The Egyptian parliament voted unanimously July 20 to support the deployment of the national army outside the country’s border, potentially bringing it into conflict with the Turkish army within Libya. The outcome of that battle, if it happens at all, is unknown. However, any deployment of Egyptian troops to Libya in support of the eastern forces of military strongman Khalifa Hifter sounds like a further death knell in a longer struggle — that for diplomatic hegemony within the Maghreb, placing Algeria, the largest country in Africa, firmly on the back burner.

Almost from the onset of hostilities in Libya, Algeria and the African Union (AU) have remained broadly neutral, seeking to mediate between the warring parties of one of the world’s longest running and most intractable conflicts. However, almost 10 years after the revolution that saw the ousting of Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi, no diplomatic breakthrough has led to any lasting pause in the fighting and — with the ever metastasizing number of combatants entering the conflict — the odds of any regionally brokered deal leading to lasting stability looks increasingly dim.

The latest initiative to help bring some kind of peace to Libya has come, not from any regional actor, but from Hifter’s supporters in Moscow who — along with Turkey, which backs the UN-recognized government in Tripoli — have announced plans to work toward establishing a joint working group to help steer the peace process toward an end that will likely complement their own foreign policy objectives.

On the sidelines of this stand Algeria, Tunisia and the AU. For both Tunisia and Algeria, the conflict in Libya verges upon the near existential. Both share long borders with the fractured North African state and both have suffered as a result of the conflict. Tunisia, already reeling from the loss of a key trading partner, continues to struggle with border closures that halt the flow of income, legitimate and otherwise, from its neighbor. Algeria, for its part, must spend an increasing amount of its shrinking coffers in supporting the tens of thousands of troops stationed along its roughly 600-mile border with war-ravaged Libya.