Libya is suddenly back on the radar of international policymakers, but for very much the wrong reasons. The 22-year-old Manchester suicide bomber Salman Abedi, though British-born came from a refugee Libyan family who now divide their time between the UK and Libya.
The authorities in the capital Tripoli have arrested Abedi’s father who is alleged to have been a member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group. This is an armed wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, which first combated the Gaddafi dictatorship and since the 2011 revolution has sought to battle its way to power in a deeply divided country.
Also arrested in Tripoli is one of Abedi’s two brothers who is said to have confessed that he knew about the plans for the bombing attack on the pop concert and that he and his brother were members of Daesh (the self-proclaimed IS). The third brother has been detained by British police in Manchester.
Suddenly the interest of US and European security forces is once more focused on Libya and the possibility that despite the defeat of Daesh in Sirte and the smashing of terror camps in Sabratha last year, the country remains an alternative terrorist haven and training ground to Syria and Iraq.
The mantra trotted out by the international community’s United Nations Support Mission In Libya is that peace can only come from negotiations based around the Presidency Council led by Faiez Serraj and its Government of National Accord. Serraj was installed in Tripoli in March 2016 but in the last 14 months, despite the issuing of endless decrees - over 400 so far this year alone - he has been unable to assert any real authority, not even in Tripoli itself.
Thanks to this failure, Serraj and his colleagues are now widely seen as puppets backed by the outside world with no mandate to govern. Yet Libya does have two levels of popularly elected government, one of which has been effectively ignored by the UN and the other until recently largely neglected. In June 2014 Libyans elected a new parliament, the House of Representatives. This fled to Tobruk when Islamists in the West, who had been heavily defeated at the polls, refused to accept the result. The parliament, which the international community says it recognizes, appointed a government led by Abdullah Al-Thinni that the international community ignores.
Then there are the elected councils in most towns and cities that have struggled to maintain services because they receive limited funds from either the Serraj or Thinni governments.
By seeking to start over with Serraj, the UN brushed aside the will of the Libyan people and began dealing with Islamists whose gunmen had seized the capital. They, therefore, started off by dividing the country that they insisted they were trying to unite. The exercise has been a disaster yet still the UN and US and EU politicians protest they are unwavering in their support for Serraj who is beleaguered by largely Islamist militias.
The Thinni government said after the Manchester horror that it had warned the UK that it was supporting and harboring Libyan terrorists but had been ignored. The UK’s ambivalence towards extremists who seek shelter on its shores has always been questionable. Though the timing and rigor of the Thinni statement was perhaps unfortunate, it does contain some truth.
