Libya: On the Resignation of Musa al-Koni from the Presidency Council

In December 2015, the United Nations and a host of foreign countries helped to create Libya’s Government of National Accord (GNA), meant to serve as a unity government for the country. The most important organ of the GNA is the Presidency Council, a nine-member body headed by Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj, who hails from a prominent Tripoli family. The Council is meant to reflect Libya’s diversity, and so its members came from different parts of the country – for example, one prominent member is Ahmed Maiteeg of Misrata, a key western coastal city, while another member is Ali Faraj al-Qatrani, who hails from the east.

The Council and the GNA have struggled to impose their authority on Libya, to say the least. The GNA’s greatest success has been the campaign to retake the coastal city of Sirte from the Islamic State, but the near-total conquest of Sirte has not left the GNA in a stronger bargaining position vis-a-vis its most formidable rival, Khalifa Haftar of the Libyan National Army (based in the east).

Now the Council has another problem. On January 2, one of its three deputy prime ministers, Musa al-Koni, resigned (French), publicly saying (Arabic) that the Council has failed to “unite the institutions of the state.” Al-Koni is a Tuareg from Libya’s sparsely populated south, and so one might argue that his departure does not indicate the loss of a major constituency for the Council, but I think that would be wrong. The Council needs to appear, and to be, representative of all of Libya in order to claim the mantle of “unity government.”

Is al-Koni’s departure temporary or permanent? Several other members of the Council – including al-Qatrani and Fathi al-Mijibri – have suspended their membership only to rejoin the Council after a period of weeks or months. A temporary walk-out can be a negotiating tactic.

Al-Koni’s Twitter account (in Arabic, here) gives the impression of someone who is fatigued with politics. A pinned Tweet from early December reads, “How wretched these political conflicts seem, which weigh upon the back of the country, before the pain of a fighter who lost his limbs in battles for the sake of Libya’s unity.” The attached picture shows al-Koni visiting an amputee in the hospital. Unless al-Koni is being deeply cynical, he gives off the impression of someone who is genuinely throwing up his hands.