Stephanie T. Williams
The lesson that should be taken from the LPDF experiment is to continue with an inclusive approach. Under no circumstances should the international community return to the days of gathering two or five guys or their representatives in a smoke-filled room. It is the triumph of hope over experience to believe that these cynical status quo actors—who spar during the day and collude at night—are interested in the kind of meaningful change that Libya so desperately needs.
In fact, conflict settlement in a rentier economy comes with its own set of challenges. This is particularly true in the case of Libya, where one man had served for 42 years as the allocator-in-chief, using his vast intelligence and security apparatus as enforcers in apportioning the country’s wealth among its different constituencies. For some years after 2011, the international community prized maintaining the autonomy and integrity of the country’s sovereign financial and economic institutions.
Therefore, the politicization of the National Oil Corporation since 2022 is an alarming development that has accelerated fuel smuggling and further deprived the average Libyan of the benefits that should accrue from being a citizen of one of Africa’s largest oil producers. Until last year’s leadership crisis, the central bank had fared better, but it has yet to fully enact the recommendations of the U.N.-facilitated financial review to regularly hold meetings of the board of governors, display the utmost transparency, and further unify the institution.
Enjoying equal levels of impunity are those who have committed atrocious human rights abuses, including the wholesale slaughter and burying of innocents in the mass graves of Tarhouna, as well as enforced disappearances, suspicious deaths (such as falling out of windows), arbitrary detention, and the trafficking of migrants—helpless souls, like the people of Derna, who have met their watery death when trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea.
Far too often, the victims of this avalanche of abuse have been women, whether public figures such as human rights activists and advocates like Salwa Bugaighis and Hanan al-Barassi, both brutally murdered in Benghazi, or former General National Congress member Fariha Barkawi, who was assassinated in Derna. To this day, no one has been held accountable for these crimes as well as for the enforced disappearance of parliamentary member Siham Sergiwa, who was violently abducted from her home in Benghazi in July 2019 by armed actors believed to have been loyal to Haftar’s forces. I hope that the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) chief prosecutor continues to move with alacrity on the Libya file. Justice delayed is justice denied.
An indifferent “international community”
The fifth and an equally important factor causing the Derna tragedy was, as the U.N. secretary-general so eloquently noted, the appalling indifference of the so-called international community. These actors have consistently failed to hold accountable those responsible for the many abuses and excesses, instead prioritizing the pursuit of their own bilateral agendas over the need to help the Libyan people build a functional and accountable state. In the case of Derna, I recall the stony silence we heard when we would report to the U.N. Security Council on the terrible human rights abuses committed during the siege of that city by Haftar’s forces.
Even worse, those responsible for spoiling U.N. political processes, in 2019 and in 2021, have been rehabilitated and rewarded for their destructive behavior rather than marginalized. In this project, some countries have elevated the counterterrorism agenda above all other bilateral priorities. While no one can really dispute the need to pursue U.N.-designated terrorist groups, too often the counterterrorism agenda requires the alignment of international actors with domestic Libyan hybrid armed groups who have no interest in the state-building project, not to mention the concept of good governance.
The same is true of those countries that have prioritized the counter-migration file above nation-building. Today we witness the cynical wielding of the migration file by actors across the southern Mediterranean, threatening to turn the migrant pipeline on or off depending on the level of material or political support received from European leaders. A recent example of this hypocrisy was the Italian government’s decision to return a known human rights abuser to Libya instead of complying with an arrest warrant from the ICC.
And then there are those countries that have carelessly used Libya as a battlefield for their ideological disputes, raising the bogeyman of political Islam or trying to impose an authoritarian model in order to suppress any move toward democracy in the Middle East and North Africa. In these proxy wars, it is unfortunately the case that Libyan actors have been full participants, inviting in tens of thousands of foreign mercenaries and allowing foreign forces, the majority of whom today are supplied by Russia and Turkey, to occupy bases throughout the country.
These and other countries have poured weapons and lethal systems into Libya, a country that was already awash in weapons from the 2011 and 2014 wars, in full violation of the U.N. arms embargo. At one point in the 2019 to 2020 war, Libya became the largest arena of drone warfare in modern history. (That record has now been shattered since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.)
The alarming facts on the ground, which are represented by the many foreign-occupied bases, will be very difficult to unwind, particularly in the absence of a fully sovereign, representative, and united Libyan government. The stark reality is that Russia and Turkey have effectively divided Libya into zones of influence, each using the country to pursue wider geostrategic objectives, whether in the Sahel and Central Africa or to extract resources and pursue commercial deals.
Since the ouster of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in December 2024 and with Haftar’s acquiescence, Russia has increased its footprint in North Africa, shifting assets from its naval and air bases in Syria to eastern and southern Libya. In addition to maintaining its toehold in Libya and projecting power in Africa, Russia’s ancillary goal is to put pressure on and destabilize southern Europe by leveraging the migrant pipeline. Needless to say, all of this negative foreign interference further renders the state-building and good governance project exceptionally difficult.
Decentralization as a path forward
Having outlined five governance-related factors (and no doubt there are more) that I believe contributed to the Derna tragedy, I believe we can best honor the memories of Storm Daniel’s victims by pressing forward. We must start somewhere, and I would modestly propose that more focus should be put on local, grassroots, and community-led efforts.
Already, good work has been done in this regard by local Libyan groups like the Peacemakers and ad-hoc coalitions of political parties and other gatherings. In fact, there is widespread consensus among Libyans about the need to devolve power from the center in pursuit of an enhanced decentralized model that would put more power and resources in the hands of local constituencies.
During the planning process for the aborted 2019 National Conference, during which the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue conducted 77 meetings with over 7,000 Libyans inside and outside Libya, participants agreed that “an overly centralized government is widely seen as having caused many of the problems Libya is experiencing today.”
Therefore, they recommended that “there should be a gradual transfer of a significant portion of ministerial responsibilities to municipalities and, eventually governorates.” As an interim measure, and pending a more durable solution, the current decentralization law, Law 59, which was passed in 2012, should be fully implemented.
In 2022, the constitutional negotiations I facilitated between the two legislative chambers resulted in an agreement on the establishment of 13 governorates—using the existing 13 electoral districts—along with the precise division of resources at the central, provincial, and local levels. Some have argued for the establishment of elected chambers at the three levels: a national parliament and higher chamber, elected provincial legislative bodies, and elected municipalities.
In fact, since 2011, the majority of Libya’s municipal councils have been elected, with the exception of some councils in eastern and southern Libya whose elected members Haftar replaced with loyal appointees. The election of municipal councils represents important green shoots of democracy in an otherwise arid environment. The U.N. helped the elections commission to organize council elections throughout the 2019-2020 conflict and even during COVID-19. It is heartening to see that municipal elections took place in 2024, accompanied by a surge in voter registration.
Decentralization in Libya will give greater autonomy and authority to local officials and, with it, greater accountability.
For all of these reasons, the move to a more devolved model must be pushed. It will lessen the pressure on Tripoli, reducing its vulnerability to constant attack. Decentralization will give greater autonomy and authority to local officials and, with it, greater accountability.
The knock-on effects of devolution could be realized in the pursuit of local disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration efforts. A variety of studies point to the fact that Libya’s armed groups are by no means monolithic and that many are well integrated into their local communities. These communities will know best how to reintegrate and rehabilitate those who have resorted to arms, helping them to turn swords into plowshares.
At this moment, when we are seemingly at a hinge in history, faced with the threatened redrawing of the global order and when international institutions are under threat—even from the very architects of that order—we must continue to work on solving conflicts like the one in Libya
Libya is a country that has enormous talent and capable citizens—women and men alike—who have their hands extended and their hearts open to each other, and who want to build themselves a viable state. The best way to honor those whose lives were tragically cut short in Derna is to neither give up nor give in.
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