Trump aide drew plan on napkin to partition Libya into three

USA - A senior White House foreign policy official has pushed a plan to partition Libya, and once drew a picture of how the country could be divided into three areas on a napkin in a meeting with a senior European diplomat, the Guardian has learned. Sebastian Gorka, a deputy assistant to Donald Trump under pressure over his past ties with Hungarian far-right groups, suggested the idea of partition in the weeks leading up to the US president’s inauguration, according to an official with knowledge of the matter. The European diplomat responded that this would be “the worst solution” for Libya.

Gorka is vying for the job of presidential special envoy to Libya in a White House that has so far spent little time thinking about the country and has yet to decide whether to create such a post.

Libya has been mired in a conflict between two competing governments since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 after a Nato-led intervention. As rival jostle for influence and position in Washington on the hitherto neglected issue, sharp differences have emerged over how much say Russia should have in Libya’s fate. There are fears among some European allies that the White House will reverse the Obama administration’s strong support for the UNbacked Libyan government of national accord, which is based in Tripoli and led by Fayez al-Sarraj.

While the GNA has been seen by some as the best option for achieving stability in the country, it has struggled against a rival government based in Tobruk, eastern Libya, backed by Khalifa Haftar, an anti-Islamist military strongman. Haftar, who would not back partition, has support in some parts of the Egyptian and Russian governments.

In January, he was welcomed onboard the Admiral Kuznetsov, the Russian flagship, as the aircraft carrier sailed along the north African coast. Haftar, a 73-year-old field marshal and former Gaddafi general who later became his bitter opponent, presents himself as a bulwark against Islamism and the Muslim Brotherhood, which makes him appealing to elements of the Trump foreign policy team.

Gorka advocates hardline policies aimed at defeating “radical Islam” and sees the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist group bent on infiltrating the US. As a former Breitbart editor, he is close to Steve Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist, who believes the struggle against radical Islam should be the central theme of US foreign policy. But Bannon’s star is on the wane in the White House and he lost his seat on the national security council last week. Gorka has alarmed foreign diplomats with his views on Libya’s future. The map he drew on a napkin during the transition period cut Libya into three sections, apparently based on the old Ottoman provinces of Cyrenaica in the east, Tripolitania in the northwest and Fezzan in the southwest. (The Guardian)