Despite
this new outbreak of violence, the head of the USMIL remains
confident and firmly believes he can make out the Libyan war. And
his confidence is based mainly on the fact that this is the first time
that representatives of the main political groups agreed to sit at the
same table to discuss a draft final peace agreement. Bernardino Leon also shares the advantage of having the support of the majority of the great powers. The United States and five European countries have also vehemently called this week for a cease-fire "immediate" in Libya.
For now, this call was not heard. This fact makes many observers say that the worst will not be to persuade the Libyan political actors in Algiers to agree on a unity government, but rather to bring the heads of many armed militia on the ground (and which today are rain or shine in Libya) to get in line with the decisions taken in the interlibyan dialogue sponsored by the UN.
Algiers, do you remember, previously housed on 10 and 11 March this year first meeting between Libyan political leaders as part of this dialogue. On this occasion, the participants had rejected any form of foreign interference and pledged to find a political solution to the crisis to preserve the sovereignty of Libya, national unity and territorial integrity.
They also condemned the terrorist groups in Libya, including the self-proclaimed Islamic state organization (EI), Ansar and Al Qaeda Sharia. What is already an important step. The work of this second round of interlibyen dialogue, which always involve party leaders and political activists, took place this time in private.
“It is the realization that Libya is in danger,” said Fathi Bashaagha, a businessman who leads the pro-unity faction now ascendant in the pivotal city of Misrata, whose powerful militias have been fighting in several places around the country. “Nobody can win. We have only one way we can survive, and that is a unity government.”
Abubakr Buera, an influential lawmaker who last year led the Parliament to move to the side opposing Misrata, said he now agreed, “to save the misery of the people.”
Their efforts give at least a glimmer of hope to United Nations-sponsored reconciliation talks now taking place in Algeria. But they still face long odds, in part because of the presence of extremists averse to any compromise and in part because of the personal ambitions and mutual distrust among leaders of both factions.
Against doves warning of an imminent catastrophe, hawks continue to minimize the threats, insisting that a military triumph is the only lasting solution.
“It will take some time, but it is possible to win the war, and the winner is going to be the winner,” asserted Abdulrahman Swehli, previously the most influential political figure in Misrata and still the leader of a hawkish camp opposed to Bashaagha.
The reports about the growth of the Islamic State in Libya were “propaganda,” Swehli said, and the economic situation was “bad but not dire.” He accused the U.N. diplomat leading the unity talks of “making things worse” by trying to isolate those like himself who still saw the domestic conflict as an existential battle.
Still, the chiefs of Misrata’s civilian and military councils both said that the majority of the city was backing Bashaagha and the unity talks, because of fatigue with the battle and a sense of the growing dangers.
“We are not as united as we once were,” Swehli conceded. “Some people are getting tired.”
Each of the two coalitions now has its own rival provisional government, each riven with internal divisions.
The side that is recognized internationally, centered in the eastern cities of Tobruk and Baida, is dominated and defined by Gen. Khalifa Hifter, 72, who once fought for Gadhafi but later broke with him to join the exiled opposition. Hifter last year announced his own attempt at a military takeover, promising to purge Libya of both moderate and extremist Islamists.
Libyans fearful of the extremists have embraced him as a hero, while others have denounced him as a second Gadhafi. The western city of Zintan has allied with him mainly in shared opposition to the expanding influence of the coastal city of Misrata.
The other coalition, centered in Misrata, controls the capital, Tripoli. It includes both moderate and extremist Islamists as well as Berber tribes and much of the former exiled opposition to Gadhafi - all united mainly by a fear of Hifter.
Their battles killed more than 2,800 people last year and displaced about 400,000, according to a recent U.N. report. They have destroyed or incapacitated Libya’s two main airports, flattened districts of major cities, and disabled much of the oil and energy infrastructure. Libya, despite its oil wealth, now suffers widespread blackouts, gas lines and even shortages of cooking oil.
Both factions have continued to draw on the same central bank to meet increasingly inflated payrolls, often for no-show jobs or inflated militia budgets. Public payroll costs tripled to $24 billion in 2014 from $8 billion in the year before the uprising of 2011, said Musbah Alkari, manager of the reserves department at the Central Bank of Libya, while oil revenue plunged.
Libya could run a deficit of more than $40 billion in 2015, quickly burning through its foreign reserves of about $90 billion, according to Central Bank figures. The currency may collapse in less than two years, Alkari said, but many Libyan politicians still believe that Libya is rich and that “we can’t go broke.”
The Tobruk-Bayda government’s leaders say their current war is against extremism, but a growing number of lawmakers in its Parliament now argue that a unity government is the only way to defeat it. “I hope we can all stand up and expel the terrorists together,” said Muad Rafa Mosod, 30, a lawmaker from the south.
Elected last year and now based in Tobruk, the Parliament confers legitimacy on the Tobruk-Bayda government and it has named Hifter its top military commander.
In Tripoli, even the chief of staff overseeing his faction’s war effort said that neither side could win on the battlefield. Without a unity government, said the chief, Jedalla al-Obeida, “We will have city-states and a Somalia scenario.”
For now, this call was not heard. This fact makes many observers say that the worst will not be to persuade the Libyan political actors in Algiers to agree on a unity government, but rather to bring the heads of many armed militia on the ground (and which today are rain or shine in Libya) to get in line with the decisions taken in the interlibyan dialogue sponsored by the UN.
Algiers, do you remember, previously housed on 10 and 11 March this year first meeting between Libyan political leaders as part of this dialogue. On this occasion, the participants had rejected any form of foreign interference and pledged to find a political solution to the crisis to preserve the sovereignty of Libya, national unity and territorial integrity.
They also condemned the terrorist groups in Libya, including the self-proclaimed Islamic state organization (EI), Ansar and Al Qaeda Sharia. What is already an important step. The work of this second round of interlibyen dialogue, which always involve party leaders and political activists, took place this time in private.
But in the same time feuding factions have consistently reached for guns instead of compromises in their battle to fill the vacuum left by the fall of Moammar Gadhafi, ultimately breaking the country into two warring coalitions of militias and city-states. Leaders on both sides vowed that Libya’s only hope was their own military victory.
But now a growing number of politicians on both sides of the conflict say that the dual threats from colonies of the Islamic State and a looming collapse of the economy may finally jolt Libya out of that spiral. In a series of interviews in five Libyan cities on both sides of the fight, political leaders were for the first time trying in earnest to reverse that trend, calling for unconditional negotiations and reciprocal concessions.“It is the realization that Libya is in danger,” said Fathi Bashaagha, a businessman who leads the pro-unity faction now ascendant in the pivotal city of Misrata, whose powerful militias have been fighting in several places around the country. “Nobody can win. We have only one way we can survive, and that is a unity government.”
Abubakr Buera, an influential lawmaker who last year led the Parliament to move to the side opposing Misrata, said he now agreed, “to save the misery of the people.”
Their efforts give at least a glimmer of hope to United Nations-sponsored reconciliation talks now taking place in Algeria. But they still face long odds, in part because of the presence of extremists averse to any compromise and in part because of the personal ambitions and mutual distrust among leaders of both factions.
Against doves warning of an imminent catastrophe, hawks continue to minimize the threats, insisting that a military triumph is the only lasting solution.
“It will take some time, but it is possible to win the war, and the winner is going to be the winner,” asserted Abdulrahman Swehli, previously the most influential political figure in Misrata and still the leader of a hawkish camp opposed to Bashaagha.
The reports about the growth of the Islamic State in Libya were “propaganda,” Swehli said, and the economic situation was “bad but not dire.” He accused the U.N. diplomat leading the unity talks of “making things worse” by trying to isolate those like himself who still saw the domestic conflict as an existential battle.
Still, the chiefs of Misrata’s civilian and military councils both said that the majority of the city was backing Bashaagha and the unity talks, because of fatigue with the battle and a sense of the growing dangers.
“We are not as united as we once were,” Swehli conceded. “Some people are getting tired.”
Each of the two coalitions now has its own rival provisional government, each riven with internal divisions.
The side that is recognized internationally, centered in the eastern cities of Tobruk and Baida, is dominated and defined by Gen. Khalifa Hifter, 72, who once fought for Gadhafi but later broke with him to join the exiled opposition. Hifter last year announced his own attempt at a military takeover, promising to purge Libya of both moderate and extremist Islamists.
Libyans fearful of the extremists have embraced him as a hero, while others have denounced him as a second Gadhafi. The western city of Zintan has allied with him mainly in shared opposition to the expanding influence of the coastal city of Misrata.
The other coalition, centered in Misrata, controls the capital, Tripoli. It includes both moderate and extremist Islamists as well as Berber tribes and much of the former exiled opposition to Gadhafi - all united mainly by a fear of Hifter.
Their battles killed more than 2,800 people last year and displaced about 400,000, according to a recent U.N. report. They have destroyed or incapacitated Libya’s two main airports, flattened districts of major cities, and disabled much of the oil and energy infrastructure. Libya, despite its oil wealth, now suffers widespread blackouts, gas lines and even shortages of cooking oil.
Both factions have continued to draw on the same central bank to meet increasingly inflated payrolls, often for no-show jobs or inflated militia budgets. Public payroll costs tripled to $24 billion in 2014 from $8 billion in the year before the uprising of 2011, said Musbah Alkari, manager of the reserves department at the Central Bank of Libya, while oil revenue plunged.
Libya could run a deficit of more than $40 billion in 2015, quickly burning through its foreign reserves of about $90 billion, according to Central Bank figures. The currency may collapse in less than two years, Alkari said, but many Libyan politicians still believe that Libya is rich and that “we can’t go broke.”
The Tobruk-Bayda government’s leaders say their current war is against extremism, but a growing number of lawmakers in its Parliament now argue that a unity government is the only way to defeat it. “I hope we can all stand up and expel the terrorists together,” said Muad Rafa Mosod, 30, a lawmaker from the south.
Elected last year and now based in Tobruk, the Parliament confers legitimacy on the Tobruk-Bayda government and it has named Hifter its top military commander.
In Tripoli, even the chief of staff overseeing his faction’s war effort said that neither side could win on the battlefield. Without a unity government, said the chief, Jedalla al-Obeida, “We will have city-states and a Somalia scenario.”
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