Libya’s politics of division

Why the country has come apart after Gaddafi

Libya’s politics of division

last update on 22 Jun 2023

When asked in a 2016 interview about his worst mistake during his presidency, Barack Obama replied that it was the lack of planning for the aftermath of the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi.

In Obama’s view, the failure to plan for Libya when the man who ruled the oil-rich country for 42 years was gone led to the descent into chaos.

Since 2011, division and anarchy have engulfed the North African country. Today, it’s split in half: one government in the east and another in the west with two rival armies that have stitched together dozens of the armed groups that helped topple Gaddafi, as they supported a popular revolution against his rule and with the crucial help of jet fighters from Western powers including France, the UK, Italy and the US.

The militias have been largely uncontrollable and operate above the law. They have refused to disarm. But starting in 2018, most of these factions have agreed to be bankrolled by the two institutions in the east and west and re-brand with security forces and brigades that resemble regular armies.

Foreign fighters and mercenaries are also operating alongside military and paramilitary factions in the east and northeast mainly to protect the oil, the country’s main industry and economic lifeblood.

The prized asset is largely controlled by the east’s forces led by the self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA) of General Khalifa Haftar. Oil fields, like the strategic Sharara, have closed and opened several times in the past 12 years, which at some point slashed Libya’s production from today’s average of 1.2 million barrels per day to just 400,000.

The militias have been largely uncontrollable and operate above the law. They have refused to disarm. But starting in 2018, most of these factions have agreed to be bankrolled by the two institutions in the east and west and re-brand with security forces and brigades that resemble regular armies.

The oil revenues go to the National Oil Company (NOC), which's the only oil producer recognised internationally and all its export revenues flow through the Central Bank of Libya (CBL).

The politics of division is also reflected in the CBL. The internationally-backed governor Siddiq Kabir has been battling against strong headwinds from the parliament in the east since 2014 when it sacked him.

Several UN attempts to put Libya together

The struggle for power has sparked several deadly clashes between both entities, the latest fighting was in August 2022, when factions under the military institution in the east attempted for the second time to retake the capital Tripoli. The clashes killed 32 people and severely damaged residential and government buildings.

The two sides have managed to get hold of weapons despite a UN arms embargo, which has been in place since 2011.

The first attempt was in 2019 when Haftar vowed to capture Tripoli — within days — from the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) created in 2015 and led today by Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh.

Dbeibeh refuses to step down and insists that only democratic elections should choose his successor. In the east, another government describes the Tripoli government as expired because the parliamentary election scheduled for December 2021 was supposed to lead to a government to unify the country and be followed by a presidential election.

And in a surprise move last month, which further deepened the political rabbit hole, the east-based parliament sacked the prime minister, Fathi Bashagha, without citing reasons. But in Libya's politics, nothing happens in a vacuum. In February 2022, the parliament endorsed Bashagha as an interim prime minister, six months before the deadly clashes over Tripoli.

The two sides are mainly wrestling over complicated election laws and the eligibility of some candidates to be the first-ever elected president in Libya's history. These candidates included very controversial figures such as Saif al-Islam Gaddafi.

The candidacy of Muammar Gaddafi's son has triggered speculations that the country could be ruled by another Gaddafi and unleashes a new phase of political uncertainty for a country that's less than 500km from Italy's shores and has become a main gateway for illegal immigrants to Europe.

Saif al-Islam Gaddafi is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes committed in 2011. A Tripoli court sentenced him to death for those same crimes in 2015. He denies the charges.

More serious challenges are in store. The country is backed by several foreign and regional powers including France, Russia, Turkey and Egypt, mainly seeking to secure oil and reconstruction deals.

The two sides are mainly wrestling over complicated election laws and the eligibility of some candidates to be the first-ever elected president in Libya's history.

But Egypt has a vested national security interest in Libya, with which it shares a 1000km border. Last year, Cairo sought to serve as a mediator in a bid to resolve the dispute between its allies in the east and the government in the west, as it realised that a political solution was the only way to heal the rift.

Over the past six months, the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) has been sponsoring political and security meetings hosted by Tunisia and Morocco in a fresh bid to draft electoral laws and foster national reconciliation. It's the UN's fifth attempt to put Libya together. So far peace is a distant prospect.

And amidst the deep divisions, there have been renewed calls for adopting federalism or even dividing the country into three autonomous regions, as during the colonial era, when the British and French occupied Libya in 1943 and split it into three provinces: Tripolitania in the north-west, Cyrenaica in the east, and Fezzan-Ghadames in the south-west.

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