USA Involvement In Libyan Burns And Wagner

The US intelligence chief is in Libya to test the internal situation in the field, as well as to deal with specific dossiers (such as the role of the Wagner Group). The visit anticipates the meeting that the US special envoy has organized in Washington with the colleges of Italy, France, Germany and the United Kingdom to discuss how to overcome the institutional deadlock
The director of the CIA, William Burns, was today, Thursday 12 January, in Libya for meetings with local actors through which to reconstruct the current situation – and probably avoid complex drifts that could reopen the military front and facilitate dynamics linked to chaos. The head of the US intelligence agency met with Prime Minister Abdelhamid Dabaiba, who heads an executive with no parliamentary trust created through a UN-sponsored process. After the face-to-face in Tripoli, according to information obtained from Formiche.net, Burns saw the Benghazi militia leader, Khalifa Haftar, in his stronghold in Rajam, while there is no news of a meeting that had been discussed in the morning with the Speaker of Parliament, Agila Saleh, in Tobruk (where the legislative branch has been self-exiled since 2014).
Currently Libya is once again divided into two parts. One supports Dabaiba, and is made up of forces – political and armed militias – mostly located in Tripolitania. The other is structured around the figure of Fathi Bashaga, a former minister of a previous UN government, who managed to obtain parliamentary confidence, but was never able to implement this political-institutional step in practice. His executive, the result of a partial agreement between forces – also in this case politicians and armed militias – from Misrata, Tobruk and Benghazi, has never managed to physically enter Tripoli.
Institutional Stalemate
The institutional stalemate that has gripped the country for months risks sliding towards armed confrontation, given that from a political point of view it does not seem possible to overcome the various obstacles created by the blockades. According to local sources, Burns’ trip was also linked to specific issues concerning security dossiers (terrorism and crime, as well as energy security issues). A theme not to be underestimated behind the visit and the American interest in the Libyan dossier concerns the Russian presence. The Wagner Group – operating on the Ukrainian front – is still in Libya, in the area south of Sirte and in al Jufra, based in shared bases with Haftar’s militiamen. Controlling the activity of Kremlin mercenaries is one of the priority interests that the US pursues in Libya.
Diplomatic Activity
The United States has also stepped up some diplomatic activity on the dossier for this reason. For example, the American special envoy, Ambassador Richard Norland, has convened a meeting in Washington for Friday 13 of all allied international colleagues – France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Italy with the diplomat Nicola Orlando – who deal with Libya to decide on a common path on how to try to overcome internal divisions. And how to implement the initiatives of the UN envoy Abdoulaye Bathily.
Norland, since last summer, has been working to create a “mechanism to control spending” amid the governance deadlock (the Libyan central bank had blocked funds and there is no approved state budget). The United States dubbed the political-diplomatic vector “Mechanism for Short Term Financial, Economic and Energy Dependability” or “Mustafeed”. This could provide a short-term pseudo-governmental function until elections are held. In essence, Mustafeed could evade the dispute between the government of Dabaiba (acronym GNU) and that of Bashaga (GNS).
It is an idea that has been circulating for months among various chancelleries involved in Libya and is now in some way pushed by the UN and the Presidential Council. It would be a way to find a third way, if accepted by all, and entrust it with the path towards the elections. Even Italy – which in the coming days will bring its presence to Libya first with the visit of Minister Antonio Tajani and then with that of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni – is substantially in agreement on the need to overcome the crisis through a system that guarantees balance between the various players and provide the basis for relaunching the interrupted stabilization process.
On this, Egypt has also tried – following an activity that has been going on for some time – to make itself the ground for meetings with a recent summit between Libyan leaders to organize it in Cairo. The increase in internal chaos risks creating a favorable terrain for destabilizations, also aimed at creating further difficulties within the Mediterranean (Russia is, for example, an actor that has always played ambiguity on Libya and destabilizing that dossier could divert the attention of some European countries from the Ukrainian war?).
This article is originally published on formiche.net