Libya’s warring sides reach permanent cease-fire. U.N. calls it ‘historic.’
By Sudarsan Raghavan,
CAIRO — Libya’s warring sides agreed to a permanent cease-fire on Friday to end all hostilities, a pact the United Nations described as “an important turning point towards peace and stability” in the volatile North African country.
Whether Libya can achieve a lasting peace that could lead to elections remains to be seen. Truce agreements have been reached before, only to break down, tossing the country into more chaos and insecurity. In particular, it’s unclear whether Libya’s myriad militias and the numerous foreign powers that are fueling the war will give up their weapons and ambitions.
For now, though, the United Nations, which brokered the cease-fire, is hailing the pact as a “historic achievement.” The warring sides signed the agreement at a ceremony on Friday in Geneva.
“The road to a permanent cease-fire deal was often long and difficult,” Stephanie Williams, the U.N. envoy to Libya, said at the ceremony, adding that “we have to give people hope of a better future.” She said she hopes the agreement will end “the suffering of Libyans and allow those displaced by the conflict to return to their homes.”
While full details were not provided, Williams said the truce calls for fighters from both sides to pull back from front-line positions and return to their bases. More significantly, it calls for the withdrawal of all foreign forces, especially from key players Turkey and Russia, and all mercenaries within three months. The deal, added Williams, will also allow tens of thousands of displaced people inside Libya, as well as refugees outside the country, to return to their homes.
But Williams, a former U.S. State Department official, conceded that mediators still face “a lot of work in the coming days and weeks in order to implement the commitments of the agreement.”
Ever since the 2011 Arab Spring revolts and NATO intervention led to the ouster and killing of Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi, Libya has been in a state of upheaval. The current incarnation of those tensions pits a U.N.-installed government in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, against a rival government based in the east.
Martial Trezzini
EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
Stephanie Williams, head of the United Nations Support Mission in Libya, holds a news conference in Geneva, Oct. 21, 2020.
Both sides are supported by a constellation of militias seeking power and wealth, as well as regional and Western powers that want to exert influence over the strategically important oil-producing country nestled along the Mediterranean Sea and in Europe’s backyard.
Over the past year, Libya has experienced its most violent era since the revolution, triggered by an offensive on Tripoli in April 2019 by renegade commander Khalifa Hifter, who is aligned with the eastern authorities. Militias in the west rose up to fight Hifter and prevent the Tripoli government from falling.
The conflict drew in more than a dozen foreign powers, which supplied weaponry, mercenaries and training to both sides in violation of an international arms embargo. The United Arab Emirates, Russia, Egypt and other powers backed Hifter. Turkey, Qatar and others entered to back the Tripoli government.
In June, Hifter’s offensive was pushed back. Since then, fighting has died down, even as both sides prepared to battle over the strategic city of Sirte, currently under Hifter’s control.
The lowering of tensions, amid international pressure, provided an opening for U.N.-sponsored mediators to resurrect talks to achieve a truce. This week marked the fourth round of talks between members of a joint military commission, which the United Nations hopes will eventually lead to national elections in Libya.
On Wednesday, Williams told reporters that the warring factions had reached agreements to open up air and land routes within the fractured nation, tone down harmful rhetoric and pave the way to fully reopening Libya’s oil production.
