At the dawn of the eleventh year after the revolution of February 17, 2011, and at the end of a veritable “black decade”, a decade of chaos, violence, rifts, power struggles, and foreign interference, Libya has just acquired a new management team which, we hope, will put the country on the path of reconstruction and lay the foundations for a new Libya.
Made up of a new Interim Presidential Council made up of a President and two Vice-Presidents from the three regions of the country (Mohammed Younes el-Menfi, Moussa Al-Koni, and Abdallah Hussein Al-Lafi), a new Prime Minister (Abdelhamid Dbeibah), two Deputy Prime Ministers (Hussein Atiya Abdul Hafeez Al-Qatrani and Ramadhan Ahmed Boujenah) and a government of 33 ministers, including five women, this team will, in fact, have the mission of consecrating the exit of Libya from its crisis by ensuring the transition and by preparing for the dual presidential and parliamentary elections scheduled for December 24, 2021, that is to say in only nine months.
Although it has aroused a lot of hope among the Libyan people and has been greeted by almost everyone and around the world, the establishment of this new leadership team is, of course, an important political breakthrough and a big step forward on the long road that Libya will still have to cover in its quest for peace, it must be said that its task will not be easy.
Indeed, it will have at least three major challenges to overcome. It is, first of all, the challenge relating to national reconciliation and the reunification of the institutions of the Libyan state.
In this regard, it should be noted that the new executive, and in particular Prime Minister Abdelhamid Dbeibah, and members of his government, who have sworn, by taking an oath, “to preserve the unity, security, and integrity Of their country, will have to face many antagonistic actors who, both internally and externally, continue to influence the political decision and do not wish their success.
However, some believe that by having been able to form a government of national unity and “representative of all Libyans” thanks to distribution as equitable as possible between the interest groups and the regions, which enabled him to obtain a “historic” vote of confidence of 132 out of the 133 members present of the House of Representatives, Abdelhamid Dbeibah will, in principle, be able to meet the necessary conditions and find the appropriate formula to reunite his deeply divided country. Moreover, to do this, and in order to be able to secure the country, overcome divisions and establish social peace, he plans to launch a global process of national reconciliation by creating internal reconciliation committees whose mission will be to bring together the different components of the Libyan people,
At the same time, he will work, in collaboration with the Presidential Council, to draft the electoral law and the constitution in anticipation of the organization of presidential and legislative elections.
As for the second challenge that the new management team will face, it is socioeconomic. In a country bruised by a decade of war, and moreover strongly hit by the coronavirus epidemic, the expectations of the population whose daily life is punctuated by shortages of all kinds, the failure of essential services, and inflation are enormous. and pressing. The new government is therefore called upon, in the first place, to mobilize the necessary means for the launch, as a matter of urgency, of the vaccination against the coronavirus.
On the other hand and at the same time, he is called to pay particular attention to the difficulties of the daily life of the Libyan people. To this end, it plans to prepare a compensation budget for the current year.
Finally, with regard to the third challenge, it is military-security in nature. In this regard, the maintenance and strengthening of the ceasefire signed on October 23, 2020, will require planning for the disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration of Libyan armed groups. This task will be particularly difficult, because, despite the end of the fighting between the two Libyan camps since last summer, Libya remains undermined by struggles for influence, the weight of militias, and the presence of foreign mercenaries.
Security sector reform and the establishment of an inclusive, civilian-led security architecture for the whole country will therefore be essential.
The achievement of the withdrawal of foreign forces and mercenaries that the UN Security Council continues to demand will also be essential. This is evidenced by its latest declaration, unanimously approved by its members and published on Friday, March 12, 2021, calling for the withdrawal, without further delay, of all foreign forces and mercenaries from Libya, calling on all parties to fully implement the agreement. October 23, 2020 ceasefire and urge member states to respect and support the full implementation of the agreement.
It should be remembered that according to the UN, around 20,000 soldiers and mercenaries were still in Libya at the end of 2020 and no withdrawal movement has been observed to date.
While recognizing that all of these challenges are, as some observers call them, colossal, and without falling into undue optimism or excessive pessimism, it seems to me that the new Libyan leadership team will meet them.
But to do this, it would have to show pragmatism and a lot of imagination, in order to be able to identify the best way to carry out its delicate mission. A way that is neither too harsh nor too complacent, to get the different parties to soften their positions and make the necessary concessions to find common ground capable of restoring peace in Libya and serving the highest interests of the people Libyan.
As for the Libyans, who have long been disappointed by the failure of the agreements reached but remained a dead letter in recent years, they will need to break with their disappointment, believe in the success of the current process, and help the new executive authority to carry it out, especially since its members are considered outsiders, which implies that they come with a new vision and a different approach.
In addition, the Prime Minister must know how to take advantage of the assets he currently has at the external level and which are in particular the following:
1 / The change in the attitude of the foreign actors involved in Libya who seem, this time, to have a real desire to achieve peace, and to renounce their duplicity which, according to Ghassan Salamé, l former UN envoy to Libya, made them say one thing and do the opposite.
2 / The return of the United States, especially with the arrival of President Joe Biden, in the Libyan dossier and its desire, at least displayed, to put an end to the war in Libya.
3 / The support of the United Nations Security Council which approved, on February 4, the request of the UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, for the dispatch of a UN team to monitor the ceasefire -fire in Libya, then dispatched on March 4 a small team of UN observers to the city of Sirte in order to set up the mechanism of its control.
4 / The links he maintains with Turkey on the one hand, and Russia on the other, knowing that he has already declared himself ready to strengthen Libya’s relations with Ankara and affirmed that he is in favor of a great partnership between the two countries. These links could be useful to him in seeking, with these two countries which support the two main rival Libyan parties, the necessary arrangements which would help him to advance the process of reconciliation and pacification of Libya.
5 / The support he can find and on which he can count from neighboring Maghreb countries and at their head Tunisia, whose president, in a laudable gesture, was the first head of state to visit Libya after the election of its new executive authority. Indeed, through this visit, President Kaïs Saïed eloquently told the Libyan brothers that Tunisia is determined to support their transition process and the reconstruction of their new Libya.
Who is the new Prime Minister Abdelhamid Dbeiba?
Born in 1958 in Misrata, the new Prime Minister Abdelhamid Dbeiba is one of the strongmen of this city located 200 km east of Tripoli and considered the bastion of the Libyan revolution.
Holder of a master’s degree in planning and building techniques from the University of Toronto in Canada, he held important positions and built his fortune under the regime of Muammar Gaddafi during which he headed the Libyan Investment and Investment Company. development (Lidco), a state-owned company, through which he carried out large-scale construction projects.
From 1989 to 2011, he was project manager for the Organization for the Development of Administrative Centers (Odac), the other Libyan investment giant responsible for modernizing infrastructure. Today, he runs a holding company whose subsidiaries extend as far as Turkey.
Beyond his business, he is the former boss of the Tripolitan football club Al-Ittihad which is one of the most emblematic in Libya.
In 2018, he founded his own movement, Avenir de la Libya (Libya al-Mustakbal), on a program to reunify the country.
He is perceived as a consensual man capable of making the big difference between the various Libyan ideological currents.
He has good connections with Ali al-Sallabi, the preacher of the Muslim Brotherhood in Libya, but also with Gaddafi.
Moreover, it is not closed to discussions with the Eastern camp.
Abroad, it has also forged solid networks and benefits from a dense address book.
He is close to Turkey, the backer of Tripoli, where he has established important trade relations. But he also cultivates good relations with Moscow, an ally of General Khalifa Haftar.
