Libya's New Government for 2012

November 24, 2011
(incomplete)

On November 22, 2011, a new government of Libya, with new ministers who will matter in coming months, was announced by the Interim NTC. Hurriyet Daily News, English edition, is the one source I'll draw on for now.

Libya names new government, ‘Gadhafi hunters’ get key posts
Compiled from AFP and Reuters stories by the Daily News staff.
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=libya-names-new-government-8216gadhafi-hunters8217-get-key-posts-2011-11-23

The National Transitional Council gave the new government its vote of confidence, NTC vice chairman and official spokesman Abdel Hafiz Ghoga said.

“This provisional government aims to achieve the following: first security, stability and restoration of normal life by providing basic social services, the return of children to their schools and the payment of (overdue) salaries,” an NTC statement said.

That's a tacit admission it was their ill-advised takeover effort, in tandem with European imperialists, that had all these things interrupted so thoroughly and devastatingly, for months on end. Only once the new program was accepted-something Libya fiercely resisted-would operation be allowed to resume.

What makes this new form of government acceptable is sure to twinkle through in spots as we look at who it has appointed to keep the faith into 2012, the first full year of its thousand-year rule.

In a symbolic step for Libya, a deeply conservative Muslim society, the cabinet included two women, heading the ministries of health and social affairs. El-Keib said those appointments showed women enjoyed more equality than ever before.

Then it won't look too good when, in this deeply conservative society that just had their al Qaeda-type elements brought to power nationwide, these ladies ushering in "a new liberal order" are killed by "the people" who insist their black-flag-waving voice really be heard.

Foreign diplomats had been expecting the foreign minister’s job to go to Libya’s deputy envoy to the United Nations, Ibrahim Dabbashi. A respected diplomat, he had rallied other Libyan officials to turn against Gadhafi soon after the revolt erupted against his rule. Instead, the job was given to Ashour Bin Hayal, Libya’s envoy to Canada under the Gadhafi regime who joined the opposition in the 1990s.

I like to imagine the transparency of his conspiratorial designs in mid-February, in tandem with more trasparent yet early defector Nouri al-Mesmari, might have something to do with his usefulness being outlived. But neither did the job go to Dabbashi's boss, Libya's ambassador to the UN Abdulrahman Shalgham, who started out with cold feet as his deputy ran miles ahead and talked the world into declaring full-scale war on the government they had both served.

Lawyer Fethi Tarbel, whose brief arrest on Feb. 15 was the spark that lit the popular uprising against Gadhafi’s regime in the eastern city of Benghazi, was named minister of youth and sport.

He really knows how to get a game going. I'm covering him separately.

Abdelrahman bin Yazza, a former official at Italy’s energy major ENI, becomes interim oil and gas minister. Ali Tarhouni, a U.S. academic who returned from exile to manage the oil and finance portfolios in the rebellion against Gadhafi, had no role in the new government.

The privatization fanatic from Seatlle, Ali Tarhouni, is blessedly out. His replacement is probably worse, however, in some other way. I don't know anything about bin Yazza just yet.

The post of Minister of Defense, the leader of the nation's external military (count-down to a new war with Chad...) went to "Osama Juwali, commander of the Zintan fighters who arrested Seif," and perhaps of the Zintan fighters who recently shot the hell out of Tripoli hospital and killed a few people trying to settle a blood feud with some Misrata fighters. Perhaps friends with the early Zintan rebels who broke the finger off of, tore open the cheek of, and sliced the nose off a Libyan Internal Security man, before killing him, and called him a mercenary from Chad.

The Zintani wasn't appointed to head the Interior Ministry, who have always operated Internal Security. "[T]he interior ministry went to Fawzi Abdelali from the former rebel town of Misrata, whose fighters captured Gadhafi in October," as well as who oversaw the "un-sanctioned" torture, murder, and public display of the formerleader, as well as his son Mutassim (see On the "Gaddafi's Dead!!!" Party). The Misratans, or Misrottens, at large also oversaw epic war crimes of revenge like the siege of Sirte, the massacres following on it, and the purge of Tawergha.

Finally, Hurriyet reported that someone called "Kib," apparently meaning current interim Prime Minister Abdurrahim El-Keib. He will head the government as continuing Prime Minister, which includes an interesting set of posts,  one of which I'm curious to see how it's filled:

Kib will head a 24-member government which will include such portfolios as the ministry of martyrs, wounded and missing people, and a ministry of civilian society.

My own imaginative reading of that is the de-facto overseer of the blaming of rebel atrocities - quite epic it seems - on Gaddafi's defenseless legacy. It will require control of who corpses get identified as, what "family members" can be found to swear to it, and which other disappeared loyalists and African workers they can just let themselves shrug their shoulders at. "Ask his loyalist commander, who probably killed him,"they can simply say. He's probably long dead and missing too.

PM el-Keib was quite reassuring, however, assuring us he could assure us of this basic fact:

 “I can reassure everyone: all of Libya is (represented) in the new government.” 

Even the hundreds of thousands, perhaps a million or more total, who were still showing massive support for Gaddafi nationwide just a few months ago, and the millions who probably sympathize with them nationwide but were too pinned-down by rebel checkpoints or NATO drones, or too dead to join in? How are they represented?

Thankfully, the loss of some prominent faces of acceptable Libyan governance didn't sufficiently shake European support.

A spokeswoman for the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, said after the Cabinet was named that the EU was “confident that the interim leadership now in place will enable the country to embark on the political transition ahead.”