World News

Economist.com: Coastal retreats-Fighting over Libya’s oil ports

Posted by: Berhane Habtemariam

Date: Saturday, 18 March 2017

Coastal retreats-Fighting over Libya’s oil ports

The battle complicates an already chaotic civil war

| CAIRO

FEW places exemplify the chaos that has enveloped Libya better than the oil ports of Sidra and Ras Lanuf, which have changed hands twice in March. First the Benghazi Defence Brigade (BDB), an Islamist militia, captured them from the forces of Khalifa Haftar, the head of the self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA). Then, as the BDB handed control of the ports to forces aligned with the Government of National Accord (GNA) in the capital, Tripoli, Mr Haftar, who is supported by a rival authority in the east, grabbed them back.

For nearly three years Libya has been mired in a civil war that at first pitted east against west. Now there are so many groups fighting that it is difficult to draw the battle lines. An attempt by the UN to stitch the country together, by creating the GNA in 2015, has all but failed for lack of support. Even Tripoli is beset with violence. Oil production, Libya’s economic lifeline, is threatened by the fighting, which may spur deeper involvement by Russia. It says it wants stability, but it supports Mr Haftar.

Though he has, at least for now, come out the winner, the battle for the ports exposed Mr Haftar, who believes he is the only one who can unite the country and defeat the terrorists in its midst. “He behaves like a strongman, but he does not have the capabilities of a strongman,” says Mattia Toaldo of the European Council on Foreign Relations, a think-tank. His national army is more a coalition of ragtag militias from the east, stretched thin by fighting in Benghazi and Derna. Indeed, it was forces aligned with the GNA, not Mr Haftar’s army, that kicked the jihadists of Islamic State out of their stronghold in Sirte last year.

Russia, nevertheless, seems to view Mr Haftar as a stabilising force worth backing. It is said to have deployed special forces to an air base in western Egypt, near the border with Libya. Both Egypt and Russia deny this. “Excessive intervention…is hardly possible and is hardly advisable,” says Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for the Kremlin. But American officials see parallels with Russia’s actions in war-torn Syria, where it supports Bashar al-Assad, the blood-soaked president. Russia has hosted Mr Haftar three times since the start of last year—on one occasion, aboard an aircraft-carrier in January, when he was greeted with a full-dress parade.

The Russians have also hosted the GNA’s prime minister, Fayez al-Serraj, in Moscow. But many blame Mr Haftar’s intransigence for the lack of progress towards peace. Egypt, which backs the LNA, was angry at his refusal to hold direct talks with Mr Serraj at a summit in Cairo last month. Now Mr Haftar’s team is trying to rally support at home and abroad by saying that the BDB is affiliated with al-Qaeda. The charge is rejected by the group, though some of its fighters have ties to extremists. One target of the propaganda is the new American administration, which has yet to take a position on Libya.

The GNA, for its part, is both weak and divided. Mr Serraj probably did not know about the BDB’s plan to attack the ports, which his government condemned. But his defence minister, Al-Mahdi al-Barghathi, probably supported the effort. Back in Tripoli, rival militias are shooting it out in the streets, as a previous Islamist government tries to reclaim power. Mr Serraj himself survived an assassination attempt on his motorcade in February. He is losing support even among the militias of Misrata, which have fought on the side of the GNA. Ironically, his weakness may also be an asset—some militias back him precisely because he cannot challenge their power.

Suffering Libyans just want the fighting to stop. The GNA has failed to provide services. Cash is in short supply. One bright spot had been oil production, which almost doubled, reaching 700,000 barrels per day (bpd), after Mr Haftar first captured the ports in September. It has since fallen to about 600,000 bpd. Libya, which has the largest oil reserves in Africa, needs the revenue, which goes to the central bank and finances both halves of the country. “Unless it can get to 900,000 or 1m bpd by the end of the year, it has no hope of avoiding fiscal collapse,” says Mr Toaldo.

That is not impossible. Before the revolution that toppled Muammar Qaddafi’s regime in 2011, Libya produced 1.6m bpd. Russia seems hopeful. Its state-owned oil giant, Rosneft, signed a co-operation agreement with Libya’s National Oil Corporation last month. But much depends on how Mr Haftar and his allies handle their recovered treasure.

 
 

7ይ ክፋል: ማዕበል ስርሒት ፈንቅል - የካቲት 1990 - ሰነዳዊት ፊልም| sirihit fenkil 1990 - part 7 - ERi-TV Documentary

Dehai Events