The Libyan city of Benghazi is approaching the middle of the second year since the outbreak of the war begun by General Khalifa Haftar to regain control over country's second-largest city and the largest in the eastern Cyrenaica region. Cyrenaican federalists hope to gain control of the city preparatory to declaring a return to the federal system in Libya or the total autonomy of the region, as was the case during the early independence period after 1949. Such a step has stirred anxieties in many quarters. If it were to occur, the results would not necessarily be as the federalists envision in view of the current e6nvironment, characterised by fragmentation, political and social fluidity, instability and a lack of security. On 16 May 2014, Haftar launched Operation Dignity to recapture Benghazi and defeat Islamists of all stripes in the region. He rallied Bedouin tribes to his side, most of them favouring a return to the federalist system without understanding the current circumstances in the country. Haftar had previously staged a “televised coup” in a video uploaded to YouTube on 14 February and coinciding with the date stipulated for the end of the term of the General National Congress (GNC) government in Tripoli. In the recording, Haftar claimed he had taken control of 90 per cent of government institutions, suspended the Libyan Constitutional Declaration and frozen the activities of the government, then headed by former prime minister Ali Zeidan. But, in fact, none of this had occurred. What did happen was that the public prosecutor's office in Tripoli then issued a warrant for Haftar's arrest, though the country's feeble law-enforcement agencies were unable to carry it out. Following the failure of his illusory coup, Haftar reshuffled his cards in the east of the country and resurfaced two months later with a declaration of war on Benghazi. The Haftar-led Operation Dignity camp includes both long-term supporters and temporary allies, the latter fighting to regain control of Benghazi, expel the Islamists and free the city from its subordination to Tripoli, which is still under the control of the GNC. The Haftar camp includes supporters of federalism in Libya, as well as military officers close to Haftar, army and political officials affiliated with the former Gaddafi regime, and eastern Bedouin tribes seeking revenge for assassinations carried out in Benghazi before and after the launch of Operation Dignity. The supporters of federalism are led by the Al-Awaqir tribe, which believes that it has the right to rule Benghazi since during the Ottoman era the city was a quasi-independent centre known as the Mutasarrafiya of the Al-Awaqir. The federalists fighting alongside Haftar have been jockeying to be at the forefront of his campaign. But Haftar has expressed his contempt for their behaviour and their refusal to obey his commands, which, he claims, has delayed final victory. Tensions between Haftar and the so-called “axis commanders” have surfaced on several occasions, for example when the commander of the Jebel Al-Akhdar Defence Zone, Colonel Faraj Al-Bar'asi, was removed from the battlefront and brought before a military court on charges of insubordination, destroying homes in Benghazi and staging attacks on banks in the city. Tribal pressures on the rival House of Representatives government and on Haftar personally not only succeeded in sparing Al-Bar'asi from prosecution, but also reinstated him with greater authority. The speaker of the House of Representatives appointed him commander of a military region extending from Messa, east of Benghazi, to the border with Egypt, making the colonel one of Haftar's most formidable rivals. Tensions spiked again when “axis commanders” in Benghazi accused Haftar of withholding ammunition. In early November 2015, a contingent of their forces stormed the Operation Dignity operations room and expelled its director, Colonel Ali Al-Thaman. The incident shed light on the relationship between the groups in Haftar's campaign and its command structure, which was legitimised as the result of tribal pressures on the House of Representatives, which, despite international recognition, is still fragile. Meanwhile, young people in Benghazi have fought against Haftar's military campaign both firmly and resolutely under the umbrella of the Islamist-dominated Shura Council of Revolutionaries that has been forced to ally with the Ansar Al-Sharia, an organisation that has been branded as terrorist. As a result, Haftar has thus far been unable to tighten his grip on the city. This situation brings out another dangerous duality in the conflict: Bedouin tribes versus urban residents. The latter oppose the return of the city to Bedouin control, as was the case during the Gaddafi era, carrying bleak implications for the future. The tribal youths fighting for Haftar are also unaware of the demography of the city. This important factor requires further attention to better understand the pattern of alliances in the east, given that Benghazi is the driver and symbol of the region. Some 402 people from Benghazi had died of war-related causes up to 8 November 2015, compared to 1,442 the previous year, according to the Casualties of the Libya War website. Benghazi has also led all the Libyan cities in the number of displaced persons due to the ongoing hostilities. More than 108,830 people were driven from their homes between 16 May 2014 and April 2015, according to Libyan Red Crescent figures. The Red Crescent report, a copy of which Al-Ahram Weekly obtained, describes the difficult circumstances of these people, especially in areas where they had sought refuge in the east of the country. Further evidence of these surfaced in the disputes that arose between the eastern municipalities and the displaced persons crisis committee in Benghazi over the fact that most of the refugees were being housed in schools and government buildings, causing delays in work and education. The internationally recognised government in Libya has been unable to provide them with minimal levels of subsistence and accommodation. When former UN envoy to Libya Bernardino Leon unveiled the proposed composition of a national accord government on 8 October, the objection voiced from the east was that it did not offer sufficient representation to Benghazi. This prevented approval of the political settlement and ended the reconciliation process sponsored by the international community. It is clear that the east's objections to the political agreement will cause a further prolongation of hostilities in the country, especially in the east which is more divided than the west. Although Haftar has announced on numerous occasions that he is on the verge of liberating Benghazi, the situation on the ground is not as he has claimed. The city is split into districts along pro- and anti-Haftar lines. Ironically, the oldest district in the city is the one that is spearheading the resistance to Haftar's forces. Since May 2014, Benghazi has been the victim of aerial bombardments, ground invasions using all types of heavy weaponry, assaults and arson attacks on people's homes, and the theft and plunder of public and private establishments. All manifestations of normal life have ground to a standstill. Those responsible for these campaigns are officers at the head of diverse groups from the villages surrounding Benghazi and the towns of eastern Libya. On the basis of the behaviour of these groups, the campaigns can perhaps best be described as Bedouin invasions waged in co-ordination with tribal agents inside the city. The result has been mass destruction and worsening corruption. The relationship between Benghazi and the Bedouin should be given closer study as it is part of the ongoing dialectic between city-dwellers and nomads in contemporary Libya. This dialectic is at work in Benghazi and was reinforced by four decades of Gaddafi rule that enabled the Bedouin to control the city, allowing the conflict between the Bedouin and the city-dwellers to persist to the present day. In addition, the situation in Benghazi compels close consideration of the general situation in the east, which for decades has been unable to achieve stability. Neither Ottoman nor Italian rule was ever stable in eastern Libya. The former Kingdom of Libya was born in the east of the country, where it also died at the hands of the Gaddafi coup. From the east sprang the 17 February 2011 Revolution, and in the east that revolution stalled. From the east come activists calling for a civil state and an end to tribal and regional differences, and from there hail proponents of tribalism and regionalism. The building of the state in Benghazi and eastern Libya will succeed only through the establishment of tribal hegemony over the country's public sphere, many Libyans believe. But the tribes are a house divided, with members fighting on all sides. What is needed is the creation of a hybrid system that will help lead the country out of its current crisis. Derna: Victim of marginalisation Derna, the first Islamic State (IS) terrorist group stronghold in Libya, took observers by surprise this year with its uprising against the organisation. In mid-June 2015, the people of Derna drove IS members out of their city, with no help from the government authorities. The city has also long been a victim of marginalisation, both under the former Gaddafi regime and to the present day. Derna is regarded as the second capital of eastern Libya, after Benghazi. Bedouin culture and tribalism prevail throughout eastern Libya, historically known as Cyrenaica. The Bedouin, who have felt marginalised since the collapse of the Gaddafi regime, are now envisaging the establishment of a federal system in the country, even though the Libyan tribes are separated by gulfs in outlook and perceived interests. Derna was the urban centre that in the late 1940s steered the unification of the disparate Cyrenaican tribes through the Al-Harabi Charter, which induced the tribes to set aside their rivalries and help establish the state with its security, economic and judicial systems. The charter also furnished the support necessary for Idris Al-Sennousi, a member of the region's Al-Sennousi Dynasty, to become emir of Cyrenaica upon its independence, won before that of other regions in Libya in 1949. It was the intellectuals and prominent families of Derna who spearheaded the movement to unify the eastern tribes. Throughout its modern history, Derna has been a citadel of business, culture and the arts. A majority of Libya's current elites has at one time or another studied in Derna's schools. One example is General Khalifa Haftar, appointed by the House of Representatives as commander of the Libyan army. The city was also once famed for its theatres and other cultural venues, among them the Derna Theatre of the Arts, which Gaddafi transferred to Al-Qobba, the Bedouin village home of the current speaker of the House of Representatives Aqila Salah. The theatre was then turned into a storehouse for animal fodder. Derna was once the centre of liberal thought but turned into a base for the moderate and radical Islamist movements as a consequence of its marginalisation under Gaddafi. The brutality with which the regime treated the opposition forced many residents of Derna, including many of its most prominent intellectuals, to emigrate. Gaddafi's nationalisation of the Derna Federation of Contractors, a business organisation, in the 1970s marked a turning point, after which the city became increasingly conservative. In 2006, the Gaddafi regime began to open up to the opposition, and Derna started to shift back to the climate of earlier times. However, this trend did not last as Gaddafi soon clamped back down on the opposition once more, only to be followed, in 2011, by the uprising against his rule and Derna's reversion back to conservatism and marginalisation. The Islamist forces in the city, led by the Libyan Muslim Brotherhood and the Libyan Combat Group, have benefited from this marginalisation as they have been able to consolidate their base in the city. Islamist leaders from the city were instrumental in mobilising its young people to take part in the fight against Gaddafi during the Libyan Revolution. When these same leaders then abandoned the young people in the wake of their acquisition of various political privileges, the youth began to form their own Islamist groups, from moderate to more extreme. Foremost among these has been the Shura Council of the Youth of Islam, which in mid-October 2014 declared its allegiance to IS, becoming the first Islamist militia in Libya to officially join the terrorist group. A group of members of the Libyan Combat Group operating in the framework of the Abu Salim Martyrs Brigade opposed the IS affiliation, and antagonism between the two groups erupted in intermittent skirmishes and assassinations. Tensions continued to seethe beneath the surface until early June 2014 when IS gunmen assassinated two leaders of the Brigade, Abu Salim Nasser Al-Akr and Salem Darbi. The murders triggered an uprising in which the Abu Salim Martyrs Brigade, backed by a large segment of the Derna population, drove IS forces out of the city and pursued them into the surrounding countryside. The Brigade succeeded in securing control of the city, apart from a few pockets on the outskirts. However, differences with Haftar forces later brought the Brigade into the crosshairs of the army alongside IS, a development that has hampered the final elimination of the IS group from Derna. While Haftar's forces have refused to support the Abu Salem Martyrs Brigade in its fight against IS, a number of Bedouin tribes in the vicinity, such as in Tobruk and Al-Beida, have been more forthcoming. This could strengthen Derna's role in the fight against terrorism and in building the state, as the city had done in the post-independence era. The social cohesion that the city has demonstrated in the face of IS and the support of neighbouring tribes in the fight against terrorism could also serve as a model to be emulated in other parts of Libya. The dynamic of solidarity between the people of Derna and the Abu Salem Martyrs Brigade proved highly effective in driving IS members out of the city in record time, for example. But Haftar eyes such a model with misgivings, as it could pave the way for the dissolution of his alliance with the Bedouin tribes in the environs of Benghazi and sap the momentum in his 18-month campaign to drive the Islamists out of Benghazi. Even so, the Bedouin tribes around Derna have taken a different stance to those in the neighbourhood of Benghazi, as they have rejected Haftar's military control of their areas. This was evident when Haftar withdrew the commander of the Jebel Al-Akhdar Military Zone, Colonel Faraj Al-Barasi, from the front in Benghazi and had him court martialed on charges of insubordination. Haftar was forced to withdraw the charnges in the face of pressures from tribal leaders who openly displayed their opposition to him, making it clear that his influence did not extend beyond Benghazi and its environs. As a result, the area from Al-Massa, east of Benghazi, to the border with Egypt has been placed under the command of Al-Barasi, with the support of speaker of the House of Representatives Aqila Saleh in his capacity as supreme commander of the Libyan armed forces. Saleh, too, has had to bow to tribal pressures, and the Abu Salem Martyrs Brigade's opposition to Haftar's political and military domination has played a major role in the latter's refusal to ally with the Brigade in the war on terrorism and IS. But just as Derna in the mid-20th century served as a model for the unification of the tribes of eastern Libya and spearheaded support for Al-Sennousi as emir of Cyrenaica and then king of Libya, so too it might serve as a new model in the current war against terrorism in Libya. Emulation of the Derna model elsewhere might also lead to the unification of a country that is in the grips of a complex and multifaceted conflict. For this to happen, however, the Libyan people will need to dedicate sufficient attention to a city that some quarters, most notably the Tobruk camp and Haftar, still eye with consternation. The people of Derna will also need to bridge the gap between the Brigade, which controls Derna, and its chief rivals outside the city, an effort that will require the assistance of other social elements. Such actions may be possible and, indeed, necessary now that IS has probably reached the conviction that Derna is no longer feasible as a base and has moved to Sirte, in the centre of the country, taking advantage of the security vacuum there and the lack of any effective official presence, whether from Tobruk or from Tripoli. It is Sirte that will now be forced to deal with its fate as a victim of IS control.
