When the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 1973 in March 2011, authorizing “all necessary measures” to protect civilians in Libya against alleged government brutality, paving the way for military intervention, it unwittingly laid the foundation for fifteen years of diplomatic failure and foreign meddling. Rather than stabilizing the nation, this mandate turned Libya into an international playground for external actors to settle geopolitical scores and establish strategic footholds — drawing in regional players, alongside global powers, including France, Russia, and the United States.

To manage the fallout of this intervention, the Security Council established the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) in September 2011. What was meant to be a temporary stabilization effort, with the goals of resuming public order, launching a national dialogue and reconciliation process, and facilitating Libya’s transition to democracy, effectively institutionalized the interventionist framework. Libya has been reduced to a chronic, permanent fixture on the Council agenda, much like the Palestinian question. Over the last decade and a half, the UN has cycled through eleven special envoys and acting heads of mission with little to show for it.

A celebrated ceasefire that failed to address drivers of the conflict 

While UNSMIL often points to the October 2020 ceasefire agreement, an UNSMIL-brokered deal signed in Geneva that aimed to permanently halt military activities and enforce the withdrawal of foreign fighters, as a landmark diplomatic success, the reality is far less triumphant. The deal merely codified a pre-existing military stalemate after Eastern forces, Libyan National Army (LNA) attacking-forces had already retreated to Sirte following their failure at the gates of Tripoli – effectively, there was no active fire left to cease. This ex post facto diplomacy functioned as a tactical bandage, completely failing to settle the root drivers of the major conflicts that ravaged Bani Walid in 2012, split the country in 2014, and engulfed Tripoli in 2018 and 2019. Consequently, the last few years have produced what are effectively two Libyas — a nation entirely partitioned politically and institutionally, remaining whole only on paper.

Ultimately, the mission has failed to deliver any workable political solution that could reunify the country. Fifteen years after Muammar Gaddafi’s murder, the democratic paradise promised, by Western powers,  following the regime’s collapse remains a mirage. Instead, this expanding bureaucratic approach has presided over the loss of thousands of lives, mass displacement, the squandering of billions in national wealth and the severe, ongoing fracturing of the Libyan state. This prolonged international mismanagement has effectively invalidated the very core mandate of “protecting civilians” used to justify the initial intervention. 

Ian Martin, the first head of the UNSMIL — who later borrowed the Security Council’s fateful phrase for the title of his own book All Necessary Measures?  — astutely warned that the UN would be doomed if it allowed its mandate to expand beyond  limited scope. He promoted strict light technical assistance for early elections and immediate transitional advice, expressly leaving deep-seated domestic matters like national reconciliation and institutional design to the Libyans themselves. Yet, since its inception, the mission has done exactly that.

An avalanche of unrealistic proposals 

The culmination of this institutional bloat was on full display during Hanna Tetteh’s June 18 briefing to the Security Council. Unable to present any tangible progress, she instead sought refuge in her latest “Structured Dialogue” — which was a months-long consultation track engaging various civil society factions, women, and youth groups that merely acted as a talk shop rather than a genuine political negotiation — using the word “dialogue” five times in her statement to introduce a staggering 600 non-binding recommendations. These include sprawling, unrealistic demands ranging from comprehensive security sector reforms to the total overhaul of national economic governance. Rather than streamlining a path to institutional unification, the international community continues to drown the Libyan crisis in positive noise. Expecting a politically fractured, economically exposed nation with paralyzed governance to execute a 600-point checklist is an exercise in diplomatic fantasy. It reads like a comprehensive four-year program for a fully elected, unified government, not a viable roadmap for crisis management.

This avalanche of proposals is not a sign of rigorous engagement, but a tactical escape mechanism. It perfectly illustrates what the UN’s own independent strategic review openly admitted: the mission suffers from strategic fragmentation and is chronically “bogged down in marginal details.” Instead of drafting a concise, enforceable roadmap, UNSMIL has constructed a paper maze.

Pushing for elections despite divisions and ongoing insecurity 

At the heart of this failure is a fundamental sequencing error—an obstinate insistence on putting the cart before the horse. For years, the UN has treated national elections (the cart) as a standalone solution to be forced through, while ignoring the horse that must actually pull it: the resolution of Libya’s deepening constitutional division and the unification of its de facto rival authorities. Pushing a cart from behind forces the horse to move blindly, inevitably leading the nation toward a cliff.

Conversely, if the international community prioritized the “horse” — dismantling the parallel political and financial networks that feed on the current stalemate and forcing a binding constitutional framework—the path to elections would naturally clarify itself.

For any election to be viable, the “horse” must stand firmly on four pillars:

• Genuine National Reconciliation to heal social divisions;
• Transitional Justice to ensure accountability and closure;
• A Short Transitional Period to prevent endless interim power-grabs; and
• The Disarmament and Dismantling of Militias to remove the threat of coercion.

None of these foundational prerequisites have been established. Yet, UNSMIL remains trapped in its own circular logic, stubbornly insisting on pushing direct, peaceful elections despite the grim, fractured reality on the ground.

Today, UNSMIL is arguably at its weakest point, commanding little, if any, UNSC support. It has lost its strategic direction, lacks a workable plan or roadmap, and has burned through its credibility among Libyan actors and citizens alike. Above all, it faces a direct, high-stakes challenge from a US-led roadmap driven by Presidential Advisor Massad Boulos. Boulos has been actively pitching this initiative to regional heavyweights — such as his recent meetings with foreign ministers in Cairo, as well as parallel talks in Rome and Paris. The initiative has now transitioned from a proposal into official US policy, solidified by June 29’s meeting between Saddam Haftar, chief of staff the LNA, and son of Khalifa Haftar, the de facto leader in eastern Libya, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the State Department in Washington — signaling clear US adoption and backing of the plan.

The UN remains politically sidelined in new negotiations 

Meanwhile, UN Envoy Hanna Tetteh has been forced into a reconciliatory, defensive posture. In her June 18 briefing to the Security Council and subsequent appearances, Tetteh carefully avoided direct confrontation with the Mr. Boulos stating that she welcomes any parallel effort as long as it unifies institutions — while firmly denying direct UN involvement in drafting the American plan. The UN is posturing neutrality because it has no choice; they do not officially endorse the plan, but they are too weak and politically sidelined to oppose a blueprint backed so heavily by Washington, effectively rendering them spectators to an American-driven transition.

US deal risks cementing another Libyan dynasty 

Yet, reading between the lines, the geopolitical reality is ruthless. Boulos is effectively giving the Haftar family via diplomacy what they could never secure by force: international legitimization through the proposed appointment of Saddam Haftar as head of a new Presidential Council. This risks cementing yet another entrenched dynasty in Libya with full US backing. Opposing him — or expecting the Security Council to pass any resolution that crosses Washington — is an exercise in naivety. An increasingly transactional US administration, heavily invested in eastern Mediterranean energy security and countering Russian influence, would not hesitate to order a veto if the UN steps out of line.

However, there is a bitter, tragic irony in Boulos’s preaching. The top-down arrangement he advances — reportedly pairing the Haftar family in the east with Dbeibah counterpart in the west — fundamentally bypasses and betrays everything the Libyan people have wished and waited for over the last four years. In 2021/2022, nearly 2.8 million Libyans defied the odds, registered in droves, and were ready to cast their ballots, only to have their democratic aspirations stolen by international and domestic elite manoeuvrings. The American shortcut substitutes the legitimate, sovereign will of millions of voters with a transactional deal between two families.

Fifteen years after the fall of the Gaddafi regime, the international community’s approach to Libya has run entirely aground. The UN’s paper maze of 600 non-binding recommendations and Washington’s backroom bilateral deals share the same fatal flaw: they treat the symptoms of managed stagnation while ignoring the underlying disease of partition.

A radical course correction in Libya is necessary  

If the international community — and specifically the UNSC — wants to salvage any remaining credibility and help Libya transition from a permanent item on the geopolitical agenda into a functioning, sovereign state, it must execute a radical course correction:

• Abandon the illusion of technical substitutes for sovereignty: UNSMIL must stop treating superficial dialogue tracks as substitutes for addressing raw political power.
• Force the hand of rival de facto authorities: The international focus must shift from forcing premature, ill-prepared elections onto a fractured state, and instead legally compel the rival executive and financial authorities to undergo genuine, binding constitutional integration.
• Respect the electorate over elites: Any internationally backed roadmap must prioritize putting the sovereign ballot back into the hands of the Libyan citizen, rather than codifying dynastic power-sharing pacts among entrenched oligarchies.

Until the international community stops managing the division and starts enforcing structural unification, Libya will remain a fractured nation whole only on paper, held hostage by foreign capitals and domestic elites clinging to power. The issue of national reconciliation remains the foundational prerequisite and ultimate sticking point in all UNSMIL efforts so far. The most viable alternative to break this deadlock is a truly Libyan-led process with minimal, supportive intervention from Libya’s immediate neighbors, structurally anchored by the African Union (AU). The AU’s High-Level Committee on Libya, established in March 2011 and led by Congolese President Denis Sassou Nguesso, has long maintained the correct focus, most notably through its Brazzaville Call and the subsequent Libyan Reconciliation Charter. Historically, however, the AU’s role has been systematically sidelined by global powers, and its recommendations have lacked the enforcement mechanisms necessary for implementation.

Yet, the process has also stalled at the hands of the domestic elite themselves; the Presidential Council failed to act decisively, taking nearly a year just to appoint a consultant to the file who has yet to deliver tangible work. For a localized mediation framework to succeed, any input from neighboring countries should be welcomed only if it rejects top-down dictations. Crucially, major global powers—particularly those with UN Security Council vetoes — must commit to backing whatever outcome is reached at the domestic level, provided it builds upon the AU’s established reconciliation frameworks rather than bypassing them.

Mustafa Fetouri is an award-winning Libyan journalist and academic with decades of experience documenting Libya’s political and social landscape. In 2010, he received the EU’s Samir Kassir Award for Freedom of the Press for his work on corruption in Libya. Fetouri’s primary focus is post-conflict transition, institutional fragmentation, corruption, and the geopolitical dynamics of North Africa. His writing has appeared in New Lines Magazine,The New Arab, Middle East Monitor, RT, The Arab Weekly, Deutsche Welle and the Washington Report on Middle Eastern Affairs.