By Agency
Tripoli:The winds of change are blowing after Turkey’s dramatic military intervention into Libya’s civil-cum-proxy war on the side of the Tripoli government changed the narrative from ‘Gen Khalifah Haftar tightening the noose around Tripoli’ to his ‘entire Western operation being in disarray,’ as one analyst puts it.
Tarek Megerisi, the Libyan expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations, believes the game is essentially over for General Khalifa Haftar.
The military strongman from the east launched an all-out attack on Tripoli in April 2019 and quickly came within a whisker of toppling the United Nations-backed Fayez Mustafa al-Sarraj government.
Since Turkey’s entry in January, Haftar and his Libyan National Army (LNA) have not only been repelled from the gates of Tripoli. They’ve also lost several towns in western Libya that they seized in their march on the capital. And Haftar’s setbacks in the west have emboldened his enemies and shaken his grip on his stronghold in the east.
‘What he’s been running is essentially a Ponzi scheme,’ says Megerisi. ‘As long as he kept going, expanding his power, he was alright. But now that he’s suffered setbacks, all the others are turning against him,’ Megerisi said.
He characterises the Libyan conflict as a ‘proxy’ war, as does Stephanie Turco Williams, Acting Special Representative of the secretary-general and Head of the United Nations Support Mission in Libya.
Haftar’s westwards march was strongly backed by Egyptian and especially Emirati air support and equipment. It was later augmented with Sudanese mercenaries and Russian private military companies.
But Turkey’s intervention, backed by Syrian mercenaries, tilted the balance of power against Haftar.
Haftar was initially stopped outside Tripoli mainly by militias loyal to al-Sarraj and a long stalemate persisted throughout 2019. Then the heavy intervention of the Turkish military in January, backed by some 4 000 Syrian mercenaries, dramatically tilted the balance of power against Haftar.
The biggest influence has been Turkish anti-aircraft artillery. It has neutralised Egyptian and United Arab Emirates (UAE) air supremacy that gave Haftar his military edge.
The key external players in the conflict have complex motives. Megerisi believes the UAE is largely driven by ideology – an eagerness to check the Arab Spring impulse towards democratisation in the Middle East and North Africa. It is opposed to the Muslim Brotherhood-aligned Islamists in al-Sarraj’s coalition but this is probably also a pretext for suppressing democracy.
Egypt has a similar ideological motive, though reinforced by more concrete fears of Islamists using eastern Libya as a springboard for attacks across the common border.
Politically, Turkey seems to be motivated mainly by an instinct to block its Middle East ideological rivals, the UAE and Egypt. In that sense Libya is indeed a proxy war, though Turkey and the UAE also have strong economic interests mainly in Libya’s large oil and gas reserves.
France also previously backed Haftar, including militarily, and is suspected of still providing military hardware, says Tim Eaton, Libya expert at Chatham House. It’s certainly still providing diplomatic support to him, particularly since Turkey entered the fray.
The Libyan antagonists are unlikely to just kiss and make up if the external protagonists withdraw.
The US role has been ambivalent. Many observers believe the Trump administration gave a silent nod to Haftar to attack Tripoli but Russia’s involvement with Haftar cooled Washington’s support.
Calling Libya a proxy war suggests that if the external protagonists withdrew, the Libyan antagonists would kiss and make up, which seems unlikely.
However Megerisi and others believe the outside interference has prolonged the war and made it bloodier. Even now, although Haftar seems to be in retreat, the UAE and Egypt are suspected of plotting a comeback. Large numbers of Emirati warplanes, for example, have reportedly been spotted in Egypt.
