Libya: the weak hand of the law

Two years after the national transitional council took its seat in the UN, central government is still a hypothetical notion

- Editorial
- The Guardian, Wednesday 18 September 2013 15.59 EDT
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The most nervous man in Libya right now will probably not be Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the son of the former dictator whose trial opens in Tripoli on Thursday, but the judge who tries him. This is not because the playboy scion of the family, which terrorised the country, holds some residual sway. Saif himself will almost certainly not be in court, because the government has failed to persuade the city of Zintan's militia to hand him over. That is only one source of the judge's nerves. There are others.

Two years after the national transitional council took its seat in the United Nations, central government is still a hypothetical notion. Geographically, it comprises Tripoli and not much more. Two-thirds of Libya's oil output remains shut down, after a deal that was supposedly meant to restore it failed. While the government controls just two ports, federalists in the east have seized the country's main oil terminals, arguing that they don't get a fair cut of the revenue, and calling for autonomy. They even tried to sell the oil on the international market themselves.

There are tensions within Tripoli between the prime minister, Ali Zeidan, and the Muslim Brotherhood in Libya, after Mr Zeidan's unannounced visit to neighbouring Egypt, where he met the general that toppled the Brotherhood's president, Mohamed Morsi. Returning home, Mr Zaidan accused the Brotherhood of undermining him from the start. No Libyan institution is strong enough to resist the city states which have re-emerged in the wake of the western intervention. The fact that free elections were held just nine months after liberation was hailed as a great achievement, but the afterglow soon wore off. The General National Congress, the interim parliament created by that poll, is paralysed by the pullout of its two major parties. The Brotherhood which, as in Egypt, is accused by its enemies of a smash and grab raid on the levers of power, and revenue in Tripoli, itself fears the consequences of placing itself under a national security umbrella after the massacres and mass arrests across the border. It doubts plans by Britain, Italy and the US to train Libyan army units. If the path to democracy in Egypt is strewn with roadblocks thrown up by the deep state, the challenge in Libya is the opposite one. There are too many reasons to resist the formation of a national army. And yet, without one, a state will struggle to exist.

The trial of Saif and the spymaster Abdullah al-Senussi opens the door to many of these currents. Zintan will not release a possession as prized as Saif, who can impugn any politician connected to the old regime. In putting the two on trial, Libya is defying the international criminal court, which insists on trying them in The Hague. At the moment, this is the least of the court's problems.