Libya: The Imitation State!
In a television interview, Egyptian actor Salah Al-Saadani was once asked: How do you evaluate our situation in the region? His answer, quoted in Egyptian dialect, was telling:
“We in the Arab world have everything just like the rest of the world. If you look at football, you’ll find federations, stadiums, crowds, advertising banners, referees, and twenty-two players facing each other with a ballexactly as it is everywhere. Even the cheering looks the same.
But the difference is, what we have isn’t real football it’s a replica of it.The same applies to art: we have cameras like those in the world, but how we use them is different the result isn’t authentic, it’s merely a semblance. We mimic the world in economy, industry, and agriculture, but we are not the real thing we are the copy without the essence.”
Anyone calmly observing life in Libya can easily detect how deeply this description applies to our reality.
We have what is called a General Command of the Armed Forces complete with buildings, military vehicles, uniforms decorated with badges and ranks, administrative structures, stamped forms, everything appearing exactly as professional armies do on paper. But when put to the test, unified command, institutional discipline, and strategic decision-making are absent. What replaces them are local or personal loyalties, brigades belonging to individuals and families, applying military law whenever and however they choose.
We also have a Ministry of Interior, police stations, IDs, patrols, and polished press statements. Yet the security that should protect citizens is too often a tool of intimidation or a service mechanism for selected interests. We manufacture fearnot fear of breaking law, but fear of cars, speech, or slogans. Our security ranks sit heavy on shoulders as metal plates, impressive in weight, light in effect, and easy to obtain. So yes, we have the appearance of widespread security, but the feeling of safety is absent.
Courts exist. Judges take oaths. Laws are printed. Seals are stamped. Yet genuine justice is frequently halted by money or guns, or delayed so long that the right itself is lost. We treasure postponement. We obsess over finding truth to the point we refuse to release it. Our justice scale looks beautiful in copper like the ones elsewhere not tilted, but rather broken in half.
We also have a Public Prosecution representing people who resemble those of other nations, and represent them as skillfully as a Libyan actor performs a role. We possess everything resembling a judicial system, yet we are still searching for justice, because justice itself is searching for where it went.
Hospitals exist in Libya, doctors wearing white coats resembling their counterparts abroad, diagnostic machines, laboratories, and wandering patients seeking answers. We have diagnostic processes that resemble those in the world, and medicine stores whose keys sit in military camps and pilgrimage compounds. We have diseases resembling those found globally in form but in meaning, they are uniquely tormenting Libyans, just as a shapeless force torments our people in Gaza.
We have banks with shiny glass fronts, ATMs, and an annual report from a central bank resembling the Central Bank of Libya. We even have exchange rates resembling those of other countries but our monetary policy is drafted in Souq Al-Musheer, among currency brokers. Our banknotes resemble those elsewhere, issued either by the Central Bank or by Rajma barracks, whichever is closer to you.
Today, Libyan institutions are more a stage set than a state. We possess all the props that make a superficial observer say, “This is an organized country.” But field experience exposes that we are prisoners of the façade.
The true challenge is not painting walls or importing equipment but building institutional substance grounded in competence, discipline, and justice.
Until that happens or doesn’t try, dear reader, to free yourself from your own façade. Perhaps if you succeed, you can tell us how to reach the rest of the real people of this country.