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Hafed Al-Ghwell

In recent years, China’s strategy in Africa has evolved from primarily economic engagements to a pronounced emphasis on security collaborations. This pivot became formalized during the 2024 Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation in Beijing last month, at which China committed billions over the next three years, including the allocation of $140 million specifically for security cooperation.

Growing instability across Africa, marked by socioeconomic upheavals, unsustainable debt, coups, armed banditry, and terrorism, is a key driver of this shift in strategy as Beijing seeks to safeguard its investments and project power on a convulsing continent.

China’s expanding security footprint is not merely a matter of scale, it also signals a shift in geopolitical dynamics. By conducting military exercises, such as the Peace Unity 2024 maneuvers with Tanzania and Mozambique in August, and transferring an increasing quantity of arms, surpassing even Russia’s weapons exports to the region, China aims to cement its position as a formidable security partner. This includes the training of thousands of African military and law enforcement personnel, a move that intertwines Beijing’s model of governance with Africa’s military infrastructure.

As Beijing moves to invest heavily in Africa’s security, the implications extend beyond traditional economic ties and the pursuit of soft power gains among disillusioned countries that feel left behind in the growing divide between the Global North and South; it positions a once reluctant China as a dominant force in Africa’s evolving security scenario.

The increasing dominance of Beijing in arms transfers to sub-Saharan Africa marks a decisive shift in the continent’s geopolitical dynamics. China was responsible for a fifth of the region’s arms imports between 2019 and 2023, surpassing Russia’s contribution, and is leveraging its competitive pricing and flexible financing arrangements to cement its role as a primary arms supplier at a time when regimes, tyrants, and aspiring despots are looking beyond a Moscow crippled by its war in Ukraine.

This strategy not only diversifies military resources in African nations, it also extends China’s influence within the continent’s security sector, defying conventional arms transfer models and placing Beijing on a probable collision course with fellow UN Security Council members who advocate for arms embargoes as a tool for seeking peace and stabilization.

China’s military involvement extends beyond traditional hardware. The deployment of advanced technologies, such as drones and warships, highlights Beijing’s resolve as it strives to maintain its edge in the rapidly evolving arms market and the rush to project power across a continent on which countries are increasingly assertive and poised to recalibrate traditional partnerships.

For instance, sales of the Cai Hong-4 unmanned aerial vehicle to Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo are part of this strategy in a calculated effort to align military support with economic partnerships free of the pesky strings that are usually attached to engagements with Western countries.

Beyond the arms transfers and military exercises uncomfortably close to global chokepoints and NATO’s southern flank, Beijing is also providing training for more than 6,000 military personnel and 1,000 law enforcement officers, in pursuit of longer-term alliances and advocacy of its governance model across Africa.

As increasingly sophisticated arms proliferate, they raise the stakes in already volatile regions, helping to empower regimes while potentially escalating conflicts in ungoverned spaces. The influx of Chinese military hardware, from drones to armored vehicles, into countries such as Libya further entrenches China’s strategic interests. This evolution will undoubtedly lead to a profound recalibration of Africa’s security landscape, with enduring implications for the continent.

China’s expanding security footprint in Africa involves the practical provision of security through Chinese private security companies.

China’s shift from being Africa’s chief economic partner, through Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative infrastructure project, to aggressive efforts to position itself as the continent’s security guarantor not only expands China’s footprint there, it mirrors historical patterns of foreign influence in Africa. Unlike its Western predecessors and geopolitical rivals that marched into the continent on flimsy pretexts, only to succumb to unceremonious exits leaving behind a trail of instability, China is trying something a little different by cementing its presence there while attempting to safeguard its growing investments.

Through its Global Security Initiative, Beijing hopes to orchestrate this shift by deepening security ties and deploying resources, labor and expertise to bolster Africa’s military and infrastructure defenses. This proactive stance is not purely altruistic; it helps mitigate potential risks to Chinese investments, including extensive infrastructure projects, and cultivates dependencies that can be leveraged for deeper political and economic alliances.

China’s support, including the training of thousands of military personnel and the provision of substantial military assistance grants, reflects a determination to further entwine African states within its sphere of influence.

Effects on the ground are already observable. The professionalization of local security forces as a result of Chinese training programs is slowly reshaping the military landscape in several African countries. This has resulted in enhanced local security apparatus that is capable of more effectively managing internal threats.

China’s expanding security footprint in Africa is not only a matter of arms or military training, it also involves the practical provision of security through Chinese private security companies. This strategic deployment helps address pressing security gaps, thereby positioning Beijing as a critical player in African security affairs without committing extensive state military resources.

However, while such efforts reinforce China’s position as Africa’s largest trading partner, they carry the potential risk of entangling Beijing in conflicts in which the interests of individual state partners might collide with wider regional escalations. In some cases, China could find itself compromised by deepening ties on both sides of a conflict and therefore unable to de-escalate tensions fueled by deep-rooted historical grievances.

China’s approach diverges from prior Western interventions by emphasizing the importance of sovereignty and non-interference, to help bolster its own hegemony and protect its vested interests. Yet this growing influence comes at the cost of potentially increased African dependencies on Chinese military aid and governance models. Beijing’s emerging role as a security guarantor might therefore inadvertently reduce the independence of African states.

This new scramble for Africa therefore involves an aggressive and calculated engagement by China with the continent’s security dynamics. While this approach might bring stability to certain regions, equally it heralds the possibility of troubling geopolitical shifts. Questions remain about China’s broader ramifications for African sovereignty.

As Beijing continues to bolster military alliances and arms transfers, the continent stands on the cusp of a transformation of power dynamics that might reinforce Beijing’s economic and strategic foothold there while redefining Africa’s own security trajectory.

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Hafed Al-Ghwell is a senior fellow and executive director of the North Africa Initiative at the Foreign Policy Institute of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington.

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Frederic Wehrey

Libya

Russia’s ties to Libya are also historic and deeply rooted in the Cold War period, when Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi started importing large quantities of Soviet weaponry and hosting thousands of Soviet advisers in the early and mid-1970s.

By 2008, Russia had forgiven Libya’s substantial debt in return for deals on energy, weapons, and transportation infrastructure. Yet, as in the case of Algeria, these security-centric ties did not convert Libya into a reliable Russia client, and the never-implemented announcement of a Russian naval port in Benghazi was in fact a stratagem deployed by Gaddafi to gain leverage over Russia and the West.

Following Gaddafi’s ouster, the dysfunction and fragmentation of Libya largely dissuaded Russia from reestablishing a presence. But when a nationwide civil war erupted in early 2014, a multitude of Libya political actors drew in competing regional and international powers, particularly Russia.

In the years since, Russia’s goals can be broadly described as the following: to recoup and exceed the economic benefits it enjoyed under the Gaddafi era through infrastructure and energy deals; to obstruct and undermine European diplomacy on Libya through aggressive initiatives unencumbered by human rights; to establish military bases and logistical hubs for its power projection into the Sahelian states to the south and along the Mediterranean’s littoral, where it can threaten NATO’s southern flank; and, since the start of the Ukraine war, to get cash through illicit smuggling.

Its strategy in pursuing these objectives has been flexible, opportunistic, scalable, and, since a good portion of it has been conducted through private military companies, nominally deniable. It has also been geared toward a diverse range of Libyan actors: Gaddafi loyalists; a local militia controlling oil facilities; the internationally recognized government in Tripoli; and especially the eastern-based military leader Khalifa Haftar, whose rise to prominence was due in no small part to Russian assistance, along with support from the United Arab Emirates and Egypt.

Working in conjunction with these Arab powers, Russia sent spare parts and medical care to Haftar’s self-styled Libyan Arab Armed Forces, as well as to technicians, logisticians, advisers, and intelligence personnel. It also printed banknotes for the Haftar-aligned, unrecognized Central Bank in eastern Libya and launched a propaganda campaign on behalf of the militia chief, using official state media and clandestine channels.

When Haftar launched his military campaign to topple the internationally-recognized government in the Libyan capital, mercenaries from the Wagner Group acted as artillery spotters and snipers and in some cases directed battlefield maneuvers. Though ultimately unsuccessful due to a Turkish military intervention on behalf of the Tripoli government in early 2020, the resulting battlefield stalemate and frozen conflict has been adroitly exploited by Moscow to reap strategic dividends.

Russian paramilitary and regular forces currently maintain access to key oil facilities and occupy major air bases in central and southern Libya. From these bases, they have been ferrying weapons, supplies, and personnel to fragile and conflict-wracked states to the south, including Sudan, where Russia has backed the Rapid Support Forces, as well as Burkina Faso, the Central African Republic, Chad, Mali, and Niger.

Moscow is also using its air bases in Libya to profit from the transregional smuggling of gold, fuel, and narcotics—especially Captagon pills from Syria. More recently, in the wake of the tragic flooding in Libya’s coastal town Derna in September 2023, Russia has solidified its relations with Haftar through the dispatch of doctors and medical aid and through high-level visits.

This support was followed by a massive uptick in military materiel, such as air defense systems and armored vehicles, flowing into Libya’s eastern port of Tobruk, which the Kremlin hopes to eventually convert into a more permanent basing arrangement.

While much of this Russian activity takes place on territory nominally controlled by Haftar, Moscow is in no sense beholden to the warlord, but rather acts autonomously. Moreover, Russia is increasing its outreach to the Tripoli government and its patron Türkiye on economic and energy matters, while bolstering its soft power in the form of a polished, Arabic-speaking Russian ambassador, an Arabic-language satellite channel, and engagement on Libyan education—all of which contrasts with the absence of a permanent diplomatic presence by the United States.

American efforts to erode Russia’s foothold in the country and to affect the departure of foreign military forces more broadly through a democratically elected executive have been stymied by the obstinacy of Libya elites and militia bosses, who are benefiting economically and politically from the status quo and from Washington’s unwillingness to significantly sanction or pressure two of its closest

Arab allies in the region, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, whose policies have directly enabled Russia’s growing influence. And unlike in the battle against the Islamic State, the United States cannot call upon Libyan proxy militias to pressure or confront Russian forces in the country.

While the question of a post-Haftar transition looms over Libyan politics, Russia will almost certainly adapt to and benefit from his successor, which will most likely be his more powerful son Saddam or the more discreet Russian-trained son Khaled.

Over the near and mid-term, then, it seems likely that Libya will continue to serve as Russia’s most significant point of entry into the Maghreb and its most successful intervention on the African continent, which now serves as a launching pad for Moscow’s growing footprint in the south through its Africa Corps.

Morocco

Morocco does not factor significantly into Russia’s strategy to gain influence in the Maghreb, given Rabat’s enduring security ties with the United States and Europe. Along with Tunisia, Morocco enjoys the status of being a major non-NATO ally, and it routinely participates in U.S.-sponsored military exercises in the region. It was also the first Maghreb country to send military aid to Ukraine, in the form of twenty renovated T-72B main battle tanks.

That said, Morocco has substantial economic relations with Russia. Trade grew by 42 percent in 2021 alone, and the country depends on Russian imports of key agricultural products such as ammonia and fertilizer to sustain its farming sector, which employs an estimated 45 percent of the Moroccan workforce and contributes to 15 percent of its GDP. Coal, petroleum, fishing, and nuclear energy are other areas of substantial cooperation.

As a result, Morocco has tried to steer a middle course amid growing Western pressure on Russia since the start of the Ukraine war, exemplified by it refraining from casting a vote against Russian aggression during an early 2023 UN General Assembly meeting. Rabat also reportedly seeks to preserve Russia’s position of qualified neutrality on the Western Sahara dispute. Despite Moscow’s declared support for Sahrawi self-determination and backing of the insurgent Polisario Front, some analysts have argued that Morocco has been encouraged by the Kremlin’s voting record at the United Nations and reportedly believes Russian officials can exert a moderating influence on Algeria’s belligerency on the issue.

Tunisia

As in the case of Morocco, Russian inroads in Tunisia have been offset by the country’s historically strong security relations with the United States, which have endured and grown despite the tumult and authoritarian turn of the post-2011 transition. That said, Tunisia has long depended on Russian wheat supplies and has remained a “significant customer for Russian gas and oil exports during the post-Ukraine EU embargo.”

More recently, the two countries’ educational and cultural ties have grown, with the Russian state press hailing Tunisia as the first country in North Africa “to officially recognize Russian as a supplemental language in secondary education.” Moreover, since his 2021 “self-coup” and in the face of growing Western pressure, President Saied is seeking to diversify the country’s external relations, which includes cultivating closer ties with Russia.

And, already, Tunisia is following its neighbor Algeria’s example of applying for membership to the BRICS. For its part, Moscow is trying to capitalize on Tunisia’s chilling of relations with the West to exert greater influence, using the multifaceted approach it has pursued elsewhere in the region. It is unlikely, however, that Tunisia will become a full-fledged Russian client, given the liabilities it could create for Moscow as an economically troubled and politically unstable state, as well as Saied’s predilection for hedging through continued ties with other countries, including China, Europe, the Gulf states, Iran, and the United States.

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Frederic Wehrey – Senior Fellow, Middle East Program

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Abdullah Alkabir

Is the Central Bank crisis over? It seems so, because an agreement was reached under the auspices of the acting Head of the United Nations Mission in Libya, Stephanie Koury, and was signed by the representatives of the House of Representatives and the High Council of State, after agreeing on the new governor and his deputy.

The Presidential Council succeeded in achieving a long-awaited change, or more precisely, succeeded in pushing the two houses to activate a task that is part of their responsibilities, which is to select and assign competent and capable figures to sovereign positions according to the political agreement.

It is certain that the agreement was first reached between the active parties in the shadows, while it appears in the picture that it was an agreement reached between the House of Representatives and the High Council of State, because the selection mechanism, as stipulated in the political agreement, requires a selection among several figures nominated for the sovereign position, and therefore the role of the two houses did not go beyond approving who was chosen among the real negotiators away from the media cameras.

The Presidential Council’s adventure into the political arena was strong, surprising and firm. It did not back down from its position of dismissing the former governor of the central bank, despite all the pressures such as the oil shutdown by Haftar’s gangs, the intensive media campaigns, the former governor’s incitement of banks and international financial institutions to stop dealing with the Central Bank, and the decline in the value of the Libyan dinar against foreign currencies to frightening levels.

Rather, the Presidential Council’s representative to the negotiations to choose the new governor went on to raise the ceiling of demands, to the point of demanding that the House of Representatives adhere to all constitutional and legal procedures in the session to ratify the agreement. 

With the continuation of the crisis of the High Council of State, and its sharp division over its recent presidential elections, and Khaled Al-Mishri’s rejection of the ruling of the Southern Tripoli Court invalidating the election session, the way seems paved for the Presidential Council to assume the position of the High Council of State, and become the political party representing a broad political, military and social spectrum in the western region. 

 The failure of the High Council of State to resolve the conflict over its presidency between Mohamed Takala and Khaled Al-Mishri will prevent the Council from performing its usual role in various disputed files, as it is a partner of the House of Representatives in managing the political process during the transitional phase, even with the recognition of Agila Saleh, Speaker of the House of Representatives, of Khaled Al-Mishri’s presidency of the Council, the High Council of State cannot exercise its role and gain recognition for its decisions and positions, as the UN mission did not communicate with either of the “presidents” in the crisis and negotiations on the Central Bank, and invited the head of the Finance Committee and considered him the representative of the High Council of State in the face of the representative chosen by the Speaker of the House of Representatives.

The Presidential Council’s success in changing the governor of the Central Bank, and emphasizing the assignment of an effective board of directors, not just a decoration, will restore the bank’s balanced role in managing financial and monetary affairs, and may push the Presidential Council to take bolder steps to address the political deadlock. 

Musa Al-Koni, a member of the Council, spoke clearly in an interview broadcast on state television, about the procedures for declaring a state of emergency to save the state if it is threatened by the risks of collapse, so the sovereign authority intervenes to exercise exceptional tasks, withdraws powers from governments and all bodies, and transfers them to the army if it is capable and unified to save the state. 

Even if the Presidential Council hesitates to take any step in this direction, it is certain that all political parties will take into consideration the new positioning of the Presidential Council, and this alone will push them to work seriously on all pending files, especially the constitutional track and elections.

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Frederic Wehrey

Russia’s outreach to the region has successfully exploited regimes’ frustrations with the West. Yet it has encountered difficulties in navigating the complex interrelations and rivalries.

The Middle East Program in Washington  combines in-depth regional knowledge with incisive comparative analysis to provide deeply informed recommendations. With expertise in the Gulf, North Africa, Iran, and Israel/Palestine, we examine crosscutting themes of political, economic, and social change in both English and Arabic.

The Arab-majority states of the Maghreb—Algeria, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia—have become an increasing focus of Russian engagement and influence. Moscow is demonstrating a growing appreciation of their strategic value, especially in the domains of arms sales, energy, and, since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, trade (largely to compensate for market shares lost to Western sanctions).

Geographically, these countries are part of Africa and are members of the African Union and therefore serve as important elements in Russia’s growing power projection on the African continent. They are also situated on the Mediterranean basin, offering Moscow potential points of leverage on the flow of oil and natural gas and irregular migration into the southern flank of NATO-dominated Europe, as well as potential warm water ports for its navy. Further, linguistically, culturally, and politically, the Maghreb is part of the Arab world and plays a role in Russia’s broader “return” to the Middle East and its increased strategic focus on issues such as counterterrorism, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the Iranian nuclear issue, and Syria.

Russia’s outreach to the Maghreb region has been met with successes and failures. It has successfully exploited regional regimes’ frustrations with conditional or limited Western security assistance and, since the eruption of wars in Ukraine and Gaza, the popular backlash in the region against the West’s perceived double standards and hypocrisy. However, with limitations in capacity, Russia has encountered difficulties in navigating the region’s complex relations and rivalries.

More importantly, the Kremlin’s ambitions have run up against the obstacle of local agency. With the exception of Libya, where Russia has arguably established an eastern-based militia commander as its client, Maghreb leaders exert far more influence in determining the extent of Russian penetration in the region than is commonly acknowledged. Leery of picking sides, governments in Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia have long preferred to keep their options open. They continue to hedge and diversify their relations with the many other powers on the scene, including the United States and European countries, despite their frustrations, and more recent arrivals such as China, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates.

Russia’s engagement in the Maghreb is centered on two anchors in the region, Algeria and Libya. Regarding Algeria, Russia has for the past two decades tried to reboot its Cold War–era ties through state-to-state diplomacy. Its efforts have focused on securing hydrocarbon deals and boosting exports of Russian arms, which currently comprise an estimated 70 percent of the Algerian inventory.

Despite these efforts, Russia has been unable to move the relationship with this famously nonaligned power from a purely transactional one to a deeper strategic partnership that would yield long-term military access and substantive joint energy ventures. In the wake of the Ukraine invasion, however, relations have warmed.

Moscow has been using trade with the North African country to circumvent Western efforts to isolate Russia, and Algeria has continued to purchase Russian arms and hold military exercises with Russian forces, to the chagrin of the West and to the Western-allied Morocco. That said, Algeria is continuing its careful balancing act of maintaining a diversified foreign policy and avoiding excessive dependence on Russia.

Meanwhile, in the weaker and politically fragmented state of Libya, Russia’s approach has been more multifaceted and more successful. This relative success stems largely from the military endeavor now dubbed Africa Corps, which encompasses much of the mercenary force formerly known as the Wagner Group as well as an overt deployment of the Russian Armed Forces.

In Libya, Moscow’s main host, facilitator, and donor is not the country’s UN-recognized government, but rather the eastern-based warlord Khalifa Haftar. As a result of that gambit, Russian forces, whose numbers are rapidly increasing, have secured access to major oil fields and smuggling networks, as well as control over key air bases and ports, giving Moscow a dependable logistics hub for its growing security footprint in the Sahel and Sudan. Complementing this armed mission is Russia’s growing diplomatic presence, including in the Libyan capital. The nonmilitary effort is multiplying Moscow’s sway in the economic, energy, and political realms.

Morocco and Tunisia are of secondary importance for Russian strategy. Although ambivalent with regard to the Ukraine war, Rabat remains squarely in the U.S. security orbit and remains suspicious of the Kremlin’s closeness to its rival, Algeria—though Morocco enjoys significant trade ties with Russia and is trying to steer a middle ground amid Western pressure since the start of the Ukraine war.

Russian relations with Tunisia are even more limited, with Moscow letting Algeria manage its own relationship toward Tunisia. Yet the country’s authoritarian turn under Tunisian President Kais Saied and its attendant fraying of relations with the West could pave the way for more substantive economic and security cooperation with Russia.

Algeria

The near concurrent election in 1999 of Abdelaziz Bouteflika in Algeria and Vladimir Putin in Russia heralded a reboot of the two countries’ robust relations during the Cold War. The Soviet Union was among the first countries to recognize Algeria’s formal independence from France in 1962 and served as a major arms supplier.

Their relations started diminishing shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall and deteriorated further during the chaos of the post-Soviet period and the turmoil of Algeria’s brutal civil war in the 1990s. In the following years, cooperation quickly expanded, with Russia and Algeria signing a “strategic partnership” agreement in 2001—Moscow’s first such agreement with any Arab country—followed in 2005-2006 by a military assistance and modernization package, which reportedly constituted Russia’s largest arms deal with any country since the breakup of the Soviet Union.

Additionally, some agreements on oil and gas have been inked between the two countries’ state-owned energy companies, which some analysts framed as a bid by Moscow to prevent any lessening of EU dependence on Russian energy flows. Moscow also agreed to write off Algeria’s external debt in exchange for a promise of arms purchases and signed additional deals on automobile manufacturing and atomic energy.

But in the decade since this flurry of agreements, the record of actual cooperation has been mixed. According to Russian officials and media reports, results from the strategic agreements of the early 2000s have been disappointing. Issues have included late arms deliveries and vague or nonbinding terms in signed documents on hydrocarbons. Russia’s and Algeria’s respective state-owned energy companies, Gazprom and Sonatrach, have certainly collaborated on pipeline and exploration projects, but they have also maintained strong incentives to compete, especially on the export of gas to Europe; Algeria has shown little willingness to join a Russia-led gas cartel.

Moreover, the volume of Algerian trade with Europe continues to vastly outweigh potential benefits from any cooperation with Moscow. Strategically, Russian officials have been disappointed by Algeria’s repeated refusal to grant Moscow permission to build a sought-after naval base at the Algerian port city of Oran.

In tandem, the complexities of international diplomacy and regional rivalries—magnified by Algeria’s adherence to the principle of noninterference and neutrality—have complicated Russian inroads. At the height of the regional and international opposition to Russia’s intervention in Syria, Moscow welcomed Algeria’s diplomatic blessing and maintenance of ties with the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad.

But on Libya, the two states found themselves on opposite sides of the factional divide. On the Western Sahara issue, meanwhile, Moscow has tried to position itself as a mediator between Morocco and Algeria but has met with little success. Beyond the Middle East, Algeria was one of the first countries to recognize Ukrainian independence in 1991 and voted in favor of a UN resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, drawing Moscow’s ire.

Nevertheless, the period since the coming to power of Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune in 2019, and especially since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, has witnessed a warming of bilateral relations between the two countries, particularly as Algeria has defied Western pressure to isolate Moscow. In conjunction with a plan in late 2022 to double its defense budget, Algeria signaled its intention to sign an arms deal with Moscow estimated at $12–$17 billion, which would reportedly include fifth-generation fighters and bombers, submarines, and air defense systems.

The announcement, unsurprisingly, elicited strong bi-partisan opposition from members of the U.S. Congress, who demanded that U.S. sanctions be applied against Algeria. Added to this, Moscow and Algiers conducted joint military maneuvers, including naval exercises and a provocative antiterrorism exercise near the Moroccan border involving Russian special forces and Algerian infantry.

Agriculture has also anchored the relationship, with Algeria becoming increasingly dependent on Russian grain, nearly quadrupling its imports of wheat from 2021 to 2022 and displacing France’s market share. Diplomatically, at the United Nations, Algeria has repeatedly abstained from condemning Russia’s aggression and has voted against a General Assembly resolution to expel Russia from the UN Human Rights Council. And in the wake of the ongoing Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, the two countries find themselves adopting similar positions regarding calls for a ceasefire and efforts to reconcile Palestinian factions.

As in the past, however, it would be a mistake to read such ties and alignments as evidence of Russia forming a truly political and strategic partnership with Algeria: despite the appearance of a more pro-Russian foreign policy, Algiers is continuing to chart an autonomous path that avoids becoming too closely dependent upon any one patron.

On the issue of arms exports, for example, Algeria is taking steps to compensate for disruptions in the transfer of Russian-made systems—resulting from the corrosive impact of the Ukraine war on the Russian defense industrial base—by turning to other suppliers, including China, Germany, Italy, and Türkiye.

And for all the hype, there is no evidence yet that Algeria has received Russia’s most advanced jets, including the Su-34 fighter-bomber and especially the stealthy multi-role Su-57, which Algiers has long sought, but whose production has been plagued by delays.

Moreover, at the United Nations, the country’s record of voting cannot be lumped with the coterie of reflexively pro-Russian states, including Belarus, Eritrea, North Korea, and Syria, who have defended Moscow’s actions during the Ukraine war. Algiers continues to maintain security ties to the West in the form of participation in NATO’s Mediterranean Dialogue.

And in late 2023, it applied for membership in the so-called BRICS forum, originally comprised of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa; although Russia welcomed the (unsuccessful) bid as yet another blow to the U.S.-led order, Algeria framed it as an effort to maintain its equidistant position from competing great powers and, in the words of its president, protect itself from “friction between the two poles.”

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Frederic Wehrey – Senior Fellow, Middle East Program

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The long-running feud between Libya’s competing authorities over the Central Bank has flared up again, threatening an economic crisis that could lead to unrest. The parties should press ahead with UN-backed mediation to achieve a resolution.

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III. The August Crisis

In August 2024, the long-running dispute over the Central Bank blew up once more. This time, however, the allegiances were inverted: the Tripoli-based Presidential Council, which marches in lockstep with the Dabaiba government, tried to remove Elkebir, and the eastern House of Representatives rushed to his defence, declaring that he is still the legitimate governor. 

A. A Bid to Replace the Governor

Tensions started to mount on 12 August, when the Presidential Council in Tripoli signed a decree that appointed Mohammed Shukri as governor to replace Elkebir.18 Neither published nor publicised, the document was circulated among the relevant institutions and then leaked within days. Observers quickly saw that it violated the stipulation in the Libyan Political Agreement of 2015 requiring the House and High State Council to agree on a new Bank governor. In naming Shukri, the Presidential Council had simply invoked an edict that the House issued (and never withdrew) in early 2018, a few weeks after Shukri’s earlier failed appointment, calling on him to take office in Tripoli. The Presidential Council’s move had no legal validity, as the Council has no mandate to unilaterally hire and fire Central Bank governors.

In a separate decree, the Council appointed a new board of directors. The new members included two deputy governors (Maraai al-Baraasi, who had been in place as deputy governor since 2022, and Abdel Fattah Ghaffar) and six others, all mentioned by name except for an unspecified deputy finance minister.

Neither document has appeared on the Presidential Council’s website, but a Libyan official confirmed that the leaked versions are authentic.

On 15 August, the House speaker’s office in Benghazi reacted by publishing an act that annulled the 2018 decree appointing Shukri, and instead reiterated that Elkebir and al-Baraasi are still the Bank’s top executives.

The full House then issued a statement on 21 August announcing that it would appoint a new board within ten days. At the time of publication, it had not done so.

[The 2018] dispute over control of the Central Bank did not conform entirely to the traditional east-west divide. Inside the capital, responses also varied.

This new dispute over control of the Central Bank did not conform entirely to the traditional east-west divide. Inside the capital, responses also varied. On 20 August, Elkebir declared the appointment of Shukri and the new board “illegal and invalid”, arguing that the Presidential Council was not authorised to make the appointment in question.

Several UN Security Council resolutions issued since 2015 appeared to support Elkebir’s contention that Shukri’s appointment did not adhere to the terms of the Libyan Political Agreement.

On the other side of the political divide in Tripoli, High State Council head Mohammed Tekkala, a Dabaiba ally, condemned the House’s reaffirmation of Elkebir’s tenure on 16 August, claiming it violated the Libyan Political Agreement’s requirement that the House consult with the High State Council about such matters to reach consensus.

All these competing claims over what constitutes a legitimate appointment hinge upon supposed compliance with UN-mediated deals signed in 2015 and again in 2021, which together have helped create Libya’s governing institutions. But these institutions have been in flux as political reality has shifted. The House of Representatives rarely acts as a genuine representative body, instead rubber-stamping what its speaker and Haftar’s entourage demand.

The High State Council is no longer the counterweight of the House, as it was when it was created in 2015; now it is split between two factions at odds over whether to negotiate with the east-based authorities. For its part, the Presidential Council, which is closely aligned with the Dabaiba government, is no longer the unifying interim authority it was meant to be when it was established in 2021. New alliances and dividing lines have emerged across the country, reshaping the pieces of Libya’s political puzzle.

B. Possible Causes of the Dispute

Why the dispute over the Central Bank governor broke out when it did remains something of a mystery, as the arrangements stemming from efforts to reunify the Bank and the National Oil Corporation deal had allowed both sides to tap into state funds. Libya had thus seen two years of relative stability. 

That said, tensions had been brewing between Dabaiba and Elkebir for months before the current standoff. In February, the Central Bank governor and his allies complained about the Tripoli government’s high spending requirements and fuel subsidy bill.

Libyan politicians allege that Elkebir blocked a number of the prime minister’s requests for funds.

Conversely, as mentioned above, Dabaiba’s associates accused the Central Bank of providing “disproportionate” funding to the eastern authorities and eastern banks – a claim Elkebir dismissed as “a lie”, although he acknowledged that the Bank did transfer $950 million to the east to cover hard currency required for reconstruction projects.

In March, the two men also clashed publicly over a new tax requested by the House of Representatives: a 27 per cent surcharge on the purchase of foreign currency. The governor proceeded to levy the tax over Dabaiba’s objections. Yet, despite these disagreements, diplomats following Libyan affairs were sure that the status quo would hold.

There are three main hypotheses as to why the mutually beneficial arrangements collapsed.

1. First theory: a desperate act

The first theory suggests that the Tripoli government felt financially and politically cornered, compelled to act by circumstances. “The magnitude of the move tells me [the Tripoli authorities were feeling] massive desperation and hopelessness”, said a Libyan official. In his view, Dabaiba had no option but to sack Elkebir, because the Central Bank had been starving his government of funds for months. “They have been dealt a bad hand with Haftar, and this has left them out in the cold”, he claimed.

According to this theory, the cooperative dealings between Elkebir and the east-based authorities, which started in 2022 and resulted in the House of Representatives confirming him in August 2023 as the governor, as well as the arrangement for management of the National Oil Corporation, redounded primarily to the benefit of the Haftar family.

Supported by the Central Bank, the family’s companies have been carrying out real-estate development and infrastructure projects in parts of Benghazi, Derna and Sirte devastated by war, at least in part to buttress their popularity. Haftar associates frame this “battle for reconstruction” as a new strategy for “conquering” Libya.

Dabaiba’s own efforts to rebuild destroyed cities in western Libya pale in comparison.

A confluence of fast-paced events in early August may have added to Dabaiba’s perception that his political position was under threat. First, Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly invited the east-based prime minister, Osama Hamad, who is not recognised abroad, to pay an official visit to Cairo, prompting Tripoli to complain.

Dabaiba suffered a second political blow on 6 August, when his ally Mohammed Tekkala appeared to lose the High State Council presidency to Khaled Mishri. The result is still hotly contested: Mishri claims he won by one vote, while Tekkala says a ballot for him was unjustifiably discarded. In any event, at the time of publication the High State Council remained split in two factions, those supporting Mishri on one side and those backing Tekkala on the other.

The two camps are divided mainly by their attitude toward Dabaiba: the Tekkala faction wants Dabaiba to stay on as prime minister, while Mishri’s wants to replace him. Sources suggest that should Mishri prevail, he would be inclined to ally himself with Aghela Saleh, speaker of the House of Representatives, to try removing Dabaiba. Saleh and Mishri have been allies on an anti-Dabaiba ticket before, most recently in 2022.

Other challenges to Dabaiba’s position came from the east-based authorities. On 9 August, rumours began to spread about an impending offensive by Haftar-led forces on Ghadames, a desert city on Libya’s western border with Algeria that is held by Tripoli-aligned forces.

While no such operation occurred, the speculation may have spooked officials in Tripoli. Later, on 13 August, Saleh announced that the House of Representatives was about to withdraw its recognition of the Presidential Council, a step it did not take when it withdrew confidence from the Daibaba-led Government of National Unity in 2022.

In short, the argument goes, Dabaiba feared that his rivals were joining hands in a bid to oust him from power and, for this reason, he decided to make a move of his own.

___________________

Hafed Al-Ghwell

As the UN Security Council once again approached the quagmire that is Libya, the pervasive sense of deja vu is hard to ignore. The impending renewal of the mandate of the UN Support Mission in Libya seems more obligatory than innovative, raising doubts about the council’s readiness to tackle the entrenched political and security issues with any new vigor.

This October, as Security Council members gathered to deliver another bimonthly briefing, the stalemate in Libya persists, mired in a profound chasm of divisiveness and dysfunction.

The Security Council’s routine, yet essential, proceedings often feel like a haunting refrain, replaying the discord between Libya’s competing mafia-like factions without offering decisive intervention to break the deadlock.

At the heart of Libya’s political standstill is the persistent struggle between the UN-recognized Government of National Unity in Tripoli and the eastern-based Government of National Stability under the control of Khalifa Haftar. This schism has recently been further inflamed by a scramble for control over the Central Bank of Libya, which extends beyond mere governance to a tug-of-war for financial supremacy.

August witnessed the provocative move by the House of Representatives to declare the Government of National Stability as Libya’s legitimate administration, coupled with an audacious decree by Presidential Council head Mohammed Yunus Al-Menfi dismissing long-serving Central Bank of Libya Governor Sadiq Al-Kabir. These unilateral acts have not only deepened the political rift but have also prompted a near collapse of oil exports — Libya’s vital and only economic artery.

Yet, as the Security Council braces to deliberate once more, there is a palpable impatience, questioning — albeit rhetorically — whether these meetings will conjure some “grand strategy” to finally close the “Libya File,” or merely perpetuate an all too familiar cycle of superficial fixes aimed at maintaining the status quo.

Amid this, the wider international community’s bumbling involvement adds another layer of complexity.

Behind the facade of concern, major regional powers are less invested in genuine stabilization and more in their own strategic interests. These external actors have successfully carved out spheres of influence within Libya, safeguarding their geopolitical, regional, economic, and military footholds.
For these powers, an unstable yet manageable Libya serves as a buffer against larger regional disruptions, making the longevity of the crisis more palatable.

The playbook offers public support for some kind of “peace” and musings of stability, even as Libya’s meddlers remain fairly content with an “invisible occupation and division” that benefits individual geopolitical stakes.

This paradox of intervention — wherein the guise of concern and, occasionally, mild outrage conceals a dogged pursuit of short-term and short-sighted strategic interests dependent on an enduring gridlock in Libya — kills all urgency for real reconciliation and spotlights the international community’s failure to provide coherent, effective solutions.

Even a serious commitment to forensically studying just why the goal of a stable, unified, secure, and sovereign Libya remains ever elusive for the UN.
In October, as the Security Council gathered for the ritual renewal of yet another mandate for the UN Support Mission in Libya, the veneer of international diplomacy seemed increasingly hollow.

The UN’s once robust role as a convener, arbiter, and legitimizer has been reduced to a mere rubber-stamper, caught in a morass of inefficiency, inertia, and dysfunction. For instance, despite many rounds of UN mission-facilitated talks culminating in the appointment of Naji Mohammed Issa Belqasem as governor of the Central Bank of Libya, the reality is that such agreements often disintegrate under the weight of Libya’s deeply entrenched power struggles.

Meanwhile, Libyans themselves seem detached and unenthusiastic by the nation’s gridlocked and highly dangerous political arena, an echo of the deep scars left in the wake of the 2011 civil war. The promises of a pluralistic democracy and personal liberties have become distant memories as ongoing humanitarian crises demonstrate systemic failures.

One such crisis, the catastrophic flooding in Derna last September, which displaced over 44,000 people and left around 250,000 in dire need of aid, is the biggest example yet that illustrates these shortcomings. Political corruption and competition over reconstruction funds have only deepened the discord, intensifying the public’s already palpable apathy.

However, even as political elites bicker and an ineffectual UN fails repeatedly to broker a lasting peace, the specter of another round of the continued civil war from 2011 looms large. Compounding these woes is the prospect of Libya becoming a permanent playground for middle powers and criminal organizations seeking to exert their own influence, further destabilizing a nation still grappling with its own unmet aspirations post-2011 as minimal as they have become.

The international community’s unsettling model-setting acquiescence to the status quo in Libya is already feeding a narrative of a heightened tolerance for failings — provided they do not lead to all-out war. However, while avoiding an outright relapse into conflict might elicit a collective sigh of relief, this “faux stability” hides far deeper issues.

After all, the current peace is illusory, masking a consolidation of power by various actors who use this period to enrich themselves via corruption and unchecked state capture.

Libya’s divided governments and mafia-like factions, meanwhile, have made an art out of manipulating public institutions like the Central Bank and the National Oil Co. as well as key assets such as oilfields to line their pockets, sowing bitter seeds among a public that can only look on as prospects diminish with each new headline or crisis.

This dynamic illustrates a peculiar form of helplessness that not only blesses the cannibalization of Libya but also amplifies the disenfranchisement of its citizens, setting an example the world over of the failures of the international community and its endless verbal diarrhea of statements, press releases, declarations, and resolutions.

After all, as political actors deepen their grip, ordinary Libyans find themselves with ever less to lose, heightening the risk of popular backlash despite the prevalence of arms across Libya’s sprawling black markets.

Recent clashes between rival militias in Tripoli and UNSMIL’s concerns over threats of force tease how quickly the veneer of stability can easily and so swiftly shatter. The longer this state of inertia persists, the more likely Libyans are to take matters into their own hands. This is not a sustainable model, nor should it be the legacy of international intervention in Libya.

The UN Security Council must confront a sobering truth if genuine progress is to be made: The cyclical renewal of mandates and surface-level agreements do little to address the root causes of Libya’s woes and only chip away at what is left of UN credibility elsewhere. Without a decisive, coordinated, and genuine effort to implement lasting solutions, the cycle of dysfunction will continue — much to the detriment of Libyans and, ultimately, driving another nail in the already precarious state of global stability.

***

Hafed Al-Ghwell is a senior fellow and executive director of the North Africa Initiative at the Foreign Policy Institute of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington.

______________________

The long-running feud between Libya’s competing authorities over the Central Bank has flared up again, threatening an economic crisis that could lead to unrest. The parties should press ahead with UN-backed mediation to achieve a resolution.

***

II. The Struggle for Control of the

Central Bank

Disputes over control of the Central Bank have been a recurring feature of the Libyan crisis since the country’s governing institutions split in two in 2014. After balloting in June of that year, Siddiq Elkebir, with the backing of the Tripoli-based authorities, refused to fund the newly elected House of Representatives, the legislature that from its inauguration has been based in eastern Libya.

He also cut off financing to the House’s two main allies, the then-nascent Libyan National Army led by Haftar and a new east-based administration. He did, however, keep releasing funds to pay the salaries of public-sector employees based in the east who had been on the state payroll from before the 2014 crisis (paradoxical as it may sound, these employees included military officers aligned with Haftar).

In the years that followed, the House of Representatives tried and failed to sack Elkebir at least twice. In 2014, it ordered Elkebir’s deputy, Ali Hibri, to take over, working from the Central Bank’s Benghazi branch.

But Hibri did not receive international recognition and did not have access to the foreign accounts holding Libyan oil revenues. He nonetheless managed to pay the salaries of employees working for the rival east-based authority who were hired after 2014 and new recruits who had joined the Libyan National Army, as well as their respective operating expenses, through parallel funding schemes, such as purchasing treasury bills from the eastern administration and then crediting its deposit account. But Elkebir remained in charge overall, since he controlled the accounts containing the proceeds of oil sales as well as the codes needed to carry out the Bank’s transactions worldwide. He also retained full international support. 

Appointments of the Central Bank … require consensus between the House in the east and the High State Council in Tripoli.

The House of Representatives tried to depose Elkebir a second time in 2017, unilaterally appointing Mohammed Shukri as governor, but the latter declined the role, citing the lack of consensus behind his selection. Shukri knew that his appointment ran afoul of existing political accords. The UN-backed Libyan Political Agreement, which the UN Security Council endorsed in December 2015 after a year of negotiations and which remains the country’s governing document to this day, established that appointments of the Central Bank governor and directors of five other sovereign state institutions require consensus between the House in the east and the High State Council in Tripoli.

The High State Council rejected the House’s appointment of Shukri because its members at the time still supported Elkebir, as did armed groups in the capital. Later in 2017, the two legislatures took tentative steps to replace Elkebir, whose five-year term had expired and who had proven divisive, but their representatives could not agree on who his successor should be. 

Between 2018 and 2020, Libya’s political crisis descended into intermittent fighting, amounting to civil war. The Libyan National Army, backed by the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, on one side, and the Tripoli-backed armed groups with Turkish support on the other clashed in the eastern cities of Benghazi and Derna, as well as in the south and over oil fields in the Gulf of Sirte.

In 2019, the war reached Tripoli, with Haftar’s forces, now also assisted by Russian mercenaries, laying siege to the capital for over a year. This westward drive was partly an attempt by the eastern authorities to gain direct control of the Central Bank and access to its accounts, including its foreign currency reserves. When the offensive faltered in 2020, the Libyan National Army returned to its base in the east.

Throughout this period, Elkebir remained at the helm of the Central Bank by default. The Tripoli headquarters operated without a functioning board of directors, because most members sided with the east-based government. The governor, flanked by trusted managers, thus became the sole person responsible for Libya’s monetary policies. The east-based authorities regularly vilified him, portraying him as a pawn of their enemy the Muslim Brotherhood. They accused him of mishandling public funds and thus contributing to an economic crisis. They also said he was running the bank illegally without a board of directors.

Even though Libya continued to sell billions of dollars’ worth of oil, ordinary people increasingly had to cope with shortages of cash and fuel, power cuts and breakdowns in other public services. These problems have only become worse today. Libyans have also had to bear delays in the disbursement of public-sector salaries and rely on the black market for foreign money transfers, because personal bank accounts have been disconnected from the international banking system.

Those in power on both sides of the divide have blamed Elkebir for the hardships, as have many ordinary Libyans. Elkebir and his associates argue that, to the contrary, under his leadership the Central Bank has been “the last pillar standing to hold the country together, solely responsible for keeping its economy going”.

In March 2021, UN-backed talks ended hostilities and briefly unified the country under an interim government led by Prime Minister Dabaiba and a three-man Presidential Council headed by Mohamed Mnefi, which the House of Representatives endorsed.

This arrangement lasted barely a year, falling apart when the House appointed its own executive, led first by Fathi Bashagha and then by Osama Hamad, while Dabaiba and the High State Council held on to power in Tripoli.

After 2022, however, relations between Elkebir and the east-based authorities unexpectedly improved. Exactly why remains unclear. Libyan bankers and foreign diplomats suggest that the thaw had to do with the Central Bank allegedly agreeing to underwrite (or turning a blind eye to) some of the east-based authorities’ expenses processed through east-based banks, which Elkebir had not done previously.

Some of Elkebir’s Tripoli-based opponents also claim that he funded the eastern authorities, an accusation the ousted governor vigorously denies: “Dabaiba tells militias that Siddiq gave billions to the east, but where is the evidence?”, he remarked in an interview with Crisis Group.

The governor stated that he never gave any direct funding to the parliament-backed authority, which he said had financed itself since 2022 through public debt, referring to the parallel funding schemes that eastern authorities had used between 2014 and 2019. 

Once the eastern authority had warmed to Elkebir, the Central Bank also started funding reconstruction projects in the east.

Once the eastern authority had warmed to Elkebir, the Central Bank also started funding reconstruction projects in the east. In the first half of 2024, it allocated $950 million for “Eastern Province Reconstruction Projects Credits” that, according to the Bank’s internal reporting, were transferred to its Benghazi branch and managed directly from there.

Elkebir acknowledged the transfer of this money, but said it was not “funding” for the eastern authorities but rather the Bank’s commitment to cover purchases in foreign currency that were necessary for reconstruction; these purchases, he said, would be paid for by eastern authorities in local currency.

The wording of this allocation would appear to suggest that these funds were put at the disposal of the Libya Reconstruction and Development Fund, which the House of Representatives created in late 2023 and is headed by one of Haftar’s sons, Belghasem. The Central Bank’s documents are unclear, however, on whether all the allocation went to the Fund or if some of it headed to other reconstruction projects in the east.

Efforts to build a bridge between the two rival governments based on shared economic interests extended to the state-owned National Oil Corporation, which manages crude oil sales and refined fuel imports. In mid-2022, a UAE-facilitated and U.S.-backed agreement between Haftar and Dabaiba paved the way for appointing Farhat Bengdara, a Haftar ally and former Central Bank governor under Qadhafi, to head the company. The deal’s terms were never made public, but diplomats and Libyan politicians say eastern authorities committed to keeping the oil fields and terminals open, under the Libyan National Army’s control, in exchange for receiving a specified portion of the oil revenues accruing in the Central Bank.

The deal’s main negotiators, who also oversaw its execution, were Saddam, another son of Haftar’s, and Ibrahim Dabaiba, the prime minister’s nephew and one of his advisers. Foreign countries also backed it, in the belief, as a U.S. official said, that if “you patch together enough economic stability in Libya, maybe a political solution will come through”. But there was no breakthrough.

___________________

Felicity Bradstock

Libya is focusing on developing its renewable energy potential, particularly solar and wind power, to reduce its dependence on oil and enhance energy security.

The country’s renewable energy efforts are supported by international partnerships with organizations like the EU, UNDP, and countries like Italy.

Despite facing political challenges and a history of reliance on oil, Libya is making significant strides in its energy transition and aims to become a model for renewable energy development in Africa.

After facing huge hurdles in oil and gas production, Libya is now striving to develop its renewable energy capacity and diversify its energy mix to establish greater energy security. Over the last decade, Libya has worked hard to get its oil industry back on track in the face of major political disruptions and a lack of foreign investment due to this instability.

Years of political unrest meant that many oil production sites were left abandoned while oil majors waited for greater stability in Libyan politics, forcing down production levels. Libya has some of the biggest oil reserves in Africa, but years of uncertainty have led to stagnation and the need for high levels of investment to get operations running again. 

Libya’s oil output rose from 1.47 million bpd in 2000 to almost 1.8 million bpd in 2010, a trend that was expected to continue until the Arab Spring protests of 2011 and the subsequent decade of political unrest. Oil production has gone up and down over the last few years, due to oilfields opening and shutting as political battles continue.

Libya regularly faces power shortages in the face of rising energy demand due to its heavy reliance on oil and gas and years of underinvestment in the country’s infrastructure. This has left the country with poor energy security, encouraging the leadership to develop alternative energy sources to solidify its energy independence in the future. 

In 2013, the Libyan government established its Renewable Energy Strategic 2013-2025 Plan, outlining aims to achieve a 7 percent renewable energy contribution to the electric energy mix by 2020 and 10 percent by 2025. The focus of the energy capacity expansion largely centred around wind and solar power. However, due to regular changes in the political leadership and continued unrest, Libya’s renewable energy ambitions were delayed for several years. 

In March this year, the European Union, in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the German Federal Government through the German Corporation for International Cooperation (GIZ) launched an initiative aimed at boosting Libya’s renewable energy capacity, improving energy efficiency and mitigating climate change.

The EU allocated funds to GIZ and the UNDP to implement a range of green energy projects. The initiative falls under the UNDP’s scheme ‘Support to Energy Transition and Climate Change Mitigation’ and GIZ’s ‘Sustainable Energy and Climate Change Adaptation for Resilience’ (SECCAR). The organisations will work closely with the government, national authorities, and public institutions to carry out the projects. 

Nicola Orlando, the EU Ambassador, stated, “The launch of these two projects testifies that concrete and effective partnerships can be built by sharing views on the future and mobilising resources for a common objective. Climate change is a major global challenge but can also be seen as an opportunity to promote prosperity. The EU and Libya are working together to make this happen.”

The Libyan government and the General Electricity Company of Libya (GECOL) are pursuing several wind and solar energy projects. Around 88 percent of Libya’s terrain is made up of deserts, which could provide the perfect environment for wind and solar projects. China’s PowerChina and France’s EDF are currently developing a 1,500 MW solar plant in Eastern Libya, while France’s TotalEnergies is building a 500 MW solar plant in Al-Sadada, which it expects to become operational in 2026. GECOL is also working in partnership with Australia’s AG Energy to construct a 200 MW solar plant in Ghadames and with the UAE’s Alpha Dubai Holding to develop two more solar plants. 

At the Libya-Italy Roundtable held in Rome in September, the two powers discussed investment opportunities. Italy is Libya’s biggest trading partner, with almost $10 billion of annual trade. Italy has expanded its role across Africa in recent years, as it looks to foster sustainable partnerships with African energy-producing nations, to expand access to clean energy and boost energy security in Europe and Africa. Italy’s oil major Eni has invested heavily in Libya’s oil and gas sector in the past and, in 2023, Eni signed a memorandum of understanding with Libya’s government to identify opportunities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and develop the country’s green energy capacity.

Gianluca Alberinni, the Italian Ambassador to Libya, stated, “Italy can be a point of entry for Libya to the larger European energy market.” Alberinni added, “We are interested in helping Libya to become a united country, peaceful and prosperous again… The more the business environment is stable and foreseeable, the more there will be possibilities for growth, development and cooperation with the Italian system.” 

While Libya continues with its efforts to revitalise its oil and gas industry and get production levels back on track, the government is also looking to develop its renewable energy capacity, with support from several international players.

Libya’s desert terrain offers significant opportunities for the development of solar and wind energy projects, and its experience in the international energy market will help it to develop its new green energy sector. Expanding its renewable energy market will help Libya to enhance its energy security in the coming decades and could provide it with the potential for developing a new energy export market with Europe as the region transitions to green. 

***

Felicity Bradstock is a freelance writer specialising in Energy and Finance. She has a Master’s in International Development from the University of Birmingham, UK.

________________

Giorgia Valente

While international eyes flit between Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Palestine, Libya faces a potential revolution after the Central Bank collapse, with tensions between rival governments and armed militias rising.

Libya straddles the verge of a revolution, with the Central Bank having just collapsed and the growing tensions between the Government of National Accord (GNA) headed by Abdul Hamid Dbeibah in Tripoli, a government in Benghazi supported by the warlord Khalifa Haftar, and the rising power of armed militias in the capital.

Mohamed Khaled Elghuel, Chairman of the Peace and Prosperity Party in Libya, explained to The Media Line that the country currently faces two main scenarios: either a revolution that may be worse than the one of 2011 if no actions are taken to end this endless circle of dysfunction or a total reset towards a federal system. 

Libya went through the collapse of the Central Bank in the past few days, and this poses a serious threat to the country’s stability since armed militias could easily take over. The bank dominates the Libyan economy, owning the two main commercial banks and holding $27bn in reserves, most of it from oil revenues.

Sadiq al-Kabir, the sacked governor, has recently started attacking Dbeibah’s overspending and is now seen to favor the forces in the country’s east. Abdel Fattah Ghaffar, the new interim deputy governor appointed by the Tripoli-based government, held a press conference in the capital and insisted he could ease the current liquidity crisis, pay unpaid salaries within two days, and be accountable to a board of governors.

Kabir has run the bank since 2011, the year that Col. Moammar Gadhafi was toppled with Western backing, leading to the paralyzing split between the west and east of the country.

The rival eastern administration has opposed Kabir’s sacking and said on Tuesday it would continue “suspending all oil production and exports until Kabir is reappointed,” citing “force majeure.” The affected oilfields constitute about 90% of the country’s oilfields and terminals.

Kabir said on Tuesday, for a second day running, the bank had been unable to operate due to threats from militia and the kidnapping of four staff, leading him to warn that August salaries may not be payable. 

The current events are caused by different historical reasons. Libya’s independence was historically a foreign decision more than a national process. In fact, Libyans do not have a national charter that sets peace within the country as its principle. This is why we are still facing inner disputes.

“The current events are caused by different historical reasons. Libya’s independence was historically a foreign decision more than a national process. In fact, Libyans do not have a national charter that sets peace within the country as its principle. This is why we are still facing inner disputes,” Elghuel stated. 

“On top of that, since the 1960s, there was not a clear plan adopted by the country to invest the money coming from oil revenues, which turned Libya into a rentier state with an endless circle of corruption that led to social uprisings like the one in 2011. The current situation may lead to a far worse scenario”, he added. 

According to a recent report by the Central Bank of Libya, the country’s oil revenue totaled 51 billion dinars from the first of January until July 31, 2024. Last year, oil income reached 99.1 billion dinars, a decrease from 105.4 billion dinars in 2022. This fluctuation highlights the volatile nature of Libya’s oil-based economy, which is influenced by global oil prices and domestic production challenges.

Moreover, according to a report from the National Institution for Human Rights in Libya, from the end of December 2023, the poverty rate in the country has risen to 40%. By subscribing, you agree to The Media Line terms of use and privacy policy.

Our economy is shrinking; our expenditure is increasing, but the corrupted parties are only benefitting from this. This system created the dichotomy of a lot of billionaires with 40% of the people under the poverty level.

“Our economy is shrinking; our expenditure is increasing, but the corrupted parties are only benefitting from this. This system created the dichotomy of a lot of billionaires with 40% of the people under the poverty level,” Elghuel stated. 

Aside from economic issues, Libya also faces a lack of security since no Western nation has shown interest in stabilizing Tripoli’s political system and has reduced everything to its personal goals.

The Europeans are primarily concerned with irregular migration and thus find it convenient to deal with a semi-anarchic situation. The United States is concerned with terrorism and the spread of Islamist organizations such as ISIS throughout the region. It pays no concern over who governs Libya as long as extremist groups are contained. 

This vacuum allowed external entities, mostly Russia and Turkey, to take over militarily.

“Currently, there are foreign powers competing with one another. Russia recently deployed 1800 fighters to eastern Libya to have a strategic asset close to the Sahel region, where Wagner is also present,” Omar Misbah, Local Coordinator at the Institute for Integrated Transitions (IFIT), said to The Media Line. 

“The US and European countries, like France and Italy, maintain their small military influence in the country to monitor terrorism and irregular migration. While Turkey aims to expand its influence by gaining the trust of both the Eastern and the Western governments, trying not to be an obstacle to Egypt’s plans, too. Libyans need these foreign powers out to gain back control of the country,” he added.  

The possibility of Libya becoming a field for proxy wars is plausible in the future since we see conflicting actors being present in the country and destabilizing it as well. You have the US vs Russia, and Italy, France, Turkey, Qatar, the Emirates, and Egypt competing over influence.

“The possibility of Libya becoming a field for proxy wars is plausible in the future since we see conflicting actors being present in the country and destabilizing it as well. You have the US vs Russia, and Italy, France, Turkey, Qatar, the Emirates, and Egypt competing over influence”, stated Ibrahim M.S. Grada, Former Libyan Ambassador to Sweden and Former UN Senior Advisor. 

This overall chaos may increase the threat of ISIS and even Iran’s influence in the country.

“With a chaotic scenario like the one we are seeing, ISIS may be able to recruit more people who are struggling to survive economically and are poorly educated. At the same time, Iran could use Libya as a tool to compete against Saudi Arabia, The Emirates, and Qatar while harming Europe by creating a new axis of terrorism connected to the Mediterranean’s migration flow,” commented Misbah. 

Both Elghuel and Misbah stressed that a federal system might be the solution to stabilize the country again and reset everything. This would avoid the current centralized power and create the basis of a new modern state. 

For Grada, the international actors’ influence may be decisive in understanding whether a solution to the current situation is reachable or whether a war will break out instead. 

“International powers are currently busy with the situation going on in Gaza, in Ukraine, in Sudan, so the Libya issue is currently not on the table. So far, both armed militias and local politicians seemed not to want a war, but if the current situation will go further and no international actor will intervene, a war may occur,” Grada concluded.

***

Giorgia Valente is a recent graduate of Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and an intern in The Media Line’s Press and Policy Student Program.

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Jonathan Fenton-Harvey

With Libya having slipped further down the priority list of Western powers, its fragile “cold peace” nearly collapsed in August amid a dispute over the Central Bank of Libya, or CBL, which almost ground the country’s financial system to a halt. Though narrowly averted, the crisis reveals how Libya’s fragile political landscape remains vulnerable due to internal power struggles and a lack of cohesive governance structures, problems that only a unified international effort toward stabilizing the country can address.

The crisis erupted when interim Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah, who heads the internationally recognized Tripoli-based Government of National Unity, or GNU, sought to oust the Central Bank governor, Sadiq al-Kabir. Dbeibah was frustrated that al-Kabir—who exercised significant power over the country’s finances, with around $80 billion worth of foreign reserves at his fingertips—had restricted Dbeibah’s access to funds that are vital to Dbeibah’s authority, including for the financing of militias loyal to the GNU. That led to GNU-aligned militias threatening al-Kabir with violence, forcing him to flee Libya for his life. It also risked unleashing economic shockwaves for ordinary Libyans, as the country’s banking system was almost frozen out of international financial networks.

Meanwhile, as the threat to his ally in the CBL began to materialize, Gen. Khalifa Haftar—who commands the eastern-based Libyan National Army, or LNA, and is aligned with a rival government in Tobruk known as the House of Representatives, or HoR—retaliated by shutting down key oil fields in eastern Libya on Aug. 26 to pressure the GNU to back down on al-Kabir’s removal.

Prior to that, on Aug. 7, Khalifa’s son, Saddam Haftar, led LNA forces in a bold westward advance toward the Ghadames region near the Algerian border, reportedly to capture the strategically located airport there. While Haftar’s forces faced pressure from local independent militias, leading to a delicate standoff, the advance effectively violated the United Nations-brokered cease-fire that ended the country’s civil war in October 2020. The rising tensions came at an already volatile moment, following unprecedented clashes between rival militias in Tripoli in early August.

However, international stakeholders were able to breathe a sigh of relief, at least temporarily, on Sept. 26, when the U.N. Support Mission in Libya, known as UNSMIL, managed to strike a deal between the HoR and the High Council of State, or HCS—the Tripoli-based advisory body that serves as a mediator between the rival governments—to end the CBL standoff. The agreement will see Naji Issa, a former deputy chief of the CBL’s statistics department, appointed as the new governor, with a Board of Directors to be appointed in the coming weeks. It also calls for the restoration of the High Financial Oversight Committee, an independent watchdog body that was initially established in July 2023 but undermined by al-Kabir.

In a reassuring sign, Dbeibah, the militias loyal to him and the Tripoli-based Presidential Council—which also backs him—all supported dialogue to resolve the CBL leadership crisis. Markets also expressed their optimism over the agreement, with black market trading of the Libyan dinar appreciating by 11 percent against the U.S. dollar, while Brent crude oil prices fell by around 5 percent, in part due to hopes that the deal would bring an end to Haftar’s blockade on eastern oil fields. The return of the High Financial Oversight Committee may also help restore some legitimacy to the bank’s operations, which should further enhance confidence in the country’s economy. However, while restructuring the bank’s leadership may restore some balance, without further changes to limit the bank’s power, the deal also reflects a return to a familiar status quo.

In the meantime, with an eye to improving Libyans’ livelihoods, Issa will be tasked with stabilizing the country’s economy, including narrowing the gap between the black market and official exchange rates, reducing the public deficit and controlling inflation. However, concerns remain over whether the CBL will be tempted to tap into the country’s foreign reserves as a short-term fix for Libya’s economic problems,which could leave Libya more vulnerable in the long term.

Crucially, the CBL will also need to shed the reputation of serving the country’s elites, one that most major institutions in Libya have earned. While the bank is crucial to stabilizing Libya’s economy, many Libyans perceive it as operating more like a political entity than an impartial financial institution, particularly under al-Kabir’s leadership. To truly deliver for the Libyan people, more transparency and accountability on how the CBL spends the country’s oil revenues would be needed.

The agreement’s sustainability will also hinge on the responses of Libya’s various rival factions, especially if further disagreements over the release of funds emerge once the initial euphoria over resolving the dispute fades. Dbeibah’s efforts to consolidate power over the bank in Tripoli, as part of a broader strategy to maximize his influence across Libya, continue to represent an obstacle to the country’s political and economic unity.

And the HoR’s endorsement of the deal notwithstanding, Haftar still maintains significant control over Libya’s oil fields, the ongoing partial blockade of which has resulted in an 81 percent drop in daily oil production. Despite reports that all major oil fields would soon reopen, the possibility that Haftar might reimpose the blockades in the future—a tactic he has frequently used—means the risk of further economic instability is likely to persist.

In addition to the challenges posed by the rival governments, Libya’s state institutions have also been an obstacle on its journey toward postwar stability. While Haftar’s blockade has severely limited the National Oil Corporation’s ability to power the national electricity grid, for instance, the corporation’s internal corruption and lack of transparency have further hindered its capacities.

Moreover, the HCS has faced internal divisions following a contentious election for the body’s presidency in August that resulted in a stalemate between Khalid al-Mishri and Mohamed Takala. Al-Mishri is from Libya’s political Islamist faction, the Justice and Construction Party, while Takala is a more nonpartisan figure. But both have ties to Dbeibah, which raises questions about the council’s necessary impartiality. Ultimately, without effective decision-making processes and impartial advisory bodies, Libya’s unity will remain an elusive goal.

That sums up the Catch-22 in which Libya finds itself. To achieve stability, the country requires unified laws and institutions. But to attain this unity, it must first establish stability. That underscores the need for the international community, particularly Western powers, to reinforce UNSMIL’s efforts toward establishing rule of law and conducting the elections that were due in December 2021. However, preoccupied with other global issues such as the war in Ukraine and tensions in the Middle East, Western nations have increasingly deprioritized Libya, tacitly accepting the fragmented status quo as long as there is no return to war.

This lack of engagement has left regional powers, particularly Turkey and Egypt, to fill the void. Both countries have become key players in Libya, with Turkey having intervened militarily in 2020 to support the Government of National Accord, which preceded the current GNU. Egypt, on the other hand, is aligned with the eastern government and previously supported Haftar during the civil war.

The meeting on Sept. 4 between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi during the latter’s first presidential visit to Turkey since taking power in 2014 raised hopes that the two countries could put aside their past differences and work toward stabilizing Libya. With waning Western attention, cooperation between Ankara and Cairo may be the most pragmatic option to nudge Libya toward a political solution, in a process that may need to include neutral regional countries like Algeria.

Failing that, while France and Italy remain divided over their political agendas and oil deals in Libya, other European countries with interests in the country—such as Spain, Norway, Austria and Germany—could play a role in supporting UNSMIL’s objectives, along with the U.K., which serves as the penholder for Libya at the U.N. Security Council. Policymakers in Europe may see this as increasingly critical, given that Russia has expanded its mercenary presence alongside Haftar’s forces in the east, at the risk of further exacerbating the country’s divisions.

For now, Libya may have avoided a turn for the worst, but in large part by once again recycling elites within the same opaque and often unaccountable institutions. Instead, unified international efforts will be essential to support UNSMIL’s initiatives and pressure Libya’s elites across both rival governments and all major state institutions to engage in a stabilization process. Until such steps occur, Libya will likely find itself trapped in a cycle of political and economic uncertainty.

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Jonathan Fenton-Harvey is a British analyst and journalist whose work has focused largely on Gulf Cooperation Council affairs, as well as geopolitical and economic issues pertaining to the wider Middle East and Indo-Pacific. He has worked with or written for a wide range of think tanks and publications based in the U.S., the U.K. and the Middle East.

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The long-running feud between Libya’s competing authorities over the Central Bank has flared up again, threatening an economic crisis that could lead to unrest. The parties should press ahead with UN-backed mediation to achieve a resolution.

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What’s new? 

In August, a dangerous dispute erupted between Libya’s rival authorities – the internationally recognised government in Tripoli and the parliament based in the east – over control of the Central Bank, after the former unilaterally appointed a new governor. It is part of a feud that has divided the country since 2014. 

Why does it matter? 

The standoff could paralyse the economy and prompt armed groups to mobilise. It has already stopped imports and led most foreign financial institutions to suspend dealings with the Central Bank. The cost of being disconnected from the world financial system would be enormous for Libyan authorities and citizens alike. 

What should be done? 

To prevent economic collapse, the Tripoli-based government and the parliament should follow through with a preliminary agreement sponsored by the UN to end the dispute. The UN should also integrate economic negotiations into its efforts to resolve the country’s overall crisis. 

I. Overview

A standoff over control of Libya’s Central Bank threatens the relative calm prevailing in the divided country over the past two years. In August, the rival east- and west-based authorities stepped up their fight for the Bank, the sole legal repository of tens of billions of dollars in oil revenue. The dispute has already precipitated a partial shutdown of oil production and prompted most foreign financial institutions that normally do business with the Central Bank and Libyan commercial banks to suspend all transactions with them.

Denied access to a large portion of its oil revenues and cash reserves held abroad that are essential for covering state expenditures and importing goods, Libya could plummet into economic collapse, resulting in severe food shortages and possibly popular protest and an outbreak of militia violence. To avert those risks, the two sides should press ahead with UN-backed mediation to end the confrontation and revive multi-track negotiations aimed at reunifying the country and its governing institutions. 

The feud over the Central Bank is a by-product of broader competition between authorities based in western and eastern Libya. The former include the internationally recognised government of Prime Minister Abdelhamid Dabaiba and its associated Presidential Council in Tripoli, supported by a military coalition made up of various armed groups; the second comprise the parliament based in the east of the country, which does not recognise the Dabaiba-led government, and an administration headed by Osama Hamad, backed by the Libyan National Army under Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar.

These rival authorities have been around in various incarnations since 2014, three years after the fall of Muammar Qadhafi’s regime; the Central Bank has been the focus of repeated disputes throughout this time, with the two sides vying for supremacy over it. 

The stakes are high.

Unlike in most countries, where a central bank’s role is to carry out monetary policy, Libya’s Central Bank also serves as the government’s fiscal implementing partner: it holds the government’s bank accounts and disburses operating funds to state entities and salaries to public-sector employees. Although oil money remains under Tripoli’s official authority, ad hoc arrangements over the past two years have allowed the eastern authorities as well to tap into the state funds that the Central Bank holds.

These are sizeable. Libya has Africa’s largest crude oil reserves, and its hydrocarbon revenues of some $20-25 billion a year account for almost the entirety of government income. It also has some $80 billion in reserves deposited in accounts held by the Central Bank at foreign financial institutions. Oil export revenues are Libya’s main source of foreign currency, used to pay for the imported goods on which its people depend heavily in the absence of significant domestic industrial or agricultural production.

The battle over the Central Bank broke out against the backdrop of deadlocked UN-sponsored negotiations between the parliament based in the east and another Tripoli-based assembly, called the High State Council, which is itself divided between supporters of the Dabaiba government and those calling for the prime minister to be replaced.

Despite the lack of progress on political reunification, in 2022 the two leading figures in the respective camps – Haftar in the east and Dabaiba in Tripoli – hashed out an informal revenue-sharing arrangement that had been working for two years. Few expected the dispute that flared up in August.

The latest disagreement concerns the question of who is, or should be, the bank’s governor. The east-based authorities support Siddiq Elkebir, who has held the post since Qadhafi fell, but in August the Presidential Council in Tripoli unilaterally appointed a new board and replaced Elkebir with an interim governor, Abdel Fattah Ghaffar.

The Council justified the move as a step toward better governance and financial transparency. A more plausible explanation is that the Tripoli government wanted access to more funds to shore up its political and economic standing, which has been eroding to its rivals’ benefit.

So far, the two sides have steered clear of violence, but the east-based authorities have retaliated for Elkebir’s sacking by shutting off about half of the hydrocarbon production in areas under their control. Unnerved by the discord, which pits two people who each claim to be the legitimate Central Bank governor against each other, most foreign financial institutions have suspended transactions with the Bank.

According to foreign and Libyan officials, the freeze extends to its offshore arm, the Libyan Foreign Bank and subsidiaries, through which oil sales revenues pass before being deposited in accounts belonging to the Central Bank, though some of the Europe-based subsidiaries have reportedly continued processing transactions.

For now, foreign governments say they will not impose more drastic measures, such as freezing Libyan assets abroad, but a prolonged disconnection of Libyan banks from the global financial system could upend Libya’s oil-dependent economy. With limited access to its foreign reserves, the Bank could have trouble paying government expenses, many of which require hard currency, or handling payment requests for imports.

If the suspension lasts, it could cause severe food shortages, dramatic rises in prices for basic goods and a rapid deterioration in living conditions. These, in turn, could snowball into social unrest or even prompt the rival camps’ militias to mobilise.

To mitigate these risks, the two sides should resolve the dispute over the Central Bank’s head by appointing a new leadership with the consent of all parties. UN-backed talks led on 26 September to the signing of a preliminary deal between emissaries of the House of Representatives in Benghazi and the High State Council in Tripoli that would see Naji Issa, a veteran Central Bank manager, appointed as the new governor.

The deal is a good first step, but much could still go wrong. The House must ratify the agreement, the Presidential Council must revoke its choice of interim governor in August and a board of directors must be appointed. Most importantly, powers over the Central Bank must be handed over to the new management without disputes flaring up.

These steps need to be taken before foreign financial institutions that have halted transactions with their Libyan counterparts can be persuaded to resume business. The UN should also give ailing political negotiations a stronger economic dimension, which would help revive them, putting Libya on a path toward a reunified and more stable governing framework.

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José Francisco Pavia

INTRODUCTION

This article will try to demonstrate the possibility of a correlation between the Nation-State – or lack of – and the occurrence of armed conflicts. It will look towards a link between the fragilities of a State and the erratic, unstable nature which leads to the lack of, or indeed threatens the stability in the international system, whilst looking for a link between the two, we shall be disclosing these concepts. The African continent will be the core example of this situation.

NATION AND STATE

The concept of the state from a legal point of view is that it is “(…) a community in a specific territory in which they themselves created a political body with relative autonomy”.

The state comprises three elements, – people, territory and political power – therein we can only mention state when we conceive that all the above-mentioned elements have been gathered together.

By shining a light on the issues related to these elements we will come to the specific aspects of the concept, if we are looking at a people, a population or a nation. We will focus on the element people, we should ask ourselves why this is the most appropriate terminology to define the human element of the state; the answer lies with the fact that the element people, is perceived as a reality that can be a clear object that is defined by a legal and political framework, if we tried to determine the human element by using the term nation, we will find ourselves on the hard shoulder of subjectivity.

When we imply people, we understand this to be a human community with a legal-political bond to the state; we designate this bond as citizenship. As such, a person is considered part of the portuguese people due to the legal statutes regulated by the portuguese state.

The concept of nation, takes us to a much more subjective field, as such to find a consensus with a clear definition is very hard indeed. For some nation has been defined as a human community that shares a common language, culture, customs, traditions and a common history, with a wish to build a shared future.

The goal that nations have set is to form a political body, the state. Though, as we well know, a nation is not always identified as the state in question and when the nation does not coincide with the state, naturally we find situations that can generate tensions and can break out into armed conflicts.

FRAGILE STATES

This term has recently taken a half-scientific meaning; it is clearly very subjective, right from the beginning due to close definitions and concepts such as failed state, weak/faltering state, collapsed state, and rogue state among others. It is not our intention to put forward a new adjective, yet stride towards the heart of it and to try to understand why there are so many adjectives. It seems to us that all of these take off from the same point, the fact that these states cannot fulfill and guarantee the role traditionally given to them.

This role is – according to authors in general – to guarantee security, justice and socio-economic welfare. When these states for a number of reasons cannot carry out one or several of these tasks, we are in effect looking at a state faltering, which can reach different degrees of magnitude.

Indeed, this view is not free of criticism, due to its origin having been based on a concept of state akin to Westphalia’s treaty of 1648, and the understanding, as was mentioned, that the majority of authors have on which ends should be pursued.

Despite this controversy many authors continue to classify fragile states (we chose this adjective as it is the most inclusive and least disputed). As the issue of security concerns the international order we can relate to Francis Fukuyama when he stated: “Since the end of the cold war, weak or failed States have become the most important problem to the international order.”

In our opinion there is an exaggerated view that fragile states pose a threat to the stability of world order; after all the problem of international terrorism has complex roots that cannot simply be relating their origin and development due to the existence and proliferation of fragile states.

It is unlikely that London, Brussels, Paris, Madrid, New York, Boston, Orlando, Nice or Istanbul, are not exactly locations in fragile states; furthermore, the process of radicalization and the agents who carried out these acts of terrorism, in many cases were not carried out in fragile states.

We are not disregarding the consequences which are caused by fragile states; namely, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Nigeria or South Sudan and others. It seems to us that the constant and incorrect use of the term for political or ideological reasons ends up discrediting it, rendering it as an instrument of propaganda anathematizing the states, which they define as such.

THE AFRICAN CONUNDRUM

If there is a place with this situation, i.e. the non-coincidence of the nation with the state, that place is Africa. Presently (2021) with fifty-four independent countries in which the absolute majority of them fall in the category of multinational states. The origins of this situation are well known: the colonial heritage and the partition of Africa among the European colonial powers, especially after the Berlin conference of 1884-1885.

The endemic instability is the primary cause of the vicious circle of the nexus insecurity – underdevelopment that is present in most of the african countries. This theory is better known by the virtuous circle of the nexus security-development.

It is not by coincidence that the top three countries that year after year are in the first, second and third places of the Ibrahim Index of African Governance (IIAG) are Mauritius, Botswana and Cape Verde.

All of them fall in the category of nation-states and are liberal democracies. They have different colonial backgrounds, namely french, british and portuguese; two of them are archipelago countries (Mauritius and Cape Verde) and the other (Botswana) is a land-locked country in southern Africa.

By contrast, in the bottom of that ranking, we will find Somalia, South Sudan and the Central African Republic, all of them with different colonial backgrounds (Italian, British and French), but with extreme polarized societies with huge divisions in ethnicity, nationhood and religion.

CONCLUSIONS

It is not by chance that the list of countries presented above as examples of states reaching the limits of fragility are all categorical situations in which the nation does not coincide with the state.

Bearing in mind the theme of this article is: if the fact that the nation did not coincide with the state would this prove to be a fertile ground to produce an armed conflict?

The answer to this question is yes, though… this means that the preposition, effectively the lack of overlapping state and nation, can lead to new forms of armed conflicts; however, we should take into account other factors, among the most important is if the political system of the said country is democratic.

Another important factor is to assess if the state is overbearing in civil society and the economy; realizing this may seem out of scope when addressing the issue of fragile states. Yet the very fact of a state being excessively involved does not strengthen it, rather, this can be identified precisely as a symptom of its fragility and hinders society and democracy from developing.

To summarize, we can take the following conclusions:

a) If a country is formed by the coincidence of nation and state, if it is democratic and the state does not have an over bearing presence in the economy and civil society, it will be a safe and stable country.

The latest classifications on the safest countries in the world (June 2021) point exactly in that direction; Portugal, Denmark or Iceland being good examples and Cape Verde and Mauritius in the african continent, another good examples.

b) If a country is not formed by the coincidence of nation and state, yet if its democratic and the state do not have an excessive presence in the economy and society, it can be classified as safe, however it will always find itself in a less favorable position as the situation above. Examples: Ghana and Botswana.

c) If a country is not formed by the coincidence of nation and state, if it is not a democracy and has the over bearing presence of the state in civil society and its economy, inevitably it becomes a potentially unstable state – hence susceptible to armed conflicts – therefore fragile. (All the worst fifty states classified in the last ranking of fragile states (2020) – which starts with Yemen in first place and Papua-New Guinea in fiftieth place, they are within, to a greater or lesser degree, the framework set out in this third conclusion).

Unfortunately, our argument regarding Africa is totally demonstrated; thirty-five countries, out of that list of fifty, are african countries, corroborating the assumption that the non coincidence of a nation and a state, together with other factors, is a cause of fragility and instability, turning those countries more prone to non-democratic regimes and thus, to armed conflicts, that are simultaneously cause and consequence of it´s underdevelopment and bad-governance.

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José Francisco Pavia, Lusíada University of Lisbon.

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Ishaan Tharoor

The recent dramas gripping the country have been shadowy, shaped by backroom deals, black-market transfers and illicit smuggling.

The news out of Libya that tends to grab international attention often involves stark tragedy and disaster. If it’s not the harrowing civil war that has convulsed the oil-rich North African nation for years and split it in two, then it’s the drowning of migrants motoring out from Libya’s poorly patrolled coasts or the epochal flood that killed thousands in the city of Derna a year ago.

In recent months, though, the considerable drama gripping the country has been far more shadowy, shaped by backroom deals, black-market transfers and illicit smuggling. But it’s equally important and fraught. A rolling crisis over control of Libya’s central bank has paralyzed the economy and sparked new fears of conflict.

Oil exports have dropped precipitously in recent weeks, while ordinary Libyans are facing long lines at gas stations, restrictions on their ability to withdraw cash from banks and a collapsing electricity grid.The upheaval is the consequence of a spat that flared in August but was long in the works, experts say.

A move by forces close to Prime Minister Abdulhamid Dbeibah, who leads the government in western Libya, centered in the capital Tripoli, saw officials in the Central Bank kidnapped and led the bank’s longtime governor, Sadiq al-Kabir, to flee into self-imposed exile in Turkey. The Central Bank, which is the sole legal repository of Libya’s oil-generated wealth, ceased functioning. Oil exports were quickly shut down.

Kabir, in Istanbul, said Thursday that Libya was essentially cut off from the world financial system. “All international banks that we deal with, more than 30 major international institutions, have suspended all transactions,” he told Reuters. “All work has been suspended at the international level. Therefore, there is no access to balances or deposits outside Libya.”

At its root, the dispute is about rival power brokers’ designs on oil revenue in a country with Africa’s largest oil reserves. Dbeibah’s faction is at odds with that of Khalifa Haftar, which holds sway in eastern Libya and has cultivated deep ties with foreign powers such as Russia and the United Arab Emirates. In the tail end of the country’s ruinous civil war, Haftar attempted an offensive to capture Tripoli that ultimately failed when Turkey rushed military aid and support to the government in Tripoli.

The internationally brokered cease-fire in 2020 that followed has settled into an uneasy peace, with Dbeibah and Haftar fighting their battles through other means — for now.U.N.-led efforts to resolve the dispute are underway. But the situation is a reminder of the perilous state of affairs in Libya, which has lurched from crisis to calamity since the bloody revolution and NATO-backed campaign that overthrew Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi in 2011.

The country has not experienced stable governance since and is now torn apart by two rival political entities and a patchwork of armed groups. The Dbeibahs and the Haftars have emerged as powerful, quasi-dynastic clans, vying for influence over the key institutions like the Central Bank and the National Oil Corporation, through which most of Libya’s oil revenue flows. Analysts say Dbeibah’s manipulation of the bank for his corrupt ends saw Kabir warm to Haftar, who is simultaneously alleged to also be presiding over vast networks of illicit smuggling.

“Kabir had sown the seeds of his own demise,” the Economist explained. “At first he bought off his chief challengers: the people who had risen against dictatorship. After Gaddafi the state payroll almost doubled to 2.4 million in a country of 7 million. It is claimed the bank funded the warlords, paying fighters who both besieged and defended Tripoli.”

The British newsweekly added: “When the fighting ended in 2020, Kabir financed their ever-more grandiose schemes for hiving off Libya’s vast oil revenue. He paid billions to import fuel at market prices, subsidized it to make it the world’s cheapest, then let it be smuggled overland and increasingly by tanker to Europe. The more lucre and power the recipients amassed, the weaker he grew. When he tried to rein in the purse strings, it was too late.”

Deeper strains are showing. “The arrangements bridging east and west appear to be nearing a breaking point,” Libya scholar Wolfram Lacher wrote in a lengthy essay for New Lines magazine, pointing to a growing body of evidence regarding the state plunder carried out by both parties, but especially the Haftars. He added: “In the meantime, the Haftars’ greatly improved access to funds threatens to destabilize the balance of power.

[Khalifa Haftar’s son] Saddam has told close associates that he is seeking to turn western Libyan factions against each other and buy the support of selected militia leaders — a task made easier by the money he now has at his disposal. His father has informed Western diplomats that he intends to make another attempt to seize Tripoli.”ver the past week, a flurry of top regional officials, including Turkey’s spy chief, have visited the country.

The tensions have threatened a rapprochement between Egypt and Turkey, which find themselves at different sides of Libya’s divide. “Egypt and the UAE have backed Haftar in part because of his staunch anti-Islamist ideology that opposes the reliance of the Tripoli government on militias linked to the Muslim Brotherhood movement,” noted the Soufan Center, an independent global security think tank, in a memo earlier this month.

“Turkey, by contrast, has engaged regional Muslim Brotherhood-inspired movements and views Haftar as a right-wing figure dedicated to reducing Ankara’s regional influence. Russia, for its part, sees Haftar’s control of most of Libya’s oil fields as a tool in Moscow’s global competition with the United States and its European partners, all of which are backing Ukraine.”

The tangled geopolitics belies the frustrations of many Libyans who simply want a degree of political stability. “If you ask any normal Libyan, they’ll say we need one government, we need elections,” a former adviser to the Libyan government, speaking on the condition of anonymity over fears to their safety, told me. But, they added, the country’s power brokers aren’t interested in such an outcome. “Why would Haftar want one government?” the former official said. “He can print money as he pleases, now, and smuggle oil.”

A lack of Western attention here may be dangerous, especially at a moment when foreign powers could exert some pressure on Libya’s factions to get in line. “Diplomats may be busy stopping other wars in Ukraine and Gaza from growing into monstrous regional conflicts,” wrote Tarek Megerisi of the European Council on Foreign Relations. “But if they’re too consumed to take this brief opportunity, then they may well end up with a third before too long.”

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Ishaan Tharoor – Foreign affairs columnist and anchor of Today’s WorldView, the Post’s daily column and newsletter on global politics

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Karim Mezran

Libya’s three years of “unstable” stability appear to have reached their much-anticipated tipping point. In late August, the initial entente between Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah’s clan and Libyan Central Bank (CBL) Governor Saddik al-Kabir came to an end when armed forces, acting on Dbeibah’s orders, stormed the CBL headquarters. However, the governor managed to flee to Turkey with his trusted collaborators and the codes that control the bank’s operations.

To put further pressure on Dbeibah, General Khalifa Haftar’s army, which surprisingly sided with Kabir, shut down key oil fields since August, creating a crisis that paralyzed the government in Tripoli. The international community must act rapidly and effectively to prevent an all-out war between the various Libyan militias and their foreign backers, which could inflame the already explosive Middle East and North Africa.

Tensions have remained high in the western region of Tripoli since 2019–2020, when fighters defended the Libyan capital from Haftar’s army—with crucial help from troops sent by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. One of the main reasons for the current unrest is Dbeibah’s refusal to resign, despite his Government of National Unity (GNU) having failed at the core purpose for which it was appointed: organizing free and fair national elections. Public perception of the GNU has shifted from welcoming Dbeibah’s appointment in 2021 to seeing it as a “kleptocracy” aiming only to appropriate national resources for its enrichment.

The GNU’s legitimacy derives mostly from its having been created by the United Nations-led Libyan Political Dialogue Forum (LPDF), an assembly of Libyan citizens empowered by the United Nations (UN) to elect a prime minister and discuss related issues.

Surprisingly, in 2021, the UN special adviser on Libya, Stephanie Williams, agreed to have the House of Representatives (HoR) ratify the prime minister’s appointment, thus giving the parliament a power it was not supposed to have anymore. Elected in 2014 by less than 20 percent of those registered to vote, the parliament should have been dissolved by now given its four-year mandate.

But with the ongoing security risks and political turmoil, elections were never called and, thus, no replacement was possible—extending parliament’s mandate indefinitely. While the HoR—established in Tobruk in territory controlled by Haftar—initially ratified the GNU, it later withdrew its recognition in favor of a Government of National Salvation (GNS), established in the eastern province, loyal to Haftar, and a pseudo-government that opposes the GNU and legitimizes the general’s role.

In the east, Haftar holds all military power and Libyan Parliament Speaker Aguila Saleh exercises political power only with approval from Haftar. In the West, however, the situation is more fragmented because of the dynamics established by the first civil war (2014–2016). The first elected assembly, the General National Congress (GNC) elected in 2012, did not disband with the election of the Libyan parliament.

Instead, in 2018, the LPDF transformed it into a second chamber, the High State Council, which was supposed to have only advisory powers. With time, these powers had more influence than originally intended. (The HSC has been accused of being dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, but this has never been proven, even though its head, Khaled al-Mishri, is undoubtedly a Brotherhood sympathizer.) The other key institution is the GNU, led by Dbeibah, who is well known for power grabbing through politicking and manipulating different stakeholders to remain in office at any cost for as long as possible.

These institutions exist within a framework formed by numerous armed militias, each with the support of a foreign power. After Haftar’s defeat in Tripoli in 2020, the situation in Libya hung in an uneasy balance, but this year could well be the one to change the course of Libyan history.

Complicating matters is the influence of foreign backers. Toward the end of 2023, Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA) received a large amount of weapons and military equipment  from his Russian allies. It is now ascertained that part of that military hardware was to go to Haftar’s army, the Libyan National Army (LNA), with the rest designated for the new Russian contractors’ company, Africa Corps, which has replaced the Wagner Group.

While theoretically independent, the company is a direct emanation of the Kremlin. The weapons received by the LNA were evidently enough to rearm and equip its troops. In recent months, the LNA has moved south, occupying large amounts of territory, and has been rapidly moving toward the border of Algeria and toward the GNU-controlled city of Ghadames.

This is causing divisions among authorities in Tripoli, who fear another attack by the eastern general. The Algerian government, alarmed by the prospect of an army closely allied with Egypt at its borders and in control of almost the entire country of Libya, put a stop to this movement, at least temporarily.

In reality, the threat of an attack by Haftar could be understood more as a pretext than a cause for the militias and politicians’ agitation over the past two weeks. The lack of sympathy, if not open hostility, between Kabir, the extremely competent and internationally respected governor of the Central Bank of Libya, and Dbeibah is well known.

Dbeibah continues to ask that the CBL release its hold on its finances and allow the government to obtain the funds needed to conduct its business and operations. Kabir understands the prime minister’s not-so-hidden intention to have access to the bank’s reserves for himself and his acolytes. This is the real reason for the confrontation, which has only recently evolved into a potential military clash between Dbeibah’s militia supporters and those who support the governor.

While the United States and a handful of European states condemned the act of surrounding the central bank with strong words in defense of Kabir, this is not enough. In Libya, whoever controls the purse strings controls the country, so the war around the CBL will continue—at least in the short term.

Foreign regional powers remain crucial to developments in Libya. From late 2019, these foreign powers’ control over their various Libyan proxies moved from absolute to lesser control. Haftar has managed—to a certain degree—to play his backers Egypt and Russia against each other by flirting with Moscow anytime he felt that Cairo’s support was waning. While the militias of Misrata, for example, counted on the support of Qatar, Italy, and, to an extent, the United States and the United Kingdom, and exacted many resources by playing on the rivalry between these powers and Turkey, another important supporter of Misrata and Tripoli.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) today—unlike a few years ago, when its level of intermingling was high—seems to have taken a step back and is observing ongoing developments as Abu Dhabi determines how and whether to engage and how to ensure its strategic interests. In the struggle between Dbeibah and Kabir, foreign powers are divided, with the United States, the UK, most European countries, and Turkey supporting Kabir. According to some close to the author, Dbeibah believes he has the support of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and France, but this remains to be seen. It is easy to see how volatile this situation is.

The real turning point was Haftar’s unexpected declaration of support for Kabir. The bank governor’s recent wiring of funds to Haftar’s bank to pay LNA soldiers and mercenaries, as well as some of the construction projects initiated by Haftar’s sons, are not enough for Haftar to undertake such a 180-degree turn, however at the moment, any hypothesis is possible and realistic.

The United States, beyond mere words of condemnation, should take the lead in fostering a closer coalition of countries that could push the Dbeibah clan out and facilitate the appointment of a new prime minister and cabinet determined by the HoR.

Kabir should be reinstated at least temporarily in his position as the governor of the Central Bank. Italy, too, has the potential to play a relevant role in pushing for a stronger rapprochement between Egypt and Turkey. Such a détente could resolve many difficult crises. However, even if all internal and foreign players align, the level of anarchy and fragmentation reached in Libya will still make resolution a difficult endeavor. 

***

Karim Mezran is director of the North Africa Initiative and resident senior fellow with the Rafik Hariri Center and Middle East Programs at the Atlantic Council.

___________________

Enrique Fojón

The fact that international attention is monopolised by the war in Ukraine and the conflict in Gaza has helped create a vacuum of attention on Libya, which is used by both local political actors and their regional and international allies to expand their influence.

One of the main beneficiaries of the conflict is General Khalifa Haftar, who could emerge as the victor of the current crisis. 

The Libyan National Army commander’s goal is to take control of the country and establish a military regime in which his clan dominates politically and economically.

After almost four years of low profile, Libya seems to be back on track. After the ceasefire and the formation of a unity government in the framework of the Berlin Process 2020/2021, there was hope for a unification of state institutions and sustainable stability. However, these expectations were dashed after the failure of the elections at the end of 2021 and the emergence of a parallel government in Benghazi in February 2022. 

The United Nations Mission in Libya (UNMIL) has so far failed to advance the electoral process and unify the country, although the international community seems to accept fragile stability as the lesser evil for now.

Since then, an agreement between the rival sides has allowed for a phase of relative stability. The agreement is weak and events are unfolding in a new situation in eastern Libya, dominated by General Haftar and his allies, weakening the current national unity government of Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah in Tripoli. 

At issue is the distribution of oil revenues and the expansion of territorial influence.

In early August, under the pretext of national security and the need to protect the southern border from smuggling and illegal migration from neighbouring countries, the National Army, led by Haftar’s son, deployed in the southwest near the Algerian border, where one of the country’s largest oil fields and important smuggling routes are located.

At the heart of the problem is the power struggle in Tripoli that has reshaped Libya’s political alliances and helped the Haftar family obtain unprecedented funds to distribute favours. The Haftars have proven adept at exploiting that rift, between the seemingly immovable central bank governor, Siddiq Kabir, and Dabeiba, or rather his nephew, Ibrahim, who many consider the real power broker behind the Tripoli government. 

As a result of this struggle, the haemorrhaging of state funds is worsening, Haftar’s sons are consolidating their power, and ultimately the precarious balance that has kept Libya calm for the past decade could crumble.

Haftar and his clan have managed to further expand their economic and military power in recent years. In addition to official central bank funding, there appear to be illegal sources for this effort. The general unofficially received part of the oil production, which is smuggled into neighbouring countries, as Haftar’s troops control migration routes and gold mines in southeastern Libya. By controlling lucrative reconstruction projects in Libya, Haftar’s family secures a share of the company’s profits and investments. In addition to Turkish and Egyptian companies, investors from the United Arab Emirates are also interested in the reconstruction of Benghazi.

Haftar receives support from regional and international allies. Egypt, by welcoming Usama Hammad, head of Libya’s eastern government, on 11 August, risked a diplomatic crisis with Dbeibah, which considers his government the only officially recognised one. The move came at the same time as a diplomatic rapprochement took place between Egypt and Turkey, a major backer of the Western government. While Turkey has pledged to supply the Tripoli government with modern air defence systems, while calling on it to de-escalate tensions, this support is likely to be short-lived if it affects Ankara’s relations with Cairo.

Libya’s geopolitical value means that Haftar continues to receive military support from Russia. In early 2024, Russia founded the pan-African ‘Africa Corps’ with some 45,000 fighters to replace the Wagner Group and protect Russian regional interests. In addition to military control of smuggling routes, it is tasked with securing sources of resources such as oil and gas fields, as well as gold and diamond mines in Africa. A close relationship with Russia strengthens Haftar’s negotiating position in Libya while significantly limiting Europe’s ability to act in Africa in the coming decades, especially with regard to refugees and migration.

The power struggle for key positions in the Libyan state reached its climax when the Presidential Council ordered the dismissal of Sediq al-Kebir , the influential governor of the Central Bank. As a result, production at several oilfields was halted as a means of exerting pressure on this decision. 

Since then, oil production and exports have plummeted massively and the Libyans’ socio-economic crisis has worsened. 

In addition, the conflict over the new governor caused liquidity bottlenecks in the banks. All this increased the pressure on the Dbeibah government, which has failed to significantly improve the living conditions of the population since its founding in 2021. Instead, Dbeibah has redistributed state resources through nepotism and corruption in favour of his clan and the Tripoli elite to secure his position of power.

_____________________

Simon Speakman Cordall

With the central bank in turmoil, analysts say that diplomatic efforts in Libya are failing its people.

After weeks of tension that saw the Central Bank of Libya (CBL) shuttered, salaries go unpaid and cash vanish, the country’s two rival governments appeared ready to accept a United Nations-brokered agreement to resume operations,  before once more reverting to a deadlock familiar to many in the country.

The internationally recognised Government of National Unity (GNU) in the west had tried to replace CBL Governor Sadiq al-Kabir, accusing him of mishandling oil revenues and going to the extent of sending armed men in to remove him from his office.

Angered, the Government of National Stability (GNS) in eastern Libya, which is supported by renegade commander Khalifa Haftar, shut down much of the country’s oil production, which it controls, in protest.

“This is serious,” said Jalel Harchaoui, an associate fellow with London’s Royal United Services Institute. “The CBL, although weaker now than it was a few years ago, remains a linchpin to the nation’s access to hard currency.”

He added that the CBL funds most of Libya’s imports of food, medicines and other staples, which the country cannot last long without.

Since then, various analysts say, life in Libya has deteriorated as fighting has continued between rival Libyans and as the international community has tried to preserve the rule of a political and military elite, convinced they are the best for stability and for the proclaimed goal of “unifying Libya”.

Why the central bank?

As well as holding Libya’s vast oil wealth, the CBL unified Libya’s eastern and western “central banks” in one body to manage the salaries of civil servants and soldiers from both governments and build confidence that recovery was possible.

After the GNU-GNS struggle over who would head the CBL, al-Kabir fled the country, claiming that he took the access codes for bank deposits with him, leaving the bank isolated from international financial networks.

Asim al-Hajjaji, director of the CBL compliance department, said international contacts had been restored, although Al Jazeera understands that most international trading remains suspended.

Meanwhile, oil exports have plunged to a new low, salaries are uncertain and everyday life for about six million Libyans is in turmoil.

“The United Nations is talking about talks, which is a sure sign we’re nowhere near resolution,” Tarek Megerisi, a senior fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said of negotiations to restart operations at CBL.

The West, which typically backs the GNU despite it being responsible for much of the uncertainty, “doesn’t know what to do, or really has the bandwidth to do it. They’re dealing with wars in Gaza and Ukraine,” he said.

“It’s just too much. In Libya, international efforts to achieve any kind of just settlement have lost momentum.” And this is far from the first time.

Over more than a decade of uncertainty and war, analysts say, the international community’s efforts focused on shoring up the country’s elites in the hope that might lead to stability.

The latest talks over the CBL appear little different, with access to the millions of dollars in assets of primary interest to the country’s elites, and access to the services and certainty craved by much of the population seemingly an afterthought, analysts told Al Jazeera.

Elite bargains presiding over endless

turmoil

“Preventing a shooting war has come to be seen as the only international strategy in Libya,” Tim Eaton, a senior fellow at Chatham House who contributed to a paper on the international practice of prioritising powerful elites, told Al Jazeera. “It’s death by a thousand cuts,” Harchaoui said.

“Everyone’s talking about a return to the status quo as if there were ever a neat, static equilibrium,” he noted. “This was never the case. Even when things appeared quiet, the arrangements were continually decaying and degrading. And that gradual deterioration is what suddenly became visible last month with the CBL crisis.”

National elections, or even a framework that might lead to them, remain a distant prospect after the last vote, initially scheduled for December 2021, was postponed after infighting.

“Any move towards holding national elections has been blocked,” Eaton said. “Both [Abdul Hamid] Dbeibah [head of the GNU] and Haftar might say they want elections tomorrow, but they only really want their side, or at least their proxies, on the ballot paper.”

Both governments continue to rule separately, while their members, allies and militias profit from smuggling in both people and fuel and unregulated cross-border trade.

However, as individual members jockey for position within small and exclusive circles, systems intended to support everyday life in Libya continue to deteriorate and fail. Eaton notes that the city of Derna, which flooded in September 2023 after a dam that the GNU was responsible for collapsed, remains unreconstructed. “For healthcare, Libyans have to go overseas,” he noted. “And if anyone is ever caught in an emergency, there’s no one number or department they can call. “All the while, the super-rich that are supposed to be looking after people, are getting even richer.”

Both sides, he explained, claim to work towards establishing a central government while state institutions needed to oversee any future state, like a strong central bank, have been hollowed out and captured by elites on either side.

Regionally, over its 13 years of sporadic conflict and political uncertainty, Libya has become a continued source of instability within an already unstable region. Within a divided Libya, various actors have come to use the country’s east as a staging point from which to project their own international ambitions in Sudan, Syria and beyond.

Overwhelming human cost

In addition to the uncertainty piled on the Libyan population are the more than 1,000 refugees, irregular migrants and asylum seekers who have died or gone missing on the Central Mediterranean migration route, in which Libya is a key part, this year. “The West and UN in Libya are performing diplomatic theatre while the country crumbles,” Anas El Gomati of the Sadeq Institute said.

“They have a toolbox of leverage gathering dust. Instead of applying pressure, they’re enabling corruption by legitimising those without electoral mandate or political credibility. That’s not diplomacy; that’s complicity in slow motion.”

El Gomati continued: “East or west, Libya’s compass points to chaos and corruption. Haftar and his kids carve out a fiefdom through war crimes in the east, while Dbeibah runs a ‘pay-as-you-go’ loyalty scheme with armed groups in the west.

“The irony? The elites don’t trust the very banking system they’ve bled dry, so they keep their assets overseas, which the West could freeze, but they’re too busy shaking hands with the very hands pickpocketing Libya’s future.

“Western policymakers and Libyan elites are locked in a race to the bottom of delusion and greed,” El Gomati concluded. “The West sees a finish line; the elites see an endless buffet. It’s not naivete, it’s willful blindness, and the Libyan people are paying for it. In the Libyan elite’s casino, the house always wins, and corruption is the chip that never runs out.”

____________________

Manaf Saad

While he never underwent any real military training, he has been crucial to his father’s bloody power struggle. He is now being backed by a range of powers to be Libya’s next leader.

It was spring 2012, the height of Libya’s revolution against their dictator Muammar Gaddafi. As the intrepid revolutionaries trickled into Benghazi’s operations centre one morning, something was different. Clustered in a corner were a few surly young men sipping coffee, scrolling Facebook on their laptops.

Thinking they were perhaps new recruits whose zealousness allowed them to stumble into this sensitive location, the revolutionaries marched towards them to teach them a thing or two about operational security in wartime. An older officer blocked them: “Leave them alone, they’re General Haftar’s kids”.

General Khalifa Haftar—Gaddafi’s one-time co-putschist turned frenemy—had just returned to Libya, offering (in a very demanding way) to lead the revolutionary forces. So, his sons were to remain ‘inside the tent’ until issues with command were sorted. But the opposition to the general—who was then best known in Libya for crimes against his own people during the Chadian war of the 1980s—quickly grew. As it did towards his sons, who incensed those in the operations room by refusing to help. Instead, they aggressively flexed their impunity, spending all day browsing the net on insecure computers. Until, one day, smiles went round those same revolutionaries. They got permission to chuck out the Haftars.

One of these kids, Saddam, was not notably seen again until later that year. Amidst the chaos of the fall of Tripoli in October 2012, he was wounded trying to storm the al-Aman bank.

Almost 15 years later, that surly young gangster Saddam Haftar is a brigadier-general, chief of staff of the land forces of the Libyan Arab Armed Forces (LAAF).

Like most success stories of modern Arab politics, Saddam’s surprising rise is deeply rooted in nepotism. While he never went through any real military or officer training, he has been a crucial lieutenant to his father’s bloody power struggle—alternating between being a diplomat, a brutal suppressor of dissent, and overseeing an extraordinarily lucrative multinational business operation that smuggles everything from scrap metal to people.

This is why, despite never finishing school, having no noticeable signs of charisma, and a political toolbox limited to blunt violence, he is now being backed by a range of regional and international powers to be Libya’s next leader.

The Karama Kid

Having been unceremoniously rejected by the revolution, General Haftar left Libya, only meaningfully returning to Benghazi in 2014. Shooting amateur video from a military base, he launched “operation Dignity” (Karama in Arabic)—an operation painstakingly crafted to look like a local fightback against Islamist extremism. When it was really a multinational operation to return Libya’s chaotic revolutionary republic to a state of military authoritarianism.

What followed were years of messy, destructive, urban warfare before Haftar conquered Benghazi from a ramshackle alliance of revolutionaries, Islamists, extremists, and poor young men who had simply ended up on the wrong side of his conflict. Despite initially claiming he would retire after ‘liberating’ Benghazi, Haftar’s multinational coalition unsurprisingly pressed on to take the rest of eastern Libya, violently subduing the city of Derna through a series of foreign-supplied air strikes and a suffocating siege.

Haftar gradually traded the gun for gold and seized Libya’s lucrative oil crescent and eventually large swathes of southern Libya by promising key tribes’ prestige and riches if they became the local franchisee of the military enterprise he now presented as a national project.

While most attention during these years was on the battlefields in Libya, Saddam kept his father’s military machine lubricated with the weaponry, ammunition, financing and support it needed to proceed, cutting his teeth as an international operator. Saddam served as Karama’s de facto chief ambassador, managing the material support directed to his father’s campaign. According to the United Nation’s Panel of Experts responsible for investigating violations of Libya’s sanction regime, these military re-supplies were usually managed by obscure aircraft chartering companies.

As the military operations continued growing, so too did the amount of munitions and additional equipment required, as it became clear that Haftar would need overwhelming material superiority to win a war. So, Saddam had to start building additional procurement channels to supplement the largesse of his foreign partners.

As later confirmed by Haftar’s Airforce chief Saqr al-Jaroushi, it was Saddam who sourced the arms his father depended upon “from secret partners and foreign states” alongside his brother-in-law Ayoub el-Ferjani. And war is tremendously expensive. In early 2016, the parliament speaker, Aguileh Saleh, called for an investigation into Haftar’s diversion of state funds and material, given that the procurement was managed by his clan and distributed according to who was loyal to them.

Once upon a time in Benghazi

At this time, Haftar’s operation Karama was formally under what was dubbed the interim Libyan government appointed by the House of Representatives whose seat was in Tobruk, in Libya’s far east.

The diversion of state resources along with Saddam extorting commercial banks to fund his procurement through locally issued debt were a growing cause for concern. Not just because of what was spent, but more because of what it had bought.

Three years into the war for Benghazi, Haftar had shed his ‘counter-terror’ pretensions: offering safe passage to Islamic State (IS) fighters towards western Libya but no surrender for Libyan opposition; Haftar’s forces were detaining or intimidating parliamentarians, activists, judicial staff and anyone else of influence; and civilian mayors were being replaced by military governors.

This synched up with Saddam’s gradual transition from Yuri Orlov impersonator to leading the domestic terror of Haftar’s counter-revolution. Saddam was appointed de facto head of the Tariq bin Ziad (TBZ) brigade, largely composed of Madkhali Salafists who had fought on Benghazi’s frontlines. This unit became Haftar’s version of Gaddafi’s feared revolutionary committees, making a spectacle of arresting and punishing anyone who publicly criticised the new regime. From TBZ’s base at Sidi Faraj, east of Benghazi, Saddam has set up his own fiefdom. Here, he oversees a parallel prison system where he can not only violently re-educate civic activists but also put pressure on businessmen or members of prominent families for ransom.

Alongside his brother Khaled, he also helped institute the 106th Brigade, which operates as a de facto praetorian guard for the Haftars and is amongst the best-equipped units of the LAAF.

At the end of 2016, Saddam’s military future was clear to see as he was pictured in a captain’s uniform attending a military ceremony for LAAF recruits. Despite never attending a military college or spending any time on a battlefield, he was promoted to Major within a year. Soon after, a now clearly subordinated Aguileh Saleh humiliatingly appointed him a Lieutenant Colonel, as the seasoned military officers who had joined Karama at the start looked on in dismay and disgust.  

The road to perdition

At the end of 2017, Saddam Haftar marked the nominal end of the war in Benghazi in a similar way to the nominal end of the 2011 revolution by robbing a bank.

Having arrested the Deputy Interior Minister of the interim government, who was responsible for securing banks. Saddam used Brigade 106 to storm the Central Bank of Libya’s eastern headquarters, trying to seize an estimated 640mn Libyan dinars, €159mn, $2mn, and almost 6,000 silver coins – though some of the cash was damaged beyond use after a broken pipe spewed sewage water around the vault.

Interestingly, it took only six months for the seized Euros to begin showing up in Europe, usually in the hands of those linked to mafias.

At this point, the rise of the Haftar’s seemed inevitable. The Libyan Arab Armed Forces nominally controlled most of Libya’s land mass; it had fully domesticated the national parliament, its international backing had swelled to include most major powers, and even the UN’s ‘national conference’ designed to reboot Libya’s political transition was bending to empower them. Then, Haftar decided to attack Tripoli.

Just over a year later, the LAAF was in disarray; its tribal support had melted, and many in the east were so aggrieved over the young men tricked into fighting with promises of a quick victory and plenty of plunder that Haftar had to stagger the return of body bags. Haftar and the LAAF as entities were saved by the Russian mercenaries his other backers had bought in to try to salvage the operation. Haftar had survived, but only just, and he was now entirely dependent on a Russian mercenary group.  

Despite his impressive rank, Saddam was mostly distant from Tripoli’s battlefield. He was putting his talents to use elsewhere, maintaining the money supply needed to fund his father’s war. Like in his previous conflicts, Haftar’s army was undisciplined, prioritising destruction and outfiring their opponent. According to a Russian military analyst on the ground, LAAF fighters showed their unprofessionalism through “indiscriminate” fire. Keeping the LAAF profligate kept Saddam busy.

From the start of the conflict, two Ilyushin cargo planes arrived each day, carrying up to 500 tonnes of Russian munitions each. Occasionally, a French Air Force C-130 Hercules would also land in Benghazi, likely with more munitions for the forces besieging Tripoli.

To keep this multinational war machine liquid, as debt became harder to obtain due to the spiralling liabilities of eastern Libya’s banks (which one day would almost crash Libya’s entire banking system), Saddam tried to step up the activities of the LAAF’s Military Investment Authority. This involved everything from stripping Benghazi’s infrastructure and the rubble of his father’s previous wars for scrap for sale, illicit sales of crude and fuel, and even taking over agricultural projects in Libya’s south. By 2020, Saddam was even said to be organising flights of the Haftar’s private jet to Venezuela, exchanging duffel bags of US dollars for gold to pay his creditors.

***

Manaf Saad – A journalist residing in the Middle East, whose real name is withheld for security reasons

______________________

Ferruccio Michelin

There is an East-West agreement for a roadmap to resolve the crisis around the Libyan Central Bank, and restart oil production. Is the country ready for political compromises, or is it just a matter of delaying decisions and taking time?

The announcement of an agreement between the two main rival political factions in Libya, to jointly decide on the appointment of a new leadership to head the Central Bank of Libya (CBL), represents a fundamental step towards resolving the economic and political stalemate that has paralyzed the country in recent years, which has reached a particularly tense situation with the issue of the institution. This agreement, brokered by the United Nations through the Unsmil mission, opens a short-term window for the resumption of oil activities and in the long term could mark a significant turning point in the long internal divisions.

The roadmap of the agreement

According to information first published by Bloomberg , the two legislative institutions – the Tripoli-based Council of State and the Tobruk-based House of Representatives – have agreed to appoint a new CBL governor and a governing council within 30 days. The agreement aims to unblock oil production, which has been severely reduced due to the political conflict between the two factions. Negotiations will continue until September 9, with the aim of consolidating this first step towards a broader resolution.

However, this agreement seems more like a compromise to buy time than a real solution to the crisis. The parties have essentially given themselves a month to resolve the issue, instead of resolving it “today.” Furthermore, rumors have already emerged that the process could be extended further: “In case of disagreement, the interim committee (of 30 days) will be extended for another 30 days,” the sources explain, and “this already suggests that the roadmap could be further delayed, making a resolution more difficult.”

The implications for the economy and oil

The Central Bank is at the center of the battle for control of the country’s energy resources, which are Libya’s main economic engine. The divisions between East and West are reflected not only in political issues but also in the management of oil supplies, with the production blockade reducing the national output from 1.2 million barrels to less than half. Oil, in fact, is not only an economic good, but also a strategic weapon in this long-running dispute. The eastern faction, which controls the main oil export terminals, has used this leverage to put pressure on Tripoli.

The Western government of Abdelhamid Dabaiba should agree to keep or temporarily bring back the “old guard” of the Central Bank, after a push to replace the leadership. The eastern government under the military control of Khalifa Haftar should feel sufficiently capable of making its choice prevail for the next CBL leadership, even without leveraging the oil blockade. If these conditions are not met, the risk is that the process will drag on further, making a short-term compromise even more difficult.

A peculiarity

The current oil blockade in Libya presents a problematic feature compared to similar situations already experienced in the country: for the first time there is the risk that several hundred thousand barrels of crude oil extracted from the Mesla-Sarir fields will no longer be sold by NOC (the state-controlled National Oil Corporation), but by a private company based in Benghazi, Arkenu.

The dynamics that brought the company to international attention, no later than July, are explained by Agenzia Nova . It is a very delicate scenario. The possible cessation of regular exports from NOC could be used by the Haftar family not only for their own blackmail — as has happened several times in the past — but this time also to create direct interests. Among other things, the Energy Triumph oil tanker chartered by the Chinese Unipec is now close to the Harriqa terminal and should load a cargo of 1 million barrels.

A political and institutional challenge

Although the agreement appears to represent a turning point, numerous obstacles remain. Libya has been politically fragmented since 2014, and the institutional system is extremely fragile. Elections, initially scheduled under the 2020 ceasefire agreement, have not yet taken place, and the situation remains unstable. Sadiq al Kabir, in office since 2011 at the CBL, is a controversial figure: on the one hand he currently enjoys Haftar’s support, on the other he is accused of mismanagement and corruption.

Accusations that have further soured relations with the prime minister of Tripoli, Dabaiba, who has tried to oust him. Another potential candidate for the leadership of the CBL, Mohamed Abdel Salam al Shukri, has refused the post, saying he will only accept with the joint support of the two factions. This underscores how difficult it is to find a consensus figure in a context of deep divisions.

“The deal represents a rare window of opportunity for Libya. If completed, it could help unlock oil production and stabilize a crucial part of the country’s economy,” one source said. However, he added, “political instability and internal divisions remain significant obstacles. Libya once again faces an existential challenge: can it overcome its internal divisions and find a balance for a sustainable economic and political recovery?”

_______________________

Tarek Megerisi

Diplomats may be busy stopping other wars in Ukraine and Gaza from growing into monstrous regional conflicts. But if they’re too consumed to take this brief opportunity, they may end up with a third before too long, Tarek Megerisi writes.

Libya’s Tripoli-based government’s recent clumsy attempt to replace the central bank governor should be a blaring alarm in the central Mediterranean.

It quickly led to a shutdown of Libyan oil exports, Libya’s quarantining from international financial systems, and the cessation of all payments or credit in a state where people are dependent on public-sector salaries and imported goods.

The situation will create a socio-economic crisis for Libya’s long-suffering population, one that could quickly turn violent given the rivalries still tearing the country apart.

But, weirdly enough, it’s also a golden opportunity to stabilise Libya that Western actors are overlooking. Instead of watching the country’s further disintegration from afar, Europeans and the US should leverage this crisis to press for technocratic control of the bank as a prelude to much-needed elections.

What happens in Libya never stays

in Libya

From a distance, Libya’s current events might just seem regretful de rigueur, nothing new for a country so deeply knotted in calamity that even former US President Obama could only call it a “shit show”. But what happens in Libya never ends up staying in Libya. This long-burning conflict has fuelled an insurrection in Mali, helped re-ignite the devastating civil war in Sudan, and almost pushed NATO countries to conflict in the eastern Mediterranean.

Meanwhile, the diffidence of the Western powers that helped Libya’s armed revolution in supporting its subsequent transition created a void that other powers, notably Russia, are also now happily filling. Since Libya’s last war in 2020, Moscow has transformed Libya into the logistical hub of its Africa operations. Russia has seized military bases a few hundred kilometres from NATO’s Sicilian HQ and turned Libya’s lawless and vast expanse into a smuggling den to break sanctions over Ukraine.

If this crisis drives Libya to war, it would be far messier than the last. Libya’s fragmenting fault lines suggest this would be a constellation of simultaneous conflicts rather than a single-front, two-party war. The entrenchment of key players like Russia, Turkey and the UAE across Libya and its southern neighbours, alongside heightened sensitivities from Egypt and Algeria, makes the prospect of a messy, overlapping and uncontrollable conflict just as likely internationally as it is domestically.

The chaos this messy internationalised war would bring to what’s already a smuggling hotspot, means any new round of conflict will be toxically destabilising for Africa, the Middle East, the Mediterranean and Europe. An outcome that will almost certainly advance hostile Russian influence at the expense of flailing Western sway.

Cosplaying generals and politicians

The petty yet powerfully destructive competition between Libya’s collection of cosplaying politicians and generals since 2011 has ultimately been for Libya’s wealth. This makes the central bank Libya’s most valuable prize and the greatest point of leverage over a political class that has exasperated all previous attempts to progress Libya’s transition with its stubbornness, selfishness and small-mindedness.

But, by bungling the attempt to replace the central bank governor, Libya’s president has created a crisis demanding urgent redress. His appointed governor cannot access key functionality, like the SWIFT payment system. Meanwhile, the intransigent rivalry between Libya’s political bodies means the parliament, senate, government and presidency are unable to agree on a new mutually acceptable board of governors that could gain the international confidence needed to run the bank.

Their inability to resolve this, the urgent need to prevent a socio-economic crisis, the UN’s already mandated mediation role in Libya, and the unique financial oversight role of the US, UK, and France over Libya’s central bank create the perfect recipe for turning this crisis into a gain.

Yet, Western diplomats have thus far done little more than offer concerned statements. Statements Libya’s leaders feel at ease ignoring because experience tells them they won’t be punished, and the prospect of seizing control of Libya’s central bank is too tempting a prize.

Be careful not to end up with a third

major war

Instead, the US and key European states should announce a position that, given the current legitimacy crisis, only a technocratic board of governors appointed via a UN process will be considered legitimate to plug Libya’s central bank back into the global financial system.

Given the political crisis, with Libya’s institutions refusing to recognise each other and the absence of a budget, the new board should also be limited to facilitating core state subsistence spending, like salaries and key imports, until new national elections are held that provide for a politically empowered new board. This would also depoliticise the policy, deflating potential claims that it violates Libyan sovereignty.

This would strong-arm Libya’s politicians into accepting the new process. The longer they stall, the more popular pressure will build as the economy breaks down. Russia could try to spoil the situation, but its only real option would be to veto the upcoming renewal of the UN’s support mission, given that it already has a mandate to mediate.

So, in one move, western powers can halt the march to war and imbue a new political process with an urgency and engagement that previous ones lacked. Sometimes, a simple solution to a complex problem like Libya seems too good to be true. But with a bit of political capital, Libya can finally be pushed to a much more stabilising place.

Diplomats may be busy stopping other wars in Ukraine and Gaza from growing into monstrous regional conflicts. But if they’re too consumed to take this brief opportunity, then they may well end up with a third before too long.

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Tarek Megerisi is a senior policy fellow of the Middle East and North Africa programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR).

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Prof. Miral Sabry AlAshry

The United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) has condemned reports as part of a larger disinformation campaign aimed at misleading the Libyan public and diverting their attention from their rightful demands for political and economic reforms.

The ongoing disinformation campaign has been launched to deceive Libyans regarding news circulating about an imminent announcement of a new roadmap that includes freezing the work of the House of Representatives and the High Council of State. The United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) has denied these reports, stating that they are part of a disinformation campaign. A fabricated story was spread through local and regional news networks, announcing a roadmap to elections in Libya by SRSG Abdoulaye Bathily.

UNSMIL urges all media networks to rely on the Mission’s official website for accurate news and announcements. This content was created and fueled by foreign actors in Libya, contributing to confusion about reform and a democratic roadmap. Difficulty in identifying the truth has led to demoralization and distrust among many Libyans.

Nested within Libya’s ongoing civil war is a fog of falsehoods and distortions about reform towards a democratic roadmap through elections, fake elections by Parliament, preparation of the Constitution, and polarizing narratives that have engulfed Libyan social media networks and online news outlets.

Since the US- and NATO-backed intervention that removed Libyan authoritarian leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, the country has faced ongoing challenges. From July 2019 until now, Libya has experienced recurring social, political, security, and economic crises, resulting in weakened state institutions and a declining national economy. Various European countries have held political conferences in Berlin, France, and Moscow, and a ceasefire in 2020 ended the civil war initiated by Khalifa Haftar against rival political factions. However, this has only fueled fragmentation, disunity, and a war-driven economy.

Efforts to move forward with elections scheduled for December 2021 have been hindered by rival factions unwilling to agree, leading to the indefinite postponement of the vote. Governments have used media platforms to spread false and misleading information, further dividing the public. Frustration on both sides of the political spectrum has intensified, increasing pressure on the Government of National Unity to hold elections and address the misuse of platforms for political polarization. This situation has resulted in heightened levels of violence, protests, and division, along with new challenges such as the negative impacts of a fragile oil-dependent economy and the proliferation of weapons.

SRSG Bathily of the Security Council has emphasized his intention to intensify negotiations through constructive engagement with all stakeholders to lead to successful elections, facilitate an inclusive and transparent settlement of contentious issues in the electoral laws, and ensure these laws are implementable.

Khalifa Haftar has been aided by online firms tied to Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin and his Wagner Group of Russian mercenaries, who have published divisive narratives on Libya’s social media networks. Bathily is working to reach a comprehensive agreement on controversial issues in the electoral bills to ensure their applicability for successful elections.

Starting in 2014, large networks of UAE and Saudi fake Twitter and Facebook accounts actively crowded out actual local voices by posting, creating hashtag traffic, and amplifying nationalistic sentiments in Libya. In 2019, thousands of these accounts were mobilized to glorify Haftar and his military campaign, while the EU engaged in foreign-backed efforts to undermine the formation of an informed and democratically engaged public in Libya’s digital spaces.

The United Nations Support Mission established a higher financial committee to address basic issues in public spending and the fair distribution of resources. This step aims to provide equal opportunities for all candidates in the upcoming elections by the end of 2023, ensure transparency in public fund spending, and achieve a fair distribution of national resources.

The Role of Misinformation in Shaping

Libya’s Political Dynamics

Misinformation has become a powerful tool in the Libyan political landscape, significantly impacting public perception and political dynamics, and changing societal views. The spread of fake news and disinformation across social media platforms has intensified existing political polarization, leading to conflicts between rival factions. In May 2014, General Khalifa Haftar launched Operation Dignity, a campaign by the Libyan National Army (LNA) to attack Islamist armed groups across eastern Libya, aiming to consolidate and strengthen his army. The armed groups, including Ansar al-Sharia, formed an alliance called Libya Dawn. Fighting erupted at Tripoli International Airport between the Libya Dawn alliance, controlling Tripoli and most of western Libya, and the Dignity alliance, controlling parts of Cyrenaica and Benghazi in eastern Libya, escalating the conflict into a full-blown civil war that has resulted in further violence.

Various actors and political factions have exploited misinformation to influence public opinion, undermine opponents, and consolidate power. Disinformation campaigns began with the deliberate dissemination of false or distorted information, with the aim of misleading the public and shaping political narratives in favor of specific alliances. Libya, which has become increasingly difficult to control, has cut across tribal, regional, political, and religious lines. To find a solution to the conflict and establish a unity government, the UN Special Envoy to Libya facilitated talks between the Tobruk-based House of Representatives (HoR) and a key supporter of Haftar.

These talks led to the creation of the Libyan Political Agreement (LPA) and the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) in December 2015. However, the GNA has faced challenges in establishing a stable and unified government in Libya. Amid these discussions, fabricated stories, manipulated images, and misleading statistics have emerged, contributing to a distorted understanding of political events and actors. In Libya, such tactics have exacerbated existing divisions, creating an environment of mistrust and hostility between different political groups and their supporters.

Exploiting widespread political instability, Islamist militant groups, including Ansar al-Sharia, have seized territory in Benghazi, Derna, and Ajdabiya. The Islamic State’s power in Libya peaked in 2016 when it captured the coastal city of Sirte, previously the group’s most important stronghold outside Syria and Iraq. Haftar’s LNA forces have attempted to wage war against Islamist universities while in control, and their members have committed numerous human rights abuses, leading to prosecution in Libya. In July 2018, Haftar announced that the LNA had retaken the city of Derna.

The Impact of Disinformation on

Governance and International Relations

In 2019, both governments deployed a new strategy of disinformation in Libyan politics that serves multiple purposes. For some political actors, it is a means of discrediting rivals and delegitimizing opposing views, with the UN quickly brokering a ceasefire in September 2018 between the militias involved. Foreign states, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, France, and Russia, back Haftar’s LNA, while Turkey, Qatar, and Italy support the GNA. Egypt and the UAE have been particularly involved in supporting Haftar militarily, fearing the GNA’s association with political Islam and the Muslim Brotherhood. This will strengthen their political standing. For others, it is a tool to mobilize supporters and influence election outcomes.

This manipulation of information is often driven by a desire to control narratives on key issues, such as governance, security, and access to resources such as oil, which remain a major source of conflict and competition. Russia has allowed the Wagner Group to assist Haftar in exchange for strategic access to ports and other transit hubs. Meanwhile, Turkey supports the GNA because of the offshore oil and gas deals it has brokered, with Turkey and Egypt agreeing to deploy troops.

The rise of disinformation in Libya has been recognized by the EU as a significant risk due to its profound consequences. Disinformation not only disrupts democratic processes, such as elections but also contributes to violence and societal unrest. In late 2022, tensions were high as the HoR consolidated its institutions and political negotiations fractured. Despite UN-led talks failing, the HoR passed a constitutional amendment in March 2023 to pave the way for elections and proposed the appointment of a new National Executive Committee to replace the General National Congress and the HoR. However, this move also led to violence and societal unrest.

The spread of false information can incite violence, deepen political divisions, and undermine trust in institutions. The HoR established a 6+6 Joint Council committee to develop a roadmap for elections. In June 2023, this committee recommended the formation of a new interim government in preparation for elections. While progress has been made in various peace talks, violence persists, and any agreement lacking strong support from Dbeibah and Haftar is likely to further polarize the situation.

Fragile Political Stability and Persistent

Disinformation in Libya (2024)

In 2024, political stability in Libya remains fragile, and the public sphere is highly contested. Disinformation continues to have a strong impact, reinforcing cycles of conflict and hindering efforts toward reconciliation and democratic governance. Regional disputes over oil deposits and arms deals have further complicated the prospects for peace, with the GNA signing agreements with Turkey and Italy’s Eni, leading to tensions with Greece and Egypt over maritime borders.

The ongoing political turmoil has negatively affected economic output, as oil revenues account for over 80% of Libya’s total exports. Concerns are growing over the country’s ability to sustain itself economically as armed groups fight over oil fields, restrict production, engage in illicit trade, and disrupt operations. Addressing the challenges posed by disinformation in Libya requires a multi-faceted approach, including improving media literacy, strengthening fact-checking mechanisms, and promoting transparency in political communication. By mitigating the effects of disinformation, a more informed and united society can be fostered, ultimately contributing to greater political stability and democratic integrity.

The digital age has brought social transformation to North Africa, with an estimated 160 million social media users in the Arab region by 2021. The government utilized these platforms to spread false or exaggerated news, as seen in the impact of psychological operations (PSYOPS) in Libya, influencing attitudes and behaviors to achieve military and political objectives.

Media ownership plays a significant role in the activities of fact-checking organizations in Libya. While many claims to be independent volunteer groups, they may still face similar repression and self-censorship issues as journalists.

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Prof. Miral Sabry AlAshry is Co-lead for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) at the Centre for Freedom of the Media, the Department of Journalism Studies at the University of Sheffield.

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Fehim Taştekin

This is a full-blown crisis.

The ongoing division in Libya is prolonged by this dynamic: while the Government of National Unity (GNU) leverages its international legitimacy to control oil sales, the valves are in the hands of eastern forces.

Militias controlling regions, cities, neighborhoods, and even government institutions siphon off the Central Bank’s resources as much as their weapons allow. Salaries account for 78.4% of the Central Bank’s expenditures. Of the 26 billion dinars spent by the bank, 20.4 billion dinars go to salaries, 3.6 billion to subsidies, and 1.1 billion dinars to operational expenses.

In Libya, a country of 7 million people where hardly any proper services are provided, 2 million people receive salaries. Besides salaries, there are other revenue streams for militias.

The Libyan National Oil Corporation sells oil it cannot export or store on the domestic market at prices far below market value. Militias, leftovers from the 2011 uprising, buy this cheap oil and smuggle it to neighboring countries, filling their coffers.

Chaos benefits those with guns.

Who cares about elections, the will of the people, transparency, or a shared national future?

The standoffs weren’t limited to the Central Bank and oil maneuvers. On August 18, in retaliation for the House of Representatives’ memorandum, Presidential Council Chairman Mohammed al-Menfi held a meeting with commanders and intelligence chiefs in his capacity as Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces—a first of its kind.

On August 23, Dbeibeh made a move he could not follow through on, attempting to bring militias in the capital under control. He established a “high security committee” headed by Interior Minister Imad al-Traboulsi, ordering all militias to vacate government buildings within 24 hours. Did anyone comply? No.

Dbeibeh likely experienced a surge of confidence, thinking that after gaining control of the Central Bank, he was the one writing the militias’ paycheck. He even made enemies within his own hometown. The forces in Misrata, which led the 2011 overthrow of Gaddafi, raised their heads once more and backed Kabir against Dbeibeh. In the meantime, he also clashed with Egypt.

The reason?

Egyptian Intelligence Chief Abbas Kamel, who somehow found time amidst his Gaza mediation efforts, visited Benghazi in the second week of August for meetings. According to reports, Kamel tried to convince Haftar, Saleh, and Hammad to establish a transitional government without the involvement of current political actors. Arab sources suggest the goal was to lead Libya, bogged down by familial, clique, and militia interests, to elections and restore stability with a national government.

From Cairo’s perspective, it would be easier to secure Egypt’s interests if a national parliament and government were formed through elections. Egypt has been troubled by Turkey maximizing its interests through confrontational means under abnormal circumstances. Ignoring objections, the Egyptian administration even invited Hammad to Cairo.

Interpreting Kamel’s initiative as a move to oust the Dbeibeh government, the Tripoli side declared two Egyptian diplomats persona non grata on August 12. Amid all this, the AKP, which often reacts to everything, remained unusually quiet and passive. Clearly, the importance of the “new chapter” with Egypt was significant. Finally, on September 5, National Intelligence Organization (MİT) Chief İbrahim Kalın flew to Tripoli. He held important meetings—what came out of them is anyone’s guess!

It’s likely that while Dbeibeh was trying to gain control of the Central Bank to boost public support through populist spending and buy the loyalty of militia forces, he did not take Ankara’s preferences into account. He not only disregarded Ankara but also fell out with Cairo. Had the rival parties remained in the previous alignment, the opposite would have happened.

Forty-eight hours before Kalın’s visit, the House of Representatives and the Tripoli-based High State Council agreed to appoint the Central Bank’s governor and board members within 30 days. It’s hard to predict the outcome, but this decision sends a message to the Menfi-Dbeibeh duo: “The game is over.”

The uncertainty at the Central Bank is throwing Libya’s “pirate” economy into a deeper crisis. Although the government managed to pay last month’s salaries with existing reserves, this is little more than a one-time fix. In summary, the future of divided Libya remains bleak. The roadmap set by the 2015 Skhirat Agreement was squandered for personal interests. The same goes for 2021. Throughout these processes, Turkey tried to play a leading role. It made deals with one side of Libya, whose legitimacy was disputed, to shape the political process and gain military bases and ports. Despite its assertive stance, Turkey’s capacity to influence developments appears to be severely limited.

While Turkey is normalizing relations with Egypt and the UAE, actors with whom it clashed over Libya, it is experiencing fluctuations with Russia. Egypt, Russia, and the UAE are in a position to say “yes” or “no” to Turkey’s membership in BRICS. And everyone expects Turkey to adopt more cooperative policies. Here comes another test run. In foreign policy, the saying “We’ve boarded a vehicle bound for disaster” continues to resonate.

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Fehim Taştekin is a graduate of Istanbul University, Political Sciences Faculty. He started journalism in 1994 as a reporter.

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