RUSSIAN PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN PAYS HIS RESPECTS TO SLAIN RUSSIAN AMBASSADOR TO TURKEY ANDREI KARLOV. AFTER SUCCESS IN SYRIA, THE KREMLIN IS SHIFTING ITS FOCUS TO LIBYA.
• Flush with success in supporting his ally in Syria, Vladimir Putin has a new ambition: supporting another one, this time in Libya. The effort is beginning to undermine the United Nations-backed government there.
Russian President Putin’s government, celebrating the return of Aleppo to government control Thursday after the last remaining opposition fighters and civilians evacuated, is befriending a powerful military leader, Khalifa Haftar, who now controls more territory than any other faction in the tumultuous, oil-rich North African state. In two visits to Moscow in the past half-year, Haftar met the defence and foreign ministers, plus the national-security chief, to seek support. A top ally also visited last week and Russia is supplying funds and military expertise to Haftar’s base in the east.
“The longer we wait, the more likely it becomes that Haftar wins,” said Riccardo Fabiani, a senior Middle East and North Africa analyst at Eurasia Group in London. “It’s clear he’s getting military, financial and diplomatic support.”
By backing Haftar in his standoff with the government of Prime Minister Fayez al-Serraj in the west, Russia could bolster its role in the region and secure billions of dollars from Libya in arms and other contracts. At the same time, it also risks igniting more conflict in the divided country, where forces loyal to Haftar, as well as rival armed groups, are accused by the UN of human-rights abuses including torture and extra-judicial killings.
Other players also support Haftar, though he’s opposed by powerful militias mostly across central and western Libya, where 70 per cent of the population lives. Among his allies: the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, whose ex-army chief president, Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, has close ties to the Kremlin. Putin branded the NATO-led campaign that overthrew Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi as a “crusade.”
Russia lost at least $4 billion in arms deals and billions of dollars more in energy and transport contracts after Gadhafi was ousted and killed, according to government and statecompany officials.
The U.S. and the European Union support the UN-endorsed government in Libya. State Department spokesman John Kirby on Nov. 29 called on Haftar and his forces to submit to “civilian command” of the Tripoli authorities.
Haftar, 73, a one-time Gadhafi ally, received military training in the Soviet Union in the 1970s. He speaks fluent Russian, according to media reports in Moscow. He also lived for two decades in the U.S. after falling out with the Libyan leader, working with the CIA by keeping contact with antiGadhafi forces, according to Saudi-Arabia-owned Al Arabiya channel.
After returning from exile to fight with rebels during the revolution in 2011, Haftar set up his own power base. He announced a campaign to take control of most of the strategic city of Benghazi in 2014 and in September of this year seized most eastern oil installations.
“You have to work from reality — the key here is military might and control of oil,” said Rafael Enikeev, head of Middle East studies at a Kremlin advisory group run by a former Foreign Intelligence Service general. “In such conditions, Haftar can dictate terms to Tripoli.”
Still, resistance to Haftar in the west of Libya is unlikely to crumble, raising the prospect of continued violence in the holder of Africa’s largest oil reserves.
“Russia’s support for Khalifa Haftar in the name of countering terrorism could instead escalate Libya’s conflict and undermine the UN-sponsored political process,” according to a report this month by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.