{"id":55318,"date":"2025-10-06T02:28:15","date_gmt":"2025-10-05T23:28:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/?p=55318"},"modified":"2025-10-06T02:28:15","modified_gmt":"2025-10-05T23:28:15","slug":"we-are-not-libyas-twin-perhaps-tripolis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/2025\/10\/06\/we-are-not-libyas-twin-perhaps-tripolis\/","title":{"rendered":"We Are Not Libya\u2019s Twin\u2014Perhaps Tripoli\u2019s"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Abdallah Ali Ibrahim<\/strong><\/p>\n

Summary<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

One wonders why those seeking parallels to Sudan\u2019s turmoil have never thought of Haiti. It is, perhaps alongside Iraq, one of the few countries whose elite once demanded the dissolution of its national army, weary of its coups, corruption, and bullying of the state. Haiti did so in 1994, only to end up not merely as a country ruled by gangs, but as a failed state that the international community has grown exhausted trying to rescue from itself. The frustration reached such a point that one observer remarked: \u201cWe haven\u2019t yet tried not helping Haiti. Let\u2019s give that a decade\u2014every other remedy has failed.\u201d<\/p>\n

When many Sudanese, and those abroad pondering Sudan\u2019s crisis, look for analogies to their country\u2019s war, they tend to settle on Libya. The image of a divided Libya\u2014split between east and west\u2014seems tempting for Sudanese who anticipate a similar fate of partition. Yet, such an outcome in Sudan remains unsupported by evidence and, at best, only a remote possibility.<\/p>\n

In reality, Sudan\u2019s condition is more perilous than Libya\u2019s by several degrees. Libya\u2019s two governments in Tripoli and Benghazi at least draw from historical roots that predate their brief unification under Italian rule in 1934. What faces Sudan, however, is not a division into two functioning states, but rather the collapse of the state itself\u2014a disintegration that could scatter authority into bottomless chaos.<\/p>\n

This collapse is not a sudden byproduct of war; it has been deliberately courted by influential circles within Sudan\u2019s modernist elite. Some of these actors have explicitly called for the dissolution of the national army, the very core of the state, believing it to be the root of Sudan\u2019s crises.<\/p>\n

If Sudan indeed experiences state collapse, it may have more in common not with Libya, but with Haiti\u2014a country that, after dismantling its army, fell under gang control. As in Haiti, Sudan risks becoming a place that even the international community eventually grows tired of trying to fix.<\/p>\n

Despite the futility, global actors continue to experiment with Haiti. In one recent campaign, a private military company was contracted to use drones to assassinate gang leaders\u2014an effort to \u201cbuy time\u201d for the government to regroup. Analysts called it \u201cambitious,\u201d but the operation quickly turned farcical. The contractors repeatedly missed their targets, prompting one gang leader to release a mocking video saying, \u201cThe government missed me.\u201d The drones soon became a scandal after killing eight children and injuring others, sparking outrage among human rights organizations.<\/p>\n

Haiti\u2019s decline has reached such depths that even the recapture of a single police communications center from gangs is now heralded as a rare national victory. The operation, carried out by local police and a Kenyan-led international mission, targeted the notorious \u201cVivre Ensemble\u201d gang, which had paralyzed Haiti by closing its main airport for months, storming prisons, and freeing 4,000 inmates. The U.S. has since designated the group a terrorist organization. In a defiant video, one militia member threatened to burn the entire government if it refused to negotiate, as others around him looted servers and equipment from the facility.<\/p>\n

Libya Revisited<\/strong><\/p>\n

If Sudan\u2019s army is dismantled, the country would resemble Tripoli, which functionally has no army and is dominated by militias. Former ruler Muammar Gaddafi never built a true military force. Distrusting his officers, he created elaborate mechanisms to paralyze command\u2014such as the so-called \u201cPeople\u2019s Army,\u201d whose soldiers could refuse orders\u2014and appointed commanders along tribal lines. After his defeat in Chad, Gaddafi effectively abandoned the army altogether, abolishing the Ministry of Defense and relying instead on elite security networks loyal to him personally. These units were staffed by his relatives and men from his own tribe, the Qadhadhfa, along with allied clans like the Warfallah and Magarha.<\/p>\n

When the 2011 revolution erupted, Libya had no army to speak of. The vacuum was filled by revolutionary brigades that distrusted any central military authority. The absence of coordination among these groups turned the country into a patchwork of rival factions, each competing for control of state facilities, land, and revenue. When united during Operation Dignity against General Khalifa Haftar\u2019s forces, these militias even looted the Central Bank to finance themselves.<\/p>\n

The formation of Abdulhamid Dbeibeh\u2019s UN-recognized government in March 2021 did little to change Tripoli\u2019s security architecture. Power remained concentrated in the hands of a few major armed groups fighting over influence, money, and access to state institutions. Currently, three main militias dominate the capital:<\/p>\n

The Radaa (Deterrence) Force, led by Abdulraouf Kara, controls eastern Tripoli and the airport.<\/p>\n

The Stability Support Apparatus, headed by Abdulghani Al-Kikli (Ghneiwa), once Tripoli\u2019s most powerful faction.<\/p>\n

And the 444th Brigade, nominally under the Ministry of Defense.<\/p>\n

Since May, Tripoli has been rocked by clashes between these factions, despite Turkish mediation attempts that collapsed within a week. On May 12, a meeting meant to ease tensions devolved into a firefight. Ghneiwa was killed in the skirmish, leading rival militias\u2014chiefly the 444th Brigade\u2014to storm his group\u2019s headquarters and declare the dissolution of the Stability Support Apparatus.<\/p>\n

Emboldened, Dbeibeh\u2019s forces then turned their guns on the Radaa group and its allies. Reinforcements from Misrata entered the fray on September 7, only for Turkey to intervene once again, brokering an agreement under which Radaa handed over Tripoli International Airport to the government. The deal was seen as a partial victory for Dbeibeh, granting his government a veneer of control, but leaving the militias intact. The agreement did not address disarmament, and Radaa still controls the surrounding districts despite its withdrawal from the airport.<\/p>\n

On September 21, government-aligned forces again clashed with Radaa\u2019s Sixth Battalion, using heavy weapons and effectively nullifying the fragile peace accord signed just a week earlier.<\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n

Drawing parallels between Sudan and other troubled states is not a matter of casual analogy, but of understanding structural similarity. Despite frequent comparisons to Libya\u2019s \u201ctwo-state\u201d model, Sudan\u2019s trajectory more closely mirrors that of Haiti and Tripoli\u2014two cases where the army\u2019s destruction, whether in revolutionary zeal or authoritarian design, led to enduring chaos.<\/p>\n

A worrying trend among certain Sudanese political groups is their conviction that the only solution to the \u201csenseless war\u201d is to dissolve the 1956 state itself and disband its army.<\/p>\n

This impulse has deep roots. Whenever crises deepened and solutions ran dry, these factions turned instinctively to \u201cdissolution\u201d as policy\u2014dismantling the Omdurman Islamic University after the 1969 coup, and the National Security Service after the 1985 revolution. Yet neither institution truly vanished; both reemerged swiftly, reclaiming their roles in Sudan\u2019s political life almost overnight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Abdallah Ali Ibrahim Summary One wonders why those seeking parallels to Sudan\u2019s turmoil have never thought of Haiti. It is, perhaps alongside Iraq, one of the few countries whose elite once demanded the dissolution of its national army, weary of its coups, corruption, and bullying of the state. Haiti did so in 1994, only …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13023,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55318"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55318\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55319,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55318\/revisions\/55319"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}