The Libyan National Oil Corporation (NOC) ended on January 2 a fire that raged for days among tanks in Libya’s largest oil export terminal of Es-Sider, but the militia violence fed by the implosion of governance that caused it continues. Indeed, the levels of suffering, civilian casualties, refugees, and those internally displaced have increased steadily. The talks between Libya’s rival warring governments slated for today have been postponed. Meanwhile, extremist elements are taking greater advantage of the ongoing maelstrom.
The NOC managed to put the fire out, but three days of normal Libyan oil exports were destroyed. Of course, with Libyan crude exports already down to less than 400,000 barrels per day (only 1/3 of normal output), the fire’s impact on global markets was minimal.
Libya’s low exports since mid-2013 pose serious fiscal challenges for the country. The internationally recognized, relatively moderate House of Representatives (HOR), elected in June 2014, headed by Prime Minister Abdullah al-Thinni, and driven to take refuge in the small eastern city of Tobruk, is in fiscal crisis. The Libyan Central Bank, so far neutral between rival governments, has drawn down Libya’s currency reserves to cover spending. With two hostile governments, there is also no budget for the allotment of funds in 2015.
One might think government spending and a budget would be the least of Libya’s concerns. But beneath the government standoff and rule of local or extremist armed elements around the country, much of the Qadhafi-era’s largely socialist economy remains. If the Central Bank fails to pay government employees, those of the National Oil Corporation, personnel keeping most ports functioning, workers struggling to maintain the electric grid, civil police, and others life would grind to a halt. Goods would stop flowing, businesses would lose customers, and people would not be able to obtain goods and services at the most basic level. Fraud-ridden and often dysfunctional, presently there is an economy just the same.
Tripoli’s Power
Credit: NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz
The Es-Sider inferno was triggered by a rocket fired by Islamic Dawn (LD), the robust Islamist militia comprised of fighters from Libya’s third largest city of Misrata, near Tripoli. LD is the muscle behind the rival Tripoli government.
Since last August when it propped up the Islamist portion of the former parliament, the General National Council (GNC) as a “government,” LD has been gaining ground. Its ability to push nearly 400 miles eastward, to menace Libya’s twin oil ports of Es-Sider and Ras Lanuf plus their supporting oil fields to the south illustrates LD’s rising power at the expense of the HOR and its loyalist allies.
Likewise, 500 miles to the west, LD has been driving toward Libya’s other major oil and gas terminal of Mellitah, near the Tunisian border. Thinni has been struggling to halt this other LD drive using local tribal militias and air strikes. A NOC statement from late December, fearing the loss of Mellitah, said Libyan hydrocarbon production would fall below the levels needed to even meet Libyan domestic demand.
Bloody Benghazi
A severe impediment for the HOR and its loyalist allies is the more extremist militia grouping continuing to dominate much of Libya’s eastern second largest city of Benghazi. Led by the formidable al-Qaeda associated Ansar al-Sharia in Libya (ASL), a militant alliance— despite see-saw fighting—has managed to hold various Libyan military units and former General Khalifa Haftar’s polyglot secular forces allied with the HOR in check.
The commitment of so many HOR military assets to the military meat-grinder in Benghazi to prevent ASL from moving eastward toward Tobruk has weakened its efforts elsewhere. Eleven more died and 63 were wounded in Benghazi on Dec. 22. In fact, most killed in clashes across Libya die in Benghazi. Eastern Libyan jihadists car bombed the HOR’s Tobruk hotel on Dec. 30 wounding 3 deputies.
Human Toll
The UN Support Mission in Libya and the UN’s High Commission for Human Rights announced on Dec. 23 that nearly 700 hundred Libyan civilians have died as collateral casualties of Libyan violence since August; many times that have been wounded. Combatant casualties would likely push fatalities over 1,000. This death toll is lower than those emerging from Syria and Iraq from the regime-rebel civil war in the former and Islamic State-related violence in both. Still, the UN warned commanders of Libyan armed groups they could be charged by the International Criminal Court (ICC) with criminal atrocities.
The refugee situation is far worse. By September, 1.8 million Libyan refugees had sought shelter in Tunisia. Added to those elsewhere, as in Egypt, refugees comprise approximately 1/3 of Libya’s entire population. Those in Tunisia have overwhelmed available humanitarian assistance, particularly now during the cold, rainy Mediterranean winter. Almost 400,000 Libyans are reportedly internally displaced.
No End in Sight
So far, diplomatic efforts seeking some sort of accommodation between Tripoli and Tobruk have been futile. Talks led by UN Envoy for Libya Bernadino Leon came to naught back in September. Leon tried to organize another round for Dec. 9, but this foundered due to more fighting triggered by a failed HOR effort to retake Tripoli. Leon reported to the UN Security Council on Dec. 23 that the two sides had agreed to meet today.
That initiative also collapsed. HOR airstrikes over the weekend against targets in Misrata (the home of the GNC’s “Libya Dawn” militia) came as a surprise. Two reportedly were wounded. An HOR military spokesman said the strikes were retaliation for renewed LD attacks against Es-Sider and Ras Lanuf where fighting has resumed. Yesterday a loyalist warplane struck a Greek tanker near the eastern port of Derna, killing two crewmen; a Libyan military spokesman claimed it was carrying militants.
Meanwhile, General David Rodriguez, head of US Africa Command, revealed on December 3 that “nascent” Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL or IS) training camps had been established in eastern Libya containing a “couple of hundred” militants. Fourteen Libyan soldiers were executed on Feb. 3 in southern Libya by a group calling itself the Islamic State of Libya. Even the more moderate Islamist GNC and LD, already hostile to ASL, condemned the killings. With Libya’s disarray and the grip of ASL and associated extremists over much of Benghazi plus areas nearby like militant-held portions of Derna, IS’s appearance at some point was inevitable.
Sudanese Foreign Minister Ali Ahmed Kharti in December chaired a meeting of his counterparts from Libya’s neighbors to express concern about the Libyan crisis’ regional impact. Weighing heavily on participants was the near conquest of Mali in 2013 by extremists, many staging out of and receiving munitions from Libya’s lawless southwest. There also has been arms smuggling from eastern Libyan militants to Egypt’s Sinai-based Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis jihadists, many of whom affiliated themselves with IS in Fall 2014.
Increasingly concerned about Libyan jihadist spillover, French President François Hollande urged the international community today to address Libya’s crisis. In a two-hour interview with France Inter radio, Hollande ruled out unilateral French intervention in Libya itself, but is establishing a base in northern Niger 60 miles from the Libyan border to help contain the menace. Last year, another French base was set up near the Malian border with Libya.
The longer Libya’s chaos remains on the global back burner, the nastier its impact will be in Libya and beyond. Crises left to fester sometimes find their own way to the front burner.
]]>by Wayne White
Last week, Jasmin Ramsey pointed out how problematic the recent US decision to deliver attack helicopters to Egypt is in terms of US human rights policy. The move also portrays the US as actively taking sides in a conflict pitting a repressive regime against armed opposition, with potentially [...]]]>
by Wayne White
Last week, Jasmin Ramsey pointed out how problematic the recent US decision to deliver attack helicopters to Egypt is in terms of US human rights policy. The move also portrays the US as actively taking sides in a conflict pitting a repressive regime against armed opposition, with potentially adverse consequences for the US and its citizens. It mirrors Washington’s decision earlier this year to send Iraq’s abusive Shi’a-dominated government advanced weaponry to use against Sunni Arab militants. And then there is the possibility that Egyptian leaders might not have done all they could to secure Sinai, in part to extract US military aid.
Smokescreens and inconsistencies
Seemingly in no mood to help Washington defend its decision, Egypt declared officially on April 24 — two days after the delivery of 10 US Apache helicopters and $650 million in military aid to Egypt was announced — that its army had “complete control over the situation” in the Sinai! This statement directly contradicted the Pentagon’s rationale for delivering the helicopters: to “counter extremists [in Sinai] who threaten US, Egyptian and Israeli security.”
The Egyptian army’s claim appears to be unfounded, merely self-serving propaganda. A less questionable source, a recent Reuters investigation, concluded several hundred militants were still at large in Sinai and “are nowhere near defeat.” To wit, the day before the army’s announcement, a Sinai-based group almost certainly carried out a bombing that killed an Egyptian police general near Cairo (in addition to various attacks by Sinai militants in recent weeks).
Jihadist activity in and emanating from Sinai soared following the military’s overthrow of former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi last year. Three groups stand out: Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis (ABM), Ansar al-Sharia of Egypt, and, since early this year, Ajnad Misr (AM). Although there have been attacks against the Israeli border and foreigners, the vast bulk of them since Morsi’s overthrow have targeted Egyptian military and police personnel.
Despite the army’s sweeping public reassurance concerning Sinai, senior Egyptian officials must have shared a more sober assessment with Washington. Indeed, more pessimistic Egyptian analysis was likely discussed during Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s exchange with his Egyptian counterpart last Tuesday.
Meanwhile, US policy aimed at reducing repression in Egypt, already struggling, has been further undermined. To justify the helicopter delivery, Kerry on April 29 cited in his news conference with Egyptian Foreign Minister Nabil Fahmy the passage of the Egyptian constitution as a “positive step forward.” This is hardly in line with the facts. It hands more power to the military, and was passed with a highly suspicious 98% of the vote amidst relatively low turnout. Kerry himself back in January expressed great concern about the entire constitutional process, noting “the absence of an inclusive drafting process or public debate before the vote, the arrests of those who campaigned against it, and procedural violations during the balloting.”
The decision to go forward with the helicopter delivery became especially embarrassing on April 28 when the Egyptian government resumed its harsh repression in a stunning fashion: a judge sentenced Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Badie and nearly 700 supporters to death. This threw Kerry even more on the defensive; while sticking with the helicopter decision, he conceded in the same news conference, among other things, that “disturbing decisions in the judiciary process” pose “difficult challenges.”
Terrorism trumps pluralism and human rights
An ominous pattern of US regional policy choices appears to be taking shape that, effectively, sweeps aside very real concerns about widespread repression and abuse in order to help regimes friendly to the US crackdown on Muslim extremists.
To place this in perspective, despite what many believe, extremists do not typically place a high priority on attacking Americans, the US and other foreigners. Most are highly localized franchises, seeking mainly to overthrow local regimes. And even when they do target foreigners, attacks almost always involve only those inside countries where the violence is taking place.
Related to the pattern noted above, for years the US has pressed Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to end his exclusionist, repressive policies toward much of Iraq’s Sunni Arab community. Maliki ignored these appeals. Mostly the result of Maliki’s purging from government, arresting, and even assassinating Sunni Arabs, al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI) — nearly defeated during Iraq’s Sunni Arab “Awakening” (welcomed by the US, but largely shunned by Maliki) — has rebounded dramatically in a devastating wave of violence.
Then, with its fortunes declining in Syria, fielding a sizeable Iraqi component, and responding to protests against Baghdad’s ill treatment of Sunni Arabs, a contingent of the jihadist Sunni Arab Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group seized and held the Iraqi city of Fallujah (and a few portions of nearby Ramadi) in early January; it was joined by some disgruntled Sunni Arab tribesmen. Unable to oust ISIL from Fallujah, Maliki appealed for urgent US military aid.
Despite Maliki’s role in provoking Sunni Arab violence and ignoring US pleas for moderation, Washington quickly dispatched Hellfire air-to-ground missiles, as well as ScanEagle and Raven drones to help him retake Fallujah. Since then, ISIL and its allies in Fallujah have suffered significant losses from Hellfire missile strikes.
There was, of course, a long history of American military assistance to governments with loathsome human rights records going back decades — driven by Cold War imperatives and the “friendliness” of such regimes. More recently, however, with the emergence of robust militant Islamic groups, a new driver for such aid emerged: terrorism. This trend became especially compelling after 9/11.
Potential anti-US blowback
There is, however, danger associated with such assistance: the US risks becoming a far more important target of extremist groups on the receiving end of regime repression than is the case now.
With respect to Algeria, the US distanced itself from a military-backed regime never close to the US during most of the 1990’s in reaction to its anti-democratic and ruthless behavior that played a major role in triggering and sustaining a huge Islamist uprising. Up to 200,000 died in a savage conflict that eventually spawned several extremist groups.
By contrast, France helped the Algerian regime crush the rebels and became a prime target for extremist reprisals. When the last militant holdouts morphed into al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), they shifted their operations out of Algeria into the weaker nations of the Francophone Sahel.
France was compelled to step in militarily last year to prevent Mali from being overrun by a collection of northern Malian separatists, AQIM and other extremists. In defeat, AQIM and closely aligned militants fell back into a lawless portion of Libya, but quickly lashed out at a southern Algerian natural gas facility in order to get their hands on foreigners there.
Likewise, Sinai extremists along with ISIL in Syria and Iraq, especially in their bitterness if and when they are defeated, could shift from a narrow focus on Egyptian, Syrian and Iraqi government targets toward Americans and the US. Yet, whether Iraq (where Maliki never retook Fallujah), Syria (where ISIL’s woes stem mainly from regime forces and rebel rivals), and Egypt (where US military aid probably will not determine the outcome in Sinai), the US could loom far larger as an enemy and scapegoat.
In Sinai, for example, surviving jihadists could make a far more serious effort to target the largely American Multinational Force and Observers (MFO) peacekeeping contingent based along the southern coast. Until now, MFO has been left alone except for one September 2012 attack against its base camp.
Egyptian scheming?
Lastly, Egyptian leaders appear to assign Sinai security a much lower priority than Egypt proper despite US and Israeli concerns. I learned when I served a year in Sinai as a peacekeeper that Egyptian troops loathed duty in Sinai, regarding it as a wasteland of little value compared to Egypt’s Nile Valley core. And unlike more rugged south Sinai, the north (where most attacks occur) is considerably less difficult to monitor.
This negative Egyptian attitude toward Sinai, combined with the government’s keen desire to secure renewed US military support, might have inclined Egypt’s military brass not to pursue Sinai security full-bore. If true, not pressing the fight to the maximum while Sinai simmers might be meant, at least in part, to increase Egypt’s chances of getting US policymakers to do precisely what Cairo wanted: release their hold on attack helicopters of great value in suppressing opposition in Sinai, but also in Egypt proper.
Photo: Sinai militia carrying al-Qaeda flags head for a funeral of killed militants on August 10, 2013. Credit: Hisham Allam/IPS.
]]>