 I'm honored today to have Tarq Magarisi here with me, the senior policy fellow from the European Council of Foreign Relations. Thank you for joining us. Thank you so much for having me here. The UN Special Representative for the Secretary General was in New York earlier this week. What did he say and why should we care? Yeah, so the special representative came to announce his new plan to take Libya towards elections. And this is a big deal because the UN hasn't really had a plan for Libya for the last couple of years. So to see something concrete come out and what was considered to be quite a powerful performance is encouraging. I think that this is an issue of vital importance, not just for Libya, but for the broader central Mediterranean region, which is dependent in some way on Libyan stability. So it was a promising first step, if not everything that people wanted to hear. So there appears to be a push by the international community and the United Nations to have elections in 2023. In 2021 there was a similar push that didn't end in elections. So what's to lead us to believe that things will be different this time around? Yeah, that's why I said it's not everything that people wanted to hear. For those of us who follow Libya closely, the SRSG speech on Monday would have sounded awfully familiar to the former UN plan that was supposed to lead to elections in 2021. To be a bit optimistic, the things that might change this time around is that we seem to have a bit more international cohesion and understanding amongst the main states of the need to get to elections, and so they should have, or the SRSG should have their full support. And hopefully in the implementation of the plan, because the plan was quite light on details, we can learn the lessons of 2021 and hopefully fix some of the things that caused those elections to fail. So what would those lessons be? So just to lay out the plan quickly, because we keep talking about it, the SRSG would like to convene a panel, a high electoral steering panel for Libya of about 30 to 40 people, including all different aspects of the current socio-political scene. This means civil society activists, or well everything from civil society to alleged war criminals. It's quite a big mix of people. And then this panel would do everything needed to take Libya to elections. This means setting the electoral law, constitutional basis, road maps, security planning. And so these are a lot of things that need to be done by a large group of people. So hopefully what we can fix and what we can learn from last time is to put safeguards into the process to stop the elites from corrupting it. For those of you who aren't familiar with Defile, the former version of this plan in 2021 had strong allegations of corruption and intimidation of participants in the forum. And the second thing would be to try to craft the legislative basis and constitutional basis for elections in such a way that there is some plan not only for the elections themselves but what comes afterwards. An idea that Libyans know what they are voting for and what that government is going to do and mandate so to speak. So you raised this issue of what people would be voting for and so what do you anticipate will be the expectations of Libyans if there are elections in 2023? Are they expecting elections to yield a functioning government and government institutions? Or are they looking for something much more modest? Unfortunately I think that Libyans are quite nihilistic by this point. I mean they've been promised many things by the UN and by other leading countries quite a few times now and as we've noted these haven't panned out. But I think the real desperation from Libyans is for a functioning government. I mean the country has been in transition for 12 years now, there have been multiple governments in that time and I think it's safe to say that not a single one of them has cared much about governing. And so the state is faltering, everyday life is getting worse and worse. And so yeah there is a real urgent need and desire by Libyans to not have to rely on themselves anymore and to be able to see a state return and that means a unified state as well because Libya has been administratively divided for much of the last eight years. What do we know about the mechanics that would go into an election? Is the SRSG or anyone else laid out whether or not there will be a voter education effort? Is the country prepared to even hold elections? Are ballot boxes able to be secured? Will there be international observers? All of the mechanics behind the election, where are we in that process? Yeah this is another one of the anxiety inducing points of the SRSG speech on Monday. The plan seems to be very light on implementational details and we all know that elections aren't easy at the best of times so elections in a country like Libya are going to be even more difficult. So Libya does have an electoral commission which hopefully can sort out a lot of the technical issues like ballot boxes and the logistics of it. But there are really big issues such as security. The security sector of the country is divided, the country is ripe with informal armed groups and many of these would like to run in elections. So we are going to need strong safeguards to ensure that armed actors don't stuff ballot boxes or intimidate voters. And then on the other side there is the issue of monitoring elections. So one of the big problems with the former election in Libya in 2014 was that the results were hotly disputed. So I think again we have to learn lessons and we have to prepare to collect objectively as much evidence as possible for how the elections go so that when the results are disputed we have a clear body of evidence to fall back on. Has there been any indication that armed groups that currently act as de facto police or security services in some of these areas would be inclined to allow elections to move forward? Would they potentially be co-opted by the state and deputized as it were to carry out the functions of the elections or how will armed groups factor into all this? From what I understand of the SRSGs planning, the UN would like to begin a dialogue starting with a body that was formed by the UN to monitor the ceasefire in Libya which is called the Five Plus Five Joint Military Commission. So the UN would like to work through them in order to identify which armed groups can be worked with and to ultimately create a vehicle through which to secure elections. But as with a number of many other key issues, the UN is currently very light on implementational details. And I think that this is another signal that the UN might require some expertise and some help to make sure that the elections and the plan actually works this time around. So we've heard Ambassador at the U.S. Special Envoy for Libya, Ambassador in New Orleans talk about the need for elections. Is it fair to say that the sequencing of events requires that elections go first before constitutional questions are settled, before DDR is discussed, before the reunification of state institutions, specifically the central bank and the military? Or can these things go in a different order than is currently being proposed? Libya is suffering from a lot of complex problems that will probably take a very long time to unwind. As a colleague of mine likes to put it, in order to resolve the situation and to stabilize things, we need to simultaneously work on the short-term and long-term issues. I believe personally that the most pressing issue in Libya right now is that of a legitimacy crisis. So Libya is politically divided, the political institutional structure of the country almost ensures that this is the case, because you have different bodies in different parts of the country representing different leaderships who are able to leverage, you know, geographical divides and grievances in order to keep the country divided. And the only way to move past this and to have a national government, which in turn creates the platform to do a lot of these long-term things like security sector reform or even finalizing a permanent constitution for the country, yeah, a national unified government is really a first step in clearing out this deeply broken and problematic political infrastructure that exists right now. Before the Secretary, the special representative of the Secretary General Bathele gave his speech at the United Nations, he was in Washington attending a conference of special envoys from other countries, the so-called P3 plus 2 plus 2 plus 2. Do you believe that he secured assurances from those countries, especially those that have been active within Libya in supporting proxies, that they will not meddle or that they will reserve the temptation to engage and tilt the scales of the elections, or are we likely to see external actors continue to put their thumbs on the scales, so to speak? I mean, knowing diplomats, I'm sure that he did receive assurances in the room, but what happens in the room and what happens outside of the room are often quite different from each other. I mean, I would say that there is probably more unity than there has been before, whilst the kind of individual interests of all of these countries, and we listed, what is it, nine, but there are still a few more who are outside of the room. I think whilst all these countries will continue pursuing their unilateral interests, there is an understanding amongst at least a critical mass of them that Libya really has to progress at this point, because if these elections are not held, Libya is going to sink back into a dangerous place, which not only means that none of them can secure their interests, but a lot of new crises will emerge. So yeah, I think we have a critical mass of states who will try to push things forward, but at the same time, there are outliers, including some major states and some regional actors, who will continue not just putting a thumb, but probably putting their whole fist on the scales. Some of the actors that have been supported by external bodies or external agents caused a great deal of consternation among Libyans in 2021, when they were potentially going to run for elected office. And so an issue that came up then was who would be allowed to run? Has that issue been resolved specifically for some of the more problematic figures, like Saif al-Islam Qaddafi or the warlord Khalif al-Hifhtar or Muhammad al-Sinusi? How do Libyans feel about those people today? There are many different opinions amongst the six million Libyans about each of these figures. And this issue hasn't been resolved yet. In fact, it's one of the main outstanding questions for any electoral law. I think that this is going to have to be one of the most pressing issues for this high electoral steering panel to consider. But I think it has to be taken with as objective, illegal-ese approach as possible, perhaps drawing on best practice. I mean, we can see clear and obvious and uncontroversial reasons for why somebody like Saif al-Islam should not be able to run because he does have an outstanding indictment against him from the International Criminal Court. And then for the rest of them, it's a political decision more than anything. And it's unfortunate that it's a political decision because some of the allegations against some of these military actors and so on are extremely severe. But at this point, I think many Libyans will have to think about whether any of these guys is even likely to win. And if so, what can we do to give these elections the best chance possible of succeeding and of going forward? So if you were able to look into the future, into the fall of 2023, how likely do you think it is these elections take place? And what's the danger if they don't take place? Is this the last ditch effort to save electoral democracy in Libya? Or is there an opportunity to push the deadline further out if it looks like the elections are not possible? I mean, first things first, I think that this attempt as a whole is probably the last attempt. It's the last chance, Saloon, to really have an electoral process, to move things forward. I get the strong impression that if this fails, I mean, not only will you have lost the belief and the hope of Libyan people, but I think also a lot of the different members of the international community will start making their own plans for the future. And we will lose a lot of the momentum and a lot of the impetus that existed following the end of the war in 2020. I think one positive thing is that there isn't a clear deadline on these elections. So the SRSG expressed a strong desire to have them in 2023. But as we've seen previously in Libya, if there is a clear deadline, then most of the political elite who don't really want elections, they want to keep living in the Wild West and profiting from it, they know in their heads that I only have to stall things until this date and then I'm home free. Whereas I think under the current format, if we get to November or December and when we are two-thirds of the way towards elections but not quite there, the momentum will still be there to continue. I don't think that the SRSG has taken the easiest path to elections. But according to the diplomats who met with him here in Washington, you know, he seems to strongly know his own mind in the sense of what he would like to do. And so whilst, you know, in my personal opinion, there are some considerable problems with the plan, especially in the sense that there are no implementational details yet, yeah, there is hope or there is reason and we can see paths to making this work. Tarik, thank you so much for your time and your insights. Really appreciate it. Thank you so much, Tom.