Libya’s government of national (dis)unity: The misleading choreography of conflict resolution
Type de matériel :
98
Following the surprise success of a list headed by Abd al-Hamid Dabaiba in the Libyan Political Dialogue Forum (LPDF) elections in February 2021, a new tripartite Presidency Council was established, and a new government was formed in Libya—dubbed the Government of National Unity (GNU). The Government of National Unity’s endorsement—both domestically and internationally—was however the by-product of a temporary convergence of national and international interests in “war by other means.” The face-value progress achieved toward solving the Libyan crisis under the UN’s auspices, in turn, did little to dim the actual interests of Libya’s warring parties and their foreign sponsors. This paper will seek to map out the continuities and discontinuities of order that characterize this new period in Libya from a political, socio-economic, and military standpoint. Such an analysis will reveal inherent flaws in the Government of National Unity’s formation process which will hamper its ability to govern and unify institutions while substantially affecting the country’s security landscape. This also has implications on the prospects for success of the road map established in the Libyan Political Dialogue Forum and the suffrage process scheduled for December 24, 2021. More broadly, the analysis outlined and the continuities and discontinuities of order characterizing the pre- and post-LPDF era reveal that the political process has created a situation whereby conflict is merely being managed within the confines of a new political structure. While this time-bound conflict management strategy can endure for some time, it is also—by design—ill-fit to effect changes that would contribute to effective conflict resolution in Libya. From these vantage points, this paper also has relevance beyond Libya, particularly for those critically looking at the areas of mediation, and multilateral UN-brokered conflict resolution approaches.
Réseaux sociaux