Fuelled by corruption and nepotism, Libya finds itself trapped in political anarchy

Libyans, like many other populations in the modern Arab world, feel abandoned in their struggle. After prolonged anarchy, their dysfunctional day-to-day existence has an air of resigned normality.

Across the country, the rubble and damage inflicted by civil war rot away. At the same time, glitzy malls, new coffee shops, and select, disconnected, stretches of road are built – advertised to the outside world as signs of Libya's rebirth, but within the country recognised as monuments to money laundering and the new elite class.

Most Libyans receive irregular salaries which are difficult to liquidate. Meanwhile everyone – from professionals to public sector employees – has been hit by inflation, which is re-introducing many Libyans to the kind of poverty not seen since the 1950s and 60s.

The people left out by this trend are the ones who either caused it or perpetuated it – those who have adapted to an economy turned upside down. Some have worked out ways to exploit Libya's deepening streams of corruption, via the banking system, import monopolies, or government procurement. They are amassing fortunes.

Alongside these activities are ever-present and parasitic militias who add criminality to corruption, generating further revenue from extortion, smuggling, fraud and embezzlement.

As society is undermined, most Libyans are now united by anxiety and stress. They look at the criminal nouveau riche with both contempt and envy but are afraid to express their anger. 

Politics for the few

Libya's politics are trapping the state and society in this corrosive toxicity. While the end of the war was the natural moment for something new, those with power and the ability to drive change were not ready to move on.

Libya is a land of abundant resource wealth in a strategic position in the world, but with no one in complete control. It remains, in effect, the political equivalent of an unfinished construction site. The UN put up the scaffolding in 2015 with a political agreement, but it was never implemented. 

Read more: Libya's oil wealth: A blessing and a curse

The political agreement was based on a flawed view of Libya, seeing it as a nation of two political poles, with two leaderships, which needed to be brought together for a national agreement to be reached.

It favours building a consensus among politicians, who lack proper, popular constituencies. The project does not prioritise Libyan desires for unity, representative politics, security, decentralisation and development.

And so, until a deal is reached between the politicians involved, they are left in control of the country and its wealth with no real mandate or restrictions. It shouldn't be a surprise then that the only agreement this system produced was an unspoken pact to keep the lawless system going at all costs.

Read more: Perpetual deadlock is limiting Libya's potential

A perfect opportunity to restart Libya's transition was repurposed by participants to protect their own profitable positions, despite the same approach having caused a catastrophic war that Libya had only just escaped.     

Foreign exploitation

There are other countries vying to exploit lawless Libya, as well as its domestic factions. As Khalifa Haftar's political confederacy disintegrated along with his fortunes, Russia saw an opportunity and stepped in.

Sensing the impending collapse, Russia's Wagner Group – the nominally private military contractor – abandoned the frontline to take up positions around Libya's oil fields and key terminals.

Read more: Will Wagner mutiny elicit more caution over mercenary use in the Middle East?

Russian jets patrolled a new frontline in the sands west of Sirte, in central Libya, and brokered a new balance of power with Turkey – the power behind Libya's government in Tripoli.

Egypt put a more respectable diplomatic veneer on a new version of the old order by presenting a ceasefire proposal to the Libyan parties. It was embraced by the broader international community because of what it represented – a return to familiarity – despite some ridiculous clauses, including one calling for Libya's government to surrender its weapons to Haftar.

When Libyans nationwide protested this rehabilitation of the old order, the UN assuaged them, promising that they would manage the change Libyans wanted through elections.

These promised elections never happened. The UN was outplayed, undermined and ultimately co-opted by Libya's seasoned politicians and their international backers until it was reshaped from a guarantor of change to another guarantor of the system.

Critics of the UN process and mediation believe that the world body has surrendered its electoral process to Egypt in early 2022. In doing so, Egypt has become more influential in Libya's political scene.

Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh – best known for being the relative of Gaddafi's most successfully corrupt underling, Ali Dbeibeh – gamed the post-war UN process to become interim prime minister and then never left.

This process was intended to leverage the post-war opportunity and popular discontent to develop a credible roadmap toward elections that was sourced from different Libyan constituencies instead of relying on Libya's dependably obstructionist politicians. 

However, the UN got stuck in a devil's pact of trade-offs and, for expediency, ended up allowing the established politicians to dominate the process.

In the end, civilian participants were even intimidated and any sense of substance or accountability over the roadmap was discarded in favour of a quick deal. The vote for a new government was allowed to go ahead despite serious accusations of widespread corruption.

In desperation to keep moving forward, the UN transformed a plan to extract Libya from its 2015 political system into a process that replicated it.

Corruption and maintaining Libya's division

Dbeibeh's enemies used the allegations of corruption to ensure Libya remained politically divided, while Dbeibeh himself used the lack of accountability or control mechanisms in the UN roadmap to becoming the de-facto king of western Libya.

Read more: Libya's politics of division

In a sign of things to come, he immediately briefed foreign diplomats on his two-year plan for Libya's rejuvenation, despite the target for elections being set for 10 month's time.

Since taking power in February 2021, Dbeibeh has been accused of mass corruption. He reshaped Libya's civil service, state-owned companies and import channels to gain control of Libya's shadow economy.

The purpose of this — other than the obvious and crude financial gain — is to normalise himself as Libya's indefinite prime minister in the eyes of the international community, ensuring he stays in power with no real challenge as decrepit moves toward an electoral process finally peters out.

But Dbeibeh is further accused of empowering particular militias to crack down on civil society, and any political or economic activity outside his control. Most recently, he even used Turkish drones to bomb political rivals.

But as he entrenches deeper into Tripoli, the fractures he is causing are widening. Militias and political actors who Dbeibeh marginalised are plotting to violently make space for themselves or upend his system altogether.

The wild, wild east

In eastern Libya, another dictatorship is in the making, who is just as likely to break everything as he is to rule. 

Countries like Russia, Egypt and even European powers like France and Greece have a need to maintain opposition to a Turkish-dominated Tripoli as a vehicle for securing their own interests. But they all took different routes.

Libya's electoral process is under the control of different political proxies who lead Libya's two parliaments, believing they could then dominate whatever the process produces. But in two years featuring three electoral processes and a rival government, they've only succeeded in causing further damage to Libyan politics and institutions.

Russia took a more sanguine role, eschewing politics and animating the corpse of Haftar's army to give Wagner a Libyan face as they directly secured interests such as smuggling routes, oil installations, ports and air bases.

But unlike Tripoli, eastern Libya has no clear leader.

As the octogenarian Haftar ages badly, his children all vie for succession with other political and military rivals. 

Given that none of Haftar's potential successors have local bases of support, they all play off international intrigue to strengthen themselves. Saddam Haftar has seemingly picked the best, working with some allies like the Russians to great mutual benefit.

Libya has become integral to Russia's foreign policy network, which props up Bashar al-Assad in Syria and is deepening its presence across Africa.

As Saddam aids Wagner's financial gains, he has gained influence over other major revenue streams and militias.

While Saddam has made friends internationally, his personality has won him enemies across Libya. Moreover, the tribes which now dominate eastern Libya have made it clear that when Haftar dies they will no longer pay even nominal fealty to his defunct military if his sons take over.

So Saddam is in a race against the clock to bully eastern Libya into submission whilst in the precarious position of being entirely reliant on foreign support amidst a sea of domestic enemies.

Libya's groundhog day

To many outside the country, this new version of the old Libya looks like it has a sustainable political status quo.

Dbeibeh provides outsiders with economic opportunity in the West, whilst Haftar fights to subdue the East, and the UN works with members of parliament and well-meaning but powerless generals to refine ceasefire agreements and electoral laws. The old status quo was considered much the same way.

Unfortunately for the Libyan people, they are rarely considered, in this country of missed opportunity, recurring political dynamics, and a morbidly decaying environment.

Beneath what is, depressingly, seen as a hopeful picture for Libya by those looking in from the outside are the swirling political currents that will create tomorrow's crises. The past few years have only heightened Libya's mineral wealth and strategic value, and still, no one is in complete control of the country.

In the coming months, Libya will only be featured on international news bulletins when military agreements or electoral pacts are reached. They will, almost certainly, lead nowhere.

The real stories – the ones that truly reveal what is going on in the country – are less likely to make headlines: proxy wars between Libyan interests fought in Sudan, migrants dying in the Mediterranean, and new energy plans for North Africa. 

There will be regular updates from the UN's special representative, where he warns the Security Council about all of these dynamics before doing nothing about them.

As with Libya's old status quo, it will either snap when one of Libya's new dictators becomes bold enough to wage war with the other, or when the poor Libyan people can bear no more and once again try to take their country's destiny into their own hands.

All we know for sure is that the next war will be worse than the last one. Everyone will act surprised when the same political conditions that stoked devastation last time cause it all over again.