The federalist movement in Libya has not been spared the dissension and fragmentation that has characterised the political situation as a whole in the country. Shortly after Ibrahim Al-Jadran, director of the so-called Political Bureau for the region of Cyrenaica, had announced the creation of an executive bureau for that region, Ahmed Al-Zobeir Al-Senussi, cousin of the country's former king Idriss and the oldest political prisoner in Libya, declared his rejection of the action and condemned the spread of the recourse to arms. He went on to contend that the Libyan federalists were not responsible for the ongoing blockade of the oil ports in the north-east of the country at Ras Lanouf, Al-Sadra, Al-Zeitouniya and Al-Hariqa. Rather, he attributed the blockade to a “crisis between the interim government and the guards at the petroleum installations.” Al-Senussi's remarks reflect the divisions that have infected the proponents of a federal system in Libya as they forge their way towards this goal, and the three proposals for a federal system that have been aired since March 2012 embody three considerably different outlooks. The first, formulated by Benghazi University professor Abu Bakr Baira, was more in the nature of an academic treatise, and it quickly vanished in the maze of an increasingly complicated political situation. On 5 June, Al-Senussi then stepped forward with a “political proposal” that he said sought to cleave a path amidst the spiralling unrest and the proliferation of militias that have aggravated the political instability in the country. However, this proposal for a federal system lost its glitter following the dispute between the former commander of petroleum installation guards Ibrahim Al-Jadran and the central government in Tripoli. Al-Jadran joined the federalist camp, but only on the basis of his own “militia-oriented” solution that now appears to have precipitated a sharp rift among the ranks of Libyan federalists. On Sunday, 24 appointees to the newly created Executive Bureau for Cyrenaica were sworn into office as ministers in the regional government which according to officials will be responsible for administrating a region that has “suffered marginalisation by the central authorities in the capital Tripoli.” On Sunday evening, local television stations that support the federalist drive aired scenes of the ceremony as the ministers took the oath of office on a stage that displayed the Cyrenaican flag: a star and crescent against a black field. Prime among those present was president of the Bureau Abdu Rabbu Al-Barasi, a former air force commander who had resigned in order to join the federalists. Next to him stood the director of the Bureau, Ibrahim Al-Jadran, with whom the interim Libyan prime minister Ali Zeidan had been trying to reach an agreement to end the blockade of the oil ports so that oil exports could resume. These negotiating efforts had earlier collapsed against the backdrop of the mounting political tensions and militia conflicts in the country. However, the former commander of the border guards leading the blockade, Al-Sadiq Al-Gheithi, an affiliate of the armed faction of the federalist drive, appeared in public with Zeidan in Tabruq, a city near the border with Egypt, at the weekend in a ceremony to reopen the Al-Hariqa oil port. The event illustrated the depths of the rift that has begun to cleave the federalist camp. Al-Jadran used the event as an occasion to respond to Al-Senussi's remarks. As great as his respect was for Al-Zobeir Al-Sennusi, his office — the Political Bureau of Cyrenaica — was the only agency authorised to open the oil ports that had been closed for many months, costing Libya billions of dollars, he said. Hassan Al-Urfi, official spokesman for the Bureau, acknowledged the existence of the disputes among the leaders of the drive that seeks autonomy for a region stretching from Libya's border with Egypt to Sirte located on the Mediterranean coast in central Libya. In a telephone interview with Al-Ahram Weekly, Al-Urfi said that although Al-Senussi was not a member of the executive bureau that falls under the Cyrenaica Political Bureau, he was still part of the federalist drive “which is not linked to personalities.” At the same time, the spokesman denied that recent developments had been linked to the oil question. “Al-Zobeir did not mention oil throughout the previous period,” he said, referring to statements in which the cousin of former king Idris had accused certain individuals of attempting to “hijack the fruits of federalism.” The spokesman added that the conflict revolved around a struggle for power and charged that the Libyan government was deliberately distorting the federalist movement. In the opinion of General National Conference (GNC) member Al-Dawi Al-Muntasser, the dissension among the federalist leaders is indicative of a broader disagreement over the federalist alternatives for Cyrenaica. However it was also his view that the main reason for the discord was the conflicting personalities of Al-Senussi and Al-Jadran, whom he held had been fabricating “media stunts” to serve their own personal ends. Al-Muntasser added that he wondered why it had taken them so long to make their disputes public. According to political analyst and chairman of the Libyan Forum for Democracy Ali Bouzakouk, the fact that discord among the federalist leaders has now surfaced to public view is a sign of deepening fragmentation in the camp. Another political analyst, Alaa Bin Dardaf, attributed the disputes among the leaders of the federalist drive to regional and tribal affiliations. These “narrow” outlooks had characterised the federalist trend since it had emerged in the wake of the Libyan Revolution in 2011, he said, adding that some federalists were now speaking not just of a distinct Cyrenaican identity but also of a “White Cyrenaica” and a “Red Cyrenaica”, signalling a possible movement to subdivide the region itself. Such a trend could gain impetus, now that the divisions had been exposed to all to see, he said. In a separate development in the capital, the GNC announced that it had withdrawn the powers of supreme commander of the armed forces from the GNC Chairman Nouri Abu Sahmein. The move was connected with the abduction of prime minister Ali Zeidan last month by an armed group, which the press at the time had described as belonging to the Chamber of the Revolutionaries of Libya and the Tripoli branch of the Committee to Fight Crime. According to both domestic and international press reports, the decision to strip Sahmein of the powers was part of a deal between the major blocs in the GNC. In exchange, the Chamber of the Revolutionaries of Libya would be dissolved, they said. A related development has also been indicative of the seething political tensions now at work in Libya. Last week, the GNC suspended its sessions that had been scheduled for this week after heated arguments flared between the blocs over the agenda for these sessions. The points on the agenda had included the abduction of Zeidan, the question of the handover of son of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi Seif Al-Islam Gaddafi for trial in Tripoli by those holding him in detention in the city of Zintan, the “Cyrenaica Declaration”, the crisis over the closure of the petroleum ports, and the future of the GNC itself, now that the countdown has begun to the stipulated end of its term in February 2014. Eventually, a compromise was reached over the agenda, allowing the sessions to meet as scheduled this week. Meanwhile, the liberal-oriented Coalition of National Forces, the largest political bloc in the GNC, held a conference to initiate discussion of the National Dialogue Initiative that the coalition had called for last month. The initiative seeks to air possible solutions to the political crisis that has been plaguing the country, and the conference was held in what was formerly the People's Hall in Tripoli, which had served as the premises of the General People's Congress in the Gaddafi era. Whether due to the choice of premises or to some of the participants in the conference, some parties left the conference soon after it had begun. Prime among these was the National Salvation Front (NSF) Party, which declared its refusal to take part in a conference that was “suspicious”, the organisers of which “were concealing their real intentions,” as the NSF spokesmen put it.
