Soft Coup In Libya Causes Meltdown, Breakup

The UN backed General National Accord (GNA) arrived in Tripoli over a week ago and current events are looking more and more like a coup. Meanwhile last Friday PM Designate for the GNA suddenly flew to London on a "private visit"; odd time for him to leave Libya wouldn't you say?

There are consequences for Malta. A main one is that for most of the EU, the intended sanctions against GNA 'spoilers' are no problem for them as neither Abu Sahmain (Tripoli General National Congress, or GNC) nor Aguila Saleh (Tobruk House of Representatives, or HoR) are EU citizens and also neither have much in the way of overseas assets but the exception seems to be Malta. So the Maltese authorities are having to trawl through everything at the UN & EU's behest to find their assets and then to freeze them. Knowing that the UN/EU is likely to suddenly unfreeze them if these two men are intimidated enough to decide to cooperate. Either way Malta is put in an awkward position.

Let's backtrack a little. The GNA consisted in total of a nine-strong presidency council led by a UN selected prime minister, Fayez Serraj, and with Tripoli airspace closed, they were conveyed to their capital city by Italian frigate, transferring at sea to a small rusty Libyan coastal patrol vessel to preserve the illusion that they were not being helped by western powers. But the GNA had fractured even before they were helped aboard the Italian vessel, with two of the nine abruptly resigning, accusing the leadership of being too cozy with Tripoli militias and for their opposition to Gen. Hafter remaining head of the army.

Nevertheless, the so called GNA, more correctly called the Presidential Council, now reduced to seven, arrived in the capital, choosing to set up office in the naval base, the only part of the capital judged safe from roaming militias.

A coup, in which a small number of people take control of a state, can be defined in many ways. On the one hand a coup can be a seizure of power through brute force. On the other, it can be the usurping of power without violence. Last week has seen what amounts to the latter unfold in Libya.

Reinforcing this coup reality, seventy three members of the Tripoli parliament, the GNC, agreed this week to reform themselves as the State Council, designed by the UN as part of the legislature of the Serraj government. However, most of the 73 were not elected to the GNC, as the UN rules stipulate, but are Libya Dawn acolytes added to the GNC after it captured Tripoli by force two years ago.

Compounding the confusion, the State Council then amended the UN rules, declaring they had the right to self-declare the new government valid. That’s a coup folks, an Islamist one, egged on by the West.

The elected HoR in Tobruk, which the UN had insisted must agree to the plan, has been discarded in actuality. UN officials were angry that the HOR failed to vote yes to the plan and indeed failed to even meet to discuss it in recent weeks.

The fact is that the Libyan Political Agreement (LPA) the UN backed document of December 17, 2015 has been torn up. Gone also is the LPA’s stipulation that new chiefs must be appointed to the Libyan Investment Authority (LIA) and the Central Bank of Libya (CBL) which hold tens of billions of dollars of foreign cash and assets. Instead, the former chiefs, approved by Libya Dawn, have control.

The big winners are therefore the Muslim Brotherhood and various factions from Misrata, and Libya Dawn, who, despite losing in the 2014 elections, now have international recognition from western powers, and through this control of Libya’s vast overseas assets. Other specific winners are Abdel Hakim Belhadj and MB leader Ali Sallabi both of whom have been feted by Martin Kobler in Istanbul in the past few days.

It is a personal victory for Britain’s Libya envoy Jonathan Powell, who mainly brokered the deal and boasts of his close links to the Brotherhood. In a damning e-mail, newly released, between Sidney Blumenthal and Hillary Clinton, Powell wrote about his ability to use his success in negotiating between the IRA and the British government twenty years ago to end terrorist campaigns. Powell further boasted that this model, being used in a number of countries through a “below radar” NGO, is workable given his close contacts, he claims, with British Intelligence. A very doubtful assertion.

But the lack of transparency over the Libya process, is coming into sharp focus. Panamagate is erupting, highlighting the lack of transparency over the world’s wealth, and it is just this lack of transparency that Powell is encouraging with Libya.

The breakup of Libya is imminent, along an east-west fault line, and the irony is that Western powers will have been the orchestrator.

It seems to me that the West's plan for Libya is now in final meltdown.