Turkish backing for emboldened Dbaiba prompts Egypt protest at Arab League meeting
 
 
Courtesy: Government of National Unity Foreign and International Cooperation Ministry Facebook page
 

Egypt’s foreign minister withdrew on Tuesday from an Arab League session chaired by a representative of one of Libya’s two rival governments.

During the televised broadcast of the meeting of Arab foreign ministers, the Egyptian delegation was absent as Najla Mangoush, the foreign minister of the Government of National Unity headed by Abdul Hamid Dbaiba, addressed the room.

Egypt’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson addressed the move on the sidelines of the meeting, saying that the delegation withdrew from the session based on  Cairo’s “clear position” that the GNU is illegitimate. However, officials in Cairo and the Arab League who spoke to Mada Masr on Wednesday and Thursday say that the protest was initiated by an Egyptian security body frustrated with negotiations between stakeholders in the Libyan process, namely what the body sees as Ankara’s lack of adherence to discussions the two countries had in pursuit of an alternative government following clashes in the Libyan capital in August. 

Despite the Turkish-Egyptian talks, Turkey hosted Dbaiba in early September while shunning his rival Fathi Bashagha, the head of a rival government formed earlier this year, who was also in Turkey at the time. According to a Libyan diplomatic source who spoke to Mada Masr on condition of anonymity, Dbaiba emerged from these talks with greater Turkish support, further entrenching his position even as his legitimate right to hold office remains ambiguous. 

Rivalry between the governments escalated into clashes in the center of Tripoli on August 27 when the 777 Brigade, an armed formation created by the former commander of the Tripoli Revolutionaries Brigade, Haitham al-Tajouri, who allied with Bashagha during the second half of 2021, began antagonizing a patrol belonging to the security apparatus led by General Emad Trabelsi, who is from the city of Zintan and loyal to Dbaiba.

Within a short time, the scope of the clashes had expanded to the areas south of the capital and the coastal road west of the city, with different military forces joining either side. 

Forces loyal to Dbaiba succeeded in taking control of the 777 Brigade headquarters and cutting off any reinforcements from reaching the pro-Bashagha fighters. 

In all, 32 people were killed in the clashes and 159 others were injured, before calm was restored a day later. 

The clashes follow a protracted tug of war between Bashagha and Dbaiba since the United Nations push for elections collapsed in December. Bashagha suffered a surprise loss to Dbaiba during the Libyan Political Dialogue Forum, a 74-member body that was formed by the UN after the 2019 war to appoint a new government to advance the UN peace process. In an attempt to depose Dbaiba by forming an alternative government, Bashagha formed an alliance with Libyan National Army commander Khalifa Haftar and speaker of the eastern-based House of Representatives Aguila Saleh — figures who were once Bashagha’s foes in the 2019 war.

However, Bashagha has faced a series of defeats that have weakened any realistic bid he has to seize power, the latest of which was his defeat at the close of August. Bashagha also tried to infiltrate Tripoli on May 16, leading to brief clashes in the center of Tripoli between groups loyal to Dbaiba and a battalion allied with Bashagha. 

The tenuous alliance that formed the backbone of his bid for power has also been weakened, as Mada Masr reported in July that Haftar once again switched sides, striking a deal with Dbaiba that saw the long-standing head of the National Oil Corporation replaced and Haftar loyalists brought into the GNU as a compromise to allow for the UN-sponsored peace process to move forward toward elections. 

Egypt’s backing for Bashagha’s bid to oust the GNU prime minister was in large part a plan by security bodies intended to cause chaos in the west of the country, due to Cairo’s unease with the alignment between the United Arab Emirates and Turkey in their support of Dbaiba, Egyptian officials previously told Mada Masr. The two countries backed opposing sides of the 2019 war in Tripoli but have increasingly found common ground in Libya and in their bilateral relations. 

According to an Egyptian official, the UAE opposed an Egyptian proposal to have a vice chairperson lead this week’s Arab League meeting.   

In the wake of the August clashes, Egypt and Turkey held discussions through security delegations on the ground to support a truce and work toward launching a new government as an alternative to both Dbaiba or Bashagha, according to two Egyptian officials. Egypt, one of the sources says, was ready to abandon Bashagha if a new pathway could be plotted.    

However, such an agreement must contend with the significant power that Dbaiba has amassed on the ground and through his generous appropriations. 

Officials in Turkey appear to be aware of this fact. 

Following the late-August clashes, Bashagha fed information to news outlets in Libya that he had received an official invitation from the Turkish government to travel to Ankara for negotiations. The Turkish ambassador to Libya denied this news. Nonetheless, Bashagha did head to Ankara, where Dbaiba was also scheduled to visit. 

Dbaiba held several high-profile meetings with Turkish officials that were documented on social media. Turkish officials did not meet with Bashagha in a similar fashion, however. 

This discrepancy angered Cairo, according to the first Egyptian official, who says Cairo views the sidelining of Bashagha as an “unacceptable Turkish endeavor to extend political influence.”

In the leadup to the general assembly Arab League meeting, Cairo decided to make its discontent heard but through a nonstandard channel. In the Sunday meeting of the permanent members of the Arab League ahead of the general session, the objection to Mangoush’s position as chair did not come from the Foreign Ministry delegation but a representative of an Egyptian security body who was attending the session, according to two Arab League sources present during the meeting. Following the sessions, many delegates approached the representative for clarification on Egypt’s position, but he declined to comment. 

However, Egypt’s protest might not change much on the ground, as a Libyan diplomatic source tells Mada Masr that Dbaiba was able to reach agreements in meetings with Turkey’s defense and foreign ministers and intelligence chief, which opened the door for a sitdown meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. 

Appointed by a UN process in February 2021, Dbaiba had a mandate to prepare the country for elections in December 2021. However, despite the publicly stated intentions to hold elections, officials in several capitals at the time of Dbaiba’s appointment expressed a lack of willingness to hold the December elections that ultimately faltered. 

Dbaiba was also not very keen on holding elections from the outset, Tarek Megerisi, a policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told Mada Masr at the time. “His actions to build out a patronage network through a big government and an ambitious construction-heavy work plan are further testament to this,” he said. “So far everything points to the idea that Dbaiba is here to stay and is planning for the long term.”

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Ehsan Salah 
Hazem Tharwat 
 
 

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