Libya’s media caught in devastating power battle

By Morten Toustrup, PhD fellow at IMS

Violent clashes between Libya’s numerous militia groups, and political and military factions have left a trail of devastation and over 1300 bodies behind in the past three months. The media is caught between the rivalling groups who seek to control the flow of information as they tussle for power.

In May 2014, the retired General Khalifa Haftar, who remains in principle command of the self-proclaimed Libyan National Army, initiated Operation Dignity (Operation Karama), a military offensive against Benghazi-based Islamist militia groups. The operation effectively established a new military front line in the eastern part of the country.

At dawn on 13 July, a second major front line was formed near Tripoli’s main international airport when an alliance of militias including the Libya Revolutionaries Operations Room and Libya Shield, formed the Libya Dawn group (Fajir Libya). Libya Dawn was set up to rid Tripoli of militia groups linked to the city of Zintan and its militias, al-Sawaiq & al-Qaqa. The airport is a strategic position that had been held since the revolution by the Zintan Brigades, a group loosely allied with the Libyan National Army. After a 40-day-long battle, which left most of the airport in ruins, control of the area fell into the hands of the Libya Dawn coalition.

Those supporting the Libya Dawn coalition suffered a significant defeat in the June 25 elections. Libya Dawn’s military offensive is seen as a response to that electoral defeat as well as to Operation Dignity’s continued military offensive in the east of the country.

Two parliamentary bodies claim legitimacy

Due to heightened security fears in Tripoli and Benghazi, the House of Representatives, the parliamentary body elected in the June elections, has convened in the eastern town of Tobruk. Meanwhile, following the takeover of Tripoli by the Libya Dawn coalition, the previous parliament has reconvened and chosen Omar al-Hasi as its leader and prime minister. Consequently, Libya once again has two competing leaders and assemblies each claiming legitimacy and each backed by armed factions.

On the one side the Libya Dawn coalition claims that their Omar al-Hasi-led government has a kind of ‘revolutionary legitimacy’ which they believe supersedes the democratic mandate—a mandate claimed by the Operation Dignity-supported House of Representatives. Ultimately, each side is trying to win the support of the majority of Libya’s roughly 1700 militia groups.

The militias in Libya are linked and differentiated along and across regional, political, and religious lines creating an ever-changing patchwork of alliances. Conflicting sympathies can be found in the same city, in single tribes, even within the same family. Therefore, depicting the conflict by only distinguishing between Islamists on one side and conservative Muslim nationalists on the other would be a crude oversimplification. However, the current clashes do appear to be polarising the country into two oppositional camps and deepening its divides.

Regional involvement

According to four unnamed senior American officials, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt are getting involved in Libya directly supporting the Operation Dignity coalition by carrying out secret airstrikes on Libya Dawn’s positions. Both countries have denied these claims. Supporting the Islamist faction are Qatar & Turkey who provide funding and weapons, say the American officials.

The supposed direct involvement of Egypt and the United Arab Emirates has given the Libya Dawn coalition and its supporters the opportunity to denounce the legitimacy of the opposing side by arguing that they are compromising the sovereignty of the state of Libya by allowing the involvement of foreign military forces.

The UN recognises the House of Representatives as Libya’s elected parliament, supports its calls for ceasefire and condemns the use of violence against civilians. The UN Support Mission in Libya released a report on 4 September documenting a number of human rights violations throughout Libya following the fighting between the rivaling militias. These violations include ongoing attacks on media and killings and kidnappings of journalists. The UN Support Mission has invited the warring parties to engage in a dialogue on 29 September to reach a peaceful solution to the deepening crisis.

Increased pressure on the media

If the UN-initiated peace talks fail, Libya risks spiraling further out of control and into a state of complete anarchy. There are several circumstances that make the struggle for stability an uphill battle: opportunistic militias and a massive amount of weapons; a profoundly fragile state; oil riches; criminal groups exploiting the chaotic conditions, and regional developments and foreign interests. In addition, Libya reportedly has a significant and ever-growing trafficking industry that includes import and export of contraband, drugs, weapons and people. In 2014, human trafficking has resulted in the deaths of nearly 2000 migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean from Libya.

In the current polarised and volatile environment, the media are increasingly being put to use as propaganda instruments of the warring parties, leaving journalists and other media professionals caught in the middle of a violent struggle for power. As that struggle continues, attacks on the media and on media workers are silencing the few independent, critical voices left in the country. Recently a number of targeted attacks struck Benghazi killing a journalist and two young human rights activists who had spoken out against militias in the eastern city.

According to the Paris-based press freedom group Reporters Without Borders, Al-Wataniya, one of Libya’s state-owned TV-channels, has been under the control of a militia group loyal to the Libya Dawn coalition since 4 August. The TV-channel has since then become a propaganda mouthpiece of the Dawn-coalition. Similarly so, Al-Razmia, another state-owned TV-channel, has been devoting all of its coverage to the Libya Dawn campaign. Al-Razmia was originally the mouthpiece of the Libyan parliament but the board of directors of the channel sees the newly elected House of Representatives as illegitimate and also refused to cover its inauguration. As a consequence, Libya’s Information Ministry requested the Egypt’s state-controlled Nilesat, a major regional satellite communications network, to terminate the signal of the two state-owned channels. Following the request, the channels were taken off the air immediately.

In a country where most state institutions have been compromised or effectively shut down, media in Libya is one of the few institutions, which could potentially expose the perpetrators of human rights violations and other criminal acts. But in the current volatile environment those who attempt to conduct any form of critical journalism are under great threat. The pressure on the media from all sides to influence and control public opinion is also greatly compromising their editorial independence and professional standards as the cases of Al-Razmia and Al-Wataniya show.

The still nascent Libyan media sector never really got a chance to develop in a free and non-violent environment. It now needs all the support it can get to help establish political accountability through independent, professional journalism that scrutinises all military and political factions without inciting further violence.