CAIRO — Ansar al-Sharia, the brigade of rebel fighters that witnesses say led the attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, holds that democracy is incompatible with Islam. It has paraded in the streets with weapons calling for an Islamic state, and a few months ago its leader boasted publicly that its fighters could flatten a foreign consulate.
But if the group’s ideology might put it on the fringe of Libyan society, its day-to-day presence in civic life does not. It is just one of many autonomous battalions of heavily armed men formed during and after the uprising against Moammar Khadafy who have filled the void in public security left by his fall, resisting calls to disarm by saying that the weak transitional government is not up to the job.
Ansar al-Sharia’s fighters have given conflicting stories about their role in the attack. Said to number fewer than 200, they can usually be found at Al Jala Hospital in Benghazi, where they act as its guards and protectors. And when instead they turned their guns on the U.S. mission, U.S. security officers and the Libyan authorities did not call for help from any formal military or police force — there is none to speak of — but turned to the leader of another autonomous militia with its own Islamist ties.
“We had to coordinate everything,” said that militia leader, Fawzi Bukatef, recalling the first phone call about the attack that he received from the mission’s security team. The Libyan government, he said, “was absent.”
The organization and firepower used in the assault, which killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans, has raised alarms in Washington about the possibility of links to an affiliate of al-Qaeda and a premeditated conspiracy that found a pretext in anger over an American-made video mocking the Prophet Muhammad.
But to Libyans, the battle for the mission has underscored how easy it is for a spark like the earlier protest in Cairo to set off such an attack in post-Khadafy Libya, when major cities are controlled by a patchwork of independent militias and all keep their weapons at the ready.
The battle over the mission has also become the latest skirmish in a larger struggle for power unfolding across the region between hard-line and moderate Islamists seeking to determine the fate of the Arab Spring.
The leaders of Libya’s interim government say they hope that public dismay at the attack on the mission will be the catalyst they need to finally disarm and control the militias.
Stevens was a widely admired figure for his support during the revolt against Khadafy. In the days after the attack, far larger crowds than the one that attacked the mission turned out in both Tripoli and Benghazi to demonstrate their sadness at his death and their support for the United States.
But since the militiamen, who call themselves “revolutionaries,” remain the power on the streets, there is an open question who will disarm or control them.
“The government is required to do so,” said Bukatef, leader of eastern Libya’s most potent armed force, the February 17 Brigade. “But the government can’t do it without the revolutionaries,” he said, noting that many brigades continued to operate independently even though they now nominally report to the defense minister. “It takes a delicate approach.”
Ansar al-Sharia declined to talk for this article.
Bukatef dismissed suggestions by some Western analysts and Libyan officials that Ansar al-Sharia might have ties to al-Qaeda or other international militants.
