A country with too many pretenders

An ever-shifting battlefield constantly at the mercy of the divergent interests of regional and international forces.

Libya is not Syria, but it is one of the many battlefields in which regional powers, the US and (to a lesser extent) Russia are embroiled. While much could change under the Trump administration, we should take stock of where things stand now.

Let’s begin with the war against Ghaddafi in 2011. Often remembered exclusively as a NATO operation, the Arab League was also involved. Most significantly, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates took the opportunity to establish their new regional political and military roles. The Emirates hoped to promote some level of institutional continuity with the previous regime, and thus provided political and military support to leaders such as Mahmoud Jibril and Aref al Nayed. The goal of the UAE was to reduce the threat of a repeat of the kind of chaos that had erupted in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein. Qatar, on the other hand, supported a clear break from the past. This often (but not exclusively) meant assisting Islamic parties as well as the undaunted opposition to Gaddafi’s regime. Qatari assistance primarily flowed to the former leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, Abdelhakim Belhadj, who had in the meantime converted to political Islam.

For some time, these opposing powers in Lybia complied with a non-aggression agreement that revolved around shared control of the capital Tripoli. The agreement was primarily directed at the Zintan militias, who were on good terms with the Emirates, and the Misrata militias, who were close to both new Islamic front and the older opposition, both backed by Qatar, with Turkey also entering the picture.

The situation changed after the Egyptian coup in the summer of 2013. The Islamic forces circled their wagons in Tripoli’s General National Congress building, and (from February 2014 onwards) the anti-Islamic general Khalifa Heftar staked his own claim to power. In May of 2014, Haftar launched “Operation Dignity” in Bengazi in an effort to oust terrorists and the Islamic forces.

Haftar received backing from both the Egyptians (and their Emirate allies) soon thereafter, as well as from a few key tribes in Cyrenaica such as the Awaghir and the Obeidat. The Egyptians and Emirates provided Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA) with political support by exerting pressure to ensure that the parliament and the Tobruk government were recognised as legitimate, and that the UN embargo on arms was relaxed. Militarily, Egypt and the UAE have been providing hefty supplies of arms, and carrying out air raids since September 2014. In fact, according to the British think-tank HIS, the Emirates have now established an air base not far from Haftar’s headquarters in Marj.

There are a number of reasons for Egypt to support Haftar. His movement has become a part of their fight against Islamic fundamentalism, and eliminates a possible “sanctuary” for Egyptian members of the Muslim Brotherhood. It has also created a buffer zone of a few hundred kilometres along the Libyan-Egyptian border, protecting the Arab giant from the instability and anarchy raging in the rest of Libya. Additionally, there are potential economic advantages on the horizon, mainly involving the reserves of the Libyan Central Bank and the ability to purchase cheap oil.

The approach of Libya’s two western neighbours, Algeria and Tunisia, stands in stark contrast to that of Egypt. They oppose all forms of military escalation for fear of fuelling instability. And in contrast to Cairo, neither Algiers nor Tunis have any patronage role to perform. Both back any and all attempts at negotiations in Libya, but other than opposing the Egyptians in both the Arab League and the African Union, neither plays a role of any importance.

From Haftar’s point of view, Egypt is not merely a supporter. It also stands as a model and a base: the general (now promoted to field marshal, just like al-Sisi) has clearly been influenced by the Egyptian leader in his no-holds-barred struggle against Islamic fundamentalism, and the section of ruling class that supports Haftar lives in Cairo.

The new field marshal has also added two other major international elements to his “regional” alliances. Since the winter of 2015, small units of French special forces have begun providing extremely useful backup to the LNA. Thus it comes as no surprise that the Haftar has made strong progress in his conquest of Bengasi recently, an effort that had been stalled for the last year and a half. But when three French soldiers died following the downing of a helicopter not far from the Cyrenaican capital in July 2016, the Hollande government had deep reservations about publicly admitting the presence of its forces in Benghazi. Thus far, France has not accompanied its military support with political backing due to infighting between the French Defence Department (which backs Heftar) and Quai d’Orsay (which fully supports the UN agreement and Faiez Serraj’s government).

More recently, Haftar has begun warming to the idea of political power, and has considerably deepened relations with Vladimir Putin and Russia. The field marshal often travels to Moscow, and Putin has assigned the Libyan dossier to Mikhail Bogdanov, the same man who diplomatically paved the way for the escalation in Syria. While Russia has backed the political agreement negotiated by the UN that led to the birth of the Serraj government in Tripoli at Security Council meetings, it has also underlined the importance of the Tobruk government (close to Haftar) within the framework of the agreement, and provided classified military and political advice.

On the other side, with the change of the guard in Doha, backing for the Libyan Islamic forces has waned. The Qataris have now joined Turkey and its Libyan protégés in supporting the UN agreement. The Misrata militias, which form the military backbone of Serraj’s new government, can rely on the vast arsenals that have been accumulated since 2011.

In the summer of 2014, Misrata had become a fundamental component of the Libyan Dawn coalition that opposed Haftar’s “Operation Dignity” and included more or less fundamentalist Islamic groups and local militias in Tripoli. Libyan Dawn took control of the capital in September 2014, but six months later a group of militia commanders and businessmen from Misrata decided to break the alliance in order to take part in the UN peace talks. Gradually, the coastal town has become the primary partner of the Americans, British and Italians, both in relation to the fight against IS and in providing support for the Serraj government.

The Italians are deeply supportive of all unified political efforts, but last summer they also embarked on attempts at mediation between Haftar and the Tripoli government. Since October, they have built a field hospital in Misrata, protected by a few dozen Italian soldiers. The axis among Italy, Libya and the US has always been very important, so much so that international meetings on Libya were always jointly arranged by John Kerry and Paolo Gentiloni. While keeping communications open with Eastern Libya, the British have adopted a similar approach. British special forces were crucial in the advance of the Misrata forces against IS at Sirte.

And finally, we come to the US itself. For Obama, Libya was mainly about fighting IS, though stabilisation was also on the agenda. The special envoy from the State Department, Jonathan Winer, was very active in the political dialogue, but he also held direct negotiations with Haftar, attempting (without much success) to get him to accept the UN agreement. The role of the US under Obama was of greater significance from an economic point of view because the Americans exerted pressure on the Security Council to ensure that resolutions were passed forbidding the sale of oil on behalf of subjects other than the Tripoli government. The Americans sided with Europe on individual sanctions against the opponents of the UN agreement, also targeting Aghila Saleh, the president of the Tobruk government and Haftar’s political right-hand man.

But the arrival of Trump could bring about major changes to this state of affairs, as the Serraj government relied very heavily on the Obama administration (along with the Italian and British governments). A less enthusiastic American position towards Tripoli could be enough to shift the balance of power, leaving the current prime minister devoid of those allies who were helping him negotiate with parts of the bureaucratic system and hostile economic powers such as the governor of the Central Bank Sadiq al-Kebir, who refused all funding requests by the prime minister during the government’s first year in power.

It is unlikely that Trump will be interested in attempting to initiate a political stabilisation that revolves around Tripoli because such an approach would set him at odds with both the regional autocracies and Putin, two subjects towards which he has shown less hostility than Obama.

It is even possible that the new administration could switch its allegiance towards Haftar. But in the first place, we must see if Libya is even a key country for the new president. The US might choose to only engage in limited counter-terrorist operations targeting jihadi commanders that directly threaten the US. We might expect such an attitude from a president with little interest in the Libyan dossier, leaving it at the mercy of the tussle between the bureaucracy of the State Department, which wants to preserve the surviving stabilisation efforts, and the Defence Department, which is focused on confronting terrorism and tempted by a tactical alliance with Haftar.

In other words, Trump’s America could end up matching the same contradictory policies pursued by Hollande and France in 2016. By not providing the Tripoli government with its outright support, American policy could even make support from Italy and the UK problematic and potentially enable the Egyptian-Emirate-Russian front to think beyond a buffer area in the east of Libya and aim to conquer the entire country, starting with the capital Tripoli. It is difficult to say if any of this will happen, but many European diplomats (even in France) predict that this “vacuum” could lead to even greater anarchy than what we see at present.

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