The black spots of Libya's new ceasefire and the failed agreements of the past
The international community has welcomed the ceasefire reached by the parties to the conflict in Libya with open arms. Despite this, the new agreement reached has left aside issues such as mercenaries, militias and oil, according to the Al Arabiya television channel. The Libyan scenario has been complicated by the interference of foreign powers and the sending of mercenaries from Syria to Libyan lands. The distribution of oil profits has also been left out of the agreement. The new truce is already part of a list of agreements that have been signed over the years and that have never achieved the final objective: peace.
Since the Skhirat Agreement was concluded in Morocco in 2015 under the auspices of the United Nations, several initiatives have been announced to bring Libya out of the crisis that have always ended in failure. These include the Skhirat Agreement signed on 17 December 2015, after months of negotiations between representatives of civil society and Libyan representatives in Morocco, under the auspices of the United Nations, which provided for the formation of a National Accord Government based in Tripoli.
But the parliament elected in 2014 and the National Congress, a transitional council that was elected in August 2012, expressed reservations about the agreement. In November 2018, Italy, the former colonial power of Libya, organized an international conference in Palermo to try to bring the parties together again, but the conference failed because of continuing divisions among the Libyans and foreign interventions, especially from Turkey.
On 28 February 2019, the United Nations announced a new agreement concluded in Abu Dhabi during a meeting between Sarraj and Haftar on the holding of elections in Libya, but without specifying a timetable and it was not implemented. On 20 March 2019, the UN mission to Libya announced a mid-April "national conference" in Ghadames (centre), during which a "road map" would be drawn up to lead the country out of the crisis, but events on the ground took place against the winds of consensus. The recent increase in Turkish interventions and the transfer of mercenaries has fuelled the conflict and deepened the chaos in Libya. After so many failures... it is difficult to know whether the points agreed in the new agreement will be respected or will remain on paper again.
The Arab League, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt have welcomed the ceasefire reached by the two governments in Libya, in conflict since 2015, which will come into effect next week after 15 months of intense fighting, according to Efe news agency.
The Arab League has welcomed in a statement the "commitment to an immediate ceasefire and to the cessation of all military operations on Libyan territory", which in the last 15 months have taken the lives of more than 1,800 people - 400 of them civilians - injured more than 20,000 and forced more than 150,000 to leave their homes and become internally displaced. In the note, the agency also welcomed the commitment of the two parties to "work towards agreements on the comprehensive resumption of oil production and export operations", and thus "turn the page on the conflict (...) to achieve a comprehensive peaceful solution to the Libyan crisis".
The Arab League has also expressed its "hope" that this step will lead to "a formal, permanent and comprehensive ceasefire agreement under the auspices and supervision of the United Nations" to "put an end to foreign military interventions and the presence of mercenaries" involved in the conflict. For its part, the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Foreign Affairs also welcomed the truce and stressed the "need to initiate an internal political dialogue that places the Libyan national interest above all else and establishes a permanent solution (...) and avoids external interference that would endanger Arab regional security", according to a statement.
The Jordanian Foreign Ministry and the Egyptian President, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, also applauded the action and urged the National Accord Government supported by the UN in Tripoli (GNA) and the Libyan National Army (LNA) of Marshal Khalifa Haftar to reach a permanent ceasefire to restore Libya's security and avoid "external interference". The truce announced on Friday, backed separately by both the head of the NAG, Fayez Serraj, and Aquila Saleh, leader of the parliament in the eastern city of Tobrouk, which is guarded by Haftar, is the third announced in the last six months and comes on the eve of the UN-sponsored peace meeting in Switzerland next week.
Both sides have maintained their forces deployed along the strategic Gulf of Sirte, the heart of Libya's oil industry, since the end of May when pro-NATO militias, supported by thousands of Syrian mercenaries sent by Turkey, succeeded in breaking the siege of Tripoli and pushing back the foreign troops and soldiers of fortune under Haftar's command.