Libya at the precipice of division between Turkey and Russia as the endgame approaches
By Nureddin Sabir
Editor, Redress Information & Analysis
In an ominous sign that may herald darker days to come for Libya, the Libyan National Army (LNA) has announced on 4 June that it is withdrawing from the outskirts of the capital Tripoli in response to calls from a number of countries and organisations, and to facilitate the resumption of the so-called “5+5” talks, aimed at reaching a permanent ceasefire in Libya.
These talks, an outcome of the January 2020 Berlin conference, consist of five military officers appointed by the unelected Muslim Brotherhood / Al-Qaeda-backed “Government of National Accord” (GNA) and another five officers from the LNA. They have no deadline and carry the very real risk of transforming the Libyan conflict from an armed conflict into a frozen conflict — a situation of no war and no peace which can revert to an armed conflict at any moment, as is the case in Cyprus, Moldova (Dniester Republic), Ukraine (Donetsk), and Georgia (South Ossetia and Abkhazia).
The announcement of the redeployment of the LNA away from Tripoli comes head on the heals of a similar announcement on 19 May in which the LNA said it would withdraw by two to three kilometers from all fronts in Tripoli to allow civilians to celebrate Eid al-Fitr, the festival marking the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. In that announcement, it urged the GNA’s Islamist and organised crime militias, and their supporting Turkish forces and Syrian mercenaries, to reciprocate, which, as expected, they did not.
The latest announcement warned that the LNA would resume military operations and withdraw from the 5+5 talks in the event of the GNA militias not observing the ceasefire. The answer was not long in coming. Speaking at a joint news conference in the Turkish capital Ankara with Turkey’s Islamist and Ottoman revivalist President Recep Erdogan, broadcast by Turkish TRT television, the “prime minister” of the GNA, Fayiz al-Sarraj, pledged not to enter talks with the LNA and to continue fighting until the GNA’s militias are in full control of all Libya. Sarraj’s message was endorsed by Erdogan, who also reminded him of Turkey’s intent “to benefit from the natural resources of the eastern Mediterranean, including search and exploration [for oil and natural gas]”.
[Egyptian President Abd-al-Fattah] al-Sisi has proved to be a fearful and unreliable ally and is likely to become even more scaredy and dubious given that his patron, the United States, has been emitting signals of support for the Turkish military intervention and the Islamists.
The question now is how the LNA’s allies, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Russia, will respond to the clear intention of Turkey and the Muslim Brotherhood coalition, in the form of the GNA, to take over the whole of Libya. A Turkish-Muslim Brotherhood victory would present an existential threat to the regime of Egypt’s President Abd-al-Fattah al-Sisi, who could soon be looking at Turkish troops across the border with Libya and seeing a surge of Muslim Brotherhood terrorism in Egypt. But so far Sisi has proved to be a fearful and unreliable ally and is likely to become even more scaredy and dubious given that his patron, the United States, has been emitting signals of support for the Turkish military intervention and the Islamists. The UAE, on the other hand, has little to lose and could exit the stage with only a loss of face.
This leaves Russia. Here its activities in Syria, where it has been collaborating with Turkey to apportion spheres of control in the north of the country, may give us a clue as to its probable course of action in Libya. Looking farther afield, in Russia’s own backyard, Moscow has been quite content with states of no war, no peace — frozen conflicts — in the Dniester region of Moldova, in Georgia’s Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and now in the Donetsk region of Ukraine. So, it it conceivable that Russia may reach an accommodation with Turkey whereby it would accept a US-backed Turkish Islamist protectorate in western Libya and a Russian one in the east of the country. As we write, it has been confirmed that the Turkish-backed GNA militias have captured the town of Tarhuna, southeast of Tripoli, and are likely to continue their advance to the south and east of Libya. This makes the prospect of a divided Libya a very real one.
Needless to say, the big losers in all this will be the Libyan people whose squabbles and tolerance of the Islamist and crime syndicate militias following the ouster of the regime of Muammar Gaddafi has led to this sorry state of affairs.
This article first appeared in Dateline Libya, a Redress Information & Analysis page dedicated to the conflict in Libya.
