"Libya no longer exists as a country", Russian expert in the North African country Yevgeny Satanoski said a few days ago to RT. Indeed, since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, there has been no central authority able to exercise one of the essential duties that any state is supposed to carry out: control its own territory. A clear proof of this is the current blockade of Cyrenaican ports by Ibrahim al-Jathran led militia. A rebel commander during the revolt against Gaddafi, Al-Jathran has proclaimed himself as a Cyrenaica autonomist leader and, now for months, has been blocking exports of Libyan oil from the ports of his region. He still refuses to reopen them.

Al-Jathran is just one more among a myriad of political and military actors who are now claiming the establishment of a decentralized Libya -or it might be better said that they are already managing it their way. One model that inspires some of them is the 1951 Constitution, adopted at the time of independence, which created a federal monarchy in which Libya's three federal provinces (Tripolitania, Cyrenaica and Fezzan) shared power with the central government. Distribution of oil revenues is currently a central element of the country's political struggle: federalists reject total control of those revenues by central government, and ask instead that it be shared with the three provinces. Federalist demands are felt most strongly in Cyrenaica, where most oil reserves are found.

The provincial divide is however only one among many others that run through Libya. Libyan society remains sharply divided into tribes, some 20 to 30 among them exert significant influence on the country's sociopolitical life. This situation did not even change during the Gaddafi era, who, indeed, used his own tribe (the Gaddadfa) as one of his regime's pillars. Ethnic and linguistic differences also conform another divide: besides the dominant group -the Arabs-, several minorities exist, including the Amazigh, the Tuareg and the Tubu, who are also organizing themselves in demand for further rights.

Retreat of the state

"The Arabs do not want a federal state", says Libya-based French journalist Maryline Dumas via e-mail. After having recently visited Fezzan -Libya's southern region-, Dumas says that Tuareg and Tubu approach to federalism "is more complicated", because is has to do with their preferences on the regional model, but also with something more elemental: some of them do not even hold Libyan citizenship. "They want to feel that they are part of this country", says Dumas. The Fezzan region is also facing other problems, according to Dumas: "Islamists, brigades, blocked oil, national reconciliation...". And this cannot be solved by the Libyan state, essentially because it is "completely absent" from the region, where "the police is not working, there is no army, and the courts are just working for the civil registers".

The Fezzani panorama is more or less similar in other regions of Libya. Libya's third largest city Misrata is governed by a local council that was elected in a local election last year. Various armed militias are operating there. The model is replicated all around the country, where "local notables, tribal groups, Islamists and militias are all vying to keep the centre from extending its authority to their fiefdoms", British expert on Libya Jason Pack summarizes in this speech.

The Amazigh too are trying to organize themselves politically. Highly concentrated in the Nafusa Mountains, the High Council of the Amazigh of Libya has become their most vocal organization. One of their main demands is the recognition of their language, which is spoken by approximately 5% of the Libyan population. After months of pressure from the High Council, the Ministry of Education announced last month that it would introduce compulsory teaching of Tamazight in all regions where the language is spoken. But it will not be recognized as one of Libya's official languages. And, in the current state of affairs, it remains to be seen whether the ministry will be able to enforce the measure in schools.

"The Amazigh are the group that has historically been the most marginalized in Libya", explains to Nationalia Maria-Àngels Roque, a Barcelona-based IEMed expert in Amazigh and North African studes. According to Roque, however, "they do not have enough strength to ask for an autonomy" that could be constitutionally recognized. Therefore, "they are trying to participate in a plural Libyan state". This will only be possible, of course, if that kind of state eventually sees the light of day, what is far from being sure. " If the Amazigh had oil, they could excert more pressure", but reality is that natural resources in Libya are mainly concentrated in Cyrenaica, not in the Nafusa Mountains.

Pressure, then, has to be done in other ways. One is boycotting nascent institutions until more representation for the Amazigh is granted, another one blocking oil exports from the Mellitah plant -located not far from the Amazigh region- for a few days. "If you do not become visible, no one thinks of you", says Roque, who believes that a good opportunity for the Amazighs would be that Arab tribes had a broad, comprehensive vision of Libya's future, and accepted to establish a new Libya meant for everyone. "But that will be hard to achieve", she says, "because attitudes and systems are not changed in just four days".

What kind of future for Libya?

Lausanne's Institute for Political and International Studies political scientist Moncef Jaziri explained at the beginning of this year in Barcelona that Libya seemed to be progressing towards the establishment of an  "Islamic state". Jaziri conceded that three other options could be envisaged, although with few possibilities to be implemented: one, a "republican state" built around a strong president; two, a "federal tribal state" where provinces and tribes enjoyed many privileges; an three, a continued situation of anarchy for at least the next ten years.

Satanovski, whom we quoted earlier, says the reunification of the country under a single authority could come from the western tribes -those of Tripolitania-, but he acknowledges that currently "there are no leaders" who can take on the task. Maryline Dumas warns, however, that if this process "does not take into consideration" the Tuareg and the Tubu, those two peoples could consider supporting federalist demands.

In any case, Jason Pack believes that "partition" of Libya is not plausible, because no one has a solid program geared in that direction on the ground. Therefore, if no political or militar actor is strong enough to impose its authority across the country, and no region or group really wants to secede from Libya, then the state of anarchy that Jaziri predicted could become a permanent reality in the North African country.

Maria-Àngels Roque also thinks that the break up of Libya into two or more new independent countries is not the most plausible scenario: "Those who have natural resources would love to keep them for themselves. However, it is not so easy to dismantle a large and sparsely populated country like Libya, given that the resulting new states would continue to have very big but weakly populated areas. But on the other hand, centralizing the country is also a formidable challenge: "Libya is an enormous country, and no one who has gone there has managed to administratively unify it".

David Forniès