Libyans have lost faith in political class, US diplomat says after Tripoli clashes

Libyans have lost faith that the political class and its allied militias and mercenaries are willing to end their robbery of the nation’s wealth, a senior US diplomat has warned, after some of the worst violence in Tripoli in years.

More than 32 people were killed and 150 wounded in clashes in the capital last week between militia allied to the rival prime ministers Abdul Hamid Dbeibah and Fathi Bashagha.

Dbeibah’s Government of National Unity, which he has run since last year and which controls the western part of the country, has been based in Tripoli since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi’s regime in 2011, while Bashagha has run the eastern part of the country since March, backed by the military strongman Khalifa Haftar.

Bashagha-allied militia, including a brigade commanded by a wealthy gangster called Haitham al-Tajouri, entered Tripoli to try to topple Dbeibah’s government, but were soundly defeated.

Jeffrey DeLaurentis, a senior adviser to the US mission at the United Nations, gave a bleak assessment of Libya’s prospects at a meeting of the UN security council on Monday.

Libyans, he said, “are losing hope that their country can be free of corruption and foreign influence, that the armed forces can be unified, and that foreign fighters, forces and mercenaries will be withdrawn. They are deprived of basic public services while the powerful cut deals to divvy up hydrocarbon revenues in accordance with their own interests, particularly to militias controlled by various factions, robbing the Libyan people of their national wealth.”

The UN debate presented few fresh ideas, apart from calling on the security council to agree urgently on a new UN special envoy for Libya. Libya has lacked an envoy since November because of political divisions. The Senegalese diplomat Abdoulaye Bathily has been proposed, but has been blocked by some Libyans who fear he will be ineffective.

The security council also heard that the UN panel of experts had named Turkey as one of the countries blatantly violating a UN arms embargo.