North Africa

Good news for the Joe Biden administration may strangely come from the recent results of the inter-Libyan negotiations in Geneva.

Ten years on, it’s important to dispel myths about why Libya went so wrong so as not to draw the wrong lessons.

Despite its marginality and irrelevance for US’s interests, Libya has come to constitute the litmus test of this perceived change in the world political landscape.

There are three primary arguments against partitioning Libya: the historical outcomes of partitioned countries, the potential for exacerbating the ongoing proxy war in Libya, and the risk of degrading international institutions.

There are virtually no coercion or accountability mechanisms that international stakeholders are committed to leveraging against domestic parties that are working to undermine the agreement with the support of foreign actors.

The proxy confrontation playing out in Libya has intensified a regional competition for resources in the waters of the eastern Mediterranean, where several overlapping claims for maritime jurisdiction by Turkey, Egypt, Greece, and Cyprus have fueled escalating tensions.