Benghazi Cops: Keeping Up Appearances

By Steve Hynd

Watching this short snippet of Alive in Libya news footage this morning (you can watch it with English subtitles here), two things jumped out at me and I feel neither is getting enough media attention so here we go.

The first is the shiny newness of the police force's building, little white cars, uniforms and equipment (only we can't call them the Benghazi Police Force, they're the "National Security" force). That's a tangible sign of the millions in aid being sent to the rebels by their Western backers. Britain and Germany, among others who until recently encourage their manufacturers to sell Gaddafi's regime weaponry and armored riot vehicles, are now sending hundreds of millions to the rebels so that they can buy new equipment - often from the same manufacturers. The new aid kid on the block is Quatar, one of the biggest of the rebel's donors, which is trying to carve itself an oil-money influence niche which would bring it out from beneath the shadow of its neighbour, Saudi Arabia.

With prices for weapons reportedly soaring in Libya as demand outstrips supply and leaves open gaps of opportunity for smugglers and profiteers, even with around 1,450,000 small arms in-country before the revolution, someone's making a killing. Odds are, many of those someones are the same who made billions from selling Gaddafi his weaponry.

In the aftermath of this revolution, that might be a bit of corporate welfare we'll end up paying for again and again.

Even in the best-case outcome -- a decisive victory by rebels who then immediately join together in unity to embrace Libyan democracy -- what about all those guns? What happens in a post-conflict Libya awash in arms, heavily populated by young men who know how to use them, who lack jobs or money or any prospect for either? In most modern militaries, the guns belong to the state, not individual soldiers. But whatever post-conflict government Libya cobbles together is likely to be weak and fractured at best. Libya's new government would struggle to exercise control over these munitions in the first days after fighting ended, and individual fighters would return to their homes better armed than when they left. What they'll then choose to do with those weapons is anybody's guess. One thing is certain: our guns would not stay in Libya, and there would be nothing we could do about it.

The story of arming rebels is the story of one of the unrecognized tragedies of our time: small arms proliferation. The abundance of cheap and increasingly deadly weapons fuels regional arms races and escalates the most minor conflicts; armed conflict is much more viable when the tools of violence are easy to come by. Charles Taylor invaded Liberia in 1989 with 150 men armed primarily with Soviet AK-47s, allegedly purchased through arms dealer Viktor Bout. Within months, thousands were dead. For all the attention paid to nuclear proliferation, small arms impose a far heavier human toll. Conservative estimates suggest that over half a million lives are lost to small arms every year through homicide, suicide, domestic violence, and armed conflict. In some estimates, 90% of all conflict casualties in the 1990s were caused by small arms.

Just as in Iraq and Afghanistan, none of this seems to be concerning the short-term thinkers in charge.

The second point i wanted to raise is how keen the National Security cops are to put their best face to the media. Everything the "patrol deployment manager" says is calculated to give an impression of efficiency - just like the shiny new station and gear.

The system depends on forming security patrols working at three times, morning, afternoon and night. The patrols spread out and are stationed at intersections. They ensure security and the citizens' feeling of safety ... The situation in Benghazi is very good, the security situation is stable and being managed well.

We've seen similiar statements from rebel police officials before. Benghazi police Colonel Abdallah Shweiter recently told Reuters:

"Earlier, the police worked to serve the political order and security was second," he said. "But now we do what we should be doing, which is helping people, keeping them safe and secure. Now we respect people, we're trying to show we care about them."

But there's no indication that the National Security force are doing much more than standing at intersections looking good. They certainly don't seem to undertake "beat" policing. That same Reuters report continued:

Rebel officials also acknowledge the force faces a shortage of vehicles. It had to consolidate the 15 police stations into five secured stations after an armed gang forced police at one station to hand over a detained suspect.

Boosting security and remaking the police force will be a long slog.

At a security building draped with the rebels' pre-Gaddafi era flag, a group of elite Benghazi policemen whiled away their time one recent evening, fiddling with their Kalashnikovs as they waited to be called to deal with any emergency.

Asked if they had tried to end the family feuds, most seemed surprised. "We can't do anything if families are fighting," said Abdel Gaddar Al-Arabi, the group leader. "They'll tell us to go away, that they can sort it out themselves."

Boredom seems to be the biggest problem. "Nobody calls us," said Arabi. "Perhaps in a half hour we'll go out and help at the traffic lights."

Remember, too, that until recently most of these officers were members of Gaddafi's police force, which had a notorious reputation for abuses of power. Have they changed their ways as much as they'd like their Western backers to think they have? A recent AP report suggests not.

A string of assassinations in recent weeks of the embattled strongman's former interrogators is raising fears of a death squad bent on vengeance in this otherwise peaceful rebel bastion in northeast Libya.

There have been at least three former Gadhafi agents found slain in recent weeks, according to Amnesty International and the rebel's newly created justice ministry. However, an officer in the rebels' own security agency indicated the toll is likely higher.

He said the bodies of six Gadhafi agents had been found in just one week at the beginning of the month.

All six had been on a closely guarded list of suspects, he said. "But each time we put a person's name on the list, when we sent someone to arrest them, we found they'd just been killed," said the officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not permitted to speak to reporters.

Critics worry that a retaliation campaign could mirror the regime's repressive methods, including extrajudicial executions without charges or trial. So far, the rebel leadership shows little will to try to hunt down the killers. The rebels' interim civilian administration has organized a fledgling judicial system even as the war continues, but its nascent courts and prisons are too overwhelmed to deal with common crimes, much less political killings. And many have little sympathy for former Gadhafi security officials notorious for torture and brutality.

Whether the West is sponsoring the overthrow of one abusive regime only to replace it with another is getting far too little attention. Before we send too much money or worse, invest in ground peacekeeping forces, we should already know whether the Benghazi cops and the rebel movement in general is simply keeping up appearances for a Western donor audience. People like the local folks at Alive in Libya may have far more chance of getting that kind of hard reporting than seasoned correspondents with CNN, BBC or AP stencilled on their cameras and mikes.