Emadeddin Badi and Wolfram Lacher
The eastern-based House of Representatives and its Tripoli-based counterpart, the High Council of State, are both widely discredited, having consistently perpetuated Libya’s crisis to keep themselves in office. The same goes for the Presidency Council, a toothless, three-member executive body formed under U.N. auspices along with Dabeiba’s government. When the fighting erupted in Tripoli, representatives of these three institutions predictably sought to harness the backlash, hoping to convert the wave of public discontent into a push to form a new government.
But their attempts likely did more to sap the public’s hope for genuine change and expose the risk of popular mobilization being hijacked for parochial ends. Equally predictable was the internal squabbling within all three institutions, which thwarted their attempts to propose a common plan to replace Dabeiba.
Such transparently cynical scheming helped the Dabeibas dismiss demands for the government’s resignation. Their efforts to shape narratives in the public sphere quickly bounced back, with Dabeiba portraying the conflict as a campaign to restore state authority and dismantle rogue militias. Evidence of Ghnewa’s crimes saturated Libyan social media, and the Dabeiba camp showed hints that it could discredit its opponents with damning imagery.
Less overtly, the Dabeibas are also leveraging the identity politics underpinning the conflict. As fighting erupted, a narrative gained traction on social media: that Dabeiba was seeking to monopolize power with the backing of Misratan forces. This framing has echoed through the organized political activism demanding his resignation, much of it emerging from Tripoli’s Suq al-Juma neighborhood, the city of Zawiya and the Warshafana region — areas where his armed opponents are concentrated. In truth, Dabeiba has long been unpopular in Misrata, including among its armed groups, only a handful of which have backed his government militarily in Tripoli.
Yet by mobilizing against what they portray as a Misratan power grab, the government’s adversaries are inadvertently shoring up Dabeiba’s faltering support in his hometown. Privately, the Dabeibas have been messaging communal and armed actors in Misrata that the crisis is not merely about retaining office but about safeguarding the city’s political relevance in Tripoli.
Their calculus hinges on the belief that a decisive alignment from Misrata’s factions could fracture the already brittle opposition coalition — particularly in Zawiya, where rivalries among armed groups have historically undermined unity.
While this political battle over popular opinion and communal fears is unfolding, the truce in Tripoli remains extremely precarious. Both sides have strong incentives to escalate. For the SDF, the ceasefire simply freezes a battlefield disadvantage. Not only did it lose control of strategic positions, it has also been politically sidelined by Dabeiba’s government. Its only viable route to reclaim leverage is to rally support and apply pressure, whether through new alliances or renewed force.
Moreover, allowing the security situation in Tripoli to recover its normalcy risks strengthening Dabeiba’s claim that he is restoring order. If, as seems likely, political efforts to unseat Dabeiba falter or drag on too long, the SDF may conclude that escalation is the only way to regain influence in the evolving power balance.
For the Dabeibas, the same logic applies. The renewed talk of forming a new government, especially among eastern institutions and western Libyan rivals, raises the stakes. The longer this momentum builds, the more tempting it becomes to preempt it militarily — particularly by targeting groups trying to establish an alternative seat of power in Tripoli. The Dabeibas and their inner circle may therefore see renewed confrontation as the only way to assert primacy.
This backdrop of rising tension is compounded by a near-total collapse of trust among Tripoli’s factions. For years, militia leaders maintained a fragile arrangement underpinned by a mutual interest in managing spoils and preventing Haftar’s advance into western Libya. Disputes were often defused at the last minute, through personal relationships, negotiated understandings and implicit red lines.
But that informal modus vivendi has now crumbled. Only recently, Ghnewa had appeared smiling alongside those who conspired against him at an iftar dinner hosted by Ibrahim Dabeiba. His killing shattered the basic assumption that alliances offered protection, and sent the message that anyone could be next.
In that climate, the foundations for negotiation over ceasefires or institutional arrangements have significantly eroded. The current truce is not the product of mutual understanding but of hedging. Perhaps the most significant reason why it is still holding is the forceful messaging of a Turkish envoy who, in direct talks with key stakeholders, stressed the imperative to avoid renewed escalation.
This matters, coming from a country whose military presence weighs heavily in western Libya’s favor. But it may not be sufficient. With trust eroded and rivalries deepened, Tripoli is in a state of suspended conflict, primed for renewed violence.
The scene of these maneuvers is part of a broader political theater. Both camps loudly warn that empowering their rivals would hand Tripoli to Khalifa Haftar. Dabeiba’s critics claim his destabilizing moves in Tripoli embolden the eastern commander.
The Dabeibas insist that a change in government would allow Haftar’s allies to reassert control through state institutions. But these warnings ring hollow. Both sides have shown they are willing to cut deals with Haftar and his inner circle when it serves their interests. The specter of Haftar does not function as a principled red line but has become a tool.
Over the past years, power struggles in Tripoli have routinely opened space for the Haftar family to expand their influence, even without a military presence in the capital. By leveraging control over oil production and their grip on the eastern Libya-based parliament, the Haftars have extracted political and financial concessions from rivals in the west.
There is little to suggest that this round will break the pattern. The divisions and short-term calculations among Tripoli’s factions continue to serve eastern interests by default, regardless of intent.
Yet another scenario has become at least conceivable with these events: the possibility of Dabeiba emerging with greater centralized control in Tripoli. Surviving this crisis may open a narrow path toward greater authority, but it will come at a cost. Ghnewa’s death has unraveled an empire of institutional influence, giving Dabeiba space to maneuver and reconsolidate patronage networks.
Many of Ghnewa’s former affiliates now seek protection from groups aligned with Dabeiba — or face the prospect of being replaced by loyalists to the prime minister. Yet the armed groups Dabeiba depends on to consolidate control are not simply loyal followers; they are exploiting his moment of vulnerability to push for the appointment of their own affiliates, constraining his ability to build a truly loyal apparatus. Efforts to fill the power vacuum left by Ghnewa are in turn shaped as much by opportunism and coercion as by strategy.
The result is a landscape of conditional alignment, where armed groups back Dabeiba not out of fealty but calculation and, increasingly, caution. They are taking note not only of the risks of open defiance, but also of the precariousness of cooperation. Brigade 444, a core pillar of Dabeiba’s operation against Ghnewa and the SDF, emerged from this brief bout of warfare politically bruised and publicly blamed.
In his address defending government actions, Dabeiba singled it out for igniting the clashes, casting it as an undisciplined actor rather than a partner. That message has resonated beyond Tripoli: The more conflict-averse factions in Misrata, too, are increasingly wary — not just of being drawn into confrontations with other western Libyan groups, but of absorbing public backlash on behalf of a prime minister who struggles to unify his own hometown behind him.
All in all, and against most expectations, the fallout may leave Dabeiba more dominant in the short term, but with even fewer trusted partners and growing unease among the militias he must still depend on. The effect would not be one of consolidation, but of reluctant drift, his position reinforced by a lack of alternatives, rather than a coherent coalition. The moral of Ghnewa’s story is now etched into the ethos of Tripoli: At this juncture, today’s ally can just as easily become tomorrow’s adversary or scapegoat.
At a deeper level, however, the patterns underpinning Dabeiba’s tenuous hold on power reflect the broader stagnation of Libya’s political landscape. The transition remains stalled — not because Libyans lack a desire for reform, but because the incentives sustaining the current order remain deeply entrenched.
The absence of a shared sense of urgency among international actors only reinforces this paralysis: Without coordinated external pressure, there is little chance of a credible push to form a new government, let alone to sideline the House of Representatives and High Council of State, whose mutual veto power continues to block meaningful progress.
And even if a new government does emerge, it will inherit the same broken foundations: a fragmented security architecture, revenues monopolized by Haftar and a governance model that privileges militia leverage over institutional legitimacy. Until those structural dynamics are disrupted, moments of crisis will continue to serve as catalyst points for mutation, not transformation.
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Emadeddin BadiEmadeddin Badi is a consultant and senior fellow with the Atlantic Council and the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime
Wolfram LacherWolfram Lacher is a senior associate at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs and the author of “Libya’s Fragmentation”
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