FRANCE TO MEDIATE EFFORTS TO END CIVIL WAR IN LIBYA
President Emmanuel Macron has indicated France will adopt a more assertive foreign policy as diplomats hope support could kick-start the peace process to end beleaguered country’s lengthy and damaging conflict
French president Emmanuel Macron is hosting peace talks between Libya’s UN-backed prime minister and its most powerful military commander tomorrow in the hope of ending the civil war in the country.
Mr Macron, elected in May, has said that France will follow a more assertive foreign policy, and diplomats hope French support will kick-start a peace process to end a war that began three years ago.
At the talks in Paris, Fayez Al Sarraj, prime minister of the UN-backed government of national accord, will meet Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, commander of the forces of the rival house of representatives parliament, for the first time since they met for talks hosted by the UAE in May.
Mr Macron’s task is to build on progress made by the UAE and Egypt, and persuade the two leaders to agree on a formula for a unity government.
Despite UN support, the GNA, which arrived in Tripoli in March last year, has been rejected by the house, which is based in the city of Tobruk.
The task of bringing these rival governments together will be supported by Ghassan Salame, head of the UN support mission for Libya. Unsmil has already suggested that Libya’s cabinet be slimmed down and called for a more inclusive version of the GNA, with its presidency cut from the present nine members to three.
Mr Macron is advised by his foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, who was defence minister under former president Francois Hollande and has warned about the dangers of militants exploiting the security vacuum in Libya.
During his defence ministry tenure, Mr Le Drian oversaw the French military operation to clear Mali of militants in 2012 and, in 2014, initiated Operation Barkhane, a 3,000-strong French force operating in Niger to prevent militant groups crossing into the country as they move between Algeria, Libya and Mali.
Mr Le Drian deployed French special forces to Libya last year to help Field Marshal Haftar fight militants in the eastern city of Benghazi – an operation that resulted in three members of France’s elite directorate general for external security being killed in a helicopter crash south of the city in July.
On June 30, Mr Le Drian told French daily Le Monde that Libya was in chaos.
“Libya is a totally failed state where all structures now need to be rebuilt,” he said, emphasising that he wants roles for the field marshal and Mr Al Sarraj. “Like prime minister Sarraj, Haftar is part of the solution.”
Paris will hope its strong links with the UAE will aid in building a co-ordinated Libyan peace process involving the international community.
Mr Macron said last month that France’s participation in Nato-led intervention during Libya’s 2011 Arab Spring revolution had been a mistake. The intervention involved Nato jets bombing the forces of Muammar Gaddafi, aiding rebel forces to depose and later kill him.
“France was wrong to join the war in Libya,” he said. The result of such interventions “destroyed countries in which terrorist groups thrive now”.
The problem that Mr Macron must confront is the disparity between Libya’s fighting forces, with Field Marshal Haftar’s Libyan national army in the ascendant.
The GNA relies for security on militias with inferior equipment and training than the LNA, and which have suffered a string of defeats against it.
Last September, the LNA captured four central oil ports, giving the house control of the so-called Oil Crescent, home to two thirds of Libyan oil production. After that, the powers in Tobruk promoted Haftar to the rank of field marshal.
In the spring, the LNA captured key air bases in southwest and central Libya, giving Tobruk control over nearly three quarters of Libyan territory. Then on July 5, the army captured the last militant enclave in Benghazi after a three-year battle.
Fighting continues in the city between the army and militant holdouts, but Field Marshal Haftar will arrive in Paris knowing army control of eastern and central Libya is assured.
By contrast, Mr Al Sarraj has found it impossible to form a security force of his own, and in Tripoli the militias aligned with him periodically battle other militias supporting a third government, the salvation government, clashing most recently on July 10 at Garabulli, east of the capital.
The field marshal has declared his intention of winning the war with a drive on Tripoli.
“Our families in Tripoli and our brothers want us to enter,” he told eastern tribal leaders on June 30. “We can enter, but we want to do it in peace, without spilling blood.”
Diplomats, however, fear a bloodbath should the LNA enter the city, with the militias knowing that losing the capital means losing the war.
Many in the house of representatives may need a lot of persuading to make a deal with Mr Al Sarraj while its army is winning on the battlefield.
Parliament’s minimum demand is likely to be that Field Marshal Haftar gets command of all Libyan forces in any new unity government.
Libya is a totally failed state where all structures now need to be rebuilt