TRIPOLI: Libyans watched the fall of Syria’s Bashar Assad with a mixture of apprehension and hope, wishing “their brothers” in the Levant a better outcome than their own.
Ten years after the downfall and death of Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, the country remains plagued by division and instability.
“It’s now been 14 years since the people of Syria have been waiting for their turn to come,” said 47-year-old history and geography teacher Al-Mahdiya Rajab.
“Their Arab Spring was stopped in its tracks” in 2011, she said.
“At last, they have been delivered from more than half a century of tyranny.”
After a lightning 11-day offensive, a coalition dominated by Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham group in Syria swept into Damascus to end more than 50 years of rule by the Assad clan.
As in Libya in October 2011, when the death of Qaddafi was announced after he had ruled for 42 years, Syrians took to the streets to celebrate the “victory of the revolution.”
Residents of Libya’s capital, Tripoli, like 55-year-old activist Sami Essid, drew comparisons between Syria and the first days of the post-Qaddafi era.
“In the beginning, there was hope,” he said.
“The people were satisfied, peaceful, and happy.”
In 2012, Libya held its first-ever free election, choosing 200 national congress members or parliament members. This was followed in 2013 by municipal elections. Both polls were considered to have been a success.
But then, in August 2014, after weeks of violence, a coalition of militias seized Tripoli in the west of the country and installed a government, forcing the elected parliament into exile in the east.
Despite Fayez Al-Sarraj being appointed premier in December 2015 under a UN-mediated deal, the east-west split only deepened.
In parallel, armed militias and foreign interference mushroomed.
Essid said the main thing Libya and Syria have in common is “the people rising against injustice, tyranny, and dictatorship.”
But in Libya, he said: “We discovered that the struggle for power and the country’s riches were the objective all along.”
“We hope we will not see division and militias emerge in Syria, as in Libya,” he said.
“The danger in Syria is that there are different faiths, and this can lead to power struggles and communities being divided.”
Today, Libya has two governments. It is divided between a UN-recognized government based in Tripoli and a rival administration in the east, backed by Khalifa Haftar, who also controls the south.
“Now we know the outcome of the revolution in Libya,” Essid said.
“But no one knows what will happen in Syria after the revolution there.”
However, for civil society member Motaz Ben Zaher, “although they both aimed to overthrow a regime, there is no real common ground between the Libyan and Syrian revolutions.”
“The contexts differ profoundly, whether in terms of the scale of international intervention or geography,” said the 50-year-old.
