Libya is currently mired in its worst crisis since the eight-month long bloody civil war that broke out in February 2011 and devastated the country.
Heavily-armed gunmen loyal to rogue general Khalifa Qassim Haftar stormed parliament on Sunday demanding it be suspended and power handed over to a 60-member body that is rewriting Libya’s constitution.
Haftar, who is reportedly confronting Islamist militias, has gained support in the east among both soldiers and some separatist groups. Rebels in eastern Libya, where they’ve been blocking oil exports since July, expressed support for Haftar. An air force base in the eastern city of Tobruk said on Monday it was allying itself with the renegade general, who heads a self-proclaimed National Army.
Forces loyal to Haftar, once a Muammar Gaddafi ally who turned against him in the 1980s and took asylum in the US, attacked militants in the eastern city of Benghazi last Friday. At least 70 people have been killed and 141 injured since fighting broke out, according to the Health Ministry. Haftar’s National Army is now deploying tanks and artillery to Tripoli, according to its Facebook page.
According to a recent Rand Corporation report, Libya’s militias number in the “low hundreds” in a conservative estimate. And any alliance of militias against Islamist groups threatens to deepen chaos in the Opec oil producer, whose rickety government is struggling to gain legitimacy and impose its authority.
As Libya looks to rebuild the fragile economy, the nation’s growth engine has almost ground to a halt. Crude production has declined to 210,000 bpd, far below pre-crisis levels closer to 1.4mn bpd. The 12-member Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries pumped an estimated 30.293mn in February. Conflicts in Libya, where oil production has slid to less than a fifth of its capacity, helped drive up the price of the Brent by as much as 18% to $117.45 a barrel between April and August last year.
As lawlessness and bloody clashes have worsened the Libyan imbroglio, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Algeria are reportedly among countries shutting their embassies in Tripoli and sending staff home.
While French oil major Total said on Monday it had cut its presence in Tripoli to a minimum due to security concerns, Algerian state energy firm Sonatrach is also evacuating workers.
More than three years after the uprising that ended Gaddafi’s 42-year rule, Libya remains unstable and violent, without an effective national government, to this day. The dramatic spike in lawlessness has edged the country closer to a new civil war, stirring concern abroad and on oil markets.
But if every successful transition requires from the start a cohesive leadership, an active civil society, and national unity, they are painfully missing in Libya. A post-Gaddafi security vacuum, with no effective state apparatus to ensure national security, has not helped either.
Libya is now in dire need of an efficient leadership with a compelling new national vision to unify competing authorities, rein in trigger-happy militias and bridge regional divisions for a stable nation that thrives on its oil riches. The longer it takes to contain the chaos, the bigger the economic hit becomes.