Archive - April 2023

Patricia Karam

After riveting the world in 2011 with a revolution that led to the fall of Muammar Qaddafi, one of the world’s most brutal dictators, Libya has largely receded from the public eye. The revolution there quickly turned into chaos, fueled by external interventions that have hampered the fragmented and tribal nation’s transition toward a more democratic trajectory.

The United Nations’ newest special envoy for Libya, Abdoulaye Bathily, has recently attempted to reinvigorate support for a stalled election process by launching an initiative that would ostensibly end the country’s political stalemate after more than a decade of conflict and divisions.

In 2021, a UN-sponsored process successfully led to the formation of a new Libyan Government of National Unity (GNU), headed by businessman-turned-politician Abdul Hamid Dbeibah; but his legitimacy was thereafter challenged when elections, initially scheduled for December that year, were indefinitely delayed because of disputes over their constitutional basis and voting rules.

In response, the House of Representatives, a rival government based in Benghazi in the country’s east, appointed its own prime minister, former Interior Minister Fathi Bashagha, and the country was once again pulled apart by dueling administrations, each claiming power and legitimacy.

In a last-ditch effort to get parties to adopt a roadmap for elections in 2023, Bathily will establish a high-level steering panel to provide a forum for opposing Libyan stakeholders to come together and agree on a legal framework, mechanism, and timeframe for holding presidential and legislative elections, ensuring broad national ownership of the process.

But while organized and democratic elections are necessary to reconfigure Libya’s political and economic institutions, a true resolution to the country’s troubles must start by rebuilding trust, not only between Libyans and their government but also between citizens themselves. Indeed, Libya’s relative peace at this time may be the best guarantee to prevent partition and further chaos, which would threaten the security and stability of the entire North Africa region.

Local Tensions and Foreign Meddlers

In the roughly 12 years since Qaddafi’s ouster, Libya’s stability has been rocked by fragmentation, warfare, external rivalries, and the proliferation of innumerable abusive armed militias operating with impunity.

Violence spiraled further in 2014, when renegade commander of the Libyan national Army (LNA) Khalifa Haftar, a one-time CIA asset who had directed military opposition to Qaddafi, launched an offensive that left him in control of large swaths of territory in the east.

After disputed elections the same year, the country’s governance broke up into two administrations, the Tripoli-based internationally-backed Government of National Accord, led by former Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj and primarily reliant on Turkey, Qatar, and Italy, and another government based in the east and under the de facto control of forces loyal to Haftar, with support from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Russia, France, and others.

Divisions intensified, especially after a second Haftar-commanded attack on Tripoli in April 2019 that laid siege to the city before eventually being driven back with Turkey’s intervention. With the continued postponement of elections, Libya is again gridlocked over the legal basis for said elections and over the nature and composition of a new political arrangement.

The security vacuum created by the 2011 intervention in Libya was quickly filled by regional and international powers and foreign mercenaries.

Meanwhile, the security vacuum created by the 2011 intervention in Libya was quickly filled by regional and international powers and foreign mercenaries, transforming the country into a site of great power competition, exacerbating instabilities, and prolonging the crisis.

While the UAE and Russia continue to support Haftar’s LNA, a ragtag mix of military units and regional armed and tribal groups, Turkey is on the side of the UN-recognized government. Being motivated by a combination of ideology, geopolitics, and commercial interests, no powers have shown any inclination toward retracting.

Indeed, Turkey has significant financial interests in Libya that predate the uprising and thus stands to profit from future reconstruction efforts. It also hopes to benefit from a controversial maritime deal on energy exploration that would allow it to exploit resources in Libya’s territorial waters in the Mediterranean.

Russia, which is aspiring to play the role of power broker in the region, has maintained a military footprint in Libya through the Wagner Group, the de facto private army of Russian President Vladimir Putin, which is notorious for its cruelty and predatory acts. As many as 2,000 heavily-armed Russian military contractors have been deployed, and a large number of Syrian mercenaries have been hired by both Russia and by Turkey, playing combat and non-combat roles and providing security services, training, and battlefield expertise.

Russia today still retains a vast amount of leverage in Libya, wielded through a sophisticated combination of hard and soft power: a network of military airbases and camps and spies on the ground on the one hand, and the use of disinformation and diplomacy on the other, enabling rogue actions such the illegal injection of Russian-printed banknotes to the LNA, which helped bolster its operations and keep it afloat and independent of the Libyan Central Bank.

Russia has particularly penetrated the oil-rich portions of the country, expanded its influence within or around significant oil installations (including the country’s largest, the El Sharara oil field) to secure key facilities, future hydrocarbons concessions, and a naval base in Benghazi granting it a Mediterranean outlet.

In the process, Russia has established the ability to apply a stranglehold on strategic oil production and export facilities. This underscores how little control local actors may have over their foreign patrons, regardless of how keen they might be to solicit and sway foreign support for their own ends.

While efforts have been made over the course of the conflict to quell foreign intervention by reducing foreign arms transfers, including by the 2011 UN embargo on the supply of arms and military equipment to and from Libya, such attempts failed to stick, and foreign powers continued to equip and bolster allied militias at great cost to Libyan civilians.

There is well-documented evidence of unrestrained air, land, and sea shipments of illicit items to opposing sides, including drones, aircraft, missiles, artillery, and armored vehicles. Meanwhile, the US has adopted an approach that has been at best inconsistent, if not confused, remaining on the sidelines of any solution to the crisis.

Libya’s Economic Outlook

Prolonged instability and conflict in Libya have led to severe human rights abuses, massive destruction of infrastructure, a displacement crisis that is aggravated by every spell of violence, and tremendous civilian losses.

Economic decline has disproportionately affected vulnerable groups, especially internally displaced persons and migrants who face poverty, widespread shortages, and rising prices on essential goods. Inflationary pressures, which have been exacerbated by the Ukraine war, have led to a corrosion of household security and welfare.

Poverty rates in Libya today are extremely high, and in the absence of social protection systems, around 800,000 people are deemed in urgent need of humanitarian aid. Citizens struggle daily with extended electricity cuts, as well as fuel and water shortages.

Rising unemployment, last estimated at around 20 percent, though at more than 50 percent among youth, mostly impacts the public sector, which employs the majority of the population.

Libya’s private sector, which was decimated by Qaddafi-era socialist-style economic policy and was largely overshadowed by a large oil revenue-fueled public sector, barely functions.

While the country’s production of crude oil has recently risen again to a robust 1.2 million barrels per day, the economy remains in disarray, hampered by poor governance, bureaucratic restrictions, and ravaged infrastructure.

The splintering of the Central Bank in 2014 along the country’s broader political fault lines has also hindered the development of a unified monetary policy, leading to differing exchange rates, liquidity shortages, and swelling public debt, all of which further damage Libya’s beleaguered economy.

Despite a rebounding of Libya’s trade balances in 2022 due to a jump in oil production and prices, the country’s economic outlook has been hindered by persistent political volatility leading to deteriorating living conditions.

Oil: The Battle for Libya’s Chief Resource

Libya’s resource wealth has been one of the most powerful factors contributing to the protracted nature of the conflict. Libya sits on the African continent’s largest crude oil reserves (48 billion barrels), and the hydrocarbons sector is the country’s main source of income.

Prior to 2011, oil revenues accounted for 95 percent of export earnings and 96 percent of the government’s income. The abundance of hydrocarbons had always been a tool to either control or fuel tensions stemming from the country’s intricate social fabric.

But the importance of oil became especially tangible after the outbreak of the civil war and the country’s division into separate spheres of influence, with the realization taking hold that whoever controls the oil also holds political power.

The battle to dominate energy sources fueled tensions between belligerent factions, including the slew of militias seeking to take advantage of the country’s fragmentation.

Because of the ongoing centralization of oil revenue distribution (and therefore of economic power) in the capital, ruling over Tripoli became equated with access to valued assets, thereby incentivizing factions to try to seize control of it, or at least of some critical infrastructure, such as oil or water pipelines, that would provide leverage over Tripoli.

In the east, this most prominently took the form of the domination of the oil crescent and other oil infrastructure by armed groups who, as they routinely blockade pipelines or shut down oil terminals, have become more and more powerful. And as long as control of Tripoli remains a means to influence the distribution of oil revenue, the incentive to resolve the conflict continues to lessen, making any agreement between parties improbable.

Elections: A Panacea for Libya’s Ills?

Despite controversies over voting eligibility and substantial legal and constitutional disagreements, the international community has continued to brandish elections as an opportunity to bring peace and stability to the battle-scarred country.

During the last attempt in 2021, Dbeibah, who was supposed to unify competing cabinets and oversee a transitional national unity government in Tripoli, clung to power after the failure of elections.

Now the country is once again stuck in a standoff between rival executives in the western city of Tripoli and the eastern city of Sirte, with no consensus on the way forward.

The persistent failure of the international community to resolve the crisis has considerably undermined both the legitimacy of imposed transitional entities like the GNU and the value of the political process itself. Accordingly, the perspective that elections will not fix the country’s woes, let alone Libya’s deep-seated corruption and economic dysfunction, has regained currency.

For now, Libya has come full circle from brutal dictatorship to a new kind of despotism by scores of militias that are on the state payroll simply because of the danger they pose, leading to unprecedented embezzlement of state funds.

The most attractive job for young Libyans since the eruption of the civil war has been to join militias, which employ more than 10 percent of the country’s workforce.

The continued political stalemate has seen militias grow stronger as they simultaneously hold governmental office, terrorize civilians on the street, and engage in illicit and lucrative activities such as the smuggling of people, drugs, and fuel, and in the process impede the state’s ability to deliver public services.

Hope for a Resolution?

More than a decade of war in Libya has entrenched an elite that is operating with no accountability and that has no interest in altering a status quo that guarantees it unfettered access to state resources.

And while this and myriad other factors—including the role and agendas of foreign actors, and more mundane bickering on elections rules and processes—are disrupting the possibility of a political transition, the reality is that all institutions and actors embodied by this political elite have lost the faith and support of a population that is simply fed up. Libya’s citizens have intermittently but increasingly expressed their anger and discontent by demonstrating across the country against deteriorating economic conditions, the collapse of public services, and an endless unstable status quo.

Here, the opaque management of the country’s wealth, the inequitable distribution of resources, and the lack of basic services are especially pertinent for any movement toward greater political and economic welfare.

To find a way out of the current stalemate, Libyans need to agree on a vision for their country.

Libya’s fundamental political crisis indeed reaches all the way to the hidden debate on its existence as a unitary state—and oil revenues and economic structures further exacerbate the political dilemma.

Beyond the critical issues of weeding out dysfunction and corruption, in order to find a way out of the current stalemate Libyans need to agree on a vision for their country that overcomes the fears and factors that split Libya up in the first place.

Until then, national unity governments and ensuing power-sharing arrangements can introduce temporary fixes. But they ultimately overlook the necessary precondition for a political resolution: the need, after decades of a deliberate weakening of the political framework by a cruel and frivolous dictatorship, followed by years of survival within a dystopian collapse, to rebuild trust between citizens and government, but also among and between Libya’s citizens themselves.

Even though the current power configuration of rampant warlordism fueled by misconceived external interference can be expected to resist, deflect, and subvert any attempt at reform—including through meaningful elections—Libya’s saving grace may ultimately be in its resilience in opposing systematic efforts to dismantle it.

The only way to extract Libya from its conundrum is through a long-term incremental approach that empowers those very Libyan actors who are invested in a citizen-centered Libya focused on advancing the interests of its people.

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Patricia Karam is a Non-resident Fellow at Arab Center Washington DC. She held multiple senior managerial positions in nongovernmental organizations over the past 20 years, working at the nexus of problem analysis, policy formulation, and impactful program implementation aimed at social and policy change in a range of complex, conflict-ridden settings across the globe.

Most recently, Karam was Middle East North Africa (MENA) Regional Director at the International Republican Institute, where she was responsible for the strategic oversight and leadership of a multimillion-dollar portfolio of programs focused on citizen-responsive governance, political party development, legislative strengthening, and civil society capacity-building.

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Hafed Al-Ghwell

Libya is once again in the headlines, following a recently announced plan by the UN’s special envoy to the North African country, Abdoulaye Bathily, to re-energize the stalled political process and bring to a decisive end a decade-long, extremely turbulent transitional period.

Incumbent elites have repeatedly resisted attempts to reach an accord as it would be tantamount to relinquishing their monopolies on power, wealth, the use of force, and the ability to leverage foreign interference to further their narrow interests.

In addition, the leading actors want to avoid any accountability from any potential transitional justice initiatives.

This staunch defense of the status quo serves only to promote the antithesis of what most Libyans, and the global community, hope to achieve through a free, fair and credible election process.
Bathily’s plan to hold elections this year was well-received, save for some apprehensive voices lamenting its lack of implementability, and the whiff of a woefully familiar insistence on the ballot being some kind of cure-all for Libya’s woes.

The UN has nothing concrete to show for nearly 12 years of mediation but now, for the first time in a long while, experts are hopeful that this latest gamble might just turn things around for good.

After all, without such ambitious plans — which hint at introducing an alternative path from the existing corrupt institutions, buoyed by a rare international cohesion and shared understanding of the need for elections — a Libya adrift will likely result in renewed conflict.

Heavily armed actors have had time to gather their forces, ingratiate themselves with enterprising external meddlers and consolidate gains from the brief scuffles between the Tripoli-based Government of National Unity and the eastern coalition led by Khalifa Haftar.

Meanwhile, with neighboring Tunisia also undergoing unprecedented crises, sparking a surge in north-bound migration, a return to armed conflict in Libya would have devastating implications for the sub-region, as well as the Central Mediterranean region, and must be avoided at all costs — which probably explains the rare convergence of support for Bathily’s plan.

But what exactly is this proposal that is being hailed as a promising first step?

Bathily wants to convene an electoral steering committee of up to 40 members drawn from across Libya’s sociopolitical scene.

This would include civil society, activists, community leaders, and even prominent figures among the current political elites. Such a diverse group would be empowered to lay the groundwork for, and map a path to, elections.

The process would require settling squabbles over the constitutional basis for electoral laws, security planning, logistics, and dispute resolution.

It is a plan eerily similar to the 2021 road map that resulted in the once highly-touted Libyan Political Dialogue Forum, which eventually collapsed due to corruption, coercion, intimidation  and malign influences, robbing Libya its previous best hope for stabilizing its transition.

For some reason, Bathily’s plan is light on such details, which observers find concerning not only for the glaring vulnerabilities this reveals in its implementability but also for the lack of a credible plan for what will happen after Libyans cast their ballots.

They should not only be fully cognizant of what they are voting for; they should also be aware how the resulting government will act, thereby granting it both legitimacy and a much-needed decisive mandate.

Insisting on elections that are credible enough to confer impeachable legitimacy requires existing good governance, which Libya desperately lacks.

Unfortunately, as successive UN special envoys have discovered, Libya is trapped in a strange “Which came first: the chicken or the egg?” paradox that would confound even the most hardened elder statesmen.

Insisting on elections that are credible enough to confer impeachable legitimacy will require existing good governance, which Libya desperately lacks.

That level of technocratic competence can only be preceded by a well-established electoral regime, constitutionally empowered to welcome a plurality and diversity of candidates to campaign unhindered.

It would also cultivate trust in its processes and results, which is key to staging peaceful transitions of power.

However, Libya lacks that, too, due in part to a ruling elite that is not keen on the idea of potentially relinquishing its power to newly elected representatives, or being stripped of ill-gotten gains in transitional justice proceedings.

As a result, even if the international community glad-hands Bathily’s encouraging proposals, average Libyans remain, for the most part, unconvinced because the plans do not resolve the paradox or provide a suitable road map for dealing with it in an appropriate time frame.

Thus, the prevailing sentiment among the public is a familiar sense of despair as once-promising aspirations quickly give way, yet again, to nihilism and indignation.

In Libya, repeating the same process many times over and expecting a different result has only left a beleaguered public feeling resigned in the face of feuding elites, because the alternative is a peace imposed by the force of arms.

So, what will happen next?

Provided Bathily manages to leverage international support and can shepherd the next iteration of the Libyan Political Dialogue Forum, elections could, technically, take place this year.

That will depend on whether deeply involved actors such as Egypt and Turkey follow up on their diplomatic assurances with actual action by pressuring their Libyan proxies to take a seat at the negotiating table.
Next, the UN Security Council would also need to do more than just issue statements or draft impotent resolutions. Elections are not easy even at the best of times and all the harder in a country ravaged by conflict, political divisions and crisscrossed by competing external interests.

If this “new” plan is to succeed in seating the next government, as well as sparking the restoration of functional state institutions after years of neglect or usurpation, it will need a more involved Security Council that is not distracted by geopolitical tensions elsewhere.

A key challenge, among several others, is of course security. It is still unclear how Bathily hopes to steer a political process in a bifurcated country where the east and south are controlled by a hostile coalition made up of thousands of foreign fighters and mercenaries, including the infamous Wagner mercenary group.

In addition, for controversial figures such as Haftar and Saif Al-Qaddafi, as much as the ballot is a threat, it also offers a relatively bloodless alternative to state capture, provided they can influence electoral outcomes either during closed-door deliberations by Bathily’s proposed high electoral steering panel, or by endlessly litigating its resolutions.

Worse, they could also resort to ballot-stuffing, voter intimidation and unattributed attacks on voting locations, all to create dubious pretexts for contesting election results after the forceful disenfranchisement of Libyans in areas they control.

For now, it can only be hoped that whatever manner of elections transpire will restore some stability and, more importantly, grant legitimacy to a unified executive authority, and not produce another dictator who will dismiss any constitutional basis for future elections.

Setting aside the shaky foundations of Bathily’s plans, reenergizing Libya’s stalled transition in this way will at least restore some momentum in the parallel tracks aimed at fixing the country’s security architecture, finalizing a constitution-drafting process, and initiating a national reconciliation underpinned by robust transitional justice.

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Hafed Al-Ghwell is a senior fellow and executive director of the Ibn Khaldun Strategic Initiative at the Foreign Policy Institute of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC, and the former adviser to the dean of the board of executive directors of the World Bank Group.

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Lubna Yousef & Tim Eaton

In Libya’s northwestern city of Zawiya, where migrants make up a quarter of the population, those involved in human smuggling and trafficking present themselves as the solution to the very crisis they helped create, write Lubna Yousef and Tim Eaton.

The UN fact finding mission to Libya this week stated that the European Union had “aided and abetted” the commission of the crimes in Libya as a result of its support to Libyan authorities to crack down on irregular migration. Their conclusions echo long held allegations made by human rights organisations.

The international narrative on migration in Libya – like the migrant experience itself – is one of abuse and exploitation. Despite the numbers of Mediterranean crossings from Libya remaining lower than the heights of 2016, many migrants and refugees still lose their lives as they attempt to reach Europe.

Yet, criticism of those engaged in human smuggling and trafficking rarely includes the voices and perceptions of Libyan society, where local smugglers and traffickers burrow. How do Libyans feel about the sector? And how can they reconcile themselves to what is going on?

To help answer these questions, Chatham House researchers have spoken to residents of Zawiya, a city in the country’s northwest.

“Criticism of those engaged in human smuggling and trafficking rarely includes the voices and perceptions of Libyan society, where local smugglers and traffickers burrow”

Zawiya manifests all the challenges of the post-2011 period: it has an unruly and competitive security sector that has mushroomed in size, its public services and infrastructure have declined, and its licit economy has stagnated while its illicit economy has grown uncontrollably due to human smuggling and trafficking.

 It has also seen a new set of actors come to dominate the city through their control of armed groups.

Local perceptions of migration

With an estimated population of 186,000, Zawiya’s 46,000 migrants are impossible to miss. As the number of migrants have increased over the past decade, local perspectives on migration have started to shift.

Zawiya’s residents are torn between sympathy for the plight of migrants and hostility towards them for being different. Their sentiments are often influenced by colourism, historical racism against foreigners from Africa, and factors like nationalism and religion – Arab Muslim migrants are typically better accepted due to shared values.

Locals struggle to differentiate between trafficking and smuggling, claiming that trafficking in humans does not exist in the city. This difficulty in identifying human trafficking as a separate illegal act is perhaps wilful.

While residents recognize the role smugglers play in their city’s current situation, their anger is mostly directed towards the migrants themselves, who are viewed as unwanted temporary guests.

And although some locals understand the circumstances that push migrants and refugees to flee their homes, they fear foreigners might compromise the fabric of their conservative community.

Apathy has grown in Zawiya over the past few years, said Mariam, a stay-at-home mother. The sight of dead bodies, including children, washed up on the shore has left a lasting psychological impact on locals.

“It is painful to see them, but we have also gotten used to it,” she admitted. Zawiyans are aware of the danger migrants endure and the risks they take, but in a country rife with violence and political divide, there is little capacity to dwell on migrant experiences.

The presence of migrants in public spaces has further unsettled locals, as entire migrant neighbourhoods have cropped up in their city. This has fuelled anxiety among residents, who are uncomfortable with their city’s changing face.

Creating a local narrative

Arguably, the most significant factor influencing local sentiments towards migrants is pervasive information asymmetry. Knowledge of the migration sector mostly circulates among men, some of whom work in the migration space, during informal gatherings where stories are exchanged between acquaintances or family members.

Despite their informality, these social interactions are where narratives on migration develop. The storytellers themselves may be security officials, armed group members, coastguards, aid workers, activists, or civilians who have heard second-hand accounts related to migrants.

The result is that the narratives they create infiltrate the wider community and help influence local perspectives in their favour.

It can be difficult to label those involved in the migration ‘business’, as they often wear many hats. They can be part of state-affiliated security forces while also maintaining an outward appearance in the community as civil servants, humanitarians, and community leaders.

“Zawiya’s residents are torn between sympathy for the plight of migrants and hostility towards them for being different”

Having a legally and socially legitimate public profile is critical in enabling these actors to shape the narrative on migrant smuggling in two ways.

First, it allows them to improve their standing in the communities where they operate by presenting themselves as the solution to the migration crisis – even when locals know they helped smuggle migrants into Libya in the first place.

With no solutions offered by the Libyan government or the international community, smugglers and traffickers are often the only option for migrants to reach Europe. Locals therefore tolerate smuggling for its perceived benefit: getting migrants out of the city.

Second, these actors use their resources and influence to present themselves as job providers for local youth, usually through their armed factions. They also help facilitate public service provision.

Local perceptions versus international narratives

The international community does not share this local narrative. The EU in particular has taken several steps over the past decade to combat trafficking and smuggling networks. It has provided support to Libyan state agencies, such as the Libyan Coast Guard and the Department for Countering Illegal Migration while also supporting aid and humanitarian work for local and international NGOs in the country.

However, these same state agencies are the ones that stand accused of being involved in human rights abuses and smuggling activities. Some state-run detention centres have benefitted from EU-sponsored capacity-building support, lending them more legitimacy and a cover for some of the human rights violations – and trafficking activity – that take place there.

The result is a fragile equilibrium: the number of migrants leaving Libya from the northwest coastline is reduced but not eradicated, while state-affiliated armed groups and officials are now regulating the sector rather than seeking to shut it down.

This has led to the establishment of informal rules of conduct, including setting quotas among rival smuggling networks. Meanwhile, the treatment of migrants differs by their country of origin and how much they pay the smugglers.

Some are exploited for forced labour and have their documents confiscated, while others are treated well and even offered snacks and beverages on their boat trips to Europe. The ‘business’ has become highly regulated.

In such circumstances, it is unsurprising to find significant differences between local perceptions and international narratives of human smuggling and trafficking in Libya. Zawiya’s new elite have found a way to bridge the gap between the two.

Western policy currently offers no alternatives and doesn’t even extract a political price from Zawiya’s elite – who hold significant interests and influence in political negotiations for high office in Libya – for its double dealing.

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Lubna Yousef is the research associate for the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). 

Tim Eaton is a Senior Research Fellow within the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House. His research focuses on the political economy of conflict in Libya and the broader MENA region. 

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