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Africa Defense Forum

Russia is exploiting politically divided Libya, with its abundant natural resources, to exert more influence on the continent, especially in the Sahel region, a recent report said.

The Kremlin’s work will be headed by Africa Corps, formerly known as the Wagner Group, which will be based in Libya. The group plans to spread a new form of “Russian colonialism,” according to a recent report by the Royal United Services Institute.

“The Russian playbook has been remarkably consistent for decades,” the report said. “The overall approach is to use information operations and active measures to polarize a target population, mobilize factions in support of allied elites and paralyze support for opposing elements of a country’s leadership.”

In Libya, Russia continues to support Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, the Libyan National Army leader based in Benghazi. Haftar is committed to seizing Tripoli and toppling Libya’s internationally recognized Government of National Accord.

“The objectives of Wagner in Libya have been mainly to get access to oil revenues more or less indirectly through supporting Haftar’s armed forces, but also to ensure that it can access the broader African continent,” Tim Eaton, senior research fellow at the London-based Chatham House, told Deutsche Welle. “In that sense, Libya has been functioning as a bridgehead.”

In mid-April, Africa Corps fighters and 6,000 tons of military equipment began arriving via cargo planes at Brak al-Shati in southern Libya and cargo ships at Tobruk. Russia also plans to build a naval base at Tobruk, where its operatives could influence traffic across the Mediterranean, expand smuggling and perhaps disrupt shipping.

The mercenaries also support Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in the country’s protracted civil war. They have been transporting portable surface-to-air missiles, ammunition, fuel and other cargo from Libya to the RSF, according to the German Institute for Global and Area Studies.

“While Africa Corps appears to be the sharp end of Russia’s security strategy in the turbulent Sahel region, its long-term goal will undoubtedly be to expand its influence across Africa,” wrote Institute for Security Studies researcher Nicodemus Minde.

After meeting with Haftar last year, Africa Corps head Gen. Andrei Averyanov visited Burkina Faso, the Central African Republic, Mali and Niger to offer security in exchange for access to the region’s abundant natural resources. Russia has extracted $2.5 billion worth of gold from Africa in the past two years, which is likely to help fund its war in Ukraine, according to the Blood Gold Report.

In February, the mercenaries took control of Mali’s Intahaka gold mine, near the Burkina Faso border. Various armed groups disputed Northern Mali’s largest artisanal mine for years. Authorities recently rewrote Mali’s mining code to give the ruling junta more control over natural resources.

“In Niger, the Russians are endeavoring to gain a similar set of concessions that would strip French access to the uranium mines in the country,” Jack Watling, land warfare specialist at the Royal United Services Institute and lead author of its report, told the BBC.

Russia’s military presence has obvious benefits for junta-led countries, according to Edwige Sorgho-Depagne, an analyst of African politics at Amber Advisers. The juntas were initially transitional leaders who were supposed to organize elections “and bring about a return to democratic institutions,” Sorgho-Depagne told the BBC. “But now Russian paramilitaries are brought in to protect the military junta, allowing them to stay as long as they want.”

Africa Corps does not operate only in junta-led states. In the Central African Republic, Russian mercenaries have for years made capturing the country’s diamond market a priority, stealing and smuggling the precious gems while killing anyone who gets in their way.

Under Averyanov, two CAR companies — Mining Industries and Logistique Economique Etrangere — now stand accused of enabling the group’s security operations and illicit mining activities.

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The Africa Defense Forum (ADF) magazine is a security affairs journal that focuses on all issues affecting peace, stability, and good governance in Africa. ADF is published by the U.S. Africa Command.

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Jonathan M. Winer

Combat terrorism with technical training

While Russia provides weapons and training to African military forces facing down threats from insurgencies or terrorist groups, the NATO report suggests the Alliance should largely limit itself to providing harm-mitigation techniques, such as training on how to identify improvised explosive devices and drones or how to gather evidence on the battlefield.

More compelling support may be possible on a bilateral basis from NATO member states to trusted regional governments. But for NATO itself, providing any hard assistance to southern partners ruled by coup-leaders is likely to be difficult at best.

Counter Russian disinformation

The May experts’ report notes that much of the Global South has a negative impression of NATO in the aftermath of the Alliance’s 2011 air campaign over Libya, NATO’s 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, the perception of double-standards on Ukraine versus Gaza, and the belief that the West has not paid much attention to the South’s needs.

To respond, the report suggests that the transatlantic bloc invite more people from Africa to NATO summits and high-level events, promote media literacy, as well as undertake a “Facts for Peace” initiative, which would provide education and training to regional journalists and social media influencers actively fighting disinformation.

Strengthen NATO’s “Hub for the South”

In 2016, NATO created a dedicated focal point for NATO member states on North Africa, the Sahel, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the Middle East in the form of the Strategic Direction-South HUB (NSD-S HUB) at the NATO Joint Force Command, based in Naples, Italy.

This institution has been operational since 2018 and is tasked with working with civil society to “understand” and then “engage.” Yet according to the report, the NSD-S HUB and its activities remain “disconnected from the rest of the NATO ecosystem” and have little impact.

It recommends integrating the NSD-S HUB’s policy development work with the actual political outreach NATO should initiate vis-à-vis its southern neighbors as well as taking basic steps like encouraging NATO members to send people to the NSD-S HUB who speak relevant languages and have some knowledge of the region. Such basic recommendations reflect NATO’s failure to date to prioritize this macro-region in practice, even after deciding to create an organ within Join Force Command specifically dedicated to engaging it.

Baby steps

To counter Russia’s adverse influence and activities across Africa — exemplified and often spearheaded by Moscow’s employment of the Africa Corps — NATO would necessarily need to be empowered to carry out military activities across the continent in a range of areas that would matter to the military and/or political leaders of the relevant target countries. Members of NATO do this bilaterally already.

The French have long had a range of military relationships in francophone Africa. It is precisely the cratering of these partnerships — with the growing number of African coup leaders being unwilling to be lectured by human rights-monitoring Westerners — that helped create the vacuum Russia has been delighted to fill, in the process dislodging the United States and other allies from key spots in the Sahel.

In response, the NATO experts’ report would have the Alliance begin to take actions it might have taken years ago if its political leadership had been paying greater attention. Eight years ago, few would have predicted that Russia could move in as quickly and comprehensively throughout Africa as it has done. Now there is widespread recognition of the threat posed by the destabilizing Russian expansion in Africa, to NATO, its members, and the African region.

In its upcoming summit, NATO should bless its experts’ recommendations to build a foundation for a more serious future role in its southern neighborhood. But their limited recommendations make obvious the need for the Alliance’s member states to engage far more comprehensively with North Africa and the Sahel, using institutions and arrangements that go well beyond whatever NATO as an organization may be in a position to do.

A viable strategic effort will require thought on what additional actions the West might take, through multiple institutions and mechanisms, working with Africans institutions, African states, and African civil society to counter the Russian presence, thereby creating renewed opportunities for better local governance, greater economic and social opportunities, and longer-term human security and political stability.

Closing Russia’s Libyan gateway

Neither NATO nor the wider West can counter Africa’s turn toward warlordism, or the Russian role in exacerbating and exploiting that trend via its neo-colonialist Africa Corps, without taking on the problem posed by Libyan disunity and competing militia chieftains.

This will require Western governments to undertake a tough-minded, urgent, and focused strategy backed by visible concrete action calculated to unify Libya and to enable the North African country to expel its foreign military forces — beginning with the Russians, but including the Turks and any other foreign occupying force. That’s one initiative where NATO members and their partners in the Middle East and North Africa could align. A unified Libya that no longer incubates a Russian military presence could do a lot to help counter the trend of junta rule in the Sahel and the insecurity and instability that radiates out from it.

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Jonathan M. Winer, a Non-Resident Scholar at the Middle East Institute, was the US Special Envoy and Special Coordinator for Libya from 2014 to 2016 as well as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Law Enforcement.

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The Middle East Institute (MEI)

Russia expressed regret over the lack of progress in the unification of Libya, attributing it to “conflicts of private and external interests and the ineffectiveness of international mediation”

Back and forth between the United States and Russia at the United Nations Security Council on Libya, while the position of UN envoy remains vacant. The first briefing at the UN Headquarters of the interim head of the United Nations Support Mission (UNSMIL) in Libya, the American Stephanie Khoury, saw a long-distance exchange of accusations between representatives of Moscow and Washington, respectively Anna Evstigneeva e Robert A. Wood.

The first accused the West and NATO of committing an “illegal attack” on Libya in 2011, triggering a chain reaction that has led to the “very tense and turbulent” situation now.

The US diplomat described the recent arrival of Russian military ships at the port of Tobruk as a “particularly worrying” episode. Meanwhile, for his part, Khoury outlined a first account of his two months as UN correspondent in place of the resigning Abdoulaye Bathily, explaining that Libyan politicians are – at least in words – in agreement on the need to go to elections, but not on how to vote.

Russia expressed regret over the lack of progress in Libya’s unification, attributing it to “conflicts of private and external interests and the ineffectiveness of international mediation.”

Evstigneeva – responsible for political affairs of the Russian permanent representation at the Glass Palace – declared that the international community and the United Nations must play a central role in the Libyan unification process, but that progress was prevented by external vested interests and will of local subjects to maintain the status quo and the partial collapse of the state.

To overcome this situation, Evstigneeva emphasized the importance of holding national elections and resolving controversial issues related to electoral legislation, hoping for an agreement between interested parties that is in everyone’s interest. Russia said legislative and presidential elections should be held simultaneously to ensure the success of the national reconciliation process, praising the African Union’s efforts to organize a conference on this issue.

The Russian representative expressed concern about the position of armed groups in western Libya, underlining the need to unify the Libyan armed authorities and include security forces in state bodies.

Evstigneeva warned that the continuation of the current state could encourage the activity of extremist and terrorist groups in the Sahel and Sahara region. The Russian representative also expressed concern about plans by external parties to create and supply militias on the border with Libya, arguing that such operations do not favor the unification of the armed forces, but only respond to national interests.

The Russian diplomat called for the cessation of the supply of destabilizing weapons and the end of the presence of mercenaries, a practice in force in Libya since the beginning of the conflict in 2011. Finally, she took note of the decision of the Sanctions Committee to lift the ban on trip imposed on some members of the family of Muammar Gaddafi.

US diplomat Wood has a completely different opinion, according to which the circulation of counterfeit Libyan dinars printed in Russia has increased turbulence in the markets and political divisions in the North African country, while the arrival of Russian ships supplying military equipment is ” particularly worrying.”

Wood praised the renewal of the arms embargo in Libya implemented by the European air and naval mission Irini, which plays a role considered “essential” to monitor the Libyan coasts and counter violations of the arms embargo. The US representative appreciated the work of the International Sanctions Committee expert group on Libya and expressed concern about Russian ships supplying military equipment to Libya.

The US representative also underlined the United States’ commitment to using sanctions to deter threats to peace and security in Libya. Wood praised the work of the Joint Military Committee “5+5” to protect the borders and reduce criminal acts in the south of the country.

In the economic sphere, Wood recalled that the United States imposed sanctions on the Russian company Goznak for printing the equivalent of a billion dollars in counterfeit Libyan currency, worsening Libya’s economic challenges.

Two military ships of the Russian Federation, escorted by two submarines, made an official stop in recent days at the naval base of Tobruk, in Cyrenaica, the eastern region of Libya.

The news was reported by the press office of the self-proclaimed Libyan National Army (LNA), led by the general Khalifa Haftar. “In order to strengthen relations between the General Command of the Libyan National Army and the Russian Federation, a group of Russian warships, consisting of the missile cruiser Varyag and the frigate Marshal Shaposhnikov, paid a three-day visit to the base naval base in Tobruk, after a visit to the Arab Republic of Egypt,” we read in an ENL statement published on Facebook together with some images of the Udaloy class frigate and part of the Russian Pacific Fleet, and of the Varyag cruiser.

“The visit is part of concrete steps to strengthen cooperation between Russia and Libya, restore long-standing friendly relations and take advantage of Russian expertise to strengthen the sovereignty and independence of the Libyan state and its armed forces,” adds the party Libyan. Rumors have been circulating for some time about Russia’s intention to open a naval base in the Cyrenaica city.

Furthermore, at least five significant weapons deliveries occurred in April, all made by the Russian Navy through the port of Tobruk. It is no coincidence that Libya’s representative to the United Nations, the ambassador Al Taher el Sonni, stated that external interference is the main cause of his country’s crisis.

The diplomat criticized the UN Security Council for failing to identify a single individual, organization or group responsible for hindering a comprehensive solution to the crisis in Libya. El Sonni declared that it is time for Libyans to decide their fate for themselves: “We are tired of stagnation and lessons on what we should do. We are tired of Libya being used by other countries. We decide our future ourselves.”

The diplomat stressed that “the time has come for Libyans to decide their fate without interference from the United Nations”, calling for the political process to be completed where it had been interrupted and for a new UN envoy to Libya to be appointed after Bathily’s resignation.

The ambassador highlighted the importance of bringing Libyan parties together, finding points of agreement and “developing an electoral road map and a specific electoral program based on shared electoral laws”, underlining that the Libyan people are suffering due to the current situation.

On the issue of security, the Libyan representative stated that “first of all, all foreign military forces must be removed from Libyan territory”, adding that it is essential to support the 5+5 Joint Military Committee to achieve this goal.

Today’s Libya is administered by two rival political-military coalitions: on the one hand the Prime Minister’s Government of National Unity based in Tripoli Abdulhamid Dabaiba, recognized by the international community and supported above all by Türkiye, a member of NATO; on the other, the so-called Government of National Stability led by Osama Hammad, prime minister designated by the House of Representatives, in effect a parallel executive based in Benghazi managed by General Haftar.

To break the political stalemate, former UN envoy Bathily launched, on February 27 last year, a plan to draft the constitutional amendments and electoral laws necessary to hold “free, inclusive and transparent” elections by 2023 However, this plan failed and Bathily resigned on April 16th.

Meanwhile, according to the French news website “Africa Intelligence”, three personalities from Algeria, Germany and Mauritania are vying for the position of new special envoy to Libya.

The German diplomat Christian Buck, director general for Political Affairs at the German Foreign Ministry and special envoy for Libya, is among the favorite candidates, although the political dynamics in the United Nations Security Council could limit his possibilities, especially after the nomination of the American Khoury as deputy UN special representative in the North African country.

Another name is that of Ramtane Lamamra, 72 years old, former Algerian Foreign Minister and current special representative of the UN secretary general in Sudan. Algeria, which has a non-permanent seat on the Security Council, has increased its influence within the United Nations, where it is represented by the ambassador Ammar Ben Jama, very active on the issue of the Gaza Strip. However, according to the French website, Lamamra did not maintain close relations with the President of the Republic, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, since the head of state fired him and replaced him with Ahmad Attaf.

The third prominent candidate is Mauritanian Mohamed al Hassan Ould Labat, law professor who currently serves as Chief of Staff to the President of the African Union Commission, Moussa Fakih Mahamat. However, again according to “Africa Intelligence”, Ould Labat does not enjoy the support of the Mauritanian president, Mohamed Ould Ghazouani, and would struggle to gain support within the United Nations or the African Union. He would therefore rely on the support of the Congolese president, Denis Sassou Nguesso, who chairs the African Union’s high-level committee on Libya which has close relations with the Libyan Presidential Council. Antonio Guterres, secretary general of the UN, has not yet given priority to the appointment of Bathily’s successor, while the American Khoury is acting as interim envoy (but with limited powers).

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The Rise and Mysterious Fall of Militant Islamist Movements in Libya

Wolfram Lacher

The Rise and Fall of Militant Islamists in Libya, 2011–2020

After the fall of Gaddafi in 2011, a flourishing landscape of militant Islamist groups developed in Libya. In one city after another, such groups burst into the open, took over security functions and forged alliances with other militias amidst escalating power struggles. Radical splinter groups developed into powerful Libyan offshoots of the Islamic State and made Sirte the capital of its “Tripolitania province” in 2015.

At the time, it seemed as if jihadist groups in Libya were destined for a promising future. However, just as quickly as they had spread, militant Islamists disappeared from Libya’s landscape of actors. Armed groups on both sides of the Libyan power struggle drove IS out of the cities. Former allies soon distanced themselves from less radical Islamist groups, which found themselves increasingly isolated and rapidly losing influence.

Militant Islamists no longer play a role among the forces that have dominated Libyan politics since the war for Tripoli ended in June 2020. The spread of militant Islamism in Libya had some deep roots. A considerable number of Libyans had travelled to Afghanistan to fight from the end of the 1980s.

In the 1990s, some of them founded the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), which fought repeated battles with the Gaddafi regime from 1995 to 1998 before its members were either imprisoned or fled abroad. After the US invasion of Iraq, Libyans made up a disproportionate share of the foreign fighters there. Many of them came from only a few Libyan cities, some of which had already been LIFG strongholds.

Even then, a jihadist subculture had developed in a few Libyan cities. During the first civil war (2011), militant Islamists were part of the revolutionary forces. They did not form their own jihadist groups, but fought side by side with non-Islamist revolutionaries. With the fall of Gaddafi, they not only became victors, but also established solid relationships with other revolutionaries.

After the revolutionaries’ victory, former LIFG leaders and militant Islamists without affiliation became members of parliament and deputy defence or interior ministers. Others set up armed groups that obtained official status and access to state funds. In this respect, Islamist actors were no different from other former revolutionaries.

Although the former LIFG leaders were now often vilified as “al-Qaeda” or “terrorists” by their political opponents, there was no evidence that they continued to pursue a jihadist agenda. Instead, they founded parties and dedicated themselves to building a state according to their ideas of Islamic principles – which were basically in line with the conservative social consensus in Libya.

At the same time, the militant Islamist spectrum began to differentiate itself. Jihadists who were ideologically aligned with al-Qaeda founded groups under the name Ansar al-Sharia in several cities in 2012.

These and other groups channelled recruits from Libya and other North African countries to Syria, where they joined the Nusra Front and later the Islamic State. In Benghazi and Darna, the murder of former army officers and intelligence officers became increasingly frequent.

Although these cases were never solved and presumably had various contexts, suspicion fell on Ansar al-Sharia and other jihadists, who were particularly active in those cities. However, Ansar al-Sharia retained a remarkable degree of social acceptance, for example by providing security for Benghazi’s main hospital or campaigning against drug use.

The second civil war (2014–2015) gave militant Islamists an enormous boost. In Benghazi, former revolutionaries formed an alliance with Ansar al-Sharia to fight against the armed groups led by the renegade officer Khalifa Haftar. Haftar’s opponents in western Libya, above all the armed groups of Misrata, supported the alliance with Ansar al-Sharia in Benghazi politically, in the media and logistically. Local branches of the Islamic State were formed in Benghazi and Darna.

They benefited from the fact that Haftar’s opponents initially did not fight them, as they did not want to open two fronts simultaneously. For similar reasons, the Islamic State succeeded in bringing Sirte under its control: The city lay between the frontlines, and neither Misrata’s armed groups nor their opponents to the east of Sirte wanted to devote valuable resources to occupying it. IS was therefore able to operate and recruit openly. Many of Haftar’s opponents minimised the IS problem and also played down the danger posed by extremists in their own camp.

Haftar’s opponents initially did not fight the Islamic State – until it became too great a threat.

The turning point came when IS finally became too great a threat. In September 2015, former revolutionaries in Darna – including militant Islamists – declared war on the IS offshoot there. This confrontation ended in April 2016 with the defeat and flight of the remaining IS fighters. In Sabratha, where IS had not openly appeared but was increasingly committing murders and kidnappings, local armed groups used a US airstrike in February 2016 to drive IS out of the city, amidst battles lasting several days.

IS’s attempts to expand from Sirte – by far the group’s largest presence in Libya – towards Misrata triggered a major offensive by Misratan armed groups in May 2016. In December 2016, they captured the last streets in Sirte where IS was still holding out. These confrontations made it impossible for Haftar’s opponents to continue to trivialise the danger posed by extremists.

The result was an extensive distancing from militant Islamists.8 The IS presence in Benghazi ended when its fighters fled the city in January 2017, by which time Ansar al-Sharia had effectively ceased to exist as an organisation. Other opponents of Haftar in Benghazi continued to fight until their defeat in December 2017. Many IS members who had escaped from the cities into the desert of central and southern Libya fell victim to American airstrikes.

The last eastern Libyan city outside Haftar’s control was Darna. As in Benghazi, not all his opponents in Darna were militant Islamists – but the latter formed the committed core, which was only defeated in February 2019 after an almost year-long battle. This meant that both the Islamic State and several other militant Islamist groups had been militarily defeated. Foreign analysts, however, continued to stress the potential danger of renewed jihadist mobilisation.

Libya remained politically divided, and violence and repression by Haftar’s forces and other militias did not create lasting security, but instead a breeding ground for new radicalisation. When Haftar attacked Tripoli in April 2019, triggering a third civil war, many well-informed observers warned that the conflict – like the one in Benghazi – would give a new impetus to jihadist mobilisation. But this did not happen.

Militant Islamists played no role in the fourteen-month war. Individual fighters may have had links to militant Islamist groups in earlier phases of the conflict, but now they were fighting in militias that rejected Islamist ideology. The leaders of these organisations ensured that figures who were – often wrongly – labelled as extremists were kept away from their units.

Even after Haftar’s defeat and the end of the war over Tripoli, militant Islamists were unable to regain any significant influence. Perhaps most surprisingly, there were hardly any signs of continued underground mobilisation, no splinter groups that remained wedded to the armed struggle for an Islamic state according to their own ideas. Militant Islamism appeared to have been defeated not only militarily, but also ideologically and morally – at least for the time being.

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Dr Wolfram Lacher is Senior Associate in the Africa and Middle East Research Division at SWP.

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SWP Research Paper – June 2024 – German Institute for International and Security Affairs

Jonathan M. Winer

NATO’s nascent response

Long before initiating his current invasion of Ukraine, Putin understood the geopolitical significance of Africa and smelled the opportunity provided by the ongoing neglect of the region by the West.

He used a range of diplomatic and economic tools as well as military ones, starting with offers of various Wagner “private military” services, to initiate partnerships with the new class of African warlords who were taking over much of North Africa and the Sahel.

That work continues at the highest levels of the Russian government, as reflected in Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s recent tour of Guinea, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burkina Faso, and Chad.

With this as a predicate, in May, just ahead of its July 2024 summit in Washington, the North Atlantic Alliance released a major study on what NATO might do to engage with the Middle East, North Africa, Sahel, and Sub-Saharan Africa to counter the interconnected “root causes of insecurity, terrorism, and instability,” which start with “climate change, fragile institutions, health emergencies and food insecurity.”

The 33-page experts report, whose contributors included US special envoy for Libya and former ambassador to the country Richard Norland, provides a potpourri of 114 concrete recommendations for the transatlantic bloc, which are meant to inform the development of NATO’s first official “Southern Strategy.”

Of particular note for the discussion of Russian influence in Africa, the preparatory document expressly states that Russia has been both fueling and benefiting from the continent’s vulnerabilities by offering an “alternative ‘non-democratic’ and ‘non-accountable’ model.”

Additionally, it suggests that, ultimately, NATO will need to find ways to cooperate with its “southern partners” without requiring them to converge on the bloc’s values. So how should NATO operationalize this advice?

Assessing where the Alliance must go from here

Start talking with Africa

To begin with, the May experts’ report recommends, with urgency, that NATO and those prospective southern partners at least engage in greater dialogue. The first 10 short-term recommendations boil down to having NATO declare that its southern neighborhood is important (a political message that “we care, we really care”);

(a) that its senior officers spend more time visiting these countries;

(b) that NATO convene a special NATO-African summit and other processes for political dialogue and consultations; and

(c) that the Alliance engage with “parliaments, media, civil society and youth in the region and invite scholars and think-tankers from the regions to expert briefings at NATO headquarters.”

While these are surely useful activities, such NATO-African chats are unlikely to be transformational anytime soon.

Support the Libyan political process

The report notes Libya’s contribution to regional instability but limits its recommendations to supporting efforts to unify the country, form a single national military force, and regain sovereign control of Libyan borders.

How NATO is to do any of those things is left unstated, beyond providing Libyans with advice on defense and security institution building. (In 2014-2016, this author personally witnessed representatives of NATO vainly seeking to secure Libyan engagement on these issues, with absolutely no success whatsoever.)

The lack of any concrete Alliance action vis-à-vis Libya is perplexing, especially since Russia’s foothold there has been foundational for the Kremlin’s success throughout Africa.

As reflected in the aforementioned mid-June deployment of Russian destroyers to Libyan ports, Moscow’s use of this country’s territory to develop a north-south transcontinental logistics network is continuing to grow and intensify.

Find ways to engage in the Sahel and Sub-Saharan Africa

The report’s recommendations on the Sahel are even weaker than its woefully inadequate recommendations on Libya. The text details the deteriorating security situation throughout the region, marked by terrorism, violent extremism, political violence, organized crime, irregular migration and human trafficking, and poor governance, all of which are exacerbated by environmental stresses and explosive population growth.

In response, bedeviled by the diverging values of the current crew of African leaders in the Sahel from those of NATO, the report’s experts make only a few modest, and clearly insufficient, recommendations.

These include:

(a) monitoring the security threats emerging from the region;

(b) mapping existing aid packages by NATO members and partners to identify gaps;

(c) enhancing training, scholarships, and media literacy efforts to help counter Russian disinformation;

(d) listening and talking to people from the region; and

(e) being patient, to await some future day when more advantageous opportunities materialize.

These ideas are better than nothing, but they are not calculated to counter Russia’s energetic work on the ground to help African military rulers maintain power.

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Jonathan M. Winer, a Non-Resident Scholar at the Middle East Institute, was the US Special Envoy and Special Coordinator for Libya from 2014 to 2016 as well as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Law Enforcement.

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The Middle East Institute (MEI)

The Rise and Mysterious Fall of Militant Islamist Movements in Libya

Wolfram Lacher

∎ Prevailing approaches to understanding Islamist mobilisation struggle to explain why militant Islamist movements in Libya initially spread rapidly after 2011 and then disappeared almost overnight. Their decline poses a puzzle for conventional analyses.

∎ Tactical choices, such as the search for protection or allies, fuelled both the rise and fall of militant Islamists. The tactical options that were in fact considered by conflict actors were also determined by social factors, such as relationships of trust they maintained and the social acceptance they enjoyed.

∎ The short-lived flourishing of militant Islamist movements can be understood as a fashion, among other things. Protagonists sought to socially demarcate themselves or to conform by superficially adopting Islamist rhetoric and aesthetics and then discarding them again.

∎ Analysing the dramatic decline of militant Islamist movements helps to understand the full range of motivations fuelling their rise. Social recognition has so far been overlooked as a motivation for armed mobilisation.

∎ The Libyan case shows that labels such as “Islamists” and “jihadists” need to be treated with extreme caution, particularly in the context of ongoing conflicts. External actors should first recognise that conflict parties deliberately misuse such categories, and second they should develop a precise understanding of the social environment in which militant Islamist movements operate.

Issues and Conclusions

Where Have All the Jihadists Gone? The Rise and Mysterious Fall of Militant Islamist Movements in Libya As in other Arab Spring countries, militant Islamist movements flourished in Libya in the first few years following the fall of the regime.

After Muammar al-Gaddafi’s rule ended in 2011, they were popular among many young Libyans and they benefited from an escalation in violent conflicts, which made them allies of other armed groups. But from 2016 onwards, these movements dramatically lost importance and appeal – as occurred in other regional countries at around the same time.

There were obvious reasons for this: first and foremost the military defeats of militant Islamist groups and the demonisation of all Islamists by Libyan and regional media. Nevertheless, the sudden fall of militant Islamists in Libya is puzzling.

It is difficult to reconcile with the two leading explanations for jihadist mobilisation. One school of thought emphasises the role of ideological radicalisation in the spread of militant Islamist groups. It sees this radicalisation as the reason for the tenacity of such groups – a tenacity they apparently lacked in Libya. Moreover, the question arises as to why Islamist ideology suddenly lost its appeal. Another approach stresses that militant Islamists benefit from conflicts and grievances, which help them to gain followers who pursue non-ideological objectives.

In Libya, however, political divisions and armed conflicts persisted after 2016, even while militant Islamists became increasingly irrelevant. When a third civil war erupted in 2019, it was widely expected that this would lead to a renewed mobilisation of jihadist groups.

Nothing of the sort happened.

This study explores the question of how to explain the abrupt change of fortune of militant Islamists in Libya – and what it teaches us about the driving forces behind Islamist mobilisation. The approach chosen here is based on interviews with members and allies of militant Islamist groups, as well as with actors who observed these groups in their immediate social environment. Recurring patterns in these interviews reveal three types of mechanisms at work in the rise and fall of militant Islamist movements in Libya.

First, there are tactical considerations. Actors joined militant Islamists, entered into alliances with them, or distanced themselves from them in order to react to conflict dynamics – for example, to counter an immediate threat. This aspect is widely recognized in prevailing approaches to jihadist mobilisation.

Second, which tactical choices were plausible depended, among other things, on the social embeddedness of actors and on what was socially acceptable. Militant Islamists benefited from a dense network of trust relations with former revolutionaries dating back to their joint struggle in 2011.

As a result, jihadists were able to mobilise openly in the first few years after 2011 and to become allies of their former brothers in arms in 2014. Confrontations between former revolutionaries and the Islamic State (IS) in 2016 shattered their trust in actors across the militant Islamist spectrum; old friendships broke apart. When the third civil war broke out in 2019, a renewed tactical alliance with militant Islamists was no longer an option, not only from a realpolitik perspective, but also because social ties with them had been severed.

Third, however, the rise of militant Islamists from 2011 onwards was also fuelled by the superficial appropriation of Islamist aesthetics and rhetoric by actors who wanted to stand out or conform. The abrupt disappearance of militant Islamist movements was also driven by this interplay of demarcation and imitation. In post-Gaddafi Libya, revolutionary Islamism was not least a fashion, jihadism an ephemeral youth culture.

The pivotal experience of the fight against IS undoubtedly provided an important impetus for the habitus associated with Islamism to go out of fashion, and for other models for gaining social status to take its place.

What requires explanation, however, is the rapidity with which this impulse spread through parts of society that had previously had little fear of contact with militant Islamists. Processes of imitation and the self-reinforcing weight of conformism can help to account for this.

The third mechanism in particular, which analyses militant Islamism in post-Gaddafi Libya as a fashion, sets this research paper apart from many previous studies on Islamist mobilisation. Studies on militant Islamist groups have predominantly focussed on their expansion and much less on their decline. This is understandable, since these groups are primarily perceived as a security problem and attract attention above all when they are involved in escalating conflicts. However, the excessive focus on mobilisation has favoured analytical approaches that cannot adequately explain an evolution such as that which took place in Libya – and the Libyan case is by no means alone.

Broadening the perspective to include the decline of militant Islamist movements produces a different picture of both their rise and their fall. Such an analytical approach also makes it more straightforward to grasp the full diversity of motivations of those who joined militant Islamist groups or made pacts with them. It helps to reveal how categories such as “Islamists” and “jihadists” were often problematic when such labels were politically relevant.

The protagonists of Libya’s power struggles were well aware of the demonising effect of these terms and deliberately used them in an inflationary manner. Foreign observers often adopted this practice because they did not know the designated actors and their social environment from personal experience. This study shows how diverse the motivations and the extent of ideological commitment were among those who were subsumed under the broad term “militant Islamist

***

Dr Wolfram Lacher is Senior Associate in the Africa and Middle East Research Division at SWP.

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SWP Research Paper (June 2024) – German Institute for International and Security Affairs

Jonathan M. Winer

With NATO celebrating 75 years since its founding, Alliance members will gather in Washington, DC, on July 9-11, for a historic summit. Two of the key issues on the agenda will be addressing the acute threats emanating from the Black Sea region and adopting a strategic approach toward the Middle East and Africa. The following article is part of MEI’s special series, “Shoring up NATO’s Vulnerable Flanks,” which aims to help shape these twin consequential debates that will occupy the Alliance ahead of the Washington Summit and beyond.

***
It may or may not be a coincidence that the Russian government’s rebrand of the Libya-based wing of the mercenary force formerly known as the Wagner Group into the explicitly state-sponsored and state-controlled “Africa Corps” evokes the infamous Nazi German “Afrika Korps.” But in any case, as this Russian military/paramilitary presence continues to infect the Maghreb, the Sahel, and neighboring regions of the African continent, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and its members have at last begun to take notice.

Four and a half years after the first Russian-African summit, chaired by Russian President Vladimir Putin, and following the deepening Russian penetration of the domestic armed forces of Burkina Faso, the Central African Republic (CAR), Chad, Libya, Mali, Niger, and Sudan, NATO is preparing to respond with its own intensified engagement.

The question remains whether this renewed effort will be too little and too late. Can NATO and its members block Moscow’s malign influence and begin to counter the tide of Russian-sponsored dictatorships, coup-leaders, and human rights violators in Africa? Or will Russia’s engagement remain unimpeded, breeding an ever-expanding region of insecurity, instability, and conflict?

Putin’s bold grab for Africa

The Russian engagement in Africa over the past decade or so has been as systematic as it has been cynical. It began in Libya, which remains central to its future success, with Russia agreeing to print and deliver more than 10 billion in Libyan dinars to Libyan warlord Khalifa Hifter, following the creation of a transitional government, brokered by the United Nations, which was intended to lead to the country’s political reunification. Hifter was able to use those billions, plus military support from the Wagner Group, to recruit and pay an army and slowly take over the coastal east, before moving south. Hifter’s effort to take Tripoli, and control of the entire country, was only blocked by determined resistance from fighters from Misrata, Tripoli, and other western Libyan cities, who were backed by Turkish air support and intelligence.

At the same period, Wagner mercenaries were deployed to Sudan to provide support to then-President Omar al-Bashir, in exchange for gold mining rights Russia has since used to help fund its war on Ukraine. From there, the Wagnerites proceeded to repress local dissent against the Sudanese government, before Moscow began providing Russian military support to fighters from both sides in the county’s ongoing civil war.

This month, Sudan’s military leader, Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, is expected to agree to a deal with President Putin, granting Russia a Red Sea naval logistics base in exchange for Moscow giving the Sudanese Armed Forces more weapons and military support to stave off the opposing paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, which Russia had previously also helped.

In the CAR, since late 2017, the Wagner Group, and now the Russian government, have been providing weapons and security services in return for gold and diamond rights, building what the United States government describes as “a vast security and business network [that has] advanced Russia’s destabilizing activities at the expense of CAR’s sovereignty.”

On May 30, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) imposed sanctions against two Wagner-linked entities involved in such abuses. The Russian military presence in Africa accelerated further in 2020-2023, in the wake of military coups in Mali in 2020 and 2021, one in Burkina Faso in 2022, and the latest in Niger in 2023. In each case, a military junta took over, and the French and other Western forces were kicked out of these francophone African countries — and replaced by Russian forces. The specifics should be humbling for the West.

In July 2022, after nine years of trying to stabilize Mali, the French threw in the towel following the military coup, saying they could not work with the junta there even to combat jihadist terrorist groups, kidnappers, and human or drug traffickers. Russia had no such compunctions, and it sent in attack helicopters, radar equipment, and weapons to support the country’s newly installed military government, which continues to refuse to schedule elections.

According to Paris, as part of the campaign to undermine the French in Mali, Russian mercenaries staged a false-flag operation, putting bodies in mass graves for a video purporting to show the French having massacred locals. In Burkina Faso, as of late 2023, Russia has reportedly provided 100 praetorian guards to protect coup leader Captain Ibrahim Traoré in return for, once again, mining concessions. Meanwhile, the Traoré government continues arresting and expelling French diplomats.

In May 2024, the military government of Niger allowed Russian military personnel to physically enter the Nigerien air base hosting American troops before the US withdrew its roughly 1,000 military personnel, who had been carrying out a counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency mission there. Niamey’s “embarrassing” strategic shift has been characterized as a direct response to Washington’s efforts to discourage closer Nigerien ties with Moscow.

The Russian march is also continuing in Chad, another country controlled by a military junta, which, as of the end of April 2024, took in some 130 Russian military trainers after demanding the departure of 75 American trainers, preparing the way for what one commentator has termed a soon-to-be “protectorate.”

Finally, since the first visit of Russian Deputy Defense Minister Yunus-Bek Yevkurov to Benghazi in August 2023, directly coinciding with the death-by-plane-crash of Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin, Russia has doubled- and tripled-down on its military build-up in Libya.

Over the past year, Yevkurov has made five trips to see Hifter; and in mid-June 2024, two Russian destroyers visited the Hifter-controlled Tobruk Naval Base. The warships’ visit was billed as a training mission but was likely a continuation of the delivery of artillery to Hifter’s “Libyan National Army,” either for use in a future military action in Libya or for export south to military forces in neighboring countries.

***

Jonathan M. Winer, a Non-Resident Scholar at the Middle East Institute, was the US Special Envoy and Special Coordinator for Libya from 2014 to 2016 as well as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Law Enforcement.

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The Middle East Institute (MEI)

The people of Ben Guerdane survived off the Ras Jadir border crossing. It’s closure hurt them, badly. Nothing much is moving in Ben Guardane, Mohammed says. The money-changing kiosks sit silent and the ad hoc markets by the banks of the saltwater inlets that line the route into the Tunisian border town are empty, they used to sell goods imported into Libya and snuck into Tunisia. Nothing is moving, Mohammed repeats.

The nearby Tunisian border crossing with Libya remains closed, as it has been since late March violence on the Libyan side of the border. The official reason for closure is technical renovations. Fighting had broken out between forces loyal to Libya’s Amazigh, who had largely controlled the crossing since the 2011 revolution, and forces from Tripoli’s Ministry of Interior, shuttering the crossing by March 20. It is not unusual, clashes between militias, and even civil war, have become almost normal for most Libyans since the revolution of 2011, and the border area is wild.

Ben Guardane is struggling, Mohammed says. One way or another, almost everyone in the town relies on trade – legitimate and illegitimate – from Libya. On Thursday, officials from Libya and Tunisia are slated to visit the border crossing at Ras Jedir and mark its reopening after a compromise between the warring factions, brokered by the Libyan Ministry of Defence. Many in Ben Guardane hope it will lead to a resumption of trade, but few believe it.

The traders and the smugglers

Ben Guerdane relies on the border. From the days when local tribes escorted trans-Saharan caravans through the territory, to the establishment of the frontier in 1910, legal and illegal trade has been the border town’s lifeblood. Over the intervening years, trade, traders and smugglers became entrenched in the area’s fabric, until recently given free rein by both coloniser and ensuing governments in return for securing the fractious border region, all at no cost to the state.

That changed from about 2014 onwards, as ISIL fighters,  fuelled in no small part by willing recruits from Tunisia, took swaths of Libya, including Sirte, the birthplace of Muammar Gaddafi. In 2016, the group attempted to invade Tunisia, and ISIL fighters stormed Ben Guerdane, only to be repelled by Tunisian security forces who stayed on beyond the fighting, essentially ending much, though not all, of the town’s autonomy.

Security on the Tunisian side is now handled largely by the state while the Libyan side has been managed by forces from the Amazigh tribespeople of the coastal town of Zuwara, whose relationship with the internationally recognised government in Tripoli is, at best, loose. Controlling Ras Jedir would be significant for any of the factions or armed groups competing for power in Libya.

When it was open, Ras Jedir had miles of trucks passing through each day, carrying everything from commercial goods to industrial cargo manufactured in distant markets for Tunisian clients, delivered by ship to Libyan ports as near as Tripoli or as far afield as Misrata to avoid heavy Tunisian import duties, before being trucked through Ras Jedir into Tunisia.

Around them scurried the myriad numbers of flatbed trucks, distinctive for their heightened suspension, taking goods as diverse as mobile phone covers to Hello Kitty rucksacks to markets throughout Tunisia.

Getting in on the action

Placing an actual value on the total goods passing between Libya and Tunisia at Ras Jedir is impossible. However, Libyan Minister of the Interior Imad Trabelsi was probably not exaggerating greatly in March when he labelled Ras Jedir “one of the largest smuggling hubs in the world”, estimating the value of goods passing illegally there at “$100m a week”.

“On a bad day, anywhere up to 300 trucks, 5,000 cars and 10,000 people can cross the border at Ras Jedir. That’s on a bad day. In terms of taxation and bribes, we’re talking about very serious money,” Hamza Meddeb, a research fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Institute who has written extensively on the border, told Al Jazeera. That the Tripoli government would try and wrest control of the valuable crossing was almost inevitable.

However, while it may have been the clashes between the Zuwara fighters and forces loyal to the Ministry of Interior that triggered its latest closure, the reasons for it remaining closed for so long are likely numerous. “It could be almost anything,” Meddeb continued. “It could be due to Abdul Hamid Dbeibah’s [interim Tripoli prime minister, pending long-promised elections] dispute with the Central Bank, which really doesn’t trust him and has left him short of funding.

“It could be the Libyan funds still being held in Tunisian banks since the revolution, which they’re not allowing them to access without proof of where it came from. The reasons could also lie further afield. Both Tripoli and Tunis have international allies that are rivals, such as the UAE and Turkey.

“Literally, it could be anything,” he said.

Lawmakers in Libya’s capital, locked in a battle for legitimacy with the rival eastern parliament in Benghazi, likely feel that controlling a valuable national asset such as Ras Jedir would bolster their ambitions for international credibility.

For the Amazigh, suppressed brutally under Gaddafi, control of the crossing and other assets, such as the oil platform at Mellitah, is, according to analysts, about safeguarding their future and that of their people as it is political influence. After decades of repression, the Amazigh had been among the first Libyans to pick up arms and join the NATO-led coalition against Gadaffi in 2011. Subsequent years have brought them little but further uncertainty.

However, running through it all is a flow of heavily subsidised Libyan fuel and the illicit networks that shepherd it beyond the North African country’s borders. Despite being oil-rich, Libya still imports much of its refined fuel, which is then sold to citizens at a heavily discounted rate.

According to a yearlong investigation by Bloomberg, anywhere up to 40 percent of fuel imported to Libya is resold to other countries, such as Europe (via Malta), Turkey, Sudan, and Tunisia, through Ras Jedir. “Smuggling has become part of the Libyan economy, especially in borderlands,” Jalel Harchaoui of the Royal United Service Institute said. “Irregular losses of fuel over the border aren’t even reported or estimated by National Oil Company’s [NOC].

“The odds are, if you’re at the top of the NOC, people with links to smuggling helped put you there,” he said. “The recent attempt by the Dbeiba government and its Ministry of Interior to seize the border crossing was at best weak and clumsy,” he said. “It’s taken weeks since for officials at the Ministry of Defence to broker a truce between the Amazigh and the Ministry of Interior. Defence officials … just want stability. As for Tunisia, they just want to see their border back and the flow of goods, including smuggled fuel, resume.” For Mohammed, in his early 30s and reliant on the irregular work the border brings, little of this matters. He’s just waiting for his town to return to life.

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James Brooke 

May was Russia’s bloodiest month in its 28-month war against Ukraine: 38,940 soldiers dead or seriously wounded. This mountain of casualties did not stop the Kremlin from sending 2,000 soldiers and thousands of tons of military equipment to the eastern half of Libya, controlled by a warlord in Benghazi.

Benghazi was front of mind in 2012 when Islamic fundamentalists murdered the American ambassador to Libya and three other American officials. As one byproduct, Washington lost its taste for Libya’s cutthroat politics.

Moscow, however, stepped into the vacuum. Now, after years of intense courtship, Russia might be on the verge of winning basing rights for Russian Navy warships in Tobruk. From that point in the central Mediterranean, Russian Kalibr cruise missiles could hit almost any target in Western Europe. Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that Russia could provide long-range weapons to other countries so that they could strike Western targets.

“A Russian Mediterranean base in Libya would threaten Europe and NATO’s southern flank,” the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) wrote in its new report “Russian Outreach Across Africa.” “The Kremlin’s position in Libya also gives it the opportunity to destabilize Europe by weaponizing migrant flows from Africa, which it now has an even greater influence over thanks to its recent expansion along southern points of trans-Saharan migrant routes in the Sahel.”

In Russia’s hybrid war against the West, Moscow uses uncontrolled immigration as a new weapon. Libya has the longest coastline in North Africa — about 1,100 miles. During the 42-year rule of Moammar Gadhafi, Europe had an unwritten deal with Libya’s eccentric ruler: you keep Africa from crossing the Mediterranean, and we overlook your “eccentricities.”

However, since Gaddafi’s overthrow and death in 2011, Libya reverted to the east-west split of the Italian colonial era of a century ago. There is one government in Tripoli, the United Nations-recognized capital. There is another government in Benghazi. With the split, control of the coast is a thing of the past. Last year, the European Union’s border patrol agency reported that 380,000 African migrants attempted to cross into Europe from Libya — the highest number in almost a decade.

Tobruk, a bitterly contested port during World War II, is 175 miles south of Crete, the Greek island. Human smugglers make that boat trip in one night. To the south, Russia’s new allies — Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger — control human smuggling routes out of the heart of Africa.

Over the last two years, Russia and its satellite Belarus have pumped undocumented migrants across their western land borders. The migrants are pawns in attempts by Russia and Belarus to fuel anti-migrant sentiment and in turn boost far-right parties in the European elections.

In Eastern Libya, the local leader, Gen. Khalifa Haftar, reportedly profits from sending boatloads of African migrants north.

“Haftar has explicitly aided migrant smugglers in Libya by granting them security clearances,” the ISW charged last week. “Russia’s partners in the Nigerien junta annulled an EU-backed migration law that aimed to stem migrant flows in December 2023.”

Ensconced in Benghazi, Gen. Haftar personifies the failure of American diplomacy in Libya. An American citizen, he lived for two decades in northern Virginia where he was a CIA asset. Recently, however, he and many of his six sons quietly moved their money out of American bank accounts.

Meanwhile, the Kremlin is reaping the fruits of a Soviet-era investment. In the late 1970s, Haftar, then a rising young officer in the Gaddafi inner circle, completed a three-year degree for foreign officers at the M. V. Frunze Military Academy in Moscow. A Russian-speaker, Gen. Haftar now is the target of Kremlin courtship: a trip to Moscow to meet President Putin last September and five meetings in Benghazi with Russian Deputy Defense Minister Yunus-bek Yevkurov, including one in recent weeks.

The fruits of this blossoming alliance could be seen two weeks ago at a parade in Benghazi marking the 10th anniversary of the defeat of local Islamist forces who might have been involved in the murder of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. According to open-source intelligence analyst Janes, the centerpiece of the parade were rows of Russian-made Volk, or Wolf, armored personnel carriers, painted in desert camouflage. The Volk fleet is the tip of an iceberg of five shipments made since April 1 to Tobruk from Russia’s Eastern Mediterranean port of Tarsus, Syria, according to ISW.

Russia is partly using Tobruk to send equipment south to bolster the countries in the Sahel where Russian troops are replacing French troops: Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger. However, many Russian military assets are now spread around Eastern Libya, according to a new report, “Mediterranean Sea Objective for the African Corps.”

“Russian military personnel and equipment have been spotted in at least 10 locations in eastern Libya since the beginning of March,” according to the report, a joint project of independent outlet Verstka and the All Eyes on Wagner project. Wagner, the Russian mercenary group, has largely been replaced by Russian soldiers answering to Russia’s Defense Ministry. Wounded soldiers from Eastern Libya are routinely treated in Russia.

On the financial side, Libya is believed to launder Russian gas for sale to Europe, contravening EU sanctions. Last month, at the Russia-Islamic World Forum in Russia, Libyan officials invited the Russian company Tatneft to build an oil refinery in Benghazi or Tobruk. Last month, on a visit to eastern Libya, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Russia plans to open a consulate in Benghazi.

In previous assaults on the government in Tripoli, Gen. Haftar flooded the country with as much as $1 billion in fake Libyan dinars, printed by the Russian state currency printer Goznak. Now, analysts believe the new funneling of arms into Eastern Libya presages Russian backing for a military assault by Gen. Haftar on the remaining one-third of Libya outside his control.

***

James Brooke has been reporting for The New York Times, Bloomberg and Voice of America. He reported from Russia for eight years and from Ukraine for six years.

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Michael Robbins, Amaney A. Jamal, and Mark Tessler

POLL VAULT

Each Arab Barometer survey polls over 1,200 respondents and is conducted in person in the respondent’s place of residence. These surveys question respondents on their views on a wide array of topics, including economic and religious issues, views of their governments, political participation, women’s rights, the environment, and international affairs. Since October 7, Arab Barometer has completed surveys in five diverse Arab countries: Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Mauritania, and Morocco.

Because Arab Barometer’s previous round of surveys in these countries was conducted between 2021 and 2022, factors other than the war in Gaza may have contributed to changes in public opinion between then and now. One additional poll, however, happened to provide an invaluable benchmark, allowing us to deduce that certain key shifts in opinion probably occurred much more recently.

Between September 13 and November 4, 2023, we conducted a scheduled survey in Tunisia involving 2,406 interviews. About half these interviews were conducted before October 7 and about half afterward.

To understand how Tunisians’ views changed after October 7, we calculated the average responses during the three weeks before Hamas’s attack and then tracked daily changes in the weeks that followed—finding a swift, sharp drop in the percentage of respondents who held favorable views of the United States. The results in most other countries we surveyed in 2021–22 and after October 7 followed a similar pattern: in all but one, views of the United States also declined markedly.

Despite the horror of Hamas’s attack, few Arab Barometer respondents agreed that it ought to be called a “terrorist act.” By contrast, the vast majority agreed that Israel’s campaign in Gaza ought to be classified as terrorism.

For the most part, Arab citizens surveyed after October 7 assessed the situation in Gaza as dire. When asked which of seven words, including “war,” “hostilities,” “massacre,” and “genocide,” best described the ongoing events in Gaza, the most common term respondents chose in all but one country was “genocide.”

Only in Morocco did a substantial number of respondents—24 percent—call those events a “war,” about the same percentage of Moroccans that called it a “massacre.” Everywhere else, less than 15 percent of respondents chose “war” to characterize what was happening in Gaza.

Furthermore, Arab Barometer surveys found that Arab citizens do not believe that Western actors are standing up for Gazans. Our survey asked, “Among the following parties, which do you believe is committed to defending Palestinian rights?” and allowed respondents to select all that applied from a list of ten countries, the European Union, and the United Nations. No more than 17 percent of respondents in any country agreed that the United Nations is standing up for Palestinian rights.

The European Union fared worse, but the United States received the lowest marks: eight percent of respondents in Kuwait, six percent in Morocco and Lebanon, five percent in Mauritania, and two percent in Jordan agreed that it stood up for Palestinians.

The results for the United States diverged even more from those of other Western and global actors on the question of protecting Israel. When asked whether the United States was protecting Israeli rights, more than 60 percent of respondents in all five countries agreed that it was doing so. These percentages far exceed the percentages of respondents who agreed that the European Union or the United Nations is protecting Israel.

These perceptions in the Arab world about Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, and about the United States’ approach to it, appear to have had major consequences for the United States’ overall reputation. In nine of the ten countries in which Arab Barometer asked about U.S. favorability in 2021, at least a third of all respondents said that they held a favorable view of the United States.

In four out of the five countries surveyed between December 2023 and March 2024, however, fewer than a third viewed the United States favorably. In Jordan, the percentage of respondents that viewed the United States favorably dropped dramatically, from 51 percent in 2022 to 28 percent in a poll conducted in the winter of 2023–24.

In Mauritania, the percentage of respondents that viewed the United States favorably fell from 50 percent in a survey conducted in the winter of 2021–22 to 31 percent in the survey conducted in the winter of 2023–24, and in Lebanon, it fell from 42 percent in the winter of 2021–22 to 27 percent in early 2024. Similarly, the percentage of respondents who agreed that U.S. President Joe Biden’s foreign policies were “good” or “very good” dropped by 12 points in Lebanon and nine points in Jordan over the same period.

The timing of our survey in Tunisia strongly suggests that Israel’s military campaign in Gaza drove this overall decline. In the three weeks before October 7, 40 percent of Tunisians said they had a favorable view of the United States. By October 27, not quite three weeks after the start of Israel’s military operations in Gaza, just ten percent of Tunisians said the same.

Although Arabs’ opinion of the United States and Biden declined after October 7, views on different aspects of the United States’ engagement with the Middle East did not all fall equally. Our respondents were just as likely to agree that U.S. foreign aid to their country strengthens education initiatives or that it strengthens civil society as they were before October 7.

In fact, respondents in Jordan, Mauritania, and Morocco in our winter of 2023–24 survey were slightly more likely to agree that U.S. foreign aid strengthens civil society than they were in 2021 and 2022. These findings suggest that disagreement with the U.S. government’s policy toward Israel and the war in Gaza, not other elements of U.S. foreign policy, are driving the decline in the United States’ regional reputation.

FRINGE BENEFIT

Despite offering limited material and rhetorical support for Gaza, China has been the primary beneficiary of the United States’ decline in reputation among Arab publics. In its 2021–22 surveys, Arab Barometer demonstrated that Arabs’ support for China was declining. But in recent months, this trend has reversed.

In all the countries Arab Barometer surveyed after October 7, at least half the respondents said they held favorable views of China. In both Jordan and Morocco, key U.S. allies, China has benefited from at least a 15-point increase in its favorability ratings.

When asked whether U.S. or Chinese policies are better for their region’s security, respondents in three of the five countries we surveyed after October 7 said they preferred China’s approach. China’s actual presence in the region has, in fact, been minimal, with its engagement focused mostly on economic deals through its Belt and Road Initiative.

Arab publics in the Middle East appear to understand that China has played a limited role in the events in Gaza: only 14 percent of Lebanese respondents, 13 percent of Moroccans, nine percent of Kuwaitis, seven percent of Jordanians, and a vanishingly small three percent of Mauritanians agreed that China is committed to defending the rights of Palestinians.

It is likely, then, that respondents’ increasingly favorable views of China reflect their dissatisfaction with U.S. and Western policies. When asked more specific policy questions, our respondents gave more ambivalent answers.

Asked if they thought Chinese policies are better at “protecting freedoms and rights,” American policies are better, Chinese and American policies are equally good, or Chinese and American policies are equally bad, a plurality of Kuwaitis, Mauritanians, and Moroccans said U.S. policies are better than Chinese policies.

Respondents in two countries that border Israel, however, felt the opposite: in Arab Barometer surveys in Jordan and Lebanon after October 7, substantially more respondents agreed that China’s policies are better than the United States’ at protecting rights and freedoms.

China’s record on protecting rights and freedoms at home and abroad is poor, but the Lebanese and Jordanian populations now consider the United States’ record to be even worse. This finding reflects a larger trend in Arab Barometer’s data: geography matters. People who live closest to the conflict in Gaza and whose countries have historically accommodated large numbers of Palestinian refugees expressed the lowest confidence in specific U.S. Middle East policies.

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Hafed Al Ghwell

The southern Mediterranean shores are fast becoming a permanent theater for worsening geopolitical tensions and their cumulative impacts on human suffering, especially with Libya’s dual crises of arms trafficking and migration.

This volatile mix, worsened by the country’s protracted political deadlock, has come to reflect the broader security risks facing North Africa, the Sahel, southern Europe, and, by extension, the US.
Historically, the post-2011 destabilization of Libya brought about an alarming proliferation of small arms and light weapons.

The raiding of a massive state military arsenal, once among the biggest in the region, led to weapons ranging from pistols to man-portable air defense systems falling into the hands of non-state actors. This proliferation has been linked directly to the enhanced operational capacities of various armed groups, notably impacting conflict dynamics in the Sahel and Sinai.

For instance, an influx of firearms and munitions allowed Mali’s insurgent factions to increase the intensity of their attacks on state forces, complicating peacekeeping efforts there and, ultimately, leading to an unceremonious French exit from the region.

Recent revelations of Russian military deliveries to Tobruk, defying a decade-old UN arms embargo, are a stark reminder of the surge in illicit activities that continue to thrive in a fractured state. The brazen act signified Moscow’s escalating involvement, as well as the impotence of international resolve.

An embargo, long-declared “totally ineffective” by a UN panel, has consistently failed to stem the flow of arms, sparking new conflicts and inflaming existing ones, as well as empowering warlords such as Khalifa Haftar. His control over eastern Libya, bolstered by external support, has essentially “green-lit” wide-ranging transnational criminality and created new, complex risks that continue to fester as the world’s attention remains fixed elsewhere.

The influx of weaponry worsens an already tenuous security situation across the region. Libya, with its strategic location and porous borders, now functions as a near-permanent hub for trafficking in arms, which feeds conflicts in neighboring countries, such as Sudan, and significantly contributes to the Sahel’s endless turmoil.

Following the end of large-scale skirmishes, Libya remains diced up among countless well-armed groups. Not only do they blur the lines between state and non-state actors, they also leverage their military capacities to engage in, and profit from, Libya’s trafficking economies. This fragmentation and militarization are now potent catalysts for derailing the country’s fragile political processes and resisting counter-trafficking initiatives.

Moreover, the proliferation of arms funds the operations of extremist groups and criminal networks that are deeply embedded in the lucrative smuggling routes crisscrossing North Africa. The ease with which these groups acquire military-grade weaponry is shocking, to say the least — given the impromptu markets for arms on social media, where transactions are openly facilitated.

Early this year, for example, munitions ranging from hand grenades to anti-aircraft cannons were being advertised on forums by militants, with some sellers claiming that the origins of some of their lethal wares to be as far away as the Czech Republic, hinting at the transnational contours of Libya’s descent into an open market for the world’s small arms.

It not only further jeopardizes Libya’s already troubled political landscape, but also heightens the risk of dangerous spillovers and cross-border violence, hampering local and international efforts even to gauge the scope of this crisis.

Another growing worry, especially in Brussels and, soon, Washington, is the intersection of small arms proliferation with sprawling human trafficking operations in Libya, which not only violates human rights but also indirectly contributes to the destabilization of both transit and destination countries.

Moreover, the black market for arms also provides a significant revenue stream that facilitates the trafficking of contraband and illicit substances, including drugs such as Captagon, dubbed “the poor man’s cocaine.” This drug has fueled what remains an enduring crisis across the Arab world, disproportionately affecting its most prolific users — the region’s youth.

The situation in Libya, serving as a hub for such extensive networks, evidently engenders regional instability and compounds challenges facing local and international stakeholders in their quest to bolster the country’s security, governance, and development. The EU’s Operation Irini, launched in 2020 to enforce the arms embargo and stem the flow of weapons, can hardly be called a success.

High-profile seizures, including the interception of almost 150 armored vehicles, for instance, hint at the scale of the challenge. However, the operation’s focus on larger shipments neglects the smaller, yet equally lethal, consignments of arms and ammunition that continue to slip through to cause havoc elsewhere or to fund it.

Europe’s fragmented and often contradictory approach to Libya has only compounded the problem. The lack of a coherent strategy, coupled with individual member states’ pursuit of narrow interests, has sustained a lawless environment that benefits malign actors. Take, for instance, the EU’s reliance on Libyan factions to curb migrant flows, often through dubious deals with local militias. These not only failed to address the root causes, but also legitimized and empowered groups that now benefit both from Brussels’ “generosity” and keeping those very same trafficking routes operational.

Benghazi has become a new source of worries for the US. The city, controlled by Haftar and his Libyan National Army, is witnessing a concerning increase in chartered flights to Nicaragua, intended to facilitate the illicit passage of migrants to the US, by crossing multiple countries, enabled by criminal networks and the tacit approval of involved states. This route has been operational since 2021, with more than 1,000 charter flights landing in Nicaragua, predominantly from regions linked to conflict or economic hardship.

The absence in Libya of a unified government and stable institutions creates a fertile ground for the proliferation of illicit economies and further external meddling. Without concerted efforts to forge an “acceptable” settlement, any attempt to curb trafficking in arms or manage migration will be akin to treating the symptoms rather than the disease.

Key stakeholders must acknowledge that a durable solution lies in robust support for mediation efforts and credible roadmaps, which should prioritize strengthening what remains of Libya’s still-functioning institutions of governance.

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James Brooke

From its new strongholds on the Libyan coast, Russian Kalibr cruise missiles could hit almost any target in Western Europe. May was Russia’s bloodiest month in its 28-month war against Ukraine — 38,940 soldiers dead or seriously wounded.

This mountain of casualties did not stop the Kremlin from sending 2,000 soldiers and thousands of tons of military equipment to the eastern half of Libya, controlled by a warlord in Benghazi.

Libya?

After Islamic fundamentalists murdered the American ambassador to Libya in Benghazi in 2012,  Washington lost its taste for Libya’s cutthroat politics. Moscow stepped into the vacuum. Now, after years of intense courtship, Russia may be on the verge of winning basing rights for Russian Navy warships in Tobruk.

From that point in the central Mediterranean, Russian Kalibr cruise missiles could hit almost any target in Western Europe. Last week, President Putin warned that Russia could provide long-range weapons to other countries so that they could strike Western targets.

“A Russian Mediterranean base in Libya would threaten Europe and NATO’s southern flank,” the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War wrote  in a new report: ‘Russian Outreach Across Africa.’ “The Kremlin’s position in Libya also gives it the opportunity to destabilize Europe by weaponizing migrant flows from Africa, which it now has an even greater influence over thanks to its recent expansion along southern points of trans-Saharan migrant routes in the Sahel.”

In Russia’s hybrid war against the West, uncontrolled immigration is a new weapon used by Moscow. Libya has the longest coastline of North Africa — about 1,100 miles. During the 42-year long rule of Muammar Gaddafi, Europe had an unwritten deal with Libya’s eccentric ruler: you keep Africa from crossing the Med, and we overlook your ‘eccentricities.’ 

However, since Mr. Gaddafi’s overthrow and death in 2011, Libya reverted to the east-west split of the 20th century Italian colonial era. There is one government in Tripoli, the UN-recognized capital. There is another government in Benghazi. With the split, coastal control is a thing of the past. Last year, the EU’s border patrol agency reported that 380,000 African migrants attempted to cross into Europe from Libya — the highest number in almost a decade.

Tobruk, a bitterly contested port during World War II,  is only 175 miles south of Crete, the Greek island. For human smugglers, that boat ride can be done in one night. To the south, Russia’s new allies — Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger — control human smuggling routes out of the heart of Africa.

Over the last two years, Russia and its satellite, Belarus, have pumped undocumented migrants across their western land borders. Migrants are pawns in attempts by Russia and Belarus to fuel anti-migrant sentiment and boost far-right parties in the European elections.

Belarus opened travel agencies in the Middle East offering a new, unofficial route into Europe. After 4,600 migrants without EU visas attempted to illegally enter Lithuania from Belarus, that Baltic nation closed four of its six land borders with Belarus. Finland closed all its land crossings with Russia after 1,700 migrants crossed last fall. 

On Poland’s border with Belarus this summer, as many as 400 migrants a day attempt to enter that EU nation. Increasingly, attempts turn violent with asylum seekers throwing rocks and burning sticks at Polish soldiers guarding the 248-mile  border. On Thursday, Polish soldier Mateusz Sitek, died after being stabbed through the border fence by a migrant. Polish soldiers push back surging migrants  with pepper spray and by firing their guns in the air and into the ground.

In Eastern Libya, the local leader, General Khalifa Haftar, reportedly profits from sending boatloads of African migrants north. “Haftar has explicitly aided migrant smugglers in Libya by granting them security clearances,” the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War charged Thursday in a report: ‘Russian Diplomatic Blitz Highlights the Kremlin’s Strategic Aims in Africa. “Russia’s partners in the Nigerien junta annulled an EU-backed migration law that aimed to stem migrant flows in December 2023.”

Ensconced in Benghazi, General Haftar personifies the failure of American diplomacy in Libya. An American citizen, he lived for two decades in Virginia where he was a CIA asset. Recently, however, he and many of his six sons have quietly moved their money out of American bank accounts.

Meanwhile, the Kremlin reaps the benefits of a long ago Soviet-era investment. In the late 1970s, Haftar, then a rising young officer in the Gaddafi inner circle, completed a three-year degree for foreign officers at the M. V. Frunze Military Academy in Moscow.. A Russian speaker, General Haftar now is the target of Kremlin courtship: a trip to Moscow to meet Mr. Putin last September, and five meetings in Benghazi with Russian Deputy Defense Minister Yunus-bek Yevkurov, including one last week.

Two weeks ago, the fruits of this blossoming alliance could be seen at a parade in Benghazi marking the 10th anniversary of the defeat of local Islamist forces who may have been involved in the murder of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other American officials. According to Janes, the centerpiece of the parade were rows of  Russian-made Volk, or Wolf, armored personnel carriers, painted in desert camouflage.

The Volk armored personnel carriers are the tip of an iceberg of five shipments made since April 1 to Tobruk from Russia’s Eastern Mediterranean naval base in Tarsus, Syria, the Institute for the Study of War reported May 17. “One shipment in April alone accounted for 6,000 tons of military hardware. These shipments included equipment, vehicles, and weapons, including radar systems, T72 tanks, armored personnel carriers, and artillery systems.”

Russia is partly using Tobruk to send equipment south, to bolster the countries in the Sahel where Russian troops are replacing French troops: Burkina Faso,  Mali, and Niger. However, many Russian military assets now are spread around Eastern Libya, according to a new report, “Mediterranean Sea Objective for the African Corps.”

“Russian military personnel and equipment have been spotted in at least 10 locations in eastern Libya since the beginning of March,” reads the report, a joint project of independent outlet Verstka and the All Eyes on Wagner project. Wagner, the Russian mercenary group, has largely been replaced by Russian soldiers answering to Russia’s Defense Ministry. Wounded soldiers from Eastern Libya are routinely treated in Russia.

On the financial side, Libya is believed to duck EU sanctions and launder Russian gas for sale to Europe. Last month, at the Russia-Islamic World Forum in Russia, Libyan officials invited the Russian company Tatneft to build an oil refinery in Benghazi or Tobruk. Last month, on a visit to eastern Libya, Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, said Russia plans to open a consulate in Benghazi.

In previous assaults on the government in Tripoli, General Haftar flooded the country with as much as $1 billion in fake Libyan dinars, printed by the Russian state currency printer Goznak. Now, analysts believe the new funneling of arms into Eastern Libya presages more serious Russian backing: for a military assault by General Haftar on the remaining one third of Libya outside his control.

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Michael Robbins, Amaney A. Jamal, and Mark Tessler

October 7, 2023, was a watershed moment not just for Israel but for the Arab world. Hamas’s horrific attack occurred just as a new order appeared to be emerging in the region. Three years earlier, four members of the Arab League—Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE)—had launched processes to normalize their diplomatic relations with Israel. As the summer of 2023 drew to a close, the most important Arab country that still did not recognize Israel, Saudi Arabia, looked poised to do so, too.

Hamas’s assault and Israel’s subsequent devastating military operation in Gaza have curtailed this march toward normalization. Saudi Arabia has stated that it will not proceed with a normalization deal until Israel takes clear steps to facilitate the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Jordan recalled its ambassador to Israel in November 2023, and a visit to Morocco by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu planned for late 2023 never materialized. Arab leaders have watched warily as their citizens have grown vocally opposed to the war in Gaza. In many Arab countries, thousands have turned out to protest Israel’s war and the humanitarian crisis it has produced. Protesters in Jordan and Morocco have also called for an end to their countries’ respective peace treaties with Israel, voicing frustration that their governments are not listening to the people.

October 7  may turn out to be a watershed moment for the United States, too. Because of the war in Gaza, Arab public opinion has turned sharply against Israel’s staunchest ally, the United States—a development that could confound U.S. efforts not only to help resolve the crisis in Gaza but also to contain Iran and push back against China’s growing influence in the Middle East.

Since 2006, Arab Barometer, the nonpartisan research organization we run, has conducted biannual nationally representative opinion surveys in 16 Arab countries, capturing ordinary citizens’ views in a region that has little opinion polling. After the United States’ 2003 invasion of Iraq, other polls consistently found that few ordinary Arab citizens held positive views of the United States. By 2022, however, their attitudes had improved somewhat, with at least a third of respondents in nearly all countries Arab Barometer surveyed affirming that they held “a very favorable” or “somewhat favorable” opinion of the United States.

But surveys we conducted in five countries in late 2023 and early 2024 show that the United States’ standing among Arab citizens has declined dramatically. A poll in Tunisia conducted partially before and partially after October 7 strongly suggested that this shift occurred in response to the events in Gaza. Perhaps even more surprising, the surveys also made it clear that the United States’ loss has been China’s gain.

Arab citizens’ views of China have warmed in our recent surveys, reversing a half-decade trend of weakening support for China in the Arab world. When asked if China has undertaken serious efforts to protect Palestinian rights, however, few respondents agreed. This result suggests that Arab views reflect a profound dissatisfaction with the United States rather than specific support for Chinese policies toward Gaza.

In the coming months and years, U.S. leaders will seek to end the conflict in Gaza and initiate negotiations toward a permanent settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The United States also hopes to safeguard the international economy by protecting the Red Sea from attacks by Iranian proxies and to cement a regional alliance that contains Iranian aggression and limits Chinese engagement in the region. To achieve any of these goals, however, Washington needs the partnership of Arab states, something that will be harder to get if Arab populations remain so skeptical of U.S. aims in the Middle East.

U.S. analysts and politicians often imply that what they sometimes dismissively call “the Arab street” should be of little concern to American foreign policy. Because most Arab leaders are authoritarian, the argument goes, they do not care much about public opinion, and U.S. policymakers should therefore prioritize making deals with powerbrokers over winning the hearts and minds of Arab citizens. In general, however, the notion that Arab leaders are not constrained by public opinion is a myth.

The Arab Spring uprisings toppled governments in four countries, and widespread protests in 2019 led to changes in leadership in four other Arab countries. Authoritarians, too, must consider the views of the people they govern. Few Arab leaders now want to be seen openly cooperating with Washington, given the sharp rise in anti-American sentiment among the populations they rule. Arab citizens’ anger at U.S. foreign policy could also have serious direct consequences for the United States. Our prior research based on data from opinion surveys in Algeria and Jordan has demonstrated that anger at U.S. foreign policy can cause citizens to have greater sympathy for acts of terror directed at the United States.

Some Arab Barometer findings, however, also reveal that Arabs’ growing skepticism about the United States’ role in the Middle East is not irreversible. Variations in opinion between publics in countries that the United States has treated differently indicate that the United States can change the way it is perceived in the Arab world by changing its policies.

The survey results also suggest specific shifts in approach that would likely improve Arabs’ perceptions of the United States, including pushing harder for a cease-fire in Gaza, increasing U.S. humanitarian assistance to the territory and the rest of the region, and, in the longer term, working for a two-state solution. Ultimately, to win the trust of Arab citizens in the Middle East, the United States must show the same care for the suffering of the Palestinians that it does for that of the Israelis.

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Dr Mustafa Fetouri

The United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Libya (SRSG), Abdoulaye Bathily, resigned his position on 16 April, some 18 months after he took up the near-impossible task of mediating the Libyan crisis.

Mr. Bathily was SRSG number nine since the UN got into the Libyan mess it helped create back in 2011, by first authorising military intervention by any willing state to protect Libyan civilians against the alleged brutality of their own government. The story of what really happened and how it continues to unfold is now well-known history.

In his last briefing, the envoy told the UN Security Council (UNSC) that his attempts to address the concerns of different Libyan power-hungry factions were met with “stubborn resistance, unreasonable expectations and indifference to the interests of the Libyan people. These politicians, he said, have over the years entrenched their positions, thanks to “divided regional and global landscape, perpetuating the status quo”, subjecting Libya to further insecurity.

He accused all involved politicians of hypocrisy and deliberately creating disagreement after they themselves agree to some plan to move forward. He described this behaviour as lack of goodwill on the corrupt politicians’ part.

Commenting on the situation after tendering his resignation, Mr. Bathily was more candid about the UN’s future role in the country. He said “under the circumstances, there is no way the UN can operate successfully.” Why? Because the Libyan protagonists are selfish and they put their “personal interests above the needs of their country” he said, while predicting that the world body has no “room for a solution in the future.”

This is a very blunt and true statement from a UN diplomat wishing to justify his failure, that of the UN and his own resignation, all at once.

With Bathily gone, his number two in the UN Mission in Libya, Stephanie Koury, took over the difficult task of political mediation of the UN mission—a task exclusively given to the Special Representative which usually requires UNSC decision.  Since the Council is unlikely to agree, in the foreseeable future, to appoint that person, Ms. Koury is likely to remain as Officer-in-Charge of the UN mission, with little prospect of successfully cracking the problem she inherited, mainly forcing Libyan factions to agree to both presidential and legislative elections.

In reality, the UN can do very little when the parties it is mediating between do not want a solution, and this is exactly the case in Libya. The main institutional actors, to use Mr. Bathily’s words, are still there and they are the ones Ms. Koury is supposed to deal with, but none of them has the intention or the goodwill to change the status quo. The five institutional actors who are holding Libya back are: the Parliament in the East, the Higher Council of State, the Government of National Unity and the Presidential Council in Tripoli. All topped by General Khalifa Haftar, the de facto power, in the Eastern and Southern regions.

Since the “five devils” do not want it, elections will not happen. Unless they are gone or, somehow, forced to accept elections, the entire nation will continue to be held hostage to the very few and will not vote to elect its president, representatives and government. Against this background, it is hard to see what progress, if any, Ms. Koury could make when the very people delaying any progress are still around and she still has to deal with them.

Besides, what kind of initiatives could Ms. Koury bring to the table to satisfy all “five devils”, who are a very wily bunch willing to do whatever it takes to keep their positions and privileges, particularly financial gains they personally make at the expense of the estimated seven million Libyans?

Over the last 13 years, since the country was plunged into an abyss by the NATO bombardment and Western-backed armed rebels, almost every imaginable idea of compromise has been tried but failed. At the same time, over the same period, the “five devils” have perfected very precise tactics and wicked strategies to kill any political idea presented to them.

They have been doing so, thanks to their regional, international backers and local armed militias. Since the 2014 elections, for example, foreign meddling in Libya’s internal affairs has been, and continues to be, behind almost all UN failures in the country. But, now, that destructive role is being played by the local proxies, including the decade old Parliament whose legitimacy, like the other four actors, has long since been lost.

Working against Ms. Koury, also, is the regional and international political environment. Russia and the United States, for one, the powers with a significant role in Libya, disagree about almost everything. Both are veto powers and are able to bring the UNSC to a halt, as they have been doing for the last few years. And if, magically, Ms. Koury successfully brokers a universally accepted compromise among the Libyan factions, she still needs the Security Council to endorse it and make it work. The Council is unlikely to agree. On top of that, the US is in election mood now, with little room for Libya to be acted upon.

In terms of geopolitics, Libya is now another potential theatre of confrontation between Moscow and the West, which means solving the Libyan crisis is not a priority at all. Add to that the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza and the war in Ukraine, neither Moscow nor Washington have the luxury of focusing on Libya with the aim of ending its misery.

All this means that elections in Libya, with the potential to end the long transitional period, are still far off, and reaching that point will involve bypassing some major potholes on a road already difficult to navigate.

One day, Ms. Koury will leave her position and move on, but the “five devils” will only further cement their positions, while perfecting the art of delaying and disagreeing.

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Emanuele Rossi

Libyan ports are back in fashion. There are the deep sea ports of Tobruk and Susan which are popular with Russia and the USA, while China appears. Profazio (Ndcf/Iiss): “There is a return of strategic competition in Libya”

According to a Benghazi website, Saddam Haftar , son of the militia leader who controls the city of Cyrenaica, Khalifa Haftar , was in Rome in recent days to discuss investment opportunities in eastern Libya with American businessmen. The site may not be reliable, and for now none of the sources contracted by Formiche.net – neither in Italy nor in the United States – can confirm the news.

However, what is interesting, in a world in which information is constantly altered and directed according to the narrative, is precisely the dynamic behind the publication of the news – which is worth as much as its truthfulness, indeed at times it makes it seem relative. Why should a media based in Benghazi (where the Haftar family exercises mafia-like control, ranging from military control to business in the area’s economic trafficking, starting with migration) talk about Saddam Haftar’s contacts with the USA?

In recent weeks that side of Libya has been particularly under the international spotlight due to information – in that case much more truthful, but always circulated with the aim of narration – which described the increase in Russian involvement in Cyrenaica. Moscow, thanks to the agreements made with the Haftars (with the father in the past, and now inherited by the children, a very active part of the family business), is using eastern Libya as a logistical-tactical hub to push the strategy of Afrika Corp – as it is now called the Wagner Group surrogate, which effectively returned under the management of the Ministry of Defense after the death of Yevgeny Prigozhin .

For example, yesterday Yunis-Bek Yevkurov , Russian Deputy Defense Minister, landed at Benina airport, Benghazi, welcomed by Khaled Haftar , who is considered Russia’s link point in Libya. A role that is often portrayed in competition with that of Saddam, who was more inclined to dialogue with the Americans. As in every family of power there is an internal struggle for succession – and everyone seeks external support for their legitimation.

In the midst of this context, the question is: perhaps Saddam Haftar’s elusive Roman contact was used by his pro-US son to boost himself in intra-family competition, or does it serve to describe a rebalancing of this excessive exposure of the warlord of ‘Libyan East towards Russia? According to Umberto Profazio , an analyst at the IISS and the NATO Foundation, it is not surprising if it was all an information maneuver to demonstrate interest in the Americans’ relations, after AfriCom has been targeting Haftarian activities with Russia for years.

“In any case it reveals the desire to try to play on multiple fronts. Interestingly, there is a return of strategic competition in Libya. which in this multipolar phase intensifies where there is a void, a deficiency, internal as in North Africa or the Sahel: and Libya is one of the main interests of a challenge that particularly concerns Europe and above all Italy”, he comments Profazio. However, he underlines that the issue is also one of internal Libyan politics, “where the issue is also linked to Khalifa’s succession: they are looking for different paths, one of his sons, Belqasim Haftar , is for example setting up a fund for the reconstruction of the region ( tragically hit by cyclone “Daniel” , ed. ), other more active in the activities of their militia and in certain relations with the outside world”.

If the general situation were not enough, this of the Haftar family is another problem for Libya, also because it brings various issues to the table. For example, at this moment in which maritime geopolitics is becoming central again for the balance between Mediterranean and extra-regional countries, Libya also has its value. In particular, we are talking about the port of Susah, once among the cities of Pentopoli Cyrenaica and a commercial port (as the port of Cyrene) since the times of ancient Greece. Texas-based Guidry Group had already landed a contract to build a couple of billion-dollar deep-sea port in Susah, which is expected to become a multi-purpose container port, making it the region’s largest deep-sea logistics hub. as it is expected to handle 1 million TEU in the first phase.

But it was a period before the current one: the agreement dates back to 2012, the feasibility study to 2013 and subsequently – with the explosion of the first phase of the internal conflict that has divided the country for ten years and of which the Haftars have always been protagonists – the path had become complicated.

A master plan had resurfaced in 2018, named among the best projects at the Global Infrastructure Forum in Montreal in August. Seven months later, Haftar launched the most important assault on Tripoli: also aided by the Russians, he intended to overthrow the UN government led at the time by Fayez Serraj .

Subsequently, a year after the failure of the Haftarian military plan, in the spring of 2021 there was a revival of the idea of ​​the port of Susah, with a long-term joint venture agreement between Guidry Group and the Greek Archirodon.

Investing in infrastructure works in Libya was a complicated project at the time like now, even if the Roman meeting would have served to relaunch the business and projects like Susah, according to information from Agenzia Nova obtained from an anonymous source in Cyrenaica. In fact, among the businessmen met by Saddam there was also the head of the Guidry Group. 

These days the investment search activity is also widespread on the other side of Libya. Prime Minister Abdelhamid Dabaiba left Tripoli to attend the China-Arab States Cooperation Forum in Beijing, and had a reserved slot with the Chinese Party/State’s foreign policy chief, Foreign Minister Wang Yi .

There was talk of the reopening of the Tripoli embassy and the activation of economic agreements that had remained dormant due to the destabilization. China is also interested in having a place (and a port) in Libyan reconstruction. When will that be, because the process is still far away, given that the country is effectively divided in two, with Dabaiba governing according to a UN mandate that expired a couple of years ago, but there is no ability to remove him.

The other half of the country is under an informal (and unrecognized) executive led by Osama Hammad and militarily pressured by Haftar. The diplomatic-military support that Moscow provides them is linked to a composite interest, which also involves the port dimension: the Russians in fact aspire to Tobruk, another deep-water port of call, which would become a further point of support in the middle of the Mediterranean, after Tartus in Syria. Tobruk is located approximately 200 kilometers from Susah. The interests of the great powers intersect.

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Angelo Boccato

In-depth: Italy’s ambitious new development plan aims to revolutionise its ties with Africa. But is it just about energy deals and stopping migration? Enrico Mattei was a leading figure in post-war Italy who went down in history for relaunching the Italian petroleum agency Agip, founded by Benito Mussolini, into state oil giant ENI (National Fuel Trust).

A partisan leader and a Christian Democracy (Democrazia Cristiana) MP, he turned ENI into a global player that broke up the oligopoly of the world’s largest energy companies dominated by the UK, the US, the Netherlands, France, and Belgium.

Mattei secured ENI contracts across the Middle East, the Gulf, and Africa, treating countries as equals with 50/50 cuts of their profits from oil. As a result, he drew the ire of rival energy nations and made powerful enemies. It is not surprising, therefore, that Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni would choose Mattei’s name for her government’s new strategy for Africa, officially announced at the beginning of 2024.

Part of a long-term vision to reshape Italy’s foreign policy strategy in the African continent, the Mattei Plan is ambitious and could see billions invested in partner nations. But beyond evoking Italy’s former soft power and influence on the global stage, what does it entail, and how will it impact the countries targeted?

The Mattei Plan beyond nostalgia

The Mattei Plan will initially focus on nine pilot projects across Mozambique, Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt, Algeria, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and includes five key pillars of education and training, agriculture, health, energy, and water. Beyond this, however, details remain scarce.

“We still do not have many details of what the Mattei Plan will look like. The plan was presented in January, during the Italy-Africa summit, a steering committee was gathered, in addition to the legislative tools to define the structure of the plan,” Aldo Liga, a Research Fellow for the Middle East and Africa at ISPI (Institute for the Studies of International Politics) told The New Arab.

“However, the Mattei Plan so far seems to be a way to repack and rebrand the Italian approach to international cooperation and development, also seen by the fact that Libya, recently visited by PM Giorgia Meloni, is not one of the countries included in the plan.”

Meloni’s Libya visit in early May seemed to be more connected to expanding Rome’s plans of pushing back migrants in cooperation with the rival UN-supported Government of National Unity (GNU) in Tripoli, led by Abdul Hamid al-Dbeibeh, and the National Stability Government in Benghazi, led by Osama Saad Hammad Saleh and backed by General Khalifa Haftar.

“The relationship between Italy and Libya is a historical one. Italian governments have pushed for the rehabilitation of Libya on the international stage in the early 2000s and have always tried to have a role after the 2011 revolution,” Liga added.

“There has been strong action on the migratory side and several economic interests, mainly in the energy sector. Libyan gas exports, almost in their entirety, are directed to Italy, while ENI produces electricity which is then distributed across Libyan electric networks.”

The Russian invasion of Ukraine forced Italy, like other European nations, to decrease its dependence on Moscow’s gas, pushing the country into further developing its energy relationships with Libya and other countries in the region, like Egypt.

ENI’s role in Italian foreign policy

There are several key issues at stake in the Mattei Plan, with analysts raising questions about ENI’s role in the strategy and its impact on migration, climate change, as well as the historic power imbalance between Italy and its partners in the project.

“Italy’s soft power has decreased. While it is true that projects of cooperation in sports, research, university, and agriculture will be part of the Mattei Plan, we have seen that ENI defines Italy’s foreign policy historically,” Italian-Tunisian journalist Leila Belhadj Mohamed told The New Arab.

“ENI is one of the global players in Oil and Gas, alongside Total, and is monopolising Africa. In Pemba, Mozambique the Eni-Total gas plant is responsible for emissions calculated to surpass French yearly emissions by five times.”

As foreign minister until 2022, Luigi Di Maio’s trips to the Middle East after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine were often accompanied by ENI managers, proof of the fossil fuel giant’s political influence, Mohamed says. This trend has continued since Meloni was appointed prime minister in 2022. “When it comes to deals between the Global North and Global South countries, these are never between equal actors,” added Mohamed.

“There is always a stronger actor, a European one in this case, and on the other side we mainly have autocracies that to keep their power over their people, decreasing public debt, etc…accept a typology of investments that is counterproductive and has the main focus of trying to manage migratory flows.”

Italy has been unable to maintain its historic relationships in the region, despite being one of the closest European countries to North Africa, the journalist says, and has failed to manage its ties following the Arab Spring revolutions that deposed Ben Ali, Hosni Mubarak, and Muammar Gaddafi.

“There is a lack of vision, while during Italy’s First Republic, politicians, regardless of their political alignment, were able to find the most advantageous positioning for Italy,” Mohamed says.

What next for the Mattei Plan?

“In terms of convening power regarding the Italy-Africa Summit and the Italian, European, and African partners involved, I believe it is possible to give a positive evaluation. However, this also raises the stakes,” Lorena Stella Martini, Policy Advisor in Foreign Policy at ECCO, the Italian climate-focused think tank, told The New Arab.

“Four months after the Italy-Africa Summit we still have to understand what this will entail beyond single projects, like the one announced with Kenya a few days ago (focused on biofuel production).”

Martini observes that while single initiatives and projects have been announced and pinpointed by Meloni and her ministers during visits to African countries, a strategic framework for the plan is still absent.

“The Mattei Plan is intended, according to what the government is saying, as a response to the migratory matter. For this reason, the absence of a focus on climate in the plan has an additional value,” Martini adds.

“Following Cop28 and Italy’s commitments, we would have expected that this would have been reflected in the plan. There is a tendency to talk about climate only in contexts like the Cop, not only when it comes to Africa, but with the whole Italian foreign policy lacking a collective and strategic vision on climate.”

The nexus between migration and climate change, and the rise of climate migration, is an element rarely discussed in the Global North. Moreover, when it comes to far-right parties there is often climate change denial, or downplaying the issue, as part of ongoing ‘culture wars’.

A recent investigation, Desert Dumps, published in May by different international media, including the Italian IRPI Media, shows how clandestine pushbacks of African migrants from Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunisia in the Sahara desert have become part of a framework of European policies which aim to turn North Africa into a hostile border outside of Europe for African migrants.

While the full extent of the Mattei Plan is still to be fully grasped, this form of migration management could be part of it. “Migration is not our tragedy, but rather an issue that we are unable to manage. It is instead a tragedy for African countries,” researcher Aldo Liga said.

“The fact that our only interest seems to be to reduce migration not only shows a general lack of empathy, but in the long term anti-migration policies risk jeopardising the very base of the relationships between North Africa and Italy.”

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Angelo Boccato is a London-based freelance journalist. His work has appeared in publications like the Columbia Journalism Review, The Independent, and Open Democracy. He co-hosts the podcast Post Brexit News Explosion.

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Jawhar Farhat

3. 166th Battalion

• Commander: Colonel Ayoub Al-Ferjani
• Ministry Affiliation: Libyan Arab Armed Forces
• Headquarters:  Al-Berka,Benghazi, Libya

3.1 Activities

-Units from the 166th Infantry Brigade participated in searching for missing persons on the beaches and areas near Derna after Storm Daniel on September 5, 2023.

This comes in addition to their work in securing the Derna Gate and organizing the entry of relief convoys and rescue teams to contribute to alleviating the repercussions of the Mediterranean Storm “Daniel” crisis.

– On 14 January, Conclusion of the tactical course on the combat use of the M/D missile (Kornet) in the 166th Infantry Brigade.

-On 21 November , the second batch – Special Tasks Course 1.7 – graduated from the 166th Infantry Brigade, after completing field training in storming, securing, and rescuing hostages.

The graduation ceremony witnessed the presence of the Chief of Staff of the security units and several officers of the 166th Infantry Brigade.

-On 10 March, within the framework of continuous patrols, the reconnaissance company of the 166th Infantry Battalion launched its patrols from the city of Ajdabiya to Jalo and Al-Sarir, all the way to Al-Kafra. After that, the Subul_Al-Salam Battalion joined with it and carried out joint patrols on the borders linking neighboring countries.

4. 302 Battalion

• Commander: Issa Guesbsi
• Ministry Affiliation: Chief of Staff of the Land Forces
• Headquarter: X2R5+26, Benghazi, Libya

4.1 Activities

– On 8 November, Colonel Issa Dhawoud Al-Qabsi, Commander of the 302nd Thunderbolt Battalion, led a military delegation comprising  officers, non-commissioned officers and field commanders on a strategic visit to the Marada region.

– On January 14, the 302nd Infantry Battalion gathered with key leaders, including the Chief of Staff of the Land Forces. High-ranking officials present included Lieutenant General Amraja’ Al-Amami, Major General Saddam Khalifa Haftar, and Brigadier General Hassan Al-Zadma. Other leaders included Brigadier General Omar Amraji, Brigadier General Ghazi Al-Shatiti, Brigadier General Ali Ableblo, and Brigadier General Amhamed Al-Jali. Colonel Anas Al-Zayani and several officers from the Armed Forces also attended.

The meeting was regarding the restructuring of the 302nd Battalion after it joined the Chief of Staff of the Ground Forces and its rearrangement and organization.

5. Benghazi Security Battalion

It is stationed at the headquarters of the “formerly Al-Fadil Bou Omar” battalion in Benghazi, under the command of Jaafar Omar Abd Rabbo. The “Al-Fadil Bou Omar” battalion was founded by Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.

• Commander: Colonel Jaafar Omar
• Ministry Affiliation: Libyan Arab Armed Forces
• Headquarter: 4534+G53, Benghazi, Libya

5.1 Activities

– The third batch graduated from a special tasks course for members of the Benghazi Security Battalion.

-On 28 January, Within the framework of raising the level of security and combat power among members of the Special Task Force of the Benghazi Security Battalion.

The force underwent training  in a sniper course inside the battalion’s training center to fully prepare  for any military orders.

-On 13 January, the Benghazi Security Battalion, officers, non-commissioned officers and soldiers participated in donating blood for the Red Crescent Blood Donation Unit.

6. 155th Brigade

The 155th Infantry Brigade is stationed in the southern region. Sites belonging to the 155th Infantry Battalion in the Jabal Al-Akhdar area, east of Benghazi.

Commander: Mahdi Nour Eddine Cherif

Ministry Affiliation: Libyan Arab Armed Forces

Headquarter: Fourth Ring Rd Banghazi, Libya

6.1 Activities

On July 26, the 155th Infantry, stationed in the city of Al Bayda, caught a drug smuggler in possession of 15 large bags containing hallucinogenic Captagon pills during a large patrol on tankers.

-Based on the decision of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces No. 170 of 2023 AD,
The name of the 155th Infantry Battalion was changed to (155th Infantry Brigade).

– On 13 March 2023, following instructions from the Commander-in-Chief of the Libyan Arab Armed Forces, the Al-Jawf commercial convoys, affiliated with Al-Watan Company, were set in motion. These convoys, safeguarded by the 155th Infantry Battalion and the Subul Al-Salam Battalion, commenced their journey from the arrival point at the Benghazi sea port to the Al-Jawf Free Zone in the city of Kufra. From there, they embarked on a mission to establish a commercial crossing line to Africa. Notably, this marks the first convoy since operations ceased in 2011.

7. 73rd Battalion

Commander: Ali Al-Qatani

Ministry Affiliation: Libyan Arab Armed Forces

Headquarter: 3338+4JM, Benghazi, Libya

7.1 Activities

– On 12 February, the 73rd Infantry Brigade and the Security Directorate of the Joint Security Room in Murzuq conducted a night march into the city of Murzuq for the Libyan Arab Armed Forces.

-On November 13, Major General Ali Saleh Al-Qatani, Commander of the 73rd Infantry Brigade, presided over a graduation ceremony for the Kornet and 120mm-81mm mortar trainees. However, the trainees passed both the theoretical test and the practical exam with a grade of 92% and received certificates of success upon completing the course.

-On 20 July, The combat companies/608th Infantry Battalion of the 73rd Infantry Brigade concluded an intensive refresher course at the brigade’s training center in the Saluk area . Additionally, the course included dealing with light and medium weapons and mortar artillery of various sizes, simulating the defense situation and how to maintain medium weapons while the vehicle is moving and while stationed, in order to reach the highest level.

8. Conclusion

The landscape of armed groups in Benghazi reveals a mosaic of power dynamics, historical affiliations, and strategic maneuvers within Libya’s fractured political and military landscape. Haftar’s forces, epitomized by entities like the Tariq Bin Ziyad Brigade, wield significant control over eastern Libya, exerting authority through a mixture of tribal allegiances and military prowess. Furthermore, this dominance is not without controversy; reports of egregious human rights violations tarnish their reputation and underscore the volatility of the region.

Ultimately, the armed groups of Benghazi represent microcosms of Libya’s larger struggle for stability and sovereignty. While some embody the dark underbelly of conflict with their alleged atrocities, others symbolize aspirations for order and progress within a fractured nation. Consequently, the interplay of these forces underscores the intricate challenges facing Libya as it navigates a path towards peace and reconciliation.

Furthermore, militant factions in Benghazi play a pivotal role in shaping the region’s dynamics, with entities like the Tariq Bin Ziyad Brigade exerting significant influence over eastern Libya. Despite their power, reports of human rights abuses tarnish their reputation and highlight the region’s volatility. Similarly, the 106th Brigade’s involvement in political incidents raises questions about their adherence to the rule of law. Amidst these complexities, institutions like the Al Karama Training Center strive to professionalize Libyan armed forces, offering a glimpse of hope amidst turmoil. In summary, the armed groups of Benghazi represent microcosms of Libya’s struggle for stability and sovereignty, underscoring the challenges ahead.

Jawhar Farhat is an ALL source analyst with a Level 6 diploma (CSMP) in Security Management and a master’s degree in Military Sciences from the Military Academy of Tunisia.

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Jawhar Farhat

Armed groups in Benghazi lie within the shadows of the cities urban landscape. Notably, the significant presence of these armed groups in Benghazi weaves a narrative of power, politics, and conflict in post-revolutionary Libya.

Among these groups, the presence of various militias and factions further complicates the scene. Allegiances shift, and the line between friend and foe blurs. Additionally, allegations of human rights abuses and forced evictions cast a chilling shadow over their influence.

Sharp contrasts are visible with the aspirations for stability epitomized by institutions like the Al Karama Training Center. Consequently, as Libya grapples with its fractured identity, the armed groups of Benghazi, including the myriad of fighters and factions within the city, offer a glimpse into a nation’s struggle for sovereignty amidst the chaos of conflict.

At the forefront stands the enigmatic Tariq Bin Ziyad Brigade. The Benghazi Armed Forces incorporate the unit. And, notably, its actions reverberate with tales of both valor and villainy.

1. Tariq bin Ziyad Brigade

The Tariq Bin Ziyad Brigade is one of the largest and most influential armed groups operating under the Libyan Arab Armed Forces. Notably, it is a notable entity amidst the myriad of armed factions in Benghazi. Moreover, this brigade is made up of a mix of professional soldiers who fought alongside Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. And, fighters from tribes allied with the Libyan Arab Armed Forces. This mix highlights the complex blend of loyalty and ambition within Benghazi’s martial landscape.

“Unlawful killings, torture, and other ill-treatment, enforced disappearance, rape, and other sexual violence, and forced displacement — with no fear of consequences” are some of the alleged terrifying acts carried out by the Tariq Ben Zeyad Brigade. Notably, their brutality is underscored, showing the reality faced by those caught in the crosshairs of armed groups in Benghazi.

Since late 2021, the TBZ is implicated in the forced eviction of thousands of residents from Sabha and its environs. Notably, this displacement is a testament to the extensive reach and influence of these groups beyond the immediate battlegrounds.

Between 2014 and 2019, the Libyan Arab Armed Forces conducted military campaigns to seize control of the eastern Libyan cities of Derna and Benghazi. In essence, the operations underscore the pivotal role of armed groups in Benghazi, like the Tariq Bin Ziyad Brigade, in shaping the outcomes of conflict and governance in Libya. Furthermore, these campaigns not only resulted in the forced relocation of Libyan families but also highlighted the enduring power struggles and the fraught path toward sovereignty and stability in a nation marred by conflict and division.

• Commander: Saddam Haftar (son of Khalifa Haftar)
• Ministry Affiliation: Libyan Arab Armed Forces
• Headquarters: Benghazi, Libya

1.1 Activities of the Armed Groups of Benghazi

• On 12 September 2022, the Libya Crimes Watch reports the Tariq Ben Zeyad Brigade set fire to the house of activist Senussi Al-Mahdi. The arson was a response for criticizing the violations taking place in the Buhadi area south of Sirte. 
• On 19 December 2022, Amnesty International accused the Tariq bin Ziyad Brigade l of committing war crimes.
• On 22 August, the official spokesman for the Commander-in-Chief of the Libyan Arab Armed Forces, Major General Ahmed Al-Mismari, confirmed that Major General Tariq bin Ziyad Al-Muazzaz is deployed inside the city of Sabha with the 11th Infantry Battalion. Moreover, Al-Mismari added that the deployment of the 11th Infantry Battalion came based on instructions from the Southern Operations Force Command. Additionally, the spokesman explained that the battalion’s deployment included its main entrances and the roads leading to it. The aim, was to of secure the city and its surroundings, according to the plan to secure the southwestern region.
• On 20 August, the forces of Tariq bin Ziyad chased the remnants of Chadian rebels inside the southern Libyan border. Some Chadian factions opposed to the military authority in N’Djamena are taking refuge in southern Libya. The common Libyan border with Chad is described as a starting point for rebels who launch operations inside Chad.

1.2 152nd Battalion 

The 152nd Brigade, under the command of Major General Tariq Bin Ziyad Al-Mouzaz, stands as a formidable force in ensuring the security and stability of southeastern Libya. Notably, tasked with combating the scourge of smuggling, this battalion, led by Colonel Abdul Hakim Amazeb Al-Saadi, operates diligently under the directives and decisions of the Armed Forces’ Commander-in-Chief and the Ground Forces’ Operations Commander.

Moreover, The 152nd Brigade patrols the extensive Libyan-Egyptian border from Al Salam (Gate 60) to Jaghbub. Remarkably, the border totals a distance of 600 kilometers. Additionally, Colonel Al-Saadi prioritizes stopping criminal gangs in the Libyan desert to maintain security for Libya and its people.

Endowed with the authority to enforce regulations and laws within the Libyan Arab Armed Forces, the 152nd Brigade is equipped and prepared to combat smuggling activities. This ensures accountability for those involved in such illicit practices. Faced with persistent threats, this brigade remains resolute in its mission to safeguard the nation’s borders and uphold its integrity.

• Commander: Colonel / Abdul Hakim Amazeb Al-Saadi
• Ministry Affiliation: Libyan Arab Armed Forces- Tariq bin Ziyad Brigade
• Headquarters: Ajdabiya

2. 106th Brigade

The 106th Brigade, also known as Awlia Aldem in Arabic, serves as a key military faction within the Libyan National Army. Remarkably, its command is held by Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar. Initially formed as the 106th Battalion in 2016 from militias acting as Haftar’s personal security detail, it evolved into a full-fledged brigade by 2018 through amalgamation with various other units.

Furthermore, engaging in its first combat experience during the 2018 Battle of Derna, the brigade subsequently played roles in significant events such as the capture of Sabha in January 2019. Additionally, it was involved in the ill-fated Tripoli offensive in April of the same year. Notably, during this offensive, the unit encountered setbacks leading to numerous soldiers being captured by Government of National Accord forces. Additionally, the brigade garnered attention for its alleged involvement in the abduction of Libyan House of Representatives member Seham Sergiwa in Benghazi in July 2019. Recently, in May 2022, the 106th Brigade deployed to the Chad–Libya border region.

• Commander: Khaled Haftar (son of Khalifa Haftar)
• Ministry Affiliation: Libyan Arab Armed Forces
• Headquarters: Rajmah, Libya

2.1 History and Disposition

The Libyan Arab Armed Force’s largest organization in terms of personnel, gear, and area of influence is Brigade 106. Initially, it began in 2014, when Haftar’s personal safety was its responsibility. Subsequently, it formally established itself as a battalion in 2016 and grew to become a brigade comprising at least ten battalions from Adjabiya and Benghazi in 2018.

Notably, Brigade 106 is a highly skilled military unit that occasionally relies on support from eastern tribes and Salafi organizations. Furthermore, since 2016, it has consistently received graduates from the military college. And, it has been well-supplied with weapons and equipment, fitting the impression of a contemporary force Haftar wishes to convey.

2.2 Al Karama Training Center

The Al Karama Training Center, within the 106th Brigade of some armed groups in Benghazi, serves as a pivotal institution dedicated to the preparation and enhancement of military personnel. The center trains soldiers in combat readiness, fitness, and self-defense, creating highly skilled soldiers. Brigade leadership aims to enhance officers, non-commissioned officers, and soldiers, building a robust and resilient armed force.

The center’s new sports facility shows its commitment to holistic fitness. Further, the Al Karama Training Center enhances the Libyan military’s readiness. Ultimately, it ensures its preparedness to safeguard national security and uphold peace and stability within the region.

• Commander: Khairy Al-Tamimi
• Ministry Affiliation: Libyan Arab Armed Forces

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Jawhar Farhat is an ALL source analyst with a Level 6 diploma (CSMP) in Security Management and a master’s degree in Military Sciences from the Military Academy of Tunisia.

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Tarek Megerisi

A diplomatic disasterclass

As these powers have dysfunctionally risen and destabilisingly fallen, the international community’s own lethargy, unilateralism and opportunism were captured in the office of the UN’s SRSG Abdoulaye Bathily. Having been appointed in late 2022 during a period of growing international momentum behind a new electoral process, he eschewed the prepared plan, partially due to pressure from predatory powers fearing change may disrupt their plunder and partially due to a myopic interest in his own pet projects.

These projects include a security-sector dialogue, a national reconciliation process, and eventually his own political process; they were substantively light, involving little expertise, no process and no clear goals, thus only undermining all the efforts which preceded him.

The lack of a cohering UN vehicle empowered unilateralism in a familiar way. Ankara stepped up efforts to mould Libya into a useful tool to enhance its energy, financial, and geopolitical needs. Italy helped deepen Libyan fragmentation through its desperation to manage migration and profit from Libyan energy. Almost everybody looked to profit from Libya’s vulnerable oil industry, general lawlessness, and the flood of capital exiting its shores.

In an eerie example of how Libyan history rhymes, for the second time in five years, the UN envoy has departed to be replaced by a US deputy named Stephanie whose nationality is weaponised by American rivals to denigrate her but not leveraged by DC or its allies to enhance any process.

The weeks preceding and following Bathily’s resignation have been forebodingly marked by stepped-up Turkish and Russian weapons deliveries. Meanwhile, Washington seems to be mimicking Bathily, squandering its geopolitical gravity to fixate on futile, hyper-focused, yet poorly thought-through policies like joint patrols between eastern and western forces—essentially trialling new deck chair arrangements aboard a sinking Titanic.

These changes have shaken the broader international community out of its disinterest in Libyan politics, only for them to relapse back into familiar camps. Those ineffectually trying to maintain the status quo and those seduced by Haftar’s military dictatorship and hoping to see it implemented nationwide. The former seeks to re-invigorate UN-sanctioned relics of their past processes, like the Joint Military Committee, which was supposed to maintain a ceasefire, evacuate foreign forces, and unify Libya’s military or the GNU itself.

These efforts range from dialogue processes that live and die completely detached from on-the-ground realities to cynical displays of realpolitik. Here, diplomats surreptitiously attempt to create the environment needed for elite bargains, like another Haftar and Dbeibeh deal, or for Dbeibeh and key allies-turned-enemies like the central bank governor to repair ties.

This is the geopolitical equivalent of trying to mate pandas. The latter camp is those either predisposed to desire dictatorships in the Arab world or diplomats who became enamoured during their guided tours through Haftar’s Potemkin villages, showcasing reconstruction and his new order. Regardless of what triggered their love for the frumpy field marshal, they believe that his style of military dictatorship is the best route to stabilising Libya.

The wheel turns 

The end of Libya’s cycles always looks suspiciously like their start. Against the backdrop of escalating skirmishes between armed groups and military buildups by intervening powers, Libya’s politicians play out a familiar pantomime as they promote a new government from amongst themselves to replace the incumbent. 

This time, they say, the government will lead to elections, though they never have a roadmap to a vote. This time, they say, the new government will unify the country while all actors tie themselves ever tighter to outside powers, and Haftar never looks any closer to genuine cooperation. This time, they say, they will fight corruption and restore governance as they prepare mock cabinets of over thirty ministers but never any actual policies.

The previous cycles have ended in war and financial meltdown, and if the diplomats do not now try something new, things will surely end the same way this time around. The only way to drag Libya out of its spiral is to begin reversing it.

To return to the planning that preceded Bathily, a medium-term political process that goes through elections is needed to restore popular Libyan sovereignty over Libya’s economics and politics. This process is backed by and involves key legitimising states from the US to Europe, key interventionists like Turkey, and regional actors.

For diplomats, this seems daunting and like a lot of hard work. But, if Libya’s elite capture is not broken, we know where it will lead. The city of Derna, destroyed last September through accumulated political negligence and now suffering the ignominious corruption of a pretend reconstruction, hovers over the country as the ghost of Libya’s future. This future can only be averted if the international community choose to push for change rather than vouchsafe another cycle.

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Tarek Megerisi is a senior policy fellow with the Middle East and North Africa programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations. His work mainly addresses how European policymaking towards the Maghreb and Mediterranean regions can become more strategic, harmonious, and incisive – with a long-term focus on Libya.

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Tarek Megerisi

Thirteen years after its revolution, Libya is divided between east and west, each with its own respective administrations, foreign backers and tribal rivalries. Since the 2011 revolution, Libya has been in a spiral. Its domestic politics, security situation, and international relations are stuck in destructive cycles, eroding Libya’s economy, social fabric, and overall prospects with each iteration.

Thirteen years on, the country is deeply divided, and not just by the military line dividing east and west. There are parallel administrations, rivalling international interventionists, and rifts within and between cities, tribes and regions. Attempts by different Libyan groups and international actors to wrest Libya out of this spiral and stabilise it as the democratic market economy many Libyans once hoped for, or the client dictatorship many predators long for, have, at best, failed and at worst, supercharged the spiral.

Today, many of these cycles are concurrently coming to an end. The political lifecycle of Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh, appointed in 2021 to lead Libya to elections, seems to be crashing. Security setups are fracturing, and the economy is breaking down. Foreign forces are ominously accumulating, and the UN Special Representative has just resigned.

After years of neglect, the broader international community is renewing its interest in a Libyan political process, but it is seemingly gearing up to repeat all its past mistakes. It is an ominous moment for the North African lynchpin, given concerns over how many more of these cycles Libya can endure. But the end of these cycles also presents the opportunity for something new.

Dbeibeh’s rise and fall

Like all his post-revolutionary predecessors, Dbeibeh rode into office on a wave of false optimism and false promises. Appointed via a UN process designed to end in elections after just ten months, countries sponsoring that process considered his upcoming administration a vehicle for stabilisation and change, despite him allegedly presenting them a two-year governance plan—for his 10-month mandate—with a conspicuous lack of electoral planning.

The representative of a Libyan family who present themselves as construction moguls but are accused of corruption (which they, of course, vehemently deny), many hoped Dbeibeh would at least get business flowing. With a presidential running mate hailing from the same eastern tribe as Libya’s national hero Omar al-Mukhtar and a behind-the-scenes deal with eastern Libya’s military general Khalifa Haftar to secure his appointment, many believed the country would finally be reunified.

Given that he had flown to Cairo before the ink was dry during his appointment and that his family had good ties with Turkey, the UAE, and the UK, it was considered that the international competition around Libya would finally end. However, none of these hopes came to fruition.

Dbeibeh’s greatest achievement in economic reform was to systematically take over the various financial controller offices which lubricate Libya’s monstrous public sector. Despite spending no less than $20bn a year, he has little to show for it beyond superficial maintenance projects. His deal with Haftar stayed true to its foundational nature. The public benefits never materialised as the surly dictator claimed Dbeibeh broke promises by refusing Haftar control over Libya’s ministries of defence and finance—the keys to the kingdom.

Yet, behind the scenes, the families have cooperated on various financial projects, often brokered by Abu Dhabi and often focused on Libya’s oil sector, rotting the heart of Libya’s economy. These range from the emergence of shady brokers for crude sales along with shady new developments, reselling existing concessions, creating new energy enterprises, and most notoriously of all a fuel-for-crude swap-system that shrouds Libya’s most crucial, and lucrative, enterprises (the sale of crude and purchase of fuels) in opaque transactions.

As a new order ossified and Libya’s shadow economy continued brutally cannibalising the regular economy, those who were left outside the order started to rankle. A moment that traditionally marks the end of a new cycle’s hopeful era and its descent into rancour.

By 2022, the Dbeibeh family’s economic colonisation was fomenting resentment. Outsiders of the patronage network formally known as the Government of National Unity (GNU) tried to counter, and mimic this by appointing their own prime ministers. Attempting to manufacture a civilian face and parallel patronage network to administer and financially irrigate lands under Haftar’s military domination.

Meanwhile, militias throughout Libya constantly try to co-opt or counter this new status quo as Haftar and Dbeibeh continuously seek to one-up each other. Today, Dbeibeh is more politically isolated than ever before, while relations have broken down with the other oligarchs of western Libya. Most damningly of all, Libya’s central bank governor has cut off the profligate prime minister, citing his need to protect Libya’s economy as a liquidity crisis, currency crisis over forged notes, and high price inflation concurrently wrack Libyans.

Secured insecurity

These political, economic, and security dynamics have simultaneously roiled under the surface throughout the current political cycle, becoming apparent in public skirmishes that plot the descent from the post-war security order of 2020 to a more fragile consolidation under the new status quo and now, the disorder Libya is descending into.

Haftar’s post-war consolidation was marked by mass-arrest campaigns against local tribes disgruntled at Sirte’s transformation into the new frontline city of their post-war order under Russia and as Haftar’s son Saddam moved to dominate lucrative smuggling routes across Libya’s borders. Consolidation and expansionism were entirely dependent on Russian military muscle.

In western Libya, militias around Tripoli attempted to consolidate by leveraging Dbeibeh’s reliance on them to capture the state and then attempt to progressively colonise armed groups in the towns and cities bordering Tripoli and beyond. This new order strengthened after they defeated attempted putsches by a coalition of groups from Libya’s western coastal region, with crucial assistance from Turkish drones. Demonstrating that just as Russia underwrote Haftar’s consolidation, Turkey was maintaining Dbeibeh’s new order.

Typically, for these security cycles, initial alliances and consolidations failed to manufacture, let alone keep any real peace. Tribal and other forces continue to plot against the Haftars and challenge their order across the cities and borderlands from the southwest to the northeast. 

Despite projecting the image of strongman stability to the world, the Haftars’ anxiety is evident in the detention and murder of prominent civilians who challenge their narrative and a battle in their capital, Benghazi, after a prodigal former defence minister Mehdi al-Barghathi simply mis-choreographed his return to the city. This skirmish was a massive overreaction involving an Israeli-style telecommunications blackout.

Though it ended in a victory, Saddam was left embarrassed, given the overwhelming force required to beat a considerably smaller and weaker actor in a conflict instigated by his own insecurity, which unnecessarily ended with torturing and murdering al-Barghathi and his kin. Meanwhile, the deterrence of Dbeibeh’s drone power is clearly waning, as seen by recent challenges to his authorities across the regions west of Tripoli from the nearby town of Zawiya to the border with Tunisia.

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Tarek Megerisi is a senior policy fellow with the Middle East and North Africa programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations. His work mainly addresses how European policymaking towards the Maghreb and Mediterranean regions can become more strategic, harmonious, and incisive – with a long-term focus on Libya.

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Canan Atilgan / Veronika Ertl / Simon Engelkes

Outlook

What does Libya’s future look like in the face of these manifold political, economic and social challenges as well as the latest political developments?

Despite international support, the Government of National Accord under al-Sarraj has not been able either to guarantee the country security or to build up support within the population.

Instead, Haftar has consolidated his territorial control and ensured security for the people, brought oil fields under his control and consolidated his demands for legitimacy. Initially anxious to marginalise Haftar, the international community increasingly finds itself in a situation that makes his inclusion in the political process unavoidable. Haftar has won acceptance in Europe with his credo of “Stability instead of chaos” and his fight against IS.

If the plan that al-Sarraj and Haftar agreed on in July in Paris can actually be implemented in this form, the de facto failed unity government – and the two other rival governments – would be superseded by elections at the start of 2018. The demobilisation of the numerous armed factions would be carried out based on the agreed ceasefire. However, the chances of success of this agreement remain low – the potential losses for

diverse groups are too great, who, in the absence of strong national structures, have appropriated territorial, economic and political control and are prepared to defend this. In addition, an agreement between the two largest warring factions, the GNA and Haftar, does not appear to be inclusive enough to serve as a point of departure for a comprehensive peace and transition process, and would once again mean the exclusion of a broad spectrum of relevant actors.

An alternative to this is a more in-depth and inclusive renegotiation of the LPA that, alongside the political process, also involves key questions surrounding the organisation of the security sector and the allocation of financial resources; and which includes all the important actors.

In the context of the weakness of the UN mission in Libya, there ensues a key role for regional actors such as Tunisia and Algeria to lead such negotiations. The risk of a renewed escalation of the conflicts in Libya and the serious consequences of instability on these countries, also provide a clear incentive to take on such a role.

At the same time, the involvement of regional and international actors in the context of political and territorial fragmentation in Libya is associated with numerous risks. In the absence of a strong central government, their support of various groups and warring factions led to significant power shifts that have contributed to further conflicts and fractionalisation, impeding the peace process as a result.

Any strategy for Libya by external actors should take these risks into account if a further escalation is to be prevented and the stabilisation of Libya is to be made possible.

What Libya needs is a solution for the fragile to non-existent state monopoly on the legitimate use of force that, through the continuing instability, enables the spread of extremist factions and trafficking and smuggling networks, which destabilise the Mediterranean region beyond the borders of Libya itself.

A solution of this kind can only be created through an inclusive transition process that establishes a viable power balance between Libyan actors. In order to facilitate effective support for this type of process, the approaches of international actors must be broadened beyond the current focus on migration and terrorism, and enable the construction of stronger state structures.

While Russia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt have contributed significantly to shifting the balance of power in the favour of Haftar, the EU and its member states – too preoccupied with controlling migration flows – appear to be left without a long-term strategy regarding Libya’s future.

The fact is, however, that short-term policies fail to go beyond treating the symptoms. This is also true in terms of the uncontrolled migration from the Sahel to Libya. Libya must become a nation-state again. It is therefore imperative that the European states come to a consensus on the priorities, goals and partners in Libya and show greater engagement.

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Dr. Canan Atilgan is Head of the Regional Programme for Political Dialogue Southern Mediterranean of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung based in Tunis, Tunisia.

Veronika Ertl is Research Associate at the Regional Programme for Political Dialogue Southern Mediterranean of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung based in Tunis, Tunisia.

Simon Engelkes is Project Coordinator at the Regional Programme for Political Dialogue Southern Mediterranean of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung based in Tunis, Tunisia.

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Canan Atilgan / Veronika Ertl / Simon Engelkes

Egypt is similarly affected.

The loss of economic advantages for Cairo from its neighbour has further exacerbated the country’s economic plight. At 770 million euros at the end of 2014, bilateral trade therefore represented only a fraction of the 2.1 billion euros revenue prior to the Libyan revolution. In 2015, there was an estimated decline in Egyptian exports to Libya of 75 per cent.

Furthermore, the situation for Egyptian migrant workers in Libya is uncertain. Repeated kidnappings of Egyptians and the execution of Coptic Christians by IS have forced many to flee. Before 2011, 1.5 to 2 million Egyptian migrant workers in Libya sent around 28 million euros back to their homeland each year. In 2015, there were only 750,000 migrant workers remaining. A drop in these return remittances harbours the potential for social unrest and further destabilisation in Egypt.

The Role of Regional and International Actors

In addition to the wide-ranging challenges that Libya is facing through political and economic collapse, regional and international actors have also taken on an increasingly active role in the conflict in terms of mediation talks about a peace process, but also through military and political support to the individual warring factions.

Although almost all states involved have pledged themselves rhetorically to the “Libyan Political Agreement” and the unity government, in many cases it is evident that they are promoting their own interests, thereby impeding the peace process. Just as in other countries in the region, the U.S. policy of the Trump administration is still unclear with regard to Libya. Based on the statements made by the President and his

advisors, U.S. commitment is expected to be restricted to supporting the fight against terrorism and, concomitant with this, a convergence with Haftar, who presents himself as the leader of the war against Islamist and terrorist factions. The recent meeting between Haftar, the US ambassador and the US-AFRICOM commander in July 2017, appears to confirm these expectations and takes place only one day after the announcement that a new diplomatic and military US strategy for Libya is due to be finalised before long.

Meanwhile, in the absence of a clear U.S. policy, other international actors have established themselves as major players and, in doing so, have had a decisive influence on the political and military power relations. With their support for Haftar, Russia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates have facilitated his military successes and territorial expansion. For Egypt and the Emirates in particular, the ideological component plays a central role here: the two governments see the GNA as linked with Islamist-motivated groups and have grave concerns about this playing a stronger role in Libya’s future political system.

Haftar’s decision to reject and fight against Islamist-motivated factions is thus an appropriate fit with both countries’ priorities. In the case of Egypt, its geographical proximity and shared border also play a key role, since Egypt sees itself as having a central part in the shaping of Libya’s future due to its security concerns and close economic ties.

From the perspective of el-Sisi, too, it is important to prevent a government coming to power that is affiliated with Islamist factions. Russia has established itself as a further actor in Libya filling the vacuum left by the U.S.; its role has grown in particular over the course of the last year. While Russia nominally supports the internationally recognised unity government, deepened contacts with Haftar and the HoR in the east have become increasingly evident.

Haftar has visited Moscow a number of times to campaign for the weapons embargo on Libya to be lifted and to solicit support in the fight against Islamist factions in the east of the country. A UN weapons embargo, in place since 2011, prohibits the export of weapons to Libya, with the exception of the channels controlled by the GNA. However, the visit by Haftar at the start of the year to the Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov, fuelled rumours of arms treaties being transacted and plans for the establishment of a Russian marine base near Benghazi.

According to international media reports, Russian military advisors and technical personnel are located in Libya. For many observers there is no mistaking that Haftar could secure not only the backing of Egypt but also of Russia. Without this, shifting the balance of power in Libya in his favour would be out of the question.

In this conflict situation, the EU has limited room for manoeuvre in Libya. The EU is in fact the greatest advocate of the LPA, yet its activities are focused for the most part on regulating the flow of refugees in the Central Mediterranean. This prioritisation by the EU is evident not only through its allocation of significant financial resources to migrant-related projects in Libya via the EU Emergency Trust Fund, but especially through the EU NAVFOR MED Operation Sophia, which began in June 2015.

The goal of the operation is to disrupt the business model of trafficking networks and people smuggling rings in the Central Mediterranean area and, in doing so, to reduce the migration flows heading towards Europe. After the second extension until the end of 2018 and a renewal of its mandate, the operation now also includes training the Libyan coast guard, monitoring the waters to suppress illegal oil exports from the country, as well as helping to implement the UN weapons embargo in the waters off the coast of Libya.

While positive results were reported pertaining to saving human lives and capturing smugglers, one current study shows that the aspired destruction of the smuggler networks’ business model has not yet been achieved. Thus, in 2016, there was again a surge of 18 per cent recorded in irregular migration to Europe via the Central Mediterranean route compared to the previous year’s figure; and the first six months of 2017 saw another rise of 19 per cent.

The second EU mission in Libya, the EU Border Assistance Mission in Libya (EUBAM), provides training and advice with the aim of increasing the capacity of the Libyan authorities to secure the borders, and developing and implementing a strategy for integrated border management in the longer term. The mission is, however, severely restricted by the security situation and the limited room for manoeuvre of the GNA. With regard to migration, the southern member states, Italy in particular, feel abandoned by the rest of the EU countries. In reaction to repeated warnings of overload, in early July the EU Commission adopted an action plan to support Italy for greater solidarity in handling the refugee problem in the Central Mediterranean.

Furthermore, a stronger role for the EU seems to be obstructed by discrepancies between its member countries and partially unclear strategies for supporting the peace process. Due to Italy’s key role in the migration issue, but also to the historical and commercial links between the two countries, the former colonial power is the leading actor of European diplomacy in Libya. Efforts to curtail migration flows by means of agreements with Libyan stakeholders have proven to be problematic, however. For instance, an agreement made in February 2017 between Italy and the GNA was annulled by a Libyan court. In parallel to this, Italy is conducting talks with tribes from the south of the country to try to find allies for better control of the southern border regions.

The most recent meeting of al-Sarraj and Haftar under the direction of Emmanuel Macron was accordingly met with disapproval in Italy, since the country feels that its diplomatic role is at risk. So far, the EU has not been successful in positioning itself as a strong geopolitical actor in Libya. The EU has so far been unsuccessful in positioning itself as a strong geopolitical actor in Libya. In fact, some European countries are following different goals because of their disparate priorities.

This is most evident in the dealings with General Haftar. Since the start of 2016, France has supported Haftar’s LNA by passing on intelligence information in the fight against Islamist factions in Benghazi. Other countries, too, increasingly see Haftar as a strategic component of a political solution. This dynamic ultimately culminated in a meeting between al-Sarraj and Haftar in July 2017, initiated by Macron. The resulting agreement implies the admission that the GNA has failed and that Libya’s political future is only conceivable with Haftar in a key role.

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Dr. Canan Atilgan is Head of the Regional Programme for Political Dialogue Southern Mediterranean of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung based in Tunis, Tunisia.

Veronika Ertl is Research Associate at the Regional Programme for Political Dialogue Southern Mediterranean of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung based in Tunis, Tunisia.

Simon Engelkes is Project Coordinator at the Regional Programme for Political Dialogue Southern Mediterranean of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung based in Tunis, Tunisia.

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