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Progress has been made on many important issues and we have before us a significant number of points of convergence, said the head of the UN Support Mission in Libya, UNSMIL. Is this complete? Certainly not, and that is why we are still working on refining our basic draft and on bridging the gap on a few points of divergencethat still exist between the two delegations.

The talks in the Swiss city form part of a renewed international push for peace in the oil-rich North African country.

In early January, Russian and Turkish Presidents Vladmir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan secured a truce agreement between the UN-recognized Government of National Accord (GNA) and the self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA) - led by commander Khalifa Haftar, who laid siege to Tripoli last April.

Although the truce had been accepted by both sides, Mr. Salam noted earlier in the week that an international arms embargo on Libya has been broken incessantly since 2011, with evidence of increasing foreign interference in the form of weapons and fighters.

During these talks, the negotiators would be certainly helped by more calm on the fronts and by the absence of any act - provocative act - on the military side, the UN official said on Thursday, in reference to ongoing clashes.

While remaining positive about the meetings this week, which precedes separate discussions on the economic aspects of the ceasefire, due to begin on 9 February in Cairo, with political talks on 26 February - also at the UN in Geneva - Mr Salam spoke frankly about the number of difficult issues facing both delegations.

What do you do with the heavy weaponry? How (best) to allow the internally displaced persons to go back to their homes? How to re-civilianize the areas that have been basically a theatre of war? How do you deal with the armed groups, the monitoring of the ceasefire; who should monitor the ceasefire?

Although the ongoing ceasefire talks have not taken place face-to-face so far, this is the least of Mr. Salam concerns, he insisted.

I didnt come to Geneva for a photo opportunity of two people shaking hands, thats not my objective. My goal is to reach an agreement. And if it turns out that it is easier to do this by shuttling between the two (delegations), I have no problem with that. The important thing is the agreement.

UNSMIL on Thursday condemned the destruction of theZawit Bin Issa Sufi shrine,in the city of Sirte, which reportedly took place on Tuesday,as well asthe reported arrest ofa number of Sufis in Sirte.

According to some news reports, the destruction was carried out by members of an armed group who partly demolished the building, reportedly founded in 1930. Sufism is a branch of Islam, rooting in mysticism.

In a statement, theMission recalledthat "the incidents appear to violate the right to freedom of religion or belief and the rightnot to be subjected to arbitrary arrest and detention.

"The destruction of religious shrines is also prohibited by international humanitarian law, and intentional attacks on religious monuments constitute war crimes. UNSMIL calls on the authorities, in control of the city of Sirte,to investigate and bring the perpetrators to justice."

Link:
'Convergence' over lasting Libya ceasefire, as negotiator urges against 'provocative' acts - UN News

In Abu Grein, on Libyas frontline, the militiamens scars read like a rollcall of the wars that have roiled the country since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. One of the fighters, a truck driver named Muhammad, removes his cap to reveal a balding pate etched with shrapnel gashes. From Daish, he says, referring to a 2016 battle he fought against Islamic State in the Libyan city of Sirte.

Now, he says, yet another foe has captured Sirte: rebel militias under the command of a 76-year-old aspiring strongman named Khalifa Haftar. Last Sunday, these militias attacked Muhammad and his men, killing 11 of them, ignoring a shaky truce in a long-running war that started last April with a blitz on the Libyan capital by Haftars forces.

Far from the quick victory Haftar promised, it has been a drawn-out slog that has left more than 2,000 dead

A former army general under Gaddafi who defected in the 1980s and became a CIA asset, Haftar launched his invasion of Tripoli after years of war in eastern Libya, where he built up power. In attacking the weak, internationally recognised Government of National Accord (GNA) in the capital, he claimed he was going to unify the country and put an end to militias. To be sure, the GNA has been unpopular due to its administrative ineptitude and deference to corrupt militias. But a promising UN-brokered process was underway to replace that government and address the militia menace before Haftars offensive scuttled it.

An abiding quest for power has fuelled Haftars rise. When I met him in 2014, he told me even then of his plans to invade Tripoli, promising to eliminate Islamists of all shades through imprisonment, exile or death. In pursuing his ambitions, he has deployed brutal tactics. In 2015, his allied militias in Benghazi admitted to me that they had carried out summary executions and stoked tribal divisions. One of his lieutenants faces a standing arrest warrant for war crimes; Haftar responded to this by promoting him.

The war he launched in Tripoli has caused misgivings among his supporters. Far from the quick victory he promised, it has been a drawn-out slog that has left more than 2,000 dead, including hundreds of civilians, and displaced hundreds of thousands. Most alarmingly, the conflict has drawn in outside powers who have sustained it with hi-tech weaponry all in contravention of a UN arms embargo.

On Haftars side is a bloc of authoritarian and anti-Islamist Arab states: the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. The Emirates role has been especially destructive its drones and fixed-wing aircraft have conducted hundreds of strikes, according to the United Nations, causing scores of civilian deaths. French support is also key. Driven by a misplaced zeal for Haftars virtues as a counterterrorist and stabiliser, Paris has been sending him clandestine military aid for several years.

Added to this are the hundreds of Russian mercenaries who arrived at the Tripoli front last September, helping Haftar break the stalemate. While Moscow is not firmly wedded to the general, its strategy seems to be to egg him on and then reel him in, in order to shape a settlement to its liking. But that has not gone entirely to plan; last month, he walked out of a ceasefire meeting convened by Moscow.

On the other side is Turkey, whose Islamist-led government has long been at odds with the Emirati-led bloc. Not long after Haftars attack, Turkey dispatched armed drones of its own to the GNA and in recent weeks it has sent thousands of Syrian mercenaries, along with Turkish intelligence personnel, air defence systems and artillery. But this came at a cost: Turkeys president, Recep Tayyip Erdoan, is providing this new round of aid only after signing an accord with the GNA that enables Turkey to extend its exclusive economic zone in the eastern Mediterranean.

A much-hyped international summit hosted by the German government took place earlier this month, but it failed to formalise a ceasefire Haftar effectively spurned the talks. And indeed, in recent days, emboldened by the increased flow of Emirati arms, he has effectively restarted the war, bombing Tripolis airport and civilian areas and blockading oil ports, which has caused production to drop dramatically and worsened the misery of Libyans. Its part of a creeping escalation that could embroil the capital in even more bloodshed.

Averting this catastrophe demands a greater role from the one power that might be able to rein in Haftar. Haftar will not accept a ceasefire unless America twists his ear, a GNA commander told me. That may well be right. Washington needs to jettison its tacit and sometimes explicit support for Haftar, epitomised in a phone call in April 2019 by Donald Trump to the general endorsing his attack on Tripoli.

While that enthusiasm has somewhat cooled because of Haftars alliance with the Russians, theres still more that the US can do, especially in areas where Washington has unique leverage. These include halting Haftars illegal effort to unilaterally sell oil on the global market, getting the Emirates to stop arming his forces, and backing a UN security council ceasefire resolution that would include strong provisions against embargo violators and human rights abusers.

In the meantime, its Libyans who suffer: from the constant fear of shelling or air strikes, 16-hour blackouts and the sense that their fates are being decided from abroad. Libyas like a cake, the mayor of Yefren, a town in Libyas western mountains, told me last month. Everybody wants a bite.

Frederic Wehrey is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and author of The Burning Shores: Inside the Battle for the New Libya

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Libyas bloodshed will continue unless foreign powers stop backing Khalifa Haftar - The Guardian

Italian anti-organised crime and special operations police units have seized a freighter and are investigating whether it was used for arms smuggling after a sailor offered information on the role he said the ship played in the illegal arms trade between Turkey and Libya, Italian newspaper Il Secolo XIX reported.

The Lebanese-registered BANA had stopped at the port of Messina in Genoa, northwest Italy, for technical checks when the 25-year-old sailor took images showing weapons that he said he had taken in the ships cargo hold, the newspaper said.

Turkey is the main backer of Libyas U.N.-recognised Government of National Accord, and its shipments of armoured vehicles and drones have helped the Tripoli-based government withstand an offensive launched last April by the eastern-based Libyan National Army (LNA).

Ankara signed a military memorandum agreeing to the deployment of Turkish troops to support Tripoli in November, and both the LNAs attacks and Turkish support have escalated since then.

The French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle spotted the BANA in late January headed toward Tripoli under escort by a Turkish frigate.

The United Nations imposed an arms embargo on Libya, which has seen a string of internal conflicts since its former dictator, Muammar Gadaffi, was overthrown in 2011.

Egypt has long accused Turkey of breaking the embargo, but the Egyptian-backed LNA has also received military support from Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Russia, according to reports.

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Italy seizes freighter accused of smuggling Turkish arms to Libya - Ahval

General Khalifa Haftar and his Libyan National Army (LNA) continue to partly encircle Libya's capital, Tripoli. Not only does the LNA threaten Tripoli, but it is within striking distance of Libya's third-largest city, Misrata. Both Tripoli and Misrata are in the hands of the Government of National Accord (GNA), which is backed by the United Nations and most strongly by Turkey. The second-largest city Benghazi is in the hands of Haftar's LNA. Haftar's LNA is backed by Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Russia. There has always been awhiff of suspicionthat Haftar himself is an old CIA asset having lived under the shadow of the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, for decades. What the NATO war on Libya did to that country is to turn it into a battlefield of other people's ambitions, to reduce Libya into a chessboard for a multidimensional game that is hard to explain and even harder to end.

LNA vs. GNA

On January 19, the United Nations and the German government held a conference in Berlin on the Libyan question. Curiously, the two belligerent parties from Libya were in Berlin but did not attend the conference. General Haftar of the LNA and Fayez Serraj of the GNA stayed in their hotels to be briefed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the UN representative on Libya Ghassan Salam. In 2012, the UN hadsaidthat no conference should be held that is not "inclusive" and does not have the stakeholders at the table. Nonetheless, the point of this exercise was not so much to create a deal within Libya as to stop the import of arms and logistics into Libya. "We commit to refraining from interference in the armed conflict or in the internal affairs of Libya,"agreedthe external parties, "and urge all international actors to do the same." External backers of each of the sides Egypt, France, Russia, Turkey, the United States were all signatories of this agreement. You can imagine that none of them will take it seriously.

Merkel hastened to Istanbul after the Berlin conference tosolidifythe pact she has made with Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdoan, who then flew to Algeria tosaythat he would not appreciate external intervention into Libya. It is not Erdoan alone who sounded bewildering all the other leaders who came to Berlin made similar remarks. You stay out of Libya, they said, but we will have to be involved in any way we think appropriate. Turkey has provided the GNA with arms and logistical assistance, and ithashelped bring a few hundred Syrian jihadis to Libya to assist the GNA-backed militias.

The UN released a statement recently with a clear indication that the deal is not worth its paper. "Over the last ten days," the UNnotes, "numerous cargo and other flights have been observed landing at Libyan airports in the western and eastern parts of the country providing the parties with advanced weapons, armoured vehicles, advisers and fighters." It does not name the countries that continue to violate the embargo, but everyone knows who they are.

Emboldened by his backers, Haftar's forces tested the GNA and its assorted militia groups in the outskirts of Misrata over the past few days. The LNA had taken up positions in al-Wishka, but they made a foray into Abu Grein, which is on the road to Misrata. The ceasefire that was supposed to be honored was violated, as the GNA Army's spokesperson Mohammed Gununusaidon Sunday. Haftar's spokesperson Ahmed al-Mismarisaidthat there is no political solution for Libya; the only solution is through "rifles and ammunition." It is a clear statement that this war is not going to be ended at the UN or in Berlin. It will have to end in Misrata and in Tripoli.

Turkey vs. Saudi Arabia

Several years ago, when it became clear that Libyans who were close to the Muslim Brotherhood might come to power, Saudi Arabia went to work against them. The Saudis have made it clear that they will not tolerate any more Muslim Brotherhood forces coming to power in North Africa or West Asia. The Saudi embargo on Qatar, the Saudi interference in Tunisia, the Saudi intervention in Egypt to remove the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohammed Morsi, and now the Saudi backing of Haftar provides a clear indication of the Saudi intention to rid the region of the Muslim Brotherhood. Turkey and Qatar have been the main sponsors of the Muslim Brotherhood; Saudi Arabia has dented Qatar's ambition, but it has not been able to tether Turkey. The war in Libya is apart from the clueless intervention of the Europeans a war between Saudi Arabia and Turkey, with Russia playing a curious role in between these powers.

Neither Saudi Arabia nor Turkey will relinquish their backing of the LNA and the GNA, respectively. No one makes any public noises about this, although everyone knows that it is these powers that are behind this horrendous new phase of the conflict ever since NATO entered Libya in 2011 and sent the country into a situation of permanent war. The UNhas donethe calculations. Since April, in Tripoli alone there are 220 schools closed and at least 116,000 children with no education. Schools, universities, hospitalsall working on reduced hours or closed.

Oil and refugees

Haftar made his move on Tripoli in April 2019. He felt that he not only had the backing of the most important powers, but that he had already taken charge of several oil fields and squeezed the Tripoli government. His rush to Tripoli, dramatic in the first few weeks, then stalled in the outskirts of the capital. He is obdurate, unconcerned that his war will simply continue the attrition of social life that had begun in the 1990s and accelerated after the NATO war in 2011.

On January 19, the LNA and its allies seized the Sharara and El Feel oil fields; both of them produce a third of Libya's oil, Sharara being the largest single field in this country. Oil production from Libya fell to less than 300,000 barrels per day from over a million barrels per day previous. The Libyan National Oil Company controlled by the government in Tripoli has now forced an embargo on oil exports from Libya. This is a blow to Europe, which relies on the sweet Libyan oil as much as it has relied upon Iranian and Russian energy sources both blocked by U.S.-driven sanctions.

European hypocrisy

Europe wants the oil but does not want the refugees. A UNreportwas recently released on the LNA's bombardment of a refugee detention center in Tajoura on July 2, 2019. That attack, by LNA aircraft, killed 53 migrants and refugees who had come from Algeria, Chad, Bangladesh, Morocco, Niger, and Tunisia. After the jet dropped its bombs on the Daman complex, there were "bodies everywhere, and body parts sticking out from under the rubble. Blood [was] all around." The migrants and refugees who survived remained in the complex. Four days later, they went on hunger strike. There have been several murders since July 2019, mainly of refugees shot by guards as they tried to leave the various detention centers that sit along the Libyan coastline and in Tripoli. There is no proper account of the total number of refugees and migrants in detention.

The European Union (EU) has been paying the Tripoli government and militia groups to hold these refugees and migrants in Libya rather than let them travel across the Mediterranean Sea. Europe has taken no responsibility for its role in the NATO war in 2011, which destabilized Libya; it has, instead, militarized the refugee crisis in Libya by using the militias. Operation Sophia of the EU brought European ships into the Mediterranean Sea to stop oil and refugee smuggling from Libya to Europe; there is now interest in restarting this policy. In Berlin, the EU's High Representative Josep BorrelltoldtheSddeutsche Zeitungthat "Libya is a cancer whose metastases have spread across the entire region." This is the attitude of Europe: how to contain the crisis and let it remain within the Libyan borders. It is a shocking statement.

I have no illness

In the midst of Libya's war against Italian colonialism a century ago, the poet Rajab Hamad Buhwaish al-Minifi wrote a poem"Ma Bi Marad" ("No Illness but This Place")about the torment of his society. This is a poem that is oftenrecited, never far from the lips of Libyans who know their long and difficult history. The line that repeats often in thepoem, "Ma bi marad ghair marad al-Egaila" ("I have no illness but this place of Egaila"), seems apt for Libya today, a people abandoned to this war that will never end, a people buried in oil and fear, a people who are in search of the home that has been taken from them.

The rest is here:
Why the war in Libya will never end - Salon

To boost motivation, Turkey is telling Syrian rebels it is sending to Libya they will fight Russians, the Investigative Journal said on Wednesday, citing sources in Turkish-backed Syrian National Army.

There are Russians here, said a 21-year-old Syrian mercenary from Kafr Nabl, a town in Syrias Idlib province. The Turks confirmed this to us. I wouldnt even hurt a Libyan here. But if I find a Russian, I will put a stick up his ass.

The Syrian fighter told the Investigative Journal that he had not seen much fighting so far, but was promised that a major offensive would start soon. With the help of the Turkish forces and their equipment, we will defeat the Russians, he said.

Of course, there are no Russian soldiers there. If the Turks tell them there are Russian troops in Libya, and that the [Syrian rebels] will get to fight them, they believe they are fighting the same enemy that is destroying their cities in Syria, another SNA source in Idlib told the Investigative Journal. But of course, this is a lie, and Libya is not Syria. But these mercenaries believe whatever Turkey tells them.

Turkey rebranded Syrian rebel factions formerly known as Free Syrian Army as the SNA last year, before launching a military offensive in northern Syria in October.

The Turkish government backs the U.N.-recognised Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli, which has been trying to fend off an assault by General Khalifa Haftars Libyan National Army (LNA), a self-styled government that controls much of eastern and southern Libya.

Turkey started sending military personnel to Libya, after the Turkish parliament granted authorisation in early January.

Turkish officials say Turkey has only been sending military staff to train Libyan police and troops, but international media has reported the arrival of Turkish-backed Syrian rebels to fight alongside GNA forces.

Some 4,700 Turkey-backed Syrian mercenaries have arrived to fight for the Tripoli government, Rami Abdurrahman, the head of the Britain-based monitoring network, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, told the Associated Press on Wednesday.

The United Arab Emirates and Egypt, Turkeys regional rivals in the Middle East, back Haftar in Libya. The LNA also has the support of some Russian mercenaries of a Kremlin-linked private contractor, the Wagner group.

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Turkey tells Syrian rebels they will fight Russians in Libya report - Ahval