Atlantic Sentinel

Tag: Libya

  • Erdoğan-Putin Deal Tests Russian, Turkish Influence in Libya

    Days after sending military aid to prop up the UN-recognized government in Tripoli, Turkey’s strongman, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has done a deal with Russia’s Vladimir Putin to halt the fighting in Libya.

    Russian mercenaries fight on the side of warlord Khalifa Haftar, who controls the bulk of the country, including its oil industry.

    Egypt and the United Arab Emirates also support Haftar, who has reportedly received Chinese-made drones and Russian-made air defenses from the UAE.

    The Arab states see Haftar as a bulwark against Islamist influences, including the Libyan branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is part of the Tripoli government. Egypt’s generals overthrew the Muslim Brotherhood in their country with the backing of most Arab monarchs in 2013.

    It is unclear what, if any, effect the Erdoğan-Putin deal will have. Artillery and missile strikes were reported on the outskirts of Tripoli in the early hours of Thursday. The promised ceasefire could be a test of Turkey’s and Russia’s influence over their proxies in Libya. (more…)

  • Five Reasons to Doubt Libyan Truce Will Hold

    Libya’s two most powerful leaders have agreed to call a ceasefire and hold elections next year after a meeting with French president Emmanuel Macron in Paris.

    Their deal has the potential to end six years of civil war, but there are at least five reasons to doubt it will hold:

    1. Khalifa Haftar, the generalissimo in charge of eastern Libya, and Fayez al-Sarraj, the prime minister of the internationally-recognized unity government in Tripoli, did not agree on a date for elections, so there is no deadline.
    2. The truce exempts counterterrorism, which Haftar and Sarraj could interpret differently. Haftar calls his entire campaign a counterterrorist operation.
    3. Libya’s institutions, including the central bank and National Oil Corporation, have recognized Sarraj’s as the legitimate government, but he has no security force of his own and could struggle to convince the militias that support him to stop fighting.
    4. Haftar, by contrast, has his own army, which occupies two-thirds of Libya, most of its oil ports and the city of Benghazi. But he has to convince a rival parliament in Tobruk to agree to the deal. Given how well the civil war has been going for them lately, they may balk at its terms.
    5. While Western countries and the United Nations back Sarraj, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates support Haftar in his war against Islamists. (more…)

  • Egypt’s War on Sunni Supremacism Goes to Libya

    From Reuters:

    Egyptian airstrikes destroyed twelve vehicles loaded with arms, ammunition and explosive material trying to cross the border from Libya, the army spokesman said on Tuesday.

    The airforce acted after hearing that “criminal elements” had gathered to try and cross the western boundary, the army statement said, without giving details on exactly where or when the strikes took place.

    Despite the paucity of the initial report, it’s clear the Abdul Fatah al-Sisi is trying to look like he’s getting revenge for attacks on Egyptian Christians by Sunni supremacists, who are trying the same old terror tricks of the 1990s to destabilize the regime. (more…)

  • Will Russia Go into Libya Next?

    Herein may sound like rampant speculation, but I’m not the only one considering it: according to The Economist, high-ranking European diplomats also wonder if Russia will make Libya the next frontier of adventure. There are good reasons to consider why Putin may be doing so. (more…)

  • Planner Benghazi Attack Formally Designated Terrorist

    Sixteen months after Islamist extremists attacked the American diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, the United States government has designated three groups that it believed were involved in the incident as terrorist organizations.

    Courtesy of The Washington Post, which broke the story two days before the designations were officially announced on Friday, the State and Treasury Departments have named the two branches of Ansar al-Sharia in Libya — one in Benghazi, the other in Derna — as foreign terrorist organizations that were intimately connected to the operation against the consulate.

    Inclusion on the list bans Americans from communicating with, joining or supporting the groups. Any financial assets they might hold in the United States have also been frozen.

    More unusual is that on the same day, the United States blacklisted the first individual who is suspected of involvement in the Benghazi attack. Ansar al-Sharia‘s leader, Abu Sufian bin Qumu, was named a terrorist operative for the role he allegedly played in the murder of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans on September 11, 2012.

    While Qumu is not as well known in the jihadist lexicon as Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden or his successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri, he has been associated with Islamist extremist networks for most of his life. A former detainee of the Guantánamo Bay detention center, he was one of the original “Afghan Arabs” who traveled to Afghanistan in the 1980s to fight the Soviets who had invaded the country. After his training at one of Osama bin Laden’s camps, Qumu traveled to Sudan in the early 1990s where he worked as a driver for one of the terrorist leader’s front companies.

    After pressure from the Libyan government of Muammar Gaddafi forced Sudan to expel him, Qumu made his way back to Afghanistan and Pakistan where he became a close member of the Taliban movement. So close that he was wounded with the Taliban fighting against the Northern Alliance. Upon his return to Pakistan after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, Pakistani security forces were able to arrest him, handed him over to the Americans, who transferred him to Guantánamo.

    Like many detainees in the prison, he was repatriated back to Libya at the request of the Gaddafi government. After a period of “reintegration,” Qumu was finally released in 2010. 

    Friday’s listing of Qumu as a specially designed global terrorist would seem to confirm fears that he never fully renounced his jihadist beliefs. When he is not directing attacks on Libyan security forces and Western facilities,

    The next step for American authorities is finding a way to capture Qumu and prosecute him in the United States. With the daring raid that captured Abu Anas al-Libi, another Al Qaeda planner, in the middle of Tripoli last fall, Special Forces undoubtedly have the capability to execute a similar operation to nab Qumu. The difficulty is pinpointing his location, monitoring his movements to establish a daily pattern of life and getting the Libyan government to cooperate with such an operation.

    It may take time to bring Qumu to justice for his role in the death of four Americans, including an ambassador. For now, the United States have taken the next best step: putting him on notice and freezing his assets.

  • Authorities on Edge After Al Qaeda Leader Captured in Libya

    Al Qaeda’s core network of operatives was struck another dramatic blow on Saturday when American commandos executed a flawless operation in the Libyan capital against a man that has been on the United States’ most wanted list for the past fifteen years.

    Nazih Abdul-Hamed Nabih al-Ruqai’i, known by his alias Abu Anas al-Liby, may not be a household name like the terror network’s former chief, Osama bin Laden, or its current head, Ayman al-Zawahiri, but he is held responsible for plotting the 1998 bombings of two American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The attacks, which claimed 224 lives, including twelve Americans, marked the beginning of what would become America’s war on terrorism. For Americans, it was Al Qaeda’s most audacious and brutal terrorist attacks until September 11, 2001, when it crash three commercial airplanes into New York’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington DC. (more…)

  • Libyan Degaddafication Law’s Scope Raises Concern

    After months of anticipation and weeks of jubilant protests in the capital, Libyan lawmakers enacted a political isolation law last week that prohibits officials who served the previous regime from reentering public service.

    To the revolutionaries who fought against dictator Muammar Gaddafi’s security forces for eight months during Libya’s civil war, as well for the activists who spent decades in exile before the uprising erupted in February 2011, the law is final proof that their long and sometimes bloody work was worthwhile.

    Thousands of Libyans celebrated in the streets of Tripoli once news of the law’s passing spread, some honking their horns joyfully at its strict prohibition on all of Gaddafi’s former henchmen.

    Having won 80 percent support in the legislature, the law’s enactment, more than two years after Libyans took up arms against Gaddafi, was an indication that the North African country still has to rid itself of all vestiges of the old order but is simultaneously committed to building a political system from scratch after four decades of authoritarian rule.

    That the task is difficult was plain ahead of the vote when democracy observers warned that the law could be used to sideline political opponents. Although designed to root out Gaddafi loyalists from positions of power, the text of the isolation law is sufficiently broad to theoretically kick out anymore who held any important position while Gaddafi was in power. (more…)

  • Hollande Doctrine? France Leads from Behind in Mali

    Paris’ gunships struck Islamist targets in the northern Malian town of Kona on Friday in support of a combined ground intervention by African troops from the Economic Community of West African States. French defense minister Jean-Yves Le Drian reported that during the operation, the French military suffered one casualty.

    On the works for months, the intervention mandated by United Nations Security Council Resolution 2085 is meant to put an end to the swift takeover of northern Mali that Tuareg and Islamist groups undertook, in the process causing the political collapse of the central government through a military coup.

    Instability in the Sahel has heightened since last year’s collapse of Muammar al-Gaddafi’s regime in Libya during a popular uprising that was supported by NATO air and naval forces. The “Arab Spring” in Libya caused a considerable power vacuum which brought political disunity along that country’s Mediterranean coast, loss of control over southern Libya and significant advanced weaponry in the hands of smugglers who have been able to export it to such conflict areas as Gaza and Syria. (more…)

  • United States Rush to Counter Libyan Terrorist Threat

    Since the fatal terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans, the Obama Administration has lived under a dark cloud. The White House is facing pressure from opposition Republican who are clamoring for an explanation on how security could be so poor during the incident and why government officials were so slow to describe the assault an act of terror.

    Republicans have called on President Barack Obama to apologize and acknowledge that he is ultimately responsible. Peter King, the Republican chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, has been bolder than many of his colleagues in demanding the resignation of Susan Rice as the United States’ ambassador to the United Nations. Her earlier comments on what precipitated the attack, King says, were “misinforming.”

    In the aftermath of the attack on the consulate in Benghazi, Rice insisted that the unrest was sparked by agitations over an anti-Islam film. It has since become evident that no protests were actually staged in the city and that the assault on the American presence there was premeditated. (more…)

  • For France, Gaddafi’s Demise Worth Mali’s

    After the beginning of the War on Terror and the practical annihilation of Al Qaeda assets in Afghanistan, few expected militant Salafism to rise again. But simple ideas are the most resilient and Obama bin Laden’s legacy resurged in Yemen and the Maghreb. The locales are indicative of the most peripheral rural populations being the most vulnerable to extreme militancy.

    With this in mind, the Americans devised the concept of “ungoverned spaces” and financed the Pan Sahel Initiative in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks aimed at training local regimes and their armed forces as well as installing surveillance mechanisms for the region. The aim was to prevent groups such as Groupe Salafiste pour la Prédication et le Combat (GSPC) from being allowed unchecked use of the Sahara and Sahel regions for sanctuary. This initiative was first and foremost prescient — the GSPC shifting into Al Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb in 2007 — but for the most part successful as no regime was ever subverted or threatened in a meaningful way by extremists. On the other hand, by no means was this initiative ambitious enough to eradicate the same groups.

    The United States have seen its prerogatives being facilitated by essentially Morocco and Tunisia.

    France, in its turn, exercises considerable influence in Burkina-Faso, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Mali and Morocco and wields significant regional power through a network of interests inherited from the French colonial empire designated as Françafrique. (more…)

  • Benghazi Attack Aftermath Threatens Obama’s Reelection

    Republicans in the House of Representatives increased their pressure on the Obama Administration on Tuesday over the September 11 attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, sending a strongly worded letter (PDF) to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and ordering her to cooperate with the Congress.

    The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, headed by Republican congressman Darrell Issa, has opened up its own investigation into the attack with a special focus on why security at the consulate was so weak prior to the assassination of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. (more…)

  • Libya Consulate Attack Could Force Deeper US Engagement

    On Wednesday morning, the Reuters news agency reported that four Americans, including the country’s ambassador to Libya, J. Christopher Stevens, had been killed in an attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, the cradle of last year’s revolt against the regime of Muammar al-Gaddafi.

    The ambassador and members of his staff were killed when unidentified men stormed the grounds of the diplomatic site, armed with small weapons and homemade explosives. Though no official details have emerged on how Stevens and the three members of his staff died, Libyan sources have indicated that a volley of rocket fire may have been responsible. It is thought by most commentators that protests against an American film said to insult the Prophet Muhammad served as the primary motivator for the assailants.

    The tragic development is the latest in a series of attacks against international and government personnel across the Middle East and North Africa. From an assault on a Red Cross convoy carrying British diplomats across Libya to recent violent protests at American and other embassies in Cairo, Egypt, disturbances clearly indicate that the political and social fallout of last year’s upheaval in the region has yet to dissipate.

    Indeed, given the severity of today’s criminal act and the grave impact that diplomatic deaths can have on a country’s policy actions, it is likely that the near term future may see an American refocusing of efforts on dealing with unrest and other ongoing issues in the new and established countries of the Middle East.

    More violent than the protest movements in Tunisia and even Egypt, the 2011 international campaign in the skies above Libya was seen by many as having been relatively successful for the United States and its coalition partners in terms of remaining relatively withdrawn from invasive operations in support of democratic regime change.

    Unlike the campaign on the ground for rebel forces, the conclusion of Libya’s “Arab Spring” movement turned out to be a discreet coup for the Obama Administration’s foreign policy. Although expensive, both the support of various Arab League and NATO partners and the clear mandate to avoid ground missions allowed the United States to act in a limited fashion, intervening without the need to stall ongoing operational rebalancing to priorities in Asia and the Pacific.

    This kind of intervention capacity, one that includes a level of reliance on the support of responsible international partners, may be increasingly valuable as America restructures its commitments in the wake of a political decision to focus on East Asia and the ongoing focus on budgetary austerity across the Western world.

    However, in the context of the embassy attack, it seems likely that the challenge for American administrations will lie not only in deploying such intervention capacity but also having to affect involvement in a region whose priority status was envisioned to be diminishing. After all, with unrest and uncertainty presently peaking in events like those that killed Ambassador Stevens, it is undoubtedly the case that the United States will need to devote significant and visible efforts to encouraging and supporting the construction of institutional stability in countries in both Africa and the Middle East.

    One point to consider is that, given that most recent dissident acts of violence have come from the general citizenry, as opposed to official government or third party groups, the United States will be incentivized to lend significant support to local governments in the form of security advising and engaging with stakeholders to crack down on factions that are contributing to instability across the region. Those factors include and are exacerbated by the fact that large segments of Arab population remain in possession of arms that were used during protests and rebel actions last year.

    The basic fact is that the attacks on American diplomatic sites in Egypt and Libya communicate a continued need for American engagement in the Middle East. It seems likely that policymakers, particularly given upcoming elections in the United States and obvious corollaries to the situation in Syria, will quickly address the previously waning topic of how security aid can be directly rendered to those states that emerged from the Arab Spring.

    Indeed, popular dissension and dangerous circumstances for international actors imply that the United States might even have to throw stabilizing efforts into high gear in the short term to assure both regional partners and new acquaintances alike.

    The question will inevitably be whether or not America can adapt to such a diffusion of national security priorities. Can Washington act to adopt appropriate granular approaches to affecting policies in the Middle East that can, at the same time, both guide broad confidence building initiatives and keep resource commitments, and thus the viability of achieving other global goals, in check?

    Given the escalation of localized unrest these past few days and the sudden impact it has had on international diplomacy, we will surely find out in the weeks and months to come.

  • Libya: French Soft Power in Retrospect

    If a state possesses sufficient “soft power,” it has acquired the ability to frame and shame events and actors in international relations. The ability to frame enables the protagonist to package a debate in terms that are conducive to its own interests. The power to shame refers to the possibility of trapping other countries rhetorically and changing their behaviour.

    The French role in last year’s intervention in Libya was a perfect example. (more…)

  • Western Nations Silent as Libya Tumbles

    Dozens of angry protesters surrounded the building of Libya’s National Transitional Council in Benghazi during the last week of January, the first to willingly come under the control of the post-Gaddafi interim authority. The members of the NTC, who have stepped into the governing vacuum left by the dismantling of the colonel’s regime, are increasingly under hot water with a growing segment of Libya’s population.

    Some of the very rebels who volunteered to fight under the NTC’s banner during the country’s eight month civil war are now turning against the body’s leadership which is often described as inept, corrupt and at times incompetent. The days when Mustafa Abdel Jalil and his colleagues on the council were hailed as revolutionary heroes and the guardians of Libya have gone. Or, as The Washington Post rightly put it, the “honeymoon is over.”

    The restoration of public security has been a significant concern for Libyans of all backgrounds and tribal affiliations since Muammar Gaddafi’s regime was officially declared dead last August. Five months later, most of the country’s security work is left to the armed brigades that swept up loyalists and drove them out of the capital of Tripoli. (more…)

  • Libyan Interim Government Urges Militias to Disband

    Libya is facing a lot of problems, even after the successful defeat of Muammar al-Gaddafi’s loyalist forces and the murder of the once dictator himself. But officials in Libya’s National Transitional Council, the interim body that has been criticized over the past few months for its lack of transparency, are gearing up all of their resources to ensure that Libya’s future is a little bit easier going into the New Year.

    Improving Libya’s economic and political future cannot be achieved until the council is serious about mending fences with former Gaddafi fighter and bringing the nation’s dozens of independent militias firmly under the central government’s authority.

    Like any postwar transition process, reconciliation across the board is key — an effort that not only demonstrates the government’s goodwill to those who fought on the wrong side but a move that helps ensure that everyone is given a say in the new governing arrangement. With eight months of conflict pitting Libyan against Libyan, reconciliation and reintegration, as well as rebel disarmament and the establishment of and strong transparent national institutions, is an urgent priority for the NTC.

    Accomplishing this objective has been a difficult and painfully slow endeavor since the civil war was officially termed over after Gaddafi’s capture and death last October. At least two hundred civilians turned fighters continue to patrol Libya’s two largest cities, Tripoli and Benghazi, with the most powerful militia in the capital resisting the city council’s disarmament efforts until the transitional government proves that it can take over the security function.

    Residents in Tripoli have been complaining about the presence of militias from out of town, with fighters from Misrata and Zintan, both cities in the west, acting as if the capital were their personal fiefdom. The same rebels who were cheered on by Libyans from both the east and the west are increasingly resembling bands of renegades who are menacingly patrolling neighborhoods with their machine guns and anti-aircraft weaponry.

    For their part, Libya’s roving militias continue to view themselves as their nation’s guardians — the only people capable of providing the type of stability that is needed to defend against a Gaddafi loyalist comeback.

    Libya’s rebels are also getting impatient, demanding that the NTC expand its membership so more revolutionaries can join.

    The interim body’s chairman, Mustafa Abdel Jalil, is making an effort to do just that. The defense and interior ministries, both critical to defending and operating Libya’s borders, oilfields and ports, are sending out applications to former rebels through municipal councils, encouraging them to lay aside their weapons in return for full employment. Security jobs are just the kind of work that the thousands of militiamen have been asking for. Soldiers and policemen require many of the same skills that Libya’s diverse militias have been honing since the revolution began last February, including arms training, basic command and control, issuing orders, taking them, building camaraderie and taking care of wounded.

    Yet upon entry in the security forces, militiamen will also be forced to learn skills that they have not performed previously, like abandoning their freelancing ways and pledging allegiance to a state that is only in its infant stages. Rounding up people on mere suspicion will have to be replaced with issuing arrest warrants upon probable cause. Prisoners will need access to an attorney instead of rotting in a jail cell, indefinitely. Those who are found not guilty of their crimes or those who cannot be linked to a violation through credible evidence are to be released back into the population. A system of laws then must be drilled into the heads of Libya’s politicians, generals, police officers, bureaucrats and armed citizens.

    No one said rebuilding Libya will be an easy task. Thanks to Gaddafi’s obsession with himself and his ideology, any of the national institutions that were functioning have been worn down or like the Libyan army, purposely destroyed for fear of a faction emerging powerful enough to rival his own.

    The NTC’s job opening is a big step forward but one that cannot be sustained without good natured international assistance, from military liaison teams and military education, to election observers and creation of employment in Libya’s petroleum industry and outside of it.

    The present situation in Libya, where militias clash among each other over prisoners and territory, cannot be sustained. Converting the militias into a national army and police force will not end all of the country’s problems but could set a good precedent.