Warring parties finally reached a ceasefire in Libya. But this is what will probably thwart it

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The problem with a ceasefire is that it sometimes ignores powers of influence. With massive sway over events on the ground, even well-intentioned truces can quickly lose meaning.

The same can be said about the ceasefire reached between warring parties in Libya last week, before it was quickly scoffed at by Khalifa Haftar, the self-styled commander of the Libyan National Army, as a “media marketing” stunt.

After years of fighting, the war in Libya has developed into a massive enterprise with many local, regional and international shareholders. The ceasefire announced simultaneously by the UN-recognised government in Tripoli, and Aguila Saleh, the east Libya-based speaker of the parliament, was effectively a push to liquidate the war enterprise and start a new kind of peace partnership.

But there is a catch. These two politicians have the authority to announce a halt in the fighting, but not to force it.

Many other local and foreign parties have managed to build large swamps of interest around the Libyan war.

In the west, the government of national accord (GNA) is protected by multiple armed militias maintaining security in the capital. The government guarantees permanent salaries and job security for the fighters in these armed groups, while their more senior commanders maintain huge influence over decision making in government. For the militias' fanatic leaders, a drastic and abrupt change in the status quo will emerge, causing them to lose all privileges they currently enjoy.

Wolfram Lacher, a researcher at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, believes that “many of the armed groups are not fighting for [prime minister Fayez Mustafa al-Sarraj], but they are fighting against Haftar.”

At the weekend, militia fighters opened fire at protesters demanding a halt to what they called a “slow death” due to collapsing public services, corruption and economic pressures, hours after the ceasefire announcement. The economy and cash inflow have deteriorated in Tripoli due to the blockade imposed on oil exports by Haftar and his allied forces. Sarraj, in response, announced a cabinet reshuffle to appease protesters.

Haftar has become the elephant in the room of the Libyan war. In April 2019, he launched his military operation to enter the capital Tripoli, thinking a push for his continually failing military to take the city would’ve been enough of a scenario to make his dreams of establishing a Muammar Gaddafi-like regime, running Libya with an iron fist, come true.

The east-Libya general has staged many failed coup d'etats to gain absolute power over the country, and also failed. He repeatedly tried to scrap the UN-sponsored Sukhairat Peace Agreement signed in 2015 to form the GNA and ignored many political initiatives to reach a peaceful solution launched in Abu Dhabi, Palermo, Moscow and Berlin. Earlier this year, Haftar’s Tripoli crusade ended after receiving heavy military losses in the west due to the Turkish assertive military intervention on the side of the Tripoli government, forcing his troops to withdraw to the key port city of Sirte and the nearby al-Jufra air base.

Any pause on the fight now definitely means that Haftar’s political future is well and truly over.

But he is not the only likely culprit. It has become clear as daylight by now that many powerful foreign shareholders are not happy about closing down the war enterprise either.

The Russian footing, through mercenaries, fighter jets and air defence missile systems to strategic air bases near the Oil Crescent in Eastern Libya, gained a lot of controversy in the US and among major European powers as an imminent threat to Nato and security in the Mediterranean. In Moscow, the US-anchored ceasefire which mandates the demilitarisation of the strategic Sirte-Jufra axis is a western trick to thwart a permanent military, economic and political Russian influence in Europe’s southern neighbour, because demilitarisation means withdrawing the Russian troops stationed in the region first and foremost.

The UAE is another backer of Haftar that would likely feel nervous about the new push to end the fighting in Libya. Abu Dhabi’s take is simple: Turkey’s well established military stronghold and political influence over the GNA can’t be tolerated as the new reality in Libya. Libya provides Turkey with a launching rack to extend its influence in Europe’s southern flank as well as sub-Saharan and western Africa. Despite its love-hate relation with Haftar, (proving incapable of taking Tripoli swiftly, as many UAE officials predicted), no alternative for Haftar is in sight. And many in the UAE perhaps believe that an ongoing, but managed, kind of war is the only way forward to stop Turkey in its tracks. UAE officials deny absolutism in Libya. After the ceasefire announcement, the UAE issued a statement in support of the new move.

Saleh's star is rising as the new leader of the East camp and Haftar doesn’t seem ready to tolerate it. So, instead of war between east and west Libya, the new fault lines are now being drawn between politicians trying to take control on both sides, and diehard war contractors feeling vulnerable and doing their best to keep the war enterprise afloat.

Wolfram Lacher told me: “the most logical thing for Haftar is to start a new offensive against the GNA now.”

And that is that. If Haftar and the militia leaders don’t drop their guns and embed their personal ambitions into a political process, they might keep the war engine going for a while, but they will eventually find no place in Libya’s future.