Ill-conceived army training programme threatens Libya

The US should remember how many of its troops were killed at the hands of the Afghan police and army trainees.

One of the solutions proposed to Libya’s current and precarious state of lawlessness is to train thousands of soldiers and members of the security forces with the purpose of reclaiming the country from the grip of rogue militias.

The EU, the United States, France, Jordan and other countries have started offering this kind of help. In fact, Jordan and Turkey have already received dozens of Libyans to train as policemen, while the US is running training programmes inside the country.

This is an ill-conceived plan. This Libyan government cannot even come up with any workable answers to the questions of who will be trained and for what purpose.

Cornered by its failure to turn the country’s fortunes around, the government is trying to extend its stay in office by coming up with a loose programme that involves integrating former rebels into the police and the army, effectively legitimising illegal gangs in the process.

Many of the trainees are militia members. Some are violent criminals and outlaws who have blood on their hands. If Nato’s experience in Afghanistan has taught us anything, it is this: do not train former gangs and militias as they will never be loyal to the state.

The US, in particular, should remember how many of its troops were killed at the hands of the Afghan police and army trainees.

In theory, the Libyan government is responsible for ensuring that not a single militia or gang member be given the opportunity of training, let alone training abroad.

But the reality is that the right people are not going to come forward for this programme. They have no trust in the state and are too busy doing work on behalf of their communities, the cities they live in and their tribes.

Before any training is offered, Libyan authorities must screen individuals for their suitability – and that process must be rigorous.

The aim must be to identify any active or former gang members and make sure they are excluded from the training and, better still, brought to justice for their past crimes. No one who fought anywhere in the country after November 2011 should be accepted into the training programmes. Such criminals are well known to local and international rights organisations.

An independent body should be set up to handle the screening process. Members of this organisation could be drawn from the judiciary or could be security experts. They could be helped by tribal leaders and local civic organisations.

This might take time to establish, but is better than the current situation, which the government seems to be happy to rush into, even though the plan is full of holes.

To participate in the scheme, former rebel groups should be willing to share information with the government and the screening body, starting by handing over lists of their rank and file.

This is the only adequate way of ensuring that all those who formed or joined any militia group after November 2011 are identified and excluded.

It is estimated that more than 100,000 militiamen have joined groups and gangs since Muammar Qaddafi was deposed and Libya was supposedly “liberated” in October 2011 – and it’s the people who joined groups after that date who have generally been the most notorious offenders.

They represent the strongest threat to the establishment of a professional army or police for that matter. If brought into the fold they will very likely destroy it from within.

Furthermore, some of the militias that claim to work for either the Ministry of Interior or defence are, or have been, actively engaged in criminal activities.

The militia that seized Ali Zeidan, Libya’s prime minister, work for the ministry of interior, while those who led the invasion of Bani Walid last year belong to Libya Shields, a loose coalition of militias which is thought to be behind last Friday’s massacre in Tripoli.

Any training offered without proper screening is likely to further enrich the personal knowledge and expertise of criminals and gang members. The consequence of this would be that these gang members would soon return home and be more advanced in their illegal activities in Libya and beyond.

We should not forget that in the Libya of today, known violent individuals and suspected terrorists have managed to recycle and reinvent themselves as politicians, religious preachers, and, in some cases, have even managed to be elected into the country’s dysfunctional General National Congress. For instance, Abu Annas Alibi, the terror suspect kidnapped by the US, was living in the heart of Tripoli prior to his abduction.

Many more Libyans and foreign Jihadists are now living in eastern and southern parts of the country. The tragedy in Ain Amnas, Algeria earlier this year – in which militia men took control of a gas production facility, taking several hundred hostages and killing dozens of workers – has the whiff of a very strong Libyan connection.

Even the EU’s border security training, which is already under way, is failing.

In recent times, we have witnessed a surge in the number of illegal immigrants leaving Libya.

One of the explanations is that some of those trainees have become part of an international smuggling network, since it is more financially rewarding than the miserable salaries on offer from the government.

Whatever the case, it provides a sorry example of what might happen if the training programme is not adequately regulated.

Mustafa Fetouri is a Libyan analyst at IHS Global Insight, an author and a freelance journalist