Revelations that the UN’s Libya envoy, Bernardino Leon, lined up a job with the United Arab Emirates, key backer of one of the country’s two governments, has driven the final nail into that coffin that is the international peace process.
The UAE along with Egypt are the key backers of the internationally recognised, elected government; no crime in itself, but damning for the man who claimed to be an ‘honest broker’ between that government and its Islamist-led rival in Tripoli.
Even before this revelation, Leon’s talks had collapsed last month when both governments refused to sign the plan the envoy put in front of them.
On cue, a vicious new round of fighting broke out, with Islamist militias fighting each other in Tripoli and a helicopter crashing in the sea near the city, killing two of their top commanders.
In Benghazi, army forces continued hammering Islamist militants while the air force bombed militia supply boats bringing weapons from Misrata – and buzzed what they said were Italian warships taking too close an interest in the battle.
Without even the semblance of a peace process, the UN and EU are left staring at two catastrophes growing ever worse – the rise of ISIS and the shipping of hundreds of thousands of Muslim migrants from Libya to European shores without anyone asking why Arab states don’t agree to take any.
The UN and the EU continue to insist that a likeable but low-key politician, Faiez Al-Serraj, must be the prime minister in a unity government that both sides have rejected.
But Libyans need a prime minister who speaks for them, not one plucked by the UN. Leon is guilty of the mistake many people – Libyans as much as outsiders – make, which is pinning their hopes on a White Knight riding over the hills to save the nation.
Some are even calling for a return for the monarchy, abolished when Muammar Gaddafi seized power four decades ago. But the truth is – it ain’t going to happen.
That constitution should be grabbed with both hands. It offers Libyans the chance to reconnect with representative government
Libyans are fighting precisely because there is no leader all can agree on.
Last week, testifying to the British parliament, former ambassador Dominic Asquith put his finger on it, saying: “There remains a very strong desire from the Libyan people for a political agreement. They want a government. They want a political settlement. There is huge frustration at their own political leadership, but also at the UN.”
A senior Libyan official put it more bluntly, telling me last week: “Everyone is focussed on the ‘who’, but the solution is the ‘what’.”
The “what” he, and I believe Asquith, have in mind is a government people support because the people chose it. It is called democracy. Such a government was elected in June last year, in elections the UN itself supervised. But when the Islamists took steep losses in those elections, they rebelled, their Libya Dawn militias seized Tripoli, and the country remains at war.
Since then, the UN has focussed not on elected politicians but on pushing those who were elected to make a deal with those who were not – the militia chiefs of Libya Dawn.
Sharing power with the militias is not what this parliament was elected to do. Especially because in recent months the key power brokers in Tripoli have become the Libya Islamic Fighting Group, a former guerrilla organisation affiliated to Al Qaida, some of them once having been interned in Guantanamo Bay.
The one sliver of hope is Libya’s constitutional commission, which is nearly ready to announce a proposed constitution. That constitution should be grabbed with both hands. It offers Libyans the chance to reconnect with representative government – but only if Libyans are given the chance to vote.
One solution may be a federal structure, with power devolved down to regional assemblies better able to meet their people’s needs. Such a system has been the bedrock of Switzerland’s success for centuries.
Whatever that constitution stipulates, the UN should get behind it. Leon’s successor, German diplomat Martin Kobler, must scrap his search for a White Knight and end the UN’s fraternising with the warlords.
As my Libyan friend told me, the only thing that will bring peace, before it is too late, is a system that all Libyans are invested in, certainly not one imposed by foreigners and particularly by a now thoroughly discredited UN and EU.
Richard Galustian is a security analyst.