U.S. Institute of Peace experts discuss the latest foreign policy issues from around the world in On Peace, a brief weekly collaboration with SiriusXM's POTUS Channel 124.

Transcript

Julie Mason: Man, it's been twelve years since the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi. God, where does the time go? Thomas Hill is senior program officer for North Africa at the U.S. Institute of Peace, here to talk about the U.N.'s Libya mission. Hi, Thomas.

Thomas Hill: Hi, thanks for having me.

Julie Mason: Great to have you. So, I do feel like we've lost track of Libya. There's just too much, right, sometimes, to focus on? And Libya kind of can get lost. So, what's the situation there? What's the status twelve years on after Qaddafi?

Thomas Hill: Well, unfortunately, not much has changed, or at least not changed for the better. We're still in a situation where we have competing factions both claiming to be the legitimate government of Libya. Both are illegitimate in the sense that they're not seated after elections that were deemed free and fair or on existing mandates. So, violence continues. We're in a position where the world has kind of turned its back. But Libya continues to be a mess.

Julie Mason: What is daily life like there for the people?

Thomas Hill: Well, the country was hit very hard by COVID. As you can imagine, a country without a functioning government wasn't well equipped to deal with the COVID crisis or get out vaccinations in a well-thought-out way. Obviously, the war in Ukraine has changed things in terms of the global energy markets. And so, Libya has benefited from higher prices, but supply-chain shortages have devastated the country. And so, basic foodstuffs are very difficult to come by. So, while some people are making a lot of money, the country overall is faring very poorly.

Julie Mason: God, what a mess. So, what is the U.N. mission there? What are they trying to achieve? How have they failed?

Thomas Hill: Well, the U.N. came in because nobody else wanted to own the Libya problem post 2011. It was deemed that it was going to be a quagmire that Iraq and Afghanistan had demonstrated that the West was unable to deal with these post-conflict environments and so, let's just kind of give it to the U.N. to solve now that we've ousted Muammar Gaddafi. And in part, that decision was made because the Libyans themselves didn't want colonial powers, or former colonial powers, making decisions on their behalf.

The result is that what they got was a U.N. body that didn't have a peacekeeping mission, that didn't have an enforcement capability, it was just the ability to cajole or convince people to act in ways that you would expect them to do on behalf of a country. Well, to no surprise, the people that came into power were self-serving, and they had external patrons who are also self-serving, and they've advanced their own narrow self-interests against the interests of the country as a whole and the U.N. has been powerless to stop it. The real tragedy, I think, for the U.N. is that the U.N. continues to try and member states continue to say the U.N. should lead, the U.N. should be empowered to do all these things and then those same countries, those same member states, go out and do and act in ways that undermine everything that they've said about the U.N.'s role. So, it's a really terrible situation, I think, that the U.N. is in, and they're kind of powerless to stop it.

Julie Mason: Imagine being at the U.N. and they give you this for your job. It’s like, oh my God, just endless futility. And the U.N., as you report, was only supposed to be in there for three months.

Thomas Hill: Well, the idea was that they would come in, help the Libyans set up a functioning government that would create a constitution and they'd have elections, etc. But that was not supposed to be permanent. But, as we've seen elsewhere around the world, these U.N. missions end up becoming permanent because the conflicts drag on and on and on. What I think is really challenging is that nobody has taken a step back and said, “Look, it's twelve years later, do we really need to rethink what the U.N.'s role is, rather than just kind of clicking replay on the mandate, and just giving them another three months, a year to work on these problems.” I think a more rational approach would be to say, “Look, this situation has changed over twelve years. The actors have changed, the needs have changed, so the U.N. needs to change as well. And so, let's re-envision what we want the U.N. to do and how it's going to act, and the mandate will reflect that.”

Julie Mason: What is Libya to the U.S. at this point? And shouldn't we be in there ruining it for everyone? Isn't that our job?

Thomas Hill: You know, I am sympathetic to those who say that Libya is not our problem to solve, because it is indeed Europe's backyard and the Europeans have been very clear that they prefer to solve the problems that are closest to them and that they don't need the Americans to solve their problems.

Julie Mason: Until they do, right?
Thomas Hill: And here's an example where the Europeans have been unable to. And so, what this has demonstrated is that the Europeans may think that they want to solve this problem or think that they can solve this problem without our help, but they clearly have not. And our value is really, I think, in organizing the international community. It's not in terms of getting directly involved. Everyone who is a spoiler or doing something unhelpful in Libya is nominally a friend of ours. And so, we can be a better actor in this conflict, or trying to resolve this conflict, by just getting our “friends” to act in ways that are in the best interests of the Libyan people.

Julie Mason: Sounds a hopeless business, Thomas.

Thomas Hill: Well, I mean, what it does have going for it, that you could say other places don’t, is that there is enormous wealth, it's a huge country, and it's got very few people. So, there's a lot of “pie to be shared,” there's a lot to go around. And so, it does have the potential to be a very, very well-off place with a high standard of living and it's so close to Europe. I mean, it has advantages that other places just don't. And so, if they can ever, kind of, put their house in order and the people who are the external actors who are being so destructive inside the country can get out or get minimized or marginalized, I think the Libyans have a real chance to do something special.

Julie Mason: Did you ever see that episode of Bourdain when he went to Tripoli?

Thomas Hill: I did.

Julie Mason: It was really good.

Thomas Hill: It was really good. Well, he did some visits and as my recollection is, I don't remember all the details, but he found that the people themselves still had a lot of hope and a lot of desire to see things get better. And that was encouraging.

Julie Mason: Yeah, he thought it was a great place, a little menacing, but the people there just really just wanted to live their lives. They just wanted to be happy.

Thomas Hill: And I think that's true in a lot of these places. It's political, economic elites who have control over the levers of power who are trying to make their own friends and cronies benefit from a system, it's the people who get lost in those kinds of situations. I think that generally people around the world just kind of want to exist, live their life.

Julie Mason: Thomas Hill, senior program officer for North Africa at the United States Institute of Peace. Thank you for joining me.

Thomas Hill: Thanks for having me.

Julie Mason: Have a great day.