“When I look at Libya, Syria, Iraq and Yemen, it is hard for me to envision a central government in those countries that is going to be able to exert control or authority over the territory that was carved out post World War II,” said John Brennan, US CIA Director, in an intelligence conference held on October 27, 2015, by the George Washington University in Washington, DC. “A military solution is just impossible in any of these countries.”

“When I look at Libya, Syria, Iraq and Yemen, it is hard for me to envision a central government in those countries that is going to be able to exert control or authority over the territory that was carved out post World War II,” said John Brennan, US CIA Director, in an intelligence conference held on October 27, 2015, by the George Washington University in Washington, DC. “A military solution is just impossible in any of these countries.”

Brennan considered that it was wrong to go directly towards the search for a “final settlement” and instead expressed the need to adopt a small steps strategy “to be able to bring down the temperature, to try de-escalate the conflict, build up some trust between the parties that are there, that are seriously interested in a peaceful settlement,” he said.

As a Libyan citizen aware of the details of the Libyan crisis that has disintegrated into other cross-cutting crises, I believe that Brennan’s analysis regarding the impossibility of military solution is largely accurate. However, a small-step strategy is similar to prescribing aspirin for a cancer patient.

Too little too late

The small steps he mentioned are not likely to lead to a way out, regardless of the international community’s scope of intervention and diplomatic pressure, as in the case of Bernardino León,  who is about to reach a political solution acceptable to all the conflicting groups.

Even if a political agreement was reached and signed by all parties, it would not last on the ground because the signatory politicians have no authority over the multi-background armed militia warlords. The conflict, from my point of view as a journalist and analyst, cannot be solved politically at present.

While it is true that there is no decisive military solution for all Libya, it is true, too, that there will be no political solution unless one party defeats the other, or all the parties to the conflict recognize the impossibility of defeating each other, having depleted their resources.

The other option is that a foreign military force, which is superior to all warring groups interferes and imposes a political solution on them, as it happened when the Syrian forces intervened in Lebanon to end the civil war and the Taif Agreement was forced on the warlords. Another example is the intervention of the French troops in Ivory Coast and Central Africa. We can also take as an example the Arab alliance’s intervention in Yemen, which forced the Houthis and pro-Ali Abdullah Saleh forces to accept the UN resolution unconditionally after they realized they would be defeated.

When NATO intervened in Libya to support the armed rebels against the Gaddafi brigades, that military solution was clearly the only option given NATO’s juggernaut. Since NATO left Libya, however, the ongoing conflict has become more like small fragmented wars in different geographical spots, often unrelated.

In this sense, the Libyan case is different from what is happening in Syria, Iraq and Yemen. External observers, like Brennan, do not understand its exceptional details. The map of armed conflict is undefined, contrary to the case in Syria where the conflict is clearly between the regime of Bashar al-Assad and rebels, regardless of the Islamic State (IS). In Yemen, fighting is going on between the Arab alliance-backed President Abd Rabbuh Hadi and the alliance between the Houthis and pro-Saleh forces. In Iraq, war is raging between the forces of the legitimate government – supported by the West and Iran – and IS.

In Libya, we have a different situation. We are before some kind of surrealistic situation. The armed conflict is not between two central forces that can decide war and peace. The armed conflict in western Libya is different in nature and causes from that in eastern Libya and from that in Southern Libya.

True, there is a general feature characterizing developments across the country, but it does not explain everything. The apparent general picture is a power struggle between Islamic forces, with their different names, to rule in accordance with their specific religious ideology, and the secular forces that oppose the control of religion over the political life of the aspired Libyan state.

On the ground, the conflict in the western region reflects severe rivalry over political influence between the Misrata militias and the Zintan militias, which shared control over Tripoli. The Misrata militias controlled the eastern part of Tripoli, while the Zintan militias controlled the western part. Allied with Islamic militias – Muslim Brotherhood, Jihadists and Salafists – the Misrata Brigades however invaded the western part and forced the Zintan militias outside the capital. Since then, fierce fighting has been going on between pro-Zintan tribes and pro-Misrata tribes, fueled by deep-rooted tribal and regional animosities.

Southern Libya, which seems to be outside of Libya, is engaged in ethnic fighting between the Tuareg people and the Toubou people, and also between the latter and Arab Zawiya tribe, let alone the remnants of the old regime gangsters who have taken up arms in different areas and have been engaged in acts of robbery, looting and assassinations.

In the eastern region (Cyrenaica), where I live, contrary to the western region (Tripoli) and the south (Fezzan), the raging war involves two specific groups: pro-Khalifa Haftar forces – supported by the Council of Deputies, the government and all Cyrenaica tribes – and terrorist groups stationed in Benghazi and Derna.

Through my follow-up of the developments of the Battle of Benghazi, I believe that the defeat of the Benghazi Jihadist Shura militia is only a matter of time, having lost most of its human and material forces and disintegrated into small isolated groups in specific areas.

Derna is beleaguered from all four sides and its terrorist groups – the Qaeda and IS fighters – are no longer able to expand into other cities. They have entered into a mafia-controlled liquidation war amongst themselves.

What is the way out?

In Cyrenaica, the military option is the only available solution. In Tripoli, a military solution is ruled out – the solution there lies in stopping the fighting and seeking social reconciliation among tribes and regions. Each militia must be committed to exist within its regional border. The same applies to Fezzan. This however cannot practically happen unless the warring factions realize that their forces have been depleted and that they have forfeited their appetite for more fighting. They must also recognize that not one of them can defeat the other. Only then will a comprehensive political solution be feasible based on a constitutional referendum, followed by legislative and executive elections.