World
Diplomatic failings and ‘elite bargains’ prolonging Libya turmoil: Analysts
After weeks of tension that saw the Central Bank of Libya (CBL) shuttered, salaries go unpaid and cash vanish, the country’s two rival governments appeared ready to accept a United Nations-brokered agreement to resume operations, before once more reverting to a deadlock familiar to many in the country.
The internationally recognised Government of National Accord (GNA) in the west had tried to replace CBL Governor Sadiq al-Kabir, accusing him of mishandling oil revenues and going to the extent of sending armed men in to remove him from his office.
Angered, the Government of National Unity (GNU) in eastern Libya, which is supported by renegade commander Khalifa Haftar, shut down much of the country’s oil production, which it controls, in protest.
“This is serious,” said Jalel Harchaoui, an associate fellow with London’s Royal United Services Institute. “The CBL, although weaker now than it was a few years ago, remains a linchpin to the nation’s access to hard currency.”
He added that the CBL funds most of Libya’s imports of food, medicines and other staples, which the country cannot last long without.
The clash is the latest battleground in the 13-year rivalry between political and military elites that has dogged Libya since the overthrow of long-term ruler Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.
Since then, various analysts say, life in Libya has deteriorated as fighting has continued between rival Libyans and as the international community has tried to preserve the rule of a political and military elite, convinced they are the best for stability and for the proclaimed goal of “unifying Libya”.
Why the central bank?
As well as holding Libya’s vast oil wealth, the CBL unified Libya’s eastern and western “central banks” in one body to manage the salaries of civil servants and soldiers from both governments and build confidence that recovery was possible.
After the GNA-GNU struggle over who would head the CBL, al-Kabir fled the country, claiming that he took the access codes for bank deposits with him, leaving the bank isolated from international financial networks.
Asim al-Hajjaji, director of the CBL compliance department, said international contacts had been restored, although Al Jazeera understands that most international trading remains suspended.
Meanwhile, oil exports have plunged to a new low, salaries are uncertain and everyday life for about six million Libyans is in turmoil.
“The United Nations is talking about talks, which is a sure sign we’re nowhere near resolution,” Tarek Megerisi, a senior fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said of negotiations to restart operations at CBL.
The West, which typically backs the GNA despite it being responsible for much of the uncertainty, “doesn’t know what to do, or really has the bandwidth to do it. They’re dealing with wars in Gaza and Ukraine,” he said.
“It’s just too much. In Libya, international efforts to achieve any kind of just settlement have lost momentum.”
And this is far from the first time.
Over more than a decade of uncertainty and war, analysts say, the international community’s efforts focused on shoring up the country’s elites in the hope that might lead to stability.
The latest talks over the CBL appear little different, with access to the millions of dollars in assets of primary interest to the country’s elites, and access to the services and certainty craved by much of the population seemingly an afterthought, analysts told Al Jazeera.
Elite bargains presiding over endless turmoil
“Preventing a shooting war has come to be seen as the only international strategy in Libya,” Tim Eaton, a senior fellow at Chatham House who contributed to a paper on the international practice of prioritising powerful elites, told Al Jazeera.
“It’s death by a thousand cuts,” Harchaoui said.
“Everyone’s talking about a return to the status quo as if there were ever a neat, static equilibrium,” he noted. “This was never the case. Even when things appeared quiet, the arrangements were continually decaying and degrading. And that gradual deterioration is what suddenly became visible last month with the CBL crisis.”
National elections, or even a framework that might lead to them, remain a distant prospect after the last vote, initially scheduled for December 2021, was postponed after infighting.
“Any move towards holding national elections has been blocked,” Eaton said. “Both [Abdul Hamid] Dbeibah [head of the GNA] and Haftar might say they want elections tomorrow, but they only really want their side, or at least their proxies, on the ballot paper.”
Both governments continue to rule separately, while their members, allies and militias profit from smuggling in both people and fuel and unregulated cross-border trade.
However, as individual members jockey for position within small and exclusive circles, systems intended to support everyday life in Libya continue to deteriorate and fail.
Eaton notes that the city of Derna, which flooded in September 2023 after a dam that the GNU was responsible for collapsed, remains unreconstructed.
“For healthcare, Libyans have to go overseas,” he noted. “And if anyone is ever caught in an emergency, there’s no one number or department they can call.
“All the while, the super-rich that are supposed to be looking after people, are getting even richer.”
Both sides, he explained, claim to work towards establishing a central government while state institutions needed to oversee any future state, like a strong central bank, have been hollowed out and captured by elites on either side.
Regionally, over its 13 years of sporadic conflict and political uncertainty, Libya has become a continued source of instability within an already unstable region.
Within a divided Libya, various actors have come to use the country’s east as a staging point from which to project their own international ambitions in Sudan, Syria and beyond.
Overwhelming human cost
In addition to the uncertainty piled on the Libyan population are the more than 1,000 refugees, irregular migrants and asylum seekers who have died or gone missing on the Central Mediterranean migration route, in which Libya is a key part, this year.
“The West and UN in Libya are performing diplomatic theatre while the country crumbles,” Anas El Gomati of the Sadeq Institute said.
“They have a toolbox of leverage gathering dust. Instead of applying pressure, they’re enabling corruption by legitimising those without electoral mandate or political credibility. That’s not diplomacy; that’s complicity in slow motion.”
El Gomati continued: “East or west, Libya’s compass points to chaos and corruption. Haftar and his kids carve out a fiefdom through war crimes in the east, while Dbeibah runs a ‘pay-as-you-go’ loyalty scheme with armed groups in the west.
“The irony? The elites don’t trust the very banking system they’ve bled dry, so they keep their assets overseas, which the West could freeze, but they’re too busy shaking hands with the very hands pickpocketing Libya’s future.
“Western policymakers and Libyan elites are locked in a race to the bottom of delusion and greed,” El Gomati concluded. “The West sees a finish line; the elites see an endless buffet. It’s not naivete, it’s willful blindness, and the Libyan people are paying for it. In the Libyan elite’s casino, the house always wins, and corruption is the chip that never runs out.”
Lebanon, rocket attack on Unifil base of the Italian contingent: no injuries
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As President Donald Trump continues to express anger at NATO European allies for their lack of help in the war with Iran, he’s making clear their behavior comes at a cost.
In the weeks during the war and since the ceasefire, the president has hit back not just with words but with definitive actions against several of those countries.
Germany
On Saturday, Trump said that he would withdraw more than the initial 5,000 U.S. troops from Germany as stated by the Pentagon, after Berlin’s leader denigrated the American effort to stop Iran’s regime from building a nuclear weapon.
TRUMP WEIGHS PULLING US TROOPS FROM GERMANY AMID CLASH WITH CHANCELLOR OVER IRAN WAR
President Donald Trump and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz meet in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., on March 3, 2026, to discuss issues including recent U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
A day earlier he said about Germany that “We’re gonna cut way down. We’re cutting a lot further than 5,000.” The Trump administration previously announced a contraction of 5,000 troops in Germany after the country’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Iran’s regime “humiliated” Trump.
In an apparent state of panic, Merz walked back his attack on Trump and his Iran strategy on Sunday. The chancellor wrote on X: “The United States is and will remain Germany‘s most important partner in the North Atlantic Alliance. We share a common goal: Iran must not be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons.”
Trump ratcheted up his troop reduction number against Germany amid his comments about downsizing U.S. boots on the ground in Spain and Italy because they failed to aid America in the war against Iran. The president’s anger at Western European countries has been simmering for weeks and could lead to profound changes in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
TRUMP CRITICIZES SPAIN AMID IRAN, NATO RIFT AS PM SANCHEZ FACES QUESTIONS OVER POLITICAL MOTIVES
Nile Gardiner, the director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at The Heritage Foundation, told Fox News Digital, “The lack of support for the United States has been nothing less than treacherous. I think the president has the right to be outraged by the lack of support from key European allies.”
An Iranian flag is planted in the rubble of a police station, damaged in airstrikes on March 3, 2026, in Tehran, Iran. (Majid Saeedi/Getty Images)
He said, “There is a very deep-seated cultural appeasement in Europe toward the Iranian regime that goes back many decades, and a flat-out refusal to accept the reality of the immense dangers of a nuclear-armed Iran. European leaders are sleepwalking toward destruction with this perilous path they have taken.
TRUMP IS RIGHT ABOUT NATO’S WEAKNESS — THE REAL QUESTION IS HOW DOES AMERICA FIX IT
“The lack of support for the United States is how far Europe has gone toward losing its moral compass. Iran is a genocidal regime that threatens to wipe Israel off the map.” He noted that the Islamic Republic has killed huge numbers of its population.
Gardiner, a former advisor to Lady Margaret Thatcher said, “If you listen to European leaders, it’s as if the U.S. is the villain here.”
Merz, speaking last week in Marsberg, criticized the U.S. approach to Iran, saying Washington was being “humiliated by the Iranian leadership” and expressing hope the conflict would end “as quickly as possible.”
Gardiner said of Merz’s remarks, “Comments like these actually help the propaganda of the Iranian dictatorship. It is astonishing that a German chancellor would make these kinds of remarks at a time of war… and the German chancellor is giving comfort to the Iranian regime. It is disgusting.”
Numerous Fox News Digital press queries sent to Merz’s spokesman Stefan Kornelius were not returned.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez called the U.S. conflict with Iran “reckless” and “unjust.” (Yves Herman/Reuters)
Spain and Italy
Before his announcement on the troop withdrawal from Germany, and in response to a question about reducing U.S. troops in Spain and Italy, Trump responded, “I mean, they haven’t been exactly on board. Yeah, probably. Yeah, I probably will… Italy has not been of any help to us. And Spain has been horrible. Absolutely horrible.”
Spain’s socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has taken a belligerent stand toward the U.S. and Israeli military campaign against the Iranian regime, forbidding the U.S. from using its military bases in Spain to refuel aircraft or prepare for military action. He has decried the campaign as illegal while staying quiet on the regime’s murder of thousands of protesters and its increased drive to produce ballistic missiles and acquire nuclear weapons-grade enriched uranium.
Gardiner said, “The Spanish have been the worst by a long way. At least the Germans and Italy have allowed the use of its own bases. The Spanish have refused to cooperate in any way with the war.”
Trump told the Italian daily Corriere della Sera last month about the country’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, “I’m shocked at her. I thought she had courage, but I was wrong.”
The Europe expert, Gardiner, sees a wide gulf between how mainly Western European countries and the United States view the preservation of Western civilization, freedom, democracy and liberty.
French President Emmanuel Macron listens to Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni during a working session with world leaders at the G7 summit in Borgo Egnazia, Italy, on June 13, 2024. (Andrew Medichini/AP)
“Europe has lost both its ability and its will to fight. The United States is clearly willing to fight to defend Western civilization and the free world. Much of Europe has given up on this, especially Western Europe. It is an appeasement mindset cojoined with weakness and pacifism and also a growing acceptance by European leaders of mass migration and Islamification.”
He added, “Europe has fundamentally changed over the last 20 years beyond recognition, and yet Europe’s ruling elites accept it seemingly as a fact, with some notable exceptions.”
France and the U.K.
Trump took the United Kingdom and France in March to task for their postion on the war against Iran.
“The Country of France wouldn’t let planes headed to Israel, loaded up with military supplies, fly over French territory,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
“France has been VERY UNHELPFUL with respect to the ‘Butcher of Iran,’ who has been successfully eliminated! The U.S.A. will REMEMBER!!!,” he wrote.
France’s President Emmanuel Macron welcomes Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer at the Elysee Presidential Palace in Paris on Feb. 17, 2025, before an informal summit of European leaders to discuss the situation in Ukraine and European security. (Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images)
Trump also wrote, “All of those countries that can’t get jet fuel because of the Strait of Hormuz, like the United Kingdom, which refused to get involved in the decapitation of Iran, I have a suggestion for you.”
“Number 1, buy from the U.S., we have plenty, and Number 2, build up some delayed courage, go to the Strait, and just TAKE IT.”
“You’ll have to start learning how to fight for yourself, the U.S.A. won’t be there to help you anymore, just like you weren’t there for us. Iran has been, essentially, decimated. The hard part is done. Go get your own oil!”
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Gardiner said the crisis over the Iran war shows that Europe has surrendered. The big Western Europeans have embraced “defeatism,” and “they do not care. It is as simple as that. And future generations will have to pay the price for the course Europe is taking now,” he said.
Fox News’ Brittany Miller and Solly Boussidan contributed to this report.
Published on
Ukraine’s top negotiator Rustem Umerov will hold talks with US officials in Florida on Thursday on how to end the full-scale Russian invasion, Kyiv said on Thursday, amid stalled negotiations during the Iran war.
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“The Secretary of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine will hold a series of meetings today with envoys of the President of the United States,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote in a post on X.
Zelenskyy said Kyiv had “defined the key tasks,” which includes discussing a potential prisoner exchange with Russia and security guarantees for a post-war Ukraine.
“Rustem and I discussed work with our European partners on Drone Deals. We are preparing the agreements reached at the highest level, as well as new steps in joint technological work,” Zelenskyy wrote.
US-mediated talks on ending Europe’s worst conflict since World War II have shown little progress since February, when Washington shifted focus to its war with Iran.
Umerov last met with US special envoy Steve Witkoff and President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner in Florida between 21-22 March.
Since returning to office, Trump has pushed Moscow and Kyiv to negotiate but months of talks have failed to bring the warring parties closer to an agreement to stop the fighting, triggered by Russia’s full-scale invasion four years ago.
The already stalled talks were put on the back burner from late February, when the US-Israeli air campaign against Iran began.
Even before the Middle East war, Russia and Ukraine remained at odds over the key issue of territory.
Ukraine has proposed freezing the conflict along the current front lines.
But Russia has rejected this, saying it wants the whole of the Donetsk region despite it being partly controlled by Ukraine, a demand Kyiv says is unacceptable.
Kremlin ceasefire
Meanwhile, the Kremlin said on Thursday that it would begin a two-day ceasefire with Ukraine starting at midnight that is meant to cover its patriotic 9 May parade, after ignoring a Ukrainian ceasefire earlier this week.
Moscow warned foreign diplomats in Kyiv that it will strike the Ukrainian capital if Ukraine targets its World War II victory parade.
“Yes, we are talking about the 8th and 9th of May,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, when asked if the ceasefire would come into effect from midnight.
Asked about the Ukrainian ceasefire on 6 May, a counter-offer by Kyiv which dismissed Moscow’s demand to stop fighting as “utter cynicism,” Peskov said, “There was no Russian reaction to this.”
The Kremlin ordered a scaled-back version this year, with no military hardware to be on display, over the fear it could be targeted by Ukraine.
Additional sources • AFP
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