Sebastian Gorka, another person in a series of colorfull members of the administration of US President Donald Trump, is the candidate for a role of a special envoy for Libya. Gorka has a peculiar idea for a solution to the crisis in that country -- split it into three parts.
Gorka drew new Libyan borders on a napkin
Gorka, trump's deputy assistant of national security, controversial military-security analyst, and former advisor to Viktor Orban, has previously been caught up in scandals related to his membership in the Order of the Hungarian Knight which the United States treated as a neo-Nazi organization.
As reported by The Guardian, Gorka, shortly before Trump's inauguration, attended a meeting with senior European diplomats and placed forward the idea of the division of Libya, sketching a new delimitation on a napkin. The unnamed diplomat, who recounted this meeting to The Guardian, told him it would be the worst solution for the North African country in the middle of an on-going civil war.
The conflict is waged between the government of national unity in Tripoli, headed by Fayez al-Saraj, which is recognized by the UN, and the opposing government in Tobruk in the east of the country. Tobruk is associated with the former Gadhafi general Khalifa Haftorah and its paramilitaries. Although Haftorah did, during the Libyan civil war in 2011, rebel against Gaddafi, today he presents himself as a protector of the country from the Islamists.
According to media reports, Haftorah is backed by Egypt and Russia. Although the attitude of Trump's administration on Libya has not yet been articulated, it is significant that Gorka, former editor of the right-wing portal Breitbart, thinks that Islamism is a major threat.
The division modeled on the Ottoman province
The division that Gorka so obviously advocates is based on the historical division of Libya into three provinces during the Ottoman Empire: Tripolitania in the northwest, Kirenaik in the east, and Fezzan in the southwest.
Mattia Tolad , an expert on Libya from the European Council, also sharply criticized Gorka's idea and brought into question his competency to fill a position of special envoy to Libya: "This is a litmus test of how much you know about Libya. If the only thing you know is that it was split in three, it shows that you have no idea about the situation in Libya. "
