4 Apr – 10 Apr: PC anti-terrorist operation allegedly a success, Khalid Mishri elected as President of HSC and regional delegates meet to secure shared borders

Apr 10, 2018 | Libyan actors

On 9 April, the spokesperson for Presidential Council (PC) head Fayez al-Serraj, Mohamed al-Sallak, reported that the PC’s new anti-terrorist operation Asifat al-Wattan (The Nation’s Storm) had completely removed all elements of terrorist organizations in its operation area. The military operation was announced by the PC on 2 April with the aim of ending ISIS’s militant presence in Libya. The operation claims to cover the 60km checkpoint in eastern Misrata through to the outskirts of Bani Walid, Tarhouna, Misallata, Khoms and Zliten. In response to questions, Sallak also reported that the operations did not involve any foreign participation.

On 8 April, Khalid Mishri was elected as the President of the High Council of State (HCS). He replaces Misratan Abdulrahman Swehli, who was also a candidate for the position along with Mohamed Maazeb and Abdullah Juwan. The election followed two rounds of voting, with Mishri beating Swehli with a second-round majority margin of 64 to 45 votes. Mishri is a member of the Justice and Construction Party (JCP), which is the executive office of Libya’s Muslim Brotherhood (MB). Prior to this, he was the chairman of the finance committee and a member of the national security committee of the General National Congress. Mishri is from Zawiyya.

On 4 April, a Libyan delegation, that included Presidential Council Foreign Minister Mohamed Siala, met with representatives from Sudan, Niger, and Chad in the Niger capital of Niamey. In a concluding statement, that highlighted southern Libya as a focal point of vulnerability, an agreement was said to have been made to create a cooperation mechanism to secure the common borders in the Sahel-Saharan region and combat transnational organized crime. An expert level meeting between the four countries is to be held in the Chadian capital of N’Djamena on 3 May.