Libyan militias amass weapons
By Simon Denyer
9/17/2011
TRIPOLI, Libya -- At a huge weapons depot in the Libyan capital, flat-bed trucks line up to be piled high with land mines, rockets and shells, before being driven off into the western mountains.
Less than a month after rebels captured Tripoli and forced longtime leader Moammar Gaddafi to flee, revolutionary militia groups are sweeping up any weapons they can find, often from huge unguarded weapons dumps left behind by Gaddafi's forces.
Some of the groups barely recognize the authority of the new civilian government, and rivalries are already surfacing -- developments that are worrying officials, civilians and human rights groups.
"Until we have a national army, this will pose a real security threat," said Noman Benotman, a former anti-Gaddafi militant who is now a senior analyst with the Quilliam think-tank in London.
The U.S. government says the potential for Libya's vast arsenal to end up in the wrong hands is a serious concern. U.S. officials worry that some of the thousands of unaccounted-for surface-to-air missiles -- especially sophisticated shoulder-launched "man-portable air-defense systems," known as manpads, that can bring down civilian airliners -- could end up with al-Qaeda.
But a massive haul of explosives, much larger than the stockpiles left behind by Saddam Hussein that helped fuel the insurgency in Iraq, also poses a real risk, especially if Gaddafi escapes abroad and uses his vast wealth to sponsor a guerrilla movement.
"While the international community until today is focused on manpads, for Libya the greater danger is from explosives and weapons that can be turned against them, as they were in Iraq and Afghanistan," said Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director at Human Rights Watch. "The mix of these unsecured warehouses, with a leader still on the run who has access to vast funds, and a proportion of the population still quite loyal to him, is a lethal one."
In the days after Tripoli fell, some individuals looted warehouses, and some of the stolen weapons have already found their way onto the international market, said Bouckaert. He warned of the prospect that this could spread insecurity across the already volatile northern African region, from Chad and Sudan west to Niger, Mali and Algeria.
The fact that revolutionary militia groups are now scooping up many of the remaining weapons and explosives might seem the lesser evil, but it is nevertheless worrying those who hope that the new Libya will emerge as a country where power comes from the ballot box rather than the gun.
"This is a major, major problem," said a military commander in Tripoli, who requested anonymity to discuss a sensitive issue.
Many of the weapons are heading to the Nafusa Mountains, home to Libya's ethnic Berber minority, according to officials, commanders and well-connected businessmen. Others are going to Misurata, the coastal city that played a major role in resisting Gaddafi's army during the revolution.
"These groups do not recognize any authority or any control," complained the commander. "These are areas which suffered a lot during the last few months of the regime, and now they think that whatever they do is justified."
Some of the most intense rivalries have emerged between liberals and Islamists, and between brigades based in Tripoli and those from the western mountains, particularly the town of Zintan.
Mountain brigades have refused to leave Tripoli and are resisting moves to bring them under civilian control.
"We want to go under the umbrella of the national army, but it is too early to execute this order," said deputy commander Ali Cuba from Zintan, whose forces are based at Tripoli's main airport. "We are still searching for weapons in this area, around 12,000 pieces, and we want to do this before joining the national army."
Political observers say the Zintan fighters may be amassing weapons to protect the Berbers' rights and because they fear Tripoli's domination after suffering discrimination under Gaddafi's rule.
In Misurata, commanders say they are protecting the freedoms they fought for during the uprising against Gaddafi.
"We will never give up our weapons until the country is being run by those who deserve to run it," Misurata commander Salem Jhey told the country's interim leader, Mustafa Abdel Jali, at a public meeting in the city last week, to cheers from the audience.
"We are in support of the legitimacy of the Transitional National Council," he stressed, adding: "We are not after any political, economic or financial benefits."
Mohamed Benrasali, a senior official in Misurata's city council and a member of the team trying to stabilize Libya after four decades of Gaddafi rule, said his city would not surrender its arms "until we have an elected parliament, and an elected government and an elected president." That could take up to two years.
At the weapons depot outside Tripoli, one fighter said the arms were headed for forces trying to storm Gaddafi's last bastions in Sirte and Bani Walid, while another claimed that the land mines were being taken into the Sahara Desert to be destroyed under international supervision.
None of this means that Libya is about to become another Somalia. The popular desire for a peaceful, democratic future runs so deep that any militia using its weapons to fight another group would be ostracized, officials and ordinary Libyans say.
But already there is a sense in Tripoli that brigades and regions are sizing each other up based on how many fighters and weapons they possess.
The U.S. government has two weapons experts in Libya to try to stem the potential proliferation of rocket launchers, mines and small arms, and more are being sent to help train local units, the Associated Press reported Friday.
But what frustrates Human Rights Watch is that the group spent months warning the State Department, NATO and Libyan rebel authorities of the need to secure Tripoli's stores of sophisticated weapons as soon as the capital fell, but nothing was done.
"They all really missed the boat," Human Rights Watch special adviser Fred Abrahams said. "We're seeing some progress now, but of course so much is already gone."