Playing on contradictions, they aim to perpetuate chaos as their best chance for survival.
Whenever some development threatens to deepen their political and social isolation, Libya’s Islamists resort to the creation of a myriad of parallel bodies, in a cloning strategy that has become too familiar by now to give the cloned entities any credibility.
The latest cloning episode was triggered by the recent visit of Libyan tribal elders to Cairo to request Egypt’s intervention in the Libyan conflict.
This visit clearly revealed the lack of social and tribal cover for Libya’s Islamists and their political front in Tripoli, the so-called Government of National Accord (GNA). It was clear that Libya’s tribes were biased towards the Libyan National Army (LNA) led by Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar and were counting on it to end the chaos created by the militias, the military arm of the Islamists and the GNA.
Reacting to the event which has obviously embarrassed them and wanting to belittle its significance, the Islamists and their GNA allies resorted to several methods. First, a number of their political activists unleashed a campaign to downplay the importance of tribal loyalty and tribal power in Libya, which was completely beside the truth. When that strategy failed, they decided to use the tribal card themselves by either showing that rejectionist voices which existed within each tribe represented in the delegation that had travelled to Cairo or by relying on the Council of Elders and Sheikhs of Libya which is controlled by Islamist figures. This council is a parallel entity to the Supreme Council of Libyan Tribes and Cities.
The parallel council (Libyan Elders) issued a statement in which it disavowed those who met with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and even questioned their identity and mental health. “We pray to Allah to return their minds to them,” said the statement, stressing that “the tribes of Libya, and even the tribes that these claim to represent, are innocent of what they are trying to achieve.”
If that wasn’t enough, the Islamists did not hesitate to resort to creating divisions and infighting within the same tribe. A statement, claimed to have been issued by some Social Council of the Maghariba Tribes, a group of well-known tribes in eastern Libya and whose head, Sheikh Saleh al-Atyoush, was present at the Cairo meeting and delivered a speech in which he called on Egypt to intervene to put an end to Turkish expansion in Libya, condemned the trip of “a delegation falsely claiming to represent the Maghariba tribe to seek al-Sisi’s help, in a desperate attempt to hinder the advance of the GNA forces to extend their authority over the entire territory of the Libyan state.”
For its part, the Supreme Council of the Notables and Elders of the Libyan City of Zintan condemned tribal “sheikhs” loyal to the LNA who called for the intervention of the Egyptian army in Libya, declaring its refusal to have “the tribes and their elders become a substitute for the elected legislative bodies, such as the House of Representatives and the High Council of State.”
Since their defeat in the 2014 legislative elections, the Islamists have not stopped creating parallel bodies that first began by refusing to recognise the new parliament, questioned its legitimacy and pressed the Constitutional Court to issue a decision to dissolve it despite it being recognised by the international community. The court’s decision prolonged the life of the National Congress and the Islamists jumped on the opportunity and formed a government parallel to the government appointed by the elected parliament. Then they forced the parliament to flee to eastern Libya in what was then called Operation Dawn of Libya.
The Skhirat Agreement of 2015 reintroduced the Islamists and their supporters back into the Libyan equation and maintained their presence in the General National Congress, which later turned into the High Council of State. But even then, they were intent on creating rifts and splits within the parliament. They refused to recognise the legislative body for years and went ahead and cloned it by creating a parallel body, after they had baited some of its members to meet in Tripoli, further complicating the situation and the negotiation process.
In efforts to show that they had support in areas under the LNA’s control, especially in the eastern Barqa region and the southern Fezzan region, they formed in these areas opposition bodies whose main role was to promote the claim that the army’s goal was to establish a military government, while of course wilfully ignoring to mention the danger that the other side posed to the country’s national security by continuing to support the conditions of chaos.
To that end, the Islamists formed what is called the Barqawi Organization, which has been stoking sentiments of the Barqawi public opinion against the army and calling on the tribes of the eastern region to withdraw their sons from the battle to liberate Tripoli when the army was at the gates of the capital. The move was meant first to disrupt the battle over Tripoli, and second, to make it seem like a regional war between the provinces of Barqa and Tripoli and not a war on rogue militias and their Islamist supporters.
Months before the onset of the battle for the liberation of Tripoli, the Islamists tried to create their own parallel army to compete with Haftar’s LNA, but they failed. In the end, the battle for Tripoli ended with the withdrawal of the LNA from the entire western region to Sirte, Jafra and the oil ports.
Still intent on creating a parallel army, the Islamists started looking for Haftar’s clone, a strong military figure enjoying the trust of the various Libyan tribes. The plan is to have that figure serve as a pivot to attract the career officers who had served during the defunct regime of the late Muammar Gaddafi and then chose to stay away from military action when the regime fell, opening the flood gates to the various armed militias. The Islamists’ plan was to continue playing on the different contradictions of the Libyan scene and creating space for manoeuvring. On the face of it, the Islamists want to look like they are pursuing reconciliation with the former regime, but in reality their goal is to perpetuate chaos, which represents the best conditions for their survival.
At that time, there were reports of an agreement between the Islamists and Lieutenant General Ali Kanna, former commander of the Air Force and military commander of the southern region under Qaddafi. Kanna had remained loyal to Qaddafi until his fall and was in command of an important military force in southern Libya. In February 2019, GNA Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj appointed him military commander of the southern military region, then Kanna disappeared from the scene after the outbreak of the battle for Tripoli.
In addition, the Islamists tried to win over the supporters of the former regime after they had ostracised them for years and called for their exclusion from the scene due to the fact that most of them sided with the army or even joined its ranks. In 2018, however, and more precisely during the Dakar Conference of May 2018 that brought together Islamist leaders, among them the former emir of the Libyan Fighting Group and head of the Watan Party, Abdul Hakim Belhaj, and figures of the former regime, the Islamists sought to yank away the card of supporters of the former regime from Haftar. The latter was the first to call for the re-integration of the leading figures of the former regime into the state and even pressured the parliament to issue a general amnesty law.