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Fifteen years ago today, Moamer Kadhafi was captured and killed by rebel fighters, ending 42 years of one-man rule over Libya. RFI spoke to Libya specialist Virginie Collombier about what “Khadafism” stood for, who still believes in it and whether the removal of its architect has made life better for the country’s people. 

Kadhafi seized power in Libya in a military coup in 1969 and went on to build one of the most idiosyncratic states of the 20th century.

Funded by vast oil wealth and enforced by ruthless repression, it was guided by his Green Book – a manifesto proposing a “third way” between capitalism and communism, and officially called the Jamahiriya – or “state of the masses”.

Kadhafi cast himself as a champion of Arab – and subsequently African – liberation, and backed armed groups abroad, which brought years of Western and United Nations sanctions.

His fall in 2011, following an uprising and a Western-backed military intervention, left Libya split between rival governments in the country’s east and west. Many Africans blame his removal for the instability that has since spread across the Sahel.

In February this year, Kadhafi’s son Saif al-Islam, long seen as his political heir, was assassinated, leaving his supporters without a leader.

We asked Virginie Collombier, a professor at Luiss Guido Carli University in Rome and a specialist on Libya, what survives of Kadhafi’s ideas and influence, in Libya and beyond.

RFI: Is Kadhafism simply the Green Book – the text which set out a third way, anti-capitalist and anti-Marxist, to shape the political, economic and social life of the Jamahiriya?

*** The Green Book is often seen as the symbol of Kadhafism, and it’s the central doctrinal text: a third way meant to offer an alternative to the two great ideologies of the 20th century, capitalism and communism. But Kadhafi’s way of governing was based on a much broader set of ideas and institutions.

The fundamental idea was that sovereignty should belong directly to the masses. People organise themselves at grassroots level through popular committees, which are then connected to the government and the executive branch. There was also a distinctive economic outlook, often likened to socialism, though it took different forms and shifted over time. And there were doctrinal elements drawn from Islam, which likewise evolved.

In foreign policy, the main principles revolved around Arab nationalism, then African nationalism, and a revolutionary anti-imperialist theory. Remember that Kadhafi took power in 1969, when the Cold War was at its height. Pan-Arab nationalist movements, notably [Gamal Abdel] Nasser’s in Egypt but also in Syria and Iraq, had already transformed the region. Kadhafi arrived somewhat late, and his approach to power was heavily influenced by what was happening elsewhere at the time.

RFI: In the West, Kadhafism is associated with political repression, regional conflict and alleged support for international terrorism. Why have his revolutionary ideology, Arab nationalism and pan-Africanism taken a back seat?

*** First, because these are not things that are particularly appreciated in the West. Kadhafi very quickly found himself in direct confrontation with the United States and France. There were repeated attempts by a number of Western powers to eliminate him, directly or indirectly.

His “third way” was also fundamentally at odds with parliamentary democracy. Behind the rhetoric of mass democracy, the system was highly centralised. Repression was severe and fell on every kind of opposition: political, of course, but also views that challenged the idea of Libya as above all an Arab nation, denying the country’s ethnic and linguistic diversity.

His economic policies also generated strong opposition, with many people badly hit by the nationalisation of property, including homes. Alongside the repression, the system used local levels of power to install loyal interlocutors on the ground – in effect a policy of repression, and reward for the regime’s local representatives. The redistribution of wealth through the central state [notably oil resources from 1960s onwards] also reinforced the concentration of power.

Finally, by positioning himself as a leader of anti-imperialism and opposition to European colonialism, Kadhafi backed a number of movements that the West regarded as terrorist: national liberation movements in Africa, but also in Northern Ireland and Palestine. The regime went as far as supporting terrorist attacks, which led to major US and then UN sanctions lasting more than 20 years.

RFI: The Arab League dropped Kadhafi, yet many African heads of state continued to back him after the first UN embargo in 1992. Why was Kadhafism less successful in the Arab world than in Africa?

*** Tensions between Kadhafi and other Arab leaders emerged very quickly. He was a flamboyant figure who soon fell out with several Middle Eastern governments, particularly Egypt’s, because he wanted to be the leader of the Arab world. He was also seen as a troublemaker – relations with France, and especially the US, were very strained. 

So he changed tack, shifting from Arab nationalism to Africa: its future, decolonisation and development. He pursued a series of African policies, including support for development and investment, which quickly made him an admired figure overall, although his popularity varied from country to country.

RFI: What remains of Kadhafi’s legacy in Africa? Libya specialist Vincent Hugeux says Africa is “short on heroes”, which made Kadhafi “an icon by default”.

*** It’s now 2026. For the younger generation, who makes up the majority of the continent’s population, Kadhafi is a distant memory. They often have other reference points, but it’s true that iconic figures are thin on the ground. Among some African elites, Kadhafi did a lot of good, so there’s a certain nostalgia.

There may also be, and it’s surely grown in recent years, deep resentment, even anger, towards the countries that took part in overthrowing him. They say, with some justification: “You removed the regime without any clear plan for what would come next.”

Removing Kadhafi profoundly destabilised the whole region. Through a domino effect, it had severe and damaging repercussions, particularly in the Sahel, in terms of insecurity, instability and the spread of jihadism. It isn’t the only explanation, but there is maybe a feeling that the military operation that toppled him in 2011 had many harmful consequences for Africa.

RFI: Libya was the only country to see foreign intervention during the Arab Spring pro-democracy protests – a “humanitarian” intervention by the West carried out without the African Union’s backing.

*** Unlike what happened in most countries in the region in 2011 and 2012, Libya was the only state where Western powers chose to intervene. There were attempts at mediation, notably under South African leadership, to find a compromise between the protesters, or opponents of Kadhafi, and the regime. But Western powers set these mediation efforts aside and gave them no serious consideration. That remains a major source of tension and criticism among African elites.

The intervention was also seen as a betrayal by Russia, which has since used its veto to block any form of intervention proposed at the Security Council. In 2011, Moscow abstained on Resolution 1973. The West had presented it as a text embodying the “responsibility to protect” demonstrators and civilians. In practice, that responsibility was very quickly turned into a military intervention with the clear aim of toppling the regime.

RFI: Why has the Kadhafist movement in Libya never recovered since the 2011 revolution?

*** The year 2011 was particularly complex. Unlike in Egypt or Tunisia, where a popular movement brought down a regime and replaced it with another, three things overlapped in Libya. There was a popular movement that quickly became militarised and was met with repression. At the same time, the confrontation between the regime and its opponents was compounded by a deep division in the country between pro and anti-Kadhafi forces, both armed. This turned the conflict into a genuine civil war.

Finally, and above all, foreign military intervention added another layer of complexity and strengthened the various anti-Kadhafi factions on the ground. When the regime collapsed, the country was deeply divided between the victorious revolutionaries and the defeated, who were marginalised and sidelined for several years.

In this divided Libya, the two rival camps realised that, for security and political reasons, they needed to bring in a number of figures from the Kadhafi era. From 2017-18 onwards, a process of absorption and co-option began, with a number of former prominent figures aligning themselves with either Khalifa Haftar [leader of the Libyan National Army] or the Tripoli government.

Those who refused to join that system were, to varying degrees, allied with Saif al-Islam Khadafi. But although he was politically charismatic, he had no army or real militia capable of mobilising people. Nor did he have the financial means to do so, which put him at a disadvantage.

Following his assassination in February 2026, his movement is in real crisis. There’s no figure for supporters to rally around and no real political project either. Among Kadhafi’s surviving children, it seems that no one has the desire or the ability to play that mobilising role.

RFI: The writer Jean-Louis Gouraud, who knew Kadhafi well, wrote in his 2023 book that “Kadhafism was nothing other than Kadhafi”. Do you agree?

*** Kadhafism was indeed very much centred on Kadhafi as a person, on a highly personalised system of power closely tied to him. At the same time, Kadhafi was the product of a society and a rather particular history. In some respects there was something very Libyan about him. In a way he organised around himself a system closely tied to his country’s social structures and history. This is what is sometimes called the “Libyan personality”.

It reflects quite well what Libyan society went through in terms of profound upheaval: from the colonial period to independence and the discovery of oil – and the brutal way that transformed society and the role of the state.

We tend to forget that Libya and its people spent several decades largely cut off from the rest of the world because of sanctions and embargoes. That still shapes the Libyan personality today, even though new generations have of course come along.

So yes, in some respects you could say Kadhafism was Kadhafi. But it’s also the reflection of a country’s history, and upheavals in a society that we haven’t yet properly analysed or understood and which are quite unusual.

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Anna Borshchevskaya and Sabina Henneberg

If U.S. officials continue to let Moscow keep Libyan factions divided while deepening the Russian military footprint, the result will be growing security threats to NATO and Africa.

As international attention remains focused elsewhere, Russia is quietly expanding its presence in Libya—a highly strategic location that offers access to oil resources, military bases, and a deep-water naval port in the East Mediterranean. If Moscow succeeds in consolidating its position there, it would gain a critical hub from which to project power in the Middle East and across NATO’s southern flank, potentially interfering with the alliance’s naval operations, overflights, and military readiness.

Such a boost to Russia’s Mediterranean infrastructure, capabilities, and presence could potentially constrain NATO air and maritime freedom of maneuver in the event of a NATO-Russia conflict. Moreover, Moscow’s expansion in Libya may undermine U.S. efforts to stabilize and unify the fractured country, reversing years of international efforts to keep terrorists and strategic competitors out. 

Arms Transfers and Security Agreements 

After the fall of the Assad regime in 2024, Russia began moving large quantities of high-quality military assets from Syria to Libya. The first indication of its plans came through aircraft tracking data reported that December, which showed a major spike in flights from Syria to Libya.

Among the deliveries were “air-defense equipment, including radars for S-400 and S-300 interceptor systems,” underscoring Moscow’s intent to deploy sophisticated military assets to the country. Subsequent reports also confirmed the deployment of at least 1,800 Russian military personnel to Libya, including regular soldiers and members of the paramilitary Africa Corps (formerly the Wagner Group). Tanks and other heavy equipment soon followed. 

During a May 2025 parade in Benghazi, forces led by Gen. Khalifa Haftar—the warlord who controls eastern Libya—displayed an impressive array of Russian equipment said to be delivered from Syria. This show of force was intended to signal the disparity in foreign support compared to the internationally recognized Government of National Unity (GNU) in Tripoli, which has received minimal equipment. Combined with Russia’s expanded military footprint in the east, the parade also signaled that Moscow’s local influence was waxing rather than waning.

Russia has also sought to add a legal veneer to its presence. Just weeks before the Benghazi parade, one of Haftar’s sons, Gen. Khaled Haftar, reportedly signed an agreement in Moscow to “develop the strategic partnership and expand the areas of military and security cooperation and coordination.”

In the past, similar agreements reached with authorities in Sudan, Madagascar, and the Central African Republic have been used to bolster expanded Russian military deployments and activity in these countries. Going forward, the Kremlin could point to this legal instrument as grounds for retaining its military positions in Libya—footholds that have proliferated significantly this year, as discussed below.

Direct Military Entrenchment and African

Expansion

According to findings by the U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency reported this summer, Moscow is accelerating the construction of Russian facilities at six Libyan air bases and deploying its forces and assets there. These assets include air-defense radars, MiG-29 fighter jets, and drones reportedly operated by Russian personnel, including Africa Corps personnel.

Reports also indicate Russian plans to develop the port of Tobruk, which would provide a deep-water facility capable of housing large navy and cargo ships. Combined with the port facilities that Moscow has retained in Tartus, Syria, an enduring presence in Tobruk could expand the Russian navy’s ability to challenge NATO maritime operations.

Libyan bases have also helped the Kremlin route military flights, weapons, and personnel to other locations in Africa, particularly Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger. The United States continues to deploy small numbers of training and strike forces in these areas to counter the high-priority Islamic State threat, so any expansion of Russian deployments nearby poses multiple risks—from compromising the safety of American service members to increasing the likelihood of Russian weapons falling into terrorist hands.

Moreover, Moscow tends to support African regimes that use counterproductive tactics when cracking down on Islamist insurgencies, thereby contributing to further radicalization and undermining U.S. counterterrorism objectives. 

Deepening Divisions in Libya

Under the guidance of U.S. envoy Massad Boulos, the Trump administration’s primary objective in Libya over the past year has been to unify the economic, military, and political institutions of the Tripoli-based GNU and Haftar’s Benghazi faction, thereby facilitating increased national oil production. The UN Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) recently announced an agreement calling for national elections within two years, complementing the U.S.-led process. 

Yet Russia’s deepening involvement threatens to keep the country divided. Actors in the east and west have resisted the UN agreement, and Moscow has been fueling their opposition. For instance, its state-controlled news outlet RT Arabic has been promoting a narrative of division to justify continued Russian interference, publishing rejectionist articles within minutes after Libyan factions issue complaints or counter-initiatives against UNSMIL’s proposal. If the agreement is not signed, the matter could be turned over to the UN Security Council, where Russia could use its veto power to further thwart unification efforts. 

Without more active allied efforts to counter Moscow’s divisive tactics, the outcome will be a weak, internally split Libya that remains a source of mass migration, transnational crime, terrorism, and other issues of deep concern to Europe, Africa, and the United States.

In response to these problems, the international community would have to invest more resources and attention in treating what amount to symptoms rather than causes, while Russia focuses on its broader goals in the Sahel region—including efforts to undermine NATO and the United States. 

Policy Recommendations 

As Russia continues to struggle in Ukraine, its current strategy abroad centers on testing European and NATO unity, weakening the alliance, and building inroads in vulnerable countries where it retains options for asymmetric escalation, to be deployed at a time of its choosing. Libya is a poster child for this approach, posing a significant vulnerability on NATO’s southern flank unless more is done to unify the country. 

As things currently stand, Russia is well-positioned to interfere in any Libyan elections (if they take place), run disinformation campaigns, fuel waves of migration into southern Europe, and undermine U.S. counterterrorism efforts in the Sahel and beyond. Moscow’s gains in Libya could also enable it to develop economic and energy alternatives in the region.

Because Russia’s goals are both internal and external to Libya, the U.S. response should be organized in similar fashion, focusing on measures that counter Moscow’s internal interference while also mitigating its efforts to use the country as a base for wider power projection. 

Unify Libyan security forces. The U.S. political track has faced criticism for appearing to secure existing Libyan powerbrokers’ grip on the country rather than enabling the formation of truly inclusive institutions. Yet internal actors and external observers have cautiously welcomed the U.S. military track, highlighted by joint exercises in Sirte this year.

Washington should therefore continue pressing for gradual unification of eastern and western military elements through meetings, joint exercises, and trainings—though any Libyan access to U.S. military programs should be conditioned on excluding Russian defense equipment and capabilities. U.S. officials should also work to incorporate groups from Libya’s south, who may be opposed to Russia’s presence.

Back the UNSMIL roadmap. Libya’s current context presents a long-awaited opportunity for the West to once again promote a Libyan-led roadmap centered on holding elections within two years. To prevent Russia from thwarting this initiative, the United States should take the lead in uniting like-minded countries behind the roadmap, while also pressuring countries that have previously supported Haftar and eastern authorities to participate constructively.

Peel the Haftars away from Moscow. Following past meetings with U.S. officials, Gen. Haftar and his sons have repeatedly engaged with high-level Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin. The United States should therefore condition further engagement with them—including meetings, military assistance, and economic investments—on limiting their cooperation with Moscow.

Support Ukrainian initiatives in Libya. Kyiv understands that in order to effectively counter the Russians, it must connect its actions across multiple theaters, just as Moscow is doing. Accordingly, Washington should look for ways to support Ukrainian operations in western Libya aimed at countering Russia’s “ghost fleet” oil smuggling efforts in the Mediterranean. In addition, U.S. officials should help Kyiv craft and project its narrative in Libya, which necessarily includes countering the heavy disinformation that Moscow issues through outlets like RT Arabic. They should also work with Ukrainian embassy staff (who remain based next door in Tunisia for security reasons) on ways to bolster Kyiv’s diplomatic presence and outreach in Libya.

Do more to project the U.S. narrative. Russia has suffered many failures in Africa in recent years, such as an ineffective counterinsurgency campaign in Mali that worsened the country’s turmoil. After years of war and extremist violence, Libyans do not want to see a repeat of this cycle on their soil. U.S. public information programming and diplomatic engagement should therefore focus on connecting Russia’s security failures to the Libyan context; the same approach should be taken with its long track record of human rights abuses via the “Africa Corps.” 

Sanction Russian aircraft. Russia is using a network of military and private aircraft to sustain its forces in the Sahel, and Libya is a frequent launchpad for these operations. The United States and its partners can curtail this growing air fleet by adding to the sanctions they have already imposed in the past for activities such as supporting the Africa Corps/Wagner Group, abetting Russian arms proliferation in Africa, and so forth. These sanctions should be enforced through denial of overflight and refueling efforts, to make this tactic more expensive and time-consuming.

***

Anna Borshchevskaya is the Harold Grinspoon Senior Fellow in The Washington Institute’s Diane and Guilford Glazer Foundation Program on Great Power Competition and the Middle East. Sabina Henneberg is a senior fellow at the Institute and coauthor of its 2024 report “North Africa in an Era of Great Power Competition.”

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Younis Moussa

Why is the Libyan dinar losing value? Libya earns billions of dollars from oil exports, yet its currency faces pressure from foreign exchange demand, public spending and uncertainty over how the country manages its oil wealth. The exchange rate matters far beyond financial markets: it affects import costs, business decisions and the purchasing power of Libyan households.

Why does the Libyan dinar face pressure?

Libya depends heavily on oil and gas exports to generate foreign currency. The African Development Bank estimates that hydrocarbons account for about 97% of the country’s exports and more than 90% of government revenue. This dependence leaves the economy exposed to disruptions in oil production, changes in global prices and political disputes over public finances.

Oil exports bring dollars into the country, but the government also needs foreign currency to pay for imports. Libya imports a wide range of food, medicines, vehicles, machinery and consumer goods. When demand for dollars exceeds the supply available through official channels, businesses and individuals may turn to the parallel market.

Public spending also matters. Government salaries, subsidies and other expenditure support domestic demand, but they do not automatically increase local production. When spending grows faster than the economy’s ability to supply goods and services, demand for imports and foreign currency can rise.

The African Development Bank’s analysis of Libya’s economy explains why dependence on hydrocarbons leaves the country vulnerable to economic shocks.

Why are there two dollar exchange rates

in Libya?

Libya has an official exchange rate set through the banking system and a parallel-market rate that reflects transactions outside official channels. The difference between the two rates can indicate pressure on the foreign exchange system.

The Central Bank of Libya’s official exchange-rate page publishes the bank’s rates. Parallel-market platforms, including Prices.ly, track prices quoted by currency traders. Readers should compare the rates for the same date and transaction type because cash, bank transfers and other payment methods may carry different costs.

When the parallel-market dollar costs more dinars than the official dollar, access to foreign currency becomes an important economic issue. Importers who cannot obtain sufficient dollars through official channels may face higher costs when they buy currency elsewhere. Some businesses may pass those costs on to customers.

Authorities can influence the market through exchange-rate policy, foreign currency allocations, banking rules and other measures. However, a policy change alone cannot resolve deeper problems if businesses continue to face limited access to foreign currency or uncertainty over future rules.

What does a weaker dinar mean for

ordinary Libyans?

A weaker dinar can make imported goods more expensive in local currency. The impact depends on the exchange rate businesses actually pay, their existing inventories, transport costs, competition and government policies.

For example, an importer who pays more dinars to obtain the dollars needed for a shipment faces a higher cost before the goods even reach local shops. That pressure can affect food, electronics, spare parts and construction materials. Businesses that rely on imported equipment may also delay investment or raise their prices.

The effect reaches beyond consumers. A volatile exchange rate makes it harder for companies to plan budgets, negotiate contracts and estimate future costs. It can also discourage investment when businesses cannot predict how much foreign currency they will need.

Libya’s oil wealth gives it a significant source of foreign currency, but oil revenue alone cannot guarantee a stable exchange rate. The country also needs predictable financial management, reliable access to foreign exchange and greater confidence in its economic institutions.

Reducing dependence on imports by developing competitive local businesses could help over time. So could more transparent public spending and stronger coordination between the institutions responsible for oil revenue and monetary policy.

The key question is not simply how many dinars one dollar buys. It is whether Libya can turn its oil income into a more productive economy, with a currency market that businesses and households can rely on.

 ____________________

Hafed Al-Ghwell

A few days ago, Libya’s eastern-based House of Representatives dismantled a leadership arrangement that had lasted for more than 12 years. Lawmakers approved amendments limiting the speaker and deputy speakers to a single 12-month term. The following day, legislators elected Al-Saleheen Abdul Nabi Al-Abidi, to replace Aguila Saleh, who had led the chamber since August 2014.

Saleh challenged the proceedings as legally invalid. His opponents, however, accused him of making decisions without consulting lawmakers in addition to allegations, made weeks earlier, of his obstructing access to parliament’s headquarters. The leadership change, therefore, emerged from what appears to have been parliamentary discontent, even as its consequences clearly favor the military establishment dominating eastern Libya.

With this change, the relationship between institutional rules and coercive power has shifted dramatically. A 12-month term can promote accountability when legislators freely choose their leadership and can reject candidates without intimidation. Under the influence of Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan Arab Armed Forces, the same arrangement can create permanent insecurity for the speaker who must regularly accommodate the priorities of his unchecked rogue force.

What is more, replacing Saleh with another Obeidat tribesman was not incidental. The Obeidat are the dominant tribal federation in Cyrenaica, with their primary base in Tobruk. Elevating a member of the same tribe avoids local discontent, prevents a tribal vacuum, and preserves equilibrium between the Tobruk and Benghazi factions that underpin the parliament’s base.

More importantly, the tribal connection reduces the risk of alienating local constituencies while changing the political function of the speakership. Saleh cultivated an independent role within Haftar’s broader coalition; Al-Abidi inherits the office after a procedural overhaul that substantially weakens its occupant.

His background also bridges traditional tribal authority and modern diplomatic engagement, positioning him to manage external relationships with Ankara, Cairo, and Abu Dhabi, given his previous chairmanship of the Libyan-Turkish Parliamentary Friendship Committee. For years, Turkiye has backed political and military actors in western Libya, while Egypt and the UAE have supported Haftar’s eastern camp. Al-Abidi’s Turkish parliamentary contacts could help manage these competing relationships.

The suspicious timing of this change also complicates claims that the turnover will advance national reconciliation. In August, a UN-facilitated agreement established a roadmap toward presidential and legislative elections within 24 months. Yet on Oct. 5, Libya’s High Council of State, based in Tripoli, voted to reject the agreement’s outcomes. The House of Representatives’ leadership upheaval consequently occurred amid renewed disagreement over the very framework intended to reunify Libya’s divided institutions. Now parliamentary consolidation in the east could strengthen one negotiating bloc while weakening the prospects of a nationally accepted settlement.

Moreover, the struggle over the speakership matters because Libya’s parliament occupies a key position in the contest over public money. The country remains heavily dependent on hydrocarbons. Oil and gas account for about two-thirds of gross domestic product, more than 90 percent of exports, and over 95 percent of government revenues. Controlling the distribution of oil wealth, therefore, shapes far more than fiscal policy. It determines which institutions receive funding, which contractors secure projects, and which political networks retain access to state resources.

For now, however, the Central Bank of Libya, based in Tripoli, remains the sole authority managing public finances and processing payments. A parliamentary vote in Benghazi may not independently redirect the entire national treasury, but legislation and budgetary authorization can influence how resources are committed, aiding the Haftar clan to possess substantial coercive and administrative power over spending within their sphere. A more malleable speaker could further reduce parliamentary resistance to military allocations and development decisions, making the House a more predictable component of a rapidly consolidating eastern bloc.

For a country ravaged by sporadic violence, neglect, and poor governance, the first test of this new parliamentary setup will be in reconstruction. Belqasim Haftar, Khalifa Haftar’s son, heads the Libya Development and Reconstruction Fund, which is responsible for major infrastructure projects in the east. Critics have questioned the fund’s financial oversight and its relationship to the eastern administration’s wider spending. Belqasim has defended its auditing arrangements, while rival authorities have raised concerns about expenditure outside agreed-upon national budgets. The competing claims make independent disclosure and parliamentary scrutiny especially important.

With a pliant speaker, the institutional danger is straightforward: When military, legislative, and development authority become concentrated within connected networks, oversight depends increasingly on the willingness of those networks to police themselves. Al-Abidi’s tenure will reveal whether the House of Representatives can demand transparent contracts, examine development allocations, and question expenditures associated with Haftar’s command. Regular parliamentary sessions alone will provide little assurance if scrutiny becomes politically costly, or procurement decisions remain inaccessible to independent review.

Externally, Egypt has strong reasons to welcome a more predictable parliamentary partner in eastern Libya. Cairo’s foundational doctrine regarding Libya rests on maintaining an absolute security buffer zone in Cyrenaica against extremist elements and perceived insurgent factions. Beyond that, a compliant legislative ally in Benghazi and Tobruk can serve as a counterweight to the Tripoli-based Government of National Unity and Turkish influence in the west. Thus, Al-Abidi enters office with a mandate to align parliamentary action with the Libyan Arab Armed Forces-Cairo axis, unlike Saleh, whose independent diplomacy sometimes complicated coordination.

Al-Abidi’s appointment consequently marks a major advance in Haftar’s political consolidation, although the enclosure remains incomplete at the national level. The speaker faces questions over the legality of his selection, the autonomy of the House, the implementation of the unified budget, and the credibility of the election roadmap. The High Council of State’s rejection of the August agreement adds another obstacle to national consensus.

The decisive test will be whether the new leadership can demonstrate institutional independence through conduct: a parliament that meets regularly, applies its rules consistently, scrutinizes reconstruction spending, and cooperates on a credible electoral framework. Genuine renewal could still emerge from a leadership transition born of internal dissatisfaction. If the speakership instead becomes an office whose holder depends on military approval for continued survival, the outcome will be a more emboldened eastern power structure and diminished prospects of national reunification.

Libya’s fragmentation persists partly because control over public institutions carries tangible financial and political rewards. Al-Abidi’s rise brings the House closer to Haftar’s command at a moment when the country needs institutions capable of negotiating beyond their own political camps.

The question now is whether parliament retains enough autonomy to constrain the power that helped determine its leadership. And the answer is obvious.

***

Hafed Al-Ghwell is senior fellow and program director at the Stimson Center in Washington and senior fellow at the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies.

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Brian G. Karamuka

Jamestown

Executive Summary:

• Türkiye is broadening its Libya strategy by cultivating partnerships with rival government factions and shifting from intervention to long-term security brokerage.
• Ankara is anchoring its position in Libya and the Eastern Mediterranean through military cooperation, maritime agreements, and economic engagement.
• Türkiye’s expanding role challenges regional rivals and carries significant implications for U.S. interests, European energy security, and North African stability.

In late May, Türkiye hosted military training exercises that brought together personnel from Libya’s rival armed factions for the first time since the country’s post-2011 civil war began. The exercises saw the unprecedented participation of soldiers aligned with both the internationally recognized Government of National Unity (GNU) and the eastern-based Libyan National Army (LNA) under a single Libyan flag (RFI, May 23).

The initiative signals Ankara’s evolving approach to Libya; one that goes beyond supporting a single faction and positions Türkiye as a security broker capable of engaging both of the country’s power centers.

By cultivating both power centers, Ankara could gain greater leverage over any future political settlement and security architecture.

Since the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi’s regime in 2011, Libya has remained divided between two competing governments and military establishments. The GNU, headquartered in Tripoli and recognized by the United Nations, controls much of western Libya with political and military support from the European Union.

In contrast, General Khalifa Haftar’s LNA dominates eastern Libya and much of the country’s oil-rich interior, relying on support from Egypt, Russia, and the United Arab Emirates (Council on Foreign Relations, June 3).

External support has enabled both factions to consolidate control over their respective territories, but neither side yet possesses sufficient capability to defeat the other (Geopolitical Intelligence Services, November 13, 2025).

Türkiye’s military intervention in Libya marked a turning point in both the country’s civil war and Ankara’s regional security strategy. After General Haftar’s 2019 offensive against Tripoli, Ankara intervened on behalf of the Government of National Accord (GNA)—Libya’s interim governing structure between 2015 and 2021—preventing the collapse of the UN-recognized government and altering the conflict’s trajectory (Al-Jazeera, June 5, 2020).

Beyond preserving a friendly government in Tripoli, the intervention established Türkiye as one of Libya’s most influential external security actors. It demonstrated Ankara’s willingness to use military power to advance its geopolitical interests in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Türkiye initially relied on military advisers, intelligence support, drones, and other defense assistance to halt the LNA’s advance; however, as the balance of power shifted in favor of Tripoli, Ankara institutionalized its presence through a series of defense and maritime agreements with the GNA, including the landmark 2019 Turkey-Libya Memorandum of Understanding, focused on security cooperation and Eastern Mediterranean maritime boundaries (The New Arab, September 30, 2025). 

The intervention later evolved into a permanent military footprint, shifting Ankara’s role from an external supporter to a long-term security partner (Nordic Monitor, December 25, 2025).

Türkiye established a naval presence at the Port of Misrata, expanded operations from Al-Watiya Air Base after its recapture from Haftar’s forces, deployed advanced military systems—including Bayraktar TB2 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and air defense assets—and provided extensive training, logistical, and technical support to Libyan forces. 

Türkiye’s interest in Libya extends well beyond stabilizing its internal conflict. Situated at the crossroads of the Mediterranean, North Africa, and the Sahel, Libya serves as a critical gateway linking Europe and Africa. It holds some of the continent’s largest proven oil and natural gas reserves (Africa Center for Strategic Studies, May 18, 2020).

For Ankara, securing a long-term foothold in Libya has therefore become central not only to its North Africa policy but also to its broader ambitions in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Building on the defense agreements signed in 2019, Türkiye and the Tripoli-based government concluded a maritime Memorandum of Understanding establishing an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) that cuts across waters also claimed by Greece, Cyprus, and Egypt (United Nations, 2019). 

The maritime agreement also gave Türkiye a legal and political framework to contest competing maritime claims, while granting Turkish firms preferential access to future offshore energy projects (Middle East Forum, April 12).

The region’s considerable hydrocarbon potential underpins these ambitions. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that the Eastern Mediterranean contains approximately 107 billion barrels of undiscovered oil and 122 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, making control over maritime access increasingly consequential for regional competition (USGS, March 2010).

By anchoring its military presence in Libya to expansive maritime claims, Ankara has enhanced its ability to pursue offshore energy exploration, project power across the Eastern Mediterranean, and shape Europe’s evolving energy landscape. 

Türkiye’s expanding role in Libya is driven by objectives that extend well beyond preserving the Tripoli-based government. By establishing itself as a long-term security partner, Ankara has sought to counter the influence of regional rivals—including Greece, Cyprus, Russia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt—who maintain interests in Libya (Libya Tribune, June 10, 2025).

A sustained military presence also reinforces Türkiye’s position within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) by enhancing its role on the Alliance’s increasingly contested southern flank, where terrorism, migration, and great power competition are becoming central security concerns.

At the same time, Ankara has begun recalibrating its Libya strategy. Rather than remaining exclusively aligned with the UN-recognized GNU, Türkiye has gradually expanded engagement with the LNA. Relations began improving in late 2023, culminating in the reopening of Türkiye’s consulate in Benghazi in 2024 and high-level meetings between Turkish military officials and Haftar in 2025 (Turkish Minute, August 26, 2025). 

Türkiye’s military diplomacy has mirrored Libya’s political reality. In 2025, Turkish naval vessels made port calls in both Tripoli and Benghazi during the same deployment—the first such engagement involving both rival administrations. The visits included naval training activities and consultations with defense officials from eastern and western Libya, including Major General Saddam Haftar, deputy commander of the LNA, on future military cooperation under the banner of “One Libya, One Army” (DefenseNews, August 26, 2025).

Together, these developments suggest Türkiye is transitioning from backing a single faction to positioning itself as a security broker capable of shaping Libya’s military and political future. 

This rapprochement gained momentum following Haftar’s April 2025 visit to Ankara, where the LNA’s Chief of Staff of Land Forces met with senior Turkish military officials to discuss expanding defense cooperation (Libya Tribune, September 26, 2025). Reports indicate the two sides have since negotiated agreements covering joint naval exercises, military training, advisory support, and the potential provision of Bayraktar TB2 unmanned aerial vehicles (Libya Tribune, September 27, 2025).

By replicating the security partnerships it has built in eastern Libya, Ankara seeks to broaden support for the 2019 Türkiye–Libya maritime agreement, reinforce its long-term military presence, and strengthen the political legitimacy of its claims in the Eastern Mediterranean.

The rapprochement has produced tangible political and military outcomes. Most notably, the LNA has reportedly considered ratifying the 2019 maritime Memorandum of Understanding originally signed by the Tripoli-based GNU. This move would significantly strengthen the agreement’s political legitimacy.

Military cooperation has likewise accelerated. Earlier this year, personnel from Libya’s rival military factions participated together in Türkiye’s Efes-2026 multinational exercise, marking the first time both sides trained under a single Libyan flag (DefenseNews, May 6, 2025). 

Türkiye’s engagement in Libya forms part of a broader strategy to establish a network of military and commercial footholds along Africa’s most strategically important maritime corridors. Ankara has prioritized partnerships with Libya, Somalia, and Sudan, viewing their ports as gateways to the Mediterranean, Red Sea, and Indian Ocean, respectively.

By expanding its presence at facilities such as Somalia’s Mogadishu Port, Sudan’s Suakin Port, and key Libyan ports, Türkiye has sought to strengthen its influence over critical maritime trade routes while advancing its energy and security interests (Observer Researcher Foundation, March 1, 2025).

A growing military footprint has reinforced this maritime strategy. Türkiye’s two principal African bases are in Somalia and Libya, giving Ankara forward operating positions on both the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean. Opened in 2017, the TURKSOM military base in Mogadishu is Türkiye’s largest overseas military installation and serves as the centerpiece of its security partnership with Somalia (Evrensel, July 29, 2025).

The facility reportedly hosts more than 1,000 Turkish personnel and can train over 10,000 Somali troops, while providing logistics, operational support, and military assistance (Turkish Minute, August 6, 2025).

Türkiye has increasingly sought to differentiate itself from Russia and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) by presenting itself as a flexible, responsive, and operationally capable security partner for African states confronting insurgencies, Islamist militant groups, and separatist movements (Africa Center for Strategic Studies, July 8, 2025). This approach has been particularly evident in the Sahel and the Horn of Africa, where Ankara has paired defense cooperation with economic engagement to deepen its regional influence.

Türkiye has also aligned with Morocco’s Atlantic Initiative, which aims to give landlocked Sahelian states access to the Atlantic Ocean, signaling Ankara’s support for emerging regional connectivity projects.

Beyond security cooperation, Türkiye continues to expand its economic footprint through maritime and infrastructure investments, including supplying a modern tugboat to Kenya and supporting port and infrastructure development in Tanzania and Senegal (Observer Researcher Foundation, March 1, 2025). 

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Enda Maguire

Libya is conveniently positioned to play a greater role in global energy markets as a series of geopolitical crises threaten hydrocarbon supplies and transport routes around the world. Yet while disruptions around the Strait of Hormuz, the Bab el-Mandeb and key energy infrastructure in Russia, Ukraine and Saudi Arabia are raising concerns over supply security, Libya is struggling to maintain consistent production in its own hydrocarbon sector.

The National Oil Corporation (NOC) warned on September 22 that it may be forced to declare force majeure after the closure of key oil facilities and Valve No. 7 on the Sharara crude pipeline disrupted production and operations around Zawiya. The shutdown of the valve has halted crude flows from the Sharara field towards Zawiya port, with the NOC estimating losses of around 130,000 barrels per day and warning that prolonged disruption could affect refining, domestic fuel supplies and state revenues.

The timing is significant. Global energy markets are entering a period in which additional reliable supplies are becoming increasingly valuable, while Libya possesses some of Africa’s largest proven oil reserves and is already producing around 1.4 million barrels per day. The question is whether Libya can turn that potential into a meaningful contribution to global supply, or whether its own political and security problems will prevent it from taking advantage of the opportunity.

A global energy system under pressure

The scale of the disruption is becoming clearer as the northern hemisphere approaches winter, when demand for heating fuels traditionally increases.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) reported in September that global oil production fell by 1.6 million barrels per day between July and August, reaching 100.1 million barrels per day. More than 10 million barrels per day of Gulf production remained shut in because of the US-Israeli war on Iran. For the year as a whole, the IEA expects global supply to average 100.7 million barrels per day, 5.7 million barrels per day below 2025 levels.

The more immediate problem, however, is not simply crude oil. Refined products, particularly diesel and gasoil, have become a major source of pressure. Diesel accounts for almost 30% of global oil demand, according to the IEA, while US diesel prices passed $200 per barrel in early September, around 94% above pre-war levels.

Russia has become an important part of this problem. Ukrainian drone attacks have increasingly targeted Russian refineries, reducing the country’s ability to process crude into fuels. In order to calm the global energy markets Donald Trump had previously stated that Ukraine agreed to stop targeting Russian energy infrastructure, however this supposed commitment by Zelenskyy has yet to materialise.

The IEA estimates that Russian refinery throughput fell to 3.8 million barrels per day in June, around 30% below the previous year, while diesel production was nearly 30% lower. In the first eight months of 2026, a Russian refinery was hit by a Ukrainian drone strike roughly once every three days.

The consequences are being felt beyond Russia. Combined Russian and Middle Eastern diesel exports in August were 1.6 million barrels per day below February levels. Those two regions had accounted for almost 45% of global seaborne diesel trade this time last year.

At the same time, the Strait of Hormuz is effectively closed. Before the current crisis, roughly one-fifth of global oil supplies passed through the waterway. Reuters reported on September 21 that only 17 commodity vessels crossed the strait over the preceding weekend, compared with 37 the week before and a pre-war average of approximately 125 vessels per day.

Traffic through the Bab el-Mandeb has also fallen, while Ansarallah’s recent takeover of Yemen’s entire western coast, including the strategic port of Mokha and the islands of Perim and Zuqar, has given the group effective control over the Yemeni side of the critical shipping route. The development raises the prospect of further disruption to a waterway linking the Red Sea and Suez Canal with the Gulf of Aden and the wider markets of Europe and Asia.

Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline, designed precisely to provide an alternative to Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb, has also demonstrated the vulnerability of alternative routes. The 1,200-kilometre pipeline was shut following drone attacks reportedly launed from Iraq and had been carrying approximately 4–5 million barrels per day, equivalent to around 4–5% of global supply.

The result is a market with increasingly limited buffers. The pressure is particularly significant for diesel and other middle distillates, which account for around 30% of global oil demand and are essential to transport, industry, agriculture and heating. As winter approaches, heating demand rises, increasing consumption of middle distillates.

The IEA expects seasonal middle-distillate demand between August and November to increase by almost 1.2 million barrels per day as markets prepare for the winter heating season. This comes as global inventories are already being depleted, with stocks falling by 95 million barrels in August alone and by around 507 million barrels since February.

Higher winter demand therefore comes at the same time as lower available inventories, leaving markets with less capacity to absorb further supply disruptions. This means that any additional loss of refinery output or disruption to major oil supply routes could have a disproportionate impact on diesel availability and prices. That leaves little room for further supply side shocks as winter approaches.

Where Libya could fit

This environment creates an unusual opportunity for Libya. The country produced around 1.4 million barrels per day in August, according to the IEA, while the NOC reported in June that crude production had reached 1.44 million barrels per day, its highest level since 2013. The corporation has been targeting production of 1.5 million barrels per day by the end of 2026

Libya is also geographically well placed to supply European markets. Its crude can reach Mediterranean refineries without passing through the Strait of Hormuz or the Bab el-Mandeb, giving Libya’s hydrocarbon reserves a strategic geographic advantage when those routes are disrupted.

That does not mean Libya can replace the millions of barrels of oil that have been wiped off of the market. Its production is small compared with the volumes normally transported through traditional routes from the Middle East and the Gulf, and increasing output requires investment, functioning infrastructure and political stability.

Nevertheless, additional Libyan barrels could become increasingly valuable at the margin. If European and Mediterranean buyers are competing for fewer available supplies, a stable Libyan export stream could provide an alternative energy source.

The same applies to refined products. Libya’s Zawiya refinery has a capacity of around 120,000 barrels per day and produces petrol, diesel, jet fuel, LPG, fuel oil and other products for domestic consumption. Its location and existing infrastructure mean that a functioning refining system could help Libya reduce its dependence on imported petroleum products while supporting regional supply.

Libya’s own energy vulnerability

The problem is that Libya is struggling to maintain precisely the stability that global markets increasingly require. This vulnerability is not confined to the latest shutdown. In August, drone attacks targeted fuel storage tanks at the Zawiya complex. One tank containing approximately 4.5 million litres of petrol was damaged, while repeated attacks also affected nearby electricity infrastructure. Zawiya is particularly important because it sits at the intersection of crude production, oil transportation, refining and domestic fuel distribution.

The latest warning from the NOC demonstrates the contradiction. What this creates is a particularly damaging feedback loop. Libya needs reliable energy infrastructure to increase production and exports, but insecurity around that infrastructure can reduce production, damage facilities and increase the country’s reliance on imported fuel, which is crucial given that Libya is suffering from its own domestic fuel crisis.

The country’s dependence on refined-product imports makes the situation more acute. Even with the Zawiya refinery operating, Libya remains reliant on imported fuels for domestic consumption. A prolonged disruption could therefore simultaneously reduce crude exports and increase the amount of refined petroleum products that Libya needs to purchase from abroad.

An opportunity constrained by instability

The global energy crisis therefore presents Libya with both an opportunity and a warning.

International markets are entering a period of tighter supply, depleted inventories and severe pressure on refined products. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has exposed the vulnerability of Gulf exports; threats around Bab el-Mandeb have placed another major shipping route under pressure; attacks on Russian refineries have reduced diesel supplies; and Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline has shown that even infrastructure specifically designed to bypass a major chokepoint can itself become a target.

Even the United States is considering measures to retain more diesel domestically. Reports on a possible 90-day export ban emerged this week, although the White House has denied that a blanket ban is being prepared. The fact that such a measure is being considered nevertheless illustrates the extent of pressure in international fuel markets. US diesel prices reached $6.529 per gallon in the week ending September 21, according to the US Energy Information Administration.

For Libya, this should represent an opening. Its crude is close to major European markets, its production has recovered towards 1.5 million barrels per day, and its hydrocarbon sector has significant scope for further development.

But the latest NOC warning demonstrates the problem lying at the heart of the Libyan state. Libya cannot benefit fully from a global shortage of reliable energy if its own energy infrastructure remains vulnerable to armed groups, political disputes and operational shutdowns.

The international market may be looking for additional barrels, but Libya’s challenge is first to ensure that the barrels it already produces can reliably reach such markets. If it can effectively safeguard its infrastructure, maintain production and expand refining capacity, Libya has the potential to be a crucial supplier to an increasingly strained Mediterranean and European energy market. If it cannot, the country risks remaining a paradox of the global energy crisis — possessing substantial resources at precisely the moment they are most valuable, but unable to guarantee their reliable delivery.

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Michael Rubin

By Working with Khalifa Haftar, Instead of Abdul Hamid Dbeibah, Europe Can Compensate for the Saudi Shortfall with Libyan Oil.

With the Saudi announcement that it no longer can maintain its European oil shipments, European officials are panicked. Decades of European investment in alternative energy have raised prices but not fulfilled Europe’s core energy demand. Meanwhile, even Germany has now recognized that cutting separate deals with Russia to purchase natural gas puts the entire continent at risk. Europe needs fossil fuels; without them, Europeans will suffer and, eventually, European capitals will need to ration gasoline or even scale back industry.

It never had to be this way. The problem is not just that successive generations of European leaders’ have failed to take the threat of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its proxies seriously or, as with President Emmanuel Macron in France, actively sought to preserve them. European foreign ministries’ mercantilism and sanctions-busting both pumped money into Iranian and proxy coffers that sacrificed Europe’s broader long-term financial health for their own companies’ or nationals’ short-term financial gain, and Europe’s indulgent attitude toward China ignored the fact that Beijing might play hardball with Riyadh to ensure that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman put China’s energy needs ahead of Europe’s.

The problem in Berlin, Brussels, London, Madrid, Paris, and Rome, however, is not just the cynicism of their leaders, but also their willingness to elevate an arbitrary United Nations’ embrace of Islamist extremism above their own national interests. It is this element that European leaders should now consider as they enter a cold winter.

They do have an out, however: Eastern Libya and the Libyan Arab Armed Forces that control more than 70 percent of that North African country, including its oil field, pipelines, and major export terminals.

The problem dates back 15 years. After Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi’s regime collapsed, Libya briefly descended into chaos. In the United States, the memory of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens’ murder in Benghazi, at the hands of the extremist group Ansar al-Sharia, looms large. What happened next, though, is crucial.

In Benghazi, former Qadhafi-era general Khalifa Haftar rallied the citizenry to take back the country. They lost more than 5,000 people, but restored order throughout eastern Libya, killing and imprisoning militiamen, or forcing them to flee their area of control. Libyans have common sense. They know their country has great natural wealth and while, on an individual level, they are religiously and socially conservative, they also realize that the Islamist groups bring only misery. In a religious society like Libya’s, Islamists less protect religion than use Islam to deflect any questions about their own corruption, mismanagement and, often, foreign allegiances.

It should have surprised no one that Libyan nationalists won the subsequent election. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, her aide Jake Sullivan, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and his Special Representative for Libya Ian Martin, as well as European officials worried that the Islamists’ electoral marginalization could lead them to choose insurgency. Their response was appeasement, forcing Libya’s electoral victors to accept an Islamist prime minister in Tripoli, whom the UN recognized as the legitimate leader of Libya.

Today, that man is Abdul Hamid Dbeibah, the front man for a Misrata business family, who most Libyans regard as a bumbling fool. Dbeibah can hardly string together two sentences, and his record suggests he is far more interested in promoting Islamism and enriching himself than in rebuilding Libya. A case in point is Tripoli’s airport: Destroyed in the civil war, it remains unusable, with international flights diverted to a decrepit former military base. Benghazi, meanwhile, has refurbished its older Benina International Airport, and is completing a state-of-the-art new airport on the other side of the city, designed to compete with Dubai and Qatar.

There is also a night-and-day difference in security. Benghazi, Sirte, Derna, and Tobruk, and even the southern cities like Sabha, Qatrun, and Traghen, are generally secure: I often walk and drive around Benghazi and Sirte, for example, without security. Tripoli and Misrata, both still under Dbeibah’s control, remain safe-havens for militias, including Ansar al-Sharia, and are more like Mogadishu than Milan.

Dbeibah cultivates Turkish and Qatari support—and solicits their cash—both to keep himself in power and to follow their diktats, including the promotion of Islamism, the provision of Libyan contracts to Turkish and Qatari concerns, and endorsement of broader Turkish maritime claims in the Eastern Mediterranean. In short, Dbeibah is a puppet and a Trojan Horse who has no real popular support inside Libya and whose theoretical mandate expired years ago.

The question European leaders, specifically, must now ask is this: If there are two competing claims to power in Libya, one of which shows clear capacity, controls both territory and the oil infrastructure, and delivers security, while the other enables militias and demonstrates little ability to stabilize, let alone develop, the country, why should Europe recognize the latter?

Khalifa Haftar and his son Saddam are not separatists; indeed, they defend Libyan sovereignty more than those who would sell it out to Ankara or Doha, or who embrace ideologies that disregard national borders. They center their government in Benghazi not because they seek to divide Libya into its pre-20th century components, but because Turkey supplied drones to protect its assets in the Tripoli government. Regardless, Libya’s original constitution calls for two co-equal capitals.

With an energy crisis looming, rather than double down on Clinton and Ki-moon’s mistakes as the State Department’s Libya desk is still prone to do, Europe should recognize reality. In this case, it would not be self-serving, but rather, symbiotic. Libyans, including those in Tripoli, want the international experiment appeasing Islamists to end. They might tie recognition of the Haftars as the interim authority in Libya in exchange for a commitment for Libyan elections within a year and the establishment of a unified capital in the symbolically important city of Sirte, halfway between Benghazi and Tripoli.

They might then deal directly for Libyan oil. Certainly, this is not a new idea, nor would it be difficult. As of 2024, Europeans already purchased more than $21 billion of Libyan oil, though Dbeibah is difficult to deal with and he diverted most of the proceeds. By working with Haftar, the Europeans can increase production and compensate for the Saudi shortfall. Haftar is direct; he is in position, and he can strike the deal Dbeibah cannot.

By shifting European energy security to Libya, Europe can guarantee itself a flow of oil that does not need to transit the Strait of Hormuz, Bab el-Mandeb, or the Suez Canal. Saudi oil can become primarily China’s problem, as Europe instead secures itself with Libyan oil and Eastern Mediterranean gas.

If effete diplomats in European capitals, however, double down on Dbeibah, and the governments they represent do nothing, they deserve the chaos that could soon befall the continent.

_________________

Amnesty International says defendants were tortured into giving ‘confessions’ later used as evidence, as 50 more face death.

At least 30 men have been executed in eastern Libya since late August after being sentenced to death in secretive military trials and at least 50 others remain at imminent risk of execution, local media and rights groups have reported over the last week.

Amnesty International said the Libyan Arab Armed Forces (LAAF), led by eastern commander Khalifa Haftar and the de facto authorities in the region, resumed executions on 23 August in Libya for the first time since 2010. 

Those executed had been convicted following “grossly unfair and secretive trials” marred by torture, the rights group said.

Some of those executed or still awaiting death sentences were convicted of murder and terrorism-related offenses linked to fighting between the LAAF and opposing armed groups between 2014 and 2018, Amnesty said.

Several detainees claimed to have been tortured by armed groups affiliated with the LAAF following their arrests, including to obtain “confessions” that were later used as evidence against them, the rights group said.

“The LAAF authorities must immediately halt all executions,” the organization said, calling for a moratorium and the overturning of convictions and death sentences handed down following unfair trials.

Amnesty also called on authorities to retry civilians accused of internationally recognized criminal offenses in accordance with international standards of fairness in civilian courts that do not use evidence obtained through torture.

It called on authorities to grant international monitors access to Grenada and other detention sites in eastern Libya.

Families refused burials

Human rights defenders also reported that the authorities prevented some of the executed from being buried by their families, keeping the bodies and burying them themselves.

Amnesty said relatives were reportedly permitted to identify the bodies before burial but told not to hold funerals.

UN bodies have described such treatment as cruel, inhuman and degrading, the organization said.

The executions started about two weeks after Major General Fawzi al-Mansouri, the LAAF military intelligence chief, was killed in a car bomb attack in Benghazi in August.  

Separately, Libyan rights group Crime Monitoring Organisation said it had documented 31 executions at Grenada and al-Kuwayfiyah prisons by 10 September.

It said the prisoners had been sentenced by military courts and that case files had not been made public, making it difficult to independently assess whether fair trial guarantees had been respected.

The Libya Al-Ahrar television channel reported that families had been informed of further executions at the two prisons.

The executions had been condemned by the UN and the Libyan authorities in Tripoli, it said.

On 17 September, the UN Support Mission in Libya said that more than 30 people had been executed in eastern Libya in recent weeks and urged an immediate halt to any further executions.

It said the resumption of executions had ended Libya’s de facto moratorium on the death penalty that had lasted about 15 years.

Military prosecutions

Amnesty said military courts in eastern Libya had repeatedly violated defendants’ rights to a fair trial, including access to lawyers, sufficient time to prepare a defense, the right to remain silent and the right to a public hearing before an independent and impartial court.

The organization added that military prosecutors and judges in the east are not independent because they are affiliated with the LAAF or allied armed groups.

In 2017, Libya’s eastern-based House of Representatives passed a law giving military courts jurisdiction over civilians accused of terrorism and crimes committed in “military areas”.

The law was later declared unconstitutional by Libya’s Constitutional Chamber. 

Executions have resumed as UN-led efforts to unify Libya’s rival institutions and prepare the country for national elections continue.

Amnesty said the eastern authorities should halt all executions and conduct independent and impartial investigations into allegations of torture and other ill-treatment.

The executions come as the country remains split between rival administrations, with the internationally recognized Government of National Unity controlling the west and an administration allied with Haftar’s forces controlling the east and much of the south.

The LAAF’s hold on eastern Libya dates back to Haftar’s 2014 Operation Dignity, which was launched from Benghazi against armed groups. His forces later used the campaign to tighten their grip on much of eastern Libya.

Haftar’s forces, along with the UAE, have also continued to support Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which have been widely accused of genocide, Middle East Eye reported in June.

Investigators found training camps for RSF fighters in eastern and southern Libya.  

__________________

Murat Sofuoglu

Ankara’s engagement with Libya’s rival eastern and western administrations is creating channels for political reconciliation, but unifying the country’s institutions remains a challenge.

***

Libya, an energy-rich North African country with Africa’s largest oil reserves, descended into a bloody civil war in 2014 between rival western and eastern factions, three years after the violent overthrow and killing of longtime leader Muammar Gaddafi.

Despite intermittent fighting between the rival forces, the internationally recognised government in Tripoli has largely retained its legitimacy, signing significant agreements with countries such as Türkiye.

In recent years, however, political dialogue between the rival administrations has gained momentum, with Türkiye promoting its “One Libya” policy and supporting rapprochement between the two sides to unify the fractured country under a single central government.

In April, the rival eastern and western factions agreed on a centralised national budget to share the country’s substantial oil revenues, marking a step towards reunification.

In August, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan made a significant visit to Libya, holding talks not only in Tripoli, the seat of the internationally recognised government in the west, but also in Benghazi, the stronghold of the eastern administration led by Khalifa Haftar, General Commander of the Libyan National Army.

“It is essential that our Libyan brothers and sisters build their own future freely, securely, and prosperously. In line with the vision set out by our President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, we will continue to support dialogue and cooperation between Libya’s west and east and to contribute to Libya’s peace, stability, and prosperity,” he said after his Libya consultations.  

‘One Libya’ policy

Two weeks after Fidan’s meetings in Libya, the UN announced a roadmap outlining a two-year timeline for presidential and parliamentary elections, institutional unification, and the restructuring of the electoral commission, marking another step towards reunifying the country.

“That Türkiye is now able to engage with actors on both sides of Libya’s divide is very beneficial,” Salah Bakkoush, a Libyan political analyst, tells TRT World. 

“Türkiye’s leverage will be most consequential when engagement with both sides translates into institutional unification rather than accommodation of permanent parallel structures,” Bakkoush, also a former advisor to the High Council of the Libyan state, says. 

Bakkoush observes a growing willingness among Libya’s rival political factions to reach a compromise. 

However, he cautions that unifying competing centres of power under a single state authority will be difficult because “institutional authority remains unresolved” between the two sides.

Following Fidan’s visit, diplomatic contacts between Libya and Türkiye have intensified. Turkish intelligence chief Ibrahim Kalin met Libya’s acting defence minister, Abdussalam Zubi, in Istanbul on Saturday to discuss ongoing efforts towards institutional unification.

On Tuesday, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan also met Mohamed Menfi, chairman of Libya’s Presidential Council, on the sidelines of the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, emphasising the importance of national dialogue and reconciliation.

“A fragmented Libya exports insecurity; a sovereign Libya can contain it,” says Bakkoush. “The more Libya restores unified control over its institutions, borders and security forces” the better the country will prevent illegal trafficking networks and help regional stability, adds the Libyan analyst.

Ankara-Benghazi channels

Türkiye’s efforts to unify Libya have taken shape particularly since the October 2020 ceasefire agreement between the UN-recognised Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli and Khalifa Haftar’s eastern-based Libyan National Army (LNA), which ended large-scale fighting in the country’s civil war.

Before the ceasefire, Türkiye had already established important ties with Libya, signing a landmark maritime agreement with the Tripoli government in 2019 that delineated their respective maritime jurisdictions in the gas-rich Eastern Mediterranean. Following the ceasefire, Ankara increasingly turned its attention towards Libya’s east.

“Since the 2020 ceasefire, Türkiye’s engagement with eastern Libya has evolved beyond humanitarian assistance and reconstruction to include greater political, economic, and defence-related cooperation,” Ferhat Polat, a senior researcher and analyst specialising in North African geopolitics and security, tells TRT World. 

Saddam Haftar, the youngest son of Khalifa Haftar, who was appointed deputy general commander of eastern forces in August 2025, has been “an important figure in this rapprochement, visiting Türkiye several times and meeting with senior Turkish officials,” Polat says.

According to Polat, Haftar’s visits, alongside growing institutional contacts between Ankara and eastern Libya, have opened new channels of communication between the two sides, contributing to the ongoing national dialogue between the rival western and eastern administrations.

He also points to Türkiye’s growing defence capabilities and military ties with Libya as factors that could help the North African country establish a unified security structure across its vast territory.

In August 2025, the Turkish naval vessel TCG Kinaliada made a significant port call in Benghazi, where Turkish and eastern Libyan military officials discussed cooperation under the framework of a “One Libya, One Army” objective.

“Once security is firmly established across the country, the broader stabilization process can progress more smoothly. In this context, bringing Libya’s military institutions under a unified command structure is crucial,” Polat tells TRT World. 

“Türkiye has provided training and other support to strengthen the professionalism and institutional capacity of the Libyan army.”

_______________

Abdullah Al-Ma’azi

The central political question therefore risks ceasing to be “How do we build a prosperous Libyan state?”

ifteen years after Libyans rose against personalized rule, the country risks replacing one family-centred dictatorship not with democracy, but with competing dynasties, armed patronage networks and a political class that has discovered that “transition” can last forever.

Libyans have not necessarily abandoned their aspiration for democracy. Something more insidious is happening: They are being taught that democracy does not matter.

Fifteen years after the overthrow of Muammar Qaddafi, Libya remains trapped in what is still politely called a “transition.”

Governments described as temporary become permanent, elections are promised and postponed, and institutions whose democratic mandates have long expired continue to exercise power. Armed groups become state actors, family members become commanders and power brokers, and public money sustains a system whose principal achievement is its own survival.

The absurdity is illustrated by the Government of National Unity headed by Abdul Hamid Dbeibah. Created as an interim authority to take Libya to presidential and parliamentary elections in December 2021, it remains in power in Tripoli in 2026 although those elections never happened.

In the east, meanwhile, another political-security establishment has consolidated itself around Khalifa Haftar, his family and the forces under their control. Governments change names, roadmaps are rewritten, and election dates recede into the future, but those exercising power remain. Libya has turned the provisional government into a permanent political system: everybody is temporary, but nobody leaves.

Perhaps that is no accident. Genuine elections contain something profoundly threatening to Libya’s political class: the possibility of losing.

Elections mean that those controlling ministries, budgets, armed formations, contracts and patronage networks today might wake up tomorrow without them. Why should beneficiaries of the existing order enthusiastically construct the mechanism capable of removing them?

A convergence of interests

Dbeibah and Haftar are not allies, and eastern and western power centres continue to compete. Yet beneath their rivalry lies a convergence of interests. The western establishment needs money, armed protection and control of Tripoli; the eastern establishment needs access to national revenues and international legitimacy.

Militias need salaries and influence, business networks need contracts, politicians need offices, and families surrounding powerful men need access to wealth.

Foreign governments want oil, migration control, counter-terrorism cooperation and sufficient stability to protect their interests. No formal coalition is necessary. Everyone merely has to conclude that continuation of the existing system is preferable to allowing Libyan voters to overturn it.

The bitterest irony concerns nepotism. Libyans rose in 2011 against a political order in which the state had become inseparable from Qaddafi, his sons and the networks surrounding them.

Yet power in eastern Libya has become increasingly concentrated not merely around Khalifa Haftar but around the Haftar family. His son Saddam Haftar has risen to become deputy commander of the eastern forces and increasingly represents that establishment internationally.

Instead of building institutions capable of surviving Khalifa Haftar, eastern Libya risks building a succession mechanism capable of perpetuating his family. Western Libya has developed a different but similarly troubling phenomenon through the growing political and commercial influence of networks associated with the Dbeibah family.

Libya thus risks completing a grotesque historical circle. It overthrew one family-centred authoritarian state only to produce multiple family-centred political, commercial and military fiefdoms. This is not a restoration of Qaddafi’s Jamahiriya. In one respect it could prove worse: Qaddafi presided over one personalised state; Libya now risks acquiring several personalized centres of power competing over the resources of the same country.

None of this can be understood without oil. Libya possesses immense petroleum wealth shared among a population of only several million people. That should provide the foundations for one of Africa’s most prosperous states. Instead, it helps finance political dysfunction.

A government dependent upon taxation must, however imperfectly, worry about the citizens from whom it collects revenue. Libya receives enormous income from selling hydrocarbons abroad. Control the institutions through which that money flows and you gain influence over budgets, salaries, subsidies, contracts, appointments and patronage.

How do we build a prosperous

Libyan state?

The central political question therefore risks ceasing to be “How do we build a prosperous Libyan state?” and becoming “Who gets access to the money generated by the Libyan state?” Oil makes capturing the government extraordinarily profitable.

When political survival can be financed through distributing oil rents, accountability to citizens becomes less urgent. Libya’s greatest economic blessing becomes its political curse.

The international community also deserves uncomfortable scrutiny. Western governments proclaim their commitment to elections, while the United Nations continues producing roadmaps towards elected and unified institutions. The language remains impeccable. But governments reveal their priorities through behaviour rather than communiqués.

Europe wants Libya to restrain migration across the Mediterranean. Washington wants counterterrorism cooperation, regional stability and limits on Russian influence. Italy wants energy and migration cooperation.

Turkey, Egypt, France, Russia and the Gulf states pursue their own strategic and commercial interests. Oil must continue flowing, migration must be contained, jihadists controlled, and geopolitical competitors kept in check.

And if the men capable of delivering these things happen to be authoritarian, dynastic or embedded in systems of patronage? Increasingly, the practical answer appears to be: We can work with them.

Haftar has understood this particularly well. The more he presents himself not merely as a Libyan military strongman but as a regional security broker—cooperating against terrorism, becoming useful in the Sahel, controlling territory and offering stability—the more the question in foreign capitals changes. Instead of asking, “By what democratic authority does this man exercise power?”, policymakers begin asking, “Can this man deliver what we need?”

Democracy in question

That is often how democratic principles die in international diplomacy: not through one dramatic betrayal, but through a thousand pragmatic accommodations. Democracy moves quietly from objective, to aspiration, to talking point.

Yet it would be wrong to conclude that Libyans themselves have rejected democracy. When municipal elections have been permitted, Libyans have demonstrated a willingness to participate, while consultations have repeatedly produced demands for elections, unified institutions and accountable government.

The tragedy may therefore not be that Libyans no longer want democracy, but that they increasingly believe nobody will allow democracy to change anything.

That is more dangerous, because frustration eventually becomes exhaustion. After enough failed roadmaps, postponed elections, rival governments, parliaments, militias, foreign interventions and political conferences, ordinary citizens stop asking constitutional questions.

They ask whether the electricity will stay on, whether salaries will be paid, whether their children can find work and whether they can return home safely at night. When politics reaches that point, authoritarianism no longer requires enthusiasm. It requires fatigue.

Then comes one of the oldest bargains in politics: give us obedience and we will give you stability. 

After fifteen years of turmoil, such a proposition inevitably becomes more attractive. Some Libyans remember a country that, whatever the brutality and absurdities of Qaddafi’s rule, possessed a single government, a recognizable state and a degree of everyday predictability.

That does not mean they want Qaddafi back. It means that when democracy becomes associated with disorder, corruption and political impotence, authoritarianism can acquire the appearance of competence simply by comparison.

That may ultimately prove the greatest failure of post-2011 Libya: not merely that democracy failed to arrive, but that those who captured the transition could succeed in discrediting democracy without ever seriously trying it.

Libyans demanded dignity, accountability, political participation and an end to arbitrary, personalized government in 2011. What risks emerging instead is a system of family networks, armed patronage, oil rents, corruption, foreign sponsorship, unelected institutions and indefinitely postponed elections.

It is more dangerous than

another Qaddafi

The danger is no longer necessarily another Qaddafi reunifying Libya under a single dictatorship. It may be something subtler and harder to uproot: an oligarchic settlement in which eastern and western elites learn to coexist, divide access to the state’s enormous revenues, distribute patronage through their respective networks and periodically renegotiate the balance among themselves.

Foreign governments might accept such an arrangement because the oil flows. Europe might accept it because migration is contained. Washington might accept it because terrorism is controlled, and geopolitical rivals are kept at bay. Libyan elites might accept it because everyone sufficiently powerful receives a share.

There would be only one conspicuous absentee from this grand bargain: the Libyan citizen.

That is why it is premature to say Libyans have bid farewell to democracy. They have not necessarily abandoned it. Democracy is being taken away from them through attrition. The ballot box is forever promised for tomorrow while political power and national wealth are divided today.

The most dangerous moment will come when Libyans finally stop demanding elections—not because dictatorship defeated democracy in an open contest, but because years of manipulation persuaded them that voting could never change anything.

At that point, the architects of Libya’s permanent transition will have achieved their greatest victory. They will not have needed to abolish democracy. They will merely have persuaded Libyans to stop believing in it.

***

Abdullah Al-Ma’azi was born in Tripoli, Libya to a well-known Tripolitanian family that dates back at least 500 years. He studied politics at the University of York and has written extensively on Libya and the politics of the Arab world. His work has appeared in Arabic in As-Safir and Al-Akhbar, and in English in The Tripoli Post and Middle East Eye. His articles on Libya have attracted substantial readership and debate, reflecting his longstanding engagement with the country’s political development.

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Tarek Megerisi

In Libya today, things have never been better. They have also never been worse. Just depends on who you ask.

On 30 August, an agreement was signed resolving long-standing disagreements which had disrupted Libya’s electoral process for almost five years. According to the UN officers and diplomats who oversaw the deal, this is the spring of Libyan democracy. Talk to Libyan activists, or politicians across the spectrum, however, and you will fretfully hear of a winter of Libyan dictatorship.

The difference is between the headlines and the small print. After all, a deal has been reached between representatives of Libya’s rulers, an impressive, rare achievement. But the deal makes the future parliament powerless, creates the prospect of an all-powerful presidency, and enables military candidates to run alongside civilians. Hence the fears that this is a purpose-built process for a Haftar presidency, rather than a path towards the representative politics Libyans crave. Especially given this agreement comes after months of Washington trying to engineer a deal to make Haftar’s son and putative heir Saddam interim President.

Libya’s House of Representatives held its first session in over 8 months on 14 September. Just over 30 out of 200 members attended and, allegedly, unanimously ratified the agreement in a closed session. The UN applauded this achievement as a sign of consensus and progress. The type of democracy to come.

Politics aside, it is the best of times for Libya’s economy (at least since the 2011 war). Oil production keeps reaching new post-2011 highs as oil prices rise amid the war on Iran. Major international companies prospect a return, while glitzy investment conferences and reconstruction projects overseen by Libya’s two rulers continue grabbing headlines. The re-opening of a more glamorous Tripoli international Airport is regularly teased, while European footballing giants Inter Milan and Atlético Madrid played a ceremonial friendly to mark the opening of Benghazi’s new stadium.

Inflation, power cuts, fuel shortages

Headlines aside, it is the worst of times for Libya’s economy (at least since the 1950s when there was widespread famine). This is best evidenced in Libya’s currency black markets, where the Libyan dinar regularly drops under 10 to the dollar. Accompanying inflation means many Libyans struggle to buy meat or nutritious food every month.

East and West Libya are united by prolonged power cuts, sometimes reaching over 24 hours, leaving Libyans stranded during exceptionally hot summer months. All Libyans wait in oppressively long queues to fill cars with fuel, even as the Libyan state imports fuel in record amounts. Professionals of all industries complain of rampant corruption, industry capture by white-collar criminals, and a state or banking system that is only really accessible through such connections.

Meanwhile, new companies like Arkenu Oil, allegedly owned by representatives of Libya’s ruling families, have broken the Libyan state’s monopoly on selling its own oil, sending billions of dollars of Libyan wealth into private hands. With no power, no petrol and no order, the normal economy is dying; rent-seeking is thriving.

Nevertheless, Libya is at least in a season of peace and stability. There has been no war since the Spring of 2020. Haftar’s forces and government forces are performing joint exercises with the United States’ Africa Command. A process has begun to join the armies and forge a durable peace.

Even so, Libya is in a season of ominous instability. Last year Tripoli saw its worst fighting since the 2019-2020 war, as tanks and drones entered residential streets. This summer, amid the power cuts, militias have been attacking Libya’s only functioning refinery in Zawiya with drones, destroying the tanks holding precious fuel for cars and generators.

Internal wrangling

Even Haftar’s forces seem to be constantly fighting in territories they claim to control. There have been internal feuds between Saddam and other generals, and most recently a siege over the city of Qatrun in southern Libya is sparking a new resistance movement. Forces in the west claim the drone strikes are from Haftar, while Haftar claims western forces are agitating against him in the south. Meanwhile, assassinations are becoming increasingly popular, with key figures in western Libya, eastern Libya (such as Haftar’s intelligence chief), and in the opposition (including Gaddafi’s own son, Saif al-Islam) killed over the past 12 months.

Libyans may be divided, but this is an epoch of unparalleled international unity on Libya. Previously feuding powers like Türkiye, Russia, the UAE and Egypt are all making accommodations on the ground and with the US process. The United Nations Security Council is collectively welcoming the recent agreement.

Oil production keeps reaching new post-2011 highs, but accompanying inflation means many Libyans struggle to buy meat or nutritious food every month

Quiet concern

The Security Council may appear united, but this is a foreboding epoch of international fractures in Libya and violations in Libya. The UN process is making progress for the first time in five years because it has relegated itself to simply facilitating Boulos’s brokering under different branding. International members of the Berlin process—a diplomatic group intended to ensure Libyan stability—are quietly concerned about the consequences of America’s actions, just not enough to actually challenge it.

The difficulties of working together are evident in a lack of joint statements, and in the wording and timing of the statements that do come out. The Ukraine-Russia war has spread to Libya, with Ukrainian units allegedly involving in trainings, the dispersal of low-cost drones, and the scuppering of an oil tanker off Libya’s coast (that could have led to disastrous environmental consequences).

Meanwhile, Russia and others continue developing military, naval and air bases while shipping and flying in weapons in alarming amounts. The Sudanese Armed Forces have bombed and launched raids to destroy supply lines through Libya’s south-eastern province of Kufra, used to fuel their own civil war.

___________________

Alessandra Bajec

Turkey’s growing engagement with Khalifa Haftar comes as Washington pushes a new bid to reunify Libya, with Ankara seeking influence across its rival camps. But with Libya’s divisions still entrenched, can Turkey help bridge the divide ?

Six years ago, Turkey helped Khalifa Haftar’s rivals repel his assault on Tripoli. Now, Ankara is sitting down with the Libyan military commander. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan travelled to Benghazi on Aug. 12 for talks with Haftar, his son Saddam, and senior eastern officials a day after meeting Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah and other officials in Tripoli. 

The visit underscored Ankara’s evolving “One Libya” strategy, reflecting a shift beyond the east-west divide. While maintaining its foothold in the west through its military presence, political relationships, and commercial ties, Turkey is also building direct links with the eastern camp it once opposed. The outreach comes as other regional powers also expand contacts across Libya’s divide. Egypt stepped up engagement last month, with Egyptian intelligence chief Hassan Rashad meeting Saddam Haftar in Alamein on Aug. 22, three days after President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi met Haftar, amid growing calls to end Libya’s institutional split.

Fidan’s visits reflect Ankara’s effort to build ties with key political and security actors while backing Libya’s unity and military unification. His July 24 meeting with Saddam Haftar in Ankara and the participation of eastern and western Libyan forces in EFES 2026, Turkey’s major military exercise, further reflect efforts to foster coordination between the rival camps. The diplomatic drive also suggests Ankara is seeking channels to figures who could shape Libya’s future political and security arrangements.

Libya has remained divided since the 2011 uprising and military intervention that toppled Muammar Gaddafi, with Dbeibah’s government controlling much of the west, while Haftar’s forces and an eastern administration dominate the east and much of the south. Haftar’s 2019 offensive on Tripoli was repelled with Turkish military support, while the 2020 ceasefire ended the assault but left institutions fragmented. The UN has for years pursued a political settlement and elections to end Libya’s institutional divisions, but repeated efforts have stalled.

The contrast with 2019 could hardly be sharper. After intervening to halt Haftar’s advance, Ankara now appears focused on leveraging its presence to engage both sides rather than pursuing direct confrontation.

The rapprochement is not just about diplomacy. It is also about what Turkey stands to gain. Turkey’s Libya strategy increasingly combines political, security and defense interests with long-term ambitions in energy, infrastructure and reconstruction. The economic relationship is substantial: since 1972 Ankara has carried out 633 projects worth around $31 billion, while bilateral trade reached about $4.4 billion in 2025. In February, state energy firm TPAO secured rights to jointly operate two Libyan oil fields. 

Turkey’s overture to the east also seeks to safeguard the 2019 maritime deal with Tripoli, which gives Ankara rights over potentially energy-rich waters but is opposed by Greece, Cyprus, Egypt and Israel. With the eastern parliament yet to ratify it, closer ties with Haftar could broaden Libyan backing and strengthen Turkey’s position in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Turkey’s rapprochement with Haftar exposes the limits of a Libya policy long centered on Tripoli. While that approach secured Turkey considerable influence in western Libya, it gave Ankara far less reach in the east and south, making a broader strategy increasingly necessary. The shift therefore represents a pragmatic attempt to close that gap, with Haftar’s camp offering Turkey an opening to become an important eastern partner and a potential facilitator in Libya’s political and security landscape, Burak Can Çelik, a political affairs researcher specializing in Turkish foreign policy, argued.

The thaw with eastern Libya is also forward looking: an attempt to build a nationwide strategy that can withstand “Libya’s eventual political reconfiguration,” said Nebahat Tanriverdi, a researcher at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs’ Center for Applied Turkey Studies. Tanriverdi identified three priorities: preserving the 2019 security and maritime agreements, securing a role in integrating Libya’s security institutions, and expanding Turkey’s footprint in reconstruction. Rather than acting as a neutral mediator, Ankara is seeking to shape political and security arrangements while protecting its own “vested interests,” Tanriverdi said.

Ankara’s outreach to eastern Libya also reflects a pragmatic commercial calculus. Turkey wants to “expand its defense industry and secure reliable clients to do business,” said Amanda Kadlec, a former member of the UN Security Council Panel of Experts on Libya, including within Haftar’s camp. The east may offer a more straightforward transactional relationship because of its more “vertically controlled” power structure, she observed, whereas overlapping armed-group interests in the west leave Ankara navigating a more fragmented set of interlocutors.

By engaging both Tripoli and Benghazi, Turkey is preserving its western ties while positioning itself for Libya’s political future. But Kadlec sees Ankara’s clout as limited by Libya’s competing internal and external actors. “It’s less about gaining leverage over Libya’s political future than securing Turkey’s own interests as a form of insurance, depending on how things unfold,” she said. She also cautioned that Turkey’s military backing of western Libya in 2019 may undermine its chances of being seen in the east as a “legitimate and trustworthy” mediator.

Meanwhile, Ankara’s credibility in western Libya rests on its 2019–2020 intervention that broke Haftar’s siege of Tripoli, Tanriverdi emphasized, so closer ties with his camp could strain that trust. Ankara is therefore stressing to western partners that its eastern outreach is “an effort to adapt to a changing political equation,” not a fundamental shift in alignment.

The move comes amid broader regional realignment, including improved ties with Egypt and the UAE, key Haftar backers during the conflict, giving Turkey greater room to maneuver between Libya’s factions without abandoning its longstanding western alliance. “It’s less about Turkey’s rapprochement with Haftar than the falling apart over the last four years of a bifurcated Libya, with different global blocs backing east and west,” said Jason Pack, Libya expert and founder of Libya-Analysis. 

Growing Turkish-Egyptian coordination over Libya reflects a more pragmatic regional dynamic, with former rivals increasingly managing competing interests through diplomacy rather than opposing proxies. “Turkey wants to safeguard its political interests, regardless of who is in power,” Turkish foreign policy analyst Suat Delgen said. “To do so, it needs to keep channels open with all sides.” Delgen emphasized that Turkey’s reconciliation with Egypt helped enable its rapprochement with Haftar. He also noted that, particularly since July’s NATO summit, Ankara has increasingly aligned its Libya policy with Washington.

Under Massad Boulos, Donald Trump’s Arab and African affairs adviser, Washington is pushing a framework to unify Libya’s rival eastern and western camps under a single government and institutional structure, centered on security integration, political cooperation and unified economic management. 

Critics fear the US is prioritizing an elite power-sharing deal while stabilizing Libya’s oil sector and opening it to greater US investment. Karim Mezran, director of the Atlantic Council’s North Africa Initiative, dismissed the Boulos plan as incapable of delivering a lasting solution. “The American mediation isn’t interested in solving Libya,” the North Africa expert said, “but rather in bringing together the two power centers created by the war.” A genuine settlement, he argued, would require foreign security guarantees and the involvement of Turkey, Egypt, and other key powers.

Regional powers are selectively backing, opposing or spoiling elements of the initiative to shape the deal in favour of their allies. “Each player is trying to be involved in the deal, making sure its clients get the best possible outcome,” Pack said. 

As Turkey and other external powers compete for influence through business and diplomacy, such competition may reduce the risk of renewed war, but it could also make a “relatively stable but divided” Libya acceptable if outside actors can protect their interests without pushing for deeper political unification, Çelik observed.

“Libya’s political reunification may no longer be essential for Ankara if it can retain its influence in the west while gaining access to energy, reconstruction, defense and trade in the east,” the scholar said. The greater risk, he argued, may therefore be an entrenched divide in which foreign powers protect their interests while local elites retain power through continued external support.

_____________________

Khaled Mahmoud

Ongoing security crises are testing Massad Poulos peace initiative

A series of crises have roiled Libya over the last month, undermining a U.S.-led initiative to resolve the country’s profound political predicament and open its markets to American investment.

Violent protests over deteriorating living conditions have surged in western cities under the control of Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh, just as a series of drone strikes have hit energy and oil facilities in the city of Zawia, west of Tripoli. In the east near Benghazi, which is under the authority of strongman Khalifa Haftar, unknown assailants assassinated Major General Fawzi al-Mansouri, Haftar’s head of military intelligence. This chaotic stretch of events prompted the U.S. to belatedly recognize that the deteriorating security situation could undermine its peace initiative.

In a tone reflecting concern over the spiraling situation, Massad Boulos, President Donald Trump’s adviser for Arab and African affairs, said the attacks “underscore the need for unified, professional military and security institutions capable of providing security for the Libyan people.”

So far, Boulos has succeeded in bringing together military commanders from eastern and western Libya in joint exercises as well as bilateral meetings. But these nascent efforts are a far cry from an actual unification of military institutions. Without progress on that front, there is little hope of achieving a The security dilemma

In a recent briefing to the U.N. Security Council, Hanna Tetteh, the U.N. envoy to Libya, said widespread power outages and public discontent revealed the consequences of “institutional fragmentation,” resource mismanagement, weak investment, and non-existent coordination in decision-making.

Tetteh’s warning regarding the fragility of the security situation along the western coast — where armed groups linked to drug, human, and fuel smuggling compete — raises anew the unspoken questions regarding the armed militias that have become part of the current Libyan scene.

An important aspect of this warning is Dbeibeh’s attempt to rearrange his forces ahead of a possible military operation to wrest control of Zawia from local militias, which has become a strategic priority due to the oil refinery located there.

However, Mohammed al-Haneesh, a member of the Libyan House of Representatives for Zawia, warns that storming the city is no easy task — one that could have exorbitant security and political costs.

Al-Haneesh says the success of any political settlement will rely on the U.S. administration’s ability to exert strong and balanced pressure on all parties. Failure on this front, he noted, could open the door to a new armed escalation, leading to yet worse division than that of today.

Zawia: A test balloon

The future of the security situation in Zawia is important for Boulos. It’s also important for the American company General Electric, which announced that it was evacuating its technical teams from a power plant in Zawia until the security situation improves.

Zawia, located about 25 miles west of Tripoli and housing the largest operating Libyan refinery, is not just a troubled city; in my estimation, it is a key test for Boulos’ initiative.

Any escalation there would weaken Dbeibeh’s position and increase the fragility of the security environment in the west. This directly threatens the U.S. initiative, which relies on maintaining the country’s fragile stability.

The goal, from the U.S. perspective, is to impose a power-sharing settlement between east and west that unifies institutions and creates conditions for investments in the energy sector.

Zawia proved that the security dimension of Boulos’ initiative is somewhat underdeveloped, as vividly demonstrated by GE’s rapid exit from the plant there. That departure should be a wake-up call for Boulos as he seeks to persuade other American companies to return to Libya.

And, despite Boulos’ success in unifying the budget for the first time in 13 years, the conflict between Benghazi and Tripoli over oil revenues and the management of the central bank is ongoing.

If Dbeibeh attempts to storm Zawia and impose his control, the initiative will find itself under extreme strain, as his expected failure will necessarily mean he is not the trusted party to bring stability.

From the perspective of oil expert Ahmed al-Shehati, Boulos’ initiative is not designed to solve the roots of the Libyan conflict, but rather pragmatically aims to temporarily freeze the conflict and protect oil flows.

This arrangement may succeed, according to al-Shehati, in preventing military clashes between elites and stabilizing the flow of funds, but it remains fragile in the long run.

Haftar’s family of multiple voices

In the east, specifically Haftar’s stronghold in Benghazi (Libya’s third-largest city), the situation is no less complex.

He suffered a blow with the assassination of al-Mansouri, one of his top aides and the head of military intelligence. But Haftar has managed to keep most attention on his relentless efforts to endear himself and his son, Saddam, to both American and Russian parties, in part by helping secure the release of an American pilot and two fighters of the Russian Africa Corps from Mali.

By cozying up to foreign powers, Khalifa Haftar is hoping to guarantee his family’s influence in any future agreement. Boulos’ compromise agreement has not been made public, but reports suggest it would place Saddam at the head of the Presidential Council, which would rule alongside Dbeibeh as prime minister.

Tetteh’s recent briefing highlights the divergence of priorities between the dueling initiatives: while the United Nations works to unify security and executive institutions in preparation for long-delayed elections, Boulos merely seeks a political and economic consensus among current centers of power. In an implicit critique of Boulos’ path, Tetteh considered that “establishing parallel tracks and initiatives may open the door to wasting time and searching for alternative platforms, which should be avoided.”

Abdul Jalil Mayouf, energy affairs adviser in the former Libyan government, warned that the balance of power on the ground has completely changed compared to 2015, when the Skhirat agreement opened the path for ongoing U.N.-led negotiations. Militias today have become much stronger and taken control of the economy in western Libya, to the extent that Mayouf pessimistically wonders whether Boulos’ initiative even aims to “officially install these militias” as leaders in the region.

What comes next?

Here lies the rub: Is it possible to protect the U.S. initiative? Will everyone accept it? And what are the limits of American capability to impose it and ensure it remains alive without suffering a sudden death?

Answering these questions would reveal the danger of Boulos making efforts to unify institutions and forge a political agreement without first providing the necessary security environment.

The events of Zawia represented a heavy price for an American company, shedding light on the magnitude of security threats. Likewise, the assassination of Haftar’s aide in the east reopened counterterrorism wounds that many observers thought had healed.

Boulos will certainly find partners for his initiative and will perhaps reach an agreement later, but the dilemma of ensuring its implementation remains.

Although the U.N. initiative is not entirely effective and faces difficulties in persuading local partners, it is at least more attentive to the danger of the security situation. However, it has so far failed to dismantle militias and expel mercenaries and foreign forces from Libya.

Some Libyans look with suspicion upon Boulos’ initiative as a means to recycle the ruling elites responsible for institutional failure in the country and preserve the dinosaurs that refuse to go extinct.

Therefore, Boulos must give the security and military situation greater importance. It is, after all, the most important dimension in his ambitious drive to secure a political solution to the war, which will certainly not succeed in the absence of a force to protect it.

***

Khaled Mahmoud is an Egyptian journalist and Cairo University graduate. Specialized in Arab and political affairs, his reports are widely cited by global news agencies.

___________________

Frank Talbot

On August 30, representatives of Libya’s rival political and security blocs signed a UN-facilitated agreement aimed at resolving disputes over the rules and constitutional basis for national elections that have blocked a vote since 2021. The agreement now faces two deadlines in quick succession: Libya’s House of Representatives (HOR) and High State Council (HSC) have until the end of September to endorse the agreement. One month later, the mandate of the UN Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) expires.

US Senior Advisor Massad Boulos and other international partners quickly welcomed the UN agreement and urged Libyan institutions to implement it. The United States has insisted that its bilateral diplomacy supports UNSMIL, telling the Security Council in August that its “efforts are fully complementary to UNSMIL’s roadmap.” The next two months will test that claim.

Declared support for UN-facilitated political processes has been among the most consistent features of international policy toward Libya over the past decade. Aligning bilateral diplomacy behind those processes has proven more difficult. Over the past year, US bilateral engagements with Libyan stakeholders in the east and west have included support for a unified national budget, joint training aimed at promoting military unification, and mediation between the Dbeibah and Haftar factions over power-sharing arrangements. These efforts have drawn skepticism, including concerns that direct talks with rival power centers would undermine incentives to compromise through the UN-led process.

US action before the end of October could help move the agreement toward implementation and give UNSMIL the political backing it needs to carry out the agreement and advance toward national elections.

The 4+4 agreement

Libya has not held national elections since 2014. A presidential and parliamentary vote planned for December 2021 collapsed amid disputes over the constitutional basis for the elections, who could run for office, and whether the two elections would be held together.

The agreement emerged from what UNSMIL calls the Smaller Convening, or 4+4, which brought together two representatives from the Government of National Unity (GNU), Khalifa Haftar’s General Command, the HOR, and the HSC. Talks began in Rome on April 29 and continued through seven rounds in Tunisia before the parties signed the agreement in Tripoli on August 30.

The agreement addresses the first two milestones of UNSMIL’s roadmap, reconstituting the board of the High National Elections Commission (HNEC) and resolving outstanding disputes over the legal and constitutional framework for elections. It uses Libya’s existing electoral laws as a basis while amending several disputed provisions. Military personnel would be permitted to vote and run for president, while dual nationals could stand provided that a successful candidate renounces any non-Libyan nationality before taking the constitutional oath. The agreement also separates presidential and parliamentary results and removes the requirement for a runoff if a presidential candidate wins more than 50 percent of the vote.

The agreement commits the parties to holding presidential and parliamentary elections within twenty-four months under a single executive authority and unified national institutions. It does not, however, provide a mechanism for forming that unified authority. The HOR and HSC have one month left to approve the agreement. If they do not, the signatories commit to pursuing its adoption through a broadly representative national mechanism and seeking international backing through the UN Security Council.

Initial reactions highlight the challenge ahead. Prime Minister Abdulhamid Dbeibah welcomed the agreement as an important step toward ending Libya’s transitional phases and moving toward elections, while Haftar similarly backed its outcome. HOR Speaker Aguila Saleh conditioned his support on the agreement’s consistency with Libya’s existing constitutional and legal framework, including the 2015 Libyan Political Agreement. HSC President Mohammed Takala declined to attend the signing and, two days later, the HSC warned against “the imposition of arrangements from outside Libya’s institutional framework.” Presidential Council President Mohammed Menfi, who had criticized the talks for their secrecy and foreign involvement, also issued a decree the same day naming a competing HNEC board.

The next two months

Neither the HOR nor the HSC has to reject the 4+4 agreement outright to derail the process before the end-of-September deadline laid out in the UN agreement. Either could decline to convene, fail to reach quorum, refer the text for further consideration, or condition its endorsement in ways that reopen issues the 4+4 sought to settle. Libya has seen similar tactics before. The 2015 Libyan Political Agreement required the HOR to endorse the Government of National Accord. Sessions in Tobruk were repeatedly blocked, and in August 2016 the chamber delivered a vote of no confidence. In April 2024, then-UN special envoy Abdoulaye Bathily blamed Libya’s political impasse in part on leaders seeking to maintain the status quo through “delaying tactics and maneuvers.”

The second deadline comes on October 31, when UNSMIL’s current mandate expires. A twelve-month renewal would keep the mission operating, but duration alone would not make the renewed mandate fit for purpose. The agreement assigns UNSMIL specific work. Under Article 6, the mission is to help build the follow-up framework; under Article 4, to help design an alternative if elections prove impossible; and under Article 7, to convene the parties when they disagree. UNSMIL already has the authority to do this work, since mediation and good offices are its core functions. What it lacks is explicit Security Council backing for this particular agreement and reporting that tracks its implementation.

The timing connects the two deadlines. If the HOR and HSC fail to endorse the agreement, its fallback provisions could push the issue to the Security Council just as its members begin negotiating UNSMIL’s next mandate.

Three moves Washington should

make now

The US mission in New York, the Treasury Department, and the State Department can take three steps to turn Washington’s stated support into demonstrated alignment with the UN-led process:

1. Build consensus among international partners: As the deadline for the HOR and HSC to endorse the agreement approaches, attention will shift to New York for the UN General Assembly’s high-level week. The United States has convened a Senior Officials Meeting (SOM) on Libya on the margins of the General Assembly in each of the past two years. The SOM brings together key European and regional partners to build consensus around international policy toward Libya.
   Countries that participated in the 2025 SOM included Turkey, Egypt, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom. The State Department should organize the SOM again this year but set the bar higher. Instead of another statement from the chair, Washington should seek a joint statement from participants endorsing the 4+4 agreement and committing participants to support its implementation. A common position from these governments would carry weight with Libyan stakeholders across the divide.
2. Secure a mandate that backs implementation: The US mission in New York should work with the United Kingdom, the penholder on Libya, and other Security Council members to ensure that the October renewal endorses the roadmap and the agreement rather than simply welcoming them. Last October, Council members softened the language on the UN’s new Libya roadmap from “endorses” to “welcomes.” The renewal should also spell out what the agreement asks of UNSMIL, including developing the follow-up framework and convening the parties when they disagree. It should require the secretary-general to report on progress against the deadlines the parties set for themselves, so that a missed milestone appears in the record rather than being absorbed into a narrative about continued divisions.
3. Prepare targeted sanctions: A 2016 executive order permits the designation of individuals responsible for actions or policies that “obstruct, undermine, delay, or impede” Libya’s political transition, and President Donald Trump continued the national emergency underpinning that authority in February 2026. There is precedent: In 2016 the United States and the European Union each designated Libyan officials for obstructing a previous UN-brokered agreement. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control should work with the State Department to decide now what conduct would constitute sanctionable obstruction and prepare designation packages accordingly so that Washington can act in weeks rather than months.

The 4+4 agreement does not guarantee that Libya will hold national elections, nor does it erase concerns about Washington’s bilateral diplomacy over the past year. It does, however, create an opportunity for Washington’s bilateral diplomacy and UNSMIL’s roadmap to reinforce one another rather than compete. Washington says its efforts are “fully complementary” to the UN process. By the end of October, it should be clear whether those are simply words of support or something more.

***

Frank Talbot is a nonresident senior fellow with the North Africa Program at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center & Middle East Programs. Previously, he served in the Department of State supporting stabilization initiatives in the Middle East and North Africa.

Kersten Knipp

The North African country has been divided between two rival governments for more than a decade. Countrywide elections could finally end the split and reunite Libya.

There have been other attempts made in the past but this time, those involved hope it will finally work out: Thanks to mediation by the United Nations, the two opposing governments in the west and east of Libya have agreed that they will hold parliamentary and presidential elections within the next two years.

“The agreement marks an important step in advancing Libya towards national elections and ending the transitional period,” the UN’s Support Mission in Libya, or UNSMIL, said in a statement. Among other things, the country’s electoral commission will be restructured and, according to the UN, various points about the legal framework for the elections that had previously led to disagreements have now been resolved. But whether all this will actually result in free and fair elections in Libya remains to be seen.

Divided for over a decade

After former Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi was overthrown in 2011, Libya ended up divided in two. Since 2014, the country has been split between opposing governments located in the east and west of the country. A UN-backed administration known as the Government of National Unity is based in Tripoli in the west, and its rival, known as the House of Representatives, is based in the east, in Tobruk.

Former warlord-turned-politician Khalifa Haftar, is based in the east while Prime Minister Abdul-Hamid Dbeibah is in charge in the west. Each is supported by a number of local militias and foreign powers, and each has tried to wrest control from the other. Up until now, attempts to hold an election that would unite the country have failed.

For Andreas Dittmann, a geographic conflict expert and professor at the University of Giessen in Hesse, central Germany, the apparent unity is a positive. “Things could not continue the way they were,” he told DW. After years of civil war and political division, the desire of many Libyans to end the fighting permanently has only grown. Dittmann believes the attitudes of political actors have also changed in this regard.

Previously foreign actors had supported just one Libyan government, but now that has also changed and the prevailing argument seems to be that Libya can only develop further if both sides are incorporated into one administration.

This is why the UN is trying to go beyond simply arranging a date for elections. It also wants to strengthen the electoral commission and work on electoral laws. The new and united government will be responsible for establishing the conditions for a secure and trusted electoral process. 

The UN has also set up what it calls “Structured Dialogues,” during which consensus was sought on questions of leadership, security, the economy and reconciliation.

Past agreements didn’t work out

Michael Bauer, who heads the Tunisia office of Germany’s Konrad Adenauer Foundation, believes the agreement is an important, if limited, step. Its success will depend on how binding any decisions are, he argued. After all, Bauer said, there have been plenty of political agreements in Libya in the recent past but none were really ever implemented.

Parallel to the UN process, the US is also trying to work on bringing the disparate leadership together. Massad Boulos, the Trump administration’s senior adviser on Arab and Middle Eastern affairs, has been trying to bring the Dbeibah and Haftar families together. In June, Haftar’s son Saddam was in Washington where he met with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Bauer said the American way of dealing with Libya differentiates from the UN plan. “While the UN mission has basically been very inclusive, in my opinion, the American mission is trying to bring about a kind of deal between the country’s elites,” he told DW. He questions how such a deal would fit into free and fair elections in Libya. “Elections can only be meaningful if the outcome has not already been decided beforehand,” Bauer said. The same is true for any pre-election allocation of political positions.

Elites strike a deal?

UK-based think tank Chatham House has already warned that a deal like this, around ministries and resources, will only institutionalize the existing rivalry between Libya’s ruling elites. With such an arrangement the rival actors would just divide the state’s resources between themselves, and corruption and patronage systems would continue.

The country’s division into east and west will be hard to overcome. A new united government would have to deal with preexisting power structures, rather than starting anew. Dittmann said there is a further problem. Much of the Libyan population lives in the western areas, especially in the Tripoli region. This would see the eastern half of the country lose power if elections are held. “If there are elections, and if those elections proceed mostly according to democratic principles, then the east can really only lose,” he explained.

Additionally, there are also external actors to consider. Russia has extended its positioning in the east while Turkey supports the government in the west. Alongside all of that is also the question of what the Libyan people want and what they expect from a united government. Bauer doubts elections alone can resolve Libya’s problems. “The people have a particular interest in seeing the country’s dysfunction end,” he said.

Libya is rich in raw materials and energy reserves, but also plagued by problems like power outages and inadequate public services. If the state was functioning properly, it would likely curtail the power of those currently benefiting most from the country’s resources and, as Bauer argued, “why would they voluntarily give up these opportunities?”

That will be the most difficult question for the next two years. The new agreement between Libya’s political rivals must do more than simply establish a path toward elections. It must also create a framework in which those rivals accept the results of an election and in which public institutions function properly.

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In International Advocacy Program, Statements and Position Papers

The Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS) and member organizations of the Libya Platform Coalition for Human Rights condemn the execution by firing squad of sixteen people following trials before military courts, with ten executed in eastern Libya on 23 August 2026 and six others on 29 August.

These executions constitute a dangerous precedent, as Libya has maintained a de facto moratorium on the death penalty since 2011. We warn against resuming executions amid a polarized judicial landscape, with mounting concerns over judicial independence and fair trial guarantees. 

The sixteen individuals were convicted of charges related to terrorism and assassination operations targeting military personnel and civilians, according to publicly available information. We affirm the right of the victims of these crimes and their families to truth, justice, and reparation. But without fair trial guarantees and transparency, these military trials fail to uphold the right of victims and their families to genuine justice and accountability, on top of negating the right to life of those sentenced to death without due process. 

Military trials in Libya are notoriously riddled with violations, as documented extensively by human rights organizations. Torture, ill-treatment, and coerced confessions are commonly alleged, with defendants – who include civilians – prevented from communicating with their lawyers and facing trials closed to the public.

The authorities have not adequately disclosed whether all those executed were civilians or military personnel nor have they provided details of their cases, including whether the defendants were provided defense guarantees or avenues of appeal. 

We reaffirm our opposition to the death penalty in all circumstances, as a violation of the right to life and a cruel, inhuman, and irreversible punishment, regardless of the extent to which fair trial guarantees are respected.

We stress that the imposition of the death penalty following a trial that fails to meet stringent fair trial guarantees compounds the gravity of the violation and may constitute an arbitrary deprivation of the right to life.

Concerns are further heightened if it is established that civilians were among those executed. In 2025, the Constitutional Chamber of the Libyan Supreme Court ruled Law No. (4) of 2017 unconstitutional insofar as it provided for the trial of civilians for terrorism-related offenses and crimes against the state by military courts.

The 2011 Interim Constitutional Declaration also guarantees fair trial guarantees, judicial independence, and the right to be tried by ordinary courts together with a prohibition on exceptional courts.

Accordingly, disclosing the status of those convicted and the legal basis on which military courts assumed jurisdiction is necessary to determine the legality of the sentences that resulted in the state depriving them of their right to life. 

Fundamental questions remain unanswered concerning the legal basis for the death penalty in each case. The announcement that the individuals were convicted of terrorism-related offenses is insufficient to justify the most severe punishment permitted by law.

The authorities must disclose the charge and conduct attributed to each person, the legal provision on which the death sentence was based, and the extent to which the principle of legality in criminal law and the application of the more lenient law were respected.

We also express concern over information indicating that the families of some of those sentenced to death were not notified in advance of the execution date, and only later received calls to collect the bodies of their relatives.

We affirm that the families’ right to truth must be respected, including their right to be informed of the circumstances under which their relative was executed, and to receive their relative’s body and relevant legal and medical documentation.

The death penalty, by virtue of its irrevocable nature, renders impossible to judicial remedy once implemented; thus requiring the highest degree of protection for the right to life and fair trial guarantees.

Accordingly, the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies and the Libya Platform Coalition call on the Libyan authorities to:

• Immediately halt the implementation of all death sentences and declare an official moratorium on executions in all cases, with a view towards abolishing the death penalty.
• Disclose the identities and status of the sixteen people who were executed, as well as the charges, judgments, and legal provisions applied in each case, and publish the judgments or comprehensive summaries thereof.
• Disclose whether any civilians tried before military courts were among those executed, and review all death sentences issued by military courts against civilians in light of the ruling of the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court.
• Conduct an independent, effective, and transparent investigation into whether fair trial guarantees were respected, as well as into any allegations of torture, ill-treatment, or the extraction of confessions under coercion, and into the procedures preceding the implementation of the sentences.
• Guarantee the rights of the families of those executed to truth and information, and to receive the bodies and relevant documentation.

We also call on the relevant United Nations mechanisms, foremost among them the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions and the Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, to take urgent action and address the Libyan authorities regarding the executions implemented and other individuals at risk of having similar sentences implemented.

Execution is not a substitute for justice, nor can the rule of law be cultivated through a brutal and irreversible punishment amid legitimate concerns about judicial jurisdiction, defense guarantees, and the legal basis of the sentences. Justice can only be delivered to victims in a judicial framework that upholds the rule of law, where the right to life, human dignity, and due process are respected for all.

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Husni Bey

The Second Conflict: Do We Defend the Official Exchange Rate — or Defend the Reserves?

The second conflict is monetary, but in reality, it is largely the consequence of the first. The question is straightforward: What should the Central Bank do when the volume of dinars chasing foreign currency becomes larger than the amount of foreign currency it can sustainably supply?

Its options are limited. It can draw down reserves, restrict access to foreign currency, tolerate an expanding parallel market, adjust the exchange rate, or push for lower public spending. Each option carries political and social costs. This is where the dispute over the exchange rate becomes critical.

One school of thought argues that the value of the dinar should be anchored primarily to indicators such as the money supply, net foreign assets and reserves, and that the Central Bank should use its tools to defend a stable rate rather than allow a speculative parallel market to become the benchmark. This position has a legitimate economic basis.

The alternative view is that any exchange rate at which the Central Bank cannot sustainably satisfy legitimate foreign-currency demand without increasingly severe restrictions or depletion of reserves cannot be regarded as a sustainable equilibrium rate, regardless of its accounting justification. That position also has a legitimate economic basis.

The disagreement, therefore, is not between those who believe in economic science and those who believe in the black market. The real question is: Should priority be given to defending a particular exchange-rate number, or to defending the state’s ability to finance and sustain that exchange rate over time?

The Exchange-Rate Gap Is Not Only a Result of the Crisis — It Can Begin to Reproduce the Crisis

When the official dollar becomes significantly cheaper than the price the wider market is willing to pay, behaviour changes. Access to the official dollar becomes an asset in itself. Two types of demand then emerge.

The first is genuine demand for imports, travel, medical treatment, education and other legitimate purposes.

The second is demand for dollars simply because obtaining them at the official rate creates an immediate profit opportunity through resale or revaluation at another rate. At that point, the exchange-rate gap shifts from being merely a consequence of the imbalance to becoming an additional cause of it.

Central Bank data illustrate the sheer scale of Libya’s foreign-exchange market. Foreign-currency usage by commercial banks during the first five months of 2026 amounted to approximately USD 12.9 billion.

Managing the exchange rate in Libya is therefore not a narrow technical matter concerning the dollar price. It is effectively the management and allocation of tens of billions of dollars each year. Anyone who obtains dollars at a materially cheaper official rate receives, in economic terms, a form of rent for as long as a substantial price gap exists.

Where Fuel Subsidies and the Exchange Rate Meet

This is perhaps the most important point in the entire crisis. Fuel subsidies and the exchange rate are not separate files. When the state spends billions of dollars financing cheap fuel, fewer dollars remain available to finance the rest of the economy.

When foreign-currency availability falls while dinar expenditure continues rising, pressure on the exchange rate increases.

When the gap between the official and parallel rates widens, speculative demand for the dollar rises. The Central Bank then needs to inject additional foreign currency in an attempt to stabilize the market. And the cycle begins again.

The sequence can be summarized as follows: High public expenditure → more dinars → greater demand for imports and dollars → large fuel imports and subsidies → lower net foreign-currency resources → pressure on the exchange rate → widening exchange-rate gap and speculation → higher dollar demand → greater depletion of reserves. This is the cycle that no Central Bank Governor can break alone.

The Real Conflict: Who Bears the Cost of Adjustment?

At this point, the economic meaning of the resignation becomes clearer. An economy that reaches this stage cannot avoid adjustment. It can only decide who bears its cost. If the fiscal authorities refuse to reduce spending, the adjustment shifts to the exchange rate.

If the authorities refuse to adjust the exchange rate, the cost shifts to the foreign reserves. If both are resisted, restrictions, shortages and the parallel market emerge. If fuel subsidies continue without reform, the Treasury and the reserves continue to bear the cost of both consumption and smuggling.

And if the money supply is sharply contracted simply to defend the dinar, the real economy may bear the cost through weaker liquidity, credit, demand, investment and employment.

There is, therefore, no cost-free option. The real question is whether the cost of reform is distributed consciously and fairly, or whether it is allowed to distribute itself chaotically through inflation, currency depreciation and reserve depletion.

Why Might the Position of Governor Become Unsustainable?

From this perspective, the resignation of Naji Issa — while reiterating that his letter does not disclose the reasons — can be interpreted as a sign of a deeper institutional dilemma.

The Central Bank is effectively being asked to do all of the following at the same time: finance very high public expenditure; preserve the value of the dinar; provide foreign currency for trade; finance a heavy fuel bill; protect foreign reserves; eliminate the parallel market; and avoid devaluing the currency.

Economically, these objectives cannot all be achieved simultaneously if the underlying fiscal position does not change. The real crisis, therefore, is not about choosing a Governor who is more hawkish or more accommodating. It is about a basic consistency problem: the authorities cannot indefinitely fix all variables while the underlying fundamentals move in the opposite direction.

Resignation — or an Economic Message?

If it is later established that the resignation was indeed connected to disagreements over public spending and economic management, its significance will extend far beyond a change of leadership at the Central Bank. It would mean that Libya has reached a point where monetary policy can no longer be expected to conceal the consequences of fiscal policy.

The Central Bank can manage an imbalance. It cannot abolish it. It cannot create more oil, eliminate the cost of fuel, force reserves to grow, or permanently maintain the value of the dinar if dinar expenditure expands faster than the economy’s ability to generate foreign currency. This is where the two conflicts at the heart of the current debate converge.

The first is fiscal: Should reform begin with controlling public expenditure, restructuring fuel subsidies and improving the management of oil revenues, or should spending continue while the Central Bank is expected to provide the financing?

The second is monetary: If fiscal reform does not happen, should the consequences be absorbed through the depletion of reserves and defence of an administrative exchange rate, or should the exchange rate be adjusted, the gap narrowed and the rent created by preferential access to foreign currency reduced?

These are not truly separate conflicts. They are two sides of the same question: Who will pay the difference between what Libya earns from oil and what Libya actually spends? Either the state pays through reforming expenditure and subsidies, or the reserves pay, or the dinar pays, or the citizen pays through inflation and loss of purchasing power. No Central Bank Governor, regardless of who holds the position, can abolish that equation.

Conclusion

The greatest mistake may therefore be to interpret the Governor’s resignation as merely a crisis within the Central Bank of Libya. Economically, it is more accurately understood as exposing a crisis in Libya’s model of public financial management: a state that earns primarily in dollars, spends primarily in dinars, consumes a significant share of its foreign-currency resources through a heavily subsidized and leakage-prone energy system, and then asks the Central Bank simultaneously to preserve reserves and maintain a low and stable exchange rate.

This equation cannot be solved by changing the Governor. It can only be solved by changing the equation itself. And this is where the central message of the recent economic debate acquires its full meaning: Politics may postpone reform, but it cannot cancel the bill. If public finances do not pay that bill today, tomorrow it will be paid by the reserves, the dinar, or the citizen.

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Among regional states, Egypt appears most strongly opposed to the deal, though it has largely kept its objections quiet. Cairo’s position is somewhat paradoxical: since its first military operation in Libya in 2015, it has supported the Haftar family politically and militarily.

Yet Egyptian officials are wary of Saddam Haftar, whom they believe is resistant to their influence. They are uneasy about hereditary succession in the military.54 Their hostility toward Abdelhamid Dabaiba is equally longstanding; in the past, they have openly called on him to step down as prime minister.

U.S. diplomats acknowledge Egypt’s qualms but believe they have faded over time.

Like others, Türkiye has sent mixed messages. Since 2023, its officials have sought to build strong military and business ties with Saddam Haftar and, in June, its foreign minister and intelligence chief both welcomed the Libyan commander in Ankara. Privately, however, Turkish diplomats voice misgivings about Saddam, the scion of a family with whom their relations have historically been strained and whom they blame for failing to deliver on a promise to persuade the Benghazi-based parliament to ratify a 2020 maritime border agreement that Ankara signed with the Tripoli government.

Russia’s position is unclear, though there are reasons to suspect that it, too, may oppose the proposal.

First, despite Moscow’s historically strong relations with the Haftar family, Russian officials appear ambivalent about Saddam, whom some view as too close to Washington. By contrast, Russia has cultivated ties with his brother Khaled, the Haftar-led forces’ chief of staff. 

Secondly, while Moscow has backed Haftar since 2018, including on the battlefield, and Russian private military contractors continue to provide training and logistical support to his forces (even as thousands of Haftar-led troops have been trained in Belarus, a Russian ally), the proposal paradoxically could reduce Russia’s manoeuvring room. According to sources close to Haftar, the U.S. would condition its backing for the new political setup, as well as future military assistance, on ending Russian military support for the unified executive.

As for the UN, it has largely been shunted aside by the U.S., despite Washington’s claims that the Boulos initiative complements the international organisation’s constitutional and electoral efforts.

UN officials were not consulted by U.S. mediators, who merely provided them with occasional updates. The UN thus finds itself in an uncomfortable position: while in principle the proposal aligns with its longstanding objective of Libyan reunification, the U.S. has bypassed the political process it set up to achieve that goal.

VI. What Next?

The U.S. initiative has merit in its aim to unblock a transition that has long been stalled and insofar as it has put institutional reunification back on the agenda. But given its reported contours, and the lack of detail, transparency or inclusiveness surrounding it, as well as the opposition it has generated, the initiative remains a gamble – and a gamble is not something Libya can afford.

In particular, elevating Saddam Haftar to the presidency risks turning an effort to overcome the country’s divisions into a catalyst of renewed confrontation.

Many Libyans fear that the Trump administration may seek to secure agreement on the broad outlines of the deal before its details have been fully fleshed out or agreed upon. Some in Haftar’s camp reportedly favour this approach, arguing that once the deal has Washington’s imprimatur, its Libyan opponents will have less room to resist it.

It is, of course, possible that fears will prove unfounded and that, once the agreement is signed and implementation begins, western forces will not rise up; opposition factions may be persuaded (or bought off); and remaining contentious issues will be resolved along the way.

But there is no guarantee. A far more worrying scenario is at least as plausible:

Clashes between rival military factions; last-minute backtracking by Dabaiba and his supporters; and a growing conviction within the Haftar camp that their only remaining option is to seize Tripoli by force. For a country that has taken years to recover from the mayhem after the fall of Qadhafi, renewed fighting would be a devastating setback.

In light of these risks, the Trump administration should resist the temptation to rush an agreement. Instead, it should take time to broaden political consultations and share details of the deal to allow for meaningful public scrutiny.

It should also seek consensus on two issues that remain unresolved: the distribution of military authority in a manner that allows the two sides to share it, and the seat of the new executive. 

Finally, on the difficult issue of elections, U.S. mediators should work closely with the UN and seek the parties’ commitment to holding them on a realistic timeline. Optimally, the timeline would not exceed two years, but disagreements surrounding a possible ballot, the numerous legal and administrative hurdles encountered over the past decade, and the danger that elections could prove destabilising, all dictate a measure of caution and flexibility in how this matter is approached. 

In the meantime, U.S. efforts should focus on priorities that need not await the deal’s completion:

• Strengthening Libya’s public financial institutions, notably by promoting greater transparency around the reported unified budget deal and making clear Washington’s opposition to parallel funding schemes and the associated diversion of public funds though smuggling. In this regard, the U.S. Treasury has significant leverage insofar as Libya’s oil sales are denominated in U.S. dollars. 
• Improving cooperation between Libya’s rival military structures by expanding opportunities for joint trainings and, together with Italy and other European and international partners, establishing joint logistical and operational coordination centres for ground manoeuvres, border security and maritime patrols. 

The burden cannot fall on U.S. shoulders alone. Libya’s rival leaders bear primary responsibility for their country’s future. To date, their actions suggest that preserving power and access to state resources remains their overriding priority.

Meanwhile, ordinary citizens face persistent insecurity, a narrowing political space and worsening socio-economic conditions. For many, the central question remains unanswered:

How, concretely, would this initiative improve their daily lives? If Libya’s leaders are genuinely committed to opening a new chapter, they should begin by publicly articulating a clear and shared vision for the country’s political, economic and military future.

___________________

Husni Bey

A Dispute Over Who Bears the Cost of Economic Adjustment — the Treasury, the Reserves, or the Dinar?

The resignation of the Governor of the Central Bank of Libya, Naji Issa, submitted to the Speaker of the House of Representatives on 9 August 2026, has reopened one of the most sensitive questions facing the Libyan economy:

Is the problem fundamentally one of monetary-policy management, or has the Central Bank reached the point where it can no longer contain imbalances originating primarily in public finances, energy subsidies, and the way oil revenues are managed?

The resignation letter itself does not state the reasons. It simply apologizes for being unable to continue serving as Governor, “without stating the reasons.” It would therefore be professionally inappropriate to claim that any single economic file was the direct cause of the resignation.

However, the developments that preceded it, the correspondence surrounding the dispute over (the US-mediated) Unified Public Spending (agreement), the Governor’s public positions, and the warnings issued by the International Monetary Fund all reveal two intertwined economic conflicts that help explain why the Governor’s task had become increasingly difficult.

In that sense, the resignation may be less about a personal disagreement and more about a broader reality: Libya’s current model of economic management may be approaching the limits of its sustainability.

The First Conflict: Who Controls Spending — and Who Finances What the State Can No Longer Afford?

The first problem is fiscal before it is monetary. Libya earns most of its public revenues from oil and gas, meaning in foreign currency, while most government expenditure is made in Libyan dinars.

This places the Central Bank at the unavoidable intersection between the two: oil generates dollars, while the Central Bank converts those dollars into dinars that the government can spend.

In April 2026, an agreement was announced on Unified Public Spending of approximately LYD 190 billion, including around LYD 73 billion for salaries, LYD 37 billion for subsidies, LYD 40 billion for development, LYD 18 billion for family allowances, LYD 10 billion for operating expenditure, and an additional LYD 12 billion for the National Oil Corporation.

But the agreement did not end the dispute.

In June, the Chairman of the House of Representatives’ Unified Spending Committee sent a letter to the Governor warning that the House might consider itself released from the commitments associated with the agreement if what it described as obstruction of implementation continued.

This reveals the nature of the first conflict. The political authorities view the Central Bank as the institution that must provide the financing, while the Central Bank sees itself as the institution that must prevent public spending from turning into a permanent drain on foreign currency and reserves.

Government spending does not end when a cheque is issued in dinars. In an economy that imports most of what it consumes, a significant share of those dinars eventually returns to the Central Bank as demand for foreign currency.

Every additional billion dinars spent by the state is therefore not merely an accounting entry in the Treasury’s books. It can translate into additional demand for imported goods and dollars.

This is precisely the concern repeatedly raised by the IMF:

Persistently high public expenditure increases pressure on the exchange rate and foreign reserves and, if continued without adjustment, becomes unsustainable.

The question, therefore, is not simply: “Does the Central Bank have dollars?” The more important question is: How many dollars can it sell every year without beginning to finance a level of public spending and consumption that continuously exceeds the economy’s capacity to generate resources?

Fuel and Energy Subsidies: The Hole Connecting the Fiscal Crisis to the Dollar Crisis – Fuel lies at the heart of this dispute.

The Libyan state does not subsidize petrol, diesel and electricity only in dinars. A very large part of the subsidy is effectively paid in dollars through the importation of fuel or through the domestic consumption of products that could otherwise have been exported and monetized.

The cost of fuel subsidies therefore has two dimensions: a fiscal cost, reflected in public spending and subsidies; and an external cost, reflected in the depletion of foreign currency. The wider the gap between the near-free domestic price of energy and its true economic cost, the stronger the incentive for smuggling, diversion and resale outside official

This is why fuel reform is not merely a decision about the price of a litre of petrol. It is simultaneously a decision about: the dollar, foreign reserves, public expenditure, smuggling and the exchange rate.

The dilemma confronting the Central Bank can be described in simple terms. The state sells oil and receives dollars. It then uses a substantial part of those dollars to import fuel, which is sold domestically at prices far below its real cost. Part of that fuel may then leak into smuggling networks.

At the same time, the Treasury requires ever more dinars to finance salaries, subsidies and other public expenditure. In effect, the state can find itself selling energy for dollars, buying energy back for dollars, and simultaneously creating the dinar counterpart needed to finance the rest of public expenditure. That is a cycle that monetary policy alone cannot close.

____________

IV. The View from the Initiative’s

Opponents

The proposal’s most provocative aspect for Libyans is that Saddam Haftar would become head of the Presidential Council. Critics fear that any power sharing arrangement would prove short-lived at best, because Saddam would sideline Dabaiba to consolidate authority for himself.

As one politician put it, “Saddam is a military man with blood on his hands. His project is to rule alone over the whole of Libya. He is not interested in ruling it jointly”. She pointed to a legal mechanism at his disposal:

under the 2015 UN-mediated Skhirat agreement, the president can declare a state of emergency, mobilise security forces and impose exceptional measures, with potentially far-reaching constitutional consequences.

Such concerns appear especially pronounced within the Presidential Council itself. According to people close to its chairman, Mohamed al-Mnefi, he would be willing to step down, but only in favour of a more broadly acceptable political figure.

Many opponents warn that concentrating power in Saddam’s hands could trigger a violent backlash.

Several influential armed groups in western Libya have made it known that they might use force to resist his appointment if they deem it necessary. Insiders say this talk is not mere bluster. The aforementioned politician said, “These men simply do not accept Haftar’s son becoming president”.

Already, observers point to early signs of military escalation, with a reported increase in the quantity of weapons entering Tripoli through Mitiga airport. That said, whether these shipments are intended for armed groups aligned with or opposed to Haftar remains uncertain.

Critics point to a second source of concern, namely widespread scepticism that the power sharing deal would make living conditions better. Many say U.S. efforts on the economic track have yet to tangibly improve ordinary Libyans’ lives.

The data appear to bear out this judgment. The exchange rate still hovers at more than eight dinars to the U.S. dollar on the parallel market, 20 per cent higher than the current official rate and over 40 per cent higher than the one set in early 2025.

Cash withdrawals remain heavily restricted, access to foreign currency is tightly controlled and businesses in need of hard currency continue to face significant administrative hurdles.

Fuel smuggling is pervasive, and many suspect the tacit acquiescence of competing political elites, even as large numbers of Libyans experience recurring fuel shortages, liquidity constraints and severe electricity outages.

Revenues generated by illicit markets have also sustained a real estate boom seen by many as disconnected from the broader economy. More generally, critics say the initiative risks reinforcing Libya’s dysfunctional political economy.

Describing the U.S. envoy’s attempt to unify the two governments’ budgets, a Misrata businessman argued that it reflected a narrow vision of economic development centred on construction projects, leaving Libya’s deeper problems unaddressed:

Any development plan worthy of note should work toward making the country less reliant on oil. But the only development these people [Saddam Haftar and Dabaiba] have in mind is building bridges and hotels. So, what the U.S. considers an achievement, we consider a disaster because they are giving money to thieves.

A third critique centres on the negotiations’ lack of inclusivity, their emphasis on elite bargaining over popular participation. Many Libyans resent the exclusion of swathes of society from a process that could fundamentally reshape the political order.

A Libyan sociologist asserted that the initiative reflects a U.S. perception of the country as “a struggling company looking for a CEO and a group of investors”, rather than as “a nation in crisis searching for a new social contract”.

In this assessment, there is an absence of an explicit commitment to elections. After years of international promises that Libya’s future leadership would be decided at the ballot box, the proposed arrangement instead appears to eschew public consent by institutionalising the existing balance of power.

Boulos sought to offer reassurance, explaining that his endeavour is meant to go hand in hand with UN-led efforts to organise polls, but Dabaiba and Haftar supporters have been far more dismissive, suggesting these could be put off “for years”

Many Libyans are furious. “In one sentence”, the sociologist wrote in a social media post, “elections vanished, the popular will disappeared, talk of justice and accountability evaporated, and only oil remained to speak for everyone”

U.S. officials appear taken aback by the intensity of the public backlash. A businessman who met U.S. mediators in Misrata in July described them as “stunned by the uproar [the initiative] caused”.

Yet so far, the resistance has prompted neither substantive nor procedural changes in Washington’s approach. Sources confirm that both sides continue to submit proposed amendments to the agreement through U.S. mediators.

V. Where Foreign Capitals and

the UN Stand

During the early years of Libya’s division, and particularly during Haftar’s 2019-2020 attempt to capture Tripoli, several foreign powers aligned themselves with one side or the other.

Türkiye was the Tripoli-based government’s most visible backer, intervening militarily to help its forces repel Haftar’s assault, while most European states offered it primarily diplomatic and rhetorical support.

Haftar, by contrast, received military aid from the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Russia, which reportedly supplied varying degrees of equipment and air cover.

France and the U.S. also allegedly gave his offensive their tacit blessing, at least at first, before it became clear that the siege would fail. 

Since the 2020 ceasefire, however, foreign alignments have become far less polarised. Türkiye opened channels to the Haftar camp, and it has since developed strong ties with the east while (reportedly) retaining its garrison in western Libya.

Conversely, the UAE, Russia and Egypt have all strengthened their relations with Tripoli.

Today, external actors, including Western capitals, continue to recognise the Tripoli-based government as Libya’s legitimate authority while simultaneously maintaining political and commercial contacts with the Haftars in the east.

Against this backdrop, the U.S. initiative has exposed differences among Libya’s foreign partners, despite U.S. officials’ insistence that it is broadly endorsed. 

France and the UAE appear to be among its strongest supporters, arguably because both hold favourable views of Saddam Haftar, welcome his political ascent and consider the Haftar-led military coalition to be critical in fighting Islamist militants along Libya’s porous borders.

Their approval was on display in mid-June, when French President Emmanuel Macron hosted Saddam Haftar at the Elysee. In recent months, he has also been received by the leaders of Greece, Chad and Qatar.

Others, notably several European states, express private doubts despite publicly backing the initiative. Their caution is understandable:

few are willing to openly challenge Washington’s approach for fear of jeopardising U.S. cooperation in other areas. As a European diplomat explained, “Nobody tells the Americans to their face that they have reservations, even when these are substantial”.

Italy, in particular, is sceptical. It acknowledges that U.S. efforts have eased security cooperation with Haftar-aligned forces, an important asset as it seeks to curb migrant flows from Libya, a key political priority.

At the same time, Italian officials are apprehensive about the implications of a botched power sharing agreement, which they worry could trigger armed opposition, undermine Libya’s relative calm and unleash a new wave of migration across the Mediterranean.

As an Italian diplomat put it, “We are supportive [of the U.S. initiative] and would love to see a unified country”, but, referring to the risk of backlash, he added, “we absolutely do not want to see Libya destabilised”.

_____________________

INTERNATIONAL CRISIS GROUP

A second unresolved issue concerns the structure of military authority. According to several sources close to the Tripoli camp, negotiators are exploring a structure pursuant to which the armed forces’ general command, or qiyada amma, now headed by Khalifa Haftar with Saddam as his deputy, would be jointly led by Saddam and a representative of the Tripoli-based military establishment (possibly Undersecretary of Defence Abdelsalam Zoubi).

 Other options under discussion include abolishing the general command altogether and appointing Zoubi as defence minister with responsibility for all military affairs; or, alternatively, dividing the country into three military regions, each with its own commander.

All these options would require Haftar’s camp to make significant concessions. Informed Libyan and foreign sources have come away from conversations with senior Haftar-linked officials with the impression that they have yet to accept any of these compromises. 

Indeed, for the past decade Haftar and his allies have insisted that all military authority be centralised under a unified chain of command, rather than shared among competing institutions or personalities.

Tellingly, a 16 June statement by the Haftar-led general command expressing support for the Boulos effort made no reference to any proposal that would reduce its authority, let alone get rid of the institution completely.

Washington also has been working on economic and military reunification, which it sees as complementary to its political efforts. On the economic front, U.S. diplomats and U.S. Treasury officials helped facilitate negotiations on a unified national budget to consolidate the expenditures of Libya’s rival governments.

In April, Boulos announced that the two camps, one represented by a member of the Benghazi-based parliament and the other by a member of the Tripoli-based High State Council, had reached an agreement whose content remains confidential.

While a U.S. official described the effort as a “good step”, not even the Benghazi-based parliament – which is supposed to ratify the budget – has yet received a copy.

In theory, if applied alongside other oversight mechanisms, a unified budget could help curb parallel spending, slow inflation, reduce pressure on the Libyan currency, the dinar, more evenly allocate development funding, finance higher oil production and kickstart desperately needed non-oil development projects.

As of late July, however, the budget was still bifurcated and Libyans continued to face severe financial hardships due to cash shortages and deterioration of the exchange rate.

On the military front, in early 2025 the U.S. supported changes to the UN Libya sanctions regime, authorising foreign governments to provide technical assistance and training to forces from both camps. The stated objective was to advance “the process of unification of the Libyan military and security forces”.

This step paved the way for members of the rival military coalitions to participate in the two-week Flintlock exercise, the flagship U.S.-led multinational special operations training program, which was held in Sirte in April.

The event represented a modest but meaningful confidence-building measure and improved cooperation between officers from the two camps, though it fell well short of genuine military unification.

Neither the economic nor the military steps generated significant domestic controversy, though the opacity of the proposed unified budget, coupled with the absence to date of tangible economic benefit, attracted criticism.

Far more polarising has been the political component of these U.S.-led efforts, specifically the proposed power sharing arrangement. It has pitted those who see it as a pragmatic path toward reunification against those who view it as an attempt to entrench the country’s existing power structure.

Broadly speaking, the U.S. proposal is a classic post-conflict arrangement pursuant to which former adversaries agree to share formal authority in a manner that reflects their actual power. For many Libyans, however, such a bargain would be a betrayal of a promise made for years by the UN and various foreign powers: that reunification would occur as a result of general elections and popular selection of a new leadership. 

Fulfilling that promise has proven arduous, despite years of UN-backed mediation, encumbered by disagreements over what elections should be held (presidential, legislative or both), in what sequence and under what governing framework.

Behind these unresolved legal disputes lies the fact that the current rulers are loath to hold elections that they might lose. By upsetting the status quo, elections could trigger a resumption of armed conflict, in the event that one faction or the other contests the results.

Instead of pursuing that elusive and potentially destabilising path, Boulos has opted with his plan to cement the existing balance of power by giving it the world’s blessing.

III. The View from the Initiative’s

Supporters

Support for the proposed arrangement partly reflects how its expected political benefits would be distributed. It is no surprise that Saddam Haftar has emerged as the strongest backer: the deal would both raise him to Libya’s highest political office and bestow the international legitimacy that so far has eluded his family.

Individuals close to Saddam say making him president would merely mirror reality, noting his steady rise within the military hierarchy, authority within its eastern power base and status as most influential of Khalifa Haftar’s sons.

They also largely dismiss the risk that dissatisfied western constituents might violently oppose the deal.

Within the Dabaiba camp, opinions are more nuanced. Tripoli-based insiders say the initiative’s biggest champion is not Prime Minister Abdelhamid Dabaiba but his nephew, Ibrahim, who privately maintained contacts with Saddam Haftar and reportedly considers an agreement with the Haftar camp the sole realistic means of preserving his family’s hold on power.

In this view, only a U.S.-backed power sharing settlement could provide the international support necessary to keep Abdelhamid in office. 

As one Tripoli-based politician put it: “The Dabaibas are much weaker than the Haftars, so they need this alliance to persuade foreign capitals – and Washington in particular – to keep Dabaiba on. Abdelhamid, however, is not entirely convinced and is buying time”.

The prime minister’s doubts reportedly include distrust of Saddam Haftar: he is concerned the young military commander might seek to sideline him once the agreement is in place. So far, he has refrained from commenting publicly on the U.S. initiative.

Support for the initiative also comes from Libyans unaffiliated with either camp. Several politicians and analysts argue that, despite its shortcomings as an elite pact, and while it warrants closer scrutiny, the emerging deal offers the best opportunity to reunify the country’s divided institutions. 

In the words of one such person: “Libya needs pragmatic realism, not aspirational fantasies. Right now, [the proposal] is more a framework than an actual process, but even if it produced an imperfect unified authority, that would still be a net positive for Libyans”.

From this perspective, even modest improvements would be preferable to maintaining today’s political arrangements indefinitely. Some are looking forward to elections, others to improved security, a more favourable business environment or stable power supply; what they share is hope that the deal might be an important first step toward ending the country’s prolonged political impasse.

Finally, these supporters do not appear to take seriously concerns that the deal could trigger armed opposition. As one put it, “a dog that barks does not bite”.

__________________

Yassin K Fawaz

America is betting that Libya’s rival dynasties can reunite a country that elections and diplomacy could not.

15 years after NATO aircraft helped topple Gadhafi’s regime, America is again trying to remake Libya. This time there are no bombers, no talk of humanitarian intervention and little enthusiasm for transforming the country into a liberal democracy. Instead the Trump administration is attempting something at once more modest and more audacious: persuading the two families that dominate Libya’s rival halves to share the state.

The proposal being pushed by Massad Boulos, President Donald Trump’s adviser on Arab and African affairs, would leave Abdulhamid Dbeibah, the prime minister of the internationally recognised government in Tripoli, in his job. Saddam Haftar, the increasingly prominent son of Khalifa Haftar, the military strongman who dominates eastern Libya, would chair a reconstituted Presidential Council. The arrangement is intended to reunify political, economic and eventually military institutions that have been divided for more than a decade.

It is an inelegant solution to an inelegant problem. It may also be the most serious attempt in years to put Libya back together.

Since Qadhafi was killed in 2011, outsiders have repeatedly treated Libya as a constitutional puzzle. If only Libyans could agree on electoral laws, organise a vote and establish legitimate institutions, the thinking went, militias would submit to politicians and rival governments would disappear.

The United Nations produced road maps, conferences and transitional arrangements. Elections were scheduled, postponed and argued over. Governments described as temporary acquired an impressive gift for permanence.

Meanwhile power settled elsewhere. In western Libya Mr Dbeibah built a durable political machine around the Government of National Unity (GNU), state spending and alliances with armed groups.

In the east Field Marshal Haftar constructed something closer to a military family enterprise, controlling Benghazi, much of the south and, crucially, territory containing much of Libya’s oil infrastructure. Neither side could conquer the other. Neither could be wished away by diplomats.

Mr Trump’s people appear to have noticed.

Their approach reverses much of the logic that has guided Western policy since 2011.

Rather than elections producing legitimacy, which produces unified institutions, which eventually produces stability, America is betting on stability first.

Unite the people who possess actual power, align their economic interests and postpone the harder question of democratic legitimacy until the state is functioning again.

There is something distinctly Trumpian about this. It treats politics less as constitutional engineering than as a negotiation among proprietors. The question is not who ought to govern Libya but who can prevent anybody else from governing it. Once those people are identified, a bargain can begin.

Money helps. Libya possesses Africa’s largest proven oil reserves but produces far less than its geology suggests it could. Its National Oil Corporation wants as much as $40bn of investment to lift output from roughly 1.4m barrels a day to 2m by 2030. More than 60 discovered fields remain undeveloped. American firms, including Chevron and Conoco Phillips, have reasons to be interested. European energy companies have never really left.

Oil also provides the rare commodity that both Libyan camps need from one another. Tripoli controls internationally recognised financial institutions and the machinery through which much state revenue flows. The Haftars command territory containing fields, pipelines and export terminals.

One side has the cheque book; the other can interrupt the income that fills it. Libya’s division has therefore produced an odd form of mutually assured insolvency.

The first important crack appeared in April, when rival authorities agreed on the country’s first unified national budget in more than a decade. Budgets rarely inspire poetry, but in Libya this one mattered.

It created a mechanism for spending across the divide and provided more money for the National Oil Corporation. Mr Boulos hailed it as evidence that eastern and western authorities could compromise.

Washington hopes commerce can do what communiqués could not. The promise of American investment gives both camps something larger to divide than the existing spoils.

Reconstruction, electricity, infrastructure, hydrocarbons and mining could attract tens of billions of dollars if investors become convinced that contracts signed in one half of Libya will be honoured in the other.

That is a formidable “if”. Libya’s political economy has long rewarded division. Militias collect salaries from the state they periodically threaten. Politicians profit from opaque spending.

Fuel subsidies encourage smuggling. Institutions duplicated between east and west provide jobs, contracts and patronage. Reunification would create winners, but also plenty of losers with guns.

Nor are the Dbeibahs and Haftars neutral custodians of a national project. Critics of the American proposal see an elite bargain that would convert temporary incumbency into dynastic entitlement.

Their objection is difficult to dismiss. Saddam Haftar’s elevation would formalise the rise of a son inside a military system built by his father. Mr Dbeibah, appointed in 2021 to lead a transition towards elections, would remain prime minister five years later.

Yet this criticism contains the uncomfortable reason the scheme may have a chance. Libya’s problem is not a shortage of plans. It is that previous plans have often depended on powerful actors voluntarily surrendering power. The American proposal instead asks them to preserve much of it in exchange for accepting limits on how it is exercised.

• Diplomatic convergence

The regional weather has also changed. Turkey, once the military saviour of Tripoli, is cultivating the Haftars. Its officials now travel between Tripoli and Benghazi. Egypt, traditionally the eastern camp’s most important Arab patron, has received Mr Dbeibah while continuing its close relationship with Khalifa Haftar.

Qatar supports the UN process but also wants stability. Pakistan has emerged as an unlikely intermediary. The countries that once treated Libya as an arena for proxy competition increasingly seem interested in ensuring that they are not excluded from a settlement.

The diplomatic convergence is striking because these countries spent of the past decade backing opposite sides. Ankara’s military intervention in 2019 helped stop Haftar’s assault on Tripoli; Cairo regarded his forces as a barrier against Islamists and disorder on its border. Their interests have not become identical. Rather, the cost of fragmentation has risen.

A settlement offers Turkey contracts and influence in the east, Egypt a calmer frontier, Qatar a process it can support and Washington a chance to turn overlapping rivalries into overlapping incentives. Foreign powers helped harden Libya’s partition. They may now, for self-interested reasons, help soften it.

The alignment is not sentimental. That may be its advantage: arrangements based on interests tend to survive disappointment better than those based on friendship.

For Europe the attraction is obvious. A more coherent Libyan state could make energy investment safer and help control migration across the central Mediterranean.

For America there is another prize: reducing Russia’s room for manoeuvre. Moscow developed deep ties with the eastern authorities while Western governments largely dealt with Tripoli.

A national arrangement that brings the Haftars closer to Washington would complicate Russia’s position without requiring America to dislodge it militarily.

Saddam Haftar’s reception in Washington in June was therefore more than ceremonial. Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, discussed with him efforts to unify Libya’s military, economic and political institutions.

The meeting conferred something the younger Mr Haftar has long sought: recognition that he is not merely his father’s son but a national interlocutor.

None of this means the deal will work. Tripoli is not Mr Dbeibah’s private estate. Armed factions in western Libya have their own interests and some fiercely oppose a settlement with the Haftars.

Eastern Libya is more hierarchical, but succession inside the Haftar family may yet produce tensions. A presidential council cannot unify competing chains of command by changing the stationery on their letterheads.

Then there is the question of elections. Mr Boulos insists his initiative complements rather than replaces the UN road map. Perhaps.

Temporary political arrangements in Libya, however, have a habit of becoming geological formations. Give two entrenched families control of a unified state, its budget and its oil revenues, and their enthusiasm for submitting themselves to voters may prove limited.

This is the central gamble. America is attempting to use Libya’s oligarchic reality as scaffolding for a functioning state without allowing that scaffolding to become the permanent structure. It is trying, in effect, to make Libya stable enough to become democratic rather than democratic enough to become stable.

That may offend those who remember the aspirations of 2011. But the intervening 15 years have been unkind to grand theories. Libya has had elections, UN envoys, constitutional drafts, peace conferences, rival cabinets and enough road maps to pave a motorway from Tripoli to Benghazi.

What it has lacked is a political bargain sufficiently attractive to the men with the power to wreck one.

America’s proposal may fail for precisely the reasons its predecessors did: too many armed men, too much money and too little trust. But it begins with a useful recognition. Libya is already divided among strongmen. The task is not to pretend otherwise. It is to persuade them that a whole country is worth more than half of one.

***

Yassin K Fawaz is an American business executive, publisher and security and terrorism expert.

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INTERNATIONAL CRISIS GROUP

Washington is negotiating an accord that would piece Libya’s divided national institutions back together. But its political aspects have sown fierce controversy. Rather than risk the country’s tenuous peace, U.S. mediators should seek broader buy-in, focusing on budgetary and military issues in the interim.

What’s new? The U.S. is backing a power sharing deal aimed at merging the rival executives that rule eastern and western Libya. Negotiators have not publicly disclosed details of the agreement, but its opponents are already threatening to mobilise troops to stop it.

Why did it happen? This initiative is the latest iteration of a year-long U.S.-sponsored mediation effort that also includes steps intended to unify the state budget and the competing military coalitions. 

Why does it matter? This U.S. effort has merit, not least because it seeks to move a stagnant political process forward. But the lack of transparency and, most importantly, one of the deal’s rumoured pillars – appointing Saddam Haftar, son of strongman Khalifa Haftar, as the country’s next president – could be incendiary.

What should be done? U.S. mediators should not rush to seal a political agreement that risks unsettling Libya’s relative calm. Instead, they should carry out broader political consultations and, in the meantime, seek progress on budgetary and military unification.

I. Overview

Libya is rife with rumours of a U.S.-backed agreement to unify the country’s two rival executives under a new power sharing arrangement. U.S. envoy Massad Boulos, the initiative’s chief facilitator, has acknowledged meeting with representatives of the two authorities, which control the country’s western and eastern regions, respectively. He has given no details, merely stating that the deal’s primary objective is to merge the country’s bifurcated administration and unify the military ranks.

Libyan participants have also been tight-lipped about the substance of talks, though they privately express confidence that an agreement is within reach. Meanwhile, however, one of the deal’s reported provisions – who would be president – has sown controversy so fierce that it could threaten Libya’s tenuous peace. U.S. mediators should keep working on unresolved political issues and seek broader consensus before formalizing a political deal among Libyan factions.

In principle, an agreement that pieces Libya’s fragmented institutions back together would be welcome. The country has been divided since 2015 between two governments and military coalitions that have periodically gone to war.

Fighting between them officially stopped in 2020, though assassinations still occur on occasion, along with bursts of violence among rival militias or smuggling rackets. Countrywide blackouts in July, coupled with drone attacks of unknown origin on fuel tanks in western Libya in August, were the latest reminder of just how unstable the situation is.

Ending the rift would be an important step, and supporters of the prospective deal believe it is the country’s best hope after years of faltering UN-led efforts to achieve unity and organize elections. Many Libyans, however, worry that so little is known about the deal’s content. They fear that an accord concocted behind closed doors could cement existing power structures, encourage authoritarian drift and institutionalize already widespread corruption. 

If the agreement goes through without broader buy-in and with its most controversial provisions in place, it might trigger violent resistance. Particularly contentious is the notion circulating that Saddam Haftar, son of Khalifa Haftar, the leader of the east-based forces, would be made Libya’s new president. In 2019-2020, Haftar’s forces laid siege to the internationally recognized capital Tripoli, and enmity lingers.

If the agreement goes through without broader buy-in and with its most controversial provisions in place, it might trigger violent resistance; some western factions have already said they would issue a call to arms. In short, rather than ushering in a period of stability, the initiative could undermine the relative calm experienced in recent years. 

With such possible unintended consequences, U.S. officials should resist the temptation to seal a deal quickly. Instead, they should keep working with Libyan parties to build greater consensus behind political arrangements and put safeguards in place to protect the country from an autocratic power grab.

Libyan leaders themselves ought to ensure broader buy-in before they sign off on any agreement. In the meantime, Washington’s priorities should be to push for reforms to Libya’s public finances and for measures aimed at narrowing the gap between the competing military coalitions. 

II. The Deal (as Understood)

Libya’s present political configuration has its roots in an October 2020 ceasefire, which ended Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar’s campaign to seize Tripoli but had the effect of freezing the country’s east-west military divide.

In March 2021, UN-sponsored talks gave rise to a short-lived unity government in Tripoli headed by Abdulhamid Dabaiba, whose task was to reunify state institutions and organize elections that December. When elections were called off amid disputes over rules and candidates, Dabaiba nonetheless stayed on, refusing to relinquish office. In February 2022, the Haftar-aligned, east-based House of Representatives appointed a rival government, led at first by Fathi Bashagha and, since 2023, by Osama Hamad.

Since then, the country has remained split between the internationally recognized Tripoli executive, which rules in much of the west, and the Haftar-backed government and parliament that administer the east and most of the south. Alongside these divided institutions, a three-member Presidential Council, headed by Mohamed al-Mnefi, formally serves as Libya’s collective head of state and supreme military authority, though its influence is lessened by the country’s political and military fragmentation.

The eastern military coalition does not recognize the Presidency Council as the top military authority; it has its own general command, headed by Field Marshal Haftar.

The status quo has its benefits: though the country remains divided, the two sides have not returned to war, preserving a measure of peace on the ground for which many Libyans are grateful. A sufficiently wide distribution of oil revenues keeps elites on both sides of the divide from rocking the boat.

A construction boom and the proliferation of events open to the public free of charge – such as concerts and international sporting contests – have also boosted support for authorities in both eastern and western Libya. But bifurcation also comes at a cost. Institutional dysfunction has worsened; foreign forces remain in the country (Russian in the east, Turkish, reportedly, in the west); and the economy has suffered, as the competing authorities bankroll themselves through a mix of licit and off-the-books arrangements. The latter have drained public finances, raising the cost of living and stunting development investment. 

Over the past year, President Donald Trump’s senior adviser for Arab and African affairs, Massad Boulos, has sought to break this deadlock, reversing a decade of U.S. disengagement following the 2012 killing of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens.

Beyond the Trump administration’s aspiration to add to the list of the president’s supposed peace agreements, three factors may explain Washington’s renewed focus.

The first is energy: amid turmoil in global markets and reduced Gulf oil exports, the U.S. may be seeking to boost Libya’s hydrocarbon production and promote the interests of U.S. oil companies.

The second is commerce, as Washington thinks Libya could be a lucrative market for U.S. firms beyond the energy sector.

The third is geostrategy: the U.S. may wish to stop Russia from firming up a foothold in Libya by drawing the North African country under its own military umbrella.

Against this backdrop, the idea of a U.S.-backed power sharing agreement originated in discreet talks launched by Boulos.

These reportedly began in September 2025 with a clandestine meeting in Rome between Ibrahim Dabaiba, adviser and nephew of Prime Minister Dabaiba, and Saddam Haftar, Khalifa Haftar’s son and deputy commander.

The discussions apparently yielded nothing beyond a generic commitment to work toward unifying the two sides’ budgets.

Secrecy has been a key feature of Washington’s diplomacy throughout. Even as the U.S. effort progressed, neither Boulos nor any other U.S. official would publicly share the content of the developing proposal.

Libyans commonly refer to the proposed political settlement as the “Boulos plan”, reflecting his central role in the negotiations. Boulos himself describes it as a “U.S. initiative”, adding only that it seeks to unify the country’s institutions after fifteen years of division. Still, broad contours of the deal have emerged, if only in increments. According to Libyan interlocutors and foreign diplomats familiar with the negotiations, the initiative’s centrepiece is merging the two rival governments into a single executive.

Again, based on these reports, two men would emerge as principal beneficiaries: Abdelhamid Dabaiba and Saddam Haftar, leading representatives of the two families that have consolidated political power in western and eastern Libya, respectively.

Despite continuous tensions, Dabaiba and Saddam Haftar have reportedly been in regular, secret contact, notably to negotiate off-the-books revenue sharing arrangements that critics charge serve their respective parochial interests. According to these sources, the proposed U.S.-backed arrangement would leave Dabaiba in office as prime minister of the unified executive, with his nephew Ibrahim staying on as national security adviser.

Saddam Haftar, currently deputy commander-in-chief of the east-based Libyan Arab Armed Forces, would become head of the Presidential Council, replacing Mohamed al-Mnefi. The fate of the Council’s two other members remains unclear. Should such a deal be concluded – and should a member of the Haftar family for the first time occupy political office with full international recognition – at least some domestic opposition would be inevitable.

Saddam Haftar’s forces fought (and won) deadly urban wars with Islamist groups in Benghazi (between 2015 and 2018) and Derna (in 2017-2018), and then led the year-long siege of Tripoli in 2019, before being compelled to withdraw in 2020. Since then, they have been accused of being involved in the disappearance of several prominent activists and politicians as well as of controlling various smuggling routes.

Beyond this central political bargain, several important aspects of the proposed arrangement remain unresolved, according to Libyans well informed about the negotiations. One concerns the seat of the new government: whether it would be Tripoli, where Dabaiba is based, or Sirte, the central coastal city under Haftar’s control. The Haftars have not set foot in the capital in over a decade, and several powerful Tripoli-based armed groups remain deeply hostile to them due to the 2019-2020 siege.

The two sides reportedly are weighing different options. One idea would be for Sirte to be the interim seat of power. Its proponents argue that Sirte would be a more neutral location, insulating the new executive from Tripoli’s armed groups, which they accuse of routinely coercing ministers and influencing government decision-making.

They further contend that this temporary relocation would provide the authorities with greater freedom to reform the security sector before returning to Tripoli. More recently, the Haftar camp is said to have suggested that Dabaiba’s government move to Sirte while Saddam Haftar, as head of state, would be based in Tripoli.

Those favouring a bigger role for the capital, by contrast, prefer an opposite arrangement, in which each leader would remain in his present stronghold: Dabaiba in Tripoli and Haftar in Sirte.

_____________________

Ben Fishman

The latest US initiative is structured in a way that lets political elites permanently postpone elections.

On 29 June, Secretary of State Marco Rubio welcomed Saddam Haftar to the seventh floor of the State Department, an unusual place to host a military leader. Despite his record of brutality and intolerance to opposition in Libya’s east, Saddam has become one of the primary faces of Trump’s administration’s initiative to unify Libya.

The American initiative, identified with presidential envoy for Africa Massad Boulos (Tiffany Trump’s father-in-law) aims to unify Libya’s east and west by selecting leaders from each region to split the top government positions.

The Trump administration seeks stability to expand access for American energy companies and increase Libya’s oil production. However, naming anyone to be president or prime minister, let alone Saddam Haftar, is a recipe for political chaos.

Since Haftar’s Washington visit, many Libyans have opposed the Boulos initiative, an electricity crisis has exposed Libya’s poor governance, and an outbreak of fighting in the western city of Zawiya shows the influence militias still have in the country.

More fundamentally, the plan would effectively kill another UN-led effort to restore political ownership of Libya to its people.

Libya has suffered from an absence of political legitimacy since the ouster of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh has been in office since 2021, when 39 members of the UN-sponsored 74-member Libya Political Dialogue Forum appointed him. He was supposed to serve for a maximum of one year but remains in office today after elections were indefinitely postponed in 2022.

Dbeibeh and his influential nephew, Ibrahim, are the likely counterparts to Saddam under the Boulos plan.

Libya’s parliaments, the Eastern-based House of Representatives and the Tripoli-based High State Council, have even less legitimacy. The Speaker of the House, Aguila Saleh Issa, has been in office since 2014, elected with fewer than 1,000 votes from a tiny district. He has used his outsized role to block political change to the extent that he was sanctioned by the US for obstructing the peace and stability of Libya.

Vicious cycle

Libya is trapped in a cycle in which political elites block any initiative that would restore political legitimacy to a new government. They cling to power and wealth in a rentier economy with rampant corruption. Outside actors, including neighbours, regional states, and the West, have contributed to Libya’s divisions by supporting the warring sides or using their influence to stymie political progress.

Given these challenges, it’s little wonder the Trump administration would be tempted to bypass the Libyan people and formalize an arrangement with the country’s two main power brokers, the Haftars and the Dbeibeh. However, if the stated goal is power-sharing and unity as a stage in preparation for elections, which Boulos is quick to emphasise, the protagonists could not be more unreliable. Khalifa Haftar launched a war against Tripoli in 2019; his son, official deputy since August 2025, is unlikely to relinquish national power if it is handed to him.

Dbeibeh, meanwhile, has already extended his tenure years beyond his initial mandate. Neither is equipped to meet Libyans’ basic governance needs, as the current challenges over electricity and inflation show.

What’s the alternative?

In June, the UN mission in Libya (UNSMIL) completed a “Structured Dialogue” among 120 Libyans that outlined the country’s political, economic and security future. The governance group laid out options for determining a constitutional framework and holding elections.

A smaller group is working to outline specific electoral law and processes. They meet regularly and recently agreed on how to appoint the chair and members of the election commission. The UN and the dialogue group should finalize arrangements and set an election date.

The US and its partners would be better served supporting that process rather than imposing a new political structure that will be even less likely to relinquish authority than the current one.

Economic reform, military unification

In addition to supporting elections, the US should continue to press for economic reforms and the military unification effort, in which Saddam Haftar has a legitimate role to play.

In April, US experts helped negotiate a unified budget for the first time in over a decade. Chaotic spending patterns and unaccountable oil-revenue receipts threatened the stability of the Libyan dinar.

The budget is only a first step. It provides top-line figures and essentially caps funds for development projects controlled by the eastern and western development “institutions” who happen to belong to Dbeibehs and Haftars.

The US and its partners should continue to press on issues of financial transparency and reforms that will allow Libya’s small population to benefit from its oil income instead of suffering from corruption and economic mismanagement.

Second, continuing the military unification efforts will better integrate the Libyan Armed Forces with their Western military counterparts.

The US Africa Command hosted a major regional exercise in Libya in April, and the administration continues to advance talks with both sides. Even though there is an imbalance in the reunification discussions since Western security forces include militias as well as a more formal military, the process keeps the sides talking rather than fighting.

A further important step would be to disclose weapons acquisitions by both sides. The US should also maintain a close military dialogue with Türkiye and Egypt since they have the most influence on the ground and neither wants another war.

For years, Libyans have insisted that they are fed up with temporary solutions. The US initiative is structured to be just that—another transitional phase that lets political elites permanently postpone elections.

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Naaman Elbouri

Libya has had a summer of chaos and discontent that at times threatened to bring down the current government.

• Increasing and persistent power cuts since June.
• Four regional power blackouts, including three in two days.
• Armed drone attacks on fuel depots, power stations, and water desalination plants.
• The government unable or unwilling to identify or name the perpetrators of the drone attacks.
• The power cuts have resulted in several shutdowns of all the Man-Made River water wells – temporarily cutting off water pumping to all the country.
• The diversion by the government of electricity from industries and businesses to domestic users, to avoid social unrest.
• Long queues at petrol stations because petrol stations that don’t have generators or diesel to operate them are unable to pump fuel.
• A spike in diesel black-market prices and the disappearance of diesel off the market as the whole country turns to using their generators .
• The billions spent on the electricity generation sector in recent years, confirmed by Prime Minister Abdel Hamid Aldabaiba in his recent angry outburst at a Cabinet Meeting – at the failure of GECOL to resolve the issue of power cuts.
• The decades of wasted state subsidies to the electricity sector.
• The removal yesterday of the GECOL chairman as a result of the power cuts and blackouts.
• The attempted resignation of the CBL Governor last week.
• The spike in the black-market foreign exchange rate of the LD to over LD 9 / dollar.

All these, and more, have led to loud public cries for a change in leadership in GECOL, the CBL, the government and its security services.

However, in his latest op-ed, Naaman Elbouri, former banker and current fintech CEO, asks: Is the problem really the people, or is it the system in which they operate? “I believe one of the biggest mistakes we continue to make in Libya is believing that changing people will automatically change the reality.

We remove one official and appoint another. We change a board of directors, appoint a new government, or replace one governor with another—and then expect different results. But we forget to ask the most important question: Is the problem really the people, or is it the system in which they operate?

The reality is that a significant part of Libya’s crisis today is not simply a crisis of individuals. It is a crisis of an institutional and operational system that has been designed—or has evolved over the years—in a way that makes it incapable of consistently producing sound results. Within such a system, even a good, honest and capable person will find it extremely difficult to achieve much. Not because they do not want to reform, but because the rules of the game themselves do not allow them to do so.

The System Is Stronger Than

the Individual

When an institution operates with complicated procedures, unclear responsibilities, overlapping authorities, weak accountability, inadequate oversight and conflicts of interest, it becomes extremely difficult for anyone to operate effectively. Eventually, one of two things happens:

Either the individual gives in to the system and adapts to it, or they try to resist it and find themselves isolated and unable to implement what they believe is right. And this is where the real danger lies.

A dysfunctional system does not necessarily corrupt people because they are corrupt. It can push even good people to adapt to its rules simply in order to survive and function within it. That is why replacing one individual within a broken system can give society the impression that something has changed, while in reality nothing fundamental has changed. The Problem Is Not Simply Who Sits in the Chair

We need to stop reducing Libya’s crisis to the question: “Who is the right person?” And start asking: “Is the system in which this person will operate actually designed to allow them to succeed?” If the answer is no, then even the best person in the world will struggle to achieve meaningful change.

We need to fundamentally reconsider how our state institutions operate:

– How are decisions made?

– Who has the authority to make them?

– Who is held accountable when things go wrong?

– How are results measured?

– How are leaders selected?

– How are appointments made?

– How is public money managed?

– How are conflicts of interest prevented?

– How are laws enforced?

– And how do we guarantee institutional independence and transparency?

These are the questions that must be at the heart of any serious reform project.

You Cannot Reform a Broken System

Using the Same Tools

We cannot expect the same system that produced failure to reform itself without changing the rules by which it operates. Real reform does not simply mean replacing people. It means redesigning the institutions themselves.

We need a system that enables good people to succeed, makes corruption more difficult, makes the right decision easier to take, and ensures that officials understand that their decisions have consequences and that they will be held accountable for their performance.

We need to move away from a system based on individuals, relationships and influence toward one based on law, institutions, competence, transparency and accountability.

We Do Not Need a “Good Man”

Inside a Bad System

Even the best leaders will face serious limitations if the institution they lead does not function properly. That is why relying on a “saviour” can be dangerous; it simply reproduces the same problem. We do not need a superhero. We need a system that enables an ordinary, competent professional to do their job properly. That is the strength of successful states and institutions.

A successful state does not depend on the brilliance of a particular minister, governor or director. It depends on the fact that the institution itself works, regardless of who occupies the chair.

Libya Needs Redesign, Not Just

Replacement

If we genuinely want to overcome the crisis, we must move from a policy of “changing people” to something much bigger: Redesigning the Libyan state and the way its institutions operate. We need institutions with clear responsibilities, decisions based on data, leaders selected on merit, clear performance indicators, real accountability, effective oversight, transparent financial management, and an independent judiciary that is respected and enforced. Only then will changing people truly make a difference.

Replacing people while keeping the same rules, procedures, centres of influence and decision-making mechanisms is, at best, a change of faces—not a change of reality.

The Bottom Line

Libya does not simply suffer from a shortage of good people; Libya suffers from a system that does not allow good people to work effectively. Therefore, the real battle is not against one individual, one official or one government. The real battle is against an entire system that needs to be rebuilt.

If we fix the system, good people will be able to succeed. If we leave the system unchanged, it will eventually consume one person after another. We do not just need to change who governs Libya—we need to change the way Libya is governed. That is where real reform begins.”

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Naaman Elbouri is a leading Libyan banker having been chairman of the privately-owned Al-Saray Bank for Trade and Investment (ATIB). He is currently the Chairman of Tadawul, the leading private sector fintech company in Libya.

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 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.”

***

Jacob Wirtschafter – Special to The Washington Times

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