TRIBAL leaders and militia commanders in eastern Libya have declared the formation of a semi-autonomous region, raising fears that the country is witnessing the first stages of disintegration six months after the fall of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.
A conference of about 3000 delegates in Benghazi has installed Ahmed al-Senussi, a great nephew of Libya’s former king, as head of the new Cyrenaica Provincial Council.
It proposed that an eastern region should run its own affairs apart from foreign policy, the army and oil resources, which would be left to a federal government in Tripoli, the capital.
The announcement on Tuesday aimed to present a federal system as a fait accompli before the struggling National Transitional Council in Tripoli.
The goal is to revive the system in place after World War II under King Idris, when Libya was divided into three states: Tripolitania in the west, Fezzan in the south-west and Cyrenaica to the east.
As the monarch’s power base, Cyrenaica enjoyed kudos and influence that was largely lost during Gaddafi’s 42-year rule. The east was the cradle of last year’s rebellion but complaints that it has been sidelined have grown since Gaddafi’s removal.
One of the new council’s organisers, Mohammed Buisier, said he had contacted ”the people in Tripoli” and told them ”come here and negotiate”.
The NTC has repeatedly voiced its opposition to the creation of a partly autonomous eastern region, warning that it could eventually lead to the break-up of the north African nation of 6 million.
”This is very dangerous,” the head of the political committee of the NTC, Fathi Baja, said. ”This is a blatant call for fragmentation. We reject it in its entirety.” Senior tribesmen attending the conference denied that the federal system would lead to a break-up of Libya, saying that countries such as the United States, Germany and Switzerland are not divided.
”On the contrary, the federal system makes people feel secure against negative phenomena like military coups, which many developing countries witnessed in recent years,” one said.
The declaration underscored the weakness of the NTC. It holds little sway even in Tripoli, where militias that arose during the anti-Gaddafi revolt have divided neighbourhoods into fiefdoms.
The NTC has called for national elections in June to select a 200-member assembly that would name a prime minister to form a government and then write a constitution.
Rejecting that plan, the conference appointed Mr al-Senussi, Libya’s longest-serving political prisoner under Gaddafi, as leader of the planned governing council. He is also a member of the NTC.
Hundreds demonstrated on Tuesday in Benghazi and Tripoli in support of the central government, their slogans including: ”No to tribalism, no to centralisation, yes to civilised Libya.”
Libya’s interim Prime Minister, Abdul-Rahim al-Keeb, urged solidarity between the government and the people, and said that the nation’s ”silent majority” should protect the state against what he called ”pseudo-revolutionaries”. ”We do not need federalism, because we are heading towards decentralisation and we do not want to go back 50 years,” he said on state television.