Good steps in Libya
France’s moves can help stem migrant tide
French President Emmanuel Macron brought together two of the principal rival leaders of Libya and, in Paris on Tuesday, won joint pledges of a ceasefire and elections next year.
There are causes for skepticism of the solidity of the accord and clear barriers still to be overcome. However, there is no question that the agreement is important for Libya and the region and a step in the right direction.
Libya has had a tormented history since its leader, Moammar Gadhafi was overthrown and killed in 2011. Its population of 6 million has known basically nothing but conflict since American, Arab, British and Italian military intervention brought about regime change in the formerly oilrich, authoritarian state.
It currently has at least three governments: the Tobruk-based eastern one, led more or less by Gen. Khalifa Haftar; a United Nations-based Government of National Accord in Tripoli, the ostensible Libyan capital, led by Prime Minister Fayez alSarraj; and the National Salvation Government, also based in Tripoli. There are also across the country various tribal and local armed militias, which answer basically to no one.
Apart from what peace and elections can mean to Libyans, there is a more important regional issue that stability in that country could help to ameliorate. With no effective government and an 1,100-mile-long Mediterranean coastline, Libya has become the center of a marketplace for human trafficking from troubled, poor African and Middle Eastern countries. The migrants’ destination is Western Europe, across the Mediterranean Sea.
It is estimated that some 100,000 migrants have crossed since January, up 17 percent from the same period last year, and that some 2,300 have died in the process, including many women and children. What has occurred is virtually more than the world can bear to see, and the only way to stop it is to somehow restore law and order to Libya.
Prospects for success are shaky. There have been other tentative Libyan agreements. The third “government,” the National Salvation group, was not at the Paris talks. Gen. Haftar is backed by the governments of Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, with a history of support from the CIA. He is ambitious, with his armies controlling twothirds of the country, including its second city, Benghazi. He had previously threatened to attack Tripoli, the headquarters of the two rival groups. His government also controls most of Libya’s oil facilities.
But this new effort is certainly worth a shot, given the stakes for Libyans and the region, including southern Western Europe, especially France and Italy. The Italian government is cross at not having been involved in the negotiations that Mr. Macron organized, given its colonial past and oil interests in Libya. However, France, too, once governed part of the country. The Italians had coastal Tripolitania and Cyrenaica; France, the desert Fezzan in the south.
The Libyan accord, if it holds, is clearly a feather in the cap of the new French president. So far, Mr. Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is active in the Qatar Middle Eastern dispute, have stepped up to the plate in trying to resolve international conflicts as the United States has stepped back, preoccupied with domestic political issues.