The Great Debate

By Kyle Scott
The opinions expressed are his own.

The U.S. has avoided some of the mistakes it made in Iraq and Afghanistan in its dealings with Egypt and Libya. While the context of the Arab Spring is entirely different from that of the invasions of Iraq or Afghanistan, the thought that democracy could be forced upon a nation has been avoided by the Obama administration in a post-Mubarak Egypt and a post-Gaddafi Libya. With Gaddafi’s death today, the challenge now is to continue taking this view while helping Libya move toward democracy. Working towards a successful transition requires adherence to two rules: A bottom-up system will be much more successful than a top-down one. The system that works in the U.S. may not work in these countries.

Top-down systems require coercion and manipulation to get things done. Bottom-up systems govern through consent. One works on domination and the other on cooperation. The uprising in Egypt was certainly bottom-up, but the government that has supplanted Mubarak is decidedly top-down. The prospect for Egypt looks bleak if the goal is to establish a representative system of government in which the majority retains the right to rule but the rights of the minority are safeguarded. It is not only because dissident voices are being quieted and religious minorities are being persecuted that the future looks bleak, it’s because once power is gained, particularly in a top-down centralized regime, reform is difficult as power tends to entrench itself as the Egyptian people know all too well.

Libya is fertile ground for an individual or group to seize power, or for a foreign nation to come in and impose its style of government on the people of Libya. Moreover, the disparate ethnic and tribal factions that have a history of violence towards one another makes a political power grab seem likely. A bottom-up system, or federalism, can secure a peaceful transition. A federal arrangement is flexible enough to incorporate all groups into the government which gives them voice and access. Rather than a unitary system that is governed only by a nationwide majority which can ignore the interests and needs of a minority, a federal system grants a geographically concentrated ethnic or religious group the authority to govern itself under the coordination of a central regime in which it also has representation.

The local governing bodies can take the form of states, provinces, regions, or cantons. But, regardless of what they are called, when the lines are drawn it cannot be done by those on the outside. The process of drawing these boundaries must be done by those who are sensitive to the various ethnic claims and familiar with the historical disputes. Moreover, proposals must be given to those who will be governed by them before they are enacted. If it is to be a government by the people and for the people then they too need to have a voice in its development.

The legislative body through which representation will be granted at the national level needs to be crafted similarly. Each group needs to be represented, thereby gaining a legitimate avenue through which to voice their concerns. Whether it’s the recent bombings in India or rioting in England, we know that alienated groups will resort to means which are illegitimate in order to be recognized. This doesn’t justify or defend such acts, but it helps explain why they occur and suggest how they might be avoided. Granting representation to groups will allow those groups to be assimilated in such a way that their success is tied to the success of the government.

By Stefan Wolff
The views expressed are his own.

The fall of Sirte and the death of Colonel Gaddafi today most likely represents the finishing blow for the remnants of the old regime in Libya. They are a highly valuable prize that the National Transitional Council (NTC) fought hard to obtain and that should trigger the formal transition period that Libya’s now widely recognized government has envisaged to lead to democratic elections and a new constitution. Comparable only to the fall of Tripoli in late August, today marks a momentous achievement for a popular movement that twelve months ago was hardly conceivable, let alone in existence. For all intents and purposes, Libya’s is the only successful uprising of the Arab Spring to date.

Though Libyans and their allies across the world are right to celebrate, we must not ignore the challenges ahead. Building a new and legitimate state in Libya remains a difficult task. Gaddafi’s death may well take the sting out of any loyalist resistance for now. The question of what the NTC will do with Gaddafi – try him in Libya or extradite him to the International Criminal Court – no longer exists, but there are others from his inner circle that will have to be dealt with in the future. Both trials at home, like Saddam Hussein’s, and trials abroad, like those handled by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, have their different problems and neither option is likely to avoid a sense of victors’ (in-) justice among Gaddafi loyalists.

There might now be fewer Gaddafi supporters, but those that remain will be no less determined and might find a new leader in any of Gaddafi’s inner circle that is still at large, initially most likely in his son Saif al-Islam. In other words, the security threat is likely to diminish, but will almost certainly not evaporate completely or quickly. At the same time, NTC forces must resist the temptation of vengeful retribution. The fierce fighting in Sirte in particular was highly costly, but as much as the NTC benefitted from a UN Security Council Resolution that mandated a military operation to protect civilians, as much does it now have a responsibility to make sure that crimes are prosecuted through the courts, not by lynch mobs.