ArabDigest.org The proxy war in Libya gathers pace

The proxy war in Libya gathers pace

Summary: the proxy war in Libya is heating up as Turkish president Erdogan makes good on a promise to commit Turkish troops to the defence of the Tripoli-based GNA.
While the  world and much of the media was focused on the 3 January assassination of the IRGC Quds Force General Qassem Suleimani, in Libya the landscape of the civil war was changing dramatically.  A spokesman for the warlord General Khalifa Haftar claimed on 6 January that Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA) had taken control of the strategic coastal city of Sirte approximately 200 miles east of the capital Tripoli. Since 2016, Sirte had been held by forces loyal to Haftar’s rival, the UN recognised Government of National Accord (GNA) headed by Fayez Al Sarraj and based in Tripoli.
At the same time the LNA, supported by the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Russia and France has increased its efforts to take the capital. Since mid-December Haftar’s forces have stepped up the tempo of air-raids and shellings. Although the LNA denies responsibility, the aerial bombing of a cadet school on 4 January that killed at least 30 and left dozens more wounded was undoubtedly part of that offensive.
Two days previously the Turkish parliament had approved the deployment of troops to back up Sarraj, the strongest indication yet that the war was moving into a fully engaged proxy battle, one that pits Turkey against its rivals in the Gulf, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and against Egypt. President Erdogan’s special envoy to Tripoli rather disingenuously claimed “we’re not intervening in Libya, we are just responding to a request for help from the internationally recognized government there.”
Egypt, for one didn’t see it that way. The country’s foreign ministry deplored “in the strongest terms” the Turkish move. A statement from the ministry added: “Such interference will negatively affect stability in the Mediterranean, and Turkey will fully bear this responsibility.”  That was followed up by a display of military muscle in the Mediterranean on 4 January in what was billed as “large scale naval war games.”  On show were a French-built Mistral helicopter carrier, a Type 209 submarine, purchased from Germany  and American F-16 fighter jets. Although the Egyptians denied the games were intended as a message to the Turks to back off, Egyptian president Abdel Fattah El-Sisi had been blunt, earlier stating  that “what takes place in Libya impacts on Egypt’s national security.”
Presidents Erdogan and Sisi have a history of mutual loathing going back to the military coup led by Sisi that overthrew the democratically elected president Mohammed Morsi. Morsi, a leading member of the Turkish supported Muslim Brotherhood, died in court in June 2019, after being imprisoned for six years in solitary confinement. Erdogan called for a UN investigation which when it was completed concluded that Morsi’s death “could amount to a State-sanctioned arbitrary killing.” And at a lunch at the UN hosted by Donald Trump in September, the Turkish president immediately withdrew when he saw that seated beside Trump was the US president’s “favourite dictator” Sisi.
Erdogan will be hoping that his deployment of troops will prove a timely saviour for the embattled GNA. Were that to happen, it would bear an eerie resemblance to an earlier  intervention where the Iranians under the guidance of Qassem Suleimani had deployed their forces to save the Syrian dictator Bashir Al Assad. Whatever the outcome, the question that remains is how far will the Turkish president and his Gulf and Egyptian rivals be prepared to go in their proxy war on Libyan soil.