The United Nations is hoping that the eight months of peace negotiations that it has brokered in Libya's civil war are finally about to pay off. Unfortunately, this seems highly unlikely. The United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) has just produced the fourth draft of its Peace Accord which it is insisting, surely vainly, that both sides sign off on before the start of Ramadan. There has been much talk of the urgent need for compromise by both sides, for more give and take. Bernardino Leon, who was appointed by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon as his Special Representative and Head of UNSMIL, has said that he produced this fourth and "final" draft after widespread consultations. But then, he had endeavored to insist last month that the third draft was "final", bar some minor adjustments. The problem is that the new document has far more than minor adjustments. In terms of control of a new National Unity Government, the supremacy of the Libyan parliament, the House of Representatives, which was elected last June, has been diluted by the award of legislative power to the proposed State Council. This had previously been put forward as a purely consultative body. The State Council will contain a majority of members from the old parliament, the General National Congress, a die-hard Muslim Brotherhood section of which has refused to dissolve itself and cede power to the House of Representatives. It is the GNC and its militant Islamist backers that triggered the rebellion which forced the House of Representatives to quit the Libyan capital Tripoli and relocate to Tobruk, in the far east of the country. Even if this deal is accepted by both sides in the name of peace, it is clear that it contains the seeds of serious division which probably sooner, rather than later, will tear the new political arrangements apart. In the meantime, while the rebel Libya Dawn movement continues to battle with government forces, the terrorist threat from the Libyan offshoot of Daesh (the self-proclaimed IS) is becoming increasingly serious. Last week the jihadists took another town in what appears to be a drive to seize four major oil export terminals and thus interdict a significant portion of the country's oil and gas earnings. What is significant is that the Misratan militias, which thanks to their bitter experience in the Revolution enjoyed a high reputation, have been beaten and humiliated by Daesh terrorists. Driven back from their attempt to push Daesh out of the coastal city of Sirte, the militias are now defending Misrata itself from Daesh pinprick raids. Worse, some of the city's Muslim Brotherhood militias are known to be sympathetic to the terrorists. This devil's brew seems set to become increasingly toxic as UNSMIL seeks, in the name of democracy, to produce an even-handed peace which largely ignores the results of last June's elections in which Muslim Brotherhood candidates were resoundingly beaten. Moscow last week blocked Security Council attempts to sanction two individuals deemed to be obstructing the peace process, thus further reducing any chance of a deal. Libya is fast becoming a failed state in which the Daesh terrorist incubus will flourish, thus ultimately forcing an extension of the international military campaign against it to Libyan soil. Yet more chaos seems almost certain.
