Although he declares himself an independent, Habib Jemli is considered very close to the Tunisian Islamic Ennahda movement. Born in 1959, and married with four children, Jemli is originally from Kairouan, a city located in the heart of Tunisia and home to the oldest mosque in the Maghreb. He is the right-hand man of Tunisia’s most significant Muslim party, as well as the third former Secretary of State for Agriculture to become Prime Minister following the footsteps of Habib Essid and Youssef Chahed. With his appointment, the country’s three major political offices – head of state, head of government and head of Parliament respectively – are in the hands of three politicians with ideas on civil rights deemed, at least according to Western standards, to be “conservative”. After the death of Beji Caid Essebsi, Tunisia’s secular leading light following the collapse of Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali’s regime, the country’s democratic transition seems to be heading in a decidedly Islamic direction. Ennahda’s leadership said in a statement that Jemli is a person without political affiliation “known for his competence, integrity and experience in administration”. However, the Muslim movement’s choice immediately sparked controversy.

L'articolo Who is Habib Jemli? proviene da InsideOver.

Seven months after the military offensive began to gain control of Tripoli, launched on April 4 2019 by General Khalifa Haftar, the situation in Libya is desperate. The World Health Organization has stopped keeping track of fatalities, which are at more than a thousand (including dozens of civilians) according to the latest update available in mid-July. The Government of National Accord (GNA) of Prime Minister Fayez al Sarraj is cut off, without an airport and with closed land borders, but it does not want to surrender to the Libyan National Army (LNA), which has neither the strength nor the capacity to conquer a vast urban area like that of Tripoli, not to mention Misrata, home to the country’s most aggressive militias and also known as the ‘Libyan Sparta’. The military stalemate has generated a situation of permanent chaos just a few kilometres from the European coast. We now risk the Libyan outpost of the former Islamic State, now bereft of its leader Abu Bakri al Baghdadi, coming back to life in the shadow of a Syrian-style proxy war, on a small scale and with low intensity, fought with a few thousand men on the ground, but a large amount of foreign aid.

Meanwhile, the Libyan economy, instead of flourishing thanks to oil, risks collapse. The region of Cyrenaica uses money printed in Russia, generating huge debt that will weigh on future generations of Libyans for decades. The Tripolitania government has cut fuel subsidies and introduced a significant tax on money changers to limit smuggling, but the black market continues to prosper. The process to approve the Libyan budget, the result of long negotiations between east, west and the international community, this year promises to be even more complicated – it is difficult to sit at the negotiating table while shots are being fired. The UN envoy to Libya, Ghassan Salamé, has announced a new four-step plan to get out of this hellish situation.

Ceasefire and observers on the ground

The route recommended by the Lebanese UN diplomat goes almost entirely via Berlin, where an international conference should be held on Libya (but without the Libyans) at a date yet to be defined. Those in the know talk of the end of the year, but the most cautious reports indicate the spring of 2020. The format of the meeting will be ‘P5 + 5’, that is the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (China, France, United Kingdom, Russia and United States) plus the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Turkey (the three non-western countries most heavily involved in the conflict) as well as Italy and Germany (the latter currently a non-permanent member of the Security Council). The absence of Tunisia and Algeria, two neighbouring North African countries very much interested in the stability of Libya, is notable, as is that of the three countries of the Sahel belt, south of the Sahara, namely Niger, Chad and Sudan. The proposal of Mr Salamé is as simple as it is direct: those who count are at the table, that is, those who have the power of veto within the Security Council, and those present on the ground in the Libyan conflict. The first step indicated by the UN is a resolution of the Security Council to impose a ceasefire. The premise is clear: before we can start any negotiations, the war must stop. Easier said than done, since the Security Council continues to be divided; after all, if it were not, it would have already stopped General Haftar’s offensive some time ago.

The second stage of the road delineated by the United Nations, as reported in Italy by Agenzia Nova, foresees a mission of international observers in Libya to monitor the ceasefire. Here too the Security Council is involved, in having to form another resolution even more tricky than the first. How and when will “neutral” observers be chosen? Who will guarantee their protection? How long will it last and what limits will the mission’s mandate have? Is there really at this point a country willing to risk the lives of its soldiers within a state under full civil war, where the only Western embassy on the ground is that of Italy (which rightly has its own interest in staying)? The third step proposed by Salamé consists of bringing closer together the positions of the parties involved in the conflict, namely the Government of National Accord on one hand and the Libyan National Army on the other, obviously without forgetting the southern Arab, Berber and Tebu tribes. However, to do that you have to get to the heart of the conflict: distribution of oil revenues, control of the Central Bank and, above all, control of the Libyan Investment Authority, the sovereign wealth fund with an estimated value of about $70bn still “frozen” by the United Nations.

Federalism or partition?

For some time, international diplomats have worked under the radar on a new “federal” Libya, where the three historical regions (Tripolitania, Fezzan and Cyrenaica) can enjoy greater autonomy than the current structure centred on Tripoli. Notably, the Istituto per gli Studi di Politica Internazionale (ISPI), an Italian think tank, has published an interesting article in which it proposes an alternative solution of a “Kurdish type” be applied to Libya. In a nutshell, Cyrenaica would receive about 30 per cent of the proceeds of oil resources, in exchange for peace. This proposal has the advantage of going to straight to the crux of the matter: the unclear distribution of oil revenues – extracted by the National Oil Corporation, but distributed by the Libyan Central Bank of Tripoli – is one of the main causes that have led de facto to the tragic situation of civil war. However, several obstacles are still to be overcome, some of them of a practical nature. How many Libyans are there, and where are they? It is important to know this accurately if the proceeds of oil and gas are to be distributed based on population (or rather, to the autonomous governments theoretically elected by voters or by the tribes at local level). The last population census dates back to 2006: new impartial statistical surveys should be carried out, the results of which to be universally recognised.

This is where the fourth and final “step” outlined by the United Nations envoy comes into play – the creation of trust, a feeling that at present, according to Salamé, is absent in Libya. The Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General stated that the building of trust starts with simple gestures, such as the exchange of the bodies of combatants killed in battle from both sides. The displaced population (over 120,000 in Tripoli alone) should be able to return to their homes, civil infrastructures should be reopened, as well as schools and universities. All these seemingly normal things currently seem almost utopian in some parts of the country. The problem is that Libya is already divided: Cyrenaica is the preserve of Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, France and Russia; Tripolitania is supported by Qatar, Turkey and Italy; Fezzan, with its oil fields, remains a territory vulnerable to raids by armed groups and traffickers. Until these powers agree on the future of what remains of Gaddafi’s ‘Jamahiriya’, every UN plan is doomed to failure.

L'articolo Libya: the UN’s “four steps” to stop the war proviene da InsideOver.

A Syria-style proxy war is being fought in Libya. Although on a smaller scale and with reduced intensity, just a few thousand men on the ground, the amount of foreign aid involved is significant, in defiance of the United Nation’s ban which has become something of a joke, by United Nations envoy Ghassan Salamé‘s own admission. The conflict was sparked by General Khalifa Haftar, Cyrenaica’s strong man who aimed to conquer Tripoli in two days but found himself bogged down in a bitter war of position which has dragged on for over five months. The US-passport holding “Field Marshal” is being supported primarily by the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, two countries which would like to use Haftar as a “policeman” against the advance of the Muslim Brotherhood in North Africa. Experts, equipment, military vehicles and above all money, have flooded in from Cairo and Abu Dhabi. According to a confidential document published by the website Daily Beast, in collaboration with the independent Russian website Portal, the commander of the Libyan National Army can count on a 150-million dollar fund made available by the UAE to help Haftar buy the clans who control the different regions.

The United Arab Emirates’ match

The investment is turning out to be more expensive than envisaged and Libya is not the only open front the ambitious Emirs of the Al Nahyan family are dealing with. Since 2015 Abu Dhabi, alongside Saudi Arabia, has been fighting a bloody war in Yemen, causing approximately 100,000 deaths. On Friday September 13 the General Command of the United Arab Emirates Army, in a note published by press agency Wam, referred that six Emirati soldiers, including one captain, were killed in a mysterious “vehicle collision” which took place on a “field of operations.” The source is official, but the information is incomplete. When did the accident happen and what field of operations is the UAE government referring to? There are two possibilities: Yemen or Libya. Yemen security sources reported to the Associated Press that the Emirati troops died in a road accident in the southern province of Shabwa, an area of Yemen teeming with Al Qaeda militants. The paradox is that the “accident” is said to have taken place after the partial retreat of the UAE from the Arab military coalition which intervened in Yemen in 2015. And, above all, after accusations of supporting the coup in Aden – the country’s major port – attempted (successfully it would seem) by separatists within the Southern Transitional Council to overthrow president Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi, currently in opulent exile in Riyadh.

The UAE has many enemies in Yemen, as it does in Libya. Military sources in Tripoli referred to the website of the Libya Observer, a news outlet close to the Government of national Accord (GNA) and to the Muslim Brotherhood, that the six soldiers were killed in an airstrike against the al Jufra base, the most important airbase used by Khalifa Haftar’s Libya National Army (LNA) to bomb Tripoli. The spokesman for the GNA forces, Mohammed al Qanunu, confirmed that Tripoli’s air force “destroyed the operations command of the al Jufra air base” also killing “six foreign officers,” without however specifying their nationality. “It’s the second time in a week, ” added Qanunu, who was quoted by Agenzia Nova – “that we hit foreign forces after having bombed the operations command of the Qasr Bin Ghashir area, where seven mercenaries died. The mercenaries were assisting the Haftar forces launch missiles onto the capital’s neighbourhoods”.

Are Haftar’s vehicles being repaired by Russian mercenaries?

Haftar is not being backed only by the UAE; he also has the support of Russia and France, albeit in a more subtle and ambiguous way. According to Daily Beast documents, Russia dispatched the Wagner, a squadron of Russian mercenaries owned by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a shady businessman known for his close ties with President Vladimir Putin. It is said they are “technicians” commissioned to repair Soviet-manufactured vehicles and artillery: the great majority of LNA armaments date back to the period of the Soviet Union and the military doctrine itself practiced by Haftar’s army follows Moscow’s dictates. Haftar’s older officers trained at Soviet military academies and in 2008 the Russian federation signed an agreement for the supply of armaments and surveillance systems for a total value of four billion dollars. Libya’s media outlets close to government forces assert that the agreement is back in force, yet this seems impossible given that Russia has no intention of blatantly violating UN sanctions. What is more likely is that Haftar attempted to spread the word that Russia was on their side which might well have had some truth in it initially. However, now that the lightning attack to seize Tripoli has failed, relations with Moscow appear to have become decidedly a lot more detached.

France plays both sides

While mere suspicions hang over Russia, France has actually been caught red handed, and on more than one occasion. The first time in July 2016 when three members of France’s special forces were killed near Agedabia in the downing of a helicopter supplied by Haftar forces. The attack was claimed by the Islamic militia known as the Bhengazi Defense Brigade. At the time General Haftar was still fighting “against terrorism” in the countryside in Bhengazi and Derna, which finally fell under control of the Army of Cyrenaica. Today the forces of operation Karama (“Dignity” in Arabic) are operating in Tripoli, an urban area which is clearly too vast for a lightning conquest. Shortly after the launch of the 4th of April attack, when it was clear that the assault on the UN government would not take place, a group of French diplomats on a return journey to Tripoli (where France does not physically have an embassy), which was later defined as routine and furthermore under an armed escort, was stopped at customs on the border with Tunisia. The guards refused to hand over their guns, thereby triggering the standard procedure which allows vehicles bearing a diplomatic number plate to be searched. Inside, Tunisian guards found hidden weapons, an extremely unusual circumstance. Even the bodyguards of Ministers and the President are required to declare any weapons. Was it possible that the convoy (what’s more not carrying an ambassador) had forgotten such an elementary rule? The suspicion is that “hidden” amongst the French diplomats were military experts entering illegally in order to support General Haftar.

INFOGRAFICA TRADOTTA

The French embassy in Libya (but with offices in Tunis) obviously denied, nonetheless the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Tripoli decided to suspend all cooperation agreements concerning security after the events. Then, in June, Minister Fathi Bashagha, the Misrata-born statesman who is considered the true “political leader” of the UN backed government, resumed ties with Paris. However, only shortly afterwards an unpleasant incident occurred: GNA fighters found four Javelin anti-tank missiles “made in the USA” in General Khalifa Haftar’s compound south of Tripoli. A New York Times scoop revealed that the missiles, worth approximately $170,000 each, had been purchased by France in 2010. Explanations given by the French Ministry for the Defense were somewhat embarrassing: they initially declared that the Javelin had been “temporarily stocked at a depot ahead of their destruction” and “that there had never been any question of transferring these munitions to anybody in Libya.” Subsequently they admitted that the missiles were intended “for the protection of the French military unit,” but that they were “damaged and unusable”. More recently, the channels Al Jazeera and Libya al Ahrar (a network close to the Muslim Brotherhood with headquarters in Doha, Qatar) accused France of controlling a base from which drones took off to carry out an airstrike on Misrata, the Libyan city state allied with Tripoli and also the site of an Italian field hospital housing approximately 300 militaries. The information contained in the broadcast was hard to verify, however it was extremely detailed and has as yet to be denied.

Turkey’s support to Misrata and Tripoli

Haftar is not the only one receiving external support. GNA forces can count on military aid from Turkey. In May a shipment of weapons and armed vehicles from the Bosphorus was openly photographed  in the port of Tripoli, while in June Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan candidly admitted to supplying weapons to the forces of Tripoli in order to “rebalance” the situation, given that Haftar’s forces had in turn received aid from the UAE and Egypt. And indeed, the power balance on land has changed, especially after the introduction of the Bayraktar TB2Turkish drones. Erdogan basically sees it as a “family matter,” given that the company producing the TB2 drones has ties with his son-in-law Selcuk Bayraktar, husband of the president’s youngest daughter. Further, Turkey can boast a large community of “Koroglu” (Libyans of Turkish descent), some 1.4 million people residing mainly in Misrata, the “city-state” located approximately 180 kilometers east of Tripoli: in practice at least one out of every four Libyans is of Turkish origins.

Keeping an eye on militias in the south

We should also not overlook what is happening in Fezzan, Libya’s forgotten south-western region, where vital infrastructures are located such as the Great man-made river (a colossal aqueduct providing Tripoli with water) and the Greenstream gas pipeline which supplies Italy with gas. Since 2011 southern Libya has been the arena of fighting between the Tebu (a tribe of Ethiopian origins living on the borders of Libya, Chad and Niger) and a number of Arab tribes over the control of legal cross-border routes (goods, livestock) and illegal cross-routes (migrants, cigarettes, drugs and weapons). In this extremely vast desert area bordering with Algeria, Niger and Chad, rebel forces from Chad have been accused of operating in turn on Libya’s and on Bhengazi’s side. Meanwhile, in Murzuq, a strategic town where Libya’s largest oil field, Sharara, is located over 2200 Arab families have been displaced, to the point that some local activists have denounced it as outright ethnic cleansing. According to Daily Beast documents, the infamous Sudanese janjaweed militia – known for the Darfur massacre – have also been recruited to carry out attacks against Haftar’s forces and to slow them down.

What about Italy?

Italy is not participating in the current conflict. However it has deployed some 400 soldiers as part of the bilateral mission MIASIT providing assistance and support to the unit led by Alessio Cavicchioli, (Ranger of the of 4th Alpine and Paratroopers Regiment) who took over on July 31 from Colonel Domenico Ciotti. The majority of staff and forces have been assigned to Misrata, where the Task force “Hippocrates” is stationed and where there is a hospital for medical assistance. It is here that the fighters wounded in the conflict to free Sirte from Islamic State domination were treated. Command headquarters are however located in the port of Tripoli in order to support, upon request of local authorities, the Coast Guard and Libyan Navy’s activities (especially rescue operations of migrants at sea).

A Mobile training team is also stationed in Tripoli to train, instruct and provide technical and infrastructure assistance to Libyan security forces. The Italian embassy in Tripoli, the only operational western representative office in the capital, is garrisoned by the Carabinieri forces and men of the Italian intelligence service and is without doubt the most competent in Libya.

L'articolo Libya, a map of the foreign forces in the conflict proviene da InsideOver.