Militia leader threatens to topple Libyan interim government

Published Friday, November 18, 2011

A commander of former anti-Gaddafi rebels and leader of the Tripoli Revolutionary Council warned that his men could overthrow the future government if it fails to meet their demand for representation.
The threat was made by Abdallah Naker, an engineer from the town of Zintan, who said that his men would demonstrate peacefully “at first” if the new cabinet did not appoint ministers representing the young rebels who ousted Gaddafi.

“We are still here on the ground and the final decision will be ours,” said Naker, adding that he has thousands of armed men at his disposal ready for night-time security patrols in Tripoli.

"If we find we have the same dictatorship, we will respond in the same way," he said, "It will not be an armed movement at first, but it might develop into that. There's a strong possibility that it will."
The credibility of the threat is hard to assess in a country where the balance of forces is unstable and obscure after eight months of civil war.

Naker's threat highlighted the tensions as Abdurrahim El-Keib, the US-trained engineering professor nominated as interim prime minister by the National Transitional Council (NTC), tries to agree to a cabinet line-up by a Tuesday deadline.

Keib faces challenges as he attempts to satisfy the interests of tens of thousands of armed men and militias, which is not helped by Libya's lack of a central army and police force.

Many diplomats expressed hope that a competent cabinet will be formed by next week's deadline by Keib. Stable government will require bringing power into the hands of new security forces and disarming militias, Keib said.

Keib described Tuesday's deadline -- set by the NTC after it declared Libya “liberated” -- as a "soft constraint" and says his priority is to bring in qualified technocrats to run the oil-rich state and organize elections by June to a constitutional assembly.

Among the trickiest tasks is satisfying demands from cities like Misrata, Benghazi, and Zintan, which feel a keen sense of entitlement deriving from their roles in the war on Gaddafi.
Muammar Gaddafi, who ruled Libya for 42 years, was killed by forces loyal to the NTC on October 20, after he was found taking shelter in a drain outside Sirte after his convoy was hit by a NATO airstrike.
Gaddafi was alive when captured, but was shot dead on the way to Misrata.

(al-Akhbar, Reuters)

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