On Tuesday 22nd January, militia groups loyal to the United Nations-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) and the Tarhuna-based Seventh Brigade agreed to a ceasefire following a week of heavy clashes in Libya’s capital city, Tripoli. These clashes erupted despite the efforts of the UN Special Envoy to Libya, Ghassan Salame, to implement a ceasefire on September 2018, following a previous round of clashes. The most recent clashes, which broke out of Wednesday (16th January), were centred around an airport 50 kilometres south of Tripoli and reportedly resulted in the deaths of 29 people, in addition to wounding more than 41.
The implementation of last week’s ceasefire has come in addition to the ceasefire agreed upon between the Tripoli-based GNA in western Libya and the Tobruk-based House of Representatives (HoR) in eastern Libya, at a summit in Paris on July 25th. While open fighting between the two rival governments subsided in recent months, tensions have remained high over a number of unresolved issues. As such, the Paris summit, which included the HoR-allied Libyan National Army (LNA) and its leader, General Khalifa Haftar, raises the prospects for a viable roadmap for the country’s future and the holding of elections that would reunite the country.
Nevertheless, there are concerns that the Paris agreement will not end the country’s conflict amidst continued domestic and international disagreements. Despite the GNA being recognised by the UN, the HoR controls a wider stretch of territory, making up much of eastern and southern Libya, with holdouts in the west. These factors, combined with the lack of infighting compared to the GNA and Haftar’s claims of staunch anti-Islamism have all attracted the support of France, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt for the HoR. In an attempt to bolster its legitimacy, the LNA is now trying to consolidate the disparate tribal factions under its umbrella and across the country into a single, coherent chain of command.
Attempts to merge the LNA, however, have been undermined, in part, by the ambiguous definition of militant groups in the text of the Paris agreement. This has allowed each militia to target groups that it perceives to be a legitimate target as part of counter-terrorism operations, with no oversight from a central legal or military authority. As a result, a number of clashes have taken place between militias loyal to the GNA and the HoR under the guise of counter-terrorism. Clashes such as these highlight the difficult road that lies ahead in the process of dismantling the militia pre-eminence across the country and their reconstitution into a national army.
These clashes have made the difficult task of formulating a constitution – already hampered by the many domestic and foreign interests – even more difficult. The cancellation of an election on the 10th December, followed by the postponement of a national reconciliation conference that was due to be held in January, has prompted Salame to warn that continued failures to hold an election could “open the path to those who want a military solution to the country’s divisions”.
A referendum is currently due to be held before the end of February to decide on a new permanent constitution for the country that would, in turn, provide the legal framework for nationwide elections later in the year. However, these elections should be viewed as one component of the peace process, not its conclusion. For the conflict to be brought to an end, major parties to the conflict that have been emboldened by foreign support, in addition to local militias, must uphold the results and begin the much longer process of consolidating the country’s military and political power brokers into a sustainable government.