AFRICA Obstacles to Involvement in

OE Watch Commentary: Following a meeting of the African Union Peace and Security Council earlier this year, the AU is insisting in having a larger role in the Libya’s , but as the accompanying excerpted article from the South African Institute for Security Studies notes, there are several challenges to such AU involvement. To understand these obstacles, it is first necessary to look at the Libyan conflict, which the article describes as a quagmire involving a multitude of local and international actors who sometimes have diametrically opposed interests, leading to protracted instability. On the Libyan domestic side there are two well known players, the UN-recognized government of national accord (GNA) and ’s (LNA). There are also two additional domestic entities that get far less media attention: militias and Islamists. As for non-African nations involved in Libya, the divide is often over who supports the GNA or LNA, though some offer varying support to both.

Into this fray the AU is trying to exert itself, however, as previously noted, despite Libya being a member of the organization, it is encountering numerous obstacles attempting to do so. The first is that the AU failed to become strongly involved with the already ongoing UN peace process. Thus, the AU is finding it difficult to convince the belligerents involved in the conflict to turn to it for solutions.

The second challenge facing the AU is the issue of neutrality. While the AU itself may appear to be neutral, several of the AU member nations are looked at by some Libyans as having sympathies to the loyalists of former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Along these same lines, there are reports that several African nations have made deals with different Libyan factions.

The AU’s third challenge is a lack of agreement among the African nations as to how The African Union, its headquarters pictured here, is encountering obstacles as it tries to engage in the Libyan peace process. to approach the Libyan conflict. One example of this is their failure to decide whether or Source: NASA/Wikimedia, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sahara_satellite_hires.jpg, Public DomainKorneliussen.jpg, CC BY 2.0 Andrew Moore/Wikimedia, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/ not to deploy a joint AU-UN peace support mission to the country. Related to this lack of File:African_Union_Conference_Centre_(18167970401).jpg, CC BY-SA 2.0 agreement as to the proper approach is the AU’s final challenge, the significant number of AU committees and other entities tasked with trying to resolve the Libyan crisis. This inability to coordinate and speak with a single voice is hindering their progress with Libya, which also has multiple entities that so far are unable to unite. End OE Watch Commentary (Feldman)

“The AU has been asserting, with increasing vigor, that it must be included in attempts at brokering peace in and bringing stability back to Libya, one of its member states.”

Source: “Africa’s Place in resolving Libya’s Quagmire,” Institute for Security Studies (South Africa), 19 February 2020. https://issafrica.org/ pscreport/psc-insights/africas-place-in-resolving-libyas-quagmire

The AU has been asserting, with increasing vigor, that it must be included in attempts at brokering peace in and bringing stability back to Libya, one of its member states. The AU is yet to convince Libyan belligerents to turn to the continent for a solution, especially with the strong presence of non-African actors in both the peace process and the hostilities in the country. Convincing Libyans to make space for a potential African or African-led process also requires bringing non-African actors to the same negotiation table In the same vein, some high-level AU officials who are political appointees and are involved in the Libyan peace process are nationals of neighboring countries and thus may not be perceived to be neutral by some Libyan stakeholders. There are perceptions that they represent the interests of their capitals rather than those of the AU as a collective entity, irrespective of what their personal commitments may be to the peace process. The latest summit has added another entity to this list by creating the contact group for Libya, without dissolving the larger High-Level Ad- hoc Committee. The difference in mandates between the two has not been clarified, nor how the contact group will be operationalized and whether the committee will continue to be the main interlocutor in the mediation process in the meantime.

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