The limited SSD/DDR efforts of the National Transitional Council (NTC) in the early days of post-revolutionary Libya set the scene for much of the fragmentation of the security landscape and the entrenchment of armed group interests that followed. The NTC attempted to initiate SSD/DDR as soon as Gaddafi was removed from power. But the politicians who formed the NTC were opposition figures who had returned to Libya during the uprising, senior officials who had defected from Gaddafi’s regime, or business and tribal leaders. Many had not participated in the actual armed struggle, did not have political credentials, and close to none had actual governing/administrative experience. In a context of weak institutions, these factors made durable implementation of SSD/DDR initiatives difficult.[16]

As a result, there were no major SSD/DDR initiatives in Libya between 2011 and 2018 to speak of – or to research. Arguably, in fact, the failure of the NTC’s incipient SSD/DDR efforts contributed to the intensification and prolongation of the Libyan conflict. Libya did however witness a number of security initiatives over the past eight years that cannot be considered in whole – or even in part – as SSD/DDR, yet nevertheless had significant consequences for the prospects of future SSD/DDR in terms of having created new interests, parameters or critical constraints. This section outlines 12 such security initiatives to assess whether the four key implications for future SSD distilled from the general course of the Libyan civil war are relevant as a gauge for future SSD efforts.

The Warriors Affairs Commission (2012)

A key goal of SSD/DDR efforts in Libya was to integrate the revolutionaries who fought against Gaddafi into the state apparatus, and to demobilise/disarm those unwilling to incorporate. The first step the NTC took towards this goal was to register all those claiming to have fought against Gaddafi and put them on the state’s payroll. In January 2012, the NTC established the Warriors Affairs Commission (WAC) – later renamed the Libyan Programme for Reintegration and Development. This initiative was tasked with overseeing a DDR process of revolutionaries who participated in the Libyan uprising.

The Commission’s most lasting accomplishment was the registration of 250,000 men claiming to have been revolutionary combatants. However, in addition to revolutionaries, the registration process attracted unemployed youth and members of radical organisations, creating an exaggerated and unrealistic list ten times the size of the ‘true’ number of fighters who actually fought in the uprising.[17] Hundreds of thousands were put on the state payroll based on the WAC’s database, but the WAC was only able to provide vocational training for a small number of those registered due to its limited budget. Moreover, the commission was unable to convince militiamen to surrender their arms and reintegrate into society as it did not have the required resources or capacity to incentivise them. Finally, Libyan nationalists and secular citizens considered the WAC a Muslim Brotherhood initiative. The lack of trust this perception generated essentially blocked any next steps the WAC could have undertaken. In the end, the WAC became inactive when its initial budget ran out.[18]

Several factors played a role in the failure of this initiative. First, the US was reluctant to commit to sustained support for nation building due to its negative experience with Iraq in the mid-2000s. It was also determined to follow the lead of Libya's interim government as far as SSD and DDR were concerned. In reality, even in early 2011, the government in Tripoli was too divided to play this role. With the US putting its faith in the interim government and European countries not engaging, sustained support for the initiative remained absent. The other, and more important, factor influencing the failure of the WAC initiative was the belief that money could incentivise armed actors into behaving in a more disciplined and civilian-oriented manner. The Tripoli government’s decision in late 2011 to grant salaries and bonuses to members of armed groups did much to enhance their status and resources, but little to increase public security. It also set a dangerous precedent.

The Supreme Security Committee (2011–14) and the Libya Shield Force (2012–14)

The first two ‘SSD-like’ attempts by the NTC were the creation of the Supreme Security Committee (SSC) and the Libya Shield Force (LSF). Both initiatives had undesirable consequences and adverse effects on Libya’s security sector. The SSC was established in October 2011 as an umbrella body within the Ministry of the Interior, which brought together a diverse range of armed factions to fulfil policing duties. In December 2011, the NTC gave the SSC the authority to conduct investigations and arrests. By mid-2014, the SSC had been partially dismantled, on paper at least, when 80,000 of its members were transferred to the police. In reality, the armed factions that had been incorporated into the SSC were able to maintain their autonomous status while benefiting from being put on the state payroll. It should be noted that the SSC was much more present in Tripoli than other parts of the country. For example, it was practically non-existent in Benghazi and eastern Libya.[19]

Sometimes described as the NTC’s ‘cardinal sin’, the LSF was established in March 2012 as an organisation within the Ministry of Defence to act as a substitute for Libya’s army, which had disintegrated during the uprising. Powerful revolutionary armed groups were enlisted and placed on the government’s payroll, mirroring the SCC process, and put under the authority of the Chief of Staff. Collectively, they formed the LSF, with 12 divisions located throughout Libya’s regions.[20] Several issues plagued the effectiveness and performance of these initiatives:

In the background, the lack of trust between senior officials and revolutionaries, as well as the division of the Libyan population into winners and losers, continued to have a major influence on the outcome of NTC-initiated SSD programmes. Revolutionaries did not trust senior officials who had defected from Gaddafi’s regime and the latter viewed the former as undisciplined radicals. Furthermore, communities that remained loyal to Gaddafi during the uprisings were not invited to the negotiating table. This arrangement meant that every government plan excluded large portions of Libyan society.

Colonel Salem Joha’s Plan (2012)

Colonel Salem Joha, a former artillery officer who led the defence of Misrata during the 2011 siege by Gaddafi forces, put forward a plan to transform the Libya Shield Force into a more regular and formal unit within the military by making it a reserve military force. According to Joha’s plan, recruits would join the LSF as individuals rather than as members of an armed group; they would train for one month a year and serve close to home. In return, they would receive a monthly salary and medical benefits for themselves and their families. Collecting and buying back weapons was another integral part of the proposal.[23]

Joha’s plan did not get off the ground because he was unable to gain the trust of armed groups and revolutionary leaders in Misrata, or in other parts of Libya for that matter. The fact that Joha is from Misrata made the realisation of his plan even more difficult since, back then, Misrata was perceived as the city with the strongest militias and there were fears that it would dominate the LSF. The initiative also failed because it intended to dismantle armed factions and collect their weaponry before a broad-based political agreement had been reached. The inclusive nature of Joha’s approach was another factor in its failure, since many local political actors across Libya were unwilling to endorse the necessary compromises such an approach demanded.[24]

In addition to Joha’s moderate approach being sabotaged or ignored by numerous Islamist and hardline revolutionary armed groups, 2012 was also a year of extreme fiscal profligacy. From US$6.6 billion in 2010, the Libyan government's wage bill reached $16 billion in 2012. More generally, the government spent a total of US$51 billion, a record for Libya.[25] A large part of this expenditure went to armed groups, either via salaries or through corruption and embezzlement. This extraordinary spending boom, combined with the aforementioned lack of trust, doomed Joha’s SSR initiative.

The Libyan National Guard (2012–13)

In late 2012, UNSMIL suggested the formation of a ‘national guard’-like structure to act as security stabiliser in the country while the official army was being trained and built. The Libyan Territorial Army, as the Guard was to be called, would consist of three brigades to perform police and security duties. Supporters of this idea drew many parallels between the proposed plan and the way the US dealt with its own post-Civil War militias, Denmark's Home Guard, and Britain's Territorial Army. The idea was endorsed by the international community, the US, the UK, and the EU, and received support from some Libyan officials.[26]

Nonetheless, the plan for creating the Libyan National Guard failed because Gaddafi loyalist tribes, the regular officers’ corps and many revolutionary groups believed that the initiative was a Misratan and Islamist attempt to increase their control over the country. The National Force Alliance considered the initiative an effort to establish an official Islamist army rather than a National Guard. More importantly, however, was the fact that the nature of the Guard’s composition, mission, mandate, purpose, oversight, and future relation to the military remained unclear throughout the process. This fed suspicion and prevented effective progress. The proposal for creating a National Guard was moved off the table in 2013. When Prime Minister Ali Zedan attempted to set up his own version of the project, it suffered the same fate and caused as much controversy as the original.[27]

The US Training Mission (2012–13)

In the summer of 2012, the US sponsored a security initiative to train and equip several hundred Libya counterterrorism and special forces in Camp 27. The camp, named after its 27 km distance from Tripoli on the coastal road to Tunisia, was an existing Libyan military base rehabilitated by US Green Berets. It was to be used as a training facility to refine the abilities of 800 Libyan counter-terrorism fighters. However, the fact that there was no clear Libyan chain of command of its military forces, the fragmented and volatile security situation and shortcomings in the selection process blocked most progress. For example, most recruits originated from western brigades, mainly in the city of Zintan. Furthermore, trainees lacked military experience and their allegiances (country, tribe, city) were not clear either. Another obstacle was the camp’s location in a disputed area between two tribes, which US forces were unaware of and which their Libyan partner, General Abd al-Salam al-Hasi, did not inform them about.[28]

The project was terminated when anti-Zintan armed groups stormed the compound in June 2013 and seized equipment (such as M-4 rifles, pistols, military vehicles, ammunition, and night vision goggles). Even the modest goal of training 100 Libyan Special Operation Forces was not achieved. The timing of this US-sponsored initiative is also relevant as it shows that the US did not leave Libya after the murder of its ambassador, Chris Steven. Instead, its trainers went home in 2013, with a full evacuation only taking place in 2014 as a result of the Dawn-Dignity conflict.[29]

The failure of this initiative illustrates well what the consequences can be if foreign states take sides, willfully or inadvertently, with particular parties in the Libyan conflict via SSD efforts. The SSD intervention risks becoming part of the conflict and viewed as a threat by other factions. This makes it susceptible to resistance and failure, and can worsen the original conflict conditions.

The General Purpose Force (2013–14)

In the summer of 2013, preparations were underway to create a Libyan General Purpose Force with international assistance.[30] At the request of Prime Minister Ali Zeidan, the plan was endorsed during a G8 summit in Ireland. G8 nations, including the US, UK, Italy and Turkey, agreed to train a military force of 20,000 individuals for a period of eight years. The general objective of the GPF was to assist the Libyan government in extending its authority, protecting political figures and public institutions, and putting pressure on militias to disarm. The project was quickly embroiled by operational complications, such as:

In the summer of 2014, training nevertheless started in Turkey, Italy and Britain. US (AFRICOM) planning progressed more slowly, although a training facility in Bulgaria had already been chosen. It pulled out of the initiative entirely in May 2014. The UK undertook to train 300 Libyan personnel in Cambridgeshire but, within months, one-third had returned home and many others had sought asylum. Eventually, the UK returned the whole group to Libya, in part because of sexual assaults on local people by a small number of trainees. In Turkey, half of the 800 participants in a police-training programme dropped out because the training was ‘too hard’. The initiative was later cancelled in the wake of the 2013 clash between the AKP and elements of the Turkish police dominated by the Gülenists. Only Italy managed to successfully train 250 officers for 24 weeks, although contact was not maintained after their return to Libya. The failure of this initiative highlights the risks when there is a lack of coordination between foreign states volunteering to support SSD work in Libya.

Operation Dignity / Libyan National Army vs. Libya Dawn (2014–)

In addition to the formation of two separate claims on Libyan state authority, the conflict between the Dawn and Dignity coalitions profoundly affected all military formations that existed and ended any existing SSD/DDR initiatives. On the back of Operation Dignity, General Haftar revived the Libyan National Army (LNA) by appealing to officers who had been negatively affected by the Political Isolation Law. A reconstituted LNA, complemented by Operation Dignity coalition forces, established control over Cyrenaica in the course of a few years and recently significantly increased its influence in the Fezzan. The LNA is a self-styled army composed of militias and tribal forces that support Haftar, which was later endorsed by the Interim Government of the East and its elected House of Representatives (HoR). In eastern Libya, the LNA was able to increase the local population’s sense of safety, although this came at an appreciable human cost.

While the LNA effectively controls Cyrenaica, it lacks international recognition. Neither is it officially recognised by the UN-backed Government of National Accord. The LNA leadership compensates for this lack of international legitimacy through bilateral cooperation with Western powers such as France and regional powers such as Egypt and the UAE. Although LNA influence in Tripolitania remains limited, it maintains good connections with towns like Zintan, Sabratha, and Wershefana. The tactics used by the Dignity coalition are premised on establishing shallow co-optation of local actors rather than establishing more permanent territorial control. A key reason is that Marshall Haftar’s military and financial resources are limited.

On the other side of the coin, the armed factions that joined the Libya Dawn coalition were not able to retain their coherence once Haftar and his allies no longer posed a direct threat to the Tripoli area. The little progress made was largely enabled by the moderate Misrata faction in early 2015: Fathi Bashagha and other local businessmen purged hardliners from the city, turned the powerful Mahjub Brigade in favour of the GNA, and worked with the Central Bank to reduce funds allocated to Misrata’s hardliners.

At the end of the day, none of Dawn’s armed factions was strong enough to defeat the others and control the capital. The rest of the country – especially the Fezzan – remained in the hands of local and transnational armed groups that act independently or maintain a loose relationship with either the Dawn or the Dignity coalition.[31] The governance shortage that resulted from this security fragmentation enabled rebels, mercenaries, terrorists and criminals from other countries to roam unhindered around large parts of Libya. Unsurprisingly, this increased the level of insecurity faced by significant parts of Libya’s civilian population.

The Presidential Guard (2016–18)

When Presidential Council (PC) members and GNA officials arrived in Tripoli in March 2016 and realised that their government did not have its own force to protect it against the various local militias in the Tripolitania area, they revived the idea of creating a Libyan National Guard under the name of the Presidential Guard (PG). Western powers and UNSMIL endorsed the plan and the first PG formation was put together in May 2016.[32] The PG was responsible for the protection of government personnel and buildings, VIP guests, and strategic locations such as ports, power plants, sources of water and energy supplies, and air and land borders. It is important to highlight that, at the time, the PG was a work in progress with little authority or credibility in Tripoli, let alone in Libya as a whole. Ultimately, the PG could not withstand the powerful armed factions present in Tripoli because it was militarily inferior to those groups.[33] This was made clear when forces affiliated with Misratan Brigade 301 and the Tripoli Revolutionaries Brigade loyal to Haitham al-Tajuri easily evicted the PG from their positions at the Prime Minister’s office and Tripoli International Airport in May 2018.[34]

The sudden collapse of the GNA’s Presidential Guard in 2018 – despite its having received support from several states, including France and Algeria – suggests that sometimes foreign states pursue SSD efforts in Libya that are largely symbolic. In this particular case, the diplomatic and material support that could have ensured greater PG effectiveness was simply absent.

The Egyptian Initiative (2017–)

The Egyptian National Committee on Libya initially sponsored a series of meetings between Dignity coalition forces and armed factions from western Libya (mostly Misrata) between May and October 2017.[35] These were revived at the end of 2017 but came to a halt again in March 2018. Restarted in September 2018, they were once again terminated on 21 October 2018 when General Haftar and Prime Minister Serraj failed to attend a planned meeting in Cairo to negotiate the final details of the agreement that was meant to result from the Egyptian initiative. The most prominent participants were Colonel Salem Joha from Misrata, LNA spokesperson Ahmed al-Mismari, the commander of the LNA’s western region, Idris Madi, and Aguila Saleh, President of the HoR. A key accomplishment of these start-stop series of meetings was that in October 2017 both parties (Dawn and Dignity) agreed to form joint technical committees to help ease the unification process of the Libyan Army. However, little practical progress has been made since.[36]

The main reason why the Egyptian initiative has so far failed is that Egypt is not seen as a neutral actor by the factions that oppose Haftar in western Libya. Via the aforementioned meetings, Egypt intends to promote an arrangement in which Haftar heads the entire Libyan military structure. Yet, the failure to arrange a meeting between Serraj and Haftar in Cairo, together with Haftar’s plan to advance into Tripoli with his forces – which Egypt disapproves of – appears to have cooled relations between Haftar and his Egyptian allies.[37] Nonetheless, Egypt continues to support Haftar in his efforts to ‘fight terrorism and extremism’, and in his attempts to challenge the authority of militias that are independent of him.[38]

While Egypt’s ‘armed-forces re-unification’ initiative showed promise in late 2017 and early 2018, the initiative rapidly lost meaning because Egypt refused to swap its strong pro-Haftar attitude for a more neutral one.

The Tripoli Protection Force (October 2018–April 2019)

On 18 December 2018, Tripoli's key armed factions announced their unification into one armed force called the Tripoli Protection Force (TPF). Its composite groups are the Tripoli Revolutionaries Brigade, the Abu Salim Deterrence and Rapid Intervention Force, the Nawasi Brigade, and the Bab Tajura Brigade. In its ‘founding’ statement, the TPF stated that it had formed in response to the intense fighting that engulfed parts of the capital in August/September 2018. It added that it supports UNSMIL and its Special Envoy, Ghassan Salame, and endorses the Libyan National Conference. Furthermore, the TPF explicitly stated its rejection of the use of military force to reach political objectives – a clear message to military forces from Tarhuna, the Summoud Brigade led by Salah Badi (UN sanctioned) that attacked the capital, and General Haftar and his LNA. The primary role the TPF claims to fulfill is the protection of Tripoli to allow state institutions to function.[39] In addition, its creation arguably improved the security of the capital’s population, at least for the time being. Although the TPF’s armed factions have stated that they have no political or ideological motives, the formation of the TPF was in part politically motivated:

The TPF’s case illustrates a recurring theme: Libyan armed actors are often sophisticated enough to portray their self-defence or offensive aims as SSD and seduce foreign countries to support the corresponding initiatives they undertake – diplomatically, materially, or both. A potentially successful SSD initiative requires that its foreign sponsors are cognisant of the ability of Libyan factions to disguise their war pursuits and power grabs as SSD endeavours.

A brief synthesis

On balance, very few of the 12 security initiatives analysed above that occurred in Libya between 2011 and 2018 align with the internationally agreed SSD paradigm.[42] They were mostly partisan efforts intended to gain the upper hand in an active conflict, often disguised as SSD/DDR interventions.[43] Only a couple of initiatives feature scattered elements of SSD. By the standard of warfighting interventions, most seem not to have been terribly effective given the prolonged and indecisive nature of the Libyan civil war. By the standard of global SSD, these initiatives have produced unequivocally poor results across the board. Both perspectives generate an interesting set of lessons for future SSD efforts:

Many of the security initiatives discussed suffered from pursuing integration efforts at armed group rather than unit or individual level. They failed to create incentives that could co-opt armed group leaders, established unclear lines of authority, introduced unjustified salary disparities and/or failed to ensure adequate geographical representation in newly-constituted (or integrated) security forces. These all represent fail factors in terms of their operational effectiveness.

Also, most of these initiatives were strongly focused on realising capability improvements without much thought for stimulating the quality of security governance, let alone accountability. Finally, insofar as they were supported by international actors, such support was typically either partisan or limited in nature, reinforcing the fragmentation of Libya’s security landscape rather than reducing it. These elements represent fail factors in terms of their durability and legitimacy.