The situation in Libya was the focus of considerable controversy during the inaugural meetings of the 71st session of the UN General Assembly. Egypt rose to the defence of the Libyan National Army and urged members of the General Assembly and the Security Council to furnish arms to the army and support it in its campaign to restore stability in Libya. Egypt also called on the international community to support the choices of the Libyan people who have staged rallies in support of their army and their national institutions that have set Libya on the course to recovery and are steering the country away from the syndrome of repeated failures on the part of all political and tribal factions. Other countries, such as Qatar, seek the opposite and — obviously alluding to Egypt and the Egyptian leadership — they even urged the international community to punish all parties that support the Libyan national army and the will of the Libyan people. The Libyan National Army (LNA) under the command of Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar has recently scored a series of successes against terrorist groups aligned with the Islamic State group and its affiliates, such as the Libya Dawn militia, the military wing of the Libyan Muslim Brotherhood. The Libyan army has driven such militias out of the oil-rich areas and, in the process, exposed the full dimensions of Western designs towards Libya and the entire region. Washington and London issued an ultimatum to the LNA, warning it to either halt its operations or face Western sanctions. The two Western powers then moved to promote a Security Council resolution to condemn the LNA and threaten it with sanctions if it did not withdraw from the territories over which it had won control and halt operations against the militia groups. The move was obstructed by the Russian Federation, China and Egypt. Credit here is particularly due to Moscow and Beijing, both of which have the right to veto. (A Security Council resolution is passed if it receives nine votes out of its 15 members so long as it is not vetoed by one of the five permanent members on the council, namely the US, France, Britain, Russia and China.) The LNA has achieved considerable progress in both western and eastern Libya under very arduous circumstances. It should be borne in mind, here, that the term “Libyan army” does not signify an army in the conventional military sense. A proper standing army had ceased to exist in Libya during the last two decades of the Muammar Gaddafi regime. During that period Gaddafi turned to mercenary forces recruited from sub-Saharan Africa which he organised into brigades and placed under the command of his sons. The army fighting the militia groups Libya today is a force built up by a group of professional military commanders (who like Haftar had fallen out with the Gaddafi regime in the late 1980s) and that was officially approved and put under Haftar's command by the popularly elected and internationally recognised House of Representatives in Tobruk. This is what formally sets it apart from all other militia groups, and especially the Libya Dawn in Misrata/Tripoli. Gaddafi simultaneously built up an enormous arsenal of modern and sophisticated weaponry. Following the fall of the Gaddafi regime, these arsenals were raided and the militia groups that had formed during the revolutionary period plundered huge quantities of heavy weapons. The militia groups then used these weapons to seize control over vast tracts of the country and they also gave a large share of these weapons to similar groups in neighbouring countries, especially Egypt. Also in the post-Gaddafi period, Libya deteriorated into a failed state, which is to say there was no central government to manage the affairs of the country and no standing army to safeguard national security and safeguard the country's territorial borders. In the absence of a central government and army, militia groups proliferated throughout the country and also seized control over seaports and airports through which they then welcomed foreign militia elements. It is important to note here that the Muslim Brotherhood, when it was in power in Egypt, forged close ties with the ideologically likeminded groups in Libya. In this regard, Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood leaders, most notably Essam Al-Erian, had mentioned that their organisation was in the process of training tens of thousands of its members to become combatants that would form the core of a “Free Egyptian Army”, along the lines of the Free Syrian Army that is fighting the regime in Damascus. It is no coincidence that the Libyan militias succeeded in seizing control over the largest tracts of Libyan territory during the year of Muslim Brotherhood rule in Egypt. Those militias were preparing themselves to expand eastwards and westwards from their base in the heart of North Africa between Egypt and Tunisia and Algeria. The crucial turning point occurred in Egypt on 30 June 2013, when the Egyptian people staged their millions-strong marches to demand the fall of Muslim Brotherhood rule and regime of the Muslim Brotherhood Supreme Guide. The popular will prevailed when the Egyptian Armed Forces chose to side with the demands of the people, thus ushering in the recovery of the Egyptian state. At about the same time, the Tunisian people were rallying to bring down the Tunisian chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood — the Ennahda movement — through parliamentary elections followed by presidential elections. The latter took place on 21 December 2014 and resulted in the victory of Beji Caid Essebsi, the candidate of the Nidaa Tounesparty, who had campaigned beneath the slogan “Long live Tunisia,” which reverberated strongly with the sentiments of the Egyptian people at the time. The Muslim Brotherhood sun had thus set in Egypt and Tunisia, leaving the Libyan branch to fight its last battle through its militia organisations there. Egypt, for its part, is doing its utmost to help the internationally recognised Libyan government reassert its control over Libyan territory and eradicate those militias. For example, Egypt has assumed the responsibility of helping to modernise and develop the capacities of the Libyan national army. When Egypt arose on 30 June 2013, it succeeded in altering the map of North Africa. Today, the battle for Libyan territorial control is the last chapter in the drive to put paid to the scheme to disintegrate and fragment the major state entities in the Arab region. The Libyan victory in this battle will mark an end to that chapter and the beginning of a new phase of comprehensive development in the region. This is precisely why we find that the same capitals that are still fighting the 30 June Revolution and trying to punish the Egyptian people politically and economically for having ousted the Muslim Brotherhood are the same capitals that are promoting anarchy in Libya. Chief among them are Doha, Ankara, London, Washington and Berlin.
