“The US is preparing for intervention in Libya – this time against ISIS. At first they destroyed the country, opened it to radicals, and now they will fight against them there,” Alexey Pushkov, the head of the State Duma Committee for International Affairs, twittered yesterday. The situation in the country is really tense. Grigory Lukyanov, a specialist in the modern history of Libya and the Arab states of the Middle East and North Africa of the Faculty of Humanities of the HSE, recalls that in February of 2011, exactly 5 years ago, the riots in the city of Benghazi turned into major armed clashes between protesters with the so-called armed opposition groups and the government. Then the situation in the country received international coverage, and was considered at the UN Security Council. And those very resolutions 1970 and 1973 were made, which allowed the legitimate intervention of foreign troops and the establishment of a no-fly zone to happen, which has allowed the conflict to reach a new armed level when outside assistance came to the aid of the internal opposition.
“By autumn 2011, in fact, the Libyan Jamahiriya, following the death of Muammar Gaddafi, ceased to exist. Power passed to the Transitional National Council, which did not have control over the entire territory of the country, was a highly amorphous structure that combined supporters of different political views, different territories of the country. A significant part of the government consisted of former migrant workers, who could not be present in the territory of Libya for decades, who did not know the situation in the country well. In the summer of 2012 the country's first elections to the General National Congress were held. The elections, which are considered to be the first general elections to a representative authority for many decades in which newly established political parties participated. During these elections, by a small margin in the percentage of votes, the General National Coalition won, it consisted of an amorphous association of parties and groups, which, as they claim, were committed to a secular path of development. The second party according to the number of votes gained in the elections, which entered parliament, was the 'Party of Justice and Reconstruction', created by the 'Muslim Brotherhood' association. Third and fourth places were also received by parties of the pro-Islamist movement, of pro-Islamist views,” Grigory Lukyanov stated.
According to him, “from the beginning of the new parliament, the new representative body of the authority, the conflict between supporters of the Islamization of Libyan society and supporters of secular development began inside it. In the future, a powerful crisis hit the country, when supporters of Islamist parties, which had become the parliamentary majority, refused to recognize the legitimacy of the work of the Constitutional Assembly, refused to accept the new constitution, and rejected the new electoral legislation. As a result, after the elections of the summer of 2014, two parliaments were formed in the country. There are the House of Representatives in Tobruk and the General National Congress in Tripoli.”
Lukyanov says that “two governments, two parliaments currently coexist in the country. Moreover, the country's Supreme Court is on the side of the pro-Islamist General National Congress, it has foreign allies, foreign support, so it can easily be called a stable government. No less stable than the government in Tobruk, generally accepted by the international institutions, international organizations, and a large number of leading regional and global powers. In 2014-15, another new structure appeared on the political scene. A cell of Islamic State appeared in Libya. And at the moment its resources have considerably increased, its capabilities have considerably increased. Starting in north-eastern Libya, today it has a strong foothold near the city of Sirte. Over the past year the number of militants has increased significantly, largely due to reinforcements which arrived from Syria and Iraq. And today Islamic State is considered to be one of the major threats to the future existence of Libya.”
