Jacob Wirtschafter
Under attack
The Zawiya strikes began at 3:45 a.m. Aug. 8, when an explosive-laden drone punctured a fuel-storage tank. Attacks followed daily. The National Oil Corp. warned it could halt refinery operations if the attacks continued. The Petroleum Facilities Guard said initial findings pointed to first-person-view drones launched from inside Libya.
Some analysts say the central conflict pits two militias that both answer, on paper, to the Tripoli government — the First Support Division under the interior ministry and the rival 103rd Battalion under the defense department. Mohamed Bahroun, leader of the First Support Division, denied responsibility for the drone strikes and called them “an act of terrorism.”
Central Bank of Libya Governor Naji Issa’s resignation, dated Aug. 9, went to both the eastern House of Representatives and the western High Council of State. Both chambers refused to accept it, and Mr. Issa remained at his post through the weekend. He was the first Libyan central banker approved across the political divide, and the central bank he runs is one of the few national institutions both sides accept.
It distributes oil revenue between east and west, and its governor sits at the center of the revenue-sharing arrangement holding the American initiative together. Libyan analysts linked his move to quit to disputes over the U.S.-mediated unified spending agreement and pressure from a weakening dinar. Mr. Issa said only that his reasons were too sensitive to state.
Mr. Boulos had singled out Mr. Issa for praise in his April speech, calling it commendable that “representatives from both sides set aside their differences for the good of the country, and especially Central Bank of Libya Governor Naji Issa.”
A bomb attached to his car killed Maj. Gen. Fawzi al-Mansouri after evening prayers in Benghazi’s Hawari district. He commanded military intelligence for Gen. Haftar’s forces. Saddam Haftar would have inherited him as a central figure in the eastern security apparatus. No group has claimed responsibility.
“Selecting a president from the east and a prime minister from the west to establish a unified government is a reasonable approach,” Mr. Pusztai said. “But I doubt that the reported candidates — Saddam Haftar for president and Abdulhamid Dbeibah for prime minister — will be widely accepted.”
Negotiating a re-union
Six weeks ago, Saddam Haftar met Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Washington to discuss Libyan-led reunification. Four days earlier, Abdulsalam al-Zoubi, the Tripoli government’s deputy defense minister, met Mr. Boulos and senior State Department officials.
Misrata, western Libya’s most powerful city outside the capital and the force that stopped Gen. Haftar’s advance on Tripoli in 2019, has rejected the framework. Sheikh Mohamed al-Rajoubi, chairman of the city’s Council of Notables and Elders, told Al Jazeera Arabic that the council had received no written proposal from Mr. Boulos despite months of consultations.
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan arrived on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast Wednesday after stops in both halves of Libya. He met Mr. Dbeibah in Tripoli a day earlier, then traveled to Benghazi for meetings with Saddam Haftar and his father. Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan also consult as the Regional Four, whose foreign ministers met in Cairo in June alongside talks with Mr. Boulos. Days before Mr. Fidan’s Libya trip, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan signed a trilateral defense pact in Mecca.
Each R4 member brings something Washington needs. Turkey holds military dominance over western Libya through drones and naval assets, in a deployment its parliament extended through early 2028. Egypt underwrites eastern security through the apparatus Maj. Gen. Mansouri helped run. Saudi Arabia holds the financing. Pakistan has signed a $4 billion arms agreement with Gen. Haftar’s forces.
The Egypt-Turkey rapprochement is the bright spot in Washington’s Libya calculation. Cairo and Ankara spent 2019 arming opposite sides of a Libyan civil war and severed diplomatic relations for a decade. Their coordination on the Boulos framework — Fidan meeting Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty at El Alamein after his shuttle to Tripoli and Benghazi — signals that neither capital plans to countermove against the other’s Libyan clients. Without that mutual restraint, the American initiative would collapse back into proxy war. The United Arab Emirates, which backed Gen. Haftar for a decade, has not publicly commented on the Zawiya strikes.
“Egyptian-American agreement on the Libyan file is a strategic necessity for both sides,” Mr. El-Aasar said. Washington does not want Libya contested by Russia, whose preoccupation with Ukraine the U.S. may want to exploit.
The Trump administration has increasingly favored power-sharing deals built around actors who already hold territory. Similar frameworks shaped U.S. policy in Gaza, Syria and early Kurdish diplomacy. Libya was to be the first success story, because its oil offered an immediate payoff at exactly the moment the Iran war was closing others. Four months after Mr. Boulos laid out his three tracks in Washington, all three are under strain.
“On the ground, Libyans see Boulos as a broker seeking financial benefits from possible future oil contracts,” Mr. Khattaly said, “and would rather see more direct involvement from the U.S. secretary of state and the State Department.”
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Jacob Wirtschafter – Special to The Washington Times
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