And that was Libyan general Khalifa Haftar commanding the Libyan National Army based in eastern Libya to march on Tripoli. As far as we know, the leader of the UN-backed government of national accord, Fayez Al-Sarraj, is still in control of Tripoli thus far, and he met with the UN secretary general this week, as did General Haftar, who was in discussion about coming up with a peaceful resolution, but that seemed to have not happened. If you can listen to the comments by the UN Secretary General Guterres on his departure.
ANTONIO GUTERRES: With a deep concern and a heavy heart. I still hope it will be possible to avoid a bloody confrontation in and around Tripoli. And the United Nations remain available to facilitate any political solution able to unify the Libyan institutions. And whatever happens, the UN will remain committed, and I will remain committed, to support the Libyan people.
SHARMINI PERIES: On to talk about all of this with me is Vijay Prashad. Vijay is the author of Arab Spring, Libyan Winter, and the executive director of the TriContinental Institute for Social Research. He’s also the editor-in-chief of LeftWord Books. Vijay, good to have you with us.
All right, Vijay, General Haftar of the Libyan National Army, based in the east, and he has ordered his forces actually not to open fire on civilians, saying that whoever raises the white banner is safe. Now, his forces have taken over Guyan, which is a city very close to Tripoli. And yet they have, as far as we know, have not taken Tripoli at this point. So what is the situation that is unfolding in Libya? Who is this general, and what is he trying to pursue?
VIJAY PRASHAD: Well, it’s a very troubling moment for Libya. Libya has been in a very difficult situation since the war conducted by NATO in 2011 which essentially sent that country into great disrepair. It hasn’t really recovered from that war. Politically there’s been great fracturing. One of the architects of the fracturing is General Khalifa Haftar, who, you know, was a senior general in the army of Moamar Gaddafi, defected from Libya in 1987, came to the United States, as it turned out, from 1987 to 2011. General Khalifa Haftar lived about 10 minutes from the CIA headquarters, which is in Langley, Virginia. In 2011, just before NATO began its bombing of Libya, Khalifa Haftar arrived in Benghazi where he claimed to be the internationally-backed military person to go and fight against Gaddafi’s government. Of course, other people had other ideas. And since 2011, Mr. Haftar has had a base in Benghazi which is to the East of the country and has played quite a disruptive force in the attempt to create a government of national unity, which was set up by the United Nations in 2015 when various other political actors created the government of national accord.
It’s very hard to explain the kind of fracturing of Libyan politics since 2011. But suffice it to say Mr. Haftar built up his military power. He was backed by the Egyptians, by the United Arab Emirates, soon by the French government. He had backing Israel, from the Russians, from Saudi Arabia. From a series of important international and regional partners. He received air support from Egypt and the United Arab Emirates. And began to consolidate his position in the East of the country around the major city of Benghazi, but also around the oil terminals which are on the Mediterranean coastline. Recently there’s been a push to come again towards some sort of natural unity. The government of Mr. Al-Sarraj, who represents the government of national accord. I mean, they were trying to negotiate with Khalifa Hafter. The UN Secretary General was in Libya. There was a great amount of hope when Mr. Guterres from the UN arrived in Libya. But Guterres left feeling that there was really no hope, because Khalifa Hafter was determined to have a military solution, to march on Tripoli, to take out the government uprising of Fayez al-Sarraj, and to basically take Mr. Sarraj’s government out of the equation and have both military and political power.
That’s what he’s essentially tried. It has been a very swift military move. His troops are moving along the Mediterranean coastline of Libya. But they also swung south and came up–this is Battalion 166–came up towards Tripoli. And they’ve taken Tripoli International Airport. In Tripoli, which is Libya’s capital, there are two airports. There’s the Mitiga Airport, which is inside the town, which is the one used by the people. It’s not the–you know, it’s not Tripoli International Airport, which has long been a place of great militia battles, terrible fights in Tripoli International Airport. Mr. Khalifa Hafter has taken Tripoli International Airport. He’s moving northward through the city of Tripoli. His troops tried to make a rush towards the Tunisian border to close the border road. But they were not successful. And where we are now on Friday afternoon, Sharmini, is that we are at a situation where it’s nightfall in Libya, and there is going to be great bloodshed tomorrow.
Vijay, this surge that we are now experiencing in Libya appeared to be sudden. But when you see the military convoy that is headed to Tripoli, and when you look at how equipped General Haftar’s troops are, it is very clear this has been in the planning for a while. So who’s financing his militia, and what is this all about?
VIJAY PRASHAD: You know, it’s very difficult to take any of this seriously. And the reason I say that is, you know, for the last six years at least these very countries have backed Mr Haftar. They provided him with exactly the kind of military equipment that you’re seeing on the videos. They provided him with funds. And many of these countries have basically staked the future of their influence through Mr. Haftar, and not through the UN-backed government of national accord.
And let’s just back up and wonder why that is. I mean, you know, you’ve got to see that for Europe, and this is where France is got to take responsibility for some of what’s happening, and maybe the Italians, in Europe, you know, there’s been a real debate about the refugees that have been coming across the Mediterranean from Libya. And last summer there was a European plan that essentially would militarize the coastline even more. And the national accord government of Mr. Saraaj rejected that plan. There’s a feeling that if you have a strongman like Khalifa Haftar in charge in Libya that he’s going to shut down, for instance, the trail of refugees going across the Mediterranean, and so on. So there is an appetite in places like France to go ahead with somebody like Haftar in power rather than a much weaker government of Mr. Al-Saraaj. So that’s something to consider.
In the early days when Haftar tried to, you know, make a move on the oilfields, and also on the oil terminals which are on the Mediterranean Sea, he traveled to Moscow. He had very close discussions with [the Russians], and [we know that] because Mr. Khalifa Haftar has been going after some of the Al Qaeda-type groups, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group remnants and so on, in Benghazi and around Benghazi. He has received air support from the UAE and from the Saudis. So there is a long relationship with a commonality of interests between Mr. Haftar, who is essentially the strongman, a major military force in Libya, at least for part of the Libyan military. This kind of militia military. And he has a kind of commonality of interest in many of these powers. It’s very hard, you know, to take them seriously. I think this is a kind of a fax machine sort of statement rendered by these governments. They have to notionally support the UN government. They’re saying that we condemn it. But I don’t think anybody takes them seriously. After the government falls in Tripoli there’s going to be talk from some of these countries that, well, now we should somehow seek stability through Mr. Haftar.
SHARMINI PERIES: Vijay, in Part 1 you mentioned that General Haftar is very close to Washington. The proximity was interesting. And there are many reports that he is also supported by UAE, that there is actually this caravan of military convoy, of trucks, and equipment, and so forth actually came from the United Arab Emirates. You mentioned that they were being supported by Egypt as well. Now, we also cannot bypass the fact that General Haftar has spent quite a bit of time in Russia. There are many photos of him in Russia, wearing Russian fur hats and so forth. But Russia has issued a statement saying that they support a peaceful UN resolution to what’s happening in Libya today. So who is backing the general, and what are his politics?
VIJAY PRASHAD: It’s interesting. I mean, this is part of the kind of, you know, bizarre turn of events in the world. You know, at one point in 2010-2011, you saw that people in the West fulminating against Gaddafi, you know, talking about democracy in Libya, we saw a range of people–some of them, of course, where there are still allegations that their election campaigns were funded by Mr. Gaddafi, such as Nicolas Sarkozy of France, and so on. They were on a high horse about dictatorship in Libya, authoritarianism, need to overthrow it, and so on.
By the way, this is France, which had just been caught flat-footed in Tunisia, where it had backed, essentially, the dictatorial government that was overthrown in the first bout of the Arab Spring. In fact, France backed that government right till it fell, and very quickly pivoted to, in a sense, reestablish its reputation as a country of great Enlightenment values, and pro-democracy, and so on, and using Libya as the best case for it to rebrand itself as a champion of human rights and so on.
And so France at the time was talking a great deal, and so was the United States, Hillary Clinton in the lead, about the need to bring democracy to Libya. Well, it turns out, of course, that they brought a hash of things into Libya. Brought chaos in Libya. And now they are willing, after all this, to return Libya to the very cliche that they said they wanted to overthrow. In other words, the strongman authoritarian government. And I find that here the question should not just remain within Libya, but we need to reopen questions about these regime change wars such as against Libya, which brought great loss of life and terrible suffering for the Libyan people from 2011 onwards. You know, didn’t improve their lot. And here we are, you know, several years later, eight years later, saying, well, you know, Libya needs a strongman. I find this not only very disturbing, but it’s an indictment of Western powers.
SHARMINI PERIES: All right. So let’s talk about what’s there in Libya, in terms of the interest of France, Russia, U.S. It is an oil-rich country. Now, why are they so interested in Libya?
VIJAY PRASHAD: You know, it’s an interesting thing, and this is something I think people need to recognize, that Europe has really suffered greatly from the policies, the political policies, of the last decade. You know, there was, of course, the sanctions regime against Iran which cut Europe off from Iranian energy supplies. Then after the fracas in Ukraine in the Crimea there was a sanctions regime against Russia, and the Russian pipeline, the Russian-German pipeline will stop. So Russian energy entering Europe also was blocked. And the third major source of energy that’s close to Europe was Libya, and then there was this ridiculous war in 2011 against Libya.
So right now the three closest and most efficiently deliverable energy sources, Russia, Iran, and Libya, have been basically offline. The Trump administration is threatening Europe, saying you cannot buy Iranian oil. Trump has already put new sanctions on Iran. The attempt to open the German-Russian pipeline keeps coming against blocks put by the United States and by other European countries.
And so there is an appetite to somehow bring Libyan oil back into the market at full strength. Libya has been selling oil, but it’s not been at full strength. Not even near its full strength. So I think there is an appetite inside Europe to somehow at any cost stop the refugee flow northwards and to start the oil flowing northwards. You know, it’s an interesting thing about Europe. It’s quite happy to have the oil migrate northwards. It doesn’t want the people.
— source therealnews.com