UN scrambles to prevent proxy war in Libya
General Ibrahim Baitalmal has lost two sons and his right arm in the successive waves of violence that have engulfed Libya since Muammar Gaddafi’s dictatorship was overthrown in 2011. There is no end in sight for his fighting career – and no time to rest.
Arriving at his headquarters near Libya’s balmy Mediterranean coastline one morning last week, the general was agitated about a concentration of enemy troops on his eastern flank.
They appeared to be gathering for an attack, but his request for drone strikes was infuriatingly delayed by confusion over the chain of command.
“I didn’t sleep last night,” he confided. “Haftar forces are in al Washkah this morning. We were up all night trying to co-ordinate what to do.”
The conflict pits the Libyan Army of the Un-recognised Government of National Unity (GNA), based in the capital Tripoli, against the Libyan Arab Army led by General Khalifa Haftar, who says he represents the will of a rival parliament based in the eastern city of Benghazi but who critics say wants to be a military dictator.
The war is also rapidly internationalising, and this week diplomats have been scrambling to prevent a full-blown proxy conflict.
In a bluntly worded briefing to the UN Security Council last week, Ghassan Salamé, the UN special envoy for Libya, warned that a truce agreed last month holds “in name only” and that foreign sponsors were continuing to funnel a “sizeable amount of advanced equipment, fighters and advisers” to the two sides in flagrant defiance of a promise not to do so.
The round of war that began with Gen Haftar’s assault on Tripoli last April has claimed more than 2,000 lives and displaced 150,000 Libyans.
In a country of just 6million people, both sides have a manpower shortage and battles are fought by small numbers of ill-trained men equipped with a mishmash of improvised kit.
The main weapon is a staple of irregular forces – Toyota Hillux pickup trucks weaponised with anything from machine guns and anti-aircraft cannons to Kornet anti-tank missiles and Grad rockets.
Gen Haftar’s assault has been stalled in Tripoli’s southern suburbs almost since it began. But despite deadlock on the ground, attempts to broker a truce have foundered on his determination to win on the battlefield.
On Jan 14, he walked out of talks in Moscow without signing a ceasefire proposed by Vladimir Putin, of Russia, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, of Turkey. Fayez al-serraj, the GNA’S prime minister, on the other hand, did sign.
Earlier that month, he tried to break the deadlock by opening a new front further east, seizing the city of Sirte. Last Sunday, Gen Haftar pushed again in the east, sending a column of Toyota technicals and armoured jeeps backed by airstrikes to attack the desert town of Abugrein, 60 miles south of Misrata.
It was a well-planned, surprise attack that caught GNA troops off guard, but like previous offensives it ended in a shambles. Drone footage seen by The Daily Telegraph, filmed by defending government troops, showed dozens upon dozens of Toyotas and armoured vehicles speeding out of the desert in a ragged cavalry charge. The fight quickly devolved into a chaotic rally of circling jeeps firing machine guns and rockets at one another over hundreds of yards. After four hours of confused fighting, the attackers retreated, leaving 11 GNA soldiers dead and more than 100 wounded. “It had to be seen to be believed,” said one GNA fighter caught up in the battle. “We won by a miracle.”
In an attempt to break this deadlock, both sides have turned to outside sponsors for more sophisticated weapons, training, and manpower.
Over the years, Egypt and Jordan have supplied Gen Haftar with arms. Russia has flirted with both sides and deployed mercenaries in support of the general’s forces late last year, although GNA commanders believe they have now gone home. Many GNA officials also suspect France of backing the Eastern armies. Gen Haftar has also hired mercenaries from Sudan.
But the principle players are the United Arab Emirates and Turkey, who have emerged as the main backers of Gen Haftar and the GNA respectively. And they are coming dangerously close to direct clashes.
The GNA’S Gen Baitalmal told The Telegraph that a Chinese-built, Emirati-supplied drone shot down last Monday near Misrata was attacked by a Turkish air-defence unit – perhaps the first direct clash between the states. They were the same unnamed countries mentioned so scathingly in the UN Special Envoy’s report.
Last month, both the UAE and
Turkey signed up to an international declaration in Berlin promising to refrain from fuelling the conflict. But data from flight-tracking services suggest the UAE has airlifted large quantities of equipment to Gen Haftar’s forces over the past fortnight.
Last Tuesday, a Turkish ship showed up in Tripoli loaded with hardware for the GNA. Turkey has deployed military advisers and is believed to have recruited some 2,000 Syrian fighters to support the GNA around Tripoli.
Faced with the prospect of another Syria, the UN is scrambling to
‘Diplomacy has produced no results. The battlefield will decide it’
de-escalate the conflict before it re-erupts. Mr Salamé spent Saturday persuading Gen Haftar to go ahead with “five plus five” talks in Geneva involving Libya, Morocco, Mauritania, Tunisia, Algeria, Spain, France, Italy, Portugal, and Malta. UN sources said the talks would go ahead this week.
Many foreign diplomats insist there is a glimmer of hope. The UN may have counted more than 110 truce violations by the middle of last week, but the tempo of violence is less than at its height. And unlike in the crisis in Syria, the international community is ostensibly united. Western officials say even Russian diplomats, so obstructive on Syria, seem open to a constructive conversation on Libya.
It is far from clear, however, if all the Libyan factions will accept mediation. Last Sunday, Gen Haftar’s spokesman said that the only way to solve the crisis was by “force of arms”.
By the weekend, the fighting had passed and the lull had resumed.
But back at his headquarters in Misrata, Gen Baitalmal was readying for a long fight. “Gen Haftar isn’t even breaching the ceasefire. He never even signed it,” he said. “Berlin for me was a failure, and five plus five will be a failure. Diplomacy has produced no results. The battlefield will decide it.”