the founder and director of the Tripoli based Saddiq Institute, the first public policy think tank in sorry. 17 00:01:54,370 --> 00:01:59,680 The first public policy think tank in Libya's history established in August 2011. 18 00:01:59,680 --> 00:02:07,930 He has held several positions in the region and Europe as a visiting fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Centre in Beirut, 19 00:02:07,930 --> 00:02:11,260 a visiting lecturer at the NATO Defence College in Rome. 20 00:02:11,260 --> 00:02:20,290 And he is a frequent contributor on Libya and manage affairs on Al-Jazeera, BBC, France 24 and Sky News. 21 00:02:20,290 --> 00:02:25,390 Many of us have watched him on a regular basis as a commentator on these on these channels. 22 00:02:25,390 --> 00:02:34,150 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, 23 00:02:34,150 --> 00:02:38,200 published in 2011 by Routledge. And so it gives us great pleasure. 24 00:02:38,200 --> 00:02:42,280 Here in the Middle East centre to invite the two of you to speak. 25 00:02:42,280 --> 00:02:49,540 I have committed to mention myself and somehow Azami on the department lecturer in contemporary Slavic studies, 26 00:02:49,540 --> 00:02:52,780 and it gives me great pleasure to call Mary first. 27 00:02:52,780 --> 00:03:00,900 If you can give us your take on how we should look at Libya today in light of a decade of revolution. 28 00:03:00,900 --> 00:03:07,980 Thank you very much, Osama. And thank you very much to the Middle East centre for organising this event. 29 00:03:07,980 --> 00:03:13,740 The week before, Libyans will mark the anniversary of February 17th, 30 00:03:13,740 --> 00:03:22,470 the day many Libyans consider was the beginning of the uprising that ultimately brought about the end of the Gadhafi regime. 31 00:03:22,470 --> 00:03:30,660 And in 2011, those at the protest that started on February 17th, February 15th, 32 00:03:30,660 --> 00:03:41,820 actually a couple of days before with the arrest of a terrible lawyer who represented families of the victims of the Abu Salim massacre, 33 00:03:41,820 --> 00:03:44,760 a massacre in the Abus to be in prison, 34 00:03:44,760 --> 00:03:55,800 the most notorious prison in Gadhafi's Libya, which had taken place in 1996 in which around 1200 prisoners were killed by regime forces, 35 00:03:55,800 --> 00:04:01,950 according to Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and other human rights organisations. 36 00:04:01,950 --> 00:04:13,680 Those anti regime protests that started and snowballed in Benghazi, Libya's second city, soon tipped in to an armed uprising. 37 00:04:13,680 --> 00:04:22,050 And I think it's interesting to compare what happened in Libya in early 2011 with what had already happened in Egypt, 38 00:04:22,050 --> 00:04:31,380 neighbouring Egypt and Tunisia, in that in Libya, those anti regime protests very quickly became an armed uprising against the regime, 39 00:04:31,380 --> 00:04:39,780 partly to do with the regime's own response to those gathering protests that had happened in February. 40 00:04:39,780 --> 00:04:52,110 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. 41 00:04:52,110 --> 00:05:01,830 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. 42 00:05:01,830 --> 00:05:08,160 I arrived in Benghazi about 10 days after those very first anti regime protests started. 43 00:05:08,160 --> 00:05:17,010 And what was striking at that time, this was just before the opposition announced the formation of the National Transitional Council, 44 00:05:17,010 --> 00:05:24,780 the body that was to be the international community's interlocutor on the part of the opposition throughout that year. 45 00:05:24,780 --> 00:05:34,740 And what was really striking for me in Benghazi in those early days and weeks before the U.N. resolution mandating the NATO intervention, 46 00:05:34,740 --> 00:05:44,460 was this sense of a fear, sense of fear in terms of what how the regime had already responded to those 47 00:05:44,460 --> 00:05:51,300 protests and how the regime may respond as those protests started to quicken. 48 00:05:51,300 --> 00:06:03,300 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. 49 00:06:03,300 --> 00:06:08,550 As we as we know, the uprising continued. 50 00:06:08,550 --> 00:06:18,810 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. 51 00:06:18,810 --> 00:06:31,560 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. 52 00:06:31,560 --> 00:06:37,770 And many internationals who are looking at Libya at that time also were quite optimistic. 53 00:06:37,770 --> 00:06:41,010 There was a sense that on paper, at least, 54 00:06:41,010 --> 00:06:48,960 Libya had all the signs of possibly being one of the success stories of what at that time many people were collectively 55 00:06:48,960 --> 00:07:00,440 terming the AAB spring on paper and Libya could appear deceptively straightforward country of just six million people, 56 00:07:00,440 --> 00:07:07,620 an urbanised population predominantly in comparison with, say, Syria and Iraq, homogenous, 57 00:07:07,620 --> 00:07:13,950 relatively homogenous society with not so much the pronounced ethnic cleavages of Syria and Iraq, 58 00:07:13,950 --> 00:07:19,020 none of the sectarian cleavages of Syria and Iraq and an educated population. 59 00:07:19,020 --> 00:07:28,410 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. 60 00:07:28,410 --> 00:07:38,280 So on paper, Libya appeared to have many of the ingredients that could lead to a success story. 61 00:07:38,280 --> 00:07:45,150 But I think what what wasn't discussed enough at that time was the fact that you 62 00:07:45,150 --> 00:07:54,600 were lifting the lid on 42 years of rule by Moammar Gadhafi and Gadhafi's Libya. 63 00:07:54,600 --> 00:08:00,210 Wasn't your common garden variety autocracy, if you like. 64 00:08:00,210 --> 00:08:07,320 This was a very unique and very idiosyncratic experiment in autocracy. 65 00:08:07,320 --> 00:08:15,240 So when Gadhafi's regime collapsed, it soon became more apparent what the nature of that regime was, 66 00:08:15,240 --> 00:08:22,350 how Gadhafi ruled, how his 42 years in power had shaped Libyan society, 67 00:08:22,350 --> 00:08:29,430 had shaped the way Libyans dealt with each other, interacted with each other, had shaped the institutions of the state. 68 00:08:29,430 --> 00:08:36,110 And I think that at those early stages, there wasn't enough understanding of that, of that of that. 69 00:08:36,110 --> 00:08:49,080 And that internationals, I would say as well, that between 2011 and 2014, a couple of fateful decisions were taken. 70 00:08:49,080 --> 00:08:57,660 That really helped set the course for the turbulence of post Gadhafi Libya. 71 00:08:57,660 --> 00:09:08,220 The first fateful decision was to basically give a state salary to those who claim to have been fighters and during the uprising, 72 00:09:08,220 --> 00:09:10,800 anti Gadhafi fighters during the uprising. 73 00:09:10,800 --> 00:09:21,510 That led to a situation that from 2012 on, you had over two hundred thousand men, honest, who were armed on state salaries. 74 00:09:21,510 --> 00:09:32,220 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, 75 00:09:32,220 --> 00:09:38,210 fighters on both sides drawing state salaries and the other. 76 00:09:38,210 --> 00:09:45,360 And of course, that dynamic also helped and encouraged the growth of more armed groups. 77 00:09:45,360 --> 00:09:50,220 So we saw the armed groups that had emerged during the uprising against Gadhafi. 78 00:09:50,220 --> 00:09:57,900 They grew in size. And then we saw the emergence of new groups in the post 2011 period. 79 00:09:57,900 --> 00:10:08,190 So that militia dynamic was something that emerged from that fateful decision to award state salaries and is fed by it still today. 80 00:10:08,190 --> 00:10:11,940 The other fateful decision was in 2013, 81 00:10:11,940 --> 00:10:24,650 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, 82 00:10:24,650 --> 00:10:36,030 a mix of Zero-Sum politicking inside that parliament and threats of force by the various armed groups pushing for this. 83 00:10:36,030 --> 00:10:43,470 At the time brought about a sweeping lustration law and the so-called political isolation law, 84 00:10:43,470 --> 00:10:51,540 which barred whole swathes of officials who had connexions with the previous regime, 85 00:10:51,540 --> 00:11:00,930 thereby hollowing out at a lot of expertise in the machinery of the state institutional expertise in one fell swoop. 86 00:11:00,930 --> 00:11:09,400 But it also made the whole question of reconciliation in the post Gadhafi period all the more difficult. 87 00:11:09,400 --> 00:11:13,650 And it created it fed those tensions. 88 00:11:13,650 --> 00:11:20,910 And what has been striking to me in recent years is in conversations with some of with 89 00:11:20,910 --> 00:11:26,940 people who were some of the strongest proponents at the time of that lustration law, 90 00:11:26,940 --> 00:11:31,860 many of them now regret that it was as sweeping and as it turned out to be. 91 00:11:31,860 --> 00:11:41,010 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 92 00:11:41,010 --> 00:11:48,960 uprising and in the critical period between 2011 and 2014 to see how they look back on it. 93 00:11:48,960 --> 00:11:56,010 Now, the mistakes that were made, how what they would have done differently, how they would have done it differently. 94 00:11:56,010 --> 00:12:02,370 But I would also add that what is interesting in the last couple of years and indeed concerning, 95 00:12:02,370 --> 00:12:09,900 is the amount of revisionism we're seeing creep in to the conversation on Libya, 96 00:12:09,900 --> 00:12:20,190 whether it's the Libyan conversation about what happened in 2011 and and since or indeed the international conversation on Libya. 97 00:12:20,190 --> 00:12:32,190 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, 98 00:12:32,190 --> 00:12:39,300 researchers references to Libya's 10 year long civil war, 99 00:12:39,300 --> 00:12:47,670 which to me is an extraordinary assertion to make because many would describe what happened in 2011 as a civil war. 100 00:12:47,670 --> 00:12:52,950 But Libya between 2011 and 2014 was not in a state of civil war. 101 00:12:52,950 --> 00:12:58,650 There were skirmishes throughout the country and there were certainly tensions. 102 00:12:58,650 --> 00:13:04,240 But at that time. Libyans didn't talk about their country being in a state of civil war. 103 00:13:04,240 --> 00:13:15,550 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. 104 00:13:15,550 --> 00:13:21,790 I see 2014 as the critical year in the post Gadhafi period. 105 00:13:21,790 --> 00:13:26,500 And we'll we'll talk about that later in terms of what happened that year. 106 00:13:26,500 --> 00:13:38,860 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. 107 00:13:38,860 --> 00:13:41,980 A couple of things about 2014. 108 00:13:41,980 --> 00:13:52,990 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. 109 00:13:52,990 --> 00:13:59,110 And by that, I mean the military coup to oust the government of Mohamed Mursi. 110 00:13:59,110 --> 00:14:01,510 And then, of course, what followed there. 111 00:14:01,510 --> 00:14:11,140 And it's interesting to see that Libya, in its post 2014 trajectory, tipped more towards echoing what had happened in Egypt than, 112 00:14:11,140 --> 00:14:18,610 say, what had happened in Tunisia, where an undoubtedly fragile transition. 113 00:14:18,610 --> 00:14:23,860 But Tunisians managed to forge a sense of of consensus and their political conversation. 114 00:14:23,860 --> 00:14:31,270 They managed to have conversations about the past, transitional justice, conversations, et cetera. 115 00:14:31,270 --> 00:14:40,900 That didn't happen in Libya. And I think that the impact of what happened in 2013 in Egypt on Libya in terms of 116 00:14:40,900 --> 00:14:50,230 certainly and I lived in Libya in 2004 14 and the Libyans who wanted a repeat of what had 117 00:14:50,230 --> 00:14:57,010 happened in Egypt to happen in Libya and the Libyans who were fearful that a repeat of 118 00:14:57,010 --> 00:15:03,310 what had happened in Egypt in 2013 would happen in 2014 happened in Libya that year. 119 00:15:03,310 --> 00:15:09,700 So that created a very febrile atmosphere in Libya early 2014, 120 00:15:09,700 --> 00:15:18,340 an atmosphere that was really ripe for for someone or something to come along and tip the situation, 121 00:15:18,340 --> 00:15:25,230 tip the transition as it stood at that point, and that someone did come along. 122 00:15:25,230 --> 00:15:34,060 And Khalifa Haftar, who I think when we look at the last decade in Libya, 123 00:15:34,060 --> 00:15:47,230 stands alone as a singular figure and a singular figure in terms of his ambitions, in terms of his actions and critically. 124 00:15:47,230 --> 00:15:51,340 And I think this is really important in terms of the conversation about where Libya's is 125 00:15:51,340 --> 00:15:58,900 at today and in the future in terms of his backing from an array of external actors, 126 00:15:58,900 --> 00:16:05,230 which unfortunately has become a key aspect of the Libyan conflict since 2014. 127 00:16:05,230 --> 00:16:14,230 So I would end there with those opening remarks because I think they lead to a wider conversation about what's happened since. 128 00:16:14,230 --> 00:16:23,290 Thank you so much, Larry. Really been a really comprehensive sweep, given how short a time you are given or allotted for this. 129 00:16:23,290 --> 00:16:33,160 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. 130 00:16:33,160 --> 00:16:39,700 The hopes that existed, the polarisation that brought was brought about, in a sense, 131 00:16:39,700 --> 00:16:46,720 in the post 2013 context and the emergence of the precipitating, in a sense, Libya's second civil war. 132 00:16:46,720 --> 00:16:52,990 And I think also you highlight something which is very important, which is that people don't pay attention to Libya. 133 00:16:52,990 --> 00:17:01,180 And so they will make these sort of offhand remarks, even reasonably informed observers, that Libya has been in civil war for 10 years. 134 00:17:01,180 --> 00:17:07,240 And, of course, you made very clear that that wasn't the case and that the second civil war emerged out 135 00:17:07,240 --> 00:17:14,800 of this sort of effort to imitate what happened in Egypt on the part of some of them. 136 00:17:14,800 --> 00:17:24,040 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. 137 00:17:24,040 --> 00:17:34,790 And, of course, this speaks with considerable experience living within Libya for many years, although he joins us, interestingly enough, from Turkey. 138 00:17:34,790 --> 00:17:38,830 So unless the floor is yours. Thank you so much. 139 00:17:38,830 --> 00:17:43,590 Thank you very much for hosting us today. And thank you again to the Middle East. 140 00:17:43,590 --> 00:17:49,910 Also, your. I think I don't want to draw in too much from what Mary has said. 141 00:17:49,910 --> 00:17:52,990 I concur with Mary's kind of timeline. 142 00:17:52,990 --> 00:17:59,990 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. 143 00:17:59,990 --> 00:18:05,660 Because we are approaching that decade anniversary and I think it's important because there are so many that watch Libya. 144 00:18:05,660 --> 00:18:12,860 There are so many that right on Libya, so many that analyse Libya that are essentially in this conundrum. 145 00:18:12,860 --> 00:18:20,060 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? 146 00:18:20,060 --> 00:18:28,790 Now, there has been several attempts there unless that tried to describe Libya as a battle between Islamists and secular secularists. 147 00:18:28,790 --> 00:18:36,020 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 148 00:18:36,020 --> 00:18:40,580 there are new attempt to try to define it by the greed of the actors ideology. 149 00:18:40,580 --> 00:18:43,970 The history, the regionalism plays no role in this. 150 00:18:43,970 --> 00:18:46,620 And that is really just about. About dollar bills, essentially. 151 00:18:46,620 --> 00:18:52,430 So I think with all of that in mind, I found myself in this conundrum pondering it for the last year, really, 152 00:18:52,430 --> 00:18:58,070 whilst I've been writing various papers for the institute, whilst I've been analysing the situation from afar. 153 00:18:58,070 --> 00:19:04,500 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. 154 00:19:04,500 --> 00:19:07,960 And we can't we can't wrench it from its context in the broader region. 155 00:19:07,960 --> 00:19:16,340 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 156 00:19:16,340 --> 00:19:23,210 of this these kind of moments that have shaken the system in Libya but have also drawn thousands of people to the fight. 157 00:19:23,210 --> 00:19:27,020 And I agree with what Mary was saying earlier on. There were skirmishes. 158 00:19:27,020 --> 00:19:33,830 Many of these moments can be characterised by certain flickers between certain camps and to be certain regions in Libya, 159 00:19:33,830 --> 00:19:40,580 certain elements of greed that pertains to some of the actors that are that are making their way into political life. 160 00:19:40,580 --> 00:19:46,820 But in my view, I would say that there are two irreconcilable visions of the state today in Libya. 161 00:19:46,820 --> 00:19:53,210 And broadly speaking, that is a war that is ravaging the entire region, is a war that has been going on for many years. 162 00:19:53,210 --> 00:19:59,060 That also encompasses what Mary was trying to illustrate about the events in 2013 and the 163 00:19:59,060 --> 00:20:04,220 knock on events that took place in May of 2014 with the emergence of Khalifa Haftar. 164 00:20:04,220 --> 00:20:08,850 Now we can get rooted down in the personalities. We can say to us of, well, Libya's complicated. 165 00:20:08,850 --> 00:20:15,290 And, you know, there are so many differences amongst people amongst its different categories of fighters and armed groups from all over the country. 166 00:20:15,290 --> 00:20:20,210 But if we matter, if we think of the of the times that matter. There are three essential moments. 167 00:20:20,210 --> 00:20:24,410 2011, the moment that galvanised thousands of Libyans, 168 00:20:24,410 --> 00:20:29,840 hundreds of thousands of Libyans across the country to either demonstrate or go to the front lines and fight 169 00:20:29,840 --> 00:20:35,400 the very same moment that took place again in 2014 with the emergence of the first civil war after Halifa, 170 00:20:35,400 --> 00:20:39,950 those emergence in 2014. And the latest chapter in that civil war. 171 00:20:39,950 --> 00:20:43,310 She doesn't write. Or April four thousand nineteen. 172 00:20:43,310 --> 00:20:49,670 With the emergence of Khalifa Haftar in western Libya trying to overthrow the last UN backed government, the government of National Accord. 173 00:20:49,670 --> 00:20:56,090 Why do these moments matter? Because they galvanise or they were, in my view, this kind of political lightning rod moments. 174 00:20:56,090 --> 00:21:00,290 They weren't straight line skirmishes. They weren't neighbourhood localised fights. 175 00:21:00,290 --> 00:21:08,620 Tens of thousands of civilians, many of whom dropped their weapons in 2011, picked their weapons up again, either in 2014 or later on. 176 00:21:08,620 --> 00:21:16,850 The latest chapter in 2019. They left their small local communities from across the country and made their way to the capital. 177 00:21:16,850 --> 00:21:25,550 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. 178 00:21:25,550 --> 00:21:30,890 Libyans have experienced military rule in the past. They experienced the Jamahiriya. 179 00:21:30,890 --> 00:21:35,870 Now we can again go into the analytical rigour of which groups, from which cities and so forth. 180 00:21:35,870 --> 00:21:43,340 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. 181 00:21:43,340 --> 00:21:46,550 And what I mean about this all in the kind of grand scheme of things, 182 00:21:46,550 --> 00:21:53,750 is that there's two irreconcilable visions are at the roots of the diplomatic efforts today to unify the country. 183 00:21:53,750 --> 00:22:00,980 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. 184 00:22:00,980 --> 00:22:08,330 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. 185 00:22:08,330 --> 00:22:13,970 And I think you can find yourself looking at the emergence of Khalifa Haftar and saying, well, could we find an alternative? 186 00:22:13,970 --> 00:22:18,740 Could we find someone that's different? Could we find someone without such a chequered history? 187 00:22:18,740 --> 00:22:23,750 But if we monitor or look from where Mary left off in thousand fourteen fifteen 188 00:22:23,750 --> 00:22:31,280 and look at the subsequent years of negotiations since at least 2016 to 2019, 189 00:22:31,280 --> 00:22:35,780 we see that there has been one consistent demand from Khalifa Haftar side. 190 00:22:35,780 --> 00:22:40,980 And that demand has been to reconfigure the presidential council of this U.N. backed government. 191 00:22:40,980 --> 00:22:46,280 Now, the presidential council is more than just a symbolic figure or symbolic position. 192 00:22:46,280 --> 00:22:51,410 It's the supreme commander of the armed forces. That position is a defining characteristic. 193 00:22:51,410 --> 00:22:56,090 It's the defining hallmark of democratic states. It defines the character of your state. 194 00:22:56,090 --> 00:22:59,740 If you have a civilian presidency, that can assure the neutrality and. 195 00:22:59,740 --> 00:23:01,410 Subservience of your military. 196 00:23:01,410 --> 00:23:09,490 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. 197 00:23:09,490 --> 00:23:13,780 If you have the inverse where it's the military that are in control of your presidency, 198 00:23:13,780 --> 00:23:17,350 as you find is the model in these old I'm living in Turkey at the moment. 199 00:23:17,350 --> 00:23:18,540 I'm staying in Turkey. 200 00:23:18,540 --> 00:23:28,420 This Turkish word asked the Arabic word Ascoli, the Turkish Turkish word for a soldier, ascaris states where essentially you can think of 1952, 201 00:23:28,420 --> 00:23:33,070 Egypt as one of those models and models across the region where the state is so 202 00:23:33,070 --> 00:23:37,300 finally intertwined with the military that you can't pull one of the other. 203 00:23:37,300 --> 00:23:38,800 Those are military states. 204 00:23:38,800 --> 00:23:46,750 And the real hallmark of those states is the presidency, a position that should be held by a civilian, is controlled by the military. 205 00:23:46,750 --> 00:23:53,530 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. 206 00:23:53,530 --> 00:24:00,780 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. 207 00:24:00,780 --> 00:24:04,750 And it's a central line that divides not only Libya and not only the permanent 208 00:24:04,750 --> 00:24:09,340 cease fire line that today stands in the centre of Libya and in the city of Sirte, 209 00:24:09,340 --> 00:24:17,380 the city where Gadhafi died in October 2011. What is so important about that aspect is it almost divides the region east of Sirte. 210 00:24:17,380 --> 00:24:25,840 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. 211 00:24:25,840 --> 00:24:33,490 You find that states have accommodated for this, have bridged this, have gone through that the maturer and they can accommodate for other challenges. 212 00:24:33,490 --> 00:24:37,930 Some of them are constitutional monarchies. Some of them are civilians, states, democratic states like Tunisia. 213 00:24:37,930 --> 00:24:45,790 And then you have states like Algeria that are undergoing trends, a major, major transformation, but are still negotiating that since the 1990s. 214 00:24:45,790 --> 00:24:48,950 So I think for me, that is like Libya's Iron Curtain. 215 00:24:48,950 --> 00:24:54,250 And I think that's what for me is the only way to describe Libya and not wrench it from its initial context. 216 00:24:54,250 --> 00:25:00,100 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. 217 00:25:00,100 --> 00:25:05,950 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. 218 00:25:05,950 --> 00:25:11,090 War is ravaging the Middle East and North Africa right now. And it's funny that we're there now in 10 years. 219 00:25:11,090 --> 00:25:13,750 But I can't shudder to think what the future holds, 220 00:25:13,750 --> 00:25:20,830 because I think given that Libya has resisted or Libyans have resisted for the last two civil wars, this model, 221 00:25:20,830 --> 00:25:25,870 I find it interesting that we're in a new conundrum where that model still hasn't been 222 00:25:25,870 --> 00:25:29,890 spoken about in negotiations or at least within the UN framework for negotiation. 223 00:25:29,890 --> 00:25:35,930 So I'll leave it to you or somewhat to provoke more more questions and elicit better answers from from you. 224 00:25:35,930 --> 00:25:43,750 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. 225 00:25:43,750 --> 00:25:53,500 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. 226 00:25:53,500 --> 00:25:58,630 And also, in a sense, there's so much background to sort of give to the Libyan context. 227 00:25:58,630 --> 00:26:01,350 Mary, you did a wonderful historical overview. 228 00:26:01,350 --> 00:26:10,900 And unless you sort of pointed out some very important aspects of the current Libyan situation, but in a sense, 229 00:26:10,900 --> 00:26:16,570 you presupposed a bit of knowledge in the sense that people aren't always aware of the East-West divide in Libya, 230 00:26:16,570 --> 00:26:22,960 the fact that the Western government is backed by the UN and in essence, 231 00:26:22,960 --> 00:26:27,700 Khalifa Haftar, who we've spoken about, has loomed large, very large in the last decade of Syria, 232 00:26:27,700 --> 00:26:33,880 although his sort of style seems to be waning considerably in the present and potentially 233 00:26:33,880 --> 00:26:39,670 being replaced by other comparable actors to himself and who have the support of his backers, 234 00:26:39,670 --> 00:26:47,380 as it were. The the challenge with someone like him who is getting so much international support, in fact, 235 00:26:47,380 --> 00:26:56,110 including from Western states, but who represents hostility towards a U.N. based, UN backed government. 236 00:26:56,110 --> 00:27:05,380 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. 237 00:27:05,380 --> 00:27:12,310 And this is you know, I would like to ask both of you in a sense that to a certain extent, 238 00:27:12,310 --> 00:27:17,260 is it the way in which policymakers and international observers and powerful actors 239 00:27:17,260 --> 00:27:22,030 in the international community approach Libya in this very contradictory fashion, 240 00:27:22,030 --> 00:27:31,000 which has allowed it to perpetuate its civil war? Well, to put it in the plural, it's civil wars without proper resolution. 241 00:27:31,000 --> 00:27:34,780 And what could they do differently and why aren't they doing it? 242 00:27:34,780 --> 00:27:39,460 This is kind of the deep question about Libya right now and then putting it to you at the beginning. 243 00:27:39,460 --> 00:27:43,840 I want to let everyone know you can ask questions. 244 00:27:43,840 --> 00:27:49,300 Walter Armbrust will be very sort of kindly sort of curating then and sharing them in just a moment. 245 00:27:49,300 --> 00:27:53,350 But I just want to start off this conversation by asking both of you this question. 246 00:27:53,350 --> 00:28:00,100 You know, how how do we how do we address the Libyan conundrum in light of the international contradiction in many respects in the. 247 00:28:00,100 --> 00:28:04,170 Well, Mary, if you'd like to give us and then. Thank you, Asama. 248 00:28:04,170 --> 00:28:12,870 Well, again, I think it's instructive to go back to that very early period after the end of the uprising. 249 00:28:12,870 --> 00:28:21,450 And again, look at what was done, what could have been done differently, how the trajectory might have turned out differently. 250 00:28:21,450 --> 00:28:24,540 And in terms of the international engagement, 251 00:28:24,540 --> 00:28:35,100 Libyans from a very early stage at the end of the uprising told the U.N., told other internationals, we can do this. 252 00:28:35,100 --> 00:28:43,650 We want a light footprint, a U.N. mission. You know, we will be able to oversee our our transition. 253 00:28:43,650 --> 00:28:50,520 And they were very forceful in that argument, very forceful in their insistence on that. 254 00:28:50,520 --> 00:28:56,820 It is interesting now to have conversations with with Libyans who insisted that at the time, 255 00:28:56,820 --> 00:29:01,560 who now regret that and believes that that was actually a mistake. 256 00:29:01,560 --> 00:29:15,120 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. 257 00:29:15,120 --> 00:29:23,580 And did your how you deal with these revolutionary brigades and the other armed groups that were starting to spring up in the environment. 258 00:29:23,580 --> 00:29:33,930 I outlined earlier how you deal with them. You know, one of the challenges of Gadhafi's legacy was that after his fall, 259 00:29:33,930 --> 00:29:40,410 the Libyan army, as it was at that point, had been utterly hollowed out by Gadhafi. 260 00:29:40,410 --> 00:29:49,260 Gadhafi came to power in a military coup in 1969, and he was terrified that somebody would plot a coup against him. 261 00:29:49,260 --> 00:29:53,400 And there were attempts over the 42 years of his regime. 262 00:29:53,400 --> 00:30:00,960 So what he did was he emasculated the army to ensure that it was not capable of of a coup against him. 263 00:30:00,960 --> 00:30:06,450 Instead, what he did was he empowered brigades led by his own son. 264 00:30:06,450 --> 00:30:14,580 So there was that familial loyalty there. But it meant that after the fall of his regime, security was a major challenge. 265 00:30:14,580 --> 00:30:23,490 You had all of these revolutionary groups, many of them regionally based, based in cities and towns, 266 00:30:23,490 --> 00:30:30,750 loyalties to their communities, loyalties to their tribes, loyalties to political currents, et cetera. 267 00:30:30,750 --> 00:30:34,530 And no one was able to kind of pull that together. 268 00:30:34,530 --> 00:30:45,210 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. 269 00:30:45,210 --> 00:30:51,840 And, you know, when Khalifa Haftar came along and in February 2014 and, you know, 270 00:30:51,840 --> 00:30:58,710 issued a video, basically he was accused of of attempting a coup at that time. 271 00:30:58,710 --> 00:31:09,300 People laughed at that early stage. But when he emerged again in May in Benghazi, he managed to gather a substantial support base. 272 00:31:09,300 --> 00:31:17,740 Why? Because Benghazi was a city that was plagued by insecurity, plagued by assassinations, played by. 273 00:31:17,740 --> 00:31:21,850 Plagued by bombings, etc., So there was an opportunity there. 274 00:31:21,850 --> 00:31:30,520 And Heffter came along and took it. Looking back at 2014 again and talking about the kind of international approach 275 00:31:30,520 --> 00:31:35,650 to Libya and particularly on the role of external meddlers in the country, 276 00:31:35,650 --> 00:31:38,480 which is, you know, a key part of the conflict. 277 00:31:38,480 --> 00:31:50,770 Since 2014, there was an effort to impose narratives on Libya that fit other regional realities outside Libya. 278 00:31:50,770 --> 00:31:54,340 But we're totally at odds with with Libyan realities. 279 00:31:54,340 --> 00:32:04,480 And as I mentioned earlier, the you know, this false idea of a secular versus Islamist and conflict conflict in Libya. 280 00:32:04,480 --> 00:32:10,510 That's not the case. You know that this is not that kind of ideological battle. 281 00:32:10,510 --> 00:32:23,170 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. 282 00:32:23,170 --> 00:32:31,930 That's essentially what much of this boils down. Other aspects of the conflict since 2014 are merely ancillary to that. 283 00:32:31,930 --> 00:32:42,820 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. 284 00:32:42,820 --> 00:32:50,410 And then more widely, you see countries that are allied with those regional powers, be they France, 285 00:32:50,410 --> 00:32:57,310 for example, in Europe, close to the UAE, which is one of the key meddlers in Libya. 286 00:32:57,310 --> 00:33:02,260 So all of that has kind of had a knock on effect on Libyan dynamics. 287 00:33:02,260 --> 00:33:10,060 So we can talk about the role of the U.N., what the U.N. could have and should have done better since 2011. 288 00:33:10,060 --> 00:33:15,430 But also, I think the role of the external actors, specifically the external meddlers, 289 00:33:15,430 --> 00:33:22,600 those countries that have been violating the U.N. arms embargo on Libya blatantly since 2014. 290 00:33:22,600 --> 00:33:27,950 And no one has managed to to rein them in properly. Thank you very much, Mary. 291 00:33:27,950 --> 00:33:32,030 And I'd just like to remind everyone that you can sort of put in your questions. 292 00:33:32,030 --> 00:33:36,820 And we hope to get to them straight after you. 293 00:33:36,820 --> 00:33:42,230 And his response to the question about international engagement that. 294 00:33:42,230 --> 00:33:46,730 And perhaps you can also tie it in with the point that you made about in a sense, 295 00:33:46,730 --> 00:33:56,580 this is a challenge of how we confront military dictatorship as a model that is being appealed to by certain international actors. 296 00:33:56,580 --> 00:34:03,870 And Mary kind of highlighted the fact that the chaos that in a sense is precipitated in the context of war. 297 00:34:03,870 --> 00:34:07,880 Some people actually yearn for that sort of authoritarian stability. 298 00:34:07,880 --> 00:34:15,430 And they said in some respects may problematic phrase that reminds us of things like Oriental despotism. 299 00:34:15,430 --> 00:34:20,540 And perhaps he could comment, you know, make those two sort of aspects of the question. 300 00:34:20,540 --> 00:34:25,900 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. 301 00:34:25,900 --> 00:34:33,230 You know, Mary has spoken about how Gadhafi gutted the army after he came to power in 1969 following a military coup. 302 00:34:33,230 --> 00:34:35,080 He had done that for the first several decades. 303 00:34:35,080 --> 00:34:43,280 But in the early 1990s, he began to realise that there was there were challenges from Libyans of all stripes. 304 00:34:43,280 --> 00:34:48,980 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, 305 00:34:48,980 --> 00:34:56,990 was to try to bleed into the lower tier army, which is essentially what it was called under the Gadhafi regime. 306 00:34:56,990 --> 00:35:01,820 It's causational Bucca named after Boubacar Yunis, the former defence minister of Libya. 307 00:35:01,820 --> 00:35:09,230 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. 308 00:35:09,230 --> 00:35:14,420 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. 309 00:35:14,420 --> 00:35:21,350 They were intercommunal battles. Libya was truly a fragmentation of the local community level, and it was neighbours fighting against neighbours. 310 00:35:21,350 --> 00:35:25,160 One of the reasons for this is that Gadhafi had selected particular tribes that 311 00:35:25,160 --> 00:35:30,410 lived on the peripheries of certain cities to blend them into the lower lower army, 312 00:35:30,410 --> 00:35:32,360 not an army that was designed to fight. 313 00:35:32,360 --> 00:35:38,690 There was an army that was designed to acquire a certain amount of social and political privilege and a certain amount of power. 314 00:35:38,690 --> 00:35:43,820 But in a sense, coup proof the regime by extending the regime into the bloodlines of local tribes. 315 00:35:43,820 --> 00:35:47,210 This was one of the ways in which he felt that he could avoid uprisings, 316 00:35:47,210 --> 00:35:54,440 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. 317 00:35:54,440 --> 00:36:01,250 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. 318 00:36:01,250 --> 00:36:06,130 He was out of that for external opponents, but then had to start fighting on the local level. 319 00:36:06,130 --> 00:36:08,570 In 2011, it was a very chaotic time. 320 00:36:08,570 --> 00:36:15,870 And that model essentially is what Khalifa Haftar has mimicked since 2014 with the support of countries like Egypt, 321 00:36:15,870 --> 00:36:21,350 countries like the United Arab Emirates, France and Russia. And the architecture of that is exactly the same. 322 00:36:21,350 --> 00:36:27,620 There is a tribal army, for example, in the east of the country. It's often quoted that the East supports Haftar. 323 00:36:27,620 --> 00:36:32,300 Which segment of the East? I often find that people say we'll have to represent something in the east. 324 00:36:32,300 --> 00:36:34,760 If we look at the tribes that are represented in the east, 325 00:36:34,760 --> 00:36:40,740 it's 12 percent of the tribes or the inhabitants of the east are represented in the senior command of helicopters army. 326 00:36:40,740 --> 00:36:44,710 It's 88 percent of the population are not represented. So there is something that is going on. 327 00:36:44,710 --> 00:36:52,070 It's ironic that only a small portion of the society represented in an army that often calls itself the Libyan National Army. 328 00:36:52,070 --> 00:36:59,150 Now that that framework, that architecture is so important because it's concealed behind the narratives that Mary was talking about. 329 00:36:59,150 --> 00:37:04,530 It's concealed as a Libyan national army that is fighting against, you know, a national threat. 330 00:37:04,530 --> 00:37:09,770 I mean, they're Islamists and terrorists, a narrative that was imposed essentially from the outside. 331 00:37:09,770 --> 00:37:16,460 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? 332 00:37:16,460 --> 00:37:21,380 Who are you? Well, where are the army and where fighting ISIS or al-Qaida in Arabic. 333 00:37:21,380 --> 00:37:28,080 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. 334 00:37:28,080 --> 00:37:33,560 Often find that peculiar because it would often that that kind of rhetoric that conceals it's easy to conceal it in English. 335 00:37:33,560 --> 00:37:35,990 It's not so easy to conceal it in a local language. 336 00:37:35,990 --> 00:37:42,170 And any anthropologist would have picked up on this in 2014 and any anthropologist would pick up on this the structures, 337 00:37:42,170 --> 00:37:48,530 the embedded tribalism within these structures that is being carved out now for the last six, seven years. 338 00:37:48,530 --> 00:37:56,270 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. 339 00:37:56,270 --> 00:38:04,460 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. 340 00:38:04,460 --> 00:38:08,210 So you have his sons and a son in law or you have radical Salafi medicalise 341 00:38:08,210 --> 00:38:14,390 from Saudi Arabia who follow a fatwah from the from there the emir or sorry, 342 00:38:14,390 --> 00:38:22,790 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. 343 00:38:22,790 --> 00:38:26,680 It's a very peculiar branch, a very peculiar architecture of an army. 344 00:38:26,680 --> 00:38:32,950 But it is one that Libya has an experience with. That's that for me was the hallmark of the Jamahiriya under Gadhafi. 345 00:38:32,950 --> 00:38:37,720 So I think that's where I pick up on this, where I leave the subject of the of the military. 346 00:38:37,720 --> 00:38:42,710 But it also gives you an idea about if that's what's been going on for the last seven years. 347 00:38:42,710 --> 00:38:48,190 Khalifa Haftar has not been able to. Has not been legitimately the head of an army since 2015. 348 00:38:48,190 --> 00:38:55,060 December 17th, 2015. How has he been able to go from a small foothold in the east of the country to 349 00:38:55,060 --> 00:38:59,570 trying to overthrow the UN backed government in Tripoli within four years? 350 00:38:59,570 --> 00:39:05,050 And I think what's been so peculiar about this and why it's so relevant to a decade on is that in 2011, 351 00:39:05,050 --> 00:39:10,570 when the U.N. passed Resolution 1973, there were skirmishes at the UN Security Council. 352 00:39:10,570 --> 00:39:19,150 Russia abstained. China wasn't happy, but they passed that legislation and it gave a green light to NATO to intervene in April 2011. 353 00:39:19,150 --> 00:39:26,590 If we go 10 years later. States that were that were worried, particularly regional states like the United Arab Emirates, 354 00:39:26,590 --> 00:39:30,730 like Saudi Arabia, who were fearful of the Arab Spring at that time, 355 00:39:30,730 --> 00:39:33,460 they wised up, and especially the UAE, 356 00:39:33,460 --> 00:39:41,380 who have transformed from a small a medium power to one of the most aggressive and activist powers the region has ever seen. 357 00:39:41,380 --> 00:39:47,950 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. 358 00:39:47,950 --> 00:39:53,410 Essentially very simple to procuring diplomatic veto at the U.N. Security Council 359 00:39:53,410 --> 00:39:59,990 level and at the European Union level by bridging and forging alliances with France. 360 00:39:59,990 --> 00:40:06,490 Has a very crucial role in being both the EU member states and as a member of the U.N. Security Council, 361 00:40:06,490 --> 00:40:12,160 but also Russia, who also play that role with them at the U.N. Security Council and by being able to do that. 362 00:40:12,160 --> 00:40:17,130 They've not only been able to, you know, break international norms, 363 00:40:17,130 --> 00:40:20,890 and I'm saying because they've got social such little time to go through with this. 364 00:40:20,890 --> 00:40:25,760 But an example of that is that when you think of the ways in which not only wars are fought, 365 00:40:25,760 --> 00:40:32,650 but how wars are funded, the most peculiar aspect of the past decade for me is something that's quite banal. 366 00:40:32,650 --> 00:40:40,450 Russia funded Khalifa Haftar by counterfeiting or printing counterfeit Libyan currency in their 367 00:40:40,450 --> 00:40:46,660 own national mint kozelek and sending around 10 billion dollars worth to the east of Libya. 368 00:40:46,660 --> 00:40:53,170 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, 369 00:40:53,170 --> 00:40:56,810 international financial norms in the way that it has. So to give it to. 370 00:40:56,810 --> 00:40:59,170 Just to summarise this kind of point, 371 00:40:59,170 --> 00:41:08,560 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, 372 00:41:08,560 --> 00:41:15,270 you know that procurement of a diplomatic veto was so crucial because Khalifa Haftar wasn't only able to just launch that war. 373 00:41:15,270 --> 00:41:20,710 He was able to launch on April 4th, 2009, seen in the presence of the chief of the UN, 374 00:41:20,710 --> 00:41:26,320 Antonio Guterres, who had just arrived in Tripoli to announce a national reconciliation conference. 375 00:41:26,320 --> 00:41:32,350 It's baffling, but it's only now, given it's been a decade that we can cannot absorb such a major, 376 00:41:32,350 --> 00:41:40,480 major transformations and not only in Libya, but in the international order that we rely upon to give us stability and the security. 377 00:41:40,480 --> 00:41:43,240 Can I interject a couple of questions now? 378 00:41:43,240 --> 00:41:50,110 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. 379 00:41:50,110 --> 00:41:52,000 But let me ask a couple. 380 00:41:52,000 --> 00:42:02,320 One is from Patrick Jeffrey, who is the EU International Relations and to play of international relations and diplomacy studies. 381 00:42:02,320 --> 00:42:08,740 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 382 00:42:08,740 --> 00:42:13,690 the January deadline for their departure and trying to the nationwide cease fire. 383 00:42:13,690 --> 00:42:19,510 And his question quite generally is what does Russia hope to gain from its involvement in Libya? 384 00:42:19,510 --> 00:42:26,080 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. 385 00:42:26,080 --> 00:42:34,570 And this one is from Peter MILIT, who was the British ambassador to Libya from 2015 to 2018. 386 00:42:34,570 --> 00:42:39,760 And his question is that the U.K. is often seen by Libyans as an important player. 387 00:42:39,760 --> 00:42:47,140 But in recent years, the British government has been preoccupied by its own problems with Brexit and with coded questions. 388 00:42:47,140 --> 00:42:56,920 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? 389 00:42:56,920 --> 00:43:04,860 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. 390 00:43:04,860 --> 00:43:08,370 Yeah, sure, I'll take that quickly and then I'll let you take the second question, 391 00:43:08,370 --> 00:43:14,700 Mary, but in a nutshell, I would say that the Russia's playing a very intriguing game. 392 00:43:14,700 --> 00:43:18,180 And I would say that the only way to understand that is by looking at the other players. 393 00:43:18,180 --> 00:43:23,070 The other players are playing Chequers. They have a very binary set of choices in front of them, 394 00:43:23,070 --> 00:43:30,270 either that is trying to support the UN backed governments and establishing a a essentially a civilian democratic state. 395 00:43:30,270 --> 00:43:38,070 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. 396 00:43:38,070 --> 00:43:42,630 And there are very strict binary choices and binary objectives in what they're doing in Libya. 397 00:43:42,630 --> 00:43:47,400 Turkey, perhaps, is the it is the peculiar actor in that it has geostrategic ambitions, 398 00:43:47,400 --> 00:43:52,990 given that there is the eastern Mediterranean gas base in there. But Russia Russia is not playing Chequers, Russia. 399 00:43:52,990 --> 00:43:54,600 Russia is playing chess. 400 00:43:54,600 --> 00:44:02,220 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. 401 00:44:02,220 --> 00:44:08,340 Is that the southern flank of NATO? And by by being able to just forge and carve out that role, 402 00:44:08,340 --> 00:44:15,690 we can't only just see in the context of the repositioning of that in the last six months or in July of 2020. 403 00:44:15,690 --> 00:44:23,670 But go back to Watford and December 8th, 2020. Go back to the comments of Emmanuel Macron at the last NATO conference. 404 00:44:23,670 --> 00:44:29,850 He called NATO Brain-Dead and said, I don't want, you know, essentially, quote, called into question why NATO's alliance exists. 405 00:44:29,850 --> 00:44:37,350 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, 406 00:44:37,350 --> 00:44:45,060 where France has a very clear interest in making sure that has a foothold in southern Libya into the Sahara and SA health base. 407 00:44:45,060 --> 00:44:50,820 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. 408 00:44:50,820 --> 00:44:57,150 And the logic is, you know, there are different logics that underpin each state within within NATO, 409 00:44:57,150 --> 00:45:02,100 its eastern flank, its Baltic states feel Russia's presence every single day. 410 00:45:02,100 --> 00:45:10,050 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. 411 00:45:10,050 --> 00:45:17,100 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. 412 00:45:17,100 --> 00:45:23,250 And Russia has been able to carve out a space right in the southern Mediterranean and really call into question two key actors, 413 00:45:23,250 --> 00:45:31,140 Turkey, who supports the Jenay. And France, who support Haftar and the Libyan national army, the LNA and the Fusion, 414 00:45:31,140 --> 00:45:40,230 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. 415 00:45:40,230 --> 00:45:45,120 This isn't about Libya and it isn't about having a decisive win. They had a decisive win in Syria. 416 00:45:45,120 --> 00:45:51,540 They could have called. I think, and had a decisive win in Libya. But a protracted conflict really plays into Russia's hands. 417 00:45:51,540 --> 00:45:57,980 And I would say just watch it in that sentence. Everyone else is playing Chequers. But Russia continues to play chess to our detriment. 418 00:45:57,980 --> 00:46:04,210 OK. What about the role the UK is the role of the U.K.? 419 00:46:04,210 --> 00:46:05,720 Affairs. Well, 420 00:46:05,720 --> 00:46:15,350 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. 421 00:46:15,350 --> 00:46:22,940 Because they think very often the conversation on Libya has become a very geopolitical conversation that is quite 422 00:46:22,940 --> 00:46:29,720 disconnected from what's going on on the ground in terms of some of the dynamics shaping Libyan society at the moment. 423 00:46:29,720 --> 00:46:42,150 And right now, we have just had U.N. and led dialogue forum that elected a new executive authority to put together 424 00:46:42,150 --> 00:46:50,240 a cabinet and oversee the country for the next 10 months until planned elections in December. 425 00:46:50,240 --> 00:46:58,220 Parliamentary and presidential elections are what are planned, and these elections will be the first elections that Libya has experienced since 2014. 426 00:46:58,220 --> 00:47:02,960 Libya has actually only had three sets of national elections since the fall of Gadhafi. 427 00:47:02,960 --> 00:47:06,410 One parliamentary election in 2012. 428 00:47:06,410 --> 00:47:16,730 Then there were elections to try to form a constitutional committee, a committee tasked with writing Libya's first constitution in decades. 429 00:47:16,730 --> 00:47:21,430 And then in 2014, the second set of parliamentary elections. 430 00:47:21,430 --> 00:47:25,400 And one thing I think many are wondering about, you know, 431 00:47:25,400 --> 00:47:31,580 if we reach a stage where in December elections can take place and there are all kinds of caveats about that, 432 00:47:31,580 --> 00:47:36,080 because a lot of things can happen in the in the 10 months in between. 433 00:47:36,080 --> 00:47:44,800 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. 434 00:47:44,800 --> 00:47:50,540 And it was very striking to watch what happened to the kind of euphoria, 435 00:47:50,540 --> 00:47:55,940 if you like, about democracy, a democratic transition amongst Libyans in 2012. 436 00:47:55,940 --> 00:48:02,120 There was an enormous turnout for those first elections. I was in Libya for that election day. 437 00:48:02,120 --> 00:48:10,070 I was in Benghazi. There was a euphoria. There was a sense that Libya had gone another important step in its transition. 438 00:48:10,070 --> 00:48:14,000 Fast forward to 2014 and the turnout plummeted. 439 00:48:14,000 --> 00:48:21,200 It was it was a tiny turnout and something that undermined the legitimacy of the resulting parliament. 440 00:48:21,200 --> 00:48:26,060 There are real concerns that we may face into another low turnout in December. 441 00:48:26,060 --> 00:48:32,690 Some of the elections more recently in Libya for municipal councils have shown a low turnout. 442 00:48:32,690 --> 00:48:43,820 So there is a question as to whether Libyans as a society are basically not so and armoured with the idea of of democracy. 443 00:48:43,820 --> 00:48:53,960 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. 444 00:48:53,960 --> 00:49:05,300 Know, Haftar spoke to a significant percentage of the Libyan population that felt that their most important priority was security. 445 00:49:05,300 --> 00:49:13,730 They felt they wanted what Haftar presented, which was caused by military rule, if you like, or at least that model. 446 00:49:13,730 --> 00:49:18,650 He aspired to the Egyptian model in many respects. And that spoke to a lot of Libyans. 447 00:49:18,650 --> 00:49:23,210 I think the the question now goes back to what Ana said earlier is, you know, 448 00:49:23,210 --> 00:49:29,030 the competing visions for what Libyans would like to see as the Libyan state. 449 00:49:29,030 --> 00:49:34,970 What does the Libyan state look like in the future? Will it be a a democratic civil state? 450 00:49:34,970 --> 00:49:44,030 Will it be some kind of quiescent attempt at a cois I am military will have to remember is in his mid 70s. 451 00:49:44,030 --> 00:49:46,610 So that I think that's worth bearing in mind as well. 452 00:49:46,610 --> 00:49:56,270 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, 453 00:49:56,270 --> 00:50:01,880 the forces he has built up, the forces he and his supporters call an army. 454 00:50:01,880 --> 00:50:11,480 What will the legacy of that be and the polarisation we've seen within Libyan society over the last six years, 455 00:50:11,480 --> 00:50:19,100 that the deep wedge that has formed between East and west Libya, driven by media narratives, driven. 456 00:50:19,100 --> 00:50:24,770 You know, there has been an intense war of narratives in Libya over the last six years. 457 00:50:24,770 --> 00:50:31,070 So I think looking forward, this question of what does a future Libyan state look like? 458 00:50:31,070 --> 00:50:39,200 What kind of state do Libyans want at this point? After the last decade where they have experienced democracy, 459 00:50:39,200 --> 00:50:46,400 at least in the form of minimally of elections, what did they want now and what do they aspire to? 460 00:50:46,400 --> 00:50:55,880 I often remember in 2011, after the uprising, Libyans were many Libyans told foreign journalists, you know, just wait. 461 00:50:55,880 --> 00:51:00,830 Within five or 10 years, Libya will be like a Dubai on the Mediterranean. 462 00:51:00,830 --> 00:51:07,060 That's what we aspire to. Other. Said they wanted to be Switzerland on the Mediterranean. 463 00:51:07,060 --> 00:51:14,920 Ten years on. I think the question of what a future Libyan state will look like, what Libya will look like 10 years hence, 464 00:51:14,920 --> 00:51:19,750 I think that's the interesting question in terms of what kind of state will will actually emerge from. 465 00:51:19,750 --> 00:51:30,910 From what we see now. I also had a question from Michael Willis in relation to one of the neighbouring states, 466 00:51:30,910 --> 00:51:34,720 which I don't think has been mentioned once in the whole evening, 467 00:51:34,720 --> 00:51:41,500 but argued which arguably has a significant stake in Libyan affairs, which is Algeria. 468 00:51:41,500 --> 00:51:48,180 Can either of you say anything about the role of Algeria and the current Libyan situation? 469 00:51:48,180 --> 00:51:51,070 I'll make this very brief. In fact, where we're publishing, 470 00:51:51,070 --> 00:51:58,810 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, 471 00:51:58,810 --> 00:52:04,360 Algeria being one of them. And I think I think actually the author actually is in the room with us as events. 472 00:52:04,360 --> 00:52:06,610 So I think I'll probably defer to him to speak about this. 473 00:52:06,610 --> 00:52:15,430 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. 474 00:52:15,430 --> 00:52:20,080 And I think despite those changes, you know, it's I think Algeria is true. 475 00:52:20,080 --> 00:52:26,260 Role has been often called that hidden giant. I think that's that's a very easy kind of statement to make. 476 00:52:26,260 --> 00:52:32,530 But I think Algeria had played a diplomatic role in Libya's last civil war. 477 00:52:32,530 --> 00:52:40,390 But I think going forward, you know, Algeria is concerned with two things power, politics and the regional the regional interference, 478 00:52:40,390 --> 00:52:45,610 particularly by Egypt and their own struggle to to have to reshape the hegemony 479 00:52:45,610 --> 00:52:54,400 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. 480 00:52:54,400 --> 00:52:56,710 But, you know, it's it's still too really early. 481 00:52:56,710 --> 00:53:03,160 I think Algeria could have played its hand many, many years ago and has decided, given its long history of non-interference, 482 00:53:03,160 --> 00:53:10,330 it's the sort of that it prefers diplomacy over, you know, interfering in the state of another domestic affairs of a neighbouring states. 483 00:53:10,330 --> 00:53:18,130 Mary, do you have anything to add to that? So it was kind of just pick up very quickly on Mary's last points. 484 00:53:18,130 --> 00:53:24,280 Yes. That's very important as we are moving towards elections over the next 10 months. 485 00:53:24,280 --> 00:53:31,810 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. 486 00:53:31,810 --> 00:53:37,630 And I think what's so fascinating about about that is it's a very it's a very, very lived experience. 487 00:53:37,630 --> 00:53:39,280 It's such a brutal experience. 488 00:53:39,280 --> 00:53:47,230 The Danish Refugee Council in the summer during Koban at its peak, said that living conditions in Libya were apocalyptic. 489 00:53:47,230 --> 00:53:50,770 You know, if you're just just think about that for a moment and think what that means, 490 00:53:50,770 --> 00:53:56,270 daily water cuts or water cuts to three million people at one point during the last civil war, 491 00:53:56,270 --> 00:54:02,570 there are electricity cuts that are already intermittent now, but our entire blackouts in some places of the country for days. 492 00:54:02,570 --> 00:54:06,890 The inability to get cash, physical cash and Libya as a cash economy. 493 00:54:06,890 --> 00:54:12,350 The inability to get cash frequently, conveniently or predictably for nearly a decade. 494 00:54:12,350 --> 00:54:18,530 Just think what that does to the political psyche of your average person, to any person, in fact, in the country. 495 00:54:18,530 --> 00:54:22,760 And think about what that does to your decision making when you move towards elections. 496 00:54:22,760 --> 00:54:26,680 We often think about ourselves in Europe or in the UK. 497 00:54:26,680 --> 00:54:32,280 You know, thinking about the decision making that was taking place during Brexit, you know, irrespective of which way one stands on, 498 00:54:32,280 --> 00:54:37,530 that was on the discussion, it was the way in which people really believed that their lives were at risk. 499 00:54:37,530 --> 00:54:43,680 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. 500 00:54:43,680 --> 00:54:48,510 If we look at what's happened in Libya over the past decade, there has been a major transformation in that. 501 00:54:48,510 --> 00:54:53,490 And what concerns me is that when you are living in such quote unquote apocalyptic conditions, 502 00:54:53,490 --> 00:54:59,070 how do you decide soberly how do you make such a good decision and do you not get more drawn? 503 00:54:59,070 --> 00:55:03,120 And do you not become more ripened to making quite extreme decisions? 504 00:55:03,120 --> 00:55:06,360 Do you not become more ripened to listening to quite simple ideas, 505 00:55:06,360 --> 00:55:13,950 very simple lethal ideas about explaining a very complex phenomena, fiscal service delivery, geopolitics? 506 00:55:13,950 --> 00:55:18,180 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? 507 00:55:18,180 --> 00:55:24,420 And I think to go back to what Mary was saying, that experience is something that I think essentially didn't need to happen, 508 00:55:24,420 --> 00:55:29,940 irrespective of the disputes and the conflicts in Libya over the last six years. Why has electricity not been managed? 509 00:55:29,940 --> 00:55:36,160 You don't need a prime minister from the east or for the West to have your electricity infrastructure repaired. 510 00:55:36,160 --> 00:55:39,660 Not something that really concerns Libyans. I'll leave this on an anecdote. 511 00:55:39,660 --> 00:55:43,170 I was in Spain last year and the Spanish Foreign Ministry, to their credit, 512 00:55:43,170 --> 00:55:48,040 who don't have much bandwidth in Libya, asked what could we do to help Libyans? 513 00:55:48,040 --> 00:55:52,820 Could we support the UN mission? Can we talk on diplomacy? Can we talk on national reconciliation? 514 00:55:52,820 --> 00:55:59,010 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, 515 00:55:59,010 --> 00:56:03,300 you have a conference about delivering electricity in Libya or delivering water in Libya. 516 00:56:03,300 --> 00:56:05,280 They will love you for that, you know. 517 00:56:05,280 --> 00:56:12,150 Just break the mould of the continuous conversations and essentially respond to very desperate needs that Libyans are living under. 518 00:56:12,150 --> 00:56:18,300 That, I would say indirectly have shaped the minds of many Libyans that today, as Mary was saying or asking themselves, 519 00:56:18,300 --> 00:56:23,760 who should we support and making quick binary decisions on things that are quite complex. 520 00:56:23,760 --> 00:56:29,400 Thank you. That's very helpful. And actually, we have had a number of questions. I'll just summarise them. 521 00:56:29,400 --> 00:56:37,110 We're close to the end anyway, asking about asking for more information about the local dynamics of what's going on in Libya, 522 00:56:37,110 --> 00:56:45,870 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, 523 00:56:45,870 --> 00:56:54,690 but also in the longer term, if the social conditions leading up to the fall of Gadhafi. 524 00:56:54,690 --> 00:57:02,580 I don't know if we have time for any more discussion, but if I could just, you know, make a few final points. 525 00:57:02,580 --> 00:57:09,720 I think following on from what I said about the discontent to Libya over and living conditions and, you know, 526 00:57:09,720 --> 00:57:17,670 last August, we saw the biggest demonstrations, the biggest nationwide demonstrations in Libya since 2011. 527 00:57:17,670 --> 00:57:26,520 They were basically driven by grievances over widespread corruption, poor living conditions, and just the frustrations that come from all of that. 528 00:57:26,520 --> 00:57:30,580 One final point. If you look at the demographics of Libya. 529 00:57:30,580 --> 00:57:37,680 Libya is a predominantly youthful population. Some two thirds of the population are under the age of 30. 530 00:57:37,680 --> 00:57:44,790 We're now looking at a younger generation that has no real lived memory of the Gadhafi era. 531 00:57:44,790 --> 00:57:54,690 So talking about the Gadhafi era and, you know, framing what's happening now through that particular lens doesn't resonate with that generation. 532 00:57:54,690 --> 00:58:01,950 It's a generation that has been shaped by the experience of 2011 and by the experience of the last decade. 533 00:58:01,950 --> 00:58:10,020 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, 534 00:58:10,020 --> 00:58:17,880 how it sees its future, its demands, its grievances, the very real frustrations it feels right now. 535 00:58:17,880 --> 00:58:25,530 And one final word in terms of those including the U.K. and other countries that are wondering what they can do in 536 00:58:25,530 --> 00:58:34,830 terms of supporting this new transitional periods should it succeed after this new executive has been established? 537 00:58:34,830 --> 00:58:38,640 I think thinking about Libya in those terms, 538 00:58:38,640 --> 00:58:45,840 those future terms and looking at that younger generation and looking at what it's demanding, how it has been shaped. 539 00:58:45,840 --> 00:58:52,770 I think that's key because it's obvious. It's often something that is missing in the conversation on Libya, 540 00:58:52,770 --> 00:58:58,500 just that useful segment and how they may view things very differently from the 541 00:58:58,500 --> 00:59:04,040 older political figures that international interlocutors are dealing with. 542 00:59:04,040 --> 00:59:06,950 Thank you very much, Mary Ann. 543 00:59:06,950 --> 00:59:14,690 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. 544 00:59:14,690 --> 00:59:20,930 You could say, because in a sense, the youth represent the future of the of this country going for decades. 545 00:59:20,930 --> 00:59:25,490 And I think it's entirely sort of to the point to highlight, 546 00:59:25,490 --> 00:59:34,050 including the policymakers in the audience and the people involved in thinking about how Britain or other countries should engage in the region. 547 00:59:34,050 --> 00:59:40,910 That that aspect of the region be highlighted. I'd like to thank you both, Mary and A. 548 00:59:40,910 --> 00:59:48,350 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. 549 00:59:48,350 --> 00:59:52,580 But this has really been a wonderfully informative evening about a very 550 00:59:52,580 --> 00:59:57,980 challenging subject and one which I hope we will try to give more attention to. 551 00:59:57,980 --> 01:00:03,710 It's one of the topics that Libya doesn't get as much attention as many of us would like, 552 01:00:03,710 --> 01:00:09,020 and it persists in facing a number of challenges as a consequence, I think. 553 01:00:09,020 --> 01:00:15,350 So with that, I'd like to wish you all a wonderful evening and a wonderful weekend in advance. 554 01:00:15,350 --> 01:00:18,920 And see you in a week's time in a week. 555 01:00:18,920 --> 01:00:25,700 We will have. Actually, I I'm not entirely certain who will be presenting next week. 556 01:00:25,700 --> 01:00:35,050 So if one of my colleagues could very kindly perhaps jump in and inform us that we will be welcoming. 557 01:00:35,050 --> 01:00:44,500 Vitaly Naumkin and Alexi Vasiliev will be speaking about Russia in the decades since the Arab uprisings of 2011. 558 01:00:44,500 --> 01:00:48,250 How opposites attract. After a discussion on Libya. 559 01:00:48,250 --> 01:01:02,498 So we would love to have you there in a week's time. Until then, good evening from Oxford.