BENGHAZI, LIBYA—The United Nations Security Council often convenes Panels of Experts on the world’s trouble spots, in theory to add clarity and a factual baseline upon which diplomats can act. What sounds good in theory seldom translates into reality. Experts have agendas. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, for example, the U.N. relies on experts who are based more than a thousand miles away from the conflict, if not sitting in plush offices back in New York City. Too often, the experts appear more interested in preserving their access in Congo or protecting their legacy by doubling down on past policy prescriptions or distorting facts than on calibrating international policy to reality.
Interested states also use the experts to launder their approach. The Panel of Experts on Yemen, for example, expelled one American member when he raised uncomfortable questions about Omani complicity in weapons smuggling to the Houthis; ironically, Muscat later acknowledged that problem.
In Libya, the same dynamics are at play. Western countries—especially the United States and the United Kingdom—double down on the idea that unity in Libya means subordinating the Libyan National Army that controls 70 percent of the country to a regime in Tripoli whose power and exercise of sovereignty remains more theoretical than real.
In reality, though, the electoral mandates of both the Tripoli and Benghazi governments have long since expired.
President Barack Obama’s decision to recognize the Government of National Unity in Tripoli was arbitrary and came after its Islamist coalition members suffered an overwhelming election defeat that they refused to accept. British Prime Minister David Cameron followed suit; British intelligence long have had a soft spot for the Muslim Brotherhood. Turkey and Qatar poured funding into Tripoli’s leadership, so long as they continued to take instruction from Ankara; when they refused, they fell.
The elected, albeit often dysfunctional, House of Representatives refused to subordinate themselves to the Islamists and their external supporters and moved; today, its complex sits just outside Benghazi’s Old City. In reality, though, the electoral mandates of both the Tripoli and Benghazi governments have long since expired. What remains, then, are two governments—one in Benghazi, functional, and the other in Tripoli, struggling to do anything other than pays its own salaries.
The U.N. Security Council Panel of Experts’ report is due soon, but some of its members or those with access to its draft report have leaked excerpts, some of which have appeared in The Libyan Observer, an outlet friendly to the Tripoli government and its Muslim Brotherhood backers.
The report apparently accuses the Libyan National Army and Saddam Haftar, its deputy general commander, of illegally diverting oil revenue.Because Libya is a rentier state overwhelmingly dependent on hydrocarbon sales, the issue is central. But the Panel of Experts and U.S. State Department’s reported position is nonsense. It reflects both ignorance of business and a tendentious rejection of reality.
The question of revenue distribution and control is not new. Most of Libya’s oil fields operate under Libyan National Army control, yet Tripoli still received its revenues, though it often failed to distribute them equally to other regions of the country, including the very areas from which they were extracted.
In 2022, however, after Tripoli-based Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh’s temporary mandate ended, but he refused to step down in favor of the House of Representative-appointed prime minister, eastern authorities temporarily cut distribution. Diplomats and Libyan officials subsequently negotiated a resumption. However, Dbeibeh has again failed to fulfill the understanding that Tripoli must distribute revenues fairly across the country. Libyan oil should belong to Libyans, not benefit Turkish businessmen, Swiss bankers, or extremists and remnants of Ansar al-Sharia whom the Tripoli-based Grand Mufti seeks to fund and support. Those who secure oil fields, ports, and transport routes should also benefit, as should the local populations.
What Western diplomats and the Panel of Experts object to is how the east spends its money, because they fear that a well-resourced east will make their goal of a centralized state more difficult.
Since 2023, the Haftars and other eastern authorities have undertaken major reconstruction and development initiatives. It is difficult to drive 100 yards anywhere in Benghazi without seeing cranes, scaffolding, or new development. Benghazi’s Benina International Airport is new and modern; Dbeibeh has yet to rebuild Tripoli’s airport, despite access to far greater resources.
The oil revenues the east receives come through the Arkenu Oil Company, which the Panel of Experts says Saddam controls. But, there is nothing wrong with this. As even Dbeibeh’s government acknowledges, Arkenu operates in full compliance with Libyan laws and in coordination with the National Oil Corporation and the Ministry of Oil and Gas in Tripoli. What Western diplomats and the Panel of Experts object to is how the east spends its money, because they fear that a well-resourced east will make their goal of a centralized state more difficult, but excessive centralism beginning in the Qadhafi-era is not a model that succeeded. Prior to Qadhafi’s rise to power, Libyan constitutionally had dual capitals—Tripoli and Benghazi—because Libya’s founders understood that subverting one to the other would be a recipe for disaster.
Put another way, the Panel of Experts does not get to dictate how a private oil company operating under Libyan law spends its revenues. If anything, they should celebrate the fact that Saddam Haftar—whatever diplomatic criticism Washington, London, Ankara, and Doha may level at him—seeks to advance Libya and return it to security and normality. Unity can come, but only when Tripoli asserts its own agency, restores security, and stamps out the extremists who now regroup in Tripoli and Misrata.
