For so many historic reasons, the country that can really mediate to have peace in Libya is Malta. What the EU and the UN have failed to understand is the very important role Malta should and could have had in all this.
The international community has a new round of no-doubt-pointless talks this week with not all the necessary powerful Libyan personalities on the ground. These are the ones hiding mostly in Tunis, like the American and British diplomatic missions.
Why has Malta been sidelined? Are the West’s ‘Save Libya’ meetings really about saving Libya?
Fortunately, the influential Libyan-British organisation the LBBC is arranging a Libya conference in mid-November in Malta, which many Libyans will be attending and real offline talks can take place.
For months, it has been obvious to everyone, except a handful of stubborn Western diplomats, that Libya is in free fall and fast heading for the rocks. A countless series of ‘Western-led’ talks about reversing the country’s decline have failed to alter this trajectory or slow down its rapid descent, with sometimes not a single Libyan even sitting at the table.
At the heart of what has become an internationally mismanaged disaster in Libya lies the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA), a hopeless entity, which, after months in power, has failed to take full control even over Tripoli. Its palpable weakness and that of its unelected Presidential Council have become increasingly evident, since it has been unable to claim control of a parliamentary complex and the adjacent luxury Rixos Hotel.
Both premises were seized by the capital’s former – unelected and self-imposed – National Salvation Government, an Islamist-heavy entity that ruled parts of western Libya and Tripoli by the gun for two years.
The GNA is widely viewed by most ordinary Libyans as, at best, ineffective and, at worst, divisive. It has been rightly shunned by the eastern-based House of Representatives (HoR), Libya’s only extant elected parliamentary body.
Despite the recent success of the HoR, its government and military arm, headed by Khalifa Haftar, in reopening some of the country’s key oil ports, a move that has seen oil production triple in just two months (according to Bloomberg), the West is still throwing its full support behind the GNA, exacerbating an existing east-west divide, which increasingly points towards partition.
Only Libyans meeting each other could start bonding all traumatised Libyan people
The UAE’s increased military support of Haftar’s efforts have been critical in the change of Cyrenaica’s (east Libya’s) fortunes, as have Russia and Egypt’s support.
The GNA’s sole achievement to date has been to support the militia-led battle to free Sirte from IS occupation. In the course of this months-long battle, it has allowed the UK, the US and Italy to gain a military foothold, albeit temporarily, something which has almost been entirely ignored by the international media but is a worrying indication that more international military manoeuvres could be on the cards.
Little wonder, then, that the West has such interest in hosting, running and participating in ‘Save Libya’ talks. Rather than try to work with all Libyan parties throughout Libya’s disastrous 2016 descent into an abyss, the reaction by the United States and Britain – key architects in the GNA project – was to double their bets.
Is there, in fact, another agenda at play with these latest ‘Save Libya’ meetings?
US Secretary of State John Kerry will attend meetings in London with his ‘Libya man’, Jonathan Winer, prompting a few cynical murmurings about whether it is less about Libya than part of a desperate attempt to shore up Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. After all, part of Donald Trump’s campaign against her has been to lambast her signal foreign policy adventure: Nato’s 2011 bombing campaign against Muammar Gaddafi and the circumstances of the suspicious death of US Ambassador Chris Stevens, as well as the failure of the Obama administration overall to help prevent ‘liberated’ Libya tumbling into chaos. And, increasingly chugging away behind all this is an ongoing and newly opened FBI investigation into the Clintons.
These external Libya meetings, which seem to promote every country’s interests except Libya’s own, should be phased out, and Libya’s many leaders and key players should start focusing on finding in-country solutions with rival politicians, with the notable exception of former AQ-LIFG members and the rather secretive Muslim Brotherhood.
Only Libyans meeting each other in their own country or its closest neighbour, Malta, to strive, at least, for a version of South Africa’s truth and reconciliation commission could start bonding all traumatised Libyan people, even tribes that supported Gad-dafi and members of his family.
Prime Minister Joseph Muscat should volunteer to take charge and take his place on the international stage by uniquely inviting everyone for talks in Malta. These should the Russians and the Chinese, too, not just the (so-called) free-world countries.
Richard Galustian is a security analyst.