The Libya Observer | July 2017 The Libya Observer The Prime Minister of the Salvation Government of the General National Congress, Khalifa Al-Ghweil, denied in a statement reported by Afrigate News any knowledge of the meeting that is taking place in Greek Rhodes Island for Libyan Jews, Libyan figures ... |
Follow this link:
July 2017 - The Libya Observer
Dutch Embassy in Libya
Holland has announced that it will send a new envoy to Libya three years after closing its mission in the war-torn country, news outlets reported on Friday.
However, according to Foreign Ministry spokesman Chris Bakker, it is too early to re-open the embassy in the Libyan capital. He noted that this would be much more expensive to do now.
The decision was apparently taken after a meeting held between Dutch Foreign Minister Bert Koenders and the Libyan prime minister and foreign minister, during which they agreed on some form of diplomatic representation.
This is an important first step to being represented once again in Tripoli at the diplomatic level, explained Koenders. He pointed out that a re-opened diplomatic mission would follow up on the complex situation in Libya.
The head of Libyas UN-backed Presidential Council, Fayiz Al-Sarraj, arrived in The Hague on Wednesday for an official visit at the invitation of the Dutch prime minister.
Go here to read the rest:
The Netherlands says too early to reopen embassy in Libya - Libyan Express
BENGHAZI, Libya We fight terrorism for the sake of the world, reads the billboard overlooking one of this strife-torn citys upscale streets. It also bears the visage of a mustachioed, uniformed manField Marshal Khalifa Haftar, Libyas most powerful and polarizing figure. Coming from him, the billboards message is a most striking assertion.
When I went to Libya just over three years ago, then-General Haftar gave me a variation of this same line. Libya will be the graveyard of international terrorism, he predicted. Those were the early days of Operation Dignity, Haftars military campaign to rid Benghazi of Islamist and jihadist militias, whod ensconced themselves in the city since the 2011 revolution. Hed promised the operation would be over in weeks. This May, the war in Benghazi passed its 36th monthlonger than the uprising that unseated dictator Muammar Qaddafi. The conflict has killed and displaced thousands, and caused devastation on a scale not seen in the country since the Second World War.
How Not to Plan for The Day After in Libya
Today, Haftar can claim some success. His forces have decimated the Islamists, pushing them back to just a few seaside blocks on Benghazis fringes. Life is returning to the city. But along the way, his operation has unleashed new, destabilizing forces, the greatest of which have been a resurgent authoritarianism and the political rise of Haftar himself, in defiance of the UN-backed government in Tripoli. It is an ascendancy abetted by support from an Emirati-Egyptian axis and, more recently, signaling from the Trump administration. And its aftershocks are rippling far across the country.
* * *
The roots of Operation Dignity lie in the aftermath of the 2012 jihadist attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. In the months that followed, Benghazi fell into despair, all but forgotten by the world. Assassinations terrorized residents; drive-by shootings and car bombs felled judges, activists, security guards, and military officers. Nobody went out at night. The motives for the killings were murkya mix of Islamist violence, tribal feuds, and criminality. Whatever the case, residents longed for order, for someone to stop the chaos.
Enter Haftar. The septuagenarian officer had fought in Qaddafis war in Chad before defecting and fleeing, with CIA assistance, to Virginia, where he lived for nearly 20 years. Returning to Libya during the 2011 revolution against Qaddafi, he tried and failed to lead the rebels. He all but disappeared from view, traveling around Libya with his retinue, an itinerant claimant to a destiny that eluded him. In February 2014, he appeared on television and announced the dissolution of the elected parliament, meeting only ridicule. The coup that wasnt, people called it. Then, that summer, amid Benghazis intractable violence, he found his opening. With just a few hundred followers drawn from disaffected army units and eastern tribes, and some dilapidated aircraft, he launched Operation Dignity to take on the citys Islamist militias. Within a year, his forces controlled most of the east. The campaign was unsanctioned by the Tripoli government and would soon throw the country into civil war.
Operation Dignity, Haftar explained to me then, sought not only to drive out the Islamists, but to reclaim the honor of the uniformed officers whod been sidelined by militias. He complained that the officers of the ex-regime were paid far less than untrained Islamist militias with ties to jihadists, and blamed the situation on the corruption of the parliament and civilian leadership in Tripoli. Most importantly, though, Haftar wanted to remake Libyas politics by expunging political Islamists, especially from the Muslim Brotherhood, who he accused of complicity in the violence. This goal aligned neatly with the policies of Egyptian strongman Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, whose speeches Haftar copied and whose military and political support would prove vital.
Haftar predicted the fighting would be over in weeks. The weeks became months; the months turned into years. International aid poured in to support Haftars forces; foreigners, meanwhile, swelled the ranks of Haftars foes as well. The United Arab Emirates, with its own phobia of the Brotherhood, joined the Egyptians in sending armored vehicles, advisers, and attack aircraft. Russia lavished Haftar with attention: a theatrical visit to an aircraft carrier, medical assistance, and, reportedly, special forces. The French, the British, and the Americans sent special operators who provided varying levels of intelligence and front-line support.
But Haftar had erred. By attacking the Islamists, he had lumped moderates together with jihadists and, as time wore on, the balance of power shifted to the radicals, bolstered by an influx of Tunisians, Egyptians, and other foreigners. In early 2015, the Islamic State arrived and exploited the chaos. Islamists who mightve reconciled with the Libyan state were killed off or exiled, or they cast their fates with the so-called caliphate.
By late 2015, when I visited Benghazi, Operation Dignity was locked in a stalemate. I visited field hospitals where I saw Haftars men torn apart by mines and snipers. Vast swathes of the city were no-go zones.
* * *
When I returned this May, I found a battlefield completely changed. Haftars forces had all but declared victory.
To be sure, fighting still rages, and parts of the city lie in ruin, including the iconic old city and its courthouse, site of the first protests against Qaddafi in 2011. The expansive, recently liberated Fish Market district, where families once gathered on Ramadan nights, is now a shamble of concrete. Shelling has scarred the Italianate porticos of Tree Square, once beloved for its cedar, and destroyed the covered bazaar of Suq al-Jarid, once filled with tailors, jewelers, and leather-smiths. Soldiers still fall from sniper fire and, especially, booby-trapsdiabolical devices triggered by thin planks of wood covered with sand, trash, or grass. Civilians still perish from salvos of rockets or mortars, often at night. One morning I witnessed the aftermath of such an attack: a gaping crater, an incinerated car, and a young man grieving for his brother.
Yet in many parts of the city I felt the pulse of normalcy. In the old district of Birka, the green-checkered flags of the Nasr football club, a local favorite, crisscross the bustling streets. Traffic police who once cowered at home for fear of assassination are stationed once again at intersections, wearing their summer white uniforms. Factories and farms are creaking back to life, while younger entrepreneurs try their hands at tech start-ups, participating in competitions for innovative app designs. The university is reopening.
Leisure has returned as well. At the Luna Mall, children play on a toy train next to ice cream parlors, candy stores, and clothing outlets. There are musical clubs, theater troupes, art galleries, and rugby tournaments. Sitting on the lawn of a new hotel, newlyweds smoke apple-flavored tobacco while a projector plays Egyptian soap operas on a wall.
This is one face of Benghazithe one of progress and order. There is, of course, another side.
* * *
Benghazis war is not simply an army operation against terrorists, but a deeply intimate social conflict, between neighbors and cousins, overlaid with tribal- and class-based tensions, between eastern tribes and families from the west, among eastern tribes, and between urban elites and rural poor. Reports of torture, disappearances, and the destruction of property emerge with numbing frequency. So, too, has evidence of summary executions, on both sides.
Tribal and neighborhood militias armed by Haftar early in his campaign have carried out many of the abuses. These militias, known as support forces, at one point comprised as much as 60 to 80 percent of his men, and they retain power today, despite efforts to disband them. Many of them have attacked the families of suspected militants, demolishing their homes and businesses. A Dignity commander once justified this destruction in the interests of saving Benghazis social fabric. Of course, precisely the opposite occurred.
I found evidence of the desecration while driving through Benghazis Laythi neighborhood, a poor, densely packed quarter with a reputation for militancy and scrappiness. I passed the blackened ruins of burned-out houses and stores and the tawny skeletons of cars. Some of the pillaging seemed invested with class rivalry, an expression of resentment by poorer tribes against the wealthier Islamists. I met one leader of a pro-Haftar militia that attacked the home of an alleged jihadist financier who owned an aluminum workshop where hed once apprenticed.
Many of those fleeing the vigilante attacks in Laythi and other neighborhoods now form the social backbone of the militant opposition to Haftar. Thousands of families have been forced from Benghazi, many simply because their male relatives are fighting Haftar. Still other refugees claim to have been targeted by Haftars militias solely because of their distant family origins, especially those who hail from western towns like Misrata, a coastal powerhouse that has armed and funded the Islamists opposing Haftar.
In Misrata, I met several of the militiamen whove shipped weapons to the Islamists fighting Haftar. They complain that his war has stoked a new nativism among some of the eastern tribes allied with Dignity. Those whom these tribes deemed not native to Benghazi and the east they brand as ghuraba, or westerners. No matter that Misratan families had migrated to Benghazi centuries ago, settling in the citys downtown, where they thrived as traders and builders. Now, tribes who came to Benghazi in recent decades from its rural environs accused them of not belonging. Even worse, they labeled the Misratans Turks or Circassians, references to the Misratas historical links with the Ottoman Empire. This is a tribal racism, said one of them.
Like many narratives of victimization, this one includes some distortion. The ranks of those opposing Haftar include eastern tribes, just as Haftars supporters include people from Misrata and the west. This is what makes the conflict in Benghazi so confounding: It cuts across communal lines and divides families. What is clear, however, is that the spirit of militant revanchism animating the displaced and those fighting Haftar, is likely to endure. Whoever controls Benghazi controls Libya, one of them told me.
Another byproduct of Operation Dignity has been a surge in conservative Islam in Benghazi and across the east. Despite the common portrayal of Haftar as secular and anti-Islamist, he has co-opted and supported conservative, Saudi-inspired Salafists. These so-called quietist Salafists embrace a doctrine of loyalty to a sitting political ruler and hostility to more activist and jihadist forms of Islamism, like the Brotherhood and al-Qaeda. Unsurprisingly, they joined Dignity from the beginning. They later sent a delegation to Saudi Arabia to secure a fatwa from their clerical mentor in Saudi Arabia authorizing support for Haftar.
In recent months, the pro-Haftar Salafists have attempted to consolidate their control of security affairs and social life in Benghazi and to the east. They field their own militia, and deploy it across the citys frontlines. They are also active in prisons; I met one of them who works on the theological rehabilitation of captured jihadists. The Salafists also function as a sort of morality police. They have confiscated and burned books deemed heretical and shut down an Earth Day celebration, branding it as un-Islamic. Their influence unnerves many of Haftars liberal supporters: They thought hed restore security and oust the Islamists, not unleash Islamists of his own.
Even more unsettling is Haftars militarization of governance. Across the east, he has replaced elected municipal leaders with uniformed military officers. The Qaddafi-era intelligence apparatus is back on the payroll. Critical voices have been silenced through expulsion, arrest, or even disappearancea return, many whisper, to the bad old days.
* * *
Haftar appears poised to move beyond Benghazi and take to the national stage. He has made no secret of his intention to move west to Tripoli to topple the Islamist militias holding sway in the capital. Hes already grabbed oil facilities in the central Sirte Basin and recently seized southern airfields from his opponents. Hes also sought international endorsement.
Last fall, Haftar sent envoys to Washington and pitched to the United States the idea of ruling Libya through a military council, only to be rebuffed. The redline for Washington, according to a senior U.S. official present at those meetings, was civilian control over the Libyan military. More recently, Haftar has shifted tack to accept a civilian position overseeing Libyas military in a three-person governing council, or to run as a candidate in Libyas presidential elections, currently scheduled for early 2018. His critics remain suspicious, seeing in this switch a back-door route to dictatorship.
I found signs of Haftars attempted rebranding in another, newly erected billboard. This one stands in Benghazis expansive Kish Square, a site of frequent demonstrations where at night young men drift in souped-up cars. Haftar appears on the sign wearing a grey suit and tie, flanked by adoring crowds. The Popular Authorization Movement for Saving the Country, the words beneath him read. At a nearby tent, one of the Movements organizers explained its goal: to obtain 400,000 notarized signatures authorizing Haftar to govern the country.
It has the trappings of a political campaign, one that has been hastened by recent Egyptian and Emirati military activity on Haftars behalf, and the misfortunes befalling Qatar, the patron of his Islamist opponents. Added to this are the encouraging signals from Trumps Middle Eastern forays. Whereas the Obama presidency kept the general at arms length, Trumps counter-terrorism focus, anti-Islamism, and embrace of Arab despots are a godsend for Haftar.
Back in Benghazi, a sense of buyers remorse seems to weigh on some of Haftars onetime supporters. For them, the saga of his comeback from the wilderness, his rescuing of a troubled city, and his rise to national dominance carries all the makings of a personality cult, one with echoes from the not-too-distant past.
Weve come to regard him as a mini-god, a local activist confided, and thats dangerous. Thats what we did with Qaddafi.
View post:
'Whoever Controls Benghazi Controls Libya' - The Atlantic
LONDON OPEC oil output has risen in June by 280,000 barrels per day (bpd) to a 2017 high, a Reuters survey found, as a further recovery in supply from the two member countries exempt from a production-cutting deal offset strong compliance by their peers.
High compliance by Gulf producers Saudi Arabia and Kuwait helped keep OPEC's adherence with its supply curbs at a historically high 92 percent in June, compared with 95 percent in May, the survey found.
But extra oil from Nigeria and Libya, exempted from the cut because conflict curbed their output, means supply by the 13 OPEC members originally part of the deal has risen far above their implied production target.
The recovery adds to the challenge the OPEC-led effort to support the market is facing from a persistent inventory glut. If the recovery lasts, calls could grow within OPEC for the exempt countries to be brought into the production deal.
"The rise in OPEC production will further delay the point at which balance is restored on the oil market," said Carsten Fritsch, analyst at Commerzbank in Frankfurt.
As part of a deal with Russia and other non-members, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries originally pledged to reduce output by about 1.2 million bpd for six months from Jan. 1.
Oil prices have gained some ground but high stocks and rising U.S. output kept them in check. To provide additional support for prices, the producers decided in May to prolong the deal until March 2018.
June's biggest rise came from Nigeria, where output extended a recovery after being curtailed by militant attacks on oil installations. The second-biggest was from Libya.
Nigerian output is expected to rise further in coming weeks. Planned exports in August are scheduled to reach at least 2 million bpd, a 17-month high.
In Libya, output was on average higher despite fluctuation and has now exceeded 1 million bpd, a four-year high. Production remains some way short of the 1.6 million bpd Libya pumped before the 2011 civil war.
Saudi Arabia pumped 40,000 bpd more, the survey found, although its compliance remained above 100 percent. Even with June's increase, the curb achieved by OPEC's top producer is 564,000 bpd, well above the target cut of 486,000 bpd.
Aside from a rise in Angolan exports, no other significant change in output occurred elsewhere in OPEC.
OPEC announced a production target of 32.5 million bpd last year, which was based on low figures for Libya and Nigeria. The target includes Indonesia, which has since left, and does not include Equatorial Guinea, the latest country to join OPEC.
The Libyan and Nigerian increases mean OPEC output in June averaged 32.57 million bpd, about 820,000 bpd above its supply target, adjusted to remove Indonesia and not including Equatorial Guinea.
Equatorial Guinea, which became an OPEC member in late May, has now been added to the Reuters survey. The country's crude production is estimated at 150,000 bpd, which brings total OPEC production in June to 32.72 million bpd.
The Reuters survey is based on shipping data provided by external sources, Thomson Reuters flows data, and information provided by sources at oil companies, OPEC and consulting firms.
(With additional reporting by Rania El Gamal; Editing by Dale Hudson)
MOSCOW Russia's Rosneft, the world's top listed oil producer, wants to supply gas in parts of Europe where Gazprom is not present to avoid the risk of losing those markets to U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG), a Rosneft executive said.
LONDON Not very long ago, a 17 percent oil price fall would have sent emerging market stocks into a tailspin. But this year they are set for their best first half since 2014.
See the article here:
OPEC oil output jumps to 2017 high as Nigeria, Libya pump more - Reuters
Author:Mustafa Fetouri Posted June 30, 2017
United Nations Secretary-GeneralAntonio Guterreshas appointedGhassan Salame as his new special envoy to Libya and as the head of the UN mission in the country known as the UNSupport Mission in Libya. His appointment came after months of searching for the right candidate.
In February, Guterres attempted to appoint Salam Fayyad, the former Palestinian prime minister. But the United States, a veto-holding UN Security Council member, objected to the appointment, accusing the internationalbody of being unfairly biased in favor of the Palestinian Authorityto the detriment of our allies in Israel, as the US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, saw the matter then.
Salames task is not easy, and four of his predecessors have so far failed to deliver peace and reconciliation to the war-ravaged country.
Right after his first meeting with a group of Libyan politicians,before his appointment, Salame tweeted May 19,Three days of meetings with Libyan leaders has been exhausting but I hope it will help the national reconciliation process indicating that he knows the difficulties facing him.
Salame is the second Lebanese to take the post after Tarek Mitri who tried his luck with the Libyansin 2012-14, before he was replaced byBernardino Leon.
Salames predecessor, Martin Kobler, had failed to make the warring Libyan factions accept the UN-brokered peace agreement signed in Skhirat, Morocco, in December 2015. It was during Leons tenure that the breakthrough took place and the Libyan Political Agreement (LPA) was signed. That agreement gave birth to the Government of National Accord (GNA), headed by Fayez al-Sarraj. Since then and despite the shuttle diplomacy, nothing has been achieved and much remains to be done.
Since the toppling of its longtime leader, Moammar Gadhafi, on Oct. 20, 2011, Libya has been divided between two quarreling governments and dominated by dozens of armed militias. The country has seen little progress in terms of peace, national reconciliationand economic stability.
What Salame brings to the post is probably his experience being a former Lebanese minister who knows how difficult it is to make quarreling factions agree in the absence of serious national dialogue. In addition, he is a well-known Arab intellectual, academicand author. Before the UN job, he was founding dean of the School of International Affairs, part of the French prestigious Sciences Po think tank and university in Paris.
As the new UN envoy, he should carefully review previous UN efforts in Libya and identify what mistakes were made in tackling the Libyan crisis to avoid repeating them. One major error made by all previous UN diplomats has been the marginalization of two important potential political players: the supporters of the former regime who are a sizeable number in the tribally divided country,and the tribal fabric of the Libyan society, which cant be sidelined for peace to have a chance.
Supporters of the former regime in exile are now organizing themselves to have Seif al-Islam, Gadhafis son, lead them as one group after the young Gadhafi was released from prisonJune 11. This brings a new dimension to the conflict, since it will be the first time a son of Gadhafi enters the political scene.
As for the tribal fabric of Libya, the majority of Libyan tribes are represented by a broad umbrella groupcalled The Supreme Council of Libyan Tribes and Cities thatoperatesfrom neighboring Egypt. In the past, tribes have been overlooked by all former UN envoys, a mistake Salame should not repeat.
Another major problem Salame must try to tackle is the outside interference in the Libyan affairs, particularly by regional countries. Such meddling in the internal affairs only contributed to heightened tensions, making the local smallsporadic wars more of a proxy war between the United Arab Emiratesand Egypt supporting the Tobruk-based governmentwhile Turkey, Sudan and Qatar support other factions in western Libya. With Qatar on retreat, the new envoy might have more room to maneuver.
Salame should not attempt to open up the LPA for renegotiations as many parties call for the UN deal to be rewritten. In fact, what could be renegotiated is only a couple of articles related to the role of the military and downsizing the number of the Presidential Council from its current nine members to maybe three representing each of the countrys three regions:Tripolitania in the west, Cyrenaica in the eastand Fezzan in the south.
Salame has good ties with France, which played a leading military role in bringing down Gadhafis regime in 2011 and has ever since been puzzled by the complicated mess Libya is in.He is well-known to French politicians and well-connected to decision-makers, which will help him align whatever plans he has hatched to the larger European Union ideas when it comes to tackling the Libya crisis.
He must make good use of the French veto power in the UN Security Council by making sure that those who disrupt the political process can and will be held accountable before the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. A kind of carrot-and-stick tactic will certainly deter many negative moves.
UN Resolution 1973 of March 2011 still applies to Libya calling for the ICC to investigate suspected human rights violations and possible crimes against humanity. However, since 2011, no one has been investigated despite all the small wars and violence Libya has been through.
No UN envoy or mediator has any magic solution and Salame can only do so much. In the end, it is the quarreling Libyan factions that must chose peace if they care about their country and its people as much as they care about their own political interests.
Read More: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2017/06/libya-new-un-envoy-mission-mistakes-peace.html
Visit link:
New UN Libya envoy faces long road to peace - Al-Monitor