News24 | Libya’s arsenals are a blind spot in the Tripoli agreement

Disbanding militias is key to Libya’s reunification, but could lead to weapons stockpiles being trafficked into neighbouring countries, writes Hassane Koné in ISS Today.

An agreement signed in Tripoli on 30 August between rival eastern and western Libyan camps could pave the way for national elections within two years. It could also restore political stability and territorial unity, which have remained elusive since the 2020 ceasefire that ended large-scale fighting in the country.

The African Union (AU) and United Nations (UN) Security Council welcomed the electoral agreement, and Hanna Tetteh, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Libya, considers it an important step towards breaking the political and institutional deadlock. The deal has revived Libyans’ hopes of emerging from a long crisis, but scepticism about its prospects remains.

While eastern Libya’s House of Representatives approved the agreement, the western faction’s advisory body, the High Council of State, rejected it. The council argued that electoral changes should go through Libya’s established constitutional mechanisms, and that the agreement bypassed earlier understandings between the two chambers.

The latest rapprochement also raises other complications. For Niger and Chad, which share nearly 1 400km of border with Libya, and indeed for the Sahel as a whole, a reunifying Libya could paradoxically increase regional insecurity in the short term if the weapons issue remains unaddressed.

Libya and neighbouring countries at risk of arms inflows

For the past 15 years, several Chadian and Tuareg rebel movements and terrorist groups have used southern Libya as a rear base to resupply with weapons and ammunition. South-eastern Libya is also a transit zone for equipment destined for the Rapid Support Forces, the paramilitary group that has been fighting Sudan’s army since 2023. This supply line, which runs through Kufra, is already operational and could simply change clients.

Reunifying the army means disbanding the militias, integrating their fighters and recovering their arsenals, which have continued to grow despite the 2020 ceasefire. Without strict controls, these stockpiles – along with the surplus weapons accumulated during the second civil war (2014-2020), which was largely fuelled by foreign powers – could be diverted to trafficking networks in neighbouring countries.

A community leader from Agadez in Niger told the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) that some factions linked to these networks could encourage the resale of weapons on the cross-border black market. The natural outlets for this trade would be in the Sahel, a transit zone where many Nigerien and Chadian intermediaries facilitate arms smuggling.

A flood of Libyan weapons like the one following the fall of Muammar Gaddafi’s regime in 2011 is a major concern, even if the circumstances differ. At that time, the state’s collapse left weapon depots open to looting; today, the negotiated dismantling of the militias could release their stockpiles.

After 2011, looted weapons flooded the Sahel and Lake Chad Basin via the Salvador Pass in Niger’s far north and Chad’s Tibesti region. These flows contributed to the outbreak of the Malian crisis in 2012, the strengthening of Boko Haram and the expansion of terrorist groups from 2015.

A resumption of such trafficking could channel Libya’s surplus weapons into the Lake Chad Basin, the Sahel and coastal states, fuelling insecurity there. In the hands of non-state armed groups, large quantities of mortars, rocket launchers and drones could shift the balance of power on the ground with devastating consequences for national armies and civilians.

The actors in this cross-border trade – local transporters and intermediaries – also traffic in fuel, drugs, gold and migrants along the routes linking Niger and Chad to Libya. With their intimate knowledge of the desert areas straddling these countries, they can easily move large quantities of arms and ammunition to various buyers, including terrorist groups.

Unless precautions are taken, the groups destabilising the Sahel, Lake Chad Basin and Gulf of Guinea countries risk becoming over-armed, a Tuareg community leader from Mali told ISS. Countries south of Libya, and the UN and AU, which sponsored the 30 August agreement, must act quickly to minimise this risk, rather than wait until the political crisis is resolved before intervening.

The first step is for Libyan parties to attach a mechanism to the political agreement that governs the collection and control of arsenals. The mandate of the UN Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL), which is mainly political, should be expanded without delay to include a dedicated disarmament component.

Working with Libyan actors, UNSMIL could, within six months, design a process for collecting, inventorying, marking and registering weapons as a prerequisite for integrating militia members into the unified army. Implementation could start before the end of 2027.

Closer military cooperation between Algeria, Niger and Chad should be encouraged. This could involve intelligence sharing and joint border patrols.

The UN and AU should also help Alliance of Sahel States (AES) countries and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) tackle weapons proliferation through national commissions on small arms and light weapons. Ideally, this should be regionally coordinated, but the AES’ withdrawal from ECOWAS may prevent that.

The AU could draw on its Strategy on the Control of Illicit Proliferation, Circulation and Trafficking of Small Arms and Light Weapons, and its Silencing the Guns initiative, to encourage countries to join forces against a resurgence of arms trafficking.

If nothing is done before a unified executive is installed in Libya, the militias’ weapons will have headed south long before the polls.

Hassane Koné is a senior researcher in the Institute for Security Studies’ (ISS) Regional Office for West Africa, Sahel, Lake Chad Basin and Central Africa.