Libya: Now will the foreign fighters be removed?

Rashid Khashana – Despite the international and regional tendency to settle the conflict in Libya through elections, which were delayed for two years, political factions are still working to thwart the process.

The issue of removing foreign forces from Libya occupied a central position in the two meetings that brought together the Special Representative of the Secretary-General of the United Nations and the head of its mission to Libya, Abdullah Bathily, to both the President of the Presidential Council, Mohamed Al-Menfi, and the Head of the National Unity Government, Abdul Hamid Al-Dabaiba, separately. What is important is that the two meetings came in the wake of a tour by Bathily to both Sudan and Chad, to reach an agreement with them to recover their mercenaries from Libya. But it is not known whether there is a serious commitment from both governments to help evacuate their armed citizens from Libya. It is also not known to what extent the countries concerned are able to control their mercenaries and impose discipline on them, including forcing them to leave Libya. It is noted that Bathily met in Sudan and Chad with the presidents of the two countries and their defense ministers to discuss the issue with those who “own” this file, on the other side. This international effort falls within the framework of the initiative announced by Bathily last month, which may lead to holding general elections before the end of this year, according to international coordination.
This endeavor by Bathily is consistent with the results of the meeting that recently brought together all the deans of Libya, with the participation of 140 deans, from all regions, under the auspices of the Dabaiba government, which observers considered an affirmation of Libya’s unity and stability. The international effort is also consistent with the recent visit that Bathily made to the city of Sabha, the largest city in the south, over which successive governments lost control, after the collapse of the majority of state institutions there in 2011. To reinforce this trend, the meetings of the 5+5 Joint Military Committee focused on the issue of “ Removing mercenaries and foreign fighters from Libya. The Military Committee met in the city of Benghazi, over a period of two days, with the participation of military, security and field leaders from eastern and western Libya, in the presence of Bathily. It is noted that this meeting is the third after a first meeting in Tunisia in March, and a second meeting in Tripoli. The attendees agreed to unite to organize free and fair elections during the current year. The participating military and security leaders (more than 20 high-ranking officers) also confirmed their commitment to the outcomes of the past two meetings. This path was strengthened by the meeting of military leaders from both sides on Thursday in Benghazi, headed by Lieutenant General Muhammad al-Haddad and Lieutenant General Abdel Razek al-Nadhuri.
Al-Nadhuri’s statements were remarkable, as he stressed that members of the military establishment have the ability to overcome differences and defend the sovereignty and integrity of their lands, stressing at the same time that “the Libyan army, east, west, and south, is far removed from political tensions, and will not be a tool for any political party.” As for Lieutenant General Al-Haddad, he touched on the unity of the military institution and its effective participation in the upcoming elections, pledging during the same meeting, “to preserve the unity of territory, the sanctity of blood, and the civility of the state,” adding, “We will support our people and their choices in achieving fair elections, and protect them, when the Libyans agree.” It can be said that this path coincides with the American proposal for a political solution in Libya, given that Washington is the actual decision-maker in the Libyan file. The former American envoy to Libya, Jonathan Weiner, considers that American efforts to achieve stability in Libya should “include unifying institutions and using natural resources and wealth.” For the benefit of the Libyan people. As for former Assistant Secretary of State for Middle Eastern Affairs David Mack, he stressed that America urges Libyan leaders to cooperate with United Nations efforts to achieve a unified political process that leads to elections by the end of the year, and “to achieve greater stability and security for the Libyans and their Western economic partners.”
In this context, the greatest concern for Americans currently is not Libya, but rather containing Russian expansion on the African continent in general, and in the Sahel and Sahara region in particular, adjacent to the southern Libyan border. In this regard, Weiner believes that creating a national border control system and local police forces, subject to civilian rule, are all normal elements in any normal government and country. By extension, the Americans, along with the well-known sociologist Max Weber, believe that the state in Libya must restore its monopoly on legitimate weapons and remove them from the hands of the militias, within the framework of a unified army. It is clear that the Russians scored a new point, during their quarrel with America in the Libyan stadium, as Moscow recently received the Second Deputy Speaker of the Libyan House of Representatives, Abdul Hadi Al-Saghir, and Representative Jalal Al-Shuwaihdi, who met in Moscow with the Chairman of the International Relations Committee of the State Duma, head of the Democratic Party. Liberal » Leonid Slutsky, and they discussed the political situation in Libya, in the presence of the Russian ambassador to Tripoli, without giving more details about the content of the meeting. However, the reception of the delegation in light of the current situation gives indications of some of the repercussions of the Ukraine war on countries such as Libya.
But there are those who confirmed that the Libyan delegation’s visit to Russia was aimed at blocking the path to the Bathily initiative, in order to keep the means of a negotiated solution exclusively in the hands of the House of Representatives and a section of the Supreme Council of State. This option is based on the two councils’ requirement that Abdul Hamid Dabaiba be removed from the presidency of the national unity government. However, the latter’s opponents had previously tried to remove him from the presidency and give confidence to a parallel government headed by Fathi Bashagha, but they failed. It is known that Russia’s representative to the UN Security Council, immediately after Bathily presented his briefing at the Security Council session devoted to Libya, quickly warned against “any haste in holding the awaited elections.”
The old fighters against the regime of Muammar Gaddafi were formed at the end of the first civil war (2011-2014) into brigades, which they called “revolutionary brigades,” and their number was estimated at that time, that is, under the General National Congress (2012-2014), at between 100 and 300 battalions, including 125. A thousand armed. Then the number rose after three years to approximately 1,600 militias/battalions, all of which included between 200 and 250 thousand members. Violent confrontations broke out after the 2014 elections, in which the National Forces Alliance party headed by the late Mahmoud Jibril won, between the forces loyal to retired Major General Khalifa Haftar, which he called “Operation Dignity,” on the one hand, and the militias of Misrata (the second largest city), which includes political Islam groups. , On the other hand. The latter fought violent battles as part of Operation “Libya Dawn” to evacuate forces allied with Major General Haftar from the Zintan region (west). The ferocity of the battles forced the Parliament, which was elected in 2012, to take its temporary headquarters in the city of Tobruk (northeast), where it remains to this day. A military council was established in Misrata to coordinate with the majority of armed bodies with an Islamist orientation. A similar council was also established in Benghazi, then in Tripoli. The military councils in major cities now have tanks, heavy artillery, and armored vehicles, as if they were a parallel army. It was noted that the deeper the differences and the wider the rift between the Libyan factions, the more support for external forces increased.

All armed

In this sense, the withdrawal of foreign forces from all Libyan lands before the elections remains a condition that everyone declares their adoption of, but many are working to violate it, now that every player has his own armed defenders. Accordingly, those following the Libyan file confirm that if the international community was serious about putting the country on the path to stability, it would have to show the stick of strict sanctions and start freezing assets, banning travel, and issuing international memorandums to anyone who obstructs the march towards elections, especially since all parties have become illegitimate, after… Its terms have been exhausted for years, and the time has come for the sovereign people to regain their right to vote, renew legitimacy, and end the rule of the interim authorities. On the military level, this means removing about two thousand Russian “Wagner” mercenaries, along with hundreds of Sudanese and Chadian mercenaries, from the country. This task will be more difficult in Fezzan (south) than in other regions, as the forces loyal to Haftar were able to control a vast section of the region, where many oil fields are spread. In the name of combating terrorism, many were convinced that the military option, pursued by Haftar, could be an ideal way to eliminate terrorist groups. Haftar’s forces also used local forces, especially the Tebu tribes, which are at war with the Tuareg, to subject smuggling networks and oil installations to their influence. Today, the matter also concerns the withdrawal of 13,000 Syrian fighters from the Free Syrian Army. Among them are former members of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, a Syrian group close to al-Qaeda. While things appear, in terms of rhetoric and principled positions, as if there is an agreement between international and regional powers to move diligently towards elections, this settlement is still incomplete, as appears from the hundreds of meetings held by presidents, ministers and special envoys to Libya. The special envoys represent the United States, Britain, Egypt, France, Germany, Italy, Qatar, Turkey, and the UAE. It is noticeable that Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco are not among them, despite the apparent and hidden roles they played in achieving rapprochement between enemy brothers.
Despite the international and regional tendency to settle the conflict in Libya through elections, which were delayed for two years, political factions are still working to thwart the process, including the Political Islam Movement, which is known as the “Mufti Movement” (Sadiq al-Gharyani). The movement (the Libyan Revolutionaries Union) held a conference in the city of Zintan, weeks ago, during which it announced that it objects to the ongoing agreements, claiming that it is entrusted with the fate of the revolution (2011). Academics and activists believe that this swimming against the current will be of no use, according to writer Milad Al-Mazoghi, in light of the regional and international consensus, and “the internal parties’ certainty that it is enough to tamper with the state’s capabilities and laugh at the helpless people.” As for the writer Abdullah Al-Gharyani, he considered that armed bodies have been, throughout the past decade, tools of sabotage and destruction, and have huge records of violations, killings, torture, and forced disappearances. Therefore, they cannot make peace or work to secure elections and lead the country to a stage of stability, according to what Abdullah Al-Gharyani says. God Al-Gharyani, adding, “She can only act that without real work.” And he is right about that.

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