"eestablishing law and order has proved to be the hardest task, not least because many militias want to provide an alternative. The government has succeeded in cajoling the militiamen to make a formal decision to leave the capital’s airports. But whole units have simply switched uniforms and painted their cars the red and white of security vehicles. “We call them policemen,” a security official tells me; but the new Libya still has no criminal justice system, because judges are too nervous to issue verdicts, and the police too powerless to enforce them.
In their absence, the militias offer what little rough justice exists. They maintain their own makeshift detention centers with an estimated five thousand captives, all held without prospect of trial. “Tripoli is safe only as long as the rebels are here,” says Faraj Sweihli, an eccentric militia leader from Misrata who has refused to hand over his headquarters in Tripoli’s military college for women despite government requests to leave. While I am talking to him, he threatens to arrest me for not having a government press card. (He did the same to two English journalists a month earlier.) A friend in Tripoli calls the uprising Libya’s “rebelution.”
The arrival of private security companies, primarily from London, further undermines the government’s hope of regaining a monopoly on the use of force. Soldiers and veterans of Baghdad and Kabul, they are the “West’s Afghans”—a counterpoint to the movement of global jihad, chasing the world’s crises to sell their mercenary services. Though they carry arms, few are registered, and none are regulated. They open safe houses in Tripoli while they solicit contracts to guard oil installations and establish a multibillion-dollar border force. The EU delegation made a deal for its protection with G4S, a company that helps secure Ofer, an Israeli prison for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
With “security” in so many competing hands, many fear violence will only get worse. Security officials attempting to instill some method into this madness estimate that some 15,000 fighters took part in the battle to topple Qaddafi. Of these, they say, thousands have returned to their previous jobs, from car mechanics to psychiatrists. But the authorities’ attempt to forge a new security apparatus out of the remnant has hit an impasse in part of their own making. Enticed by government handouts of 4,000 dinars for married men who took up arms against Qaddafi’s regime and 2,400 for bachelors, as well as the chance to cover up their history of involvement with Qaddafi, hundreds of thousands more have registered as “revolutionaries,” proclaiming their loyalty to some sixty militias. “The truth is no one knows how many there are,” I was told by Mustafa Rugbani, the labor minister and former Paris-based IBM manager responsible for vetting recruits." (thanks Laleh)
In their absence, the militias offer what little rough justice exists. They maintain their own makeshift detention centers with an estimated five thousand captives, all held without prospect of trial. “Tripoli is safe only as long as the rebels are here,” says Faraj Sweihli, an eccentric militia leader from Misrata who has refused to hand over his headquarters in Tripoli’s military college for women despite government requests to leave. While I am talking to him, he threatens to arrest me for not having a government press card. (He did the same to two English journalists a month earlier.) A friend in Tripoli calls the uprising Libya’s “rebelution.”
The arrival of private security companies, primarily from London, further undermines the government’s hope of regaining a monopoly on the use of force. Soldiers and veterans of Baghdad and Kabul, they are the “West’s Afghans”—a counterpoint to the movement of global jihad, chasing the world’s crises to sell their mercenary services. Though they carry arms, few are registered, and none are regulated. They open safe houses in Tripoli while they solicit contracts to guard oil installations and establish a multibillion-dollar border force. The EU delegation made a deal for its protection with G4S, a company that helps secure Ofer, an Israeli prison for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
With “security” in so many competing hands, many fear violence will only get worse. Security officials attempting to instill some method into this madness estimate that some 15,000 fighters took part in the battle to topple Qaddafi. Of these, they say, thousands have returned to their previous jobs, from car mechanics to psychiatrists. But the authorities’ attempt to forge a new security apparatus out of the remnant has hit an impasse in part of their own making. Enticed by government handouts of 4,000 dinars for married men who took up arms against Qaddafi’s regime and 2,400 for bachelors, as well as the chance to cover up their history of involvement with Qaddafi, hundreds of thousands more have registered as “revolutionaries,” proclaiming their loyalty to some sixty militias. “The truth is no one knows how many there are,” I was told by Mustafa Rugbani, the labor minister and former Paris-based IBM manager responsible for vetting recruits." (thanks Laleh)
