On December 17 in Morocco a formal agreement was reached between Tripoli and Tobruk, the two cartels that divide the areas of influence of a country without more institutions established by the 2011. Today's Libya, far from being stabilized and pacified, is represented by two geographic poles, ironically superimposable on the two historical souls of the country, Cyrenaica and Tripolitania, but who, in the midst of an all against all, supervise the they are internal to very different matrix interests.
What Western governments and the United Nations through UNSMIL seem to be in a hurry to show is a façade agreement that gives public opinion and the media a more institutional overview of the North African country. Much emphasis is given to the composition of the executive that based on a government of 32 ministers should move Libya from the civil war to a situation of normality.
The agreement is expected by the 29 January (the ratification would be up to the Parliament of Tobruk) and goes through a division of the departments that takes into account the political burdens of all the components.
The deputies of Prime Minister Al Sarray would presumably be five. The defense would go to Tobruk with General Haftar (ill-concealed knowledge of the CIA) in a key role, while the Interior would go to the Tripoli front.
Currently what is called the legitimate government of Tobruk, boasts a victory in the 2014 elections based on a turnout of 10% of those entitled. The Islamic front of Tripoli, controlled by the Libyan Muslim Brotherhood, in turn is all but compact. The "Misurata militias" and the Islamic cartel Fajr they have a lot of say in the "west front" and make the basis of any deal with Tobruk absolutely unstable.
Why hurry to give good news?
The latest rumors of ISIS militia progress in Libya are out of control tissues. The actual expansion in the country of the alleged Caliphate is not tangible, also because the recruitment of new militiamen does not take place on a confessional and ideological basis, but on that of despair. The same thing happened in Derna, a stronghold of the Sunni Waabhite Islamists fought by the late Gaddafi. After the revolt against the colonel and the civil war began, many young Libyans were attracted by the extremist fringes only because they lacked institutional reference points. The link between the Libyan population and militias (including ISIS) is absolutely instrumental on both sides. This also due to a historically secular tradition of the Libyan middle bourgeoisie.
In other words, beyond the UN proclamations, there does not seem to be any particular urgency in Libya, because the stalemate is total. Only a regime of complete anarchy is shining, and the increasingly blatant certainty that Gaddafi's elimination was perhaps the greatest geopolitical mistake of the last 50 years in the Mediterranean area.
Whatever the developments over the next few days, it is easy to foresee that the real control of the Libyan territory by any government would still be a chimera.
What really matters today seems to be to give an institutional hat to the only central aspect of the Libyan question: the control of the multinationals over resources exercised through the National Oil Corporation. The militias prepared for this purpose continue to do their work undisturbed.
Whether the ISIS is entrenched in Sirte, whether the government of national unity is under way or that there is an imaginary agreement for a military intervention by NATO or the UN, for the moment, these are paradoxically secondary aspects.
(photo: al-aysh al-lībī)
