AP, Cairo
The United States, Europe and United Nations have all pinned their hopes for resolving Libya’s chaos and blocking the Islamic State group’s growth there on a newly announced unity government. The problem is: It’s not clear how the government can actually get into the country.
The unity government, brokered by the U.N. and headed by a little known Libyan technocrat, Fayez Serraj, is supposed to replace the two rival administrations — one based in the capital Tripoli, the other based in the eastern city of Tobruk — that have been battling each other for more than a year, each one backed by an assortment of militias.
But the Tripoli-based government, dominated by Islamists, and some of its allied militias said this week they will never allow the new administration — whose members are currently in neighboring Tunisia — into the capital.
“We say it has no place among us,” Khalifa Ghweil, the Tripoli-based prime minister, said in a statement. He said the unity government was “imposed from the outside” and his administration will never let in a leadership “installed” by the United Nations.
Meanwhile, the Tobruk-based parliament, which is the one recognized by the international community, still hasn’t formally approved the U.N. deal. While some members support Serraj’s government, others outright reject it, viewing it as a compromise to their Tripoli rivals. Most significantly, eastern-based strongman Khalifa Hifter, a general who commands a force of army units and militias that has been battling Islamic militants allied to Tripoli, has remained silent on the deal and many of his loyalists oppose it.
European nations are divided on how to act, even as they and Washington step up their warnings over the threat from the Islamic State group.