CIAO DATE: 04/05

Challenges to Security Sector Governance in the Middle East: the Libyan Case

Abstract

The authoritarian revolutionary regime in Libya has been in power for about 35 years now. This is largely thanks to the efficient governance of the security sector, whose main feature is a flexible structure of different but mutually enhancing security organisations. The most important characteristic of these security organisations is that they are neither subject to political control (e.g. by the General People's Congress) nor to control by the public (e.g. the media, NGOs), but have been controlled exclusively by the Revolutionary Leadership led by Mu'ammar al-Qaddafi since September 1969. Up until the present, the Revolutionary Leadership's deployment of the security organisations to protect the Revolution has been so efficient that any attempts to depose the regime or to change the political system by oppositional military or political groups have been doomed to failure. As a result, the Revolutionary leadership tends not to be receptive to structural reform of the security sector, although this does not exclude the possibility of secondary aspects of the security sector (e.g. restriction of torture, abolition of special courts) being reformed in times of lessened political tension.

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