Beware Libya’s ‘Fair Dictator’

DOHA, Qatar — “We probably need a fair dictator,” my friend told me during a January 2013 visit to Libya. He was referring to the general sense of hopelessness that had started to grow within the Libyan public. The security situation had deteriorated and Libyans were looking for a savior.

In the midst of this bleak situation, a Libyan general, Khalifa Hifter, has emerged and appointed himself as the rescuer of the deeply divided country. While he seems to respond to the desire of my friend and many Libyans for a “fair dictator” to lead the country through its troubled transitional period, General Hifter also raises the specter of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s infamous 1969 coup and the collective agony that followed. Many Libyans are therefore asking, is General Hifter the sought-after savior or just another dictator?

Either way, Washington must be careful. Openly accommodating or indirectly supporting a new strongman so soon after Libya overthrew its longtime dictator will not only undermine a democratic transition but also exacerbate America’s credibility deficit in the Middle East.

If General Hifter didn’t exist, the Libyan people would have created him. His emergence shouldn’t be surprising, given the country’s disarray. If anything, it’s surprising that he, or someone like him, didn’t appear much sooner.

Since the collapse of the Qaddafi regime in October 2011, Libyans have suffered from rampant insecurity and uncertainty about the direction of their country. Post-Qaddafi Libya is in fact two states running in parallel — the official state that has no power on the ground, and the militias’ state, which is creating facts on the ground. The most egregious example of this lack of central state control was when militias kidnapped Prime Minister Ali Zeidan in October 2013. Libya is not only a failed state, but also on the verge of a civil war.

A situation in which powerful generals emerge amid chaos and civil war is not unique to Libya. Yemen’s Ali Abdullah Saleh came to power in 1978 after the country’s experience with civil war. Lebanon’s civil war paved the way for Gen. Michel Aoun to head a military government that took over in 1988. Most recently, the troubled transition in Egypt has culminated with the rise to power of the former army chief, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. In fact, many are speculating that General Hifter will be “Libya’s Sisi.”

But the history of military strongmen seizing power and then pushing their countries into further chaos should give American policy makers pause.

General Hifter already has a controversial history in Libya. He was part of the team that carried out the 1969 coup, and later led a controversial war against Chad from 1978 to 1987. After Libya’s defeat in the war, General Hifter defected to the United States, where he became an American citizen and devoted himself to toppling the Qaddafi regime.

When the 2011 uprising began, General Hifter came back to Libya and fought side by side with the Islamists he has now condemned. While he presents himself as the unifier of Libya, some view his movement as a reaction to Libya’s controversial banning of all high-ranking members of Colonel Qaddafi’s government from holding public office, including General Hifter.

Regardless of General Hifter’s motives, Libya needs an inclusive national dialogue, not the formation of an additional militia or a coup.

General Hifter’s aligning with militias is likely to trigger the formation of other alliances among Libya’s 250,000 militants and deepen Libya’s divisions, possibly even pushing the country into outright civil war. Only around 30,000 fighters fought against Colonel Qaddafi’s army; the rest took up arms later.

Over the past two years many of them have profited from — and developed an interest in maintaining — the chaos that engulfs the country. Warlords, Islamist groups and other committed revolutionaries who truly fought against the Qaddafi government will not surrender to General Hifter’s movement — and that poses a grave threat to Libya’s prospects for stability.

Washington’s tolerance of General Hifter’s movement has made things much worse. Deborah Jones, the United States ambassador to Libya, was quoted as saying, “I am not going to come out and condemn blanketly what he did” because, she added, General Hifter’s forces were going after groups on Washington’s terrorist list.

Driven by the short-term goal of fighting terrorism, American foreign policy is reverting to the ignoble tradition of tolerating dictatorships and prioritizing security solutions. As a result, America is allowing Libya to slide toward civil war rather than helping it transition to peace, democracy and pluralism. The United States should instead put pressure on General Hifter to use his power to support an inclusive national dialogue that can eventually forge a new social contract and put Libya on a track toward peace and reconciliation.

Whether fair or oppressive, a dictator is a dictator. Libya has finally escaped from autocracy, and there should be no going back.

Ibrahim Sharqieh is a foreign policy fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Doha Center and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University in Qatar.

A version of this op-ed appears in print on June 24, 2014, in The International New York Times.