It is noteworthy that more than one revolution has been staged on the soil of Libya, but this chapter focuses on the 2011 Revolution, also known as “17 February Revolution”. Just like the Egyptian revolution, the “17 February Revolution” was triggered primarily by the uprisings in Tunisia and to a reasonable fault, Egypt. On 15 February 2011, a small group of protesters in Benghazi demanded that justice be made for the victims of a 1996 prison massacre. That same day, government buildings were set on fire by youth in the towns of Bayda and Darna and Zintan. They also called for the regime’s breakdown. Within days, the unrest also spread to the capital Tripoli and other cities in the north-west.
Two factors that fueled the protest were: the regime’s violent response to the protests and the establishment of the NTC. The more protesters were killed by the security forces, the more quickly political, military and tribal leaders joined hands to protect their families and cities. The demands of the protesters became less important once regime forces had killed some of them. Civilians armed themselves and challenged the government. The reason for this development lay in the strength of local, family and tribal loyalties, as well as the weakness of state institutions.
As a result, civil war began within two weeks of the protests erupting. With the NTC, an elitist leadership comprising a coalition of regime defectors and dissidents placed itself at the head of an initially unorganized uprising. The main objective was to bring down the Gaddafi government. The former included close Gaddafi aides and senior military officers, former Gaddafi confidants who had seen exile or imprisonment, and technocrats. They were joined by former members of the exiled opposition from less prominent backgrounds (such as Oil and Finance Minister Ali Tarhouni), as well as the educated elite – university professors and lawyers – who had remained in Libya throughout Gaddafi’s rule, such as NTC vice-chairman Abdel Hafiz Ghoga. As the conflict evolved, local military councils emerged to coordinate this plethora of militias, with varying degrees of success. The NTC completely failed to control these developments. In the east, the brigades refused to submit to the command structures of the defected army units. Some brigades were loosely tied to the NTC’s Defence and Interior Ministries, while others operated entirely independently. The NTC’s loss of control over the military forces leading the revolution was first highlighted by the murder of the defected army units’ Chief of Staff, General Abdel Fattah Younes, in July 2011. Although the details remain murky, Younes was apparently assassinated by members of a revolutionary brigade. The struggle of individual cities and tribes against the regime gave rise to the emergence of local power centres, tensions between the revolutionary base and the political leadership, as well as rivalries between armed groups from different tribes and cities.
After the fall of Tripoli in late August 2011, the defeat of the regime’s remnants in Sirte and Bani Walid, and the proclamation of Libya’s liberation on 23 October, the NTC entered a crisis of legitimacy. Short of funds, reluctant to press for the release of frozen Libyan assets in the absence of adequate control structures, and having taken over a collapsed state apparatus, the NTC failed to quickly get the administration and economy working again.
