The kidnapping of four staff members of the Egyptian embassy in Tripoli marks a turning point in the history of Egyptian-Libyan relations which, today, lack strategic direction that leaves them all the more prey to the political, security and economic turmoil in these two countries and the region as a whole. The kidnapping was in response to the arrest of Shaaban Hadiya, commander of the “Revolutionaries of Libya Operations Room”. This entity was recognised as legitimate by Libya's parliament, the General National Congress (GNC), in August 2013 and subsequently incorporated into the general chiefs of staff of the Libyan army on 11 November following the controversy sparked by this entity's kidnapping of the current Libyan prime minister, Ali Zeidan. The GNC speaker then assigned the Revolutionaries of Libya Operations Room with the task of protecting the capital city and its suburbs as an auxiliary force to the army and police, which are currently under formation. The group that metamorphosed into the “Operations Room” entity is made up of former revolutionaries who fought against the regime of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi during the uprising of 2011. The majority of its members are Islamists, ranging from moderate to extreme in outlook. However, the climate of political controversy and tensions often propels its younger and more hot-headed members towards impetuous actions, such as the kidnapping of Zeidan and, more recently, the kidnapping of members of the Egyptian diplomatic mission in Tripoli. In order to gain a clearer understanding of this act, it is important to contextualise it in the rampant security deterioration that followed the fall of the Gaddafi regime. The Libyan uprising stirred long stagnant waters, agitating ancient family, tribal and ethnic tensions that had long been contained by the Gaddafi police regime. It also triggered new types of conflicts between various components of Libyan society that had been unknown before the revolt against the Gaddafi regime. The eruption of these many tensions and conflicts has precipitated the kidnappings, assassinations, gun battles, armed attacks against government facilities and non-government facilities, and other acts of violence that mushroomed in Libya. While in Egypt the army and security agencies remained strong enough to safeguard the state and enable it to weather the violent storms of the Arab Spring, the same can not be said of Libya where the existing military and security apparatuses collapsed. There are important demographic and geographic considerations to consider as well. Libyan society is strongly tribal in its organisation and the tribe often has an influence that supersedes that of the state. In addition, the country is relatively sparsely populated, with only 6.5 million inhabitants, as of the official census in October 2013, spread over an area of some two million square kilometres. Also unlike Egypt, and most other countries of the Arab Spring, the Libyan uprising that erupted in February 2011 did not begin with a peaceful protest movement to speak of. It was militarised almost from the outset and it overthrew the regime militarily in October 2011. Because of Gaddafi's idiosyncratic mode of one-man rule, there were no institutionalised bodies of government. When his regime collapsed, the country was left without structures, governmental, security or otherwise. The authorities that have since come to power have so far been unable to fill that void, as a result of which there is no armed forces worthy of the name and the borders have become more porous than ever and constant lures for drug trafficking, smuggling, terrorism, illegal immigration, organised crime and non-organised crime. Meanwhile, the militarised nature of the revolution, the proliferation of militias, the prevalence of tribal allegiances and their sensitivities, the fragility of political parties and non-tribal interest groups have combined to prevent the emergence of a police force capable of maintaining law and order in post-Gaddafi Libya. Thus, kidnapping is a manifestation and an indicator of the complex weave of numerous social, demographic, political, economic factors that interplayed in a multiplicity of unexpected ways during and after an uprising that was nothing less than an unprecedented revolutionary act on the part of the Libyan people. Interestingly, by way of comparison there had been an uprising of sorts before this. It was generally referred to as the aborted “Warfalla coup”, so named as it was led by a former Libyan army officer who belonged to the Warfalla tribe. It took place in 1993 and ended with the execution of 21 officers from that tribe, the largest Libyan tribe whose members are concentrated in the city of Beni Walid south of Tripoli. Following the coup, the “Warfalla” were virtually reduced to outcasts, condemned by others as “traitors” or worse. It was a bitter lesson and helps explain why this tribe had chosen to remain on the sidelines in the 2011 uprising against Gaddafi. Unfortunately, this neutrality did not prevent the Warfalla from being eyed with suspicion by revolutionaries and accused of aiding and abetting the regime. Its relations with other tribes and cities would subsequently deteriorate further, especially with Misrata, the western command base of the anti-Gaddafi resistance. As is the case with other Libyan conflicts, the hostility between the city of Beni Walid and Misrata is fuelled by an ancient animosity and more recent sources of tension borne of post-revolutionary circumstances. It is also useful to bear in mind, when considering the current security chaos in Libya, that it was the Gaddafi regime that had initiated the phenomenon of kidnappings and arrests. His targets were family members and relatives of opposition figures and dissidents, with the purpose of using them as hostages to force the recalcitrant back in line. As he grew more desperate, he arrested journalists and relatives of dissident diplomats and burned their homes. A well known victim of this was Libya's permanent ambassador to the UN and former foreign minister under Gaddafi, Abdel Rahman Shalqham, whose impassioned speech brought tears to the eyes of those who attended the UN Security Council session of 19 March 2011 that was dedicated to discussing developments in Libya at the time. Another tactic of the Gaddafi regime during the civil war was to release imprisoned criminals in order to sow terror. According to official statistics, they number in the neighbourhood of 45,000 criminals that both Gaddafi's security agencies and the current interior ministry rank as “dangerous”. They are still at large and are certainly responsible for many of the murders, kidnappings, thefts and other crimes that plague the country. One of the most notorious kidnapping operations that took place in Libya in the post-Gaddafi era involved the antagonism between Misrata and Beni Walid. A gang of gunmen that was reported to have been operating out of a lair on the outskirts of Beni Walid abducted journalists from Misrata who had been covering the GNC elections on 7 July 2012. The abduction turned out to be an act of retaliation. Many months before this, shortly after the fall of Tripoli and Sirte, militias operating out of Misrata that were still surrounding Ben Walid kidnapped several Warfalla elders. These were only released in November 2013. The militias in Misrata, as well as in Zawiya and Zintan, still hold hostages they captured during the war of liberation and afterwards. According to reliable reports from the Libyan justice ministry and the National Council for Freedoms and Human Rights, copies of which were made available to Al-Ahram Weekly, there are at least 8,000 detainees in Libya at present. Of these, only 3,000 were detained by the government and are held in detention centres supervised by the justice ministry in accordance with the current penal system. The remaining 5,000 are held in jails and prisons operated by militias and outside of government control. These 5,000 imprisoned persons can only be classified as hostages. The Libyan figures, which coincide with those cited in the reports of Human Rights Watch and other international agencies, are based on confirmed information. Libyan activists claim that the actual number of people arbitrarily detained and jailed by militias is much higher. Kidnapping has become one of the hallmarks of the new Libya. Other recent well-known kidnapping victims were Mohamed Al-Qatous, director of the office of Prime Minister Zeidan, who was abducted in the summer of last year; GNC member Abdel Hamid Al-Zintouni who was abducted from the city of Warshfana by a group of gunmen in November; the son of Minister of Defence Abdullah Al-Thani; and Prime Minister Zeidan himself. Foreign diplomats, as we know, have not been spared. In addition to the Egyptian embassy staff members, the commercial attaché at the South Korean embassy in Tripoli was kidnapped last week. In southern Libya, kidnapping is a weapon of warfare in the ongoing dispute between the Arab tribes and the African Tebou tribes. The latter's victims are generally spirited across the border into Chad where they are kept as bartering chips to use in negotiations with their tribal adversaries in Libya who, naturally, have Tebou hostages that they keep for the same purpose. The kidnappings and occasional prisoner swaps are a constant feature of what can only be described as a civil war in the south that has been raging for several weeks, unchecked by Libyan authorities. There are regional variations in the phenomenon. In the east, where the security deterioration is most acute, political assassinations overshadow kidnapping operations. Most of the victims are security personnel or rival militia members, although a good number of political figures have died. In the west, which is a bit less unstable, kidnappings and prisoner exchanges are more frequent. Most of these target politicians and diplomats and relatively few security personnel or militia members. In the south, killing and kidnapping are equally rampant.
