Nearly a decade after NATO’s 2011 onslaught on Libya the war it unleashed threatens to draw in the whole Mediterranean. Already Turkey is militarily committed on the side of the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA), which has political support from Libya’s former colonial master – Italy – and increasingly Britain and the US. Russia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are militarily committed to the opposition to the GNA, the rival ‘House of Representatives’ government and General Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA). These forces have covert French military support, and Egypt has threatened open intervention to oppose ‘Turkish occupation’. Libya is of crucial strategic importance, situated at the heart of the Mediterranean, adjacent to major underwater gas fields and containing Africa’s largest proven oil reserves (OPEC, 2019). The country has become an arena where regional powers struggle to carve out a new order amid the fracturing of NATO and the decline of US imperialist power. TOBY HARBERTSON reports.
Libya’s civil war officially began in 2014. In national elections the House of Representatives government was elected with a turnout of 18% but would not take up office in the capital Tripoli, in the west, which was controlled by Islamist militias. It relocated to Tobruk in the far east of the country. UN diplomatic talks to create a unitary authority led to the formation of the weak Government of National Accord in 2015, which was based in Tripoli, ‘internationally recognised’… and rejected by the House of Representatives members a few months later. General Haftar, appointed by the House of Representatives to command the LNA, was seized upon by some powers – Egypt, Russia, France – looking for a ‘strongman’ to control Libya. They were concerned about the power of Islamists in the west, where the GNA represents the Muslim Brotherhood among other groups. Turkey and Qatar, backers of the GNA, are politically aligned with the Brotherhood. Egypt’s President General Abdel Fattah Al Sisi has fought a brutal domestic campaign against the group, coming to power on the back of a coup against a Brotherhood government.
From April 2019, Haftar’s LNA forces had expanded from their base of support in the east, launched an offensive on Tripoli and occupied swathes of western territory. Turkish intervention, beginning in January 2020, has brought about a major reversal. The GNA, supported by Turkish troops, drones, planes and thousands of pro-Turkish Syrian militia fighters have succeeded in pushing back the LNA from around Tripoli. Turkish forces captured the Al Watiya airbase near Tripoli in May 2020. Resurgent GNA forces are threatening the important coastal city of Sirte. Key oil fields such as El Shahara came under GNA control in June, and the central Al Jufra airbase was threatened. Turkey had granted its support to a desperate GNA in November 2019 in a deal which also agreed to a re-division of maritime territory between Libya and Turkey – which Turkey claims through its presence in northern Cyprus. Cyprus also claims the area. Greece, Egypt, the UAE, Cyprus and France opposed the deal, and described Turkish plans to drill for natural gas in the area as ‘illegal’. Turkey’s claims threatens existing French and Italian oil concessions and major Greek, Egyptian and Israeli plans to build gas pipelines across the region to Europe.
The GNA gains, and Turkey’s audacious moves, have alarmed other powers. On 21 June Egypt’s President Sisi threatened ‘legitimate’ military intervention on the side of the LNA if Turkish forces crossed a ‘red line’ by capturing Sirte or Al Jufra. French President Macron endorsed Egypt’s threat and warned that France would support sanctions on Turkey. (French oil company Total significantly expanded its oil holdings around Sirte in 2018). On 26 June Russian Wagner Group mercenaries – often seen as a ‘deniable’ arm of the Russian military – took the El Shahara oil field from the GNA. On 5 July the Al Watiya airbase was bombed, destroying Turkish air defence systems and other equipment. The GNA claimed the jets were from a ‘foreign air force’, with the UAE the prime suspect. Egyptian airstrikes have also supported Haftar, and in May the US accused Russia of bringing 14 military aircraft from Syria to Libya. On 15 July the House of Representatives government requested Egyptian military intervention to eject the ‘Turkish occupation’. LNA-supporters including Egypt are currently pushing for a ceasefire and talks as they are on the back foot, but the GNA will not negotiate until it has occupied Sirte. Haftar’s support has been dependent on his military successes – now he is facing military defeats his backers may find a new vehicle for their interests.
The situation in Libya today was created by the imperialist onslaught on the country launched by France, Britain and the US in 2011. The war was fought and supported by a patchwork of opportunist powers with conflicting interests and no realistic plan of what should happen after the destruction of Muammar Gaddafi’s state. France and Britain pushed NATO to go to war in order to remove a strong and independent government on Europe’s resource-rich doorstep, with simplistic ideas about installing a puppet government which would sign all the right contracts. The US was persuaded to play a central military role at the head of a NATO coalition. Italy supported reluctantly as Italy’s ENI already had a powerful place in the Libyan oil market. Russia and China stood aside in the face of NATO’s overwhelming military power and lost huge investments – encouraging them to take a more active stance against NATO plans in Syria and subsequent wars.
The 2011 war killed tens of thousands and left a stateless wasteland run by warlords and jihadists. The exiled Libyans who were sponsored to form new governments failed utterly. Covert pipelines of weaponry and support from regional powers to militias inside Libya encouraged the formation of competing power bases. Migration to Europe through Libya became a major concern for Europe. Slavery and sexual exploitation became rife. European oil companies had seized contracts, but no satisfactory division of power was agreed between the antagonists, and the chaos in Libya made production and export of oil almost impossible. The divisions and tensions brought into the open continued to fuel civil war.
From Egyptian military intervention to the neo-Ottoman ambitions of the Turkish state kicking off a clash over gas with Greece, there are countless flashpoints for escalating war. Latent conflicts between France and Italy, both seeking to be major oil powers in Libya, present the ever-growing possibility of an inter-imperialist clash. In Libya’s war there is no side for socialists. The Libyan people are treated as expendable by all the competing powers. Only a mass movement against the imperialist system can remedy the inhumanity that underlies it.
