--- title: "Libya's rival governments agree a joint budget and train together" description: "Fifteen years after Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown and twelve after the country split in two, Libya's rival legislatures have agreed a single 190 billion dinar budget, and soldiers from both sides trained together at Sirte for the first time in over a decade. Neither amounts to a political settlement." category: "World" category_url: https://newsparlor.com/category/world author: "Megan Chen" published: 2026-08-21T19:38:46.000Z updated: 2026-08-21T19:38:46.000Z canonical: https://newsparlor.com/article/libya-s-rival-governments-agree-a-joint-budget-and-train-together tags: ["libya", "haftar", "dbeibah", "united-nations", "oil"] --- # Libya's rival governments agree a joint budget and train together Fifteen years after Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown and twelve after the country split in two, Libya's rival legislatures have agreed a single 190 billion dinar budget, and soldiers from both sides trained together at Sirte for the first time in over a decade. Neither amounts to a political settlement. Two things happened in Libya in April that had not happened in more than a decade. The country's rival legislatures [agreed a joint budget of 190 billion dinars, around $30 billion](https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2026/8/21/libya-rivals-test-a-new-path-towards-unity-15-years-after-gadaffi-overthrow). And soldiers from the eastern and western authorities [trained together at Sirte, near the ceasefire line, presided over by Saddam Haftar, deputy commander of the Libyan National Army, and Abdel Salaam Zoubi, Tripoli's deputy defence minister](https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2026/8/21/libya-rivals-test-a-new-path-towards-unity-15-years-after-gadaffi-overthrow). Neither is a peace agreement. Both are the first concrete cooperation between the two administrations in years, which in Libya counts as news. ## Who is who The division runs east to west. In the east sits a parliament based in Tobruk, backed by the forces of Khalifa Haftar, a former Gaddafi general, with his son Saddam Haftar now deputy commander of those forces. In the west, in Tripoli, sits the Government of National Unity, led since 2021 by Abdul Hamid Dbeibah as interim prime minister. The recognition question matters and is often stated loosely. Following [the 2015 United Nations peace deal, the Government of National Accord became the sole authority recognized by the UN](https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2026/8/21/libya-rivals-test-a-new-path-towards-unity-15-years-after-gadaffi-overthrow), with the Tripoli-based structures that succeeded it inheriting that standing. International recognition has not translated into control of the country. ## Why the previous attempts failed The pattern is worth understanding because it explains why cautious language is appropriate now. The 2015 deal, brokered by the UN, did not replace the competing parliaments. It [preserved both](https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2026/8/21/libya-rivals-test-a-new-path-towards-unity-15-years-after-gadaffi-overthrow), which locked in the duality it was meant to resolve. The 2021 process installed Dbeibah as an interim prime minister pending elections that were meant to follow within months. [Nearly three million Libyans registered to vote in the December 2021 election. It was cancelled two days before polling](https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2026/8/21/libya-rivals-test-a-new-path-towards-unity-15-years-after-gadaffi-overthrow), amid disputes over who was eligible to stand, including over Dbeibah's own candidacy given the terms of the UN agreement. Interim has now lasted five years. That is the recurring shape: an agreement that defers the hard question of who holds power, followed by a vote that does not happen. ## Oil is the reason the split survives Libya's oil is what makes two governments financially viable. Control of export terminals has repeatedly been used as leverage, with [both sides having blockaded infrastructure](https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2026/8/21/libya-rivals-test-a-new-path-towards-unity-15-years-after-gadaffi-overthrow) to extract concessions or deny revenue to the other. The most recent experiment in sharing that revenue did not end well. An arrangement reached in Abu Dhabi between rival politicians made [Arkenu the first private company to export Libyan crude. The UN later raised questions about its ownership and where the revenues were going, and the arrangement was terminated this year](https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2026/8/21/libya-rivals-test-a-new-path-towards-unity-15-years-after-gadaffi-overthrow). The country's refineries have been offline since 2013, so a state sitting on major crude reserves imports its refined fuel. That is a reasonable summary of what twelve years of division has cost. ## What would actually count as progress A shared budget and a joint exercise are meaningful because they require the two sides to agree on numbers and to put armed men in the same place without incident. They are not the same as agreeing who governs. The measure to watch is whether the disputes that killed the 2021 vote get resolved: who may stand, what powers an elected government would hold, and what happens to the armed formations on both sides afterward. Until there is movement on those, the honest description of April's agreements is that the two administrations have found it more profitable to cooperate than to fight, which is worth something and is not the same as unity. The violence has not entirely stopped either. Fawzi al-Mansouri, an eastern military intelligence chief, [was killed this month](https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2026/8/21/libya-rivals-test-a-new-path-towards-unity-15-years-after-gadaffi-overthrow). ## Sources - [Libya rivals test a new path towards unity, 15 years after Gaddafi's downfall](https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2026/8/21/libya-rivals-test-a-new-path-towards-unity-15-years-after-gadaffi-overthrow)