SIRTE, LIBYA—U.S. Envoy Massad Boulos continues his shuttle diplomacy to end Libya’s long-standing divisions and formalize the country’s administrative unity. The uprising against Muammar Qadhafi began on February 15, 2011, on the steps of the Benghazi courthouse, after several weeks of sporadic protests across the country.
Benghazi’s inclusion in the protests was both a blessing and a curse. For the anti-Qadhafi forces, Benghazi was the most important city after Tripoli. Omar Mukhtar, the so-called “Lion of the Desert” and Libya’s national hero, was executed in an Italian concentration camp just 30 miles south of the city. Benghazi was also Libya’s second-largest city and, prior to the Qadhafi era, a co-capital of the country. As Qadhafi sought to centralize Libya, he purposely neglected Benghazi, falsely believing that Tripoli’s prominence meant smothering its rival rather than allowing all cities to thrive.
Libyans recognize they have more in common with each other than with their neighbors and embrace a similar nationalist outlook.
The curse of Benghazi’s prominence in the Libyan Revolution lies in the notion that restoring equity somehow equates to separatism. This is false. Italy merged its two North African colonies—Tripolitania and Cyrenaica, along with the Fezzan—in 1934 to form Libya. While there are tribal differences between Libya’s various regions, Libyans recognize they have more in common with each other than with their neighbors and embrace a similar nationalist outlook. The three stripes in the Libyan flag represent the country’s three regions, with the black stripe and white crescent and star replicating the flag of the short-lived Emirate of Cyrenaica. The Tripoli-Benghazi division is more political than nationalist and has no corollary in the disputes between Baghdad and Iraqi Kurdistan or between Somalia and Somaliland.
Boulos’s mediation is welcome, but many Libyans fear he is trapped within former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s framework for Libya, one that sees Tripoli and its Islamist government as legitimate and the Libyan Arab Armed Forces as separatist. Both sides base their claims to legitimacy on elections, though the democratic mandate of both the Tripoli-based Prime Minister Abd al-Hamid Dbeibeh, selected by a United Nations-appointed body, and the Benghazi-based House of Representatives has now expired.
What has changed, however, is the relative success of both sides. The Libyan Arab Armed Forces now controls more than 81 percent of Libya, including all of the country’s east and south. Where they control, there is security and reconstruction booms. Dbeibah’s east remains chaotic, because he and the “Grand Mufti” Sadiq Al-Ghariani provide shelter to the same militants and militias that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens in 2011 or fueled the Islamic State with recruits. Dbeibah claims a monopoly over state resources but has rebuilt almost nothing in Tripoli. Tripoli’s international airport, for example, remains in ruins more than a decade after militia fighting destroyed it; Benghazi’s Benina International Airport is up and running with a new modern terminal about to open, and the New Benghazi Airport will open next year with runways longer than both Chicago O’Hare and Los Angeles International.
Given the chaos and corruption that still dominate Tripoli, those from Benghazi and other towns reject unity that would place their fate under a politician and businessman like Dbeibah, who has squandered Libyan resources and cannot point to any real accomplishments. Many international diplomats, meanwhile, reject either moving the capital to Benghazi or returning to the era of dual capitals, believing this could lead to fragmentation.
Increasingly, Libyans talk about a solution: Sirte. Sirte could pose an elegant solution. Located along the central Mediterranean coast, it is not only roughly halfway between Tripoli and Benghazi, but it is also the gateway to Sebha, the regional capital of Libya’s south, and for die-hard supporters of Tripoli, it falls in historical Tripolitania.
The city was largely destroyed during the waves of fighting but has since become a paradigm of development.
Symbolically, Sirte was at the center of recent battles. It was where Qadhafi made his last stand and was killed, and then it was overtaken by the Islamic State and made the capital of their short-lived emirate. The city was largely destroyed during the waves of fighting but has since become a paradigm of development. The new Gulf of Sirte International Airport is the most modern in North Africa, putting Cairo and Casablanca to shame, in terms of organization if not scale of operations. A new stadium, convention center, and port will soon begin full operations, and a refurbished hospital and renovated university already draw patients and students from across Libya and the region. Sirte has a population of only 120,000 and so has room to grow.
On July 12, 2026, representatives from Benghazi and Tripoli met in Sirte as a “city that unites the nation.” Local officials are preparing for national institutions—the Libyan National Bank, for example—to locate in the town that is now one of the most modern and advanced in the country. Crime has fallen almost to zero, a huge accomplishment for a city once under the sway of militias.
As Boulos continues his shuttle diplomacy, the State Department and international community should listen to Libyans. They want unity, but they also want a new beginning. Sirte provides it.
