By Muriel Asseburgk, Wolfram Lacher, and Mareike Transfeld
This section of the study answers the following questions: Why are the Libyan conflict so resistant to resolution efforts?
What are the specific aspects of the conflict configurations that impede UN efforts? What factors in the UN approach are obstacles to a successful conclusion? What lessons can be learned for future mediation efforts? And how can Europe contribute to progress in this area?
PART THREE
The Mediators: Facing Time Pressure and Conflicts of Interest
The time pressure Special Representatives León and Kobler applied while attempting to conclude the negotiations was seriously detrimental to the viability of the agreement.
The rush was due to both León’s personal ambitions and pressure from Western governments for a rapid conclusion in the autumn of 2015.
In mid-2015, León informed Western diplomats that he intended to leave his post within months and was determined to reach a deal before he handed over.
In September and October, León tried to force an agreement to be able to take up his next post – director of the Emirates Diplomatic Academy – as soon as possible and with a success under his belt. This meant that León secretly negotiated his conditions with high-ranking Emiratis while at the same time mediating in Libya, where the UAE was blatantly intervening on one side of the conflict.
When this came to light, León had to bring forward the planned handover to Kobler without having obtained a result in Libya.
Upon taking office, Kobler faced the choice of reopening the draft agreement, which had been called into doubt by the León scandal, or bringing it to a quick conclusion.
Libyan proponents of the agreement advocated the latter, not least due to self-interest. However, pressure from Western governments for an imminent conclusion proved decisive. The main reason was the steady expansion of IS, especially in the region around Sirte.
The Obama administration and Italy, in particular, saw an urgent need to act, but wanted a “legitimate” Libyan government to request international support for action against IS.
If the negotiations dragged on, however, military intervention against IS would happen without a unity government – which, in turn, would negatively affect the talks. European governments also needed a legitimate counterpart so as to take military action against human smugglers in Libyan waters, since Russia was blocking the mandate for this in the Security Council.
In late November 2015, Italy and USA set the pace by calling for a ministerial-level conference for mid-December to express its support for the agreement – when no agreement yet existed.
The time pressure induced UNSMIL to try a risky manoeuvre. The negotiating parties, the HoR and GNC, were internally divided.
According to the text of the agreement, the two parliaments were the parties to the deal, the institutional pillars of the agreement, and key to its implementation. However, neither parliament had a formal majority in favour of the agreement; the presidents of both parliaments had even withdrawn their delegations’ mandates.
UNSMIL therefore decided to let the negotiators sign the agreement in a personal capacity. To emphasise the supposedly broad support in Libya – as Kobler and Western diplomats asserted – UNSMIL flew dozens of parliamentarians, mayors and other political actors to Skhirat for the signing ceremony.
Of the 21 figures who initialled the agreement on 17 December 2015, only 11 were elected members of one or the other parliament; the other ten were handpicked by UNSMIL and mostly had no political base to speak of.
After negotiations that within this framework had lasted less than a year, the time pressure exerted by Western governments caused defects in the agreement that would prove fatal.
The consent of the HoR, which was imperative for implementing the agreement and forming a government, failed to materialise after the signing, and the tug-of-war over that question opened up rifts that permanently paralysed the parliament.
In November, to appease as many clienteles as possible, Kobler increased the soon-to-be Presidency Council from six to nine members whilst maintaining the requirement for unanimous Council decisions.
This practically ensured that the Presidency Council would be unable to act. Moreover, at the time that the negotiations were hurriedly concluded, talks with armed actors over security arrangements had not even begun.
This excluded key issues from the agreement – issues that would remain unresolved thereafter. All of these problems were already apparent in December 2015, but experts’ warnings against excessive haste went unheeded. That haste largely rested on assumptions that subsequently turned out to be erroneous.
During the negotiations, the UN mediators closely coordinated with Western governments that intended to support the agreement’s implementation. They thus shared the miscalculations that prevailed in Western capitals, regarding both their own influence on Libyan conflict actors and the GNA’s room for manoeuvre.
Even at the time of signing, Europeans were still planning a Libya International Assistance Mission (LIAM), for which Italy wanted to provide as many as 5,000 soldiers – ostensibly to train Libyan forces, but in reality to protect the GNA and the international presence in Tripoli.
These plans were key to Western designs for the agreement’s implementation – but they were divorced from Libyan realities. It was clear that no Libyan government would agree to such a foreign presence. When the Italian government finally realised this, the plans were shelved.
In addition, both the UN Special Representative and Western governments overestimated the effect of the punitive measures at their disposal. León and Kobler repeatedly threatened sanctions against spoilers, but differences within the Security Council prevented UN sanctions against leading GNA opponents, including Haftar.
The EU and US therefore imposed separate sanctions against three politicians, including the presidents of the two parliaments. All three were figureheads rather than heavyweights, and it is debatable whether the term “spoilers” really applied to them.
After all, there were justified objections to the legitimacy of the accord and the government formed by it. Their opposition to an agreement that would lead to the dominance of their political rivals was also understandable. Besides, the sanctions had no significant impact, except for reinforcing the defiance of those opposing the agreement.
Western diplomats also based their calculations on the expectation that the Presidency Council and its government would overcome their initial legitimacy deficit by creating new facts on the ground. Since the GNA alone would have access to state funds, they argued, it would gradually buy off fence-sitters and opponents of the agreement.
In March 2016, Western governments and the UN urged the Presidency Council to take office in Tripoli despite the fact that the parliament in Tobruk had approved neither the agreement nor the government.
Since there was no progress on negotiating security arrangements, the Presidency Council depended for its security in Tripoli on local militias whom several GNA members viewed as enemy forces.
The move to Tripoli contributed to reinforcing the initial divergences between the parties to the agreement. Several members of the Presidency Council and government refused to work in Tripoli under these conditions, which essentially meant that the Presidency Council had already lost its claim to spearhead a government of national unity.
Nor was it able to create the expected facts on the ground. The governor of the Central Bank did not allow the Presidency Council access to regular budgets, as long as the parliament had neither approved the government nor a budget, let alone monitored state expenditure.
Finally, members of the Presidency Council worked against rather than with each other, meaning that the clientelist networks of individual members did not amount to a power structure for the government as a whole.
Consequently, the Presidency Council had no control over the various forces that were loosely associated with it.
The UN: From Mediator to Party in the Conflict
With the conclusion of the agreement in December 2015, the Security Council tasked UNSMIL with supporting the implementation of the agreement and coordinating capacity-building measures for the GNA.
If the agreement had in fact been a power-sharing arrangement between the conflicting parties, this task would have been compatible with the role of impartial mediator. However, since the agreement was concluded between certain actors against the resistance of many others, the UN role was now to support the Presidency Council in asserting itself against its adversaries.
In Tripoli, this amounted to a tacitly acquiescent attitude toward the militias allied with the Presidency Council, who drove their rivals out of the capital in several rounds of fighting starting in mid-2016.
The actors in Tripoli themselves even viewed this evolution as driven by UNSMIL’s senior security advisor, the Italian General Paolo Serra – an impression the UN mission did nothing to dispel – and the Italian government.
In eastern Libya, this meant that UNSMIL backed a group of controversial militia leaders, simply because they viewed the GNA as an opportunity to expand their influence at Haftar’s expense.
Soon after the Presidency Council arrived in Tripoli, it became clear that the agreement would not see implementation and that the country remained politically divided.
Soon after the Presidency Council arrived in Tripoli, it became clear that the agreement would not see implementation and that the country remained politically divided.
As a result, Western officials emphasised that a modified agreement would have to make room for Haftar. However, UNSMIL, being so closely associated with the GNA, could hardly mediate between the government and its opponents.
In fact, Haftar refused to meet Kobler for more than a year after the agreement was reached – declaring it would be “a waste of time”.
Only when Ghassan Salamé assumed office in July 2017 did UNSMIL begin to distance itself from the GNA and once again seek a role as impartial mediator.
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Dr Muriel Asseburg is a Senior Fellow in the Middle East and Africa Division at SWP
Dr Wolfram Lacher is a Senior Associate in the Middle East and Africa Division at SWP
Mareike Transfeld is a doctoral student at the Berlin Graduate School Muslim Cultures and Societies
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Source: Mission Impossible? UN Mediation in Libya, Syria and Yemen
