Khaled Mahmoud
Military Manoeuvres: Imposing the
East’s Conditions
By contrast, eastern and southern Libya are characterized by a more centralised but still personalised military structure under the Libyan National Army (LNA) led by Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar. In recent years, command roles have increasingly been distributed among his sons, including Saddam Haftar and Khaled Haftar, reflecting a gradual institutionalization of familial military authority.
The LNA’s consolidation of control over key infrastructure, including airbases and oil facilities in the south, has further deepened the asymmetry between Libya’s fragmented west and its more hierarchical east. This divergence continues to obstruct any meaningful attempt to establish a state monopoly over the legitimate use of force, a foundational element of sovereignty.
Libyan Rejection of the Boulos Initiative
Unsurprisingly, the American initiative has faced resistance across Libya’s fragmented political spectrum. Key institutions, including the Presidential Council and the High Council of State, alongside various revolutionary and armed factions in western Libya, have expressed reservations or outright rejection.
In parallel, eastern forces have conducted large-scale military exercises, often referred to as Operation Karama Shield 2, which showcased extensive manpower and advanced military hardware, including Russian-supplied air defence systems. Beyond their tactical dimension, such exercises carry a clear signalling function, reinforcing the perception that any future political settlement must account for established military realities rather than attempt to bypass them.
The Plunder Economy and Armed
Factions
Over time, Libya’s armed groups have also evolved into central components of a parallel political economy. Their activities extend beyond security provision into the regulation of economic life, including fuel distribution networks, cross-border smuggling routes, informal taxation systems, and influence over public spending and reconstruction contracts. In this context, many armed and political elites perceive competitive elections not as a pathway to legitimacy, but as a potential threat to entrenched economic interests and patronage networks.
This entanglement between coercive power and economic survival has contributed to the repeated failure of initiatives aimed at demilitarising urban centres. Despite formal agreements announced by authorities in Tripoli calling for the withdrawal of armed formations from the capital, implementation has remained limited and inconsistent. Episodes of renewed violence in Tripoli, Zawiya, and other urban areas have repeatedly followed such announcements, reinforcing perceptions among international observers of a fragile and reversible security environment.
The Oil Equation and Russian Influence
Libya’s relatively stable oil production—hovering around 1.4 million barrels per day—reflects a tacit and informal accommodation among competing actors. Rather than indicating institutional consolidation, this stability appears to rest on pragmatic arrangements that insulate the energy sector from direct confrontation. Oil thus remains both a shared resource and a potential bargaining instrument within Libya’s fragmented political economy.
This raises a central analytical question regarding the direction of US policy: whether Washington is genuinely invested in supporting a long-term democratic transition anchored in unified institutions, or whether it is instead prioritising a narrower form of ‘functional stability’ aimed at ensuring energy flows and containing geopolitical competitors, particularly Russia through its expanding Africa Corps presence in Libya and the wider Sahel.
Russia’s engagement in Libya has deepened through its relationships with eastern and southern actors, especially those within the LNA’s orbit.
Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar asserts that the Libyan National Army (LNA) exercises effective operational control over the vast majority of Libya’s territory, particularly throughout the eastern and southern regions. Having anchored his political legitimacy on erasing transnational ‘jihadist’ networks from eastern Libya, Haftar successfully projected power over the strategic Oil Crescent and into the vast southern Fezzan—a porous border triangle abutting volatile neighbouring states.
Despite occasional security friction with Chadian and Sudanese armed factions operating across these frontiers, the LNA has largely mitigated these threats through sustained military deployments, though isolated pockets remain conduits for lucrative smuggling networks. To maintain this architecture, Haftar commands a force estimated at nearly 100,000 personnel, relying heavily on critical logistical, intelligence, and military support from Egypt and Russia to circumvent the enduring UN arms embargo on Libya.
Legitimising Chaos and Postponing
Elections
In response to these complexities, Washington has advanced an approach centred on gradual militia integration, institutional co-optation, and financial centralisation aimed at reducing illicit revenue streams. This strategy is reinforced by a set of regional security partnerships involving, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates. However, such an approach risks producing what analysts increasingly describe as a ‘stability trap,’ where short-term de-escalation masks unresolved structural tensions.
Evidence from the ground suggests that stability in western Libya, particularly in Tripoli, remains contingent and highly sensitive to localised triggers. Even minor incidents have the potential to escalate rapidly into armed confrontations, underscoring the absence of a fully functioning monopoly of force. Recent episodes of violence linked to public gatherings and sporting events have demonstrated how quickly civilian spaces can become militarised, raising broader questions about the feasibility of nationwide electoral processes under current conditions.
International assessments, including reports by the UN Panel of Experts, Human Rights Watch, and the International Crisis Group consistently emphasise that armed groups have become embedded within Libya’s governance architecture. They exercise coercive influence over political decision-making, economic regulation, and public administration, often with limited accountability or effective oversight.
Recognizing these unyielding dynamics, Washington’s engagement in Libya has increasingly shifted toward a transactional, short-term approach centred on brokering elite deals with established power centres in both Tripoli and Benghazi. While this strategy manages to maintain a fragile, temporary stability, it practically obstructs any genuine pathway toward national political unification or the realisation of credible domestic elections. Instead of resolving the crisis, it perpetuates a closed political marketplace that privileges armed actors over democratic transition.
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Khaled Mahmoud is a Cairo-based Egyptian journalist and political analyst covering regional security, armed conflicts, and Middle Eastern affairs for international publications.
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