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BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 1,548, May 4, 2020

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Turkey under Recep Tayyip Erdoan is constantly looking for opportunities to enhance its status as a regional superpower and promote its Islamist ideology in the Arab Middle East. Libya is the newest arena in which Erdoan is trying to capitalize on inter-Arab rivalries, this time in service to his desire to lay claim to gas under the seabed of the Mediterranean.

The so-called Arab Spring, which erupted in late 2010, brought several Arab countries to a state of near or in some cases total collapse. Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoan saw this as an opportunity to further his perpetual quest for broad regional power. Earlier in 2010, prior to the uprisings, he had sent the Mavi Marmara cruise ship to save Hamas in Gaza from the Zionist blockade. In February 2011, following the ousting of President Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, he threw Turkish support behind the Muslim Brotherhood and provided support to Qatar, the Brotherhoods main financier.

Recently, a representative of the Khalifa Haftar government in Libya was named ambassador to Syria. He reopened the Libyan embassy in Damascus with the full consent of Assads government. The embassy had shut its doors in 2013, as did all Arab League diplomatic missions in Damascus following the suspension of Syrias membership in that organization. That occurred in response to the Assad regimes refusal to comply with a 2011 League resolution mandating a ceasefire in the Syrian civil war.

Khalifa Haftars rival in the bicephalic control system that has ruled Libya since the start of the second Libyan civil war in 2014 is the Tripolibased Government of National Accord. That government has signed cooperation agreements in the economic, energy, security, military, and maritime borders areas with Ankara, its chief ally and patron. Ankara is also a supporter of the rebel groups currently fighting Assad in Syria.

The creation of these two oppositional axesAssad-Haftar vs. Tripoli-Ankaradeserves notice. Other theaters of conflict that are still simmering ten years after the explosion of the Arab Spring undoubtedly contributed to the alignment of Haftar with Assad and pushed Fayez Sarrajs Government of National Accord into Erdoans arms. These practical alignments have deep ideological common denominators: on the one hand the remains of Arab nationalism, which is claimed by both the Baath party of Assads Syria and by Haftars Libyan National Army; and on the other hand the primarily Islamic Brotherhood foundations that underpin both Erdoans policies and Tripolis orientation.

The implications of these new alliances are not confined to their immediate theaters of conflict (Idlib in Syria and Misrata and Tripoli in Libya). Russia and Turkey have been trying to cooperate with one another for some time, but keep supporting opposite sides in Middle Eastern conflicts. This occurred in Syria and is happening again in Libya. Turkish forces are being sent to reinforce Sarrajs forces in the battle for Tripoli, where they find themselves fighting official Russian mercenaries (the Wagner group, which captured Crimea and provinces in Donbass in eastern Ukraine) that have been incorporated into the Libyan National Army. Israel, Cyprus, and Greece find themselves blocked by the sudden delineation of a direct maritime border between distant Turkey and Libya, a border that threatens the maritime gas line from Israel to Europe. The anti-Muslim-Brotherhood Sisi government in Egypt is menaced by a disquieting Islamic Turkish presence on its western border. NATO members France and Greece are supporting Haftars forces while the US, the UK, and Italy support Sarrajs.

Hulusi Akar, the current Turkish minister of defense and former Turkish chief of staff who headed NATOs military missions in Afghanistan, Bosnia, and Kosovo and commanded most of the Turkish involvement in the Syrian Civil War, now oversees the Turkish military intervention in the second Libyan civil war. The deployment of troops to support Sarrajs forces started on January 5, 2020, and consists mainly of rebel fighters from the anti-Assad Syrian National Army accompanied by Turkish military advisors. Six thousand of those fighters have already been deployed, and they have suffered 151 combat casualties so far.

It seems that combining elements of the second Libyan Civil War with the Syrian Civil War is adding fuel to the fire and perpetuating these conflicts, which arose from the Arab Spring.

The violence in Libya will continue to devastate that oil-producing country as long as domestic rivalries are supported by external intervention. The Turkish involvement in Libya and Syria prolongs the agonies of the Libyan and Syrian people and propels more refugees toward Europe. Turkeys intervention in Arab countries should be viewed by the world as a major crime against those countries and Europe alike.

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Col. (res.) Dr. Dan Gottlieb is a graduate of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and the Bar-Ilan University law faculty. He served four rounds of service in different parts of Africa and is a leading authority on African issues within the Israel Medical Association.

Lt. Col. (res.) Dr. Mordechai Kedar is a senior research associate at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies. Heserved for 25 years in IDF military intelligence specializing in Syria, Arab political discourse, Arab mass media, Islamic groups, and Israeli Arabs, and is an expert on the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups.

Continued here:
Turkey and the Libyan and Syrian Civil Wars - besacenter.org

Two brothers are among the four charged with violating Libya sanctions together with arms dealer James Fenech, The Shift can reveal.

The five are accused of breaching sanctions through one of Fenechs companies, Sovereign Charterers, during an operation off Libyas coast last summer.

The names of the other four charged with Fenech have so far been kept under wraps, for reasons unknown. They were simply described as Fenechs employees.

Yet, a court order dated 24 April to freeze the assets of four individuals that was published in the Government Gazette lists their names. Their personal details match those in initial reports the police gave to the media although their names were withheld.

Investigations by The Shift show that brothers Bertrand Agius, 47, (a delivery man) and Konrad Agius, 44, (a government blacksmith) were among the four arraigned together with Fenech.

They were joined by pensioner Charles Bugeja, 63, and Michael Cauchi, 45, both residing in Mellieha the same locality where Fenech started his arms trade business from a small shop selling supplies to Maltese hunters.

The five were charged after the police launched an investigation into the use of Rigid Hull Inflatable Boats (RHIBS) in June 2019 by personnel with links to the Emirati government and its efforts to arm Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar and his Libyan National Army.

They have denied the accusations and were given bail by Magistrate Victor Asciak. Fenech is insisting that the polices charges relate to fully authorised operations and that his group will have the opportunity to clear its name.

The Shift has documented Fenechs rise from a hunting shop in Mellieha to one of the EUs key arms dealers.

Fenechs work has repeatedly made international headlines. His organisation made its mark in recent years supplying weapons to private security firms working for the EU, partnering also with Erik Prince, a former US Navy SEAL officer and the founder of Blackwater a controversial US private military company that was given unclassified security contracts from the CIA during the Iraq war.

Currently, Fenechs Mellieha shop Fieldsports has a quasi-monopoly in supplying armaments to EU companies, being one of the very few suppliers in the EU accredited to sell lethal weapons on EU soil for private users, according to reports prepared for the European Parliament. Big firms in the industry turn to the local shop Fieldsports when they need to order weapons for armed guards deployed to protect EU embassies.

Other companies controlled by Fenech, Strategic Supplies and REA Malta, take care of logistics for various UN agencies and NGOs in hostile environments.

They are among a long list of companies in which Fenech is involved that shows he has diversified his investments, even tapping into some 60 million in road works by the Maltese government.

Read the rest here:
Court order reveals names of those charged with busting Libya sanctions - The Shift News

Robert Abela said on Monday that during his time as legal advisor to Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, he was not aware that Neville Gafa served as Maltas envoy in Libya during migration talks in Tripoli.

I only learnt of his visits [to Libya] from what was being reported in the media, Robert Abela, now prime minister, said in reply to a series of parliamentary questions filed by Opposition MP Claudette Buttigieg.

A former official at the Office of the Prime Minister during Muscats administration, Gafas official role had been concealed for months until the government admitted he was Maltas envoy in Libya.

Though he was not retained when Prime Minister Robert Abela took office last January, he recently made headlines after he testified in court that he had coordinated the pushback to Libya of 51 migrants involved in a tragedy over Easter on the instruction of the OPM.

However, the prime minister refuted such claims saying the government had only sought Gafas help in view of the latters contacts in Libya, while denying that there had been any pushback at all.

Opposition MP Buttigieg asked Abela to outline Gafa's during these visits to Libya, given that there was no agreement between Malta and the Libyan coast guard on how to handle irregular migrants. Buttigieg also asked if Abela had been aware of Gafas role, in the first half of this legislature when the was the legal advisor of the then prime minister Joseph Muscat.

In a terse reply, Abela said that as indicated by his predecessor, Gafa was representing the Maltese government during these visits, while emphasising that he was no longer part of the OPM secretariat.

Furthermore, he pointed out that he was not aware of Gafas role when he was Muscats advisor and he only learnt about the matter from media reports.

Buttigieg also asked for all of Gafas employment contracts with State entities to be tabled in parliament. But the prime minister declined, saying he had nothing to add to the reply given to a previous parliamentary question on the matter.

That previous question, dating back toJuly last year, showed that Gafa served as a customer care assistant at the health ministry from June 2013 to April 2014, projects director at the foundation for medical services between April 2014 and December 2018, and finally a coordinator at the OPM from January 2019 onwards. There was no reference to his missions in Libya.

The Opposition MP also asked if the prime minister was going to order an investigation into claims of the existence of an unofficial agreement between Malta and the Libyan coast guard on migration. That claim had emerged during the public inquiry related to the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia.

Abela replied that institutions were free to launch any investigations they felt appropriate.

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Read this article:
'I only learnt of Gafa's Libya visits from the media' - Robert Abela - Times of Malta

1. Libya is Sliding Toward Partition  Bloomberg
2. Tide turning in Libyan war  Anadolu Agency
3. Libya's al-Sarraj rules out future negotiations with Haftar  Al Jazeera English
4. Peace Storm: Turkey tries to turn the tables in Libya  Ahval
5. Israel's little-known support for Haftar's war in Libya  Middle East Eye
6. View Full Coverage on Google News

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Libya is Sliding Toward Partition - Bloomberg

Social media activists circulated reports of a valuable catch at the Haftar-controlled Al-Wattia air base in eastern Libya.

The activists stated that a group of French and Emirati advisers were trapped at the air base, after the attack carried out by the forces of the Government of National Accord (GNA) last Monday, following which they took control of the entire West Coast cities, serving as the bases strategic depth on the Mediterranean coast.

In turn, Tunisian MP Maher Zid accused the United Arab Emirates, in a post on Facebook, of communicating with the Tunisian presidency to ensure smuggling the Emirati officers trapped in Al-Wattia air base.

A military source in Tripoli informed Arabi21 that he does not rule out these reports, as it is likely that a number of foreign officers (whose identities have not been revealed) have already been trapped in Al-Wattia air base after losing contact with Haftars forces, that were expelled from most areas of the Libyan West. However, the source did not provide detailed information on the issue.

Another source confirmed to Arabi21 that despite the fact that the GNA army launched an offensive on the air base about three weeks ago, the troops did not manage to storm the entire location. Thus, the forces of Operation Volcano of Anger raided the bases dorms only, and captured a number of Haftars officers and fighters, without managing to access the weapon stores, aviation facilities and other parts of the air base, in which other officers are likely to be hiding.

The same source pointed out that the base, which mediates a rugged mountainous region in the west, is not completely surrounded by the GNA forces, as it can be infiltrated through the city of Zintan (south of the base), pointing to the presence of rugged mountain paths in that area, known only to the residents of the Nafusa Mountains.

Arabi21 spoke to Mustafa Al-Mujai, spokespersonof the GNAsOperation Volcano of Anger, who affirmed that he had no information on the matter, nor the officers trapped at the base, indicating that he saw the news on social media platforms.

READ: How not to fail as UN envoy to Libya

More:
Libya: Government forces surround foreign military personnel in Haftar-controlled air base - Middle East Monitor