Libya’s Muslim Brotherhood Problem Is Now Everyone’s Problem

For years, the Muslim Brotherhood’s presence within Libya’s Tripoli-based government was an open secret that Western diplomats largely preferred to ignore. The Justice and Construction Party, the Brotherhood’s Libyan political wing, famously voted Abdulhamid Dbeibah into power during the 2021 UN-brokered Geneva conference. Over the years, the group bolstered his government through budget crises, militia clashes, and endless performative reconciliation talks. It was a politically convenient marriage, mutually beneficial yet rarely acknowledged in polite circles. Today, that arrangement is publicly dead, and the manner of its demise exposes the profound cynicism governing Libya’s political trajectory.

Dbeibah recently severed ties with the Brotherhood, leaving zero room for diplomatic misinterpretation. During a public address, he accused the organization of secretly contacting foreign governments while he was abroad for medical treatment. Their goal, he claimed, was to lobby for their own elevation, allegedly telling foreign diplomats that the Prime Minister was dying and they should be considered his replacements. “He’s dying… we’ll sort it out after,” Dbeibah summarized.

In response, Dbeibah salted the earth, declaring the Brotherhood “no longer has a presence in the country” and will have “no opportunity to return to the political scene.”

The Brotherhood’s reaction was defensively telling. Its youth affiliate pointedly reminded the public of its longstanding support for Dbeibah. Meanwhile, exiled mufti Sadiq al-Ghariani attempted damage control, insisting Dbeibah was only targeting a specific rogue faction, not the loyalists still entrenched in the government’s orbit. It was a classic Islamist maneuver: disavow the condemned branch while protecting the networked presence that remains.

However, the political climate has shifted. Brotherhood alignment is now a severe liability, particularly in dealings with Washington. Earlier this year, the Trump administration designated Brotherhood-linked organizations in Egypt, Lebanon, and Jordan as terrorist entities. By March, it added the Sudanese Brotherhood to the list, citing alleged Iranian backing.

Whatever his other failings, Dbeibah knows how to read a room. His public denunciation perfectly coincides with a renewed American diplomatic push led by Massad Boulos, who is actively brokering a power-sharing arrangement between the Dbeibah network in the west and the Haftar family empire in the east.

The tragedy is that Dbeibah is merely substituting one liability for a more durable one. While appeasing Washington, both ruling factions have mastered the art of looting the country beneath them. To understand what a Dbeibah-Haftar arrangement actually means for ordinary Libyans, we must examine what these camps built together in the shadows.

A leaked 288-page United Nations Panel of Experts report from late March details a clinical 2022 bargain struck in Abu Dhabi. This wasn’t a treaty between governments, but a private deal between Ibrahim Dbeibah, the Prime Minister’s nephew and national security adviser, and Saddam Haftar, the Libyan National Army’s deputy commander.

Together, they created Arkenu, a private oil company incorporated in the east but linked to the Haftar family, designed to channel revenues entirely outside Tripoli’s oversight. Between October 2024 and February 2026, Arkenu diverted over $3 billion in oil revenue to foreign bank accounts. The crude reached European refineries, but the money never reached the Libyan state.

This enterprise single-handedly dismantles the “east-versus-west” narrative dominating Western analysis. The two families ostensibly at war built a corporate machine to extract wealth from the nation they nominally govern. It is a system of intersecting interests where supposed enemies collaborate to monopolize economic levers.

The consequences fall squarely on ordinary Libyans, who endure chronic fuel shortages and exorbitant prices. In remote regions, citizens pay up to forty times the official subsidized rate for fuel extracted from their own soil.

The public sees through this facade. On March 13, 2026, hundreds protested in Zawiya against the corrupt mismanagement of state wealth. Crowds targeted Saddam Haftar, Prime Minister Dbeibah, Ibrahim Dbeibah, and Minister Walid al-Lafi in the same breath. When Zawiya’s oil refinery shut down recently due to militia clashes linked to Dbeibah-aligned groups, it was western Libyan residents who suffered, not the elites in Benghazi.

Ultimately, Dbeibah’s Brotherhood breakup is not a reformist pivot; it is a calculated rebranding tied to American patronage demands.

Current US-brokered talks prioritize unifying the budget and stabilizing the economy, deliberately sidelining democratic elections in favor of a deal between the exact same factions that produced Arkenu. Washington’s desire to keep oil flowing and minimize Russian influence is strategically understandable, but its methodology is flawed. A power-sharing deal between the Haftar and Dbeibah dynasties does not resolve Libya’s political crisis—it transforms a temporary theft syndicate into a permanent constitutional reality, now backed by American diplomatic legitimacy.

The Brotherhood’s exit removes one Islamist obstacle, but it changes nothing about the massive corruption costing the state nearly $10 billion annually, or the bipartisan looting network both governments protect. Dbeibah broke with the Brotherhood because Washington made it politically necessary. Until Washington makes accountability for operations like Arkenu equally necessary, the east-west framework will remain a convenient stage set, hiding two families running one country solely for themselves.

Published originally on May 10, 2026.