Opinion

Macron brokers Libyan ceasefire

July 27, 2017
Emmanuel Macron
Emmanuel Macron

France’s new president Emmanuel Macron has pulled of a diplomatic coup by having Libya’s two main rivals agree to an immediate ceasefire and the holding of presidential and parliamentary elections next spring.

Leader of the UN-backed Presidency Council (PC) Faiez Serraj met east Libya’s strongman Khalifa Hafter in Paris. They hammered out a 10-point agreement hailed as a roadmap for the return of Libyan peace and stability. The country has been torn apart by conflict since the 2014 Muslim Brotherhood-sponsored takeover of the capital Tripoli.

The international community has made a mess of the reconstruction of Libya after the US-sponsored destruction of the Gaddafi regime largely by French and UK warplanes in support of a ragtag army of revolutionaries. It refused to accept the government appointed by the parliament that had been elected in 2014, but it did accept the legitimacy of the parliament itself. However, legislators had been driven out of Tripoli when it was seized by the Muslim Brotherhood and its militias, the largest component of which was from the port city of Misrata.

The British and Americans had sought to deal with the Brotherhood under the illusion that it represented a unified and moderate force that could lay the foundations for a new Libya. London and Washington sat back and said nothing while MB gunmen forced the former parliament, the General National Congress (GNC) to pass a law that banned from public office for 10 years, anyone who had served the Gaddafi regime in any senior capacity. They also said nothing when in the same way gunmen outside a court building forced judges to rule the 2014 election result void because of some legislative technicality.

In December 2015, the UN finally persuaded a not-entirely representative group of Libyans to sign up to the Libyan Political Agreement (LPA) as the basis for reconciliation. Businessman Faiez Serraj was chosen to lead a seven-man Presidency Council. Though accorded all the international honors due a leader of state, Serraj in fact does not even control the capital and for his survival is beholden to militias including those backing the Muslim Brotherhood. Instead he presides over chaos, which includes daily nine-hour power cuts, a dearth of cash in the banking system and persistent insecurity in the capital with kidnappings for ransom happening almost every day.

Hafter by contrast has just crushed almost all the Daesh (the self-proclaimed IS) terrorists in Benghazi and has behind him a seemingly well-drilled and equipped army, to the head of which he was appointed by the parliament, the House of Representatives.

Thus while Hafter may be able to deliver on the Paris agreement, there must be doubts about Serraj’s power to honor the commitment. And both men know that there are so many rival interests and so many lesser leaders, who are exploiting the chaos for considerable personal gain, that finding agreement between the east and west of the country will be a tall order.

The current mentality is displayed by personal attacks on National Oil Corporation boss Mustafa Sanalla, a technocrat who in a year has managed to treble Libyan oil output to a million barrels a day. He is seen as too successful. Another perhaps telling marker of the degree of distrust that corrodes the country is that neither Serraj nor Hafter signed the Paris agreement.


July 27, 2017
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