Since 2011 and the death of Muammar Qadhafi, Libyan politicians have repeatedly promised the Libyan people that they would work toward state-building, justice, national reconciliation, and prosperity to transform Libya into “another Dubai.” Likewise, international efforts to facilitate state-building and a unified Libya date back over a decade, with two parallel initiatives currently taking place in Libya to help mediate between the country’s rival eastern and western political camps. The 2025 roadmap of UNSMIL, the United Nations Support Mission in Libya, and the Boulos initiative, proposed by U.S. Arab affairs adviser Massad Boulos in April, are the latest efforts to bridge this divide between Libyan elites from east and west. Yet Libya continues to look like an arena in which competing family businesses each claim to represent the best interests of the Libyan people, the country’s true stakeholders, while actually excluding them. For most Libyans, the most tangible aspect of these processes has been the high-level international meetings they involve, which are often presented as signs of progress toward unification in and of themselves. Increasingly, Libyans see this elite engagement in international mediation initiatives as performative rather than constructive. Moreover, they understand that elites stand to gain personally from the focus on international investment in the Boulos initiative. If discussions about the country’s future maintain public focus on a series of arrangements and business deals among powerful families, political networks, and international intermediaries rather than tangible progress toward elected institutions or popular participation, public confidence in these international efforts toward a unified Libya will continue to erode.
The Erosion of Public Trust in Libya’s International Unification Efforts | The Washington Institute
