Libya’s two-track trap: UNSMIL’s roadmap vs. Washington’s “Boulos process”

Libya’s political process finds itself between a rock and a hard place, again. In late August, the UN’s new envoy for Libya, Hanna Tetteh, sketched a political roadmap built around a unified government and credible presidential and parliamentary elections—a message that resonated with a public weary of parallel institutions and militia rule. Her team framed an estimated 18-month timeline to end the transition and unify state bodies in line with the Security Council’s mandate renewal.

Then Rome happened. In early September, Massad Boulos, the U.S. president’s senior adviser for Africa, brought Saddam Haftar and Ibrahim Dabaiba face-to-face in Rome. That meeting, and a follow-up gathering of international senior officials chaired by the U.S. on the sidelines of UNGA (24 Sept), has effectively opened a parallel policy lane—what diplomats now shorthand as the “Boulos track.”

What UNSMIL is proposing (and why it matters)

• Objective: Close the transition, unify institutions and deliver free, fair, inclusive elections under a time-bound framework.
• Authority: The plan sits on the foundation of UNSC Resolution 2755 (2024) and subsequent briefings by SRSG Tetteh to the Council in June and 21 August 2025.
• Method: A structured dialogue with institutions and broader society to unlock the legitimacy crisis (who governs, with what mandate) before anything else.

The United Nations Support Mission in Libya’s (UNSMIL) baseline premise is simple: without a single executive, coherent security policy and a legitimate mandate, Libya cannot build stable future institutions. Tetteh understands that Libya needs a systematic reset instead of just applying short-term solutions to current problems. Without a new legitimate government, any stopgap measures implemented risk falling to the same forces that have prevented real reform in the past.