In April, Libya’s rival legislatures agreed for the first time in more than a decade on a budget of 190 billion dinars, almost $30bn, split between the two rival camps in the country. Fifteen years after Muammar Gaddafi’s downfall in Tripoli this week, the United States-backed budget captures both the divisions that shape Libya and an emerging space that could incentivise cooperation between the country’s two authorities. The vacuum that emerged following the overthrow of Gaddafi produced rival institutions, recurrent conflict and delayed elections.
Now, these political adversaries are finding ways to work together. Libya has been in an almost perpetual state of conflict since antigovernment protests broke out in 2011 and were violently crushed by the police and military. The suppression of demonstrations sparked an armed uprising in cities across Libya, centred on Benghazi.
In August 2011, rebels began the Battle of Tripoli, resulting in Gaddafi’s flight from the capital and the overthrow of his regime. The National Transitional Council, which led the 2011 uprising, promised to rule only until Libyans elected a parliament. In July 2012, about 1.76 million voted in the first national election since 1964, handing power to the winners, with the authority soon dissolving itself.
It was the first time, and remains the last, that a Libyan election ended in a peaceful handover of power. It did not last for long, and in May 2014, Khalifa Haftar, a former Gaddafi general, launched a self-described “anti-terrorism campaign” against armed groups in Benghazi, while forces aligned with Haftar attacked the parliament in Tripoli. Libya’s next vote was in June 2014, when only 630,000 of Libya’s 1.5 million registered voters cast their ballots.
Polling stations in several cities never even opened, and the results were disputed by the outgoing parliament. The newly named MPs relocated east, where Haftar’s forces backed the new Tobruk-based parliament. The result was two authorities at war with one another, and a 2015 UN peace deal preserved both parliaments rather than replacing them.
The Government of National Accord (GNA) was formed that year, which became the sole authority recognised by the UN. Conflict between the two sides continued with a 2019 offensive on Tripoli by Haftar-linked forces against the GNA, before a ceasefire took hold in 2020. A second UN process installed Abdul Hamid Dbeibah as the Government of National Unity (GNU) interim prime minister in 2021.
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