As Libya descends further into unrest, the ongoing wave of political assassinations underscores the increasingly arduous and complicated nature of the struggle of the Libya's nascent security agencies to assert control and restore order, and further darkens the political horizons of a country plagued by crisis since the overthrow of the Gaddafi regime. The most recent assassination occurred on 23 August, when Colonel Mustafa Al-Aguili, head of the Interior Ministry's explosives disposal unit in Benghazi, was gunned down in front of Al-Ansari Mosque in Benghazi after Friday prayers. The drive-by shooting seemed a replay of the assassination of Abdel-Salam Al-Mesmari on 26 July. The popular political activist was also killed after Friday prayers, when he emerged from Abu Ghoula Mosque in the Baraka district of Benghazi. A statement released by the Interior Ministry noted that Al-Aguili was instrumental in defusing many of the explosives that had been targeting the Libyan people and their government institutions in various parts of the country since the 17 February Revolution. Most recently, he had defused an explosive device that had been planted in the Tibesti Hotel in Benghazi. The statement announced that security agencies had begun investigations in order to unearth the assassins and bring them to justice. Libyan security sources told Al-Ahram Weekly that preliminary investigations have revealed that four extremists had been involved in the crime and that they had driven from Derna, to the east of Benghazi, to carry it out. Sources added that security agencies have launched a search to apprehend the culprits. Evidence surrounding the many assassinations that have targeted political activists, members of the judiciary and security personnel since the overthrow of the Gaddafi regime late last year shows considerable similarities in planning and execution. Security and intelligence reports as well as the observations of informed Libyan sources interviewed by the Weekly on numerous occasions indicate that most of those responsible for these crimes belong to extremist groups based in Derna. Situated in the Jebel Al-Akhdar region in eastern Cyrenaica, Derna is home to the largest jihadist training camps in Libya. If not to these groups, the evidence leads to organised gangs of mercenaries that began to proliferate under the security vacuum that has prevailed since the outbreak of the revolution on 17 February 2011. Earlier last week, on Monday, 19 August, retired judge Muftah Khafeefi was gunned down, again while leaving a mosque after morning prayers. His and Al-Aguili's deaths bring the number of assassinations since the revolution up to the 100 mark — a large number for this relatively sparsely populated country whose largely tribal composition feeds other conflicts that have received little attention. In fact, a significant facet of Libya's current crisis is the “cold war” between various tribes that has been aggravated by the security breakdown and by mounting tensions between political factions. The latter are the object of growing discontent among large segments of public opinion that regard the new political rulers and elites as responsible for the political crisis and indifferent to the broadening gulfs between the various tribal, ethnic and cultural components of Libyan society. Nevertheless, in a new attempt on the part of Libya's new leaders to stem the security deterioration, president of the General National Congress (GNC) Nouri Abu Sahmain, acting in his capacity as commander-in-chief of the Libyan armed forces, issued a decree instructing Libyan army units to order their troops to attend the morning roll call and to submit the daily list of attendees to the office of the general chief-of-staff which, in turn, would be required to submit a copy of this roster to the commander-in-chief and minister of defence. The decree went on to instruct relevant authorities to monitor the implementation of the instructions and to apply relevant provisions of the military penal code to violators. The security chaos has greatly affected Libya's major economic life source, namely the petroleum sector. Although this sector recovered significantly following the war of liberation, it has deteriorated again as consequence of repeated strikes by oil workers protesting government policies towards the sector, low wages, and more recently due to the Cyrenaica federalists' desire to bring this vital resource under the control of the autonomous regional government they envision for Cyrenaica. Early last week, proponents of the federal system in eastern Libya notched up their pressures on the central government in Tripoli by staging a blockade of the major oil-exporting ports in that area. Chief among these were the ports of Al-Sidra, Al-Zoweitina and Marsa Al-Bariqa. The Libyan National Petroleum Authority has declared a “state of force majeure” while the interim government of Ali Zeidan has threatened to bomb any oil tanker that approaches Libyan ports before the end of the dispute surrounding those facilities. It appears also that tensions in Libya's Egyptian and Tunisian neighbours have cast shadows over the already critical situation in Libya as some political factions have begun to adopt more adamant stances against the current head of the interim government. Among the ranks of the opposition one now hear calls for Ali Zeidan's resignation or dismissal on the grounds that he has failed to make progress on the democratisation roadmap and even on the security question which has severely complicated the political process. Addressing a closed session of the GNC, Zeidan responded that he would not cave into pressures for his resignation and vowed not to abandon the country to an unknown fate that would await it in the event that he resigned in the absence of an alternative ready to step in to succeed him. The rift in the GNC over the fate of the Zeidan government is growing sharper than ever. Nevertheless, a withdrawal of confidence from Zeidan would require the approval of at least 120 of the GNC's 200 members. Such a majority would be difficult for any political bloc in the congress to obtain, especially that of the Justice and Construction Party, the political wing of the Libyan chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been the most vocal of the political forces calling for the prime minister's ouster. Another reaction to the security deterioration came from the office of Libya's Chief Mufti Sheikh Al-Sadeq Al-Gharyani, which issued a statement last week accusing the UN Support Mission in Libya of promoting calls to divide the country. “Libyans did not sacrifice their precious lives and blood so the UN could divide the country,” the statement said. The UN mission expressed its surprise at the statement issued by Libya's eminent national religious establishment and asserted that there were no grounds for the accusation. In its statement, the mission affirmed its commitment to the national unity of Libya and stressed that it supported the choices and priorities of the Libyan people and that it would stand by what they determine best achieves the aims of their revolution. Libya is clearly more splintered than ever along political, regional and tribal divides to the extent that no single group or faction can gain the upper hand. This extends down to ordinary public opinion. Rarely are found two Libyans who can agree, especially on fundamentals.
