On Sept. 28, the US House of Representatives passed the Libya Stabilization Act. This bipartisan legislation requires the American president to impose sanctions upon foreign persons who provide “significant support to militia or paramilitary groups in Libya” in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1970. That resolution, often referred to as the Libya Arms Embargo, prohibits the transfer by foreign entities of military equipment and support into Libya.

The act also imposes sanctions on foreigners found complicit in gross human rights violations in Libya and calls for increased American assistance, including humanitarian and health assistance, democracy promotion, and strengthening Libya’s economic institutions. Finally, it authorizes the executive branch to investigate “assets taken from the people and institutions of Libya” and to expand cultural and educational exchange programs.

The Libya Stabilization Act was originally introduced in the House of Representatives in 2019, when Libya was in the throes of active conflict. General Khalifa Hifter, who commands the eastern-based Libyan National Army, had launched an attack on the capital, Tripoli, in April of that year, and human rights abuses and war crimes were rampant. A revised version of the bill passed in the House Foreign Affairs Committee without opposition this April; in last month’s vote, in the full House it passed with wide support. Some observers have noted that the Senate is under pressure to pass its own version of the bill quickly, before Libya’s scheduled presidential and parliamentary elections at the end of the year.

The act has been hailed by its supporters as a means of bringing relief to the Libyan people, and as a way to stop Hifter from competing in elections. Advocates of the bill have explicitly named Hifter in their calls for action, and indeed, the sudden canceling of a contract he had signed with an American lobbying firm suggests the effects sanctions could have. Yet the passage of this bill in the House are likely to be more complex than simply blocking Hifter, an authoritarian strongman accused of war crimes and feared by many for his attacks on the Muslim Brotherhood.