Libyan warlord battles for control of Tripoli airport as militia forces push closer to city
"Libya Isn’t Hillary’s Fault, Says Libyan Republicans say Hillary Clinton botched the Libyan intervention, but Libya's ambassador says his country only has its own incompetent governments to blame."
VIDEO - East Libyan troops close on Tripoli, clashes near former airport Eastern Libyan troops advanced into the southern outskirts of the capital, Tripoli, in a dangerous thrust against the internationally recognized government. (Reuters)
By Fahmi Hussein and Sudarsan Raghavan April 6
MISURATA, Libya — A renegade militia seeking to storm its way into Libya’s capital battled for control of the international airport Saturday in a showdown that threatened to spill into bloody urban combat in the streets of Tripoli.
Fighters loyal to warlord Khalifa Hifter said they had overrun the airport, on the southern edge of the city. But forces for Libya’s U.N.-backed government mounted a counterattack — aided by reinforcements flowing into the city — and it was unclear which side held the airfield by nightfall.
The airport has been closed since it suffered widespread damage during battles between rival groups in 2014. But it would be a symbolic blow to the government if the site fell to Hifter, who could use it as a key staging ground for further advances.
Hifter’s militia is aligned with a separate administration based in eastern Libya. The country, rich in oil and gas reserves, has been split into rival regions for years as the United Nations and others try to hammer out a peace deal and set a road map for elections.
Hifter’s offensive could usher in the most significant escalation of violence since the toppling of Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi in 2011. Hifter was a general in Gaddafi’s army, but he defected and spent years living in Northern Virginia. He returned to Libya to take part in the revolution against Gaddafi’s rule.
Hundreds of truckloads of fighters from different militias left the city of Misurata on Saturday, heading to Tripoli to help fend off Hifter’s forces, said militia sources and residents of Misurata, about 120 miles east of the capital.
-- Military vehicles in the Tajura neighborhood east of Tripoli, Libya’s capital. (Hani Amara/Reuters) --
Many Misurata residents — and the city’s militias — despise Hifter and view him as another dictator in the making. Militias from other pro-government cities such as Zintan also moved into Tripoli, according to photos posted on social media.
In Misurata, a radio station sent out a rallying cry to listeners: “Everyone who owns a gun please go to Tripoli right away to fight for your country against Hifter.”
Fayez Sarraj, chairman of the Presidential Council of Libya, said Hifter rejected concessions offered “to avoid bloodshed.”
“We were stabbed in the back,” he said in televised comments, the Associated Press reported.
Tripoli is a city accustomed to eruptions of militia violence. In some neighborhoods, life remained typical Saturday, with people shopping and going to work or school, said residents reached by phone.
“The city is normal,” said Jamal Mustafa, 35, an employee at a Libyan overseas investment firm. “People are shopping and going out and doing their routines.”
But in neighborhoods closer to the fighting, residents were preparing for the worst. Many stayed inside their homes as heavily armed militia vehicles steadily drove through to the front line.
Jamal Ramadan, 42, whose house is less than three miles from the old airport, decided to flee.
“We could hear heavy shelling and gunshots,” said the taxi driver and father of three children, ages 3 to 6. “My wife told me she was to afraid to stay. So we got a few clothes and left. We are not going to gamble our lives on this.”
They drove about 90 miles to stay with his wife’s relatives.
“We don’t want Hifter to come,” said Mustafa. “Anyone who wants to rule the country like Gaddafi is unacceptable.”
Human Rights Watch on Saturday raised concerns about possible abuses if fighting escalated inside the capital. Activists accuse Hifter’s fighters of committing numerous human rights violations, including summary executions, indiscriminate attacks on civilians and arbitrary detentions.
Pro-government militias also have a track record of abuses against civilians, the watchdog group said.
“Whenever rival armed forces clash in Libyan cities, it’s civilians who suffer the most,” Sarah Leah Whitson, the group’s Middle East and North Africa director, said in a statement. “All sides need to abide by the laws and minimize civilian harm.”
Earlier Saturday, government warplanes targeted Hifter’s militiamen in attempts to stop their push toward Tripoli. The planes bombed positions of his self-described Libyan National Army south of Tripoli, prompting the warlord to declare that his forces would shoot down any aircraft flying over western Libya, local media reported. Tripoli residents on social media described hearing fighter jets passing over the city.
Saturday’s aerial assault came a day after Hifter’s forces were stopped from advancing in Tripoli at a strategic checkpoint and about 100 of his fighters were captured by pro-government militias, local media reports said.
But by Saturday, Hifter’s forces appeared to have regrouped. Their media office said on its Facebook page that they had not only seized control of the airport but also had captured another enclave, Wadi el-Rabeia, south of the capital.
There was no immediate response from the Tripoli government nor the militias that back it.
On Thursday, Hifter ordered his forces to seize control of Tripoli following their takeover of Gharyan, a town about 60 miles south of the capital. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres personally intervened in a bid to stop the fighting but failed Friday to persuade Hifter to halt his offensive.
Also of concern is that a power vacuum and more insecurity could allow an Islamic State affiliate that once ruled the city of Sirte to regroup.
The United Nations, the United States and other governments, including France and the United Arab Emirates, which supports Hifter, have all demanded that he pull back his forces. On Saturday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called for restraint from all sides at a news conference in Cairo.
Any escalation in fighting threatens to torpedo a U.N.-sponsored reconciliation conference to forge a path forward for elections, scheduled for next weekend.
But Saturday, Ghassan Salamé, the U.N. special envoy to Libya, said the conference would go forward as planned, declaring that it was a year in the making and that the world body would not quickly give up its political work.
After meeting with the Tripoli government’s president, Sarraj, Salamé said in a tweet, “I want to reassure the Libyans that the UN will not leave them by themselves & will stay in Libya, working toward a political solution, silencing the guns & a peaceful political understanding btwn the various parties.”
Hawks see two possible routes to regime change. The first approach relies on ramping up economic pressure on Tehran in the hope that popular discontent will grow and that the clerical regime will simply collapse. The second option is to provoke Iran into restarting its nuclear program, which would give Washington the excuse to launch a preventive war.
Let’s look a bit more carefully at each of these options.
Regarding the first, the belief that ever-tighter sanctions will cause the regime to collapse is wishful thinking. The U.S. embargo on Cuba has lasted more than 50 years, and the Castro regime is still in place (even if Fidel is now dead and his brother Raúl just stepped down in favor of a chosen successor). Sixty-plus years of ever-increasing sanctions haven’t brought the North Korean regime crashing down either and didn’t stop it from acquiring a usable nuclear arsenal. We’ve been told for years now that Iran was on the brink of collapse .. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/sep/30/iran-economy-verge-collapse-sanctions-israel .. and it never seems to happen. Sanctions didn’t topple Saddam Hussein in Iraq or Muammar al-Qaddafi in Libya either. Hard-liners got excited a few months ago when anti-government demonstrations occurred in several Iranian cities, but, by this logic, the massive demonstrations that have occurred in numerous U.S. cities since Trump was elected are signs that regime change is imminent here. Not likely in either case. Economic pressure can sometimes help convince opponents to negotiate and maybe even alter their policies, and they can weaken an enemy’s economy during wartime, but leaving the JCPOA isn’t going to bring Iran to its knees.
What if I’m wrong and the clerical regime did collapse? As we have seen in other settings, the result is not likely to be a stable, well-functioning, and pro-American regime. U.S.-sponsored regime change in Iraq led to a civil war, a brutal insurgency, and the rise of the Islamic State. Ditto with foreign-imposed regime change in Libya. The United States has also intervened repeatedly in places including Somalia, Yemen, Afghanistan, and Syria in recent years, and all it reaped was additional instability and fertile ground for terrorists. And let’s not forget that the original U.S.-backed regime change in Iran — which ousted democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq and reinstated Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in 1953 — spawned the anti-Americanism the United States has had to deal with ever since the 1979 revolution. And don’t forget that many prominent opponents of the regime — including leaders of the so-called Green Movement — also support Iran’s nuclear program and aren’t about to become Washington’s lackeys even if they were somehow to come to power. .. https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=140639867
“The only two countries with capacity and motive to mount the strike were the UAE and Egypt,” Millett told the Guardian.
“It is clear the finger of blame is being pointed to the UAE. It is time the security council called this out. If this war continues much longer Libya .. https://www.theguardian.com/world/libya .. will have become a failed state, and the responsibility will lie with the outside powers.”
He added that Turkey was the third country pouring arms into Libya in support of the UN-backed Government of National Accord which has been under attack in Tripoli from Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar’s forces, the Libyan National Army. Libya is subject to a UN arms embargo.
Millett said the coordinates of the detention centre had been given to Haftar’s forces so the strike against the detention centre was either the product of a dreadful accident or a terrible crime.
The confidential report from the UN’s panel of experts presented to the security council on Wednesday said it is highly probable that a foreign jet launched the guided weapon on behalf of the Libyan National Army.
The report said: “An unknown number of Mirage 2000-9 fighter jets were operating from two airbases inside Libya at the time of the strike.” The two airbases are named as Al Khadim and Al Jufra.
“It is highly probable that the airstrike was carried out using precision-guided missiles by a fighter jet operated by a UN member state acting in direct support of Haftar armed forces,” the report said.
It says the likelihood that the detention centre would be hit by two “dumb” bombs, as opposed to precision-guided missiles, would be “very low”.
Haftar’s air force does not have the equipment or ordinance types to support the operation of such aircraft. Only UAE and Egypt have the Mirage 2000-9 jets in the region.
No direct reference was made to the panel of experts’ report during an open session of the security council on Libya, although numerous calls were made for more to be done to protect refugees, as well as to find those responsible for the detention centre attack.
Militia supporting the UN-recognised Government of National Accord based in Tripoli had an arms supply dump near to the detention centre.
At the UN security council session, the international criminal court (ICC) prosecutor Fatou Bensouda pointed out that one of Haftar’s supporters wanted by the ICC over alleged war crimes had been promoted from major to lieutenant general in July.
“Two arrest warrants against Mahmoud Mustafa Busayf Al-Werfalli remain unexecuted more than two years since the first warrant was issued,” she said.
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