If anyone had the slightest doubt about the gravity of the violence in Libya, it was dispelled by the UN Security Council resolution unanimously approved on Wednesday. It called for an immediate ceasefire amid allegations of secret airstrikes by the United Arab Emirates, with Egypt’s assistance, against the Misurata-led alliance that currently controls Tripoli.
Neither the UAE nor Egypt has accepted the claims but expert observers fear that Middle East regional rivalries are now engulfing Libya. Qatar had previously armed the Muslim Brotherhood, allies of Misurata. This alliance is now claiming that Egypt, the UAE and Saudi Arabia are supporting the alliance led by the former general, Khalifa Haftar, who has vowed to eliminate all Islamists from Libya.
With some 350 militias, the country is a tinderbox. The UN judges Libya too unstable for a peacekeeping mission.
The political institutions meant to keep violence in check are themselves disintegrating. The police and the army are weak. The executive has two rival prime ministers. Now there are two rival legislative assemblies.
The democratic elections in June were intended to replace the interim General National Congress with a new House of Representatives. The turnout – 18 per cent, down from 60 per cent in 2012 – indicates loss of popular faith in the process.
The moderate Islamists’ share of seats fell drastically to 30 (out of 200). They have refused to recognise the result. Hence, their alliance has reconvened the former General National Congress. The outcome is that one assembly refuses to recognise the legitimate democratic process while the other has dismissed its rival as made up of terrorists.
If this standoff persists, there are three possible scenarios. We could see one side wipe the other off the map: a bloodbath. Both the radical Islamists and Haftar are dangerous in their extremism.
The likelier scenario, given that both sides have international backers, would be a prolonged conflict, with Libya divided into unstable fiefdoms governed by self-righteous warlords and criminal organisations.
A third scenario would see the prolonged conflict spill over into neighbouring countries, perhaps with Malta dragged into it as a passageway for illegal supplies and foreign recruits.
In preparing for every eventuality, Malta can and must combine principled action with self-interest.
Extra vigilance will be necessary to make sure Malta is not used as a base to aid and abet violence. Special vigilance, however, will also be needed to make sure that zeal for security does not lead to the harassment of innocent moderate Libyans and other Muslims; experience shows this only serves the cause of radicalisation.
Malta has economic and political friends on both sides within Libya and among each side’s international allies. But it should stick to principle in both recognising the result of the legitimate democratic process while refusing the blanket demonisation of all political adversaries without distinction.
Both sides claim to want to save the 2011 revolution from the other. Every effort must be made to persuade them that excluding dialogue and compromise is the surest way to destroy the fruits of that revolution.
Dialogue must exclude no one, and it is clear that it would also have to be international, given the regional stakes.
For Malta, the stakes cannot be higher. A conflagration on our doorstep would have wide political and economic repercussions.
Malta’s efforts for peace must therefore be commensurate. All stops must be pulled, all political capital used, to try to set in motion an institutionalised international dialogue about and for the future of Libya.