By Ali Ezzatyar

In North Africa, feelings die hard. Few are pondering today the arduous reconciliation process that awaits in Libya. Most of us are concentrating, instead, on the person of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi and the bizarre reality that the man is still around.
However, we should be concerned that a large number of Libyans, in particular those who regard themselves as neutral, may become targets only when the formal war eventually comes to an end. A relevant analogy is the tragic history of Algeria during its long and brutal civil war.

The seeds of Algeria’s civil war were, of course, different from that of Libya. After parliamentary elections in 1992, the army intervened to keep the Islamic Salvation Front from coming to power after it had won a majority of votes in the first round of voting. But the motivations for and manner in which the Algerian conflict degenerated is not dissimilar to Libya at all. Supporters of the FIS began with peaceful civil disobedience campaigns to protest army intervention in the democratic process. The government crackdown was brutal and immediate. Hundreds of people were killed or shipped off to makeshift concentration camps for voicing opposition to the army. This pushed the opposition to take up arms, precipitating a bloody conflict that lasted for more than a decade and that ended up claiming what is estimated to be 150,000-200,000 lives.

If it were as simple a story as Islamists versus a secular government, then perhaps we could discount Algeria’s experience when considering Libya’s. However, this was not the case. In many respects the Algerian conflict resembled a purge more than it did a war. To this day, Algerians are unclear as to who was responsible for some of the most flagrant atrocities perpetrated during their conflict, including the murder of nearly 70 journalists and dozens of academics.

Islamists often denied their involvement in specific incidents. There is strong evidence that at least part of the unrest in Algeria was deliberately caused by the government to maintain control through a state of emergency. This allowed it to hunt down enemies of the state, which it described as traitors and terrorists. The few independent organs of civil-society were destroyed. In the chaos, neutral citizens were inevitably grouped with the other side and became open targets.

The civil war has left an indelible scar on the Algerian psyche, and is the main reason why Algerians are loath to follow their North African neighbors in their revolutionary fervor. Pre-war society has yet to be rebuilt and suspicion is still rampant, as the decade-old iron bars over most windows in Algiers demonstrate. Algeria offers a grim picture of what could beset Libyan society as the conflict drags on.

It is foolhardy to assume Libya’s rebels, who will inevitably grow more fractious as they near power, will not resort to similar techniques in seeking to consolidate power. Libya is even less homogenous, with its complicated tribal structures, than Algeria is. Certainly, the rhetoric of blame and the undertones are eerily similar to those in Algeria in the wake of its violence. Such long-term disintegration would, among other things, set a horrible precedent for humanitarian intervention.

But perhaps most problematic for the rest of the world is the reality that the civil war in Libya is also leaving, and will continue to leave, abundant power vacuums in its chaotic wake. As with Algeria, Al-Qaeda and other extremist groups will without question seek to fill such voids. It is imperative that the world and the United States, in particular, plan their responses and actions accordingly.

The world has put its weight behind the Libyan rebels. As a result, it must use the tools at its disposal to ensure that the rebels’ behavior is in line with international humanitarian law. This inevitably means that the United States, acting with the international community, needs to take a more active role in the decision-making process of the nascent rebel government. The rebels should establish an overarching government of national unity, which reaches out to all of the primary tribal, ethnic, and social groupings in Libya.

In particular, a strenuous effort must be made to co-opt and incorporate all tribal leaders, especially those previously aligned with the Gadhafi regime, by providing them with a share of political power and economic resources commensurate with their numerical and strategic standing. Without consensual and conciliatory elites able to carry the bulk of their constituency with them, the consequences for Libya, and the world for that matter, could be disastrous.

Ali Ezzatyar is an American writer and lawyer practicing in Paris. He wrote this commentary for THE DAILY STAR.