Struggle over legitimacy in Libya begins third period of dueling governments
By Jonathan M. Winer
last updated: Feb 16,2022
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With the election on February 10,
2022, by the Libyan House of Representatives (HoR) of Misratan Fathi
Bashagha as its choice to
become the country’s new prime minister, Libya has entered a new, third round
of two governments contesting each other’s legitimacy.
A review of Bashagha’s background
provides a window into how Libya has arrived there.
Bashagha is a well-known figure
within Libya and to international actors involved in the country. Having served
as a pilot in the Libyan Air Force under Muammar Gaddafi, Bashagha was elected
from Misrata to the new Libyan HoR in June 2014, the last time national
elections were held. Bashagha boycotted the HoR when its new speaker, Aguila
Saleh Issa, moved it from Tripoli to Tobruk in the east, Saleh’s base, with the
result that Libya had its first round of two competing governments —
the western one in Tripoli representing the outgoing General National Congress
(GNC) and the eastern one supported by Saleh and a rump HoR in the city of
Baida.
During 2014 and 2015, Bashagha
actively participated in the UN-sponsored peace process that led to the Libyan
Political Agreement (LPA) establishing the Tripoli-based GNA, agreed in Skhirat
on December 17, 2015, which was supposed to end the period of dueling (and
dual) governments. He became its interior minister, and effectively organized,
with the support of Turkey, the coalition
of forces that resisted and defeated Libyan
warlord Khalifa Haftar’s effort in 2019 and 2020 to conquer Tripoli by force
and bring the country under his personal rule.
In the wake of Haftar’s failed
military offensive and the end of the foreign-backed civil war, Bashagha fell out with
then-Libyan Prime Minister Fayez Al-Sarraj, and retired from the GNA. He then
promptly broke bread with his former military enemy, Haftar, and with Saleh,
who from 2015 through 2021 steadily resisted and thwarted the GNA and then-PM
Sarraj from functioning as a government, establishing a second
period of competing and parallel institutions in
Libya’s eastern coastal region.
By March 2021, with an unpopular GNA
and Sarraj running out of gas, and Libya’s east facing a cash crunch
after a Maltese
seizure of inbound Russian fake dinars and the
insolvency of many of the region’s banks, Bashagha cut
a deal with Saleh. Under their agreement, the two men would run as a tandem to
become prime minister and president, respectively, in a successor transitional
government brokered by the UN and its then-acting special envoy, Stephanie
Williams, the Government of National Unity (GNU),
which was to have held power only until the conclusion of national elections
scheduled for December 24, 2021.
But instead of Bashagha delivering
enough votes from Tripolitania in the west and Saleh delivering enough from
Cyrenaica in the east among the 75 members of the Libyan Political Dialogue
Forum selected by the UN to vote on the heads of the new GNU, another
Misratan, reported
billionaire Abdul Hamid Dbeibah, eked out a
victory — said to be secured through carefully placed bribes —
and became the GNU’s prime minister. After several sources
confirmed the bribes, the UN undertook an
investigation and made the decision to keep its
findings secret.
Despite the pall cast on Dbeibah’s
legitimacy, as the first Libyan leader in seven years not to have a competing
government in the east to contend with, and freed of any immediate threat of
civil conflict, Dbeibah used the remainder of 2021 to freely,
and adroitly, distribute largesse from Libya’s oil revenues for
popular new infrastructure projects. Dbeibah then broke the
commitment he had been required to make to become
prime minister that he would not become a candidate in the scheduled December
24 elections, and was well-positioned to come out as the leading candidate
following any first round.
This was not the way things were
supposed to turn out for Saleh, who has skillfully used his position as speaker
to ensure that any Libyan process or institution he did not control would fail.
In August 2021, Saleh engineered a vote of no
confidence by the HoR in the Dbeibah government,
and a month later, the HoR held a further no
confidence vote and declared the Dbeibah
government as authorized to function solely as a temporary caretaker pending
elections.
Saleh then announced his candidacy for
president of Libya in the pending December
elections.
When the December elections did not
take place, in large part because Saleh had designed them to fail by separating
them into multiple phases to enhance his ability to control the results, a
further move by Saleh to succeed in his quest to become president with a
hand-picked PM was inevitable.
Thus, the reappearance of Bashagha
as the HoR’s choice for prime minister represents a resurrection, one year
later, of what Saleh had sought all along — a prime minister who both depended
on Saleh and his constituencies in the east, and yet who had his own foundation
of support in the west, including with key militias.
On the day of Bashagha’s selection,
Dbeibah survived an
assassination attempt (Bashagha had himself
survived such an attempt last
year) and immediately thereafter, announced his intention to continue to serve
as prime minister, and expressed his support
for Libyan elections to take place as soon as
possible.
Simultaneously, Bashagha flew into
Tripoli, promising his new Libyan government would feature reconciliation
and inclusiveness.
The uncertainty of whether Libya
will now have one government (and if so, which one), or two (and if so,
headquartered where), and whether political settlements will be reached
peacefully, or through force, have left foreign governments, many already
preoccupied by the risk of a Russian invasion of Ukraine, largely silent, with
the exception of Egypt, which
has endorsed Bashagha, despite his long and close
association with Turkey.
So far, the United Nations, through
both Secretary-General
António Guterres and his Libya advisor, Williams,
has largely limited itself to calling on all sides to maintain stability and to
support early
elections. Williams’ ability to bring those about has
been sharply curtailed by Russia’s refusal to
authorize the UN Support Mission in Libya beyond April 30, potentially
making Williams a short-timer, unless Guterres is able to work out a deal with
Russia.
While it would be better to have the
Libyan people empowered to make these decision for themselves, the ability of
Bashagha, Haftar, and Saleh to form a new coalition remains a striking
development in Libyan history, suggesting the possibility that people with
vastly different foundations for support could — perhaps — find ways of sharing
power and funds in a fashion that could bring about stability. The possibility
of success would be enhanced if Bashagha were ultimately able to bring enough
of the military forces, including Tripoli’s militias, to back him, as they did
during their defense of Tripoli against Haftar.
Similarly, the ability of Debeibah
to use Libya’s wealth to secure the support of a range of constituencies behind
him is in some sense a positive development. Using Libya’s vast oil wealth to
buy people off as a means of remaining in power was one of Gadhafi’s most
important skills. If Debeibah remains in power, it will largely reflect his
ability to secure support within Libya, rather than dependence on any foreign
actor.
An important factor in determining
what will happen is the other Libyan governance body, the High Council of State
(HCS) in Tripoli, formed as a consultative body to replace the old GNC by the
2015 LPA. Support for the Bashagha government from the GNC, as the other half
of Libya’s legislative branch, independent of Saleh and frequently in
opposition to his actions, would substantially increase the perceived
legitimacy of the HoR’s action, and likely facilitate Bashagha’s ability to
secure further support from a variety of political actors and from security
groupings on the ground in Tripoli.
So far, the head of the HCS, Khaled Al-Mishri,
has not taken a clear position on the Bashagha appointment. Initially, he was
reported as supporting it, before then saying (accurately) that the HCS had no
formal authority to approve or disapprove appointments, as its only role is
consultative, but also saying that consultations
remained underway. Mishri’s caution in taking a
position is understandable, given reports that a convoy of
militia forces from Misrata were on their way to
Tripoli to provide further armed support for keeping Debeibah in place.
Absent elections, the legitimacy of
any Libyan government remains justifiably contested. The good news in the
ongoing drama is that Libyans, rather than internationals, are now taking the
lead in determining who will govern Libya. The bad news is that the current
turmoil risks a renewal of armed conflict in Tripoli, pending a resolution of
the political, security, and financial competition of yet one more period of
dueling Libyan governments competing for the mantle of legitimacy.
The writer, non-resident scholar at
the Middle East Institute, was the US special envoy and special coordinator for
Libya from 2014-16. The views expressed in this piece are his own.
Read more Opinion and Analysis
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With the election on February 10,
2022, by the Libyan House of Representatives (HoR) of Misratan Fathi
Bashagha as its choice to
become the country’s new prime minister, Libya has entered a new, third round
of two governments contesting each other’s legitimacy.
A review of Bashagha’s background provides a window into how Libya has arrived there.
Bashagha is a well-known figure within Libya and to international actors involved in the country. Having served as a pilot in the Libyan Air Force under Muammar Gaddafi, Bashagha was elected from Misrata to the new Libyan HoR in June 2014, the last time national elections were held. Bashagha boycotted the HoR when its new speaker, Aguila Saleh Issa, moved it from Tripoli to Tobruk in the east, Saleh’s base, with the result that Libya had its first round of two competing governments — the western one in Tripoli representing the outgoing General National Congress (GNC) and the eastern one supported by Saleh and a rump HoR in the city of Baida.
During 2014 and 2015, Bashagha actively participated in the UN-sponsored peace process that led to the Libyan Political Agreement (LPA) establishing the Tripoli-based GNA, agreed in Skhirat on December 17, 2015, which was supposed to end the period of dueling (and dual) governments. He became its interior minister, and effectively organized, with the support of Turkey, the coalition of forces that resisted and defeated Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar’s effort in 2019 and 2020 to conquer Tripoli by force and bring the country under his personal rule.
In the wake of Haftar’s failed military offensive and the end of the foreign-backed civil war, Bashagha fell out with then-Libyan Prime Minister Fayez Al-Sarraj, and retired from the GNA. He then promptly broke bread with his former military enemy, Haftar, and with Saleh, who from 2015 through 2021 steadily resisted and thwarted the GNA and then-PM Sarraj from functioning as a government, establishing a second period of competing and parallel institutions in Libya’s eastern coastal region.
By March 2021, with an unpopular GNA and Sarraj running out of gas, and Libya’s east facing a cash crunch after a Maltese seizure of inbound Russian fake dinars and the insolvency of many of the region’s banks, Bashagha cut a deal with Saleh. Under their agreement, the two men would run as a tandem to become prime minister and president, respectively, in a successor transitional government brokered by the UN and its then-acting special envoy, Stephanie Williams, the Government of National Unity (GNU), which was to have held power only until the conclusion of national elections scheduled for December 24, 2021.
But instead of Bashagha delivering enough votes from Tripolitania in the west and Saleh delivering enough from Cyrenaica in the east among the 75 members of the Libyan Political Dialogue Forum selected by the UN to vote on the heads of the new GNU, another Misratan, reported billionaire Abdul Hamid Dbeibah, eked out a victory — said to be secured through carefully placed bribes — and became the GNU’s prime minister. After several sources confirmed the bribes, the UN undertook an investigation and made the decision to keep its findings secret.
Despite the pall cast on Dbeibah’s legitimacy, as the first Libyan leader in seven years not to have a competing government in the east to contend with, and freed of any immediate threat of civil conflict, Dbeibah used the remainder of 2021 to freely, and adroitly, distribute largesse from Libya’s oil revenues for popular new infrastructure projects. Dbeibah then broke the commitment he had been required to make to become prime minister that he would not become a candidate in the scheduled December 24 elections, and was well-positioned to come out as the leading candidate following any first round.
This was not the way things were supposed to turn out for Saleh, who has skillfully used his position as speaker to ensure that any Libyan process or institution he did not control would fail. In August 2021, Saleh engineered a vote of no confidence by the HoR in the Dbeibah government, and a month later, the HoR held a further no confidence vote and declared the Dbeibah government as authorized to function solely as a temporary caretaker pending elections.
Saleh then announced his candidacy for president of Libya in the pending December elections.
When the December elections did not take place, in large part because Saleh had designed them to fail by separating them into multiple phases to enhance his ability to control the results, a further move by Saleh to succeed in his quest to become president with a hand-picked PM was inevitable.
Thus, the reappearance of Bashagha as the HoR’s choice for prime minister represents a resurrection, one year later, of what Saleh had sought all along — a prime minister who both depended on Saleh and his constituencies in the east, and yet who had his own foundation of support in the west, including with key militias.
On the day of Bashagha’s selection, Dbeibah survived an assassination attempt (Bashagha had himself survived such an attempt last year) and immediately thereafter, announced his intention to continue to serve as prime minister, and expressed his support for Libyan elections to take place as soon as possible.
Simultaneously, Bashagha flew into Tripoli, promising his new Libyan government would feature reconciliation and inclusiveness.
The uncertainty of whether Libya will now have one government (and if so, which one), or two (and if so, headquartered where), and whether political settlements will be reached peacefully, or through force, have left foreign governments, many already preoccupied by the risk of a Russian invasion of Ukraine, largely silent, with the exception of Egypt, which has endorsed Bashagha, despite his long and close association with Turkey.
So far, the United Nations, through both Secretary-General António Guterres and his Libya advisor, Williams, has largely limited itself to calling on all sides to maintain stability and to support early elections. Williams’ ability to bring those about has been sharply curtailed by Russia’s refusal to authorize the UN Support Mission in Libya beyond April 30, potentially making Williams a short-timer, unless Guterres is able to work out a deal with Russia.
While it would be better to have the Libyan people empowered to make these decision for themselves, the ability of Bashagha, Haftar, and Saleh to form a new coalition remains a striking development in Libyan history, suggesting the possibility that people with vastly different foundations for support could — perhaps — find ways of sharing power and funds in a fashion that could bring about stability. The possibility of success would be enhanced if Bashagha were ultimately able to bring enough of the military forces, including Tripoli’s militias, to back him, as they did during their defense of Tripoli against Haftar.
Similarly, the ability of Debeibah to use Libya’s wealth to secure the support of a range of constituencies behind him is in some sense a positive development. Using Libya’s vast oil wealth to buy people off as a means of remaining in power was one of Gadhafi’s most important skills. If Debeibah remains in power, it will largely reflect his ability to secure support within Libya, rather than dependence on any foreign actor.
An important factor in determining what will happen is the other Libyan governance body, the High Council of State (HCS) in Tripoli, formed as a consultative body to replace the old GNC by the 2015 LPA. Support for the Bashagha government from the GNC, as the other half of Libya’s legislative branch, independent of Saleh and frequently in opposition to his actions, would substantially increase the perceived legitimacy of the HoR’s action, and likely facilitate Bashagha’s ability to secure further support from a variety of political actors and from security groupings on the ground in Tripoli.
So far, the head of the HCS, Khaled Al-Mishri, has not taken a clear position on the Bashagha appointment. Initially, he was reported as supporting it, before then saying (accurately) that the HCS had no formal authority to approve or disapprove appointments, as its only role is consultative, but also saying that consultations remained underway. Mishri’s caution in taking a position is understandable, given reports that a convoy of militia forces from Misrata were on their way to Tripoli to provide further armed support for keeping Debeibah in place.
Absent elections, the legitimacy of any Libyan government remains justifiably contested. The good news in the ongoing drama is that Libyans, rather than internationals, are now taking the lead in determining who will govern Libya. The bad news is that the current turmoil risks a renewal of armed conflict in Tripoli, pending a resolution of the political, security, and financial competition of yet one more period of dueling Libyan governments competing for the mantle of legitimacy.
The writer, non-resident scholar at the Middle East Institute, was the US special envoy and special coordinator for Libya from 2014-16. The views expressed in this piece are his own.
Read more Opinion and Analysis
A review of Bashagha’s background provides a window into how Libya has arrived there.
Bashagha is a well-known figure within Libya and to international actors involved in the country. Having served as a pilot in the Libyan Air Force under Muammar Gaddafi, Bashagha was elected from Misrata to the new Libyan HoR in June 2014, the last time national elections were held. Bashagha boycotted the HoR when its new speaker, Aguila Saleh Issa, moved it from Tripoli to Tobruk in the east, Saleh’s base, with the result that Libya had its first round of two competing governments — the western one in Tripoli representing the outgoing General National Congress (GNC) and the eastern one supported by Saleh and a rump HoR in the city of Baida.
During 2014 and 2015, Bashagha actively participated in the UN-sponsored peace process that led to the Libyan Political Agreement (LPA) establishing the Tripoli-based GNA, agreed in Skhirat on December 17, 2015, which was supposed to end the period of dueling (and dual) governments. He became its interior minister, and effectively organized, with the support of Turkey, the coalition of forces that resisted and defeated Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar’s effort in 2019 and 2020 to conquer Tripoli by force and bring the country under his personal rule.
In the wake of Haftar’s failed military offensive and the end of the foreign-backed civil war, Bashagha fell out with then-Libyan Prime Minister Fayez Al-Sarraj, and retired from the GNA. He then promptly broke bread with his former military enemy, Haftar, and with Saleh, who from 2015 through 2021 steadily resisted and thwarted the GNA and then-PM Sarraj from functioning as a government, establishing a second period of competing and parallel institutions in Libya’s eastern coastal region.
By March 2021, with an unpopular GNA and Sarraj running out of gas, and Libya’s east facing a cash crunch after a Maltese seizure of inbound Russian fake dinars and the insolvency of many of the region’s banks, Bashagha cut a deal with Saleh. Under their agreement, the two men would run as a tandem to become prime minister and president, respectively, in a successor transitional government brokered by the UN and its then-acting special envoy, Stephanie Williams, the Government of National Unity (GNU), which was to have held power only until the conclusion of national elections scheduled for December 24, 2021.
But instead of Bashagha delivering enough votes from Tripolitania in the west and Saleh delivering enough from Cyrenaica in the east among the 75 members of the Libyan Political Dialogue Forum selected by the UN to vote on the heads of the new GNU, another Misratan, reported billionaire Abdul Hamid Dbeibah, eked out a victory — said to be secured through carefully placed bribes — and became the GNU’s prime minister. After several sources confirmed the bribes, the UN undertook an investigation and made the decision to keep its findings secret.
Despite the pall cast on Dbeibah’s legitimacy, as the first Libyan leader in seven years not to have a competing government in the east to contend with, and freed of any immediate threat of civil conflict, Dbeibah used the remainder of 2021 to freely, and adroitly, distribute largesse from Libya’s oil revenues for popular new infrastructure projects. Dbeibah then broke the commitment he had been required to make to become prime minister that he would not become a candidate in the scheduled December 24 elections, and was well-positioned to come out as the leading candidate following any first round.
This was not the way things were supposed to turn out for Saleh, who has skillfully used his position as speaker to ensure that any Libyan process or institution he did not control would fail. In August 2021, Saleh engineered a vote of no confidence by the HoR in the Dbeibah government, and a month later, the HoR held a further no confidence vote and declared the Dbeibah government as authorized to function solely as a temporary caretaker pending elections.
Saleh then announced his candidacy for president of Libya in the pending December elections.
When the December elections did not take place, in large part because Saleh had designed them to fail by separating them into multiple phases to enhance his ability to control the results, a further move by Saleh to succeed in his quest to become president with a hand-picked PM was inevitable.
Thus, the reappearance of Bashagha as the HoR’s choice for prime minister represents a resurrection, one year later, of what Saleh had sought all along — a prime minister who both depended on Saleh and his constituencies in the east, and yet who had his own foundation of support in the west, including with key militias.
On the day of Bashagha’s selection, Dbeibah survived an assassination attempt (Bashagha had himself survived such an attempt last year) and immediately thereafter, announced his intention to continue to serve as prime minister, and expressed his support for Libyan elections to take place as soon as possible.
Simultaneously, Bashagha flew into Tripoli, promising his new Libyan government would feature reconciliation and inclusiveness.
The uncertainty of whether Libya will now have one government (and if so, which one), or two (and if so, headquartered where), and whether political settlements will be reached peacefully, or through force, have left foreign governments, many already preoccupied by the risk of a Russian invasion of Ukraine, largely silent, with the exception of Egypt, which has endorsed Bashagha, despite his long and close association with Turkey.
So far, the United Nations, through both Secretary-General António Guterres and his Libya advisor, Williams, has largely limited itself to calling on all sides to maintain stability and to support early elections. Williams’ ability to bring those about has been sharply curtailed by Russia’s refusal to authorize the UN Support Mission in Libya beyond April 30, potentially making Williams a short-timer, unless Guterres is able to work out a deal with Russia.
While it would be better to have the Libyan people empowered to make these decision for themselves, the ability of Bashagha, Haftar, and Saleh to form a new coalition remains a striking development in Libyan history, suggesting the possibility that people with vastly different foundations for support could — perhaps — find ways of sharing power and funds in a fashion that could bring about stability. The possibility of success would be enhanced if Bashagha were ultimately able to bring enough of the military forces, including Tripoli’s militias, to back him, as they did during their defense of Tripoli against Haftar.
Similarly, the ability of Debeibah to use Libya’s wealth to secure the support of a range of constituencies behind him is in some sense a positive development. Using Libya’s vast oil wealth to buy people off as a means of remaining in power was one of Gadhafi’s most important skills. If Debeibah remains in power, it will largely reflect his ability to secure support within Libya, rather than dependence on any foreign actor.
An important factor in determining what will happen is the other Libyan governance body, the High Council of State (HCS) in Tripoli, formed as a consultative body to replace the old GNC by the 2015 LPA. Support for the Bashagha government from the GNC, as the other half of Libya’s legislative branch, independent of Saleh and frequently in opposition to his actions, would substantially increase the perceived legitimacy of the HoR’s action, and likely facilitate Bashagha’s ability to secure further support from a variety of political actors and from security groupings on the ground in Tripoli.
So far, the head of the HCS, Khaled Al-Mishri, has not taken a clear position on the Bashagha appointment. Initially, he was reported as supporting it, before then saying (accurately) that the HCS had no formal authority to approve or disapprove appointments, as its only role is consultative, but also saying that consultations remained underway. Mishri’s caution in taking a position is understandable, given reports that a convoy of militia forces from Misrata were on their way to Tripoli to provide further armed support for keeping Debeibah in place.
Absent elections, the legitimacy of any Libyan government remains justifiably contested. The good news in the ongoing drama is that Libyans, rather than internationals, are now taking the lead in determining who will govern Libya. The bad news is that the current turmoil risks a renewal of armed conflict in Tripoli, pending a resolution of the political, security, and financial competition of yet one more period of dueling Libyan governments competing for the mantle of legitimacy.
The writer, non-resident scholar at the Middle East Institute, was the US special envoy and special coordinator for Libya from 2014-16. The views expressed in this piece are his own.
Read more Opinion and Analysis
