The Debrief: Tripoli’s deteriorating baseline

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Tripoli’s deteriorating baseline

An assassination and an armed militia’s takedown triggered a domino effect of clashes and protests in Libya’s capital, leaving the country more fragile, though its fractured status quo appeared to hold.

The full details of what happened in Tripoli on the night of May 12 may never be made public. The clashes erupted rather suddenly, perhaps underscoring the country’s deep political fracture, but what followed is clear: two days of heavy fighting that left dozens dead, paralyzed much of the city, and deepened the political fragmentation that continues to define Libya’s capital.

There is no agreed-upon death toll. Tripoli health authorities have said at least 55 people were killed while local media put that figure at more than 100, after two days of fighting. In a city – and country – with no clear authority, where there is little access to reliable information, even the basics are murky. Libya does not run on hard data, but instead survives on a worn-out instinct for endurance that is eroding the public’s patience.

“Tripoli remains a relatively safe place to be… This is not like the war that we saw a few years ago,” said Factal’s Middle East and Africa lead Ahmed Namatalla. “There have been no large-scale evacuations of diplomatic missions. There’s still business being done on the ground … There’s traffic police on the ground, and there are services. But that does not mean the risk is limited. And the reason for that is the proliferation of weapons. Clashes might happen relatively infrequently, about every few months, but when they do happen, they are significant,” Namatulla said.

The suburbs of Tripoli continue to act as micro-fiefdoms for various armed groups with shifting allegiances, a reflection of the country’s general state. Libya’s baseline for normal continues to deteriorate. Despite its oil wealth, living standards remain low and corruption rampant. Since the 2011 civil war, the unsuccessful fight for singular power over Libya has left the country riven, with semi-state rival armed groups running lucrative state institutions and duplicate executive bodies outliving trust and mandates.

“There seems to be no end on the horizon to the divide between eastern Libya and western Libya where the two rival governments are based. Libya, for multiple years now, has just been run kind of day-to-day on both sides of this divide – there are two of everything, so the respective security apparatuses of both these sides try to issue decrees and laws that they say apply to the entire country, when really, they just apply to their region, and even there it only applies to the areas they control within the regions,” Namatalla said.

“Each side tries to flex its muscles every once in a while by doing things like trying to make changes in the security apparatus,” he added.

“There seems to be no end on the horizon to the divide between eastern Libya and western Libya.”

And it appears an attempted change of the capital’s security landscape triggered the unrest on May 12, when the assassination of a militia commander set off the deadliest round of fighting that Tripoli has seen in months

The head of the Stablisation Support Apparatus (SSA), based in Abu Salim neighborhood, was assassinated at Tekbali base, the stronghold of the powerful 444 Brigade. The clashes that ensued drew in a third armed group, the Special Deterrence Force, also known as Rada, which had a tight grip on more than one area in Tripoli, including Souk al Juma.

The prime minister of Libya’s Tripoli-based west Government of National Unity framed the violence as an operation against illegitimate militias, in this case targeting SSA and Rada, an effort to consolidate the power of the state. As part of the so-called operation, Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah also attempted to defang Rada, by bringing it under the control of his government. Dbeibah stopped short of admitting state involvement in the SSA leader’s assassination but appeared to offer a veiled rationale for removing him.

This, however, was hamstrung by the deep divides of Libyan security and politics. Armed pro-Rada groups rushed to the capital to join the fight against Dbeibah-allied forces amid anti-government protests. One by one, the many bodies that oversee the east and west-based governments issued indictments against the leader, one even ordering a reversal of his orders “restructuring security institutions.”

“There is zero chance elections will happen in Libya anytime soon.”

Dbeibah remains in office for now, despite protests, cabinet departures,and having lost his mandate when the parliament, based in the east, voted him out in 2024.

Just days before the Tripoli unrest, a UN mission, formed in February, proposed options for a legal electoral framework in a bid to resolve Libya’s enduring political crisis. With the transfer of power in Libya rarely a linear process, it seems unlikely much will come of it.

“There is zero chance elections will happen in Libya anytime soon. There is precedent for a very thorough UN-led process falling apart at the last minute. It doesn’t matter what you plan, there is just no political will on the ground,” Namatalla said.

Tripoli, he says, is under almost-annual attempts to unseat the government.

“To me, that just represents another tick in the buildup of pressure towards something even more disruptive happening in the future. You have state-sanctioned armed groups affiliated with the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Interior. And then you have civilian-led militias that will sometimes carry out the work of the state. When you have a conflict this deep that has dragged on for this long, the potential for alliances to shift.

Just the possibilities for unrest are endless.”

Written by Halima Mansoor. Edited by Bada Kim.

Tripoli’s deteriorating baseline

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