Libya's top leader of the GNA dismisses his interior minister

The prime minister of the Government of National Accord (GNA), Fayez Sarraj, dismissed the interior minister, Fathi Bashagha, one of the most powerful and influential men in western Libya and an ally of the Tripoli executive.

The dismissal coincides with reports of a possible harsh confrontation between the two strongmen of the GNA owing to the excessive repression carried out against the protests triggered by the difficult living conditions in Libya that erupted last Sunday and were dispersed by militias apparently under the control of Bashagha, who originated from the powerful city-state of Misrata, Allied to the GNA, which has been supported by the United Nations (UN) since 2016 and by Qatar and Turkey, countries that organised coverage of the Tripolitan government and the sending of paid mercenaries from Syria attached to groups linked in the past to terrorist organisations such as Daesh and al-Qaeda, as various media have pointed out.

On Thursday, the human rights organisation Amnesty International (AI) called for an investigation into the serious incident that occurred during the protests, in which militias used heavy weapons, and demanded that the whereabouts of six of the demonstrators who are missing be known.

The demonstrators protested about the continuous power cuts, the shortage of running water and fuel and the lack of money, but also about the enormous power exercised by the militias, which control the capital of Tripoli outside the government. Militias sent by the Turkish nation, with the financial support of the Qatari state, which carry great weight in the Tripolitan enclave and have helped change the direction of the civil war raging in Libya and pitting the GNA against the Libyan National Army (LNA) led by Marshal Khalifa Haftar, which is in turn supported by Russia (which has also sent mercenaries from the so-called Wagner Group), France, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia and Egypt. All this is part of an armed conflict that has become a dispute involving several foreign powers with geostrategic interests in North Africa, specifically Libya, owing to its privileged position in the Mediterranean area and its oil resources. 

Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, signed an agreement with Fayez Sarraj at the end of 2019 to secure Turkish military support for the GNA, with the aforementioned dispatch of paid combatants, and to distribute exclusive economic zones under the great Ottoman interest in gas and oil prospecting in the Mediterranean. The involvement of the Eurasian country has changed the course of a war that was controlled by the LNA of Haftar after the last offensive launched on April 4, 2019 on Tripoli to put an end to the last stronghold of the Tripolitan Executive. Thanks to the Turkish support, the GNA militias managed to recover ground and take key points such as Sorman, Sabratha or Al-Watiya airport; they even threatened to go after the enclaves of Sirte and Jufra. Indeed, the important port city of Sirte is considered a red line by neighbouring Egypt (an ally of the LNA), which threatened to send its powerful armed forces if any action were to be taken on this city. 

Among the armed groups akin to Sarraj's forces is the Special Dissuasion Forces (RADA) militia attached to the Ministry of the Interior and led by the warlord and Salafist leader Abdel Rauf Kara.

Kara is one of the most powerful men in Tripoli and has been one of the leaders of the fight against the siege of the capital by the troops of Marshal Khalifa Haftar, an ally of the other unrecognised executive in eastern Libya and a strongman of the country; a fight against the LNA led by Bashagha himself.

The now cornered minister of the interior has also sounded on several occasions as a possible replacement for Sarraj at the head of the GNA, which since it was formed in 2016 at the behest of the UN has neither managed to establish itself in the territory nor secure the approval of the Libyans, who are tired after nearly a decade of war that has destroyed the country. Bashagha's post has been assigned by the Council of the Presidency of the GNA to Undersecretary of the Interior Khaled Mazen.

Libya is a failed state, a victim of chaos and civil war since NATO contributed militarily to the victory of the various rebel groups over the dictatorship of Muammar al-Qadhafi in 2011.

The fratricidal conflict that has been raging in the country since 2015 has become a multinational armed confrontation in recent months, totally privatized, with no armies, which are waged by local militias and foreign mercenaries sent by both Russia and Turkey, the two countries most involved along with France, Egypt and the UAE.

Days ago both sides announced their commitment to a ceasefire, the third in five months, which various experts consider insufficient to achieve peace in Libya, something that could only be achieved by expelling the armed militias, the most serious problem the North African country has.