[News] The Guns Are Again Ablaze in Libya

[Anti-Imperialist News]

counterpunch.org
<https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/06/05/the-guns-are-again-ablaze-in-libya/>
The Guns Are Again Ablaze in Libya
Vijay Prashad
June 5, 2025
------------------------------

Commander of the Stability Support Authority (SSA), Abdel Ghani al-Kikli,
also known as “Gheniwa” was assassinated during a meeting at the base of
the 444th Combat Brigade. Sparking massive clashes between government and
paramilitary forces across the capital. Photo: X

On 12 May 2025, Abdul Ghani al-Kikli, known to everyone in Libya as Ghnewa
al-Kikli, was killed
<https://media.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b02aceea9cb578af543d3029c&id=399f556978&e=ab710e72ba>
during
a meeting inside a militia facility run by the 444th Combat Brigade in
Tripoli. Ghnewa, as he was called, led the Stability Support Apparatus
(SSA), which had ruled parts of Tripoli, and indeed sections of northern
Libya, with an iron fist. The leader of the 444th Brigade, Major General
Mahmoud Hamza, celebrated
<https://media.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b02aceea9cb578af543d3029c&id=190e8d49d8&e=ab710e72ba>
his
troops for ‘overthrowing the Ghnewa Empire’. Hamza, although rooted in his
militia, is the director of military intelligence of one of the several
governments that claim to be the official government of Libya. The death of
Ghnewa opened a new round of violence across Tripoli, as the SSA fighters
took to the streets in distress at the death of their leader. As the SSA
dissolved in despair, the 444th Brigade went into its vacated posts and
properties to claim them. At this point, as if Libya needed more trouble,
the RADA Special Deterrence Forces, led by the Islamist leader Abdul Raouf
Kara, attacked
<https://media.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b02aceea9cb578af543d3029c&id=87de12d8e9&e=ab710e72ba>
the
444th Brigade. Kara’s al-Radaa or RADA forces are rooted in the Madkhali
salafi tradition that is favoured by sections of Libya’s Muslim
Brotherhood, and while the name of their force appears governmental, it is
just another glorified militia outfit that spends its time going after
non-Islamic political forces in Libya.

The clash between the 444th Brigade and the SSA, and then with the RADA
Special Deterrence Forces, provoked another round of handwringing about
tribalism and Islam in Libya. That was how the Western press and think
tanks reported
<https://media.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b02aceea9cb578af543d3029c&id=de57f61cb7&e=ab710e72ba>
what
had happened in Tripoli. But this is utterly misleading. Major General
Hamza responded
<https://media.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b02aceea9cb578af543d3029c&id=63e47ec330&e=ab710e72ba>
to
criticism that his 444th Brigade operates as militia for parochial purposes
on his Facebook page, ‘For years, we have always been keen on the security
and protection of citizens, preventing bloodshed and stopping the armed
conflict. We were not advocates of war, and keen on the sanctity of the
blood of innocent people and the protection of lives, property and honours.
Our intervention in the past years to stop armed conflicts is evidence of
the sincerity of our intentions’. He hastened to meet with the Prime
Minister of Libya’s Government of National Unity, Abdul Rahman al-Dbeibeh
and told him that the 444th Brigade had secured the major intersections in
Tripoli, such as at Salahaldeen and Ain Zara. All seemed back to normal.

*What NATO Created*

When the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) exceeded the mandate of
United Nations Security Council resolution 1973 in 2011, it did not provide
a no-fly zone and prevent bloodshed in Libya, but it destroyed the
institutions of the Libyan state and provided air cover to a range of
militia groups. These militia groups, funded by a range of actors (Egypt,
United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, the United States),
worked together against the remnants of the Libyan state, but had nothing
to unite them. The moment that they brutally killed Muammar al-Qaddafi and
claimed Tripoli, they turned on each other. A hasty parliamentary election
called for 2012 brought some of these factions into stark conflict: the
Muslim Brotherhood coalesced by and large around the Justice and
Construction Party (led by a former hotel manager, Mohamed Sowan) and the
National Front for the Salvation of Libya (led by a long-time exile,
Mohamed el-Magariaf), the salafi Homeland Party (led by the cleric Ali
al-Sallabi and the al-Qaeda fighter Abdelhakim Belhadj), and then the
neoliberals of the National Forces Alliance (led by the US-backed Mahmoud
Jibril). The pro-Qaddafi forces had been banned. No political leader
emerged in parliament with a majority, while Islamist and other militias
began to tear apart the country as the state’s monopoly over armed force
vanished. Prime Minister after Prime Minister followed each other, but none
had real power. The entire situation created by NATO in 2011 exploded in
what is now known as the Second Civil War, which went from 2014 to 2020.

Three centres of power emerged. The Government of National Unity and the
Government of National Salvation operate in Tripoli, while the Government
of National Stability is in Tobruk and Bayda. Guns blared with ex-CIA asset
General Khalifa Haftar trying on several occasions to seize Tripoli from
the east and provide a military solution to the political disorder. But no
one was able to prevail. Libya became chaotic, the oil wells clogged up,
theft was rampant, and government institutions deteriorated. None of the
major political forces could make a claim to being Libyan, with the result
that no-one could rise above their parochial origins (leaders of this or
that militia from this or that town) or of their limited power base (head
of this group or that group with gunmen able to defend this or that
neighbourhood or town). In the absence of any national force (a military or
a political project), Libya spent the past decade bathed in violence and
despair.

Ghnewa was a perfect example of the kind of man who dominated Libya. He was
born in Benghazi, but his family comes from Kikla, a town in the western
Nefusa Mountains, about 150 kilometres southwest of Tripoli (where his body
was returned to be buried on 14 May). Ghnewa owned and worked in a bakery
in Tripoli’s Abu Salim working-class district in 2011 when Gaddafi was
overthrown. He had already become part of the local muscle in the tough
neighbourhood, and shaped that experience into building a militia that
increasingly took over parts of the economy and life of Tripoli. It was the
SSA that ran many of the prisons in which migrants had been detained,
tortured, and then sold into enslavement (recently the International
Criminal Court framed a warrant
<https://media.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b02aceea9cb578af543d3029c&id=e34f17ffed&e=ab710e72ba>
for
the arrest of Osama Elmasry Njeem, the head of one of these prisons; rather
than hand him over, the Italian government, which had Njeem in custody, sent
<https://media.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b02aceea9cb578af543d3029c&id=8a329b14f8&e=ab710e72ba>
him
back to Libya). While it is tempting to imagine that his death is part of
an attempt to clean up the militia groups, it is in fact part of a broader
internal struggle between the militias that characterised the Second Libyan
Civil War. Social media shows the movement of militia groups from
Warsehfana and Zawiya in western Libya toward Tripoli, perhaps in support
of Kara’s RADA group. There is no immediate optimism about the situation in
the aftermath of Ghnewa’s death. The baker lived by the gun and died by the
gun. His life since the NATO war has been characterised by violence and
corruption – dangerous ingredients that characterise Libya today.

*Dangerous Tremors*

A few days after the death of Ghnewa, Libya’s mufti, Sheikh Sadiq
al-Ghariani went on Tanasuh Television to call for ‘people to take to the
streets in their tens of thousands to call for elections and an end to the
transitional phases’. Al-Gharani, a salafi preacher, had emerged in the
chaos of the NATO war to claim this important seat and from there began to
offer fatwas against Qaddafi and later against anyone who went against his
view of the world. He remains very powerful, with close links to some of
the Islamist forces in the country. Meanwhile, General Khalifa Haftar took
advantage of the anniversary of what is called the al-Karama (Dignity)
uprising of 2014 to offer his view that the military is the most important
institution in Libya and should be saluted for its bravery and commitment
to the nation. Between al-Ghariani and Haftar lie the two sources of power
within the country, those who wield the Quran and the Gun, for political
purposes. Even they are fragmented, though.

But the real source of power lies elsewhere. Since 2011, the United Nations
has forty-four times passed resolutions calling for stability in Libya and
for no outside interference. The ceasefire of 2020, rooted in the Berlin II
process, created several platforms for stability and sovereignty, including
the Security Working Group, the Economic Working Group, and the 5+5 Joint
Military Commission. These groups have become vehicles for the intervention
of foreign powers, from the United States to Turkey, that are interested in
Libya’s future oil production. They simply will not allow Libya to breathe
because that will mean that it might make decisions for the oil that do not
please the outside forces. In each of these groups and the many others that
have been set up since 2012, Libyan representation has been minimal,
largely because Libya is itself fragmented and disoriented.

The guns are again firing in Libya. Money pours in from outside with the
hope that one day Libyan oil will allow money to move in the opposite
direction. In the shifting sands of Libya’s interior, hope is minimal. The
desire is for no more conflict, but that is unlikely. There are so many men
with guns across the country. And they have so many bullets.

*Vijay Prashad’s most recent book (with Noam Chomsky) is The Withdrawal:
Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and the Fragility of US Power (New Press, August
2022).*
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