The Libyan crisis, with its intertwined local, regional, and international actors and interventions, remains deadlocked. There is nothing new to report and nothing from the past that has proved useful. The UN mission continues to search for a solution in the Libyan desert, while political fragmentation and division continue to strike different parts of the country. More alarming still is that time is passing quickly. Countries are building and developing, while Libya is not. Libya has chosen to remain stuck in 2011, with everything left in ruins.
There is no doubt that negative external intervention is what has prolonged the Libyan crisis and transferred international disputes onto Libyan territory. After the state and its institutions were dismantled in 2011 under the pretext of protecting civilians, NATO left Libya for years at the mercy of the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliated organizations. It then returned through a succession of international envoys, most of whom had failed in previous assignments. Why, then, are they sent in the first place to address a crisis as complex as Libya's? Thus, Libya became engulfed in a quagmire of terrorism and armed groups that infiltrated the country as a result of the chaos of the Arab Spring and the collapse of the state and its institutions, before the Libyan Army rose and regained control of most of the country.
The Libyan crisis today reflects internal political divisions among different currents, some of which do not believe in the country's national geography. One such current is that of the isolated Grand Mufti, along with remnants of the Muslim Brotherhood, which uses the funds it obtained during the upheaval of the Arab Spring and its infiltration of centers of power and the Central Bank during the events of February 2011. It was able to rule for a period as a result of the political and presidential vacuum.
The Libyan crisis requires the participation of the genuine parties that represent the Libyan people, not artificial parties, most of which are little more than numbers that do not exceed the number of their founders, without genuine popular representation. Nor should those currently holding power be treated as representative, foremost among them the remnants of the National Congress, whose legitimate mandate had expired, and which was transformed into the State Council, becoming a partner in the legislative authority alongside the elected Parliament. This was where the political error began: bringing together an elected body and one whose mandate had expired. The Libyan political scene consequently became populated by hybrid bodies created through political agreements rather than by the ballot box, such as the current Presidential Council and Government. Even under the political agreement that created them, their mandates and the political legitimacy they acquired through an agreement that most Libyans did not accept have expired.
The Libyan crisis has been dominated by a flawed reading of its reality, while rushed and incomplete solutions have contributed to making it more complicated and keeping it at a standstill, without making the slightest progress. Instead, it has become increasingly complex as it struggles along difficult and treacherous paths, amid a political quagmire that grows larger every day. As a result, the Libyan crisis has become mired in difficulties, and so have the Libyans, exhausted by wars, displacement and forced migration, rising prices, the collapse in the value of the Libyan dinar, and the high cost of living, after Libya had once been among the least expensive countries in the world in terms of living costs.
The Western conflict among France, Italy, and Britain over Libya's oil wealth was not unrelated to the worsening and growing complexity of the Libyan crisis, particularly because each of the parties competing over Libyan oil refused to accept partnership with the others. Instead, each believed in excluding the other and that only the strongest would prevail. This was despite Germany's attempts to bring the parties competing over the Libyan prize together through Berlin 1, Berlin 2, and Berlin 3, as well as Paris 1 and Paris 2. None of these efforts succeeded in narrowing the gap between the competing parties. This was despite the exclusion of the Libyan side from Berlin 1, even though the stated purpose of the conference was to "resolve the Libyan crisis." In reality, however, it proved to be an effort at reconciliation among the Western parties competing over the Libyan crisis. For this reason, the solution can only be Libyan. Waiting for a solution from abroad will come at the expense of many things, including the loss of national sovereignty and placing the national economy at the mercy of external powers.
The Libyan crisis has moved through many stages, all of them external, yet not a single track has succeeded. This confirms that the solution lies inside Libya, not outside it, by bringing together the actors who have influence on the ground with the genuine components of Libyan society, namely the tribes, rather than the artificial political parties that the UN mission insists on including. These parties represent the views of individuals rather than groups with coherent political visions that can be relied upon in the democratic process.
A democratic process does not necessarily require the existence of political parties. Parties are simply groupings that can participate in and enrich the democratic process, provided that the foundations of their formation and financing are sound. Today, however, Libya has more than one hundred political parties whose identities, sources of funding, and affiliations are unknown. How can the democratic process, or even the political process, be put in order amid components whose identities and affiliations are unknown? Indeed, the most prominent of these political groupings in terms of organization is the Muslim Brotherhood. Therefore, given the weakness of the other parties, the organized Muslim Brotherhood party would have the advantage, openly declaring allegiance to its leader and its organizational affiliation, while its leaders do not believe in the country's national geography.
To move the Libyan crisis out of its stalemate and end its cycle of going nowhere, the answer is not to beat the drums of war between the two strongest sides at present, but rather for them to sit down together and share temporary power in order to lead the country toward forthcoming elections, after the State Council, Parliament, and Presidential Council have delayed the implementation of the electoral process. The political deadlock must come to an end.
