Foreign interventions deepen Libya’s divide

Emad Mekay, IBA Middle East Correspondent, CairoThursday 9 April 2020

Pic: Supporters of the Libyan National Army hold a picture of Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan as they celebrate atop a Turkish military armoured vehicle, which they confiscated during Tripoli clashes, in Benghazi, Libya, January 2020. REUTERS/Esam Omran Al-Fetori

Libya is fast becoming another of the world’s humanitarian crises, while the international community vies for the country’s oil interests.

Warlord Khalifa Haftar’s 11-month all-out assault on Libya’s capital, Tripoli, is turning the country into the world’s next security and humanitarian crisis. Analysts say this situation is highlighting the stark lack of accountability, with various countries competing for interests in the oil producing North African nation acting as a significant contributing factor.

Haftar’s self-proclaimed Libyan National Army (LNA), which is based in the eastern city of Tobruk, attacked Tripoli on 4 April 2019, in an attempt to take the city from the internationally recognised Government of National Accord (GNA). Despite support from several regional and international powers, Haftar has been unable to take control. This has created an internationally polarising situation, pitting several countries against each other and further complicating life for many Libyans.

Humanitarian disaster

The International Organization for Migration estimates the armed conflict has already affected the lives of three million people – out of a population of seven million people. More than 355,000 Libyans have been displaced, while 823,000 people are in need of immediate humanitarian assistance, including 248,000 children. Nearly 200,000 children are unable to attend school. Multiple health facilities now lack necessary supplies and have had to lock their doors. More than 700 Libyan civilians, mostly in or around Tripoli, have died as a result.

Nine years earlier, the United Nations enacted an arms embargo on the country and gave the International Criminal Court (ICC) jurisdiction over war atrocities. In February, the UN Security Council (UNSC) adopted Resolution 2510, which spoke of holding accountable those responsible for international law violations.

But Natalie Mazur, Senior Programme Lead on Accountability and Transitional Justice at the London-based Lawyers for Justice in Libya (LFJL), said that ‘the problem in Libya is not the lack of UNSC resolutions, but the failure to enforce the existing resolutions’.

Since the fall of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, Libya has been gripped by political instability, weak leadership and violence. The civilian-controlled GNA, which came out of a UN-led initiative – the Libyan Political Agreement – signed on 17 December 2015, is led by Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj, whose internal critics describe him as a Chamberlain-like figure; too timid to unify the fractured country or stand up to Haftar, a former military general who served under Gaddafi.

UN and ICC officials have publicly accused Haftar and his LNA of harbouring individuals wanted for war crimes, of whom many remain actively involved in the conflict. Militia leader Mahmoud al-Werfalli still functions within the LNA ranks despite ICC arrest warrants against him for killing 43 unarmed detainees in eight separate incidents. Al-Werfalli, now one of Haftar’s top confidantes, was promoted from Major to Lieutenant Colonel, a few months after the start of the attack on Tripoli.

‘Impunity for atrocity crimes is hardly conducive to bringing peace and stability to this war-torn country,’ Fatou Bensouda, the ICC’s Chief Prosecutor, recently told the UNSC. ‘In a country devastated by war and conflict, with great human suffering, it is past time for the protective embrace of the law to feel real and tangible to Libyans.’

Turkish effect

As matters escalated earlier this year, UN Deputy Special Representative for Political Affairs in Libya – appointed as part of the UN Support Mission in Libya – Stephanie Williams, said the UN arms embargo has ‘become a joke.’ Several countries have been openly arming and funding Haftar’s rebel faction in his bid to dominate Libya. Arab wealthy nations, like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, see in Haftar a preferable authoritarian stability model in the face of increasing public restlessness in the region. By contrast, and despite being internationally recognised as the legitimate government in Libya, the GNA has fewer backers.

The situation took a surprising turn when Turkey stepped into the conflict for the first time. In December, the GNA turned to Ankara for help, making not only Haftar’s traditional regional sponsors, but the European Union, sit up and take notice. Turkey was looking for an extra foothold in the region, after its East Mediterranean neighbours struck natural gas deals that excluded them. They quickly seized the opening in Libya, with the maritime boundary deal, which provided Turkey access to Mediterranean waters that could cut natural gas routes to southern Europe. In return, Tripoli gets Turkish arms, military training and even boots on the ground if needed to slow down LNA’s advance.

The agreement drew immediate criticism from Cyprus, Egypt, the EU, Greece and Israel, who were all expecting to profit from natural gas in the Eastern Mediterranean. The agreement appeared to prompt the UAE to increase its already large arms shipments to Haftar while Egypt, which shares a long border with Libya, signalled it may use force to face ‘the threat from Turkey’.

The EU, which had abandoned its mission to man the arms ban, said it will now resume its role enforcing the original failing weapons ban by running naval and air missions; an announcement which was interpreted in Tripoli as one-sided. The Europeans are punishing the UN-recognised GNA, Tripoli said, rather than standing against the rogue LNA, who get modern weapons as well as intelligence from France, an EU Member State.

Hours after the EU declared the resumption of its role policing the Mediterranean, the LNA hit a Turkish ship docked at Tripoli’s port. The GNA responded by suspending UN ceasefire talks in Geneva, saying it will not participate in the talks until world powers take ‘firm positions’ against Haftar and ‘the countries that support him.’

Jalel Harchaoui, Research Fellow at the Clingendael Institute in The Hague, whose work focuses on Libya and the country’s security landscape and political economy, says the new EU mission will neither help bring about peace or limit Haftar’s access to massive weapons supply. ‘The EU announcement is not to be taken seriously,’ he told Global Insight. ‘It’s politically biased. It implicitly considers the UAE a good violator as opposed to Turkey which is considered a bad violator. If you have a strong preference for one party waging war against another party; that’s not peace.’

Harchaoui explains that the EU is not a military entity, like the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and that it will not be able to target the UAE’s air or land arms supply to Haftar, which runs through the Egypt-Libya border. He said France, a powerful EU Member State, backs the LNA. A true peace deal now, when Haftar hasn’t yet taken over, would be a losing scenario for Paris, he argued.

‘There’s a lack of substance, lack of seriousness, lack of neutrality and a lack of commitment to really try, in a genuine fashion, to prevent the conflict,’ he says. ‘France is tremendously influential within the EU. Most of the EU ends up following France, especially in a case like Libya, and France is not interested in stopping the war.’

France has given Haftar’s LNA training and arms; in 2016, three undercover French soldiers died in a helicopter crash in Libya. Paris doesn’t want to upset Haftar’s backers in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Haftar not only controls most of the oil in the country, but he has committed to ridding Libya, and Africa in general, from both moderate and radical Islamists, who France increasingly see as a threat to stability.

To complicate matters further for Libyans, Russia is involved too. Moscow uses the Kremlin-linked Wagner Group of mercenaries to back Haftar’s faction for oil deals and to regain influence. The US was initially neutral but later backed Haftar in July, blocking the UNSC from condemning Haftar’s LNA for a deadly airstrike on a migrant detention centre in Libya. Like France, Washington is now leaning towards viewing Haftar, who is a US citizen and was trained by the Central Intelligence Agency, as a force that can help against Islamists, secure Libya’s oil reserves and provide stability.

This catering for foreign interests and the involvement of multiple countries is making international law and peace initiative enforcement in Libya extremely challenging. Meanwhile, ordinary Libyans now realise that the international community, which once helped oust Gaddafi in 2011, may now be part of their current plight.

‘Years of war have devastated ordinary people,’ says Peter Maurer, President of the International Committee of the Red Cross. ‘Neighbourhoods are shelled; hospitals and schools destroyed. The economy is collapsing. Libyans cannot wait any longer.’

Emad Mekay is the IBA’s Middle East Correspondent. He can be contacted at emad.mekay@int-bar.org