Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Libya’s civil war, resources draw crowd
Oil-rich nation has become an arena for many rivalries
BEIRUT — On the southern edge of Tripoli, Libya’s capital, drones belonging to Turkey and the United Arab Emirates fly missions against forces on opposite sides.
Below them, mine-resistant vehicles provided to Libyan government forces by Turkey hunt for Jordanian-built armored personnel carriers supplied by the UAE, which supports a rival government operating from east Libya.
Nearby, militiamen, including mercenaries from Sudan and Chad, smile while taking selfies atop pickup trucks supplied by Saudi Arabia as they load large-caliber machine guns bought from Belarus and Russia.
The head-spinning mix of countries represented by military personnel and equipment in Tripoli, as described by U.N. officials, activists and analysts, comes as the oil-rich North African nation’s latest spasm of violence pits aspiring strongman Gen. Khalifa Haftar and his self-styled Libyan National Army against the Government of National Accord of Libya led by Prime Minister Fayez Sarraj.
Almost eight years since a revolution backed by NATO led to the ouster and killing of longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi in October 2011, Libya has become an arena for regional and international rivalries. The materiel flooding the country’s battlefields betrays a larger conflict: one that has turned Libya into an international chess game embroiling the region’s potentates, Western powers — including the U.S. — and Russia.
A triad of the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, with France backing them, support Haftar against the Tripoli government and its allied armed factions, which are backed by a Muslim Brother hood friendly alliance between Turkey and Qatar. Each side lavishes weapons, trainers and money on supported factions, while other countries provide assistance, too, despite a long-standing U.N. arms embargo on Libya ostensibly agreed on by all countries involved.
“More than ever, Libyans are now fighting the wars of other countries who appear content to fight to the last Libyan and to see the country entirely destroyed in order to settle their own scores,” Ghassan Salame, U.N. special envoy to Libya, said in an address to the Security Council recently.
And arms, he said, go into Libya “with the complicity and indeed outright support of foreign governments.”
Much of that support has gone to Haftar, who portrays himself as the only figure capable of delivering stability to Libya. Under the rubric of counterterrorism, he has wielded international assistance since 2014 to control the rival government holding Libya’s east and capture the south. In April, 10 days before a diplomatic conference ushering in a political settlement, he moved on Tripoli in a bid to consolidate his grip over the country. France, the UAE and Egypt denied having prior knowledge of the operation.
Haftar vowed to take the city in 48 hours, but roughly four months later, the offensive remains bogged down by a vigorous defense by factions allied with the Government of National Accord. More than a thousand people have been killed and hundreds of thousands displaced during the past few months.
Sarraj’s government said in July that it had recovered four U.S.-made Javelin missiles during a raid on Gharyan, a town south of the capital that had been the headquarters for Haftar’s Tripoli offensive. A State Department investigation subsequently found the missiles had been sold to France. French officials denied they had been transferred to Haftar, which would constitute a violation of both the sales agreement with the U.S. and the embargo. Instead, French special forces in Libya, officials said, had judged the weapons to be defective and had lost track of them as they awaited destruction.
There was no explanation from officials of why the missiles were in Gharyan or whether there were French military personnel in the town during the raid.
Meanwhile, Haftar’s international backers helped him orchestrate an accompanying air campaign, said Anas Gomati, head of the Tripoli-based think tank the Sadeq Institute.
Haftar’s allies have shielded him from international opprobrium, said Gomati.
The U.S. blocked a Security Council statement condemning Haftar following the attack on the migrant center.
Earlier, France had stopped the EU from issuing a statement blaming the general for the violence in Tripoli and called for a cease-fire instead.
At the heart of the international conflict: Libya’s natural resources. It has Africa’s largest oil reserves, as well as mineral deposits and more than a thousand miles of coastline on the Mediterranean.