Analysis of the Geopolitics of the

Libya Conflict (June 2020)

Dr. Walid Phares (June 2020): Analysis of the Geopolitics of the Liby…

Analysis of the Geopolitics of the Libya Conflict

(Dr. Walid Phares, June 16, 2020)

Transcript available below

About the speaker

Dr. Walid Phares served as a foreign policy adviser to Donald Trump and
Mitt Romney and is Fox News national security expert.

Dr. Phares is an engaging and highly sought after Middle East expert and
pacesetter, often predicting trends and situations on the ground years
before they occur. He is a Fox News Expert, advisor to the US Congress
and the European Parliament and served as a senior advisor on national
security foreign policy to presidential candidate Mitt Romney 2012.

Dr Phares is the only expert/author who predicted the Arab Spring a year
before it occurred in his pacesetting book, The Coming Revolution:
Struggle for Freedom in the Middle East (Threshold, a division of Simon
and Shuster 2010). Dr Phares holds an extensive CV and noteworthy
achievements in the fields of academia, government strategies, media
and publishing critical advice on combating terrorism and countering
jihadi radicalization both stateside and abroad.

Dr Phares holds a Ph.D in international relations and strategic studies

from the University of Miami, and a Political Science Degree from St
Joseph University and a Law degree from the Lebanese University in
Beirut and a Master in International Law from Universite’ Jean Moulin in
Lyons, France.

Dr Phares taught political science and Middle East studies at Florida

Atlantic University between 1993 and 2004. Since 2006, he has taught
Global Jihadi strategies at the National Defense University in Washington
DC. Dr Phares lectures on campuses nationwide and internationally,
including at the US Intelligence University. He lectured at Georgetown
University, George Washington University, American University,
Columbia, University of Chicago, Pepperdine, Boston College, Brandeis,
UC Berkley, University of Colorado at Boulder, Loyola New Orleans, UC
Santa Barbara, and many others including Ecole Militaire of France in
Paris. Dr Phares lectures also to various academic associations including
the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa in Washington
DC and Middle East American ethnic organizations.

After having authored six books on Middle East politics and history (in
Arabic) in the 1980s, Dr Phares authored another five in English stateside
since the mid 1990s. His most important volumes were published after
9/11 starting with Future Jihad: Terrorist Strategies against America,
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) and a critically acclaimed book that was
ranked in the top ten books of the 2006 Foreign Affairs List. Future
Jihad was read and cited by many members of Congress and the
European Parliament. Dr Phares predicted the rise of jihadi urban
networks and set forth strategies to counter them in the West and
overseas.

Dr Phares published two more books on global strategies: The War of

Ideas (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008) explaining the ideological
indoctrination and The Confrontation, a policy strategy book designed to
isolate radicals. Media and colleagues alike rave about Phares’s hallmark
book, which predicted the Arab Spring a year before it occurred: The
Coming Revolution: Struggle for Freedom in the Middle East (Simon and
Shuster, 2010). The book was endorsed by US Presidential candidate
Mitt Romney, and praised by many leading figures in Congress, political
circles and media on both sides of the Atlantic.

Dr Walid Phares is a native of Beirut, Lebanon, and immigrated to the

United States in 1990. He speaks fluent Arabic and French as well as
English. Prior to moving stateside, Dr Phares was a student union leader,
a lawyer, a publisher, a university professor, and founded a social-
democratic party, which he represented in several political coalitions.

Phares previously spoke at Westminster on the subjects of A New U.S.

Response to Upheaval in the Middle East and Geopolitics of the Jihadi
Threat: Assessment of ISIS and Iran’s Strategies.

Transcript
Robert R. Reilly:

Hello and welcome to this online lecture of the Westminster Institute. I am

Bob Reilly, the director, and I am delighted to welcome back to
Westminster Dr. Walid Phares, who is an old and dear friend. He was born
in Beirut, Lebanon, where he spent the first half of his life until emigrating
to the United States in 1990.

He received two Bachelor’s degrees from Saint Joseph University in

Beirut in public law and the second in political science and public
administration. He then went on to receive a Master of International Law
degree from the Universite’ Jean Moulin in France. In 1993, he obtained
his PhD in international relations and strategic studies from the University
of Miami.

I do not have time to address his distinguished academic career or all of

his public activities because we want to hear from him, but I must
mention that Dr. Phares has published twelve books in three languages
(English, Arabic, and French) on the Middle East and international
terrorism. Some of his notable post-9/11 books include Future Jihad:
Terrorist Strategies against the West, published in 2005, the very
important book The War of Ideas: Jihadism against Democracy,
published two years later, then The Confrontation: Winning the War
against Future Jihad from 2008, and The Coming Revolution: The
Struggle for Freedom in the Middle East, published later. The Coming
Revolution projected the popular uprisings in the Middle East before they
occurred later in 2011. His most recent publication is the Lost Spring: U.S.
Foreign Policy and the Catastrophes to Avoid.

We are delighted to welcome Walid here to address the subject of Libya,

of what is unfortunately currently taking place in that country, who is
active there, the number of foreign countries that have interfered for their
own purposes, what they are doing there, what are their objectives, and
how should the United States address this problem. Thank you, Walid
Phares, for joining us.

Walid Phares:

Introduction

Thank you, dear Bob. I would like to thank you, Dr. Reilly, and thank the
Westminster Institute for an amazing job in educating and in informing
the American public. This is basically the most important exercise that we
who are involved in academia and research, advisers, policymakers,
opinion-makers, can offer to the American public and to American
democracy. Our public needs to be informed about these conflicts and
these issues worldwide to be able to make the right choices here at
home in the selection of our lawmakers and leaders.

The topic of Libya is really in the heart of the field I have been in for the
last thirty years. I have taught, published, been interviewed, interacted
with politicians, leaders, NGOs, across the Middle East, including in Libya,
but Libya in particular I have been following since I was a teenager. Back
in the old days in Beirut I was looking at the events both in Lebanon and
then the war in Lebanon, and the developments in the Middle East
around my mother country.

And for about forty years I have been following the developments in
Libya. Eighty percent of it was basically what one single man – dictator
Qaddafhi – has been doing since 1969, the end of 1969, when he took
over the rein of government in a coup d’état, all the way to his demise in
2011, and then the very tense and dangerous years since the revolt in
Libya in what was called then the Arab Spring, which we in America got
involved in as well as our partners in France, in Europe, then other players
in the region.

And now Libya is in the midst of a very violent confrontation between at

least two camps, and those camps are backed by regional actors. So that
in a nutshell is my own interest. I have briefed, testified, been interviewed,
met with Members of Parliament of Libya, human rights activists and
others. So based on those experiences that I have had for forty years, ten
of these years in the Middle East, and the other thirty in the United
States. One of the challenges that the U.S. policy has since the so-called
Arab Spring, and I would say even since the end of the Cold War, but
more specifically since the upheavals in Egypt, Syria, Yemen, other
places, and of course, Libya, was to make sure that the choice we are
making as Americans is the right choice, is not going to cost us later in
terrorism and economic problems.

Overview

In Libya the challenges are even greater because of who is there and who
is involved, so let us do this historic journey first to see how the war
started, and then we will move to what is the current situation, and then
we can do a summary discussion about what would be the best options
that the United States now and after the elections would or should have
with regard to Libya.

Libya is a very large country in the Middle East as we can see in ‘Map 1’,
and most of it is desert. It is inhabited by a majority Arab population, but
it also minorities, including Berber-Amazigh, and then in the south it has
Africans. It was the battlefield in World War II that we are all familiar with.
Then it had a few years with the independent regime under King Senussi.
And in 1969 Muammar al-Qaddafhi, a young officer in the Libyan Army
then conducted a coup d’état, which some say was backed by Egypt and
Abdel Nasser at the time.

Muammar al-Qaddafhi

Now who was Muammar al-Qaddafhi ideologically and politically? It is

very important to understand. It is going to allow us to understand
against whom that revolution took place in 2011. Muammar al-Qaddafhi
was part of what was known in the Middle East as the Arab nationalist
movement. Arab nationalism is a pan-Arab movement. They want to
establish a one-nation Ummah nation from Morocco to Iraq, including all
of these countries. It is a kind of return of a settler-Caliphate. It is
modeled after the German reunification project, the Italian reunification
project, but it has multiple political parties operating.

In the east in Syria and Iraq, the most notable Arab nationalists were the
Ba’ath regime of the Assad family and of Saddam Hussein. In Egypt you
had Abdel Nasser, the great leader of the ’50s and the ’60s, the one who
was clashing with Israel in two or three wars, that is Egypt and Israel. And
in Libya, Muammar al-Qaddafhi represented that trend, which was very
radical, but in addition to that, he promoted himself as a socialist leader,
a third world-type of socialism. And in addition to that he had a third
component. He brought in what he called the Islamic Green Revolution,
not to be confused with the green movements today.
So he created this ideology that has one dimension that is Arab
nationalist, another dimension that is socialist, and a third dimension that
is really a Qaddafhi dimension, the Islamic Green Movement, which is
different from the Islamists, the Salafis, the Muslim Brotherhood.
Qaddafhi was not very clear on what he was talking about. That is why
very few in the Arab world followed him, but he meddled in many if not all
the crises in the Arab world.

He had a huge income in oil. Libya has among the largest reserves in the
world, the largest before Nigeria became [an oil power] in Africa as well.
Because of that cash that he obtained, he created a very large army in
equipment, not really in soldiers, but he funded many terrorist
organizations across the Middle East. He supported the PLO, but he
criticized them. He supported other organizations. He found himself in
the ’70s and the ’80s backing radical groups that operated in Europe and
elsewhere, but he was also an ally to the Soviet Union.

So Qaddafhi was a unique, unusual leader. Sadat used to call him the
boy, the adolescent, the teenager because of his style and speeches.
The bottom line is that Qaddafhi ruled from 1969 until 2011. He survived
many changes in the world and in the Middle East, including the collapse
of the Soviet Union. So those changes are going to take us to 2011 and
the revolution.

Qaddafhi’s Shocks

The first and most important change that occurred with regard to
Qaddafhi’s policies in the region from being a very radical, pro-terrorist
leader was a massive retaliation by the Reagan administration in 1986 in
order to punish the Qaddafhi regime for being involved in a terror action
against an American airliner, the famous Pan-Am 103 over Lockerbie in
Scotland with hundreds of people killed. The United States waged an air
raid over Libya, killing many people surrounding Qaddafhi. Since that
moment, Qaddafhi disengaged from a direct confrontation with the
Unites States and the West. He understood. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union
was reforming under Gorbachev. Qaddafhi understood that he was not
going to have the backing of the Soviet Union, which was busy in
glasnost and perestroika.

The second shock to Gaddafhi was in 2003 when the Bush

administration moved into Iraq, removed Saddam Hussein, changed that
regime by force, and then captured Saddam Hussein. They gave him to
the Iraqi interim government at the time, which was militias, and he was
tried and executed. This shocked Qaddafhi, and in a meeting with the
Arab League after that in ’04, he said where are the Arabs? One of our
leaders was captured and executed. It is going to happen to each one of
us, [that is] what he said. Indeed, it happened to him years later.

What happened after the fall of Saddam was that Qaddafhi announced
that he is going to let go of his weapons of mass destruction system
because he had them. And he asked the international community to
come and dismantle his weapons of mass destruction, his long-range
missiles, the bio-chemical capabilities. From then on he not only let go of
that system of weapons, he started to cooperate — probably in a very
confidential way — with U.S. and European agencies to go after
terrorists, including Al-Qaeda.

So now we are in ’04 and Qaddafhi has shifted against the jihadists,
against the Salafists and the Islamists. That created enmity between the
Qaddafhi regime and all of the Islamist organizations and movements
that ranged from the Muslim Brotherhood all the way to Al-Qaeda, and
other affiliated organizations.

Arab Spring

In 2011, the so-called Arab Spring begins and it hit many Arab countries.
In Egypt, there was an uprising against the Egyptian government at the
time, the Mubarak regime, in Syria against the Assad regime, in Yemen
against the government of Yemen (Abdel al Saleh), and in Libya there
was a series of demonstrations against Qaddafhi for the first time since
he came to power.
And his reaction was very violent from the beginning. Unlike Assad or
Ben Ali of Tunisia or the leader of Yemen or his neighbor in Egypt, he
immediately resorted to massive power, including [the use of the] air
force, tanks. There were massacres, including in Benghazi. That
prompted all of his enemies, all of his foes, to come together and rise
very quickly against him.

Qaddafhi’s Opponents

Now, who were the foes of Qaddafhi in 2011? He had all of the liberals
who he had suppressed, put in jail, tortured. Some of them were in
Europe, others hiding, other elements in the Arab world. They rose
against him, but the liberals basically were mostly visible in newspapers
or on TV. The second component was officers within the Libyan Armed
Forces, including his Chief of Staff at the time. They knew that Qaddafhi
was lost, and they wanted to guide Libya slowly from where it was into
engaging the international community, meaning they wanted to have a
military-controlled, interim-government like in Egypt, and then give it to
civilians.

The third component, the most important component, were the Islamists.
When we say the Islamists, it is a collection between the far-jihadists, Al-
Qaeda and all of the satellite organizations, the Salafi-jihadi fighting
groups on the one hand, to the more political network of groups under
the Ikhwan, the Muslim Brotherhood. So these three components were
competing to replace Qaddafhi.

U.S. Policy Towards Libya

What was U.S. policy at the time? The Obama administration between
2009 and actually 2016 had adopted a different policy than the Bush
administration and even all of the previous administrations. What was
that policy? With regard to the Middle East there were two directions that
the Obama administration had adopted. One was the Iran deal, and
because of the Iran deal there was a dialogue or a discussion between
the Obama administration and the Iran regime to get to the Iran nuclear
deal, which meant that the United States will disengage from its strong
posture against that regime with, of course, consequences in Iraq, in
Syria, in Lebanon, and elsewhere.

The other arm was to engage with and to partner with the Muslim
Brotherhood. Many ask the question: why would the Obama
administration engage with the Muslim Brotherhood? Because the
Muslim Brotherhood influence in America for the previous forty years has
impacted think tanks, universities, media, and then little by little into the
bureaucracies, and made the case that the Muslim Brotherhood is a
better alternative than Al-Qaeda or the violent jihadists at least since the
’90s. So when President Obama went in 2009 to Cairo and delivered this
speech, most of the prominent VIPS who were in the audience were
either close to or part of the Muslim Brotherhood.

In Libya, Qaddafhi was basically seen by the international community, by

the U.S., and Europe as a lost case, so they were looking for an
alternative. And the intelligentsia in Washington at the time under the
Obama administration thought that partnering with the Muslim
Brotherhood and with the allies of the Muslim Brotherhood would be the
best alternative both in Egypt and in Libya, but also possibly in Tunisia
and in other countries. So among the three oppositions to Qaddafhi,
those linked to the Brotherhood were in the best position because they
were assured almost that when Qaddafhi would fall, they would either be
directly or indirectly under that name or a different name the transition.

Qaddafhi’s Fall

So now in those critical months between March 2011 and the end of the
year, those months were critical to see the race between the three
components. The liberals were in the media, making the case that
Qaddafhi’s regime is bad so he was lost. The military, including high
ranking officers who became dissidents from the Qaddafhi regime, tried
to control the ground for the benefit of the army then, and then of course
the Islamists benefited from the action to weaken Qaddafhi to bring him
down. And of course there were the jihadi militias who actually killed him.
In the weeks and months after Qaddafhi was eliminated, there was a
quick race between the Islamists and the branch of the army that rose
against Qaddafhi. There was an incident in the east of the country where
a former Chief of Staff of the Army was assassinated. It was said,
allegedly, [to have been done] by jihadi militias. So as of 2012 basically,
after Qaddafhi, the country had many political parties and factions and
tribes, but the strongest central force was the Brotherhood or the
Brotherhood-linked groups, and obviously they profited from the fact
that both Europe and the Obama administration kind of partnered with
them, shepherded them, or let them do whatever they wanted. That is in
terms of substance.

UN Mediation

In terms of form, they were several attempts by the UN and the

international community to organize the transition of power in Libya
between 2012 and 2015. Meanwhile, there was an election in 2014. It is a
crucial stage in the evolution of Libya, 2014. Elections were organized,
sponsored by the United Nations, monitored by NGOs, and the result was
surprising to me. Though the Islamists, militias, and the Brotherhood
were the most active, winning control of the bureaucracies at the time
because they controlled the various ministries, the result was that civil
society in Libya brought to the parliament a majority of non-Islamists, a
majority of anti-jihadists, a combo of liberals, tribes, social democrats,
and of course a significant component of Islamists, but the majority was
not.

And that parliament opposed the control by these militias of the capital
Tripoli and of course of Benghazi. As a result of that, in 2014 the
parliament was ejected out of Tripoli. The last elected body was ejected
out of Tripoli and went into exile to the far east of Libya to the famous city
of Tobruk. So as of the end of 2014 to 2015, Libya has in Tripoli a
bureaucracy controlled by the Islamist militias plus their allies. And in the
far east in Tobruk you had a parliament that is elected by the people of
Libya and is anti-Islamist.
Libyan National Army

Also in 2014 another phenomenon occurred, and now it is going to get us

closer to the events that Libya is living today. Out of the desert in the
eastern side of Libya, a number of officers and soldiers who were part
originally of the Libyan Army, then followed the line of the dissidents
against Qaddafhi, but were very concerned about the rise of various
jihadist and Islamist militias, formed what they call the Libya National
Army.

The Libya National Army is, in fact, a branch or a piece or brigades of the
original Libyan Army, but with volunteers right and left, coming to join the
effort. What was the goal of that force? That force was aimed at going
first of all against Al-Qaeda factions in Libya which were mostly found in
Derna in the east, in the center of the country on the coast mostly, and as
of the end of 2014 and 2015 who would come to Libya? ISIS.

ISIS, which started basically in Iraq and Syria, had cells operating in a
variety of Arab countries but in Libya they found a great location to re-
establish or establish an emirate, so the LNA started warfare in the east.
It seized or they call it ‘liberated’ Benghazi from these militias, and then
slowly and surely in 2015 and 2016 it marched across the country, mostly
in the east and the south.

Skhirat

Now comes another very important chapter, which is in 2015. In 2015, the
United Nations intervened again and a collection of governments from
the international community, from Europe, and the Obama administration
pushed the Libyan factions to a meeting in Morocco, in the city or the
town of Skhirat. This is a name that has now been used as the origin, the
legal constitutional origin of the current government of Libya.

During that meeting most of the factions of Libya came together: that
would be the authority in charge of Tripoli, an interim authority; that
would be the Libyan Parliament; the LNA; and other components and
political parties. All of these forces came together. They were recognized
– and that is a crucial element in understanding today’s situation. They
were recognized by the United Nations as the founding fathers of the
new Libya.

So what was that summit or convention about? It was about creating a

new government that would unify all of these forces. It would be called
the GNA. That is the interim government that would rule Libya. It would
have a presidential council and then executive branches. It will be
recognized by the Libyan Parliament. In any government in any
democracy the executive branch would have to be recognized by the
parliament. And it will have the LNA as one of the components of its
army.

GNA Unity Fails

That was the deal that was blessed and recognized by the United Nations
because often today we hear the term of the GNA, which rules in Tripoli,
is the UN-recognized government. True, but the GNA is one of the
various components recognized by the United Nations in Skhirat in 2015.
That means that also the parliament of Libya, the last elected parliament.
— the GNA was not elected, it was appointed, the parliament was elected
— is also UN-recognized. And the LNA because it participated in the
Skhirat Agreement, indirectly though, and recognized as such by the
parliament, they are all UN-recognized.

The GNA came to Tripoli and there was an attempt as of 2015-2016 to

create that unity. The Obama administration was supportive of that
process. What was the problem? The problem is that the parliament of
Libya, which is made up of a majority of moderates or at least non-
Islamists or jihadists, said I will give approval to that government, the
GNA, if they disband the militias. No country can rise and combat
democracy. We cannot do more elections. We cannot move forward if we
have militias, and the militias in Tripoli were basically either connected to
the jihadists in central Libya or they were Brotherhood.
So now the GNA refused to disband the militias, did not get the approval
of the parliament. What does that leave Libya with now? The essential UN
recognition of the Skhirat Agreement and to the GNA government was
based on the fact that the government would be recognized by the
parliament. It was not, so a new status quo has emerged, and that status
quo is a de facto division in Libya. On the one hand in Tripoli (I am talking
about 2016), you had the GNA government under Mr. Sarraj as the chief
executive of a body of nine members, and then in Benghazi you have now
the Libyan Parliament and the LNA. Both of them equally legitimate,
equally recognized by the international community from Skhirat.

Now, many may not agree with my terminology, but that is how you read
it from a legal perspective based on international law. The Obama
administration left, the Trump administration came, so the question is
what has the policy of the U.S. been since 2017 with regard to Libya? The
new U.S. administration took some time before it developed a new policy,
so it was basically the bureaucracy, the foreign policy bureaucracy of the
previous administration, that managed the Libya dossier until a couple of
things started to change in Washington in terms of new policy.

On the ground something else happened in 2017-2018: the forces of the

LNA on the ground were able to seize a lot of territory. It took all of the
territory to the east all of the way to the Egyptian border. It went to the
south as you can see now in Map 2, and it was able to control almost the
entire coasts, which are rich in oil, that is the oil ports for exports. And it
came closer and closer to the west, so all of that was achieved in 2017-
2018, but Libya remained divided in two portions in two parts; the west
was the GNA and the east was the parliament and the LNA.

International and Regional Intervention

Now, international and regional intervention. Over the past three years we
have witnessed a rise in the level of intervention of outside actors. The
GNA was supported initially and then increasingly by two important
players and by a movement. The two important regional players (who did
not hide that intervention) are first Qatar, which has been backing Tripoli
and its institutions and funded a lot of the political activities worldwide in
support of the GNA, and then came Turkey with the President Erdoğan
government, which also and very publicly said we are supporting the
GNA. So now you have a regional bloc which is backing the GNA on the
military level, political, diplomatic, and financial.

On the other side you have other players. You have Egypt backing the
LNA and the parliament under President Sisi’s government. You have the
UAE under the leadership of MBZ, Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan. You
have also other players not always with very visible [involvement] but
from the Arab world who started to back the LNA, which is under the
command of Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar.

Khalifa Haftar

So who is the commander of the Libyan National Army, known as General

Khalifa Haftar or as his rank in his own army says ‘Field Marshal’ Khalifa
Haftar? General Haftar or Field Marshal Haftar was a high ranking officer
in the Qaddafhi Army initially in the ’80s. Then he quit Libya because of
disagreements with Qaddafhi and he was hosted in the United States
where he lived for twenty years in Virginia as an exile in opposition to
Qaddafhi.

As soon as the war started in Libya, he and other officers and soldiers of
the Libyan Army or ex-military members of the Libyan Army decided to
go and help Libya get rid of the militias, and of Al-Qaeda, and of ISIS. And
he was the one who actually launched what became the LNA as we
mentioned earlier. So General Haftar or Field Marshal Haftar became the
commander of that force, expanding in the east.

He was recognized (and his army obviously) by the parliament, so unlike

what some are claiming, he did not impose himself, though on the
ground, obviously, his army did against the jihadist and Islamist militias,
but he obtained a recognition by the parliament, which basically was in
Tobruk and moved to Benghazi.
LNA’s Foreign Relations

So the LNA is not an ideological army. Obviously, it is anti-jihadist, anti-

Islamist. Second, it is not aligned to international great powers like
Qaddafhi was with the Soviet Union. Thirdly, Haftar and the LNA wanted
to establish (as far as they said) good relations with the international
community. He is an ally to Egypt. Egypt is an ally to the United States.
He is an ally to the UAE, and the UAE is an ally to the United States. The
LNA wanted to establish good relations with the United States, but it was
not able to do so obviously under the Obama administration, which
backed the other side, the Brotherhood side.

However, the LNA was able to establish strategic relations with France, a
NATO member and our partner. So there is something complicated about
the relationships here because Turkey is a NATO member so the U.S. has
good relations with Turkey and therefore Turkey represents part of NATO,
but on the other hand, France represents also NATO, which means that
NATO on Libya backs both sides. Turkey backs Tripoli, and France backs
Benghazi, which complicates issues.

The U.S. Position

So back now to the U.S. position. The United States bureaucracy or

foreign policy establishment chose to recognize Tripoli, what they called
the UN-recognized government, but they did not want to have enmity
with the LNA. So the general idea was to try to bring both of them to the
table of negotiations with a little tilt, one must add, to Tripoli, until 2019.

In 2019, there was a surprise event or development, which created

another manifestation of U.S. policy towards Libya. The phone call came
from the White House to Benghazi, and President Trump spoke with Field
Marshal Haftar. Not only did they speak, but there was a statement
issued, stating that the U.S. president and the commander of the Libyan
Army (that is the title that was given) discussed efforts against terrorism,
and President Trump praised Haftar for his efforts against terrorism.
So now you have two policies; one coming from the foreign policy
establishments and institutions that have a tilt towards Tripoli, but wanted
a political solution under the UN, and another policy coming straight from
the White House from the President that says Haftar and the LNA, and
therefore the parliament, should be our partners against terrorism, which
was not easy to understand in the Arab world or in the Middle East or
even in the international community.

Recent Developments

So now let us bring it back home to paint a tableau, a picture of what has
been happening over 2019 and 2020. On the ground, the LNA forces
were able to terminate ISIS and Al-Qaeda on the coasts around Sirte and
take control of the oil zone. They ended the jihadist enclave that was in
Derna in the east and then Haftar and the LNA gathered their forces and
moved towards Tripoli.

Meanwhile, obviously, Turkey and Qatar were backing Tripoli and Mr.
Sarraj. And for the first time over the past maybe six months, you had a
direct intervention by Turkey in Libya. That was not the case before.
Qatar and Turkey used to send weapons and other support. UAE and
Egypt non-officially and other countries would support Haftar. So what
changed the geographies or the geopolitics of it was that Turkey
intervened directly by sending military attachés and advisors, equipment,
anti-aircraft missiles, and mostly an army of drones, of flying drones, to
push back against the LNA forces.

A few months ago another development also changed the landscape on

the ground, which is that President Erdoğan’s government signed an
agreement with Mr. Sarraj’s GNA government, the provisional
government of Libya, whereby they did something that nobody expected.
They not only created a security agreement, but divided international
waters, the economic zones between Libya and Turkey. They created
(look at Map 3). They created a zone between Turkey and Libya to be
partitioned between the two countries in terms of economic zone. That
created a crisis in the Mediterranean that has nothing to do with the fight
in Libya but it will be intertwined with this fight.

So we are talking 2020: the Libyan conflict moved from local in Libya to
become a Mediterranean crisis. Why? That water zone and high seas
basically is rich in oil, petroleum, and other riches and wealth, but that is
in international waters. It cut off Greece’s access to those energy
deposits in the Mediterranean. It also put pressure on Cyprus’ ability to
take advantage, and obviously, on Egypt’s ability.

So as of Spring of 2020, you have now Greece moving in. Greece is tilting
towards Field Marshal Haftar and the LNA. Cyprus is moving in. Both of
them are members of the European Union, complaining about Turkey
creating that new equation in the Mediterranean. Greece is coordinating
with Egypt, with Israel to a certain extent, and with Cyprus, so the
landscape in the Mediterranean has changed and added to the conflict in
Libya.

So on the one hand, you have Turkey and Qatar backing Tripoli. And now
you have Egypt and the UAE, and Greece and Cyprus all coalescing with
the east of Libya. So at this point in time you have the two superpowers
— we are the superpower, but another superpower, Russia, is interested
in the game.

Russia’s Role

Here, let me say a couple of words about Russia’s role. On the outset of
the LNA in ’14, ’15, and ’16, questions were asked in Washington and
Brussels as well, what would be the relationship between Field Marshal
Haftar and Russia, why? Because the officers of the old Qaddafhi Army
had ties to the Soviet Union. But that is what happened with Egypt. Egypt
had excellent relations with the Soviet Union until Sadat changed the
policy, but their equipment was still Soviet and Russian for a long period
of time. Both Egypt and the UAE, though they are direct allies of the
United States, have relationships with Russia for a variety of other
reasons. So the east of Libya does not have a preferential treatment
between America and Russia. They meet with both officials, but they do
have a relationship with Russia in the same way Cyprus has relationships
with Russia as well. So that was level one.

Level two: A Russian aircraft carrier came a couple of years ago to the
coast of Libya and invited Haftar to visit the aircraft carrier. He went in
and, of course, his photo was taken, and then his opponent camp
accused him of preferring Russia and bringing the Russians to Libya. It
did not actually happen. Had there been a U.S. aircraft coming to
Benghazi, inviting Haftar to go, he would have been very happy I imagine
– or a French carrier or an Indian carrier, he would have visited because
Field Marshal Haftar and the LNA need international backing.

You have the United States superpower is now interested in it. You have
Russia as a great power in the east interested in Libya, and questions
were asked in Washington and in Brussels from the onset of the LNA in
’14, ’15, ’16, into ’17 about the state of the relationship between the LNA
and Russia. Why? Because most of the officers in the LNA were officers
in Qaddafhi’s Army, and Qaddafhi had great strategic relations with the
Soviet Union, therefore with Russia. That is the same case with Egypt,
which was an ally of the Soviet Union, and then it let go of the Soviet
Union. It turned to the United States under Sadat. And all of its
equipment became American, and there were trained missions between
U.S. and Egyptian forces for twenty-five years.

Egypt and the UAE are partners with the United States, yet they visit and
meet and talk with Russian leaders. So the LNA basically and Field
Marshal Haftar are too small in size to basically become the ally of one or
the other but they want all the allies possible against the jihadists and the
Islamist militias, which explains why the LNA obtained an alliance with
France, which is in NATO and is an ally of the United States.

But the Russians were pushing. They wanted basically to show that
Haftar and the LNA are in their zone of influence. There was an incident a
few years ago when a Russian aircraft carrier came close to the Libyan
coast and invited Haftar to visit, which he did. Had it been an American
aircraft carrier, a French, a British, or an Indian aircraft carrier, Haftar
would have visited. Why? Because the position of the LNA in the
parliament is to obtain as much as possible international recognition.

So that was that point, and that picture taken then was used by the
opposition to Haftar as he is closer to the Russians. Then, of course, with
time when the LNA got closer and closer to Tripoli, Turkey sent more and
more weapons, and these were weapons under NATO, and that started to
put pressure on the LNA. Observers started to see a Russian presence in
the east, and that presence was identified as a mercenary, a private
security company, the Wagner Group company, which actually is Russian,
but is not the Russian government, but in smaller numbers. Yet this was a
signal that made Washington very nervous because they saw Russian
elements in the east. There was no base for Russia like in Syria. There is
no open strategic relationship, but there is a presence and the LNA
considered that presence a private presence, which would be the
equivalent of Blackwater if the Americans had been hired or engaged in
the east of Libya, and actually, there were American elements in the
eastern part of Libya.

Now, let us come to the current situation.

Current Situation

Now you have the LNA pushing all the way to Tripoli, almost controlling
the areas between Tripoli and the Tunisian border. So Tripoli was the last
enclave along with Misrata, the other strong enclave controlled by the
GNA Islamist militias. Then things started to change. Turkey sent
significant amounts of equipment, used its air drones, and its assets on
the ground to shell and push back against the LNA and indeed, the LNA
withdrew from around Tripoli and rapidly started to withdraw all the way
to the center of Tripoli as this map shows you. So now you have west of
Sirte all of the way to the Tunisian borders, you have the GNA
government under Mr. Sarraj and the Islamist militias and the jihadi
groups in charge and from Sirte to the east all of the way to the Egyptian
borders, you have the LNA and the parliament in charge.
Ten Thousand Jihadists

Another element of concern other than the Russians – but this time in the
west of Libya – were thousands of jihadists who were transferred from
northern Syria by the Turkish authorities almost openly (documents and
videos are on YouTube and actually, that was an open decision by the
Turkish government in Ankara to bring volunteers, jihadi volunteers or
Islamist volunteers, who were in Idlib, Syria or in other part of northern
Syria or even elements within the refugee population inside Turkey. The
Human Rights Council or Association of Syria issued a press release,
stating that close to ten thousand jihadists have been shipped and
transferred to the west of Libya and are operating under the GNA and
Turkey against the LNA.

So now in terms of involvement, you have in the east the LNA, plus you
have a few elements from the Russian private company. We do not know
much about what there status is now after the withdrawal from the west,
but in the west you have (if you believe the Syrian Human Rights NGO)
close to ten thousand jihadists.

So why don’t we talk about ten thousand jihadists. This is a quarter or a

third of the entire ISIS caliphate that existed in Iraq and Syria. These are
not hundreds of jihadists or a couple thousand jihadists, these are ten
thousand jihadists. Now, as it is right now, Libya is divided in two parts.

Impacts on Security

What are the impacts of the current situation on regional and

Mediterranean and international security? With the presence of the
Russians in eastern Libya, this matter has to be dealt with between the
United States and Russia, and the U.S. position is that those private
consultants or mercenaries should be withdrawn from Libya, and that will
be a good thing because the less internationalization of Libya in terms of
military involvement, the better it is, but that is not really even
comparable with the other problem that now we have in western Libya
under the GNA, this huge army of jihadists who are linked to Al-Nusra,
are linked to Al-Qaeda, and others, and at least are working with the
Muslim Brotherhood. Why? Because from western Libya these jihadists
can easily cross into many countries in the Sahel, that would be from
Chad to Niger to Mauritania, and eventually hook up with Boko Haram in
Nigeria.

This is huge. This is not just Libya. We are talking about one-fifth or
fourth of Africa that could be penetrated by these thousands of jihadists,
in addition to Tunisia, which already has some instability, Algeria, which
witnessed a civil war in the ’90s between the same type of jihadists and
their army, and, of course, Egypt. So that is going to pose a big problem
in Africa, but there is a another wing to that problem. Jihadists who are
deployed in Libya are one water crossing from Europe.

Europeans now are very nervous just to think of the idea that thousands
of jihadists are massing in Libya, including as refugees into Italy, Spain,
and France. Everything we have seen over the past twenty years in terms
of Al-Qaeda or ISIS activities in Europe will pale in comparison with that
new wave.

Refugees

And the last problem: the Erdoğan government had allowed (or some
would say helped) hundreds of thousands of refugees who were present
in Turkey, in south Turkey, mostly from Syria, to head towards the borders
with Greece in Thrace, and we have seen in the media that the Greeks
have opposed that movement backed by the European Union. Bulgaria
has also closed their borders because they know and they project that
there will be radical elements within this mass population of refugees,
plus the argument that those refugees should go back to Syria.

Why are they uprooted from Syria and sent to Europe? If Turkey controls
Idlib, Turkey controls northern Syria. This is where they should go. On the
international community, on the European Parliament, support them
financially in Syria, but these refugees are helped and pushed towards
those borders.
Now we have a crisis on the Greek-Turkish land border. There is a
concern in Europe that if those refugees cannot pass through the
Turkish-Greek borders, they will be shipped to Libya. They will be
deployed or they will be put in camps in Libya, and if that happens, the
concern would be that these refugees would be then ‘helped’ to cross
the Mediterranean Sea into Europe, and through them the jihadists could
infiltrate their ranks and then get to a European country.

So now there is a major shift in European positioning with regard to Libya.

They know that if the jihadists will stay, it is going to be a security threat.
They know if the refugees are sent (and they may be sent without their
consent) to Libya, there could be another humanitarian crisis across the
Mediterranean, which the Europeans already lived through a few years
ago.

The U.S. Position Today

The U.S. position to close. The United States foreign policy has been
over the past three-and-a-half years under a lot of pressure. The Trump
administration is dealing with the Iran challenge, which is huge, the
defense of the peninsula, the presence in Iraq, we were in east Syria, the
Kurdish issue, obviously the matter of the Iran deal, so that consumed a
large segment of our Middle East policy. In addition to that, the fight
against Daesh, ISIS, has consumed a lot of resources, and it is not a
secret in Washington, that the domestic challenges that the
administration went through and against have been huge.

So because of all these fronts both overseas and at home, little attention
or little energy was being given to the crisis in Libya, but one can
summarize that the current position, which I believe is not going to
change until the next election in the fall, is going to still based on two
considerations; the foreign policy bureaucracy would like to see a
balance in Libya between the two forces, and start some sort of talks,
negotiations. The President is concerned and his advisors are concerned
about the terrorist factor and want to see who of the two forces on the
ground is going to be more helpful to the United States in fighting against
remnants of Al-Qaeda, ISIS, and the other Islamist radical militias.

So with this I would say that Libya is a very important place for U.S. policy
to see stabilized, unified in the best place possible. The
recommendations are that in any solution there should be a participation
of all factions and communities in the process. There should be elections
when the militias are disarmed, which means that the key, the most
important key for any process in Libya in the next few months will be who
and when and how these militias will be disbanded and disarmed (if they
want to be political parties, that is fine), how they can integrate into the
army and how the country cannot go into any dictatorship, but become a
representative democracy and a republic, and let us see how that will
help.

Robert R. Reilly:

Turkey’s Involvement: Neo-Ottoman Pretensions?

Walid, thank you very much for that fascinating lecture, exposing the
mind-numbing complexity of the situation in Libya. May I ask you a
question about Turkey? Is Turkey’s involvement from neo-Ottoman
pretensions or Muslim Brotherhood allegiances? What is its ultimate
objective there, and does Erdoğan see any danger of being at
loggerheads with Russia and Libya as indeed they were in Syria?

Walid Phares:

First of all, there are two levels in Turkey’s involvement in Libya. The level
that we actually see is the level of the narrative, and yes, the fact that the
Erdoğan government, which is the AKP Islamist Party in control of Turkey,
follows the line of the Muslim Brotherhood thinking without being
necessarily part of the Brotherhood, and therefore, we get involved in
northern Syria, Libya, Iraq, southern Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, in all of the
places where the Brotherhood has some influence and has a case. That
is not a secret, but it is below the level of ideology and policies.
You also have the economy. The Erdoğan government is very conscious
that if they partner with at least a piece of Libya, which is significant, that
would be the western part of Libya and Tripoli, they will have huge access
to oil and gas and other riches in Libya. And from an economic
perspective that would be huge in terms of interests. Actually, as we
speak these days there are talks between Ankara and Tripoli about
special contracts, special concessions to Turkey in Libya in terms of a
permanent military base, permanent airfields to be used by Turkey, and
obviously contracts between Turkish companies in Libya, so it is even
moving from the secret economic interests to becoming open economic
interests.

With regard to Russia, I think that President Erdoğan is very skillful in

politics and policies. He was able to create a kind of equation in northern
Syria whereby by backing those militias in the north, Islamist militias, he
was able to negotiate with President Putin of Russia some sort of Brest-
Litovsk kind of agreement. You have your agreement with the Assad
regime (says Erdoğan to Putin and I have my interest in this part), so it
looks more like the 19th century division of Poland or of the Balkans
between large powers, which promoted Turkey as becoming – though it
is smaller than Russia – but as equal in terms of negotiations, so I think
the same would be happening in Libya with one difference. Turkey has
more influence in western Libya than Russia has influence in eastern
Libya. That is a major difference.

Now, from Washington’s perspective I need to add this point because you
made it; Turkey and Tripoli and the Sarraj government, the GNA, and
Qatar have established a very strong platform of influence through
lobbying. I mean our system, you know it, everybody knows it. If you sign
up with lobbies, then they will conduct the actual influence for you, and
that is not to say that the other side does not have lobbies. Everybody
has lobbies here, but the success of the Qatar and Turkey-contracted
lobbies has been to a point where they have been able to influence U.S.
not just positions because that is something the U.S. sovereignty does,
but U.S. perception in the media.
Haftar has been perceived as a warlord, as an ally of Putin and Russia,
and nothing was said about the ten thousand jihadists. I mean if we were
after 9/11 in the Bush years or during the Trump years dealing with ISIS,
and someone had said there were ten thousand jihadists in Libya, it
would have been a full mobilization. Nobody in the media is talking about
it, which is a huge PR success for Turkey and Qatar.

Robert R. Reilly:
What can Egypt do?

Dr. Phares, President Sisi has to be extremely worried about the

developments that you just went over. Is Egypt in a position to do
anything about them?

Walid Phares:

Egypt is very concerned because it is at home. Egypt has maybe a

thousand miles, kilometres border with Libya, so if the jihadists of the
west reach Benghazi or closer, then they will be in Egypt’s face. Egypt will
be sandwiched between Libya and those operating in the Sinai. Egypt is
the most concerned in this, but beyond Egypt, the Saudis are the most
concerned. The UAE, the Gulf is concerned. And beyond them, Israel is
concerned because the actual final goal of the jihadists marching east is
to hook up with Gaza with Hamas. That is why you have this collection of
Israel, undeclared partnership with Israel, Egypt, the Gulf, and Greece,
not just because of economic matters, but because of security matters.

Robert R. Reilly:

Thank you very much, Walid. My last question actually was going to be
about Israel’s interests in this, but you just folded that in, and I know that
we are out of time now, so I would thank you very much in your
generosity for giving another outstanding Westminster lecture.

Walid Phares:
Thank you so much for inviting me.