Libya: the insoluble chaos
Libyan troops march through Tripoli on the occasion of the country's independence day, December 24, 2020. Mahmud TURKIA AFP / File
Text by: Houda Ibrahim Follow
11 min
Ten years after the start of the uprising against Muammar Gaddafi on February 17, 2011, Libya is bloodless, undermined by armed conflicts, plagued by the stranglehold of foreign powers and divisions of the United Nations Security Council.
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On February 17, 2011, in Benghazi, following two days of protests calling for the release of lawyer and human rights activist Fathi Terbel, a crowd of 600 gathered in front of the city's main police station. .
The demonstrators are violently repressed.
This does not stop the protest which widens and continues to become daily.
The police leave the city and the Gaddafi regime, from Tripoli, promises to punish Benghazi.
Very quickly, the rebellion gained several towns in eastern Libya.
Reinforcements were sent from Tripoli to the east but were stopped at Ras Lanouf, in the oil crescent, some 600 kilometers from Benghazi.
The fighting opposed the army and the rebels for several weeks.
In Misrata, too, there is fighting between the forces of the regime and the revolutionaries who have taken up arms.
The international community adopted, on March 17, 2011, at the United Nations Security Council, resolution 1973 which allows military intervention in Libya to impose a no-fly zone over this country and "
protect the Libyan civilian population.
".
This coalition, led by France, the United Kingdom and the United States, is carrying out hundreds of strikes targeting regime positions.
On August 20, 2011, the armed revolutionaries made their entry into Tripoli, which Muammar Gaddafi and the influential members of his regime had fled.
The "Guide" moved to Sirte, where the fighting continued.
On October 20, 2011, American and French planes hit the convoy of Mouammar Gadhafi, which was trying to leave Sirte.
The head of the regime falls.
In addition to Muammar Kadhafi and one of his sons, some 80 regime officials were immediately liquidated by the revolutionaries, aided by NATO aviation.
The fall of Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi's regime in Libya, after 42 years of reign, sinks the country into a decade of violence and murderous suffering.
A fierce struggle for power and legitimacy is then launched.
Actors, who have been crushed under the weight of dictatorial power, then try to conquer power.
Several wars take place, undermining dreams of democracy.
The country plunges into a complex armed conflict, fueled by multiple and contradictory foreign interference.
Instead of the desired democracy, the country is sinking into anarchy.
Libyan Islamists want power
As in all countries marked by the "Arab Spring", the uprisings are accompanied by a push from the Islamic movement,
encouraged by the United States
(see
the emails of Clinton
, the former American Secretary of State, broadcast on the website of the US State Department in 2020 and which clearly show the links of the Clintons with the Islamists in Libya as well as in Egypt and Tunisia) and financially assisted by Qatar.
The parties of political Islam in Libya, all persuasions, from the most moderate to the most extremist, are joining forces to take power.
► To read also: Libya: thousands of emails from American diplomacy about to be declassified
The Islamists, who were for the most part imprisoned during Gaddafi's time, are released following the NATO strikes and participate largely in the armed conflict as “February 17 revolutionaries”.
These revolutionaries consider that the power in Libya must return to them de facto, and feel legitimate after having "
sacrificed
" themselves on the battlefield.
Thus they twice refused the results of the ballot boxes in the municipal elections of 2012 and 2014, using their weapons.
In 2012, the Islamists are playing the election game.
They form several political parties and participate in the polls.
The victory of the liberals in this first democratic election organized in Libya for half a century, surprises them.
On that date, the hope of the Libyans for real and profound political change is immense.
The CGN, the National General Congress, takes power and replaces the CNT, the National Transitional Council formed in 2011 to manage the country and ensure the transition.
Very quickly, the CNT was put under the yoke of the Islamists.
The General National Congress gives, not without difficulty, its confidence in the government of Ali Zaidan.
Two years later, in 2014, the latter was forced to resign and left the country under threat.
The legislative elections of 2014
On June 25, 2014, new legislative elections took place and once again it was the liberals and independents who won the ballot.
Moreover, it takes several weeks to announce the results.
In July, militias from Misrata, allied with other armed groups from the Muslim Brotherhood, from other towns in western Libya, invaded the capital to drive out non-Islamist militias from Zintane.
The operation is called Fajr Libya ("the dawn of Libya").
Its prime target is the international airport located on a strategic hill.
These forces then extend their power to the capital, Tripoli, then to the oil crescent.
The Libyan Parliament resulting from the 2014 elections, still in place today, fled to the east of the country.
He appoints a government that settles in Al-Bayda, in the east, for security reasons and in order to be able to hold its meetings without threats from the militias.
Parliament itself is also established in the east, in Tobruk.
In the west, another government was then set up by the Islamists and militias in Tripoli.
It survives until the arrival of the government of Fayez el-Sarraj, in March 2016,
following the Skhirat agreement signed at the end of 2015.
The aim of this political agreement was to unify the Libyan government, but it has an effect. the contrary: two parallel governments still coexist today.
Khalifa Haftar and the desire for military power
Marshal Khalifa Haftar has always dreamed of power.
Does he want to imitate Muammar al-Gaddafi or the Egyptian rais?
In any case, he prefers the authoritarian regime to democracy.
"
The Libyans are not yet ready for democracy
", he keeps repeating.
In the 1980s, Khalifa Haftar was a general in the Libyan army under the old regime.
In 1990, he went into exile in the United States, after having tried, on several occasions, to overthrow Colonel Gaddafi with the support of the CIA.
He returned to Tripoli following the uprising in 2011 and took part in the fighting against Gaddafi's forces in eastern Libya, where he acquired his legitimacy.
He founded the Libyan National Army (ANL), largely made up of soldiers from the old regime.
Later, the ANL integrates into its ranks Islamist Salafist (anti-Muslim Brotherhood) brigades.
In practice, its multiple abuses do not differentiate it from militias in the west.
In 2014, Khalifa Haftar launched his operation al Karama - "
Dignity
" - to "
get rid of extremist Islamist groups in Benghazi
", according to the official speech.
In reality, this soldier wants to appear as the providential man, as a bulwark against the Islamists.
It receives support for this from Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Russia, among others.
It took him three years to retake the city and push back several extremist movements, such as Ansar al-Sharia and the group of revolutionaries of Benghazi.
In 2016, he also took over the oil crescent and then began fighting against extremists in Derna.
In April 2019, after having no doubt obtained tacit consent from the Americans, he attempted to conquer Tripoli, which was officially in the hands of Fayez el-Sarraj, but which was in reality under the control of Islamist militias.
Khalifa Haftar arrives at the gates of Tripoli, but fails to seize the Libyan capital and repeatedly refuses to make peace with Fayez el-Sarraj, in Cairo, Abu Dhabi, Paris, Moscow and finally in Berlin in January 2020. When Paris announces in 2019 an agreement for elections at the end of the year, its faithful campaign to appoint him as head of the country.
One way to bypass the ballot box.
More generally, the deadline for these elections is very short and almost impossible to organize, according to the admission of the UN.
In May-June 2020, with the help of Turkish drones, the militias holding Tripoli victoriously counterattack and push back the pro-Haftar forces as far as Sirte.
The mistakes of the international community in Libya
In his book "
A Promised Land
", Barak Obama, the former US president, recognizes that his intervention in Libya remains the greatest regret of his two terms.
This was "
a big mistake,
" he writes.
And for good reason, the international community quickly disengaged from the Libyan issue and "
did not follow up
", regret
the African heads of state who plead for an inclusive solution
.
Worse still, the 15 members of the United Nations Security Council are still divided on the Libyan question.
Europeans too.
As for the Trump administration, it is versatile.
First pro-Haftar, then with absent subscribers, she then encouraged Turkey to settle in Libya in order to counter the Russians there.
Wagner's Russian mercenaries having engaged alongside Khalifa Haftar.
Ankara is indeed strengthening its military and economic presence in Tripoli.
It must be said that Libya represents a strategic position in Africa.
It has the largest oil reserve on the continent and a huge gas reserve east of the Mediterranean.
Since the Second World War, its riches have been coveted by the great powers and, more recently, by the regional powers.
The impotence of the United Nations
For ten years, the deep divisions within the United Nations Security Council have complicated any search for a political solution.
With relevance, the Lebanese Ghassan Salamé, the former special representative of the UN general secretariat,
denounced countries which "
say one thing and do its opposite
"
.
But the UN is not always consistent with itself.
The Skhirat accords, obtained under the auspices of the UN in December 2015, had excluded the camp of Khalifa Haftar, as well as the supporters of the old regime.
This time, of the 74 members of the Libyan dialogue forum, which appointed the new executive on February 5, 2021, 42 are Islamists.
The members of the forum were all chosen by the UN.
And the Alliance of National Forces, a liberal and secular party which enjoys wide popularity, was not entitled to any representative!
By December 24, the new executive resulting from the vote of this forum has just ten months to accomplish a very complex mission, which must lead to elections in a country which is divided between two powers and which suffers from the military presence. of two foreign forces: the Turks and the Russians.
Even if the general elections are held well on December 24, will the international community this time around be able to guarantee the outcome of the polls in Libya?
Who can promise the exhausted and breathless Libyans, ten years after the fall of the Gaddafi regime, that the armed forces on both sides will comply with the election results?
Despite the glimmer of hope aroused by the birth of this new interim executive, the Libyan chaos seems insoluble.
► To read also: Libya: "unify the country", the number one challenge of the new Prime Minister
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Libya
Diplomacy
Khalifa Haftar
Defense
Fayez el-Sarraj
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