TRIPOLI, Libya — Many of the local militia leaders who helped topple
Col. Muammar
el-Qaddafi<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/q/muammar_el_qaddafi/index.html?inline=nyt-per>are
abandoning a pledge to give up their weapons and now say they intend
to
preserve their autonomy and influence political decisions as “guardians of
the revolution.”
The issue of the militias is one of the most urgent facing Libya’s new provisional government, the Transitional National Council. Scores of freewheeling brigades of armed volunteers sprang up around the country and often reported to local military councils, which became de facto local governments in cities like Misurata and Zintan, as well as the capital, Tripoli.
The provisional government’s departing prime minister, Mahmoud Jibril<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/j/mahmoud_jibril/index.html?inline=nyt-per>, suggested in a news conference Sunday night that instead of expecting the local militias to disband, the Transitional National Council should try to incorporate them by expanding to include their representatives.
“Nobody wants to give up arms now, and many tribes and cities are accumulating arms ‘just in case,’ ” said Mahmoud Shammam, a spokesman for the council’s executive board.
Noting reports of sporadic clashes between militias as well as vigilante revenge killings, many civilian leaders, along with some fighters, say the militias’ shift from merely dragging their feet about surrendering weapons to actively asserting a continuing political role poses a stark challenge to the council’s fragile authority.
“This could lead to a mess, to conflict between the councils,” said Ramadan Zarmoh, 63, a leader of the Misurata military council, who argued that the city’s militia should dissolve itself almost immediately after a new defense ministry is formed. “If we want to have democracy, we can’t have this.”
His view, however, appears to be in the minority. Many members of military councils insist that they need to stay armed until a new constitution is ratified because they do not trust the weak provisional government to steer Libya to democracy on its own.
“We are the ones who are holding the power there — the people with the force on the ground — and we are not going to give that up until we have a legitimate government that will emerge from free and fair elections,” said Anwar Fekini, a French-Libyan lawyer who is a leader of the armed groups in the western mountains and is also close to top leaders of the transitional council.
“We will make sure we are going to bring the country to a civil constitution and democratic system,” he added, “and we will use all available means — first of all our might on the ground.”
Militia leaders have already demonstrated their resolve to step into the political process. Before the provisional government named a new prime minister Monday night, local leaders in Misurata — speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid an open fight with the national council — threatened that if it failed to agree on a candidate they deemed satisfactory, local military councils from cities in western Libya might intercede to decide the question.
The choice for prime minister, Abdel Rahim el-Keeb, a Tripoli engineer and businessman, pleased the Western cities and resolved the matter peacefully. But officials of the national council say the threat of intervention itself undermines the transition to civilian democracy, in which disputes are settled with ballots or gavels, not with weapons.
Mr. Shammam said that armed intervention “would be a disaster” and that adopting a new constitution should happen “under the umbrella of the law — police stations, judges — rather than military councils and the force of arms.”
He and others in the national council say they hope that as their next transitional government takes over and begins to build a national army, a goal that has so far remained elusive, local military councils will begin to stand down. Referring to the promised election of a governing body this year, he added, “If the military councils start to extend and expand themselves, they will be a replacement for a national assembly.”
Some point to neighboring Egypt, where the council of military officers that took power at the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak has delayed a transition to civilian control. Others say there is a danger Libya could resemble the chaos in Yemen or Syria because there are several autonomous militias poised to take on a political role — in Tripoli, in the western mountain towns like Zintan and its neighbors, in Misurata, and in the eastern city of Benghazi.
In the east and in Tripoli, some of the largest, best-equipped brigades are associated with Islamist groups now forming political parties. “They will keep their arms as long as they are not part of the power,” Mr. Shammam, who is a liberal, predicted.
There have already been clashes between armed groups. Two weeks ago, fighters from Zintan and Misurata fought briefly at the Tripoli international airport, leaving about three dead, said Abed Rzag al-Bakesh, 40, a military leader from Zintan. He said provocations by a Qaddafi loyalist in disguise were to blame.
Last week, a shootout erupted between two groups in the capital’s central Martyrs Square, which the local military council has now banned other fighters from entering.
After the conquest last month of Colonel Qaddafi’s last holdout, in Surt, fighters from Misurata and Benghazi clashed briefly over looting, Mr. Zarmoh, the Misurata commander, said, though he said none were injured.
And early Monday morning, a group of Zintan fighters attacked a Tripoli hospital, searching, they said, for a Qaddafi loyalist seeking treatment inside, according to reports on Tripoli radio.
“The N.T.C. appears to be helpless,” Abdurrahman K. Shater, a respected columnist in one of the dozens of new newspapers, The Nation, said of the transitional council, “like a deceived husband who does not know what’s going on behind his back, or who knows but goes along.”
The Transitional National Council has pledged in a “constitutional declaration” that within eight months after the selection of a new government, it will hold elections for a national assembly, which will oversee the writing of a constitution. (Mr. Jibril, in his news conference, appeared to suggest casting the “declaration” aside without much fuss, raising questions about how binding it is.)
With no history of electoral democracy, Libya’s provisional authorities must draw electoral districts and devise a voting system — decisions with inevitable winners and losers, politically and geographically.
During the uprising, officials of the Transitional National Council vowed to give equal voice to all Libyans, regardless of their location or political position.
But leaders in Misurata, a commercial center that withstood a long siege to emerge as the arsenal of Libyan revolt, say they are advocating a four-point set of criteria for representation that would increase their say, at the expense of smaller towns or those who stayed loyal to Colonel Qaddafi: population, size, economic output and “priority in liberation.”
Some in the eastern areas around Benghazi, neglected under Colonel Qaddafi in favor of the West, are now arguing for Libya to return to a loose federal structure that could protect them from domination by Tripoli and Misurata.
But Azza Kamel Maghur, a human rights lawyer who recently held a conference in Misurata to talk about the transition process, said she was particularly surprised by the open determination to introduce weapons to the political process. “They stood up and said, ‘We are not going to give up our arms until the constitution is drafted,’ ” she said. “You cannot have a civil democratic society with weapons — how can you make elections?”
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