Inkwell Institute
Subject: North Africa
Recently I was having a conversation with the wife of a friend who has a MA in International Relations and we spoke about the situation in Libya…….she said that the country was experiencing all kinds of political pangs and because of the racial tensions that the best thing might be some form of federalism to try and make the country’s politics more stable……
My opinion was that I did not think that would be a solid solution for the problems the country was having…..we argued a bit longer before we had to go back to the mundane doings of the event we were attending….but her idea got me to thinking and this what I found out……
I am not an expert on Libyan history but I thought that I had heard something Libyan federalism…..from a piece written by an Libyan expert, Jason Pack…..
Amid the ongoing tumult, over-eager commentators warn that Libya is poised to fracture along regional, tribal, and provincial lines. Ambassador Akbar Ahmed, Chair of Islamic Studies at American University in Washington, has written in an Al Jazeera English Opinion piece that federalism is the only solution which would be in fitting with Libyan history.
The reverse is true. Federalism was tried in the Kingdom of Libya between 1951 and 1963. It facilitated dysfunctional governance, widespread corruption, and redundant government offices at the national and provincial levels simultaneously enacting conflicting policies. Provincial legislators and bureaucrats were local notables protecting their fiefdoms – similar to the militias and regional strongmen of today. Taxation policy was subject to a provincial veto rendering wide-scale planning unwieldy.
When Libya was a poor desert economy prior to 1961, central planning and streamlined infrastructural budgets were not yet necessary. However, with the influx of oil wealth post-1961, federalism needed to be abandoned when the inefficiencies it fostered impeded the rapid development of Libya that would otherwise have been possible. Protracted battles in 1963 over which authorities had the right to tax foreign companies operating in Libya were its final death knell.
So federalism may not be in the best interests of the people or the country…….
Today’s Libya requires the rapid creation of nation-wide institutions and human capital that Libyan history shows is incompatible with federalism. Yet, the proponents of federalism wish to decide taxes and budgets at the provincial level – a sure recipe for gridlock. Furthermore, one of the few positive legacies of Gaddafi’s rule is his construction of extensive water and oil pipelines that link the provinces together. For example, much of Libya’s oil is extracted in Cyrenaica and brought via pipelines to the Sirte Basin, while the majority of Libya’s groundwater comes from aquifers in southern Cyrenaica but is consumed in the populous areas of Western Tripolitania. A return to a “federal” governmental model would inevitably endanger these gains unleashing a competition over strategic resources – especially those in the Sirte Basin where Cyrenaica and Tripolitania meet.
Since Libya, like so many others in the region, is a tribal country and overcoming that obstacle will be a paramount undertaking….only time and the sands of the Sahara know what waits for the people of Libya.