Libya: lies have short legs

(To Giampiero Venturi)
14/09/16

Beyond the good faith with which theOperation Hippocrates, some reflections seem necessary.

On the day of the announcement, the news of the conquest of three major oil terminals by forces loyal to General Haftar and the parallel government of Tobruk is confirmed by Libya. After Al Sedra and Ras Lanouf, the soldiers of Cyrenaica would have secured the port of Zouteitina, taking it away from the guard militiamen, at the same time allies of the Government of Tripoli and its leader Al Serraj.

From the military point of view the news of the Haftar tear has not a particularly wide echo. In economic and political terms, on the other hand, it burns very much, because it reveals the substantial reality matured during these months of false national reconciliation. The parallel government of Tobruk today controls the most important infrastructures in the country, or in any case those that condition the possible economic recovery of Libya, whose overall crude oil production has fallen to 200.000 barrels per day (1,6 million at the time of Gaddafi).

Although all Western governments continue to bland Al Serraj as the leader of a National Unity Government (the GNA recognized by the UN), in Libya it is obviously quite the opposite. Local sources of Online Defense, confirm what some independent press organs announce from time to time in the general torpor: the Government of Al Serraj, in addition to the capital and the areas of Zuwarah and Sabratha to the west, has effective jurisdiction only in the coastal area between Misrata and Sirte, with practically constant continuity solutions. Essentially less than 300 km of coastline for a non-calculable depth, given the geography of the country.

But it gets worse. Libyan Dawn, the coalition that supports the GNA in Tripoli, is a federation of groups and acronyms among which the militiamen of Misurata stand out (where our Operation Hippocrates) ei Muslim Brotherhood, backed in turn by Islamist armed groups such as i Martyrs of 17 February of Benghazi and the Tripoli militia. Among them it should not be forgotten Ansar al Sharia, jihadist group known for its radical ideology. 

It is this galaxy of armed men and gangs that exercises real power in the western territory of Libya and that in exchange for an armed peace, allows Al Serraj to consider itself the representative of less than a third of the entire country.

In addition to Tripolitania, more or less under the GNA, Libya has three other macro areas: Cyrenaica in the hands of General Haftar, who rules from the "oil crescent" of the east coast to the oasis of Kufra, hell on the distant sand 1100 km from Benghazi; the South where the revival rages Tubu, a cross-border people between Libya, Chad and Niger; the West along the borders with Tunisia, where the Tuaregs, free from the constraints of the Gaddafi era, have taken up a new voice.

In the chaos the "militia of oil" insinuates itself Petroleum Facilities Guard of the enigmatic Ibrahim Jadhran, officially allied with the Government of National Unity, but apparently not so powerful (or reliable) as to prevent the conquest of the most important wells to the general Haftar.

Libya where we are landing is in essence a country divided on armed balances where traffic of all kinds continues to thrive without restraint. In addition to oil, where thanks to the 2011 war Total, Exxon, BP they joined with ENI and Gazprom, everything in Libya is part of a tariff: migrants that are collected in the south; weapons that change hands without control; even the wounded to be evacuated in armed clashes ...

The biggest tragedy is that unlike other countries torn apart by disastrous civil wars (Afghanistan and Bosnia above all), ethnic religious radicalization gives way to business alliances closer to crime than politics. The Libyan institutional stalemate appears to be unsolvable because everyone (except Italy) agrees.

It is important not to say it. As has been argued several times, both a united Libya and a public opinion do not need to believe that it is possible. In this context, ours come.

(photo: AMN)

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