Libya Has a Shot at Peace as Combatants Tire of War, Envoy Says
Libya Has a Shot at Peace as Combatants Tire of War, Envoy Says
(Bloomberg) -- His heavily fortified compound west of Libya’s capital provides Ghassan Salame with a ringside seat as two forces grind out a four-month battle for control of the country.
As the United Nation’s special envoy to Libya, his mission is to end fighting between the internationally-recognized government and its chief rival, eastern-based commander Khalifa Haftar, that’s been fueled by the ambitions of regional powers. After several setbacks, he says the deadlocked contest for Tripoli is bolstering his argument that no one can win.
“OK, if there’s nothing conclusive, what do we do now? That is where we are,” Salame said in an interview this week. “That allows our modest efforts in the various capitals that are concerned with the Libyan case to be more fruitful than they have ever been.”
His nuanced optimism will be welcome to Libya’s 6.4 million people, who’ve suffered years of violence since Muammar Qaddafi was ousted and killed in a 2011 NATO-backed uprising. In that time, parts of Libya became a refuge for smugglers feeding migrants into Europe and Islamic State militants. The economy collapsed and hardship spread.
But to deliver, he’ll have to overcome deep mistrust in Libya, an OPEC member with Africa’s biggest oil reserves, and divergent agendas overseas.
The offensive on Tripoli that Haftar launched in April has attracted military intervention by several powers on his side, while Turkey is openly backing the Tripoli-based government of Prime Minister Fayaz al-Sarraj.
Members of the UN Security Council, meanwhile, failed to pass a resolution calling for a ceasefire after the U.S. threatened to veto a British draft. The French and U.S. said they would prefer to hold out for a peace agreement.
The Trump administration indicated tentative support for Haftar once his assault was underway and France has quietly supported him while also pushing for peace. But for the most part, a distracted Washington watched from the sidelines.
“The American line was to say: no, give war a chance, and when we need to have a resolution, let’s have a resolution,” Salame said. “There was some feeling in some countries that the war can be won by one side or the other. I think it has faded away slowly.”
Central Disputes
Sarraj’s government and Haftar agreed a UN-proposed temporary truce over this month’s Muslim Eid al-Adha holidays. Fighting has resumed since, but with the increasing realization on both sides there would be no decisive victory. More than a thousand people, mostly fighters, have died since April and many more have been displaced.
Salame is pushing for a meeting next month of global powers and regional countries with a stake in the conflict to restore the ceasefire and enforce a longstanding but widely-flouted UN arms embargo.
He says there’s interest in the gathering, which will have to tackle controversial disputes at the heart of the infighting.
Aside from working out a ceasefire, parties must “do the political, economic and financial reforms that would somehow take off the table the causes or the pretext for a new military confrontation.”
That would include unifying the central bank that’s been split between the west and the Haftar-controlled east, agreeing on how the National Oil Corp. should be run, and conducting an audit of how finances are spent.
Salame, whose career in diplomacy saw him wounded during a 2003 bombing at the UN headquarters in Baghdad, also has a personal stake in peace. In August, a car bombing in Libya’s east killed three of his staff.
“I’ve been in other conflicts,” he said, pointing to a scar on his forehead from the Baghdad blast. “I keep a souvenir for the rest of my life.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Samer Khalil Al-Atrush in Cairo at skhalilalatr@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Lin Noueihed at lnoueihed@bloomberg.net, ;Alaa Shahine at asalha@bloomberg.net, Mark Williams
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