Libya remains mired in dysfunction. In the country’s east, state authorities are dominated by the family of Khalifa Haftar, who heads the Libyan Arab Armed Forces. In the west, the Dbeibah family has sought to entrench its power through control of the internationally recognized Government of National Unity under the leadership of Prime Minister Abdel Hamid al-Dbeibah. The United States is seeking to end this division through a diplomatic deal.
Saddam Haftar, the son and heir apparent of Khalifa Haftar, met with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Washington D.C. yesterday. The State Department’s readout said that the two men discussed “ongoing Libyan-led efforts to unify the country’s military, economic, and political institutions.” No deal was announced, but the welcoming of Haftar to the United States was a significant step. Nonetheless, the Trump administration has been keen to insist that its plans are not solely based on bringing the Haftars and the Dbeibahs together. “Our plan is to have one unified government and to unify all the institutions,” Massad Boulos, the U.S. senior advisor for Africa, told the Financial Times of his efforts to broker what was described as a power sharing arrangement in Libya. Yet in reality, unification on the terms laid out by Boulos would legitimize family rule by the Haftars and the Dbeibahs in Libya.
Libya remains mired in dysfunction. In the country’s east, state authorities are dominated by the family of Khalifa Haftar, who heads the Libyan Arab Armed Forces. In the west, the Dbeibah family has sought to entrench its power through control of the internationally recognized Government of National Unity under the leadership of Prime Minister Abdel Hamid al-Dbeibah. The United States is seeking to end this division through a diplomatic deal.
Saddam Haftar, the son and heir apparent of Khalifa Haftar, met with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Washington D.C. yesterday. The State Department’s readout said that the two men discussed “ongoing Libyan-led efforts to unify the country’s military, economic, and political institutions.” No deal was announced, but the welcoming of Haftar to the United States was a significant step. Nonetheless, the Trump administration has been keen to insist that its plans are not solely based on bringing the Haftars and the Dbeibahs together. “Our plan is to have one unified government and to unify all the institutions,” Massad Boulos, the U.S. senior advisor for Africa, told the Financial Times of his efforts to broker what was described as a power sharing arrangement in Libya. Yet in reality, unification on the terms laid out by Boulos would legitimize family rule by the Haftars and the Dbeibahs in Libya.
While the plan is presented as an interim step in support of a United Nations road map that envisages elections, the likelihood is that the Dbeibahs and Haftars would seek to make their positions permanent, disregarding the population’s hopes for political change. Such a deal would likely spell the end of any political transition efforts and instead heighten the struggle between the two ruling families.
This debate is a far cry from the promise of 2011, when Libyans overthrew longtime dictator Muammar al-Qaddafi with the support of NATO and Gulf state airpower. Libyans came together in the immediate aftermath of Gaddafi’s overthrow, holding elections in 2012. But the dispute over who should be able to participate in the country’s new political system heightened, leading to the emergence of a second bout of civil war in 2014.
Rival governments emerged in the east and west of the country as a result, a split that remains in force today. In the east, the Haftars began to build their forces, coalescing them in a bloody and partially ethnically driven campaign in the eastern city of Benghazi. Western Libya remained mired in factionalism, providing a fertile environment for the emergence of Islamic State’s control of the city of Sirte.
The Government of National Unity became the first unified national government in seven years when it entered office in 2021 and was recognized by authorities across the country. But it was not to last. Recriminations over the collapse of elections planned for December 2021 led to the creation of another rival government. Libya has two governments to this day. Efforts to reunify the country have continually failed as the Haftars and the Dbeibahs have tightened their grip over the state’s institutions, leading to a debate over whether the formation of a unified government would be possible without their inclusion.
According to an insider with knowledge of the situation speaking on background, the deal on the table for the Haftar and the Dbeibah families would see the Dbeibahs retain the prime minister’s office and the Haftars take leadership of the Presidency Council. While a new administration would also include other constituencies—the three-person membership of the Presidency Council would also include a member from the west of the country and the south—the Dbeibahs’ and the Haftars’ hold on Libyan institutions will tighten further, as they would hold the real power in such an arrangement.
The deal would bring with it risks and opportunities for the two rival families. For Saddam Haftar, control of the Presidency Council confers the status of commander in chief of armed forces, providing a springboard to expanding the control and influence of his Libyan Arab Armed Forces into western Libya. The LAAF failed in its attempts to capture Tripoli in 2019-20 as western Libyan armed groups coalesced with support from Turkey to defeat Haftar’s forces.
There is little in the histories of Saddam Haftar or his father that suggests a willingness or interest in sharing power. It is likely that the Haftars would not be willing to be confined to the Presidency Council. Most expect that Saddam would use such a deal as a springboard to force a takeover.
Meanwhile, the Dbeibahs have sought to centralize authority in the prime minister’s office since entering office in 2021. Under the prime minister’s nephew and national security advisor Ibrahim Dbeibah the office has expanded dramatically, with a growing number of state institutions that house financial resources (94 at last count) placed under its aegis. Continuing control of the executive is a major prize, and the dissolution of the rival eastern government that operates under the Haftars’ shadow would deprive the Haftars of a key point of leverage.
Yet retaining the prime minister’s office would not be sufficient, in and of itself, for the Dbeibahs. Guarantees would be needed that the Haftars will remain in their barracks, which is something that they have shown no interest in doing. Would the United States provide these guarantees? And would the Haftars sign on if they did? Both prospects seem unlikely.
To add a further layer of challenge, the Dbeibahs hail from Misrata, a powerful city in western Libya that has adopted a staunchly anti-Haftar position.
These complexities illustrate how Libya’s political quagmire defies simple solutions. Boulos’s initiative reflects the reality on the ground that the two families have gained dominance: The United States therefore likely sees the Haftar- Dbeibah deal as the only deal that can be done in the present circumstances.
Yet no Libyan constituency—perhaps not even the Haftars or the Dbeibahs—currently appears to be convinced. For many Libyans, the Boulos initiative has sparked outrage that a return to family rule is being facilitated, as they are unconvinced by the claim that the power sharing would meaningfully extend beyond the two family networks. Such a deal would be “the end of Libya’s democratic hopes,” one key institutional leader told me.
Boulos’s attempts to form a unified government follow a U.S.-mediated agreement over a new unified budget. The $30.1 billion budget, announced on April 11, is the first formally unified budget agreement since 2014. The agreement was a significant diplomatic achievement by the United States in a context where political progress has been lacking for five years. Endless attempts at agreeing to a budget had taken place previously, via joint political and technocratic committees and incessant shuttle diplomacy. Yet they all failed to produce a deal. This effort was different because it sidelined Libya’s many competing institutions and centered on a deal between Ibrahim Dbeibah and Saddam Haftar.
The agreement of the budget fixes a critical flaw in the flow of funds through the Libyan state system. Prior to 2021, broadly, the east and south lifted oil and gas and then sold the oil and gas internationally through the National Oil Corporation (NOC). The proceeds from these sales were then passed on to the Central Bank of Libya. Once at the bank, all parties bargained for their share of the revenues.
But from 2022 onward, this situation was transformed as the NOC scaled up crude-for-fuel swaps to manage the Libyan state’s fuel subsidies and also practiced crude swaps in order to settle debts with partners. Analysis of disclosures from Libya’s central bank and its audit bureau indicate that these off-book mechanisms masked massive increases in state spending, from $18.5 billion in 2021 to more than $50 billion in 2024, facilitating an unprecedented wave of diversion of state funds.
The budget deal is not a giveaway. To abide by the terms of the deal, Libya’s elites will have to cut something like 40 percent of their costs from 2024—a significant ask. This is also likely to aggravate family tensions.
While such cuts make sense, the problem with the budget deal is that it has not yet been implemented. The United States has supported the formulation of a technical committee to oversee this process, but major question marks remain over whether actual implementation will follow.
The Trump administration has made no secret of its goals to benefit economically from its foreign policy, an approach echoed by Boulos. There is no doubt that Boulos sees opportunity for U.S. companies to grow their footprint in Libya’s oil sector if the country’s governance is improved. Boulos has already facilitated the return of Chevron and has talked up investment opportunities in the country.
But to enter this next stage, Libya’s economic governance needs to improve, particularly if U.S. companies are to enter into long-term contracts where they have to stump up significant investment.
Rather than using the budget deal as an immediate stepping stone to the formation of a new government, the United States should use the leverage at its disposal to pressure Libyan actors to adhere to their commitments. The United States holds trump cards over its ability to support targeted liquidity cutoffs to restrict dollar access and even individual sanctions if leaders within Libya’s ruling elite do not hold up their end of the bargain. Leaning in to the drudging and technical work of budget implementation will not bring major headlines for Boulos to present to the White House, but it would reduce the growing dominance of the two leading families by constraining their access to revenues and penetration of state institutions. This will strengthen the hand of the United States in negotiations.
On the other hand, if a Dbeibah-Haftar government were to be formed, it would effectively release the pressure of the budget deal and allow the new government to form its own budget—spelling the end for any remaining institutional independence that exists outside of those family interests. It would also move the conflict between the families inside government rather than resolving it. In this respect, no deal would be better than a bad deal.
As it invites controversial powerbrokers such as Saddam Haftar to Washington, the United States should heed its own track record of backing individuals in conflict-affected states. Washington’s investments in Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan and Nouri al-Maliki in Iraq attest to the fact that seeking to establish one-man rule over the strengthening of institutions is destined for failure.
Restoring fiscal responsibility and some due process to state expenditures will increase U.S. leverage and provide greater room for more sustainable political initiatives. One such initiative could be the activation of Article 64 of the Libyan Political Agreement, which would allow a United Nations process to form a new, unified government.
In the application of carrots and sticks to pursue political progress in Libya, experience to date shows that the Libyan elites eat the carrots and that the stick is rarely, if ever, wielded. For U.S. diplomacy to succeed—and for anything other than family rule to endure—this will need to change.