 But good morning everyone and welcome. My name is Bill Burns. I'm the president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and I am very pleased to welcome my former colleague Jonathan Weiner to Carnegie. Jonathan's formal title at the State Department was Special Envoy for Libya and Senior Advisor for MEK Resettlement, but he was known at Foggy Bottom and across government as the fixer-in-chief. The more complicated and charged the issue, the more likely we were to ask Jonathan to help fix it. This is not just because of the surgical precision with which he navigated both thorny issues abroad and the complicated political currents here at home. It's because he was able to deliver results and to move the ball forward when most of us were inclined to throw up our hands in despair. His work on Libya over the past three years is a prime example of his grit and determination. When Jonathan inherited the Libya file, the country was rapidly disintegrating and would soon fracture into open conflict between two loose camps backed by regional patrons. Capitalizing on the chaos, the Islamic State took control of a 150-mile strip of coastline in the country's oil-wrench center, further threatening not only Libya's stability, but that of neighboring states like Tunisia. Oil production plummeted to its lowest level since the 2011 revolution and the flow of migrants across the country's poorest borders reached tragic and catastrophic proportions. By the end of 2014, the international community had essentially pulled out of Libya. Faced with these extraordinary challenges, Jonathan worked with Libyan leaders to help form a unity government, build regional support for the new government, and enable a Libyan-led campaign against the Islamic State. His granular understanding of Libya's Byzantine political landscape and his tireless shuttle diplomacy throughout the region across the Mediterranean were critical. So was his focus on ensuring that counterterrorism efforts reinforced the building of inclusive institutions and a cohesive government, and that critical institutions like the Central Bank and the National Oil Corporation didn't collapse. Today, the Islamic State has been ejected from its stronghold insert, and its footprint in the country has been greatly reduced. Oil output has rebounded threefold to a three-year high, and Libya's admittedly fragile government and national accord offers some hope for further progress. All of you know, as well as I do, that there remain massive obstacles in the path of that progress. Libya faces enormous governance hurdles, including the rebuilding of its security sector, civil society, and in some areas basic services. Its factional divides and the intervention of regional actors with their own interests and aspirations risk a return to open conflict. This is all a reminder of the importance of active and sustained diplomacy, the kind that Jonathan has exemplified over the past three years. So we're very fortunate that Jonathan has agreed to share with us his thoughts on the road traveled and the road ahead for the Libyan people and their partners. And all of us at Carnegie and all of those who care about Libya and the region are equally fortunate to count on Fred Weary's unique experience and expertise. Opinions are free in this town, but Fred has earned the right to his. His opinion is the product of many trips to Libya and many more conversations with key players across the political spectrum. I benefited from his insights when I was in government and I know Jonathan has as well. So I'm very proud today to call Fred my colleague and I look forward to today's timely and very important conversation. Thank you all very much for coming. Thank you Ambassador Burns for that nice introduction and thank you all for for joining us today. Thank you to Jonathan Weiner. We're very fortunate to hear your views. As was mentioned in the introduction, I thought this would be an opportune time to to reflect on your tenure during a tumultuous period. But then also look forward to the future of the country and especially US US policy. And as we heard you arrived in this post at a really critical juncture. I mean this is this was a time when when Libya was starting to become really a failed state. It wasn't meeting basic definitions of sovereignty. I think you had the Prime Minister being kidnapped. You had Benghazi the birth of the revolution under this this reign of terror. Very soon you'd have oil being grabbed. And as we heard the country would devolve into into open conflict that became really a regional conflict. So going into this, what were some of your initial assumptions about the root of the conflict? I mean the drivers of this of this problem and then how did those assumptions change over over time? Well, at the very beginning, when I took on the work in late 2013, Ali Zaidan was still the head of the country. And what I observed was that the the wheels, the gears weren't connecting to the to the wheel of government. So the will of government continue and nothing would could quite connect with it. Every country has got various types of absorptive capacity limits. And what I observed was that Libya seemed to have repellent capacity, which is its absorptive capacity was essentially nil. The government's leadership, the political impulse and the government were connected. When I visited Libya, it went to ministries. There'd be the person who would be the guard at the open door. There'd be the assistant for the minister. And then there might be a secretary sitting outside the the administrator's office. You couldn't find anybody else working at the ministry. Absolutely cataractless and empty. So there wasn't a connection between the political and the functionality of government. So I assumed based on that that a substantial portion of it was a technocratic limitation. And you could technocratically bring in Gulf state type software and hardware systems and techniques. I'd never met a Libyan with an email address that ended in L.Y. Dot coms, sure. Nets, orgs, whatever. But ending in an L.Y. couldn't find it for government people. So no electronic systems to move information around government to keep track of records and to keep track of what they're doing. Somehow it all worked on the financial side. Central bank was still paying salaries. So I assumed, OK, you bring in, you do a technical fair or something. You start getting some government contracts into training of Libyans in systems. It was all hopelessly naive. It was the most ridiculous prescription for Libyans anybody could have come up with. I hope nobody ever comes up with anything sillier than what I came to the table with when I started out. Because while there are technocratic gaps designed in by Gaddafi, so the system wouldn't work unless he said make it work. The whole idea was for everything just to keep going unless he decided to change something. If he decided to change something, he'd make his phone calls and people would then engage on that. And you had a good audit arm, the Dewan, checking everything to make sure it worked. I mean, Dewan would have to engage and say yes. The finance minister would have to engage and say yes at Gaddafi, drove it. With his impulse gone, there was no one with legitimacy who was the person who could say yes and everybody else would follow. Ali Zaidan did not have deep ties as near as I could tell. The government bureaucracies, my understanding was he lived outside the country for a number of years. I compared him at one point to being in a revolving door on his telephone, on a cell phone in a revolving door. And he would kind of wave at you as the revolving door opened to where you were and they'd go on to the next spin. Not connected, lack of connection functionally. So I moved rather quickly away from that technocratic ideal, which had worked in a number of countries in transition, which had had some real appeal when you got revenues, recognized, began to recognize the problem was political. And then what I saw was not only the Libyans not say yes to other Libyans, they seemed to delight in saying no. And I began to hear the Gaddafi in their heads. Gaddafi in their heads, he'd been dead at that point for three or four years, the Gaddafi in their heads said, the people are the only thing that's legitimate. There is no government to no reason for opposition to the government because there is no government. The government is the people, the people are the government. Cool, I'm Libyan, I'm the government. Nobody else gets to decide, I get to decide. Are you the government or are you a Libyan? You get to decide, you get to decide, you get to decide. Well, you get four people in the room, you're going to have seven or nine opinions of what should happen next. So there was no ability to get decisions made and then enforced. President Obama had worked with Elie's idea to come up with a general purpose force, create an integrated Libyan security force to replace the old army and to act as a way uniting the country against internal and external threats under the government. I couldn't figure out why they couldn't say yes. To something that Elie's idea had agreed to. They had to sign a piece of paper to get the U.S. portion, we already trained 6,000 Libyans. Oh, those people who told it, who say to you, the United States Obama administration abandoned Libyan never did anything. It's not true. This is not true. Repellent capacity rather than absorptive capacity. That's true. But Secretary Kerry chased around Elie's idea and then chased around his successor, Prime Minister Alpini, to get from the side a piece of paper. Couldn't get it done, let alone get even minimal funding to make it happen. So if foreign countries wanted to help, it wasn't going to be funded by Libyans. Even when Libya had the money, they were going to have to do it on their own and then it still wasn't going to work because you couldn't get Libyan cooperation. So this is what I began to observe. Political division, not just west and east, west, east and south, not tribe against tribe, not political party against political party, not government versus opposition. Just getting it down to two would be an enormous achievement. Just getting opposing forces would itself already be achieved would be a coalescence. I saw chaos fragmentation near our anarchy. The Qadhafi in their head. So in 2014, we watched Qadhafi in their head play out with the decision to remove Ali Zaidan. He's ineffective in March 2014. Following Khalifa Haftar's announcements, there is no government at all other than me. I am the government. I now run Libya. It was a very famous, I think, February 2014 announcement, a television coup. Nothing much happened after it because at that point, he didn't have forces. Valentine's Day. It was his Valentine's Day message to Libya. By March, we had two competing governments to succeed, Ali Zaidan. And I remember talking to a member of the General National Congress who was trying to impeach Zaidan right before it happened. He said, don't worry. We're going to get rid of him. We'll get somebody better. Well, how's that going to happen? Oh, don't worry. We'll get somebody better. They had no plan, particularly to get somebody better. Ultimately, they had two prime ministers agreed to, as the people were going to run the country. One was from the Misrata. That was Ahmed Batig. The other was the old defense minister, Al Thani. And he ultimately wound up in Tobruk. There were votes in June. They voted for a new House of Representatives. Participation was, I think, 19%. Something like that nationwide. Karim, is that number about right? 19%. Libyans at this point did not have a lot of rosy expectations. So we wound up with two governments competing. Ahmed Batig then pulled down his prime ministership after a court ruling. The Supreme Court ruling said that Al Thani was legitimate. And this was very hard. It provided a real chance. It was the Supreme Court deciding who was running the country. And one of the two people accepted. Now, the problem was that Mr. Al Thani, he, as prime minister, proved less effective than Ali Zaidan. Now, I have not described Ali Zaidan as being massively effective. Pride. But he was not massively effective. Al Thani was less effective. He came to Washington and started talking about what a great place Libya was to invest. It was not a credible performance, unfortunately. People just looked at him in disbelief because his speech was so removed. From the realities that will be at that point. In later appearances with senior foreign leaders and ambassadors and envoys, he would go on and on blaming us for everything he couldn't do. Just straight out of tax, which was even more dismay. Evasion of responsibility. Unwilling to say, it's my job. I'm going to get it done. Very frustrating. By the summer we began to see the government, the old government in Tripoli, the GNC, which disappeared as a result of the election, say, well, we don't really like the elections. Yes, they were carried down the amendment to the constitutional declaration, but we don't really like them. So we're still the government. The House of Representatives was supposed to meet in Benghazi, which is at least sort of close to the center of the coast. Of course, the center of the center was cert on the coast. But they didn't meet in Benghazi. That by then was becoming contested territory due to General Haftar unilaterally on his own as a militia before he had any authority from the House of Representatives deciding to take the city. So we now have a classic warlord problem. Classic warlord problem. He then ultimately gets appointed by the House of Representatives guys and builds out the Libya National Army as his vehicle to bit by bit secure the country against the Islamists. Now, one of the wonderful things is the way Libyans label one another. I wouldn't label a Libyan. The label would be wrong. Any label I give anyone there is going to be inadequate. But you have the guys in the east called the guys in the west, Islamists. It's rotten. They're all Islamists. They all need to be imprisoned out of the country or dead, the Islamists. The people in the west who are the Islamists are saying they're all Gaddafiites. They just want a new dictator. Both labels are mischaracterizations, but they're at least simplifying things into two. We may no longer have 10 or eight or 12 or 15 or 18 things to worry about at the same time, at least a coalesce to two. So you had two governments, each of which said we're in charge. I remember Mr. Kerry, Secretary of State, saying, so they get two governments now, which of them can provide goods and services to Libyan people? It was that kind of silence in the room. And I said, well, Mr. Secretary, we'll work on getting back to only one that can't yet provide services, goods and services to Libyan people. That would be better. And he basically said, we can't have two governments. You've got to find some way of getting one government in place that is universally recognized and which can function. So the goal began as of late summer of 2014. How do you get the Libyans back together again? 2014 saw a low conflict, low intensity civil war where they're competing. And that in turn caused us to need to say, okay, another technocratic solution. Let's consider freezing the assets again, trying to get technocrats in place because you've got competing governments that can't meet the needs of the people and see if some kind of international trusteeship of the type that has done Sierra Leone, Liberia, maybe Somalia, Ethiopia has been done four times including Iraq. And there was some support for that internally within the foreign ministries, the White House, Ten Downing. The LAZ had no interest. We do that. We become responsible. We become responsible for the whole thing. Everything goes wrong in Libya will be our fault. It's really not smart. I had to agree with the point of view. We would all have been blamed. Post-colonial, colonial behavior, inappropriate. Things weren't that bad. So let's avoid that. And we would draw and push once again to a political solution. But we had to get the Libyans to find a pathway together towards one government. And that was the work of 2015. To get one government in place. And there were a series of things that were done, political dialogue, meetings of political parties, meetings regionally. And we followed three precepts. And these three precepts came from Johnny Carson, former Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs in Somalia. And I keep blazing them on my brain because they were so important. First, you've got to have one negotiating process. You can't have an American process and a Chinese process and a Russian process and an EU process, an Egyptian process, an Algerian process. It's got to be one. So we relied on the UN to be the core process to get discussions going. Fundamental principle. Second principle, have the countries who are patrons of clients tell their clients they have to deal. We were seeing certain countries supporting the Islamists and other countries supporting the Qaddafiites. Right, I'm using those labels. They're not the right labels. But we'll use those labels for a moment. As long as you've got different people supporting different factions with guns, you're not going to have peace. I wound up going to Sudan and talking to the Sudanese government, saying, you know, we've heard reports you've provided weapons to both sides. And before I even said that, I said, you know, there are these press reports by counterpart in Sudan, said, you're saying that we've sold weapons to both sides. You don't have to beat around the bush, but we stopped. We've stopped. I was delighted. My mission was already accomplished while I was still pussy-putting around, tiptoeing into the territory. And they stopped. So the goal was, the second goal was get the patrons to tell the clients they've got to deal in a single negotiating process. And the third element, get benefits to people throughout the country. Can't favor the East or the West or the South only. It's got to have benefits to all the different cities. So there has to be some distributed benefits. And that became very fundamental to discussions as well. With those three principles, bit by bit by bit, we were able to work through a series of activities with the countries who are most concerned, Libya's neighbors, both in North Africa and the Middle East and beyond, and with people representing a pretty wide range of the infractions and through an instrument called the political dialogue which included meetings in Algeria and Geneva and Cairo as well as meetings in Morocco and Scorot, Morocco where the court discussions took place. Bit by bit, the UN was able to cobble a government together. And I was asked throughout the process, well, what do you think about this guy for prime minister? That person for deputy prime minister. Response, the United States should have nothing to do, period, with the selection process. We don't want a government that's been hand-picked in any shape or form by the United States. So we declined that. And when the names were announced as Libyan choices, we had no way of knowing to what extent that had been influenced by other countries, which Libyan jewel what? Because we stayed focused entirely on the general principles, come together, integrate, benefit everybody, don't fight one another. And that was created the Scorot agreement. That was our role. And it was very important. Now, what we needed to do next at that point was to help them get functional, get into tripling, get functional. And the same reasons we tried to get a general purpose force came evident that we once again needed to build, get Libyan forces built at a national level that incorporated everybody. And that became, those became important principles in 2016. I'm gonna say we're a kind of territorial friend that I'm gonna give this long statement. Yeah, that's a, you've answered all my questions. So that we can get to your next question. There's no more. And that would be, what about terrorism? Islamic State had moved in into all of this chaos. They thrive on absent governance. There had been absent governance, particularly insert the area most destroyed in the Civil War and with the least infrastructure there to oppose them. So we had a strong interest encounter in terrorism. And to respond to that strong interest, we wanted to engage and deny them territory that they could occupy. So one of the first things I did in 2016 was I met with each member of the presidency council, there are nine of them at that point, that individually, not together, so they didn't have to look over their shoulder, what someone else might say. If we wanted to go in and bomb Islamic State targets, we knew they were Islamic State targets, we weren't gonna be killing non-combatants. We exercised great care. This is something you want us to do. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. We got all nine of them individually, each of them. Say yes, feel strongly about it, yes. And Matt Interin gave President Obama the tool he needed to consider whether to do this and get it designed properly so that we ultimately were able to do it and the Islamic State does not hold territory in Libya today. A very important security goal for our country, for the region, and of course for Libya. Long answer to your question, but what I did was I talked about how premises change and how solutions change. That was great, let's pick up on the government in Tripoli, the government of National Court. I mean, this objective that you worked so hard to accomplish. My last trip to Tripoli, people were seething at it. I mean, services, basic services. What can the United States do? What should it do moving forward to help this government? And then really the basic question is, what are its prospects and is it negotiable? As we heard, it's a foundation, but what's its future moving forward? Libyans need to agree on a government that they're ready to live with. Legitimacy is profound. Qaddafi was the only legitimacy on a national level for years and Qaddafi's legitimacy ultimately crumbled. The question was, who's legitimate and what's legitimate? Host Qaddafi goes back to the, well, who's the government? I'm the government, I'm the government. So the question is, how do they get legitimacy by working together? How do you do that? This fall, I heard General Haftar told me, in essence, I'm the only one who can unify the country. I am the only one who can unify the country. I'm going to take over the country. His representative has told me that and he more or less said that to me. His representative said it to me very explicitly. Aguila says, I run the country. The Speaker of the House also represents Aguila. I run the country. It's my country. I'm the only elected person in charge of the only elected body where the only ones with legitimacy, I decide. Al-Saraj says, I'm the Prime Minister of the country. I've been recognized by countries throughout the world. I emerge from political process involving a wide range of stakeholders. I'm responsible for running the country. I said, don't you think the three of you should get together and work it out for the good of Libya on a transitional basis until you can get a permanent constitution in place? Either vote for the old constitution and bring back the king, create a new constitution, do a constitutional referendum. There's been a constitutional drafting assembly. Or do it on the basis of amending the constitutional declaration one more time. Have elections in another year. Skorot is supposed to last two years. So if you assume that the House of Representatives vote on January 25th, 2016 begins the date of the two years of the government of national accord, that's to January 2018. It's one year from now, not even. They should be preparing for elections for a new government now in a united way and help the current government function. Why is the current government not function? Well, before it came into existence, the previous government was having a hard time getting much done. But I sometimes describe it as imagine a restaurant where you've got a chef who's brought in, who's never cooked before. He's got a recipe book inside. The recipe book has got a lot of stained pages. Other pages have been torn out. Different portions of the recipe book are in different parts of the room. You're trying to put it together. You're looking at what the ingredients are in the refrigerator. There's some stuff, other stuff is missing. Meanwhile, somebody is throwing from outside, is throwing raw eggs at you from outside and throwing old grease onto the floor. And the people in the restaurant are saying, we want to be fed right now. We want good meals right now. Where's my tuna fish sandwich? Where's my steak? Where's my fish? I want it right now. And meanwhile, more stuff is being thrown at you. People are quitting because they're not being paid. People are quitting because they don't think you're qualified to be the head chef. And you've got a bunch of people you want to hire and bring into the restaurant. Do you know who they are? Nobody will act to reach agreement with you. Of course the government isn't working. The House of Representatives leadership has done everything it possibly could to prevent it from working. Of course. So the solution would be for Libyans to work with one another to try and make things work on an interim basis in order to be able to then have elections so Libyans can select Libyans directly by a vote, by a ballot, and the new government can try again where the previous governments have failed. Now instead, what we're faced with potentially is a military government. I have concerns about General Haftar moving west and undertaking an effort to impose a military government. I've told him and his representatives, we think that's bad for Libyan, that there's another pathway. He's the most popular person in the country and some people think he is. Have elections and run. Run for office. It's been done elsewhere. If he wins those elections, so be it. But not by conquest. So conquest is one risk. In response to conquests, civil war is another risk, risk. Further collapse of the government and inability to provide any services is another risk. The money is going to run out. We've done a lot of work to try and maintain the functionality of the central bank and the National Oil Corporation. Precisely because if those don't work, Libya cannot function economically. I always measured my effectiveness and the effectiveness of our policy by saying how much oil did they pump today? They're pumping a lot of oil. It means the country's kind of working somehow despite everything. If oil is down to almost nothing, it means we're really in a bad situation. For a long time, last year, they were down to 250, 350,000 barrels a day out of 1.5 million. That is an evidence demonstration, a demonstration that things are not working. With oil at $50 a barrel, they need 800,000 barrels a day, basically to manage. Oil was down, of course, to 25 or 30 barrels a day for a while. At a million barrels a day and oil at 50, they'd really be in very good shape. 1.6 million, which is what they can pump. Libya is prosperous. And you can run the numbers. It ranges from $6,000 per capita to $750. It's the kind of range we're talking about, depending on the state of oil prices. So keep the unitary, the technocratic institutions, the National Oil Corporation, the central bank, the less functional Libyan investment authority, and strengthen them. Get one legislature, one executive branch, get them working together, create one national army under civilian control with representatives from people throughout the country. Then it begins to look like a country. But Libyans have to reach agreement to do that. And the ambitions of ambitious individuals need to be confined enough so that they don't wind up destroying their country and themselves in the process. Very good. We've already got questions going up. So let's take questions. We'll go three at a time. Please introduce yourself before you ask a question. We're waiting for a microphone here. Mark Schneider, National Crisis Group. Jonathan, you mentioned the second of the three concepts that Johnny had said were necessary. And you agreed. That was the patrons telling the proxies that you have to deal. You have to negotiate a solution. Isn't that still sort of the missing ingredient in terms of getting Haftar and the others to accommodate what you describe as the only solution which is coming together in a transition to come to an outcome that is Libya? Every country in the region, every country with interest in Libya beyond the region, UN Security Council members, the PIRM-5, the EU, all still subscribe to political agreements and the Scorot framework. My last visit as a diplomat overseas was about two weeks ago. I have some Cairo. I met with senior Egyptian officials. They continue to support the political agreement, for example. The question of how much influence states have over clients is always an interesting one. Libyans really, really don't like other people telling them what to do. They don't like the Americans telling them what to do. And I don't tell Libyans what to do. I didn't even when I had as much power as an American envoy can have, as it were. Any time, if I were to do that, I'd get slapped fast. Europeans don't tell them what to do. Their neighbors don't tell them what to do. And they can't tell one another what to do. So when you talk to countries that have been patriots, what they will say is, well, yes, we have influence, but we don't control them. And it's true. They don't absolutely control them. They don't absolutely control them. Every country needs to recognize, I think, that a military takeover of Libyans is not feasible and won't work. I know one country that has been a patron of some of the military actors that said to me, if any actor does that, it would be suicidal if any actor tries to do that. So we have to continue to have a united message that conquest is not going to work. My concern about military contrast, imperial overstretch, even within Libya, is, among other things, it becomes polarizing. You'll have opponents. And in the course of that polarization, you'll have extreme people line up with extremists. So if, for example, a General Haftar were to decide to move west with his army and engage in military conflict, with Misrata or Tripoli, you run a grave risk that groups that are not aligned militarily with Ansar al-Sharia, with al-Qaeda in the Maghreb, with Islamic State, will say, yeah, we still don't really like where they want to take things, but we'll take them on as partners to fight off the hated Haftar. And you can see this kind of dynamic in the despicable rhetoric of Sadaq Gureani, so-called Mufti, urging people to fight, fight, fight. And we saw some of this in Benghazi, where you had anti-Haftar people fighting who were not Islamic State, AQIM or Ansar al-Sharia, but were on the Islamist side, fighting in turn with those groups. And that's dangerous. You don't want Libyans fighting, Libyans probably. One of the great successes, I mentioned my oil metric as one of the models, my successful or not, are we successful or not? And the answer was no, not so much when oil was down to 250, 350,000 barrels a day. Well, another metric is, how many Libyans are killing one another in civil war? And by that metric, we've had moderate success. There have been very few political killings, killings between forces in Tripoli, in Tobruk, in Maida, in Misrata, in Ajdabia, or at Sabha. In Benghazi, it gets more complicated. But there were AQIM people in Benghazi and there were Islamic State people in Benghazi and they were terrorists and they were killing people. So it's hard for us to know from the outside what was going on in Benghazi a very difficult problem. Its liberation from those terrorists was a good thing. But how broad was the net and did people fight and die who shouldn't have and who could have been resolved by political means rather than by military means? Against the terrorists, military action is the only thing that's going to work of one kind or another and they do exist in the field. But the goal is to have that be as narrow a slice of society as possible. The fewest deaths, the maximum stabilization, then have people come together to have the oil turned on, to have the oil exported, the revenues generated, then to invest technocratically in training Libyans for all of the different jobs for the future. As countries in the Gulf have done with their oil revenue. So as you can then build a country, the country's got the money to do it. You then provide an atmosphere where Egyptian workers can come back in to help, which helps the Egyptian economy. Where they can enter to contract with Chinese companies again and have Chinese foreign workers. You can have some technical transfer there to strengthen Libyan capacities further. And that becomes a path forward for the country, which is real. But they have to find a way of working these things through politically first. Political, security, economic, well well. One, one that's been much discussed is the representivity of who was there, but I'm not. But the big problem was Heftar, the fate of Heftar and all of that. Secondarily, there was a whole issue visions of the two sides. The big problem was Heftar. But when Kobler came in, he sort of was up. And moment maybe where there could have been some tea. What were the efforts of the Heftar issue and the flaws? Have there been moments where there could have been some tinkering? Thank you. John Anderson, independent analyst, former Foreign Service. With regard to forces at play in Libya at one historic moment, and I'm talking about the election of the GNC, among Islamist forces represented there, Muslim Brotherhood, was rather well represented as I understand it. Now we could discuss what the current complexion is that would be important. I want to ask a question about current efforts to recognize and designate the Muslim Brotherhood as an international terrorist organization. That is by the way. How would that affect and complicate potentially our involvement with Libya and the diverse forces at play in Libya? One could talk about other countries, of course, but looking at Libya particularly, thank you. Thank you. Mike Wasco, former Constitution Drafting Advisor, one of many. And I was curious, there is a draft at the HOR and I was wondering what the appetite is among the Libyans to moving that process forward and is it possible that could play a bigger role? In the transition as you see it? On General Haftar, the reason why Article 8, the provision of the Scurad Agreement, which was not ultimately voted favorably on by the House of Representatives on January 25th, 2016, was opposed by them as it was seen as Haftar repellent. It was seen as a way of preventing Haftar from becoming a general. Now people have been concerned about coup risk. General Haftar engaging in a coup. As I mentioned earlier, he actually announced a coup when Ali Zayedad was still in power and his people had told me since then he intends to take over the country and run it in a way that is extra constitutional as a strongman. That's what his people told me. I believe that was they were accurately reflecting an intention whether he's pulled back from that or not at this point. I don't know. I hope so. I tried very hard to get him inside a framework where he would work within a government. It struck me that you have got to be realistic and have everybody in who has authority, power and legitimacy as a result of authority or power. Libyans would have to decide to do that. He'd have to decide to do that. He's rejected that. Would he have rejected in January 2016? I don't know. My guess based on my experience with Libyans is that when you enter into a negotiation with Libyans we'll talk about that next week. We can't meet next week. We can meet next month. We're not sure we should meet next month in the city you've selected. We need to select a different city. I'm not going to go. I'll send my representatives. They won't be empowered to deal. They'll go back to me. Oh, it's five months have passed. Shame that that government hasn't been able to do anything for five months. It's not a legitimate government or it would have been active. So I personally believe that if I wasn't happy that they took four months to get to triple. I believe any further delays were against Libyans interests once the political agreement had been reached. And I believe that the stalling by the House of Representatives was a tactic used to weaken the government of National Court and the Presidency Council so that it wouldn't function. It wouldn't matter what cabinet came up with. There were many efforts to try and make it work. I believe that the goal is always to strangle the baby and its cradle by people from the East who don't want the West to have any power. That's what I think was going on with a number of them. I wouldn't impute that to everybody. That's not right. But there's a hardcore rejectionist. But that's what was going on. And in response to the message that needed to be for you to get the resources you want, for you to get the power you want, you're going to have to share. You're going to have to work with others and you're going to have to compromise. Because this is a country and no faction can be just taking it over. So no, I don't think it would have made a difference. It would have hurt the process further. On the issue of the Constitution, it's up to Libyans to decide whether it's the old Constitution, the new Constitution, some other Constitution, or an amended constitutional declaration. But whatever legitimacy the government of National Court and Presidency Council has, by its own terms, it lasts for two years. Now one could come up with an argument that the two years only begins when they've got a government that is a cabinet voted by the House of Representatives. If that's the case, the House of Representatives authority has already ended as well and there's a vacuum. So I think the better view is that it began a year ago and it's got a year to go. And at the end of that year, they need to have elections. Libyans will have to decide that, but that's how I look at that process. On the third question, Muslim Brotherhood, the Justice and Construction Party elements in Libya have been more supportive of trying to have one government that's inclusive, which could include Haftar, by the way, under civilian authority, not as a unilateral military person. And they have been a very... Justice and Construction has been constructive in a Libya context. I don't know how you define Muslim Brotherhood. You have to be careful not to define it like you would define a national group, like all the Koreans, all different kinds of Koreans, all the Americans, lots of different kinds of Americans. I'm not sure Muslim Brotherhood is one thing. I very much doubt it. And in a Libyan context, you have to look at what the process of excluding people does. If someone is excluded, is a second class citizen or not a citizen at all, they have to go into opposition. And that goes into the polarization issue I discussed before, which I think is very risky for Libya. Hi, I'm Hannah Werman from the Center for Strategic International Studies. I wanted to hear your views on the extremist groups who are still operating in Libya. We cleared the Islamic State out of Syria a few months ago, but there still are Islamic State members in the country, as well as other groups who are in Benghazi. So I wanted to see what your opinion is as to the world with those groups. Boubakar Habib, Libyan activist. Jonathan, you summarized the situation in Libya when you said there is Gaddafi in their heads. So whatever, if we change, many faces the same problem would be there. And now you said three of them, each one said that I'm the one who can fix this problem. Don't you think it's time to face the reality? That everything divided on three. A problem in Libya is a matter of distrust between three states. So don't you think it's time to sit on the table, this is the negotiation between three states. Are you going to be together as a federal state or the risk of division? Because each one has his own interest to control the country. Daniel Amaro, USC Teleforum. The question is about Mr. Putin and do you believe that Mr. Putin is going to do in Libya what he did in Syria? First question is about terrorists in Libya. When I last looked at Benghazi, there were remnants of ISIL and remnants of AQIM still in Benghazi. It was in the process of being removed by General Haftar and his forces. I can't tell you whether they're any left there or not. I don't know, but certainly there are cells of AQIM, cells of El Marabatun, cells of Islamic State, and cells of Ansar al-Sharia left in Libya. And the labels change. Sometimes a Boston Red Sox fan, sometimes a New York Yankee fan, it depends on the hat, right? You can put on different emblems and membership in these organizations to some extent. It does shift in terms of who you wish to identify yourself with. In the last days of the Obama administration, the Obama administration carried out a military tax against terrorist training bases, as has been publicly reported. We did that. It was important that we did that. We did it with the consent of the Libyan government. People ask me sometimes, well, why don't you support this government? This UN-picked government. Sometimes people say you picked it, but it's not true. I didn't. Well, they have been extremely good partners with us in countering terrorism. I went to each of the nine, as I mentioned, and asked them individually, as well as together, will they support us on this than they have? They've been excellent partners. We want to help build Libyan institutions that can be even better partners, because terrorists are not going to do any good for Libya. They threaten Europe. They threaten their neighbors, Algeria, Tunisia. Tunisia suffered a lot from terrorism already out of Libya in specific incidents. Algeria has risk, and so do its other neighbors. So it's very important to the country that that work continues in collusion and with the consent of the Libyan government. Now, on the issue of Mr. Putin, I have no special insights into what Russia intends to do anywhere in Libya or anywhere else. We'd better ask of a Russian official what Russia's intentions in Libya are. Russia, like China, France, and the UK, has supported the political agreements in Skorot, and we had excellent working relationships with Russia's ambassador to Libya and with Russian counterparts through most of 2016. The visible activity between Russia and General Haftar raises some questions asked to intentions. General Haftar does not accept the political agreement of Skorot or the government of national accord. Therefore, we during my tenure did not provide military support to him. That would have been working with a parallel government since he is a parallel institution, since he did not accept the government of national accord. Part of my job was to urge him to accept that government of national accord and to find their appropriate role within it. I would still like to see that. I think that's the right solution. My name is Nathan Vest with the Stabilization Network. So, as you mentioned, the GNA has proven a very capable and willing actor in the battle against Daesh, and the BAM Coalition carried a very successful campaign against them. But I think it also highlighted the GNA's reliance on militias, specifically those from Mosfora. But not even on a regional scale, but even within Tripoli. I was wondering if you could provide any insight in the roles of militias in the city, specifically the Radha forces, who are functioning ostensibly as a security force of the GNA, and the GNA's tacit endorsement of this gang for all intents and purposes. Ricky Goldstein, Human Rights Watch. What role has the arms embargo played, if any, and should it be maintained or modified? Very back there, sir, waving you. Yeah, right there. Thank you very much. My name is Yahya Fenusian. We're United State of Africa 2017 Project, LLC. This is what you all have to understand. The poor Gaddafi forces will be establishing the political party in Libya when they feel it's appropriate and safe. Two, we are going to institute in Libya, what we call United State of Africa 2017 Project, 2017 Town Halls. And those Town Halls will be organized by the African Libyans. And God help those non-African Libyans to interfere with them like what they have done in the past and you all will see what will happen. What was the question? Okay, there was no question. That was it. Right there. Yes. Good morning. I'm Radwan Masmoudi, with the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy. Jonathan, you identified that there are many Libyans who could not talk to each other, but you also said that Haftar was the main spoiler because he did not recognize the National Government Accord. He tried to organize a coup. This is what you said. And we know who is behind Haftar. We know it's Egypt and the UAE. Both of them are allies of the United States. Why can't you convince UAE and Egypt, especially UAE, to stop its support for Haftar and let the National Government of the National Accord govern Libya? As the first was militias? Yeah, the rule. Second one? The arms embargo. Okay, great. Okay. So on militias, Prime Minister al-Sarraj delayed his entry into Tripoli because of his desire not to rely on militias. And he since then has worked bit by bit to get agreement from the other members of the Presidency Council to have a presidential guard form that would provide security for the government and for public institutions. This, the politics of it get very complicated because of the presence of militias. The presidential guard is in the process of forming. The person selected to head a general in the coup, former Libyan Army guy under Qaddafi-era, is very good. I was quite impressed by him. So they're moving ahead. We're trying to do that. In the meantime, different militias control different neighborhoods. It is suboptimal to say the least. What are the alternatives? To have Americans or Brits or Italians or Russians or Chinese guard with Tripoli? I don't think so. I don't think that would make things particularly better. Libyans don't like, and I don't blame them, having foreign militaries acting as police. I wouldn't want a bunch of Libyan or Egyptian or Algerian or Tunisian, let alone Russian, Chinese, British, French forces guarding me in Washington. Wouldn't like it. So Libyans need to develop national institutions to do this, and that's what we've supported. Now that gets into the arms embargo. I don't understand why anyone needs to eliminate the arms embargo. The arms embargo is a notification regime. Libyan government says, I want the following 500 tanks. I need them for counterterrorism purposes to whatever. It says, and the permanent experts panel would say, why do you need all those tanks? You don't need tanks. What you need is boom, boom, boom, and boom. And if they say, well, you're right, we don't need tanks. So we're going to get instead of the following kinds of guns and the communications equipment, the military function, we're going to need to get some surveillance equipment. Handled experts would say, great, fine. So the people who want the arms embargo eliminated, in my opinion, want it eliminated because it's very transparent. The arms embargo means you go to the UN, you say what weapons we're seeking from whom. This is what we're getting, and this is who we're getting it for, and this is what we're going to use it for. So of course people don't like that. They want to do it secretly. They want to do it so that you can make some profit off the deal without anyone knowing about where the profit is going. You want to do it so you can gain power over your enemies or people you don't trust. So eliminating the arms embargo or modifying it runs the grave risk of creating an arms race in Libya of new weapons, lots of money to be made, that's good. Lots of money to be stolen, that's not so good. Lots of weapons coming into the country in an uncontrolled fashion, that's not so good either. So I haven't heard any convincing argument of any kind as to why the arms embargo needs to be modified. Now I know that there are some people who don't recognize the government who want to be able to buy arms on their own despite the fact that they're not part of the government. This is not something Libya needs. Keep the pressure on to get them to work together to form a unitary government. Much better solution. Third question was? The UAE in Egypt. Oh, UAE in Egypt. I'm not going to talk about US discussions with individual countries on particular issues. I'm not going to do that. What I can say is that we told everybody that we needed their collective support for scurad agreement. We have opposed any arms violations of the arms embargo by anyone. Anyone who has any such information of violations of the arms embargo should be providing it to the panel of experts for them further to evaluate and come to conclusions. That's the right mechanism for doing it. I think it is an exaggeration to believe that any one state is the reason why General Haftar has been doing what he's doing or that any two states, their visible emanations, the visible things that people can see about what's going on. And beyond that, it's very hard to say what's going on. For example, Russia has said that it's not violating the arms embargo. Russia visibly invited General Haftar to an aircraft carrier recently. They all looked resplendent in their military dress. I never dress up that well. And they signed stuff together. I assume it was a defense cooperation agreement for training, for example. Well, training isn't the provision of arms. The Russian government says it's not providing arms. And it's abiding by the UN Security Council resolutions. If anyone has any contrary evidence, they should present it. Same with Egypt, same with the Emirates, same with Turkey, same with Qatar. Certainly the same with Sudan. Unfortunately, we've gone over our time. I think that's a testament to the interest. I'll give the last word to you in 30 seconds your advice to the current administration. It's so tempting when you're in new administration to say the guys before us didn't know what they were doing. They really didn't know what they were doing. They really messed up. We're going to take an alternative approach. You can't blame any human beings who've just changed political parties and it's been beaten as successor government from wanting to change course. My concern about changes, of course, from the approach we've taken, which is quite unsatisfactory, is increasing the risk of civil war, increasing the risk of creating a safe haven for terrorism, increasing the risk of accelerating migrant flows to Europe, increasing the risk of humanitarian disaster, increasing the risk of corrupt capture of resources causing further damage to the Libyan people. I hope none of that happens. Libyans are fun people to be with. They're interesting people. They're strong-willed people. They deserve to have a good collective life. They deserve better than what they've gotten and we should continue to work together to promote the good and to discourage the bad. Matt, thank you all for coming. Please join me in thanking Jonathan Reiner.