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Delegates From Libya’s Rival Factions Sign Deal for Unity Government Libya’s Rival Factions Sign Deal for Unity Government
(about 4 hours later)
SKHIRAT, Morocco — Delegates from Libya’s warring factions signed a United Nations-brokered agreement to form a national government on Thursday, a deal that Western powers hope will bring stability and will help fight a growing Islamic State presence. CAIRO — Representatives of Libya’s dueling parliaments signed a United Nations-brokered agreement on Thursday to form a national unity government that supporters said was an important and long overdue step toward ending years of chaos and civil war.
Four years after Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s fall, Libya is deeply fractured, with two rival governments — a self-declared one in the capital, Tripoli, and an internationally recognized one in the east — each backed by coalitions of former rebels and militia groups. Negotiations over the agreement, which was signed in Skhirat, Morocco, had been underway for more than a year. It was finalized after intense diplomacy by Western nations, including the United States, that was widely seen as motivated by worries about the growing strength of a Libyan branch of the Islamic State extremist group.
The United Nations-backed deal calls for a presidential council to lead a unified government, but hard-liners in both factions reject it and questions remain about how it will be carried out in a country where rival armed factions are crucial to power. The agreement was signed by deputies representing the rival parliaments. More than 200 other Libyans, including elected lawmakers and local officials, attended the signing ceremony, according to Naima Jibril, a Libyan judge who attended.
Chants of “Libya, Libya” erupted as representatives from both parliaments signed the accord along with local councils and political parties in the Moroccan coastal town of Skhirat, after more than a year of negotiations. Judge Jibril called it a “historic day” and said the agreement had the support of ordinary Libyans who were not often heard from, rather than “people with militias, or special interests.”
“The doors remain wide open to those who are not here today,” the United Nations envoy Martin Kobler said at the ceremony attended by regional foreign ministers. “The signing of the political agreement is only the first step.” But analysts as well as critics of the deal said the Western pressure might also have resulted in an agreement that was rushed and did not yet have broad enough support from powerful factions across the fractured North African country, including figures who are trying to forge a competing pact. Important questions about how the agreement will be carried out remain unanswered, including where the new government will be based, given the ongoing violence in Tripoli, the capital, and how Libya’s unregulated militias will be brought into line, they said.
Western officials believe war fatigue, promises of foreign aid, the strain on Libya’s oil economy and the common threat of the Islamic State militant group will help build momentum for the national government and bring opponents on board. In a recent report warning of the risks posed by the deal, the International Crisis Group said, “Granting recognition to a government that has insufficient backing will condemn it to irrelevance.”
Under the deal, a nine-member presidential council will form a government with the current, eastern-based House of Representatives as the main legislative chamber and a State Council as a second consultative chamber. The presidential council will name a new government in a month, and a United Nations Security Council resolution will endorse it. Libya has become hopelessly divided since the uprising against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi four years ago. Rival governments project a meager authority in the east and west of the country, undermined by their internal divisions and by unaccountable armed groups that hold sway on the ground. Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced by violence, and the birthplace of the revolt, the eastern city of Benghazi, has been decimated by war.
But the agreement faces questions about how representative the proposed government will be, how it will set up in Tripoli and how various armed factions on the ground will react to a government critics say was imposed on Libya. The push to unify the country took on added urgency over the last year because of a collapsing economy and the rise of a branch of the Islamic State that has taken control of the town of Surt and is increasingly regarded by counterterrorism officials as the most dangerous Islamic State affiliate.
Since revolution ousted Colonel Qaddafi, Libya has struggled with almost constant instability as heavily armed brigades of former rebels and their political allies squabbled for control. Claudia Gazzini, a Libya researcher with the International Crisis Group, said she understood the pressures on Libyans as well as Western powers to seat a unity government. European governments in particular accelerated their push after the terrorist attacks in Paris. “They fear the consolidation of the Islamic State in Libya, and wanted to see something quickly done,” she said.
Battered by protests and attacks, oil production that accounts for most government revenue is now less than half of the 1.6 million barrels per day level before 2011. There is also talk, she said, of a European bombing campaign against the Islamic State militants in Libya — a move that would require the consent of a unified government.
But last year, fighting intensified when one armed faction took over Tripoli, set up its own government and reinstated the old parliament, the General National Congress. Since then, the recognized government and elected House of Representatives operate out of the east of the country. But, Ms. Gazzini added, “it is too risky to move forward without having a clear security plan in place, without having activated a dialogue between the various armed groups,” and without ensuring that the government can be safely based in Tripoli. It would have been better, she said, “to pause for a minute, and bring more people onboard.”
In the chaos, Islamic State militants have steadily expanded their presence, taking over the city of Sirte, attacking a hotel and a prison in Tripoli, ransacking oil fields to the south of Surt and executing a group of Egyptian Christians. Abdulrahman Swehli, an influential figure in the western city of Misurata who has opposed the unity agreement, said some of the figures named to a council to initially head the government were “weak,” given the size of the challenges facing any new government in Libya.
“They have no experience running anything before,” he said. “They don’t have any political influence. I can’t figure out how these figures can run Libya, in the next difficult phase.”