The Berlin Conference on Libya will be a crucial test of whether Europe can act on its ambitions.
MEI experts Robert S. Ford, Fatima Abo Alasrar, and Emad Badi join host Alistair Taylor to survey what lies ahead for the Middle East in 2020, with particular attention to Iran, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Iraq and Algeria.
It is profoundly in the interest of the U.S. to help all three countries arrive at an amicable working solution.
It is increasingly the case that the Russian-Turkish decisions on Idlib or Syria need to be understood as part of a broader Russian-Turkish partnership.
The UK’s impending exit from the EU will present a new chapter for British interests in and posture toward the region. If the UK is to find a trade-off for loss of diplomatic and economic heft, it will need to re-prioritize its engagement efforts. Policy continuity toward Morocco and Tunisia appears inevitable; Algeria, in contrast, promises great opportunity for an evolving relationship.
Strong U.S. leadership could still make a difference to counter the threats arising from the ongoing proxy war, but the Trump White House appears mainly to have other things on its mind.
The question as 2019 ends is whether foreign forces supporting the conflict will rethink their commitment to military victory and instead work to secure political solutions through compromise.
On Nov. 27 the GNA signed an MoU with Turkey seeking to create a shared maritime boundary in the Mediterranean Sea between southwestern Turkey and northeastern Libya. In an overt quid pro quo, this maritime agreement was signed along with a separate MoU to expand security and military cooperation. Thus, it seems clear that Turkey was only able to persuade the GNA to agree to the maritime deal in exchange for increased security support for the GNA-aligned forces fighting the self-styled LNA in Tripoli.
On Oct. 23, Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Chairman of Sudan’s Sovereign Council Abdel Fattah al-Burhan in Sochi. After their meeting, Putin praised Sudan’s reliability as a Russian ally and said that the formation of the council was a critical step toward a path of “sustainable development” in Sudan. The cordial meeting between Putin and Burhan came less than one month after Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met with Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly and underscored the resilience of the Russia-Sudan bilateral relationship.
The U.S. and World Bank sponsored talks last week between Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan, over the Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam – the latest developments in a regional soap opera that’s been running since 2010, when Ethiopia first announced the construction of the dam.
The Nov. 1 seizure by Malta of two 2000-cubic-foot containers full of Libyan currency printed by the Russian state printer, Goznak, that was intended for delivery to Libya’s non-internationally recognized eastern government, highlights the continuing importance of the economic aspects of Libya’s ongoing civil war.
The crux of today’s Libya problem in international foreign policy lies in an underappreciated UN misstep in the most important international treaty concerning Libya, the 2015 Skhirat Agreement, and the decision to vest sovereignty in the heads of independent and semi-independent sub-state institutions like the Central Bank of Libya. The negative implications of this decision must now be addressed and it is time to move onto something new, after Skhirat.
Largely overlooked in international policymaking toward Libya’s current conflict is the role of corruption as a key driver of violence, as opposed to merely its byproduct. The high-level debate on Libya at the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in late September and the proposed follow-on international conference to be hosted by Germany in October or November are the perfect opportunities to correct this oversight.
The celebratory scenes in Khartoum last month were a marked contrast from the bloodshed in Sudan’s capital earlier this year. After eight months of unrest following the ouster of former Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir in April, Sudan’s military council and the Alliance for Freedom and Change — represented by Ahmed al-Rabie — signed a power-sharing agreement on Aug. 17. This deal offers hope that Sudan can complete a peaceful transition to civilian rule.
Khalifa Hifter has managed to garner outside support by appealing to foreign states’ desire for a stable Libya, but this rogue former general and would-be authoritarian has proven a troublesome proxy. In supporting his ongoing offensive on Tripoli, foreign states are undermining their own narrative of authoritarian stability.