Attack by Fringe Group Highlights the Problem of Libya’s Militias By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK, SULIMAN ALI ZWAY and KAREEM FAHIM

September 15, 2012
Attack by Fringe Group Highlights the Problem of Libya's Militias
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK, SULIMAN ALI ZWAY and KAREEM FAHIM
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/16/world/middleeast/attack-by-fringe-group-highlights-the-problem-of-libya-militias.html?_r=1&hp

CAIRO — Ansar al-Sharia, the brigade of rebel fighters that witnesses say led the attack on the United States diplomatic mission in Benghazi, holds that democracy is incompatible with Islam. It has paraded 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 may put it on the fringe of Libyan society, its day-to-day presence in society does not. It is just one of many autonomous battalions of heavily armed men formed during and after the uprising against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi 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 United States mission, American 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 alarm in Washington about the possibility of links to 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-Qaddafi Libya, when major cities are still controlled by a patchwork of independent militias and all keep their weapons at the ready.

The battle over the mission has also became the latest skirmish in a larger struggle 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 public dismay at the attack on the mission will be the catalyst they need to finally disarm and control the militias. Mr. Stevens, the United States ambassador, was a widely admired figure for his support during the revolt against Colonel Qaddafi, and 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 still 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 Mr. 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 be interviewed for this article. The brigade in Benghazi, whose name means Supporter of Islamic Law, came together during the fight against Colonel Qaddafi.

Mr. Bukatef said that its numbers had seemed to range from 50 to about 200. He claimed that some of its members were responsible for the assassination during the uprising of the rebel commander Abdul Fattah Younes, in revenge for his previous role as a minister in the Qaddafi government who led a crackdown on Islamists. The transitional government, Mr. Bukatef said, was too weak to confront such a brigade, and so no one has been charged with the crime.

Many more-secular politicians in Libya are suspicious of Mr. Bukatef and his brigade because of their own Islamist reputation. He has been a member of Libya's branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, and one of his group's commanders reporting to him is Ismail al-Salabi, who leads a group of Islamist fighters and is the brother of Libya's most prominent Islamist thinker, Ali al-Salabi. But unlike Ansar al-Sharia, both Mr. Bukatef and the Salabi brothers have emphasized their conviction that Islam requires a democratic, constitutional government.

Ansar al-Sharia, Mr. Bukatef said, was excluded from meetings of a larger eastern Libyan militia alliance that he oversees. "Some of their members were with us at the beginning," he said, but "we do not believe people who do not believe in the government are entitled to be with us."

Mr. Bukatef dismissed suggestions by some in the West that Ansar al-Sharia might have ties to Al Qaeda or other international militants. "They're Libyans. They're extremists. They are outlaws," he said, noting that some had served time in Colonel Qaddafi's jails — a radicalizing experience for many Libyan Islamists.

Witnesses at the scene of the assault on the mission said they saw pickup trucks labeled with the group's logo, which is well known in Benghazi. Fighters attacking the embassy acknowledged then that they belonged to Ansar al-Sharia, although they said there were other unarmed protesters joining them.

But amid the backlash against the attack — and the news that the beloved United States ambassador was killed — the group's leaders have tried to distance themselves from the assault, often in muddled or contradictory ways. On the morning after the attack, a spokesman for the group made a statement to local television from the hospital saluting the assault, approvingly recalling a similar mob attack on the Italian consulate in Benghazi six years ago after an Italian minister wore a T-shirt mocking the Prophet Muhammad.

But the spokesman, Hani al-Mansouri, denied that the Ansar al-Sharia brigade had participated as "an independent entity following orders." He said, "It was doing its work in Jala hospital and other places where it has assigned roles." And at a news conference on Thursday night, amid growing threats of retaliation against the perpetrators of the attack, Mr. Mansouri denied that any of the group's fighters had participated, pleading with the news media to accept his denial.

Ansar al-Sharia has never been shy about its beliefs. In June the group led a parade of pickup trucks loaded with weapons through the streets of Benghazi to call for an Islamic government. Local residents were so annoyed by the display that they stopped cars to shout at them, blasted Western rap music forbidden (along with all music) by ultraconservative Islamists, and pelted them with rocks.

Later, after several minor or unsuccessful attacks on Western diplomatic offices and convoys, including a bomb blast in June outside the United States mission, a commander of the group said his brigade would have been more ruthless if it had tried such things. While he disapproved of those attacks, including the June attack, the commander, Mohammed Ali al-Zahawi, told The Washington Post, "If it had been our attack on the U.S. Consulate, we would have flattened it."

Members of the group have often refused to talk to Western journalists, or, in at least one case, refused to speak with a female journalist. They gave the BBC a statement of their philosophy on paper bearing the symbols of the Koran and a Kalashnikov. "Democracy is a human condition where laws are made by people," it said. "Only God has the authority to make law and that is why Islam and Sharia are incompatible with democracy."

The Libyan guards who were outside the United States mission during the assault said the attackers, whoever they were, made their militant ideology clear, charging that any Muslim who defended Americans had effectively disavowed the faith.

"You are an unbeliever! You are shooting at us with the Americans," the attackers shouted at one wounded Libyan guard, as he later recalled from his hospital bed, with two bullet wounds in his right leg and shrapnel from a grenade in his left. (He spoke anonymously for his safety.) "I am just the gardener," the guard said he eventually lied to a second wave of fighters, who carried him to the hospital.

Mai Ayyad contributed reporting.

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Libya's Salafists in search of relevance
September 14, 2012 12:52 AM
By Frederic Wehrey
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/Opinion/Commentary/2012/Sep-14/187812-libyas-salafists-in-search-of-relevance.ashx#axzz26YKqr3XK

The tragic assault on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi was the latest in a series of attacks by the country's increasingly active Salafists. In late August, armed Salafist groups demolished Sufi shrines, mosques and mausoleums in Tripoli, Misrata and Zliten. Earlier this year, Salafists desecrated British World War II graves, attacked the Tunisian consulate over an art exhibit in Tunis they deemed offensive, bombed the offices of the International Red Cross, and detonated an improvised explosive device at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.

However, such attacks are hardly proof of Salafism's growing influence over Libya. Rather, they are symptoms of an intense recomposition and fractionalization of the movement, between quietist, "politico," and militant strands. More importantly, they reveal the Salafists' anguished search for relevance in a country that is already socially conservative, but that has soundly rejected dogmatic political actors in favor of technocratic ones.

In the July 7 elections for the General National Congress (GNC), Libyan voters effectively shunned the "politico" current of Libyan Salafism represented by the Al-Watan party – which counted the former Libyan Islamic Fighting Group emir, Abd al-Hakim Bilhaj, as its most prominent luminary – and Umma al-Wasat, whose candidates included LIFG figures such as Sami al-Saadi and Abd al-Wahhab al-Ghayid, the brother of slain Al-Qaeda deputy Abu Yahya al-Libi.

Tellingly, the candidates from both groups failed to secure even a single seat. Bereft of the political platform of Egypt's Al-Nour party and lacking the stark secular-Islamist social divide that has enabled Tunisian Salafists to play the role of provocateur, militant Salafists in Libya are trying to muscle their way to prominence using violence. The country's rich Sufi heritage (regarded by Salafists as anathema and idolatrous) has been the most recent object of their wrath. But the history of Salafist militancy extends farther back and encompasses a broad array of causes and targets.

By many accounts, the Salafists' most visible entrée into the public sphere occurred on June 7, when the militia Ansar al-Shariah (based in Darnah and Benghazi) led a rally of armed vehicles along Benghazi's own Tahrir Square and demanded the imposition of Islamic law.

It was the Ansar al-Shariah Brigade that was initially implicated in the consulate attack this week in Benghazi, although the group issued a statement on its Facebook page denying involvement. Another, more shadowy underground group, the Omar Imprisoned Omar Abdul Rahman Brigades – which claimed responsibility for the Red Cross attack and previous bombing of the consulate – is suspected in the recent assault. Elsewhere in Darnah – long-regarded as a hub of Islamic conservatism – Salafist militias have reportedly carried out assassinations of Gadhafi-era officials, taken over radio stations, and shut down beauty parlors. All of this has occurred in a worsening security vacuum where, in the absence of a professional police force and army, power has fallen to local militias – many with a Salafist bent.

Libyans' public reaction to such strong-arm tactics has been vociferous and damning. Tribes, women's groups, and civil society – as well as the country's increasingly active social media community – have all mobilized to condemn the recent attacks on Sufis, while mounting demonstrations of their own against the Salafists' shows of force. Counter protests in Benghazi were held in response to the Salafists' armed rally on June 7, with many participants arguing on local TV that Libyan society was already sufficiently Islamic, and that Ansar al-Shariah should leave their weapons and Afghan dress at home.

Taken in sum, much of the violence suggests a movement in search of a cause; failing to achieve local resonance, Salafists have expanded beyond their traditional turf of social issues and are now grasping at foreign causes they believe will excite Libyans' emotions.

Recently, anti-Americanism has risen to the fore. The Omar Abd al-Rahman Brigade has been the most active in targeting U.S. interests and claims credit for an earlier bombing of the consulate. In the run-up to the Benghazi attack, there were alarming exchanges in Salafist social media attacking the U.S. for using Libya as a base for flying drones.

Prominent Salafist-jihadist ideologues from Al-Qaeda (most notably Ayman al-Zawahiri) have long seen Libya as ripe for exploitation and have urged Libyan Salafists to avenge the U.S. killing of Abu Yahya al-Libi. According to one report, Zawahiri dispatched a longtime Libyan Al-Qaeda member, Abd al-Basit Azuz, after the 2011 revolt to establish an Al-Qaeda foothold in Darnah. An online video (probably from spring 2012) shows Azuz speaking at a rally there.

Most worrisome about the recent attacks on Sufi sites has been the government's reaction – a response that has blended toleration and active collaboration. Much of this ambivalence results from the weak legitimacy and resources of the country's provisional government, the National Transitional Council. Bereft of an effective army and police, the NTC was forced to co-opt the country's numerous revolutionary "brigades," deputizing them into provisional security forces like the Supreme Security Committees and Libyan Shield Forces, which nominally report to the Interior Ministry and the Army chief of staff, respectively. Invariably, these poorly trained bodies contain a number of Salafist militias who have used their warrant from the government to enforce draconian social mores, conduct vendettas against Gadhafi-era intelligence officers, and attack Sufis.

The real threat, therefore, is not Salafism per se, but Salafism as a failed litmus test for the new government's legitimacy and capacity. In the wake of the shrine demolitions, many Libyans indicted the lame-duck cabinet of the NTC and the newly installed GNC as the true culprits for failing to provide security. Calls for more government resignations and even martial law have only increased in the wake of the attack on the Benghazi consulate and the death of the U.S. ambassador. Although the GNC had initially demanded the resignation of several Supreme Security Committees commanders in Tripoli for their complicity in the recent shrine demolitions, they subsequently reversed course and issued a letter of commendation after these commanders threatened a general strike. When the government has responded, it has usually been late or ineffective.

For the citizens of Tripoli, Benghazi and other cities, all this is a stark and tragic reminder of the perennial problems of poor governance and the security vacuum. Moving forward, what is needed is less of a focus on Islamism itself and more on building effective, representative governance and accountable, professional security forces.

Frederic Wehrey is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and focuses on security affairs in Libya and the Gulf. This commentary first appeared at Sada, an online journal published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.