Libya: Press Roundup, Key Documents on the Sarraj-Haftar Meeting in Paris

On July 25, two of the most important figures in Libyan politics – Fayez al-Sarraj, head of the United Nations-backed Government of National Accord, and Khalifa Haftar, head of the Libyan National Army – met in Paris and agreed on a ceasefire.

Here are a few a relevant statements:

• The joint declaration by Sarraj and Haftar.
• The speech by President Macron (French).
• United Nations Security Council: “The members of the Security Council welcome the meeting of Fayez Al Sarraj, President of the Presidency Council of Libya, and General Khalifa Haftar, Commander of the LNA, hosted in Paris by the President of the French Republic on the 25^th of July, and the Joint Declaration issued after the meeting. Council members urge all Libyans to support a negotiated political solution, national reconciliation, and an immediate ceasefire, as called for in the Joint Declaration.”
• U.S. State Department: “We welcome the Joint Declaration from the July 25, meeting between Libyan Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj and General Khalifa Haftar, hosted outside of Paris by French President Emmanuel Macron. We call on all Libyans to support political dialogue and adhere to a cease-fire, as stated in the Joint Declaration.”

Here’s a roundup of some press coverage. Much of the coverage has been quite critical, including when it comes to assessing the role of French President Emmanuel Macron:

• L’Express (French): “If the initiative seems praiseworthy, nevertheless the hardest [part] remains to be done.”
• Bloomberg: “A French-led effort to reunify fractured Libya failed to consult powerful local forces and risks achieving little beyond boosting the legitimacy of a renegade general who has recently racked up significant battlefield gains.”
• The Economist: “The deal is but a small step. More agreements are needed before elections can be held and the fighting, which now involves myriad groups, is likely to continue. As it is, the LNA, which backs a separate government in the east, rarely battles the forces aligned with Mr Serraj. But General Haftar is free to keep pummelling terrorists, which is what he labels most of his opponents. The country’s powerful militias were left out of the talks in Paris, which were chaired by the newly appointed UN envoy for Libya, Ghassan Salamé. So like previous deals brokered by the UN, this one lacks widespread support, at least for now.”
• VOA: “The meeting…was not coordinated with the Italian government. [Italian Prime Minister Paolo] Gentiloni’s ministers took the unusual step of openly criticizing the French president this week, voicing their frustration with Macron’s efforts, which they argue distract from a coordinated U.N. and European Union effort to engineer a political deal in Libya between three rival governments and dozens of militias.

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.

Two Recent Items of Interest on Libya

Two very interesting reports on Libya came out in December.

The first, by the International Crisis Group, examines the unsuccessful attempt in early December to take back oilfields in the Gulf of Sirte from Khalifa Haftar and the Libyan National Army, who had themselves seized the oilfields in question back in September. Haftar is an anti-Islamist warlord, based in eastern Libya, who is aligned with the internationally recognized legislature of Libya, although not with the UN-backed national unity government (the Government of National Accord or GNA). Much of Crisis Group’s piece deals with the economic stakes of the struggle for the oilfields, but the report also addresses the politics of the situation, especially the power struggle between Haftar and the Presidency Council of the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord.

The rump government in Tripoli, the Presidency Council headed by Prime Minister Faez Serraj and backed by the UN and several Western powers, has distanced itself from this operation and stated it played no role in mobilising this force. Crisis Group warned in September and November that such an attack would be perilous.

 

Yet many Libyans, including members of units who launched the assault, claim the operation was carried out under the leadership of al-Mahdi al-Barghathi, the defence minister in Serraj’s government. Tripoli-based officials have been sounding the alarm for months about preparations for such an assault, alleging that Barghathi was providing legal cover and funds for the operation, and also coordinating the recruitment of men and provision of weapons.

These developments take me back to this post from July, where I probably overstated al-Barghathi’s importance but where I tried to say that if anyone could successfully undermine Haftar, it was probably him. If al-Barghathi was behind the early December attacks, then his current anti-Haftar moves are failing. Some of al-Barghathi’s rumored allies in eastern Libya, the Benghazi Defense Brigades, now appear to be on the defensive in the east, as Haftar’s forces attack them in the Jufra region. The Brigades were, as you can read in the Crisis Group piece, one of the key militias involved in the effort to retake the oilfields from Haftar. With the assault rebuffed and the anti-Haftar forces on the defensive, the momentum seems to be decisively with Haftar and his Libyan National Army.

That brings me to the second report that caught my eye in December, which highlights a different but ultimately related aspect of Libyan politics: Haftar’s relationship with Russia. Writing for the Carnegie Endowment, Tarek Megerisi and Mattia Toaldo argue that “Russia’s support for Khalifa Haftar in the name of countering terrorism could instead escalate Libya’s conflict and undermine the UN-sponsored political process.” The report details how Russian support to Haftar grew during the second half of 2016, extending a pattern of Russian support for authoritarian, anti-Islamist figures in the Middle East. For further reading on Haftar and Russia, see two recent Bloomberg articles here and here. Haftar has the strength he does in large part because of his domestic relationships, but foreign backing has also been key, especially from Egypt, the Emirates, and now Russia.