Libya's rival governments agree on elections within two years, but skeptics warn of elite power-sharing deals

Libya has spent more than a decade fractured between two rival governments, each claiming legitimacy, each backed by militias and foreign powers. Now, after years of failed attempts at reconciliation, the two sides have agreed to hold parliamentary and presidential elections within the next two years. The agreement, brokered by the United Nations, includes restructuring the electoral commission and resolving legal disputes that had previously blocked progress. On the surface, it looks like movement toward the unified state Libyans have waited for since the fall of Moammar Gadhafi in 2011.

The split began in 2014. The Government of National Unity, led by Prime Minister Abdul-Hamid Dbeibah, controls the west from Tripoli. The House of Representatives, anchored in the eastern city of Tobruk and backed by former warlord Khalifa Haftar, controls the east. Each has tried repeatedly to consolidate power over the other. Each has foreign backers—Turkey supports the west, Russia the east. The UN's Support Mission in Libya, or UNSMIL, framed the new agreement as a turning point: a chance to end the transitional period and move toward legitimate elections that could finally reunite the country.

Geographic conflict expert Andreas Dittmann, a professor at the University of Giessen in Germany, sees genuine reason for cautious optimism. The appetite for continued division has worn thin, he argues. Years of civil war have exhausted both the political actors and the population. Foreign powers, too, have shifted their approach—rather than backing a single faction, they now seem to accept that Libya can only move forward if both sides are incorporated into a single government. The UN has gone beyond simply scheduling elections. It has established what it calls Structured Dialogues to build consensus on leadership, security, economic policy, and reconciliation. It is also working to strengthen the electoral commission and clarify the legal framework that will govern the vote.

But Libya's history of failed agreements casts a long shadow. Michael Bauer, who heads the Tunisia office of Germany's Konrad Adenauer Foundation, calls the current accord an important but limited step. The real question, he says, is whether it will actually be implemented. Past political agreements in Libya have routinely collapsed. Meanwhile, the United States is pursuing a parallel track. Massad Boulos, the Trump administration's senior adviser on Arab and Middle Eastern affairs, has been working to bring the Dbeibah and Haftar families together. In June, Haftar's son Saddam met with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Washington. This American approach differs markedly from the UN's more inclusive process, Bauer argues. The US appears focused on brokering a deal among the country's elites—a distinction that raises uncomfortable questions about what kind of elections might actually result.

The risk is that elections become a formality masking a power-sharing arrangement. Bauer puts it plainly: elections can only be meaningful if the outcome has not already been decided. The UK-based think tank Chatham House has already warned that a deal dividing ministries and resources among rival elites would simply institutionalize the existing competition and entrench corruption and patronage systems. The country's geographic division compounds the problem. Most of Libya's population lives in the western areas, particularly around Tripoli. If elections proceed according to democratic principles, the east would lose power—a reality that gives eastern leaders little incentive to accept genuine democratic results.

There is also the question of what ordinary Libyans actually want. The country is rich in oil and gas, yet plagued by power outages, inadequate public services, and dysfunction across state institutions. Bauer doubts that elections alone can solve these problems. The deeper issue is structural: a functioning state would curtail the power of those currently benefiting from Libya's resources and patronage networks. Why would those actors voluntarily surrender such advantages? Over the next two years, the agreement must accomplish more than simply set a date for voting. It must create conditions in which political rivals accept electoral results and in which public institutions actually work. Whether Libya's elites are willing to accept those conditions remains the central, unanswered question.