Libyans have lost faith that the political class and its allied militias and mercenaries are willing to end their robbery of the nation’s wealth, a senior US diplomat has warned, after some of the worst violence in Tripoli in years.
More than 32 people were killed and 150 wounded in clashes in the capital last week between militia allied to the rival prime ministers Abdul Hamid Dbeibah and Fathi Bashagha.
Dbeibah’s Government of National Unity, which he has run since last year and which controls the western part of the country, has been based in Tripoli since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi’s regime in 2011, while Bashagha has run the eastern part of the country since March, backed by the military strongman Khalifa Haftar.
Bashagha-allied militia, including a brigade commanded by a wealthy gangster called Haitham al-Tajouri, entered Tripoli to try to topple Dbeibah’s government, but were soundly defeated.
Jeffrey DeLaurentis, a senior adviser to the US mission at the United Nations, gave a bleak assessment of Libya’s prospects at a meeting of the UN security council on Monday.
Libyans, he said, “are losing hope that their country can be free of corruption and foreign influence, that the armed forces can be unified, and that foreign fighters, forces and mercenaries will be withdrawn. They are deprived of basic public services while the powerful cut deals to divvy up hydrocarbon revenues in accordance with their own interests, particularly to militias controlled by various factions, robbing the Libyan people of their national wealth.”
The UN debate presented few fresh ideas, apart from calling on the security council to agree urgently on a new UN special envoy for Libya. Libya has lacked an envoy since November because of political divisions. The Senegalese diplomat Abdoulaye Bathily has been proposed, but has been blocked by some Libyans who fear he will be ineffective.
The security council also heard that the UN panel of experts had named Turkey as one of the countries blatantly violating a UN arms embargo.
Tarek Megerisi, a Libya expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations thinktank, said last week’s violence marked the first time heavy weapons and artillery had been used in central Tripoli during the current impasse. “The outcome leaves Dbeibah stronger for now, but only underlines the need for a still absent political process,” he added.
UN-sponsored national elections – a real possibility a year ago and seen as the only route to giving political leaders and institutions a fresh mandate – look further away than ever.
National elections were to be held on 24 December last year, but disagreements about their constitutional basis and those entitled to stand led to their indefinite postponement, creating a dangerous vacuum that has been filled by a renewed military battle for power. Many politicians are against holding elections, since defeat risks depriving them of access to power, patronage and resources.
Dbeibah, appointed by a UN-sponsored body in February 2021 as a stopgap prime minister, has said he would not leave until the vote is held, effectively entrenching himself in power. He claimed his government was subject to planned aggression at the weekend from inside and outside.
Bashagha, recognised in February as prime minister by the Tobruk-based parliament, the House of Representatives, blamed corruption on the part of Dbeibah for the continued power of militias in Tripoli. “Dbeibah was the one who exploited the state’s resources to support armed groups,” he said.
Haftar, the leader of the self-styled Libyan National Army based in the east, expressed his displeasure at the setback for Bashagha, a relatively recent ally. Seemingly unwilling to accept the reverse, he called for Libya to be saved, but did not specify how this could be achieved.
Bashagha denied involvement in the weekend violence, but militia groups supportive of him have now been repelled three times in efforts to enter Tripoli.
Karim Mezran, from the Atlantic Council, described Libya’s militia as “criminal organisations totally dedicated to power and money, and the grabbing of resources at any price. It is a mistake to think of these as political ideological organisations, but instead mafia organisations that have a vested interest in preventing the development of a functioning state.”
The fighting also has short-term geopolitical implications. Giorgia Meloni, the far-right frontrunner in Italy’s elections, has used the Tripoli violence to reissue her call for an EU-led mission to install a naval blockade across northern Africa and prevent migrants reaching the Italian coastline.
In the first six months of this year, 27,633 refugees and migrants arrived in Italy by sea, compared with 20,532 in the same period in 2021, according to figures from the UNHCR.
The appointment of a forceful yet balanced new special envoy is seen as critical to the next phase in Libya. Stephanie Williams who had been the secretary general’s representative, but not the security council envoy, was steeped in Libyan politics. Williams, an American, tried to shame the political classes in Tripoli and the east into staging elections, and backed a new, younger political class.
She nearly secured her goal by securing a nationwide ceasefire agreement in October 2020, the adoption of the political roadmap by the Libyan Political Dialogue Forum in November 2020, and progress between east and west on the constitutional framework for elections.
But less progress was made on meeting the planned deadline to remove foreign forces, or the level of conciliation required to hold national elections.
