Was Libya close to a peaceful transition before Gaddafi’s assassination?

According to reports by London-based The Independent the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi had agreed to step down and leave politics in 2011, in a deal that could have avoided a decade of crisis and bloodshed — but it fell through at the last minute.

Former Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Store told the British newspaper that a draft text was agreed between Gaddafi’s son Saif Al-Islam and senior opposition figure Aly Zeidan, who would later become prime minister of Libya’s National Transitional Council.

Norwegian diplomats hammered out a transition plan, the first line of which stated: “Colonel Gaddafi has decided to leave power and step aside and to end the first phase of the revolution.”

But the fate of the country’s erratic leader, who had been in power for 42 years, remained a sticking point. Specifically, he refused to leave the country after stepping down.

“People very close to Gaddafi, people in the legal apparatus, in his family, supported what was on the table,” said Staale Wiig, a Norwegian biographer of Store who first uncovered the existence of the negotiations years after the war.

“But the final mile was for Gaddafi to say ‘I agree to move into exile’ or where he would live.”

Store said the Libyan leadership was not the only roadblock to a peaceful transition. According to him, the US was keen on the deal but Britain and France had reservations.

“I felt that the mindset in London and Paris didn’t have openings for really reflecting on the diplomatic option. Were (France and Britain) willing to look at something beyond military solutions? The jury is still out,” Store said.

“Had there been in the international community a willingness to pursue this track with some authority and dedication, I believe there could have been an opening to achieve a less dramatic outcome and avoid the collapse of the Libyan state. Had there been a will to do it … one could have imagined some kind of ceasefire in the military campaign to allow diplomats to move in,” he added.

“But the military operation had already lasted for eight weeks, the dynamic on the ground was changing, and frankly speaking the will to rally behind such a process was not there.”

It has been a decade now that Libya has been engulfed in conflict and chaos since the Arab Spring reached it and then leader-dictator Gaddafi violently suppressed a popular uprising.

Eventually a UN-backed intervention led by the US, the UK and France established no-fly zones and bombarded the oil rich state – dropping 7000 bombs over a course of seven months on the Libyan forces – which finally led to Gaddafi’s assassination, overthrew his regime and plunged Libya in chaos.

Since then, Libya has suffered from incursions from Daesh-affiliated militants, a civil war that has seen extensive involvement from outside powers, and the death of thousands of civilians and combatants.

Earlier this month, a peace deal was agreed between the country’s two warring sides — based in Benghazi and Tripoli — but observers have said Libya remains on the brink of a resumption of conflict.