Libyan Interior Minister Imad Trabelsi announced Feb. 20 that, following lengthy negotiations, an agreement had been reached with the main militias present in Tripoli to facilitate their exit from the city and re-establish control of the urban area by regular police forces.
The agreement, aimed at easing the tensions that have long characterized the capital, is intended to facilitate a return to normalcy through the removal of the various checkpoints that still demarcate the different zones of influence of the militias, ensuring unified control of the capital by the government’s police forces.
Under the understandings reached through the intermediation of the interior minister, all members of the different militias will abandon their positions within the city and return to their respective headquarters, removing the numerous checkpoints dividing the different areas of Tripoli, restoring free movement in the capital.
The agreement also stipulates that the possible re-entry of militias inside the city will only be possible in the event of serious emergencies and at the order of the government authority, thus taking a symbolic but significant step toward stability.
The intent, according to Trabelsi, is to set a precedent that can then be followed by the other major cities, thereby restoring the central authority of the Tripoli government and the police forces that depend on it, in a path ideally capable of restoring the dominance of politics over that of the various militias that still form the backbone of security in western Libya.
Under the general terms of the understanding at least five of the main armed groups present in the capital are expected to vacate their positions by the beginning of the coming month of Ramadan, April 9. These are the General Security Force, the RADA, the 444th Brigade, the 111th Brigade and the Stability Support Authority, representing the main armed components now present in the different areas of the capital, which impose control over specific neighborhoods and have long exercised their prerogatives through the erection of control barriers, at which arbitrary powers have not infrequently been exercised. At the same time, however, these forces have often clashed with each other over control of certain strategic areas, such as the port or Tripoli airport, resulting in casualties and damage that have exasperated the population.
The measure is also ideally aimed at regulating the role of the various militias, which are not an expression of the public security apparatus but still receive subsidies from the government according to their contribution to national security, based on a special status guaranteed in 2021, in a combination of interests that has gradually eroded the power of the central government in favor of the militias and the numerous armed gangs present in the city and throughout Tripolitania.
Although the adherence to the removal measure from the city represents a notable success for the government, the presence and capacity of the militias is still an essential factor for the security of the Tripoli government, which has failed despite numerous efforts to reconstitute a national army capable of defending the territorial integrity of the part of Libya administered by the Tripoli government.
The militias have been instrumental, if not essential, in defending the capital from General Haftar’s attempt in April 2019 to overthrow the Government of National Accord government, however, assuming at the end of hostilities a central as much as polarizing role in managing Tripolitania’s security and economic interests – licit and illicit – entrenched in the territory.
The government, for this reason, while on the one hand attempting to limit its role and presence in the cities, is not yet able to free itself from the role of the various militias, having to manage the complex and fragile balances that determine their relations and capabilities with care and restraint.
The ideal goal of a unified national army under the direct command of central authorities still seems far off, and the risk of militias feeling threatened in the management of their specific local interests must be handled by political authorities with extreme caution.
