By Ferhat Polat
Without the support of key foreign states that sponsor Libyan actors, no political process will be able to succeed in bringing stability.
In 2011, the Arab Spring engulfed Libya, as people stood up against Gaddafi’s regime. The opponents united to oust Gaddafi from power, but their loose alliance fell apart as the various groups sought different agendas and mistrusted each other for political and commercial interests.
The post-Gaddafi era led to serious, unintended consequences, causing regional unrest, massive civilian displacement, and an environment conducive to terrorism and extremism.
After 42 years of autocratic rule, the country remains in chaos and its post Gaddafi future still unclear. Gaddafi left the country without state structures and an efficient security apparatus, which has had a negative impact on the post-revolutionary process of setting up democratic political institutions and stabilizing the state.
Libya has had a long history of political exclusion and stigmatization of political opposition. Gaddafi seized power through a military coup in 1969 and subsequently introduced a law prohibiting the formation of political parties or civil society organizations.
Since the collapse of Gaddafi’s regime in 2011, Libya has been governed under a temporary Constitutional Declaration, under which the country is designated as a parliamentary republic administered by the General National Congress (GNC), whose representatives were elected in July 2012. Between 1965 and 2012, no elections were held in Libya, and these were the first to be held since the ousting of Gaddafi.
The country has struggled to build national institutions and a consensus over the post-Gaddafi transition owing to deep-rooted divisions driven by Libya’s fractious society and complex identity politics.
The complex political and security situation in Libya has posed significant challenges to the achievement of a substantive political settlement between rival factions within the country. Disagreement as to what political form Libya should take means that the country has been plunged into growing turmoil over the last ten years.
Libya’s political trajectory has gone through different stages since 2011, but in 2014, Khalifa Haftar, a former military leader in Gaddafi’s army, returned to Libya following the outbreak of the protests in the country. He declared a coup, creating his own war in the east and setting his sights on Tripoli, triggering a counterassault and effectively splitting the country into two halves.
Since then, Libya has not been able to recover from the conflict setting it is mired in. This was the critical moment for Libya and signaled the collapse of a peaceful transition and the shattering of dreams for Libyans, who were craving democracy and stability.
With the help of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Egypt, Russia and France, Haftar extended his military power in the eastern Libya, with the UAE and Egypt remaining its biggest and longest-serving military sponsors.
Both states have been supporting a counter-revolution in Libya by providing vast military and operational assistance for Haftar in his attempts to turn Libya back into a dictatorial military regime.
Given the number of countries that have been involved in the Libyan conflict, which has turned Libyan revolution into an opportunity in which external players pursue their economic and political interests rather than helping Libyan people to build national institutions and a consensus over the post-Gaddafi transition.
Frederic Wehrey, a senior fellow in the Middle East Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote: “At the broadest level, Libya’s post-2011 civil wars have been facilitated by a breakdown in global multilateral norms, the diminished authority of the United Nations, American ambivalence and retrenchment, European discord and deadlock, and Russian opportunism.”
In December 2015, the Libyan Political Agreement (LPA), also known as the Skhirat agreement, was signed with the aim of forming a transitional government to resolve the country’s political divide. Eventually, the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA), headed by Fayez al Sarraj, was established through the Libyan Political Agreement (LPA).
Haftar has never accepted the UN-brokered deal, the LPA, and has refused to recognize the legitimacy of the GNA. Consequently, he has consistently rejected peace proposals and initiatives put forward by different regional and international actors.
In April 2019, Libyan Warlord and his self-claimed Libyan National Army (LNA) made a move on the capital in an attempt to overthrow the UN-backed GNA.
Turkey intervened in the conflict in December 2019 at the request of the GNA, sending advisers, drones, air-defense systems, which have shifted the balance on the ground. Turkey’s involvement in the Libyan conflict has brought relative stability to the conflict.
A nationwide ceasefire was declared in August 2020, and on Oct. 23 2020, military delegations from Libya’s two warring parties announced a formal ceasefire agreement that initiated a peace process that could lead to elections on Dec. 24, 2021. This would be a vital step, if they take place and are fairly free and fair.
All of this is largely positive, however, even if the UN-led political talks succeed in engendering a consensual government for all the rivaling fractions, there will still be several obstacles on the way to the December elections this year. Recently, delegates from opposite sides at a UN-led forum elected Abdul Hamid Dbeibah from the western city of Misrata as prime minister, and Mohamed al Manfi from the east as head of the presidency council.
This new temporary government could provide a new opportunity to pave the way for a more democratic and smooth transition of power in the near future. However, stability will be far from guaranteed as long as the parties who fought the war have little willingness to give up their gains, and it remains to be seen whether the various armed groups, both in western and eastern Libya, will respect the outcome. Besides, mercenaries and foreign fighters show little sign of withdrawing from the country.
In order to provide a reliable election, international actors must coordinate their approach to support the UN efforts, engaging with Libyans across the country in a way that enhances the country’s unity and sovereignty.
Without the support of key foreign states that sponsor Libyan actors, no political process will be able to succeed in bringing stability. Therefore, all actors, both Libyan and international, should take a more sincere stance towards peace.
In this regard, the international community must provide further assistance to Libyans to establish a sustained strategy, focusing on security and unifying the country’s institutions.
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Ferhat Polat – a Researcher at the TRT World Research Centre.
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A new dawn for Libya brings hope for regional stability
By Nicholas Waller
While it may seem as though only one subject has dominated the news for the past year, and our lives came to a very literal standstill, the world did in fact continue to turn; and in recent months, there have been some momentous political developments.
A Brexit deal was hammered out at the eleventh hour ahead of the 1st of January deadline, Donald Trump left the White House, but not before inciting the biggest attack on American democracy in more than 200 years, several Gulf countries officially normalised relations with Israel and the four-year Qatar blockade by the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Egypt came to an end when the agreement was reached to restore full diplomatic ties. In hindsight, these all look to be hugely positive events that could potentially have a lasting impact on global peace and stability.
While all eyes have been on these international stories, a power shift in a country so closely tied to European peace and security concerns has continued to play out in the background. Beyond its strategic regional importance in North Africa and the Middle East, Libya, for all intents and purpose, has a long, chequered history with Europe and the UK. The Arab Spring in 2011 brought with it a sense of hope that things were finally beginning to change. The fall of Muammar Gaddafi and his regime was meant to be a new start for the Libyan people; what followed, however, was a decade of civil unrest and seemingly endless internecine war.
Now, however, there is renewed hope for long term peace and stability as a new statesman emerges from the plethora of characters that have been involved at the heart of Libyan politics since 2011. Fathi Bashagha, a 58-year-old former fighter pilot from Misrata, has served as Minister of Interior for the Government of National Accord since 2018 when he was appointed by Prime Minister Fayez Al-Sarraj. However, he is not a career politician, like so many before him. His career began after he graduated from Misrata’s aviation college in 1984. After almost a decade training other pilots to fly fighter jets, he left the Air Force for civilian life and started a business in the import-export trade.
Bashagha believed his military career behind him until the revolution in 2011. Following the fall of the Gaddafi regime, a judicial committee was formed, and Bashagha, along with other serving and retired military officers, were summoned to form a military committee, known as the Military Council of Misrata. His initial role was Head of the Information and Co-ordinates Department, and he quickly became the spokesman for the Council, before joining the advisory committee at the National Reconciliation Commission.
In 2014, he was elected to the House of Representatives for Misrata but has boycotted the institution since the outbreak of the second civil war. It was during this time did he start to emerge as a serious reformer for security issues Libya faced. He co-ordinated air and ground military operations between the Al-Bunyan Al-Marsous forces, AFRICOM forces and the International Counter-Terrorism Coalition to help fight ISIS’ mandate in Libya. This role, alongside his work in the Parliament’s Political Dialogue Commission, in partnership with the UN, where he emerged as the leading figure to bring together the warring factions ahead of the peace agreement signed in 2015 in the Moroccan city of Skhirat, is what led to his appointment as Minister of Interior in 2018.
Upon assuming office, Bashagha quickly got to work reforming the ministry from the inside out. Once he had reorganised and restructured procedures and the administration, he looked to address the key external security issues. At a local level, this meant the establishment of a professional police force which proved successful at reducing crime and most significantly, minimise the impact of the armed militias that historically had wielded considerable influence. In a move like the UAE, there is now a mobile police app that allows people to report crime without the need to visit a police station, thus allowing cases to be investigated and closed more efficiently that the old system of bureaucracy. He has previously faced questions over his historic political ties, most notably to Turkey and its relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood, which has, in the past, been a cause for serious concern across the much of the Middle East and the European Union, particularly in Egypt and France.
However, since his appointment as Minister of the Interior in 2018, Bashagha has been very vocal in his fight against terrorism and corruption. He was the first Libyan government minister to launch a campaign to fight institutional corruption within the government working closely with the Attorney General to bring charges against several high-profile officials from across the entire national infrastructure.
In recent years, the Ministry of Interior has prioritised its counter-terrorism campaign, and the Minister has personally worked closely with European and US counterparts and international security organisations to assist in the capture of known terrorists and wanted individuals, most notably in the capture and subsequent extradition to the UK of Hashem Al-Obaidi, brother of the Manchester Arena bomber, who fled to Libya after the attack. He also played a pivotal role in the recent arrest of Abdul Rahman Milad, a known human trafficker wanted by the United Nations Security Council among other foreign governments. The Ministry’s newly formed Financial Crimes Unit commissioned a business intelligence firm to help implement anti-terror financing and anti-money laundering regulations. To date, this has saved almost $500 million that would otherwise have made its way to armed groups and insurgents.
In recent months, the Minister has met with many of his Western counterparts, including Italy and Malta and has held meetings with the Deputy US Ambassador to Libya and travelled to France to hold talks with both security and political leadership. The aim of these meetings is not only to win support but also to seek guidance and support. Bashagha has been open and modest enough to admit the country lacks the capacity and skill to implement reforms alone. In his November visit to France, the ministry signed a Memorandum of Understanding with French security firm Idemia, to put in place a biometric digital identity system. Among other things, Bashagha hopes this will enable the country to hold credible and fraud-free elections later this year.
What happens next in Libya is anyone’s guess. If recent history has taught us anything, it is that nothing and no one is permanent in government and politics, particularly in the Middle East. That said, if Bashagha becomes interim Prime Minister, ahead of elections in December, the outlook for Libya looks positive for the first time in a long while, and European nations would be wise not to waste an opportunity to strengthen ties with a leadership that is not only willing to listen but also co-operate.
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Nicholas Waller – Managing Editor, Veteran journalist/editor/analyst in the former Soviet Union, EU, and the Middle East.
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NEW EUROPE
