As the afternoon heat begins to cool, Benghazi’s corniche settles into its evening routine. Families walk along the waterfront, some stopping for a tea at small seaside stalls. Children crowd around a giant sign saying Benghazi for selfies. Vendors grill corn facing the Mediterranean.
Across the road, a heavily damaged building displays the scars of the battle that drove Islamist militants from the city. Bullet marks remain visible beneath sections covered with black sheets. Banners along the avenue promise better days.
“Hope returns to every home,” and “Libya is built by the hands of its sons,” they say. The traffic moves steadily, but nothing else in Libya appears to be doing so.
Portraits of Saddam Haftar have become increasingly visible on billboards and public banners alongside those of his father Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar. His growing visibility now extends beyond the streets to a conference on justice and prisoner rights held at a fancy beach resort.
Although the event focused on legal and humanitarian issues rather than Libya’s political future, it revealed Haftar’s efforts to cultivate a broader public image as a political leader and statesman at a time when diplomats and regional actors are once again searching for ways to end Libya’s long political deadlock.
Some 15 years after NATO helped to bring about the fall of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, Libya remains divided between rival powers in the east and west of the country, with the internationally recognised government in Tripoli and the eastern camp centred on the House of Representatives and the Libyan National Army in Benghazi.
Neither side has achieved a total military victory, and neither has accepted a political settlement that would diminish its influence.
After years of failed mediation efforts, Western and regional powers are now looking for ways to work with the reality on the ground rather than trying to reshape it. “One of the most significant shifts in Libya’s political landscape has been the gradual erosion of rigid external alignments,” explained a top Arab diplomat.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, he said that “foreign powers that once backed one side almost exclusively have increasingly adopted a pragmatic, dual-track approach, maintaining relations with both the Eastern and Western authorities.”
Western diplomats who once engaged almost exclusively with Tripoli now regularly meet officials aligned with Khalifa Haftar in Benghazi, while continuing their contacts with Prime Minister Abdel-Hamid Dbeibah’s national unity government.
Egypt, historically more inclined to the east, now receives delegations from both governments. Even Turkey, whose military intervention in 2020 was decisive in preserving the Tripoli government, has welcomed Haftar to Ankara while sustaining its close partnership with Dbeibah.
One example of this new fait accompli is US Presidential Adviser Massad Boulos’ initiative that seeks to break the stalemate in the mediation efforts that has persisted since 2015.
Previous attempts, from the Skhirat Agreement and the Berlin Process to the UN-sponsored Libyan Political Dialogue Forum and the 6+6 Committee, offered different formulas, but all ultimately ran into the same obstacles.
Instead of starting with elections, Boulos focused on a political bargain between the two sides, potentially appointing Saddam Haftar as the head of the Libyan Presidential Council while keeping Dbeibah at the top of the executive and unifying the armed forces before any elections were held.
His proposal received tentative support before collapsing. According to a Libyan official who served in the eastern government before shifting to the western one, “it was unacceptable to both sides”.
In the east, military leaders opposed dismantling the General Command, which they regard as the cornerstone of their authority. In the west, the resistance came from two directions: people who did not want to see Saddam Haftar playing a senior national role and people who wanted Dbeibah gone entirely.
“Political actors outside the current governing coalition oppose any deal that would allow Dbeibah to remain in office. Their objective is the formation of an entirely new executive authority,” the official said.
Boulos defended his idea by describing it as “a short-term effort designed to fully complement the UN-led roadmap under the leadership of the UN Support Mission in Libya and Special Representative of the Secretary General Hanna Tetteh.”
Political circles in Benghazi then said that a Pakistani mediation track had started. “There appears to be a US mandate for such a role at the moment, but there are still no clear indications of what form Pakistan’s mediation or broader approach will take,” one diplomatic source in the city said.
Not everyone believes a new initiative is needed, however. Libyan political analyst Al-Senussi Ismail said that Libya’s best political option is the UN-backed “structured dialogue”, as other proposals have become unworkable.
“Unlike earlier proposals, including Boulos’ initiative, the Structured Dialogue Council has already secured broad consensus around its recommendations among its 120 Libyan members from across the country’s political and regional spectrum,” Ismail said.
The recommendations focus on unifying Libya’s key sovereign institutions, including the Central Bank, the Audit Bureau, the Administrative Control Authority, the Elections Commission, and the Anti-Corruption Commission, while leaving contentious issues such as the formation of a unified government and the management of the High National Elections Commission to negotiations between the House of Representatives and the High Council of State.
If those institutions fail to reach agreement within the allotted period, Article 24 of the Libyan Political Agreement would allow the UN to convene another dialogue with a broader mandate than the Geneva Process to resolve questions hanging over the Libyan executive authority, electoral framework, and maybe also the constitutional framework.
Tetteh is to deliver a strategic update on the political, security, and economic situation in Libya, including the progress of the UN-backed dialogue tracks, during a UN Security Council session in the third or fourth week of this month.
But the official source in Tripoli is pessimistic. He believes Libya is unlikely to reach a political settlement without another round of fighting. “I don’t have concrete information that preparations for war are underway,” he said, “but the atmosphere in Libya is increasingly pointing in that direction”.
The night falls over Benghazi and the electricity cuts out once again, the third time in 24 hours. Hundreds of kilometres away, protests erupt in Tripoli over the same issue. The outages are one of the few things that hold the two parts of the country together — the same darkness and the same noise of generators filling the night.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 6 August, 2026 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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