Trump aide drew Libya partition plan on napkin: Report

A top foreign policy official in US President Donald Trump’s White House has pushed a plan to divide Libya, a report suggests.

Sebastian Gorka, a deputy assistant to Trump, once illustrated his idea of a partitioned Libya by drawing a picture on a napkin in a meeting with a senior European diplomat, showing how the North African country can be divided into three parts, the Guardian reported Monday.

His proposed map reportedly cut Libya into three sections, apparently based on the old Ottoman provinces of Cyrenaica in the east, Tripolitania in the north-west and Fezzan in the south-west.

Shocked by the plan, the European diplomat responded that dividing Libya to smaller parts would be “the worst solution” for the war-torn country.

Gorka, who has come under pressure for his past ties with Hungarian far-right groups, floated the idea in the weeks leading up to Trump’s January 20 inauguration, the report added, citing an official with knowledge of the matter.

Gorka has been trying to secure the job of presidential special envoy to Libya. However, the Trump White House has made it clear that Libya is not one of its immediate priorities and has so far made little effort in addressing concerns surrounding the militancy-ridden country.

As a former Breitbart editor, Gorka has close ties with Steve Bannon, the former head of the far-right news outlet who currently serves as trump’s chief strategist.

Just like Bannon, Gorka supports the same extreme policies that Trump and Bannon have been pushing against Muslims.

“This is like a litmus test of how much you know about Libya. If you the only thing you know is that it was cut into three, then it shows you are clueless about the situation in Libya,” Mattia Toaldo, a Libya expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations think tank, told the Guardian.

Libya has faced a power vacuum since a US-led military intervention resulted in the downfall of its longtime dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. The country has been grappling with chaos and the emergence of numerous militants, including Daesh Takfiri terrorists, who are concentrated in Iraq and Syria.

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The north African country has two rival governments. One is based in the eastern port city of Tobruk and its rival government, backed by the United Nations (UN), is based in Tripoli, the main port city in the western side of the country.

Since August last year, the US has been carrying out airstrikes in the country under the pretext of taking out the Daesh terrorists.

During his last year in office, former US President Barack Obama regretted meddling in Libya as his “worst mistake.”

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