BENGHAZI, Libya — A large map of Libya hangs on the wall in the home of Idris al-Rahel, with a line down the middle dividing the country in half.
Al-Rahel, a former army officer, leads a movement to declare semi autonomy in eastern Libya, where most of the country’s oil fields are located. The region’s top tribal leaders meet Tuesday in the east’s main city, Benghazi, to consider announcing an eastern state, linked to the west only by a tenuous “federal union.”
Opponents fear such a declaration could be the first step toward outright dividing the country. But some easterners say they are determined to end the domination and discrimination by the west that prevailed under dictator Moammar Khadafy.
Al-Rahel points to the capital, Tripoli, on the map, in the west. “All troubles came from here,” he said, “but we will not permit this to happen again.”
The move shows how six months after Khadafy’s fall, the central government in Libya has proved incapable of governing at all. Other countries that shed their leaders in the Arab Spring revolts — Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen — are going through rocky transitions, but none has seen a collapse of central authority like Libya. The collapse has only worsened as cities, towns, regions, militias and tribes all act on their own, setting up their independent power centers.
“What Khadafy left in Libya for 40 years is a very, very heavy heritage,” said Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, head of the National Transitional Council, which in theory rules Libya but doesn’t even hold sway in Tripoli. “It’s … hard to get over it in one or two years or even five years.”
Signs of the government’s weakness are everywhere.
Tripoli remains under the control of various revolutionaries-turned-militiamen, who have resisted calls to integrate into a national army.
Kufra, deep in the southern desert, is a battleground for two tribes, one Arab and one African, with dozens killed in two weeks of fighting last month.
And Misrata, the country’s third-largest city and just two hours’ drive east of the capital, effectively rules itself, with its militias ignoring government pleas and exacting brutal revenge on anyone they believe to have supported Khadafy.
The violence highlights the weakness of the National Transitional Council, made up of representatives from around the country. NTC chief Abdul-Jalil, a former reform-minded justice minister under Khadafy, was welcomed as a clean and well-intentioned figure. But many criticize him for being a weak leader.
Al-Rahel’s National Federal Union movement calls for a return to a federal system that existed under the monarchy before it was toppled in Khadafy’s 1969 coup, giving each region its own capital, parliament, police and courts. Al-Rahel cites the American model of states and a federal government.
Abu Bakr Baaira, a co-founder of the group, dismissed worries the move will break Libya apart. “Are the U.S., Switzerland and Germany divided?” he said. “We hope they don’t force us to a new war and new bloodshed. This is the last thing we look for.”
