by Jim W. Dean, VT Editor … with New Eastern Outlook, Moscow
[ Editor’s Note: The LNA shot down a GNA plane today, flying in from Misrata, so we have had our first plane shoot down, and an indication that the LNA had forces west of Tripoli with the Misrata militia base in its rear, an aggressive and dangerous position.
We have had reports today of Tripoli forces abandoning immigrant detention facilities, as they were running out of food and water with no where to go. They are going to suffer the brunt of the current fighting via neglect.
The strong ones are being shanghaied into the military as heavy laborers in exchange for food and cigarettes. Things are worse for the women and children.
We also learned today that General Haftar’s move up from the south, after splitting the alliance between the two major tribes there, also brought the southern oilfields back online. But a question remains as to who will get the money from it, as all export income goes into the Libyan national bank, unless Haftar has found a way to circumvent that.
Smart money is saying that his forces cannot carry on a long siege, which I don’t agree with. It depends on how much and how intense the fighting is and the numbers of KIAs and casualties. That is what kills morale, and quickly. The issue is still in doubt… JD ]
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– First published … April 08, 2019 –
It appears now that the Benghazi-based Libyan National Army’s (LNA) General Khalifa Haftar wants to negotiate the final settlement with the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord’s(GNA)Al Serraj government over who will rule over Libya and its oil and gas reserves, after he has taken Tripoli.
All diplomatic attempts to derail Haftar’s advance have failed. The UN-backed GNA head Fayez Sarrj had offered to meet with Hafter, but he refused. UN chief AntónioGuterres’attempts to broker a ceasefire failed, and he left Libya Friday.
The UN Security Council says it will hold accountable those responsible for the current escalation, which would be Haftar. I cannot imagine how it plans to do that, when it has never been able to do so in the past when the fighting was more intense. The UN is still attempting to mediate, but an array of foreign backers of each side will also have influence over any resolution.
Who thought the Libyan civil war would last this long?
VT has followed the Libyan conflict closelysince the civil war that removed Gaddafi. When fighting was raging, we were covering the story hour by hour, fortunate to have had sources on the ground from the Libyan expat community who had returned to help overthrow Gaddafi.
Our key source and his team were present when Gaddafi was captured just outside Sirte, but then quickly left, knowing in advance that a bloody struggle for power over who would control Libya’s oil wealth would ensure, and wanted no part of it.
To avoid the impending battle for Tripoli during that war, where casualties were being estimated at 100,000, VT, without being asked to do so, successfully negotiated a safe exit for Gaddafi and his family to an African country to hopefully avoid that slaughter.
Gaddafi turned the offer down. And to everyone’s surprise, Tripoli fell in a day, the result of a carefully laid and executed plan that not only saved countless lives and injuries, but the destruction of the city.
Looking through the fog of war
I have held off writing this Libya article, due to some major loose ends with the story. The biggest one was how Haftar, with his base in Benghazi, was maintaining logistical supply lines for advancing on Tripoli from the south and west.
General Haftar’s forces advanced from the south after having taken Sabha in the southern oil fields, and thenUbari to the west to protect his left flank. His LAN fighters then moved north to take Garyan on Saturday April 6.
Tripoli’s GNA reported a counter attack by its forces, inflicting major losses on the LNA advance. Despite this claim,Haftar’s forces have actually closed on Tripoli by taking its non-operational international airport south of the city.
If Haftar had 155 howitzers, he could be shelling the city today, but I have seen no photos of any moving columns showing artillery being moved. There are reports that he has wanted to take the city with as little fighting and damage as possible, a hard thing to wish for.
All we have seen are columns of “technicals” with their heavy machine guns mounted, and lots of them. We see no columns of supply trucks following them to provide the ammunition and logistics needed for assaulting Tripoli. This could be Haftar’s undoing if Tripoli puts up a stiff defense, which I suspect it would.
How can General Haftar logistically supply a full assault on Tripoli?
I initially had to decipher how Hafter’s forces had proceeded from a southern approach with running a gauntlet of IEDs and TOW ambushes cutting it to shreds. The answer lays in the shifting allegiances of the local tribes in the area.
The GNA had earlier pulled a political coup in getting the long feuding (over respective shares of the southern oil wealth) Tebu and Tuareg tribes into the GNA coalition, where these tribal soldiers became an important part of the GNA military forces guarding Tripoli from the south.
What I learned was that Haftar had managed to split this coalition, I suspect by offering one of the tribes a bigger cut of the oil wealth ifhe could take over Tripoli. Buying off tribal leaders is an old colonial tactic, used for hundreds of years.
So we see Haftar has been preparing this move on Tripoli for some time, even going to the effort to clear the southern Libya regions of ISIS, Al-Qaeda, foreign operators, and even smugglers so he could concentrate his forces for the final move on Tripoli.
Who are the behind the scenes players on Libya’s future?
Now that Haftar has the international airport, despite its being non-operational for civilian traffic, it can receive supply planes from Tripoli. But the question is what major powers does Haftar have behind him to provide realistic logistics muscle to support a multi-pronged attack?
On the surface he has Egypt, the UAE, and tacit support, politically and military, from Russia. The GNA support comes from the UN, some Western countries, Turkey and Qatar, with its military defense depending on the Misrata militias, famous for their fighting Gaddafi.
The Pentagon announced on Sunday that the US contingent on the ground was “temporarily” withdrawing due to the current hostilities. But will the US really be gone?That requires digging into Mr. Hafter’s past, and carefully.
Somehow, missed for years now, the mainstream press has never reported that General Haftar is an American citizen, and that he had once lived in the US for many years.
In his earlier career, when he had run into some serious trouble by being captured in the Libya-Chad war in Africa, a US organization eventually extracted and took him under its wing. Some analysts feel that this relationship still exists, which might explain how Haftar has managed this two-front advance with mysterious supply lines.
There is a corporate media ban on discussing Haftar’s past, but Wikipedia found a way of getting around it with its extensive biography of Haftar’s military career.The Wiki people say he worked near Langley, Virginia, one exit off the Washington beltway. It has three letters on it. The first one is C.
What happens now?
The absence of visible preparations for a contested long assault on Tripoli indicates that Haftar is trying force a settlement on the GNA. He is holding the most cards, with control over the oil and gas infrastructure. He may be gambling that the man with the biggest pocketbook will eventually win the political battle.
But that could change if hard fighting ensues and his troops sustain major losses, which is always a morale killer for those fighting for money, as dead men don’t get to enjoy theirs.
The oil market is watching this situation carefully, as taking the Libyan oil off the market at this time would strengthen OPEC’s hand in the cutbacks it has made to move oil prices up. On the other hand, the GNA government controls both the national oil company and the central bank where all oil export revenues flow, so Tripoli is still holding some important cards.
A negotiated settlement would be better for both sides and the Libyan people, but is that what the foreign backers of both sides want? Are the Libyan people and their respective political parties being played as pawns on the grand chessboard, just to move oil markets in a predictable manner by which some can profit? I would say there is a good chance of that.
Jim W. Dean, managing editor for VT, producer/host of Heritage TV Atlanta, specially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
Jim W. Dean is VT Editor Emeritus. He was an active editor on VT from 2010-2022. He was involved in operations, development, and writing, plus an active schedule of TV and radio interviews. He now writes and posts periodically for VT.
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The sudden (but temporary) disappearance of US Forces leads me to believe General Haftar has never left the cold, damp embrace of the CIA, with the general intention being that Haftar is being granted a clean and clear run at asserting control over the entire of Libya, preferably without bloodshed, and without his being labelled a US lackey following which he will ensure some sort of deal with the (for now) internationally recognized Government based in Tripoli who, no doubt will have Washington whispering warm words of encouragement in their ears favoring such a deal. At that point, I have no doubt but that Washington, together with London, Paris and all of the other voracious rodents will fully expect to return to Tripoli and assert hegemony throughout North Africa but ……. I very strongly suspect General Haftar may have his own ideas on the role to be played by the western war-machine in North Africa post- his arrival in Tripoli: what I might describe as a slightly semi-detached relationship and to be kept at arms length pending his asserting full and absolute control over the entire of Libya’s Territory and it’s very considerable Oil & Gas wealth. Once this primary objective has been achieved, I believe Haftar will shut out his western puppet-masters and reassert Qaddafi’s and Libya’s previously-held role as Leader of Africa’s desire to carve out its own independent role in the world whilst retaining good and businesslike relationships with “the West”, whether through ensuring access to the Oil-fields, Mineral wealth or otherwise. Despite his US Citizenship, I believe he will NOT allow military/defense access to either America or to NATO with his being far more likely to engage in ensuring a warm relationship with Moscow. I may be entirely wrong but I believe his previous long experience with the CIA has granted him unique insight into the thinking of Langley and within the State Department and while American hegemonists may scream blue bloody murder off camera at being double-crossed by “one of their own” they will maintain a modicum of decorum for fear of Haftar’s spilling little platinum nuggets of information on both the overt and covert activities of the CIA and US War Machine throughout North Africa and the Middle East, stretching as far east as the Punjab, arising from his own “work” with the CIA throughout the past 25 years.
IN CASE YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THESE—
1) Military Security Forces are about to announce, that the Sudan’s Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir who was in power for (30 years) since 1989, is to step down.
2) Julian Assange of Wikileaks has left from Ecuador Embassy in London with Police.
Good work, You VT elders — but that You shure recognize already each morning and evening whilst shaving if before a mirror, I feel confident of. Keep it up! The Wikipedia breakthrough is a sweaty.
Thanks folks, but Gordon and I have a ton of time on the whole Libyan war saga. If you go here to the VT board and staff page and scroll down to the bottom “In Memorium” section you will find Mohamed Mo Nabbous, KIA Benghazi. He was an early video blogger who had captured a large audience quickly via on the street selfie reports, and very anti-Gaddafi. We told him that with his high profile that it was crazy to be doing video shoots out in the street, where he was just sniper bait. But he had the “young disease” of not listening to elders. He said I am here, you are there, so I know more about the danger, it’s OK. A few days later a sniper put a bullet through is head, and yes, while he was out in the street shooting.
Thank you Jim for the article. I’m following this escalation with great interest. Is it interesting that the US govt is not saying much about this? Like I’m comparing this to Venezuela and the difference in rhetoric and comments coming from the white house from the conflict in Libya in comparison to the Venezuelan stand off is great. So maybe General Hafter might still be in the CIA’s paybook?
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