Libya: Towards stability

Doaa El-Bey , Tuesday 21 Jan 2025

Cairo continues to coordinate with Libyan forces in a push to stabilise Egypt’s western neighbour

Libya: Towards stability

 

 

This week, President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi received the head of the Libyan national army Khalifa Haftar in Cairo, their first meeting in more than three years.  

During the meeting, President Al-Sisi underlined the close links between Libya’s stability and Egypt’s national security and highlighted the efforts Cairo is making to ensure both. Haftar expressed appreciation of the pivotal role Egypt is playing to secure Libyan resources and restore stability, and its efforts help the Libyan people since the start of the crisis in 2011.

The meeting was attended by the head of the General Intelligence Service Hassan Rashad.

President Al-Sisi has expressed Egypt’s appreciation of the role played by the Libyan national army in combating terrorism on a number of occasions, and Haftar’s visit, according to Cairo University professor of political science Ahmed Youssef, appeared to confirm Cairo’s long held view that the Libyan national army is best placed to protect the country from the fallout of warring factions in the west of Egypt’s neighbour.

Youssef told Al-Ahram Weekly that the timing of the visit — following the fall of the Syrian regime at the hands of Turkish-backed armed factions long associated with Islamist groups — was significant.

“One cannot help but question whether there are similarities between these factions and the warring factions in the west of Libya, especially those that are backed by Turkey,” said Youssef.

The visit by Libyan Prime Minister Abdul-Hamid Dbeibah to Turkey last week, less than a month after Bashar Al-Assad’s overthrow, during which he met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, reinforced the impression of coordination between Turkey and the Libyan government, said Youssef.

During their meeting, Al-Sisi, a key backer of Haftar, stressed the importance of coordination between all Libyan parties to draw up a political roadmap leading to simultaneous presidential and parliamentary elections, as well as the need to remove all foreign forces and mercenaries from Libyan territory.

A former diplomat pointed out that the rise in the number of foreign forces in Libya is increasing the gap between the west and east of the country. Earlier this month, Haftar gave Russia the green light to use Maaten Al-Sarra, a military base near the Libyan border with Chad and Sudan, and recent reports suggest Moscow is transferring Russian forces from Syria to Libya. Last month Russia sent a group of soldiers to re-establish the base, with the aim of making it a strategic point for military operations in Africa.

The reports added that Moscow has also strengthened its operations at four air bases — Al-Khadim in the east of Libya, Al-Jufra and Al-Qardabiya in the central region and Brak Al-Shati, southwest of Sabha.

Regional and international parties are involved in every conflict in the Middle East, pointed out Youssef. In the Syrian conflict, Turkish, Russian, Iranian, and US parties contributed, in different ways, to the fall of Al-Assad regime. Iranian, Saudi, and other Gulf states are intervening in Yemen, while in Libya, Egypt and Russia support Haftar and Turkey backs western-based factions.

Egypt has always expressed support for Libya’s territorial integrity and attributes the lack of settlement in the country to the absence of a unified government.

During his meeting with acting head of the UN Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) Stephanie Koury in Cairo last week, Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty said Cairo was keen to boost cooperation with the UN envoy and contribute to resolving the Libyan crisis with full Libyan ownership and leadership.

Late in December, Rashad met Haftar during a brief visit to Benghazi to discuss regional and local developments and efforts to push the political process forward.

Libya is struggling to recover from years of conflict that followed the 2011 uprising that ended Muammar Gaddafi’s four-decade rule. The country has since been split between the United Nations-recognised government of Dbeibah in Tripoli, which Turkey supports, and Haftar’s forces, backed by Russia, in the east.

Parliamentary and presidential elections planned for December 2021 were postponed indefinitely because of disagreements over the legal framework under which they would be held.


* A version of this article appears in print in the 23 January, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly

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