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Dear Dr. Gorka,

So I hear youre interested in being Donald Trumps envoy to Libya. You even sketched a plan on a napkin to partition the country. The plan would divide Libya into three provinces that date back to the Ottoman Empire in the 16th century, and thereby solve Libyas current crisis. If it were only that simple.

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But its not. Libyas ongoing conflict is complicated. It has to do with the legacy of four decades of brutal dictatorial rule under Muammar Qadhafi that obliterated any semblance of functional governmental institutions and pitted Libyan against Libyan. It has to do with lack of rule of law and poor governance that has allowed the democratic process initiated after the 2011 revolution to be perverted and then aborted. And it has to do with regional proxy powers intervening both openly and clandestinely in Libya to make sure that they have an oil-rich ally on the Mediterranean when the dust settles.

The current mess in Libya is layers upon layers, with multiple bodies in different cities claiming to be the countrys true government. And then there are the fence-sittersnot yet with this side or that but waiting to see where the chips fall. And all of these groups are armed. Were not talking about just small arms, but armor, artillery and air power. Also, lets not forget the Islamic State, which was only recently ousted from its stronghold in Sirte. Many of those fighters who fled likely linked up with clandestine cells throughout the country. But lets put all this aside for the moment and focus on why your plan is a clunker.

For starters, your plan is predicated on the notion that the Ottoman division of Libya into three provinces (Tripolitania in the west, Cyrenaica in the east, and the Fezzan in the south) worked.

Well, lets review a little history. (Yes, I too have a Ph.D.) The Ottomans first conquered and created Cyrenaica, todays eastern Libya, in 1517. It took them another 34 years to conquer Tripolitania, the region closer to Tunisia. The Ottomans only conquered and created the Fezzan, Libyas vast and mostly empty desert south, 300 years later. And this glosses over the fact that Istanbul lost control of Tripolitania for more than a century in the intervening years. These were not happy, seamless times.

But how did these Ottoman provinces function? For starters, the borders between the regions were primarily for the purposes of tax collection to be paid to Istanbul, not for the full remit of governance that we would require today. People moved back and forth and families and interests spanned different regions. Law enforcement, such as it was, devolved to the local level.

But all this was before oilwhich wasnt discovered in Libya until 1957. Had oil been discovered in Libya during the Ottoman era, would Istanbul have divided it the way it did? Wouldnt we then be sketching different borders on different napkins?

But for the sake of argument, lets say we do divide Libya according to 600-year-old borders (regardless of whether this is what Libyans want or not). Oil is Libyas lifeblood. It pays for everything from food to water to public-sector salaries. Without oil revenue there is no Libya.

The problem is, borders on the ground dont always neatly line up with the oil reserves in it. In Libyas case, most of the oil is in the east, in what would be Cyrenaica. The Fezzan would have some too. There is considerably less in what would be Tripolitania, the region that contains the capital, Tripoli.

Recreating Ottoman divisions then would ultimately cut a future Tripolitanias revenue by more than two thirds. Making matters worse, the oil fields that Tripolitania would lose would be just across the border in neighboring Cyrenaicaso close that Tripolitania would be forgiven were it to be tempted to fight for them. And while the Fezzan would end up with some oil, it has no access to ports and would have to pay Tripolitania transit tariffs to get its oil to market. Given how much revenue it would have lost, you can bet Tripolitania will extract a pretty penny. Plus, the Fezzan would end up a landlocked country. The United Nations and the World Bank have ample statistics demonstrating how fragile landlocked countries are.

But the Libyan conflict is already about oil and about controlling the revenue that oil generates. This became abundantly clear last month when militias allied with the Government of National Accord in Tripoli seized four oil export terminals that had earlier been captured by the military allied with the eastern government in Tobruk, which in turn had captured from a separatist cum gangster. (Are you following along, Dr. Gorka?) Even though the Tobruk government had continued to allow oil revenue from the ports under its control to keep going to the government in Tripoli after it captured them in September 2016, some political leaders in Tripoli were uneasy with that gentlemens agreement and felt they needed to take the oil terminals back, not only to undermine their opponents in the east, but also to guarantee oil revenue for themselves in the future. They managed to do so briefly in March, but the Tripoli government was able to hold the terminals for only a few days before the government in Tobruk took them back. Now that it has taken them back, the Tobruk government is exploring ways of selling oil on its own.

Meanwhile, the government in Tripoli is trying to figure out how to exert more control over oil revenue, likely to deprive that revenue of going to the government in Tobruk. Further south, other groups are also leveraging oil, periodically shutting down a pipeline leading from two large southwestern fields to deprive the government in Tripoli of revenue and force it to bow to their demands.

Libyas current conflict, though, is also about more than oil. It is about former Qadhafi regime members trying to reclaim what they lost in the 2011 revolution. It is about Islamistsno, not radical Islamic terroriststrying to preserve the political gains they made during Libyas brief democratic interlude in the aftermath of the revolution that ousted Qadhafi. It is about former political dissidentssome who were imprisoned, others who were exiled, trying to gain some political power for the first time in a country they call their own. And into this mix add jihadi terrorists organizations like the Islamic State; the remnants of Benghazi consulate attackers Ansar al-Sharia; and some components of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, a regional terrorist group with a large presence in the south. None of these groups fits neatly into Ottoman-era borders. Which new country would you give to the Islamists? Which one would the former Qadhafi henchmen get? Who ends up with the bulk of the terrorists?

Despite all of this, perhaps you still think creating three new countries is a good idea. But you dont have to look very far to find instances where this approach has been a disaster. This is especially the case when oil is involved. Case in point: South Sudan, which not only fought a calamitous 20-year war for independence from Sudan that reignited over oil less than a year after winning independence, but is now engulfed in a civil war of its own and failing. Do we really want to be flirting with the prospect of more failed states in the Sahara? After all, failed states are hothouses for jihadi salafis who are already abundant in Libya and the Sahara. We should be working to limit their areas of operations, not creating new ones for them.

Finallyand this is a big onedespite having two governments and being on the cusp of civil war, most Libyans still think of themselves as Libyan. They dont think of themselves as Tripolitanian or Cyrenaican or Fezzani. The solution for Libyas crisis is to foster this sense of Libyaness as a way of countering the zero-sum mentality that is driving the current crisis. The National Oil Corp. recognizes this. It has consistently maintained in the face of all sorts of confrontations that Libyas oil is for Libyans, east and west, north and south. The challenge now is to spread the Libya for Libyans mentality to other governmental institutions. Admittedly, a plan for doing this doesnt fit on a napkin, but neither would any plans for dealing with the mess created by divvying up Libya into borders from a bygone era.

Respectfully,

Geoff D. Porter

Geoff D. Porter is president of North Africa Risk Consulting.

Read more:
So You Want to Partition Libya - POLITICO Magazine - POLITICO Magazine

Central Bank of Libya said it had taken the necessary measures in coordination with all banks to import food goods worth 550 million dollars via bills for collection before the coming for Ramadan (In 20 days). It added the relevant authorities will be responsible for making sure the citizens buy the foods with the real prices.

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GECOL said the shutdown of gas pipeline that feeds Ruwais power plant has caused it to close entirely losing 700 megawatts from the general electricity network, According to the media office, load shedding policy will be adopted by the GECOL manually to maintain the stability of the network.

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UN-proposed government's Interior Minister Aref Al-Khouja met with Egyptian counterpart Majdi Abdelghafar in Cairo, according to the Egyptian Interior Ministry. They both discussed the current security crisis and collaboration on all levels between the two governments.

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The Head of the High Council of State, Abndelrahman Al-Sweihli, condemned the attack on the house of the CBL's Governor, Al-Sidiq Al-Kabeer, saying the right to protest doesn't mean violating the laws and terrifying people.

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Gunmen kidnapped Tuesday the Civil Registry's Director in Tripoli Khalid Al-Bayad as he was on his way to Tajoura, eastern Tripoli. The media office of the Civil Registry accused one of Tripoli brigades of the abduction saying they forced him into handing over the civil registry electronic system and database.

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Libyan Volleyball Federation decided to qualify Al-Sweihli team for the finals of Libya Cup after riots between the spectators in the game against Al-Itihad Misrati (3-0). Al-Sweihli will go with Al-Ahli Benghazi to the finals awaiting the decisive match for the western group between Asariya and Al-Jazeera. The federation's contests committee set the finals' date on 7-8-9 May.

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The Head of Public Relations Office in Al-Bayda security department said a committee was formed to follow the details of the latest suicide cases and said that the security personnel talked with the social affairs offices to send specialists and counselors to talk to the two survivors. He added that the security department kicked off Monday a large-scale campaign targeting witches and sorcerers' dins in the city and its suburbs. Six people were reported in suicide cases, while two survived lately in Al-Bayda.

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Illegal Immigration Fight Authority said it had opened a new migrants center in Tajoura. The anti-terrorism department hailed this new action and all those involved in making it happen.

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News Roundup - Wed, Apr 12, 2017 - The Libya Observer

Libya, which has lost control of its stakes in nine telecommunications companies in sub-Saharan Africa since the 2011 overthrow of Muammar Qaddafi, is battling to save its last one.

State-owned Libyan Post Telecommunications & Information Technology Co. in February ceased all funding and investment in fixed-line, mobile and internet provider Uganda Telecom Ltd. The company has accused Ugandas revenue authority of seizing funds in UTLs bank account and said it had lost confidence in the governments ability to implement a $48-million turnaround plan that LPTIC was willing to fund.

The Tripoli-based company has called for an emergency shareholder meeting to discuss its 69 percent stake in the Ugandan provider into which it says Libyans invested more than $250 million since 2007. The remaining stake is held by Ugandas government.

Were concerned about nationalization. Unauthorized sale of our shares, Chairman Faisel Gergab said by phone. Ugandan Finance Minister Matia Kasaija said his ministry has taken over management of UTL after it was divorced by our partners. The government hired PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP to audit the company and will take actions on UTL based on the findings, he said.

The uprising in Libya six years ago saw the North African country descend into turmoil and precipitated the unraveling of telecommunications interests across the continent that LPTIC says totaled more than $1 billion. Among them, Libyan stakes in Zambian and Nigerien providers were nationalized, assets liquidated in Rwanda and Ivory Coast, and a Togo agreement was probed for fraud.

Such assets were just left to run themselves, said Abdulla Boulsien, a former director of Libyas pan-African telecoms portfolio LAP Green Network. The reason these assets started crumbling was because there was no plan in the first place, then the Libyan revolution happened.

The telecommunications dispute is emblematic of broader challenges in Libya, where fights between rival governments, feuding militias and a perennial Islamist threat have crippled state institutions. Libya still holds interests in sub-Saharan Africa, including 11 hotels in locations such as Kenya and OiLibya gas stations in 17 countries including Mali, Nigeria, Sudan and Ethiopia.

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LPTIC said that after it took ownership of the UTL stake from its predecessor LAP Green Network in August 2015, LPTIC appointed Strategy&, a consulting team at PwC, to advise on its responsibilities as the custodian of Libyas international telecommunications assets. It was immediately clear that UTL required a significant turnaround plan to restore profitability and growth, LPTIC said by email.

The Ugandan minister, Kasaija, said in a March 23 interview that UTLs debts total more than 700 billion shillings (about $193 million).

Ugandan State Minister for Finance and Privatization Evelyn Anite wasnt available when Bloomberg called her office three times for subsequent comments. Secretary to the Treasury at the Finance Ministry, Keith Muhakanizi, wasnt available to comment either.

UTL competes in Uganda with the local units ofIndias Bharti Airtel Ltd. and MTN Group Ltd. of South Africa. The telecommunications regulator declined to give rankings or subscriber numbers for UTL, citing competition.

LPTICs chairman said UTL owes the Libyan company more than $62 million. The company has written to the Finance Ministry and detailed monthly working capital losses at UTL of as much as $900,000, according to Gergab.

Gergab said that, should LPTIC recall this debt, UTL would be de facto insolvent. In a letter shown to Bloomberg by Gergab, Anite told him that UTLs going-concern status was entirely dependent on assurances of funding from LPTIC.

Gergab said delays in the long-standing plan to revise a shareholder agreement and revamp UTL are the root cause of the dispute. Ugandan authorities have said the turnaround agreement was pending clearance by the countrys attorney-general, and requested emergency stop-gap funding of $3 million for crucial operations to avoid disruptions, according to correspondence shown by Gergab.

We will not allow the company to collapse, Kasaija said, when explaining the governments intervention.

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Libya Battles to Control Its Last Sub-Saharan Telecoms Stake ... - Bloomberg

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The Hillchopped the headline down to We Need to Learn From Iraq, even though what Gabbard actually said was, We need to learn from Iraq and Libya, questioning not only President George W. Bushs policy in Iraq but the Obama administrations intervention in Syria.

The main thrust of Gabbards email to The Hillis an argument against military intervention. She evidently used the email to lay it out in a clean and simple fashion.

We need to learn from Iraq and Libya wars that were propagated as necessary to relieve human suffering, but actually increased human suffering many times over, shewrote.

I and thousands of my brothers- and sisters-in-arms went to war in Iraq based on false intelligence and lies from our leaders our president, military, and political leaders. We should have been skeptical then, and we werent, argued Gabbard, an officer in the Hawaiian Army National Guard who served two tours of duty in Iraq.

She also criticized President Trump for failing to seek congressional approval before ordering the missile attack on Syria.

There is a reason our Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war: we should be shown the evidence and given the opportunity to debate the strategy and sacrifice expected.No leader of either party, pro or against military intervention should let our President take us down the path to another regime change war without that debate, she urged.

Gabbard previously denounced Trumps escalation of U.S. involvement in Syria as short-sighted, warning that it would lead to more dead civilians, more refugees, the strengthening of al-Qaeda and other terrorists, and a possible nuclear war between the United States and Russia.

She has also promised to call for Assads prosecution and execution by the International Criminal Court if he can be proven guilty of using chemical weapons against his own civilians, although she added that the U.S. attack on Sharyat airbase might have made a conclusive investigation impossible.

The Hillchose not to reprint Gabbards email in its entirety, so it is not clear if she acknowledges that some of the pushback she is pushing back against is directed at her indulgence of conspiracy theories that exonerate Syrian President Bashar Assad of responsibility for the chemical weapons deployment in Idlib province last week.

She has also been criticized for visiting Syria and meeting with Assad. Whatever you think about President Assad, the fact is that he is the president of Syria. In order for any peace agreement, in order for any possibility of a viable peace agreement to occur, there has to be a conversation with him, she said in defense of her actions.

Gabbard said her visits to Syria were motivated by her extreme commitment to end this war that has caused so much suffering to the Syrian people, to these children, to these families, many of whom I met on this trip.

That does not bypass the many controversies swirling around her trip, as capably summarized by the Lawfare blog:

She reportedly declined to inform House leadership in advance, met with Bashar al-Assad, toured with officials from a Lebanese political party that actively supports Assad, and received funding from an American organization that counts one of those same officials as its executive director. Moreover, both before and after traveling to Syria, the congresswoman channeled some of Assads positions on the war in statements to the public.

One other controversy, naturally the principal one examined by Lawfare, is that Gabbards renegade diplomacy with Assad would seem like a fairly blatant violation of the Logan Act that strangely-worded, dubiously constitutional, never-enforced 1799 law which is supposed to criminalize freelance diplomacy. However moribund the Logan Act might seem, Gabbard should understand that Americans want their government to present a somewhat unified front on the world stage.

Gabbards point about the need for congressional authorization has been made, or at least tacitly acknowledged, by other politicians of both parties. Both Democrat and Republican lawmakerscriticized President Obama for bypassing Congress when he launched his Libyan intervention, a much larger and more expensive project than anything the Trump administration has currently put on the table for Syria.

On the other hand, skeptics say that most congressional representatives are quietly content with various presidential administrations bypassing their warmaking authority, and thus relieving them of responsibility for difficult and politically inconvenient votes, such as the congressional vote to authorize the Iraq War. AsThe Hillobserves in its post about Gabbards email, congressional enthusiasm for insisting upon involvement in further military decisions related to Syria is mixed.

Read the original here:
Gabbard: 'We Need to Learn from Iraq and Libya' Before Intervening in Syria - Breitbart News

Sebastian Gorka is vying to become presidential special envoy to Libya, but such a position has not yet been created. Photograph: BBC

A senior White House foreign policy official has pushed a plan to partition Libya, and once drew a picture of how the country could be divided into three areas on a napkin in a meeting with a senior European diplomat, the Guardian has learned.

Sebastian Gorka, a deputy assistant to Donald Trump under pressure over his past ties with Hungarian far-right groups, suggested the idea of partition in the weeks leading up to the US presidents inauguration, according to an official with knowledge of the matter. The European diplomat responded that this would be the worst solution for Libya.

Gorka is vying for the job of presidential special envoy to Libya in a White House that has so far spent little time thinking about the country and has yet to decide whether to create such a post.

Libya has been mired in a conflict between two competing governments since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 after a Nato-led intervention. As rival jostle for influence and position in Washington on the hitherto neglected issue, sharp differences have emerged over how much say Russia should have in Libyas fate.

There are fears among some European allies that the White House will reverse the Obama administrations strong support for the UN-backed Libyan government of national accord, which is based in Tripoli and led by Fayez al-Sarraj.

While the GNA has been seen by some as the best option for achieving stability in the country, it has struggled against a rival government based in Tobruk, eastern Libya, backed by Khalifa Haftar, an anti-Islamist military strongman. Haftar, who would not back partition, has support in some parts of the Egyptian and Russian governments.

In January, he was welcomed onboard the Admiral Kuznetsov, the Russian flagship, as the aircraft carrier sailed along the north African coast. Haftar, a 73-year-old field marshal and former Gaddafi general who later became his bitter opponent, presents himself as a bulwark against Islamism and the Muslim Brotherhood, which makes him appealing to elements of the Trump foreign policy team.

Gorka advocates hardline policies aimed at defeating radical Islam and sees the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist group bent on infiltrating the US. As a former Breitbart editor, he is close to Steve Bannon, Trumps chief strategist, who believes the struggle against radical Islam should be the central theme of US foreign policy. But Bannons star is on the wane in the White House and he lost his seat on the national security council last week.

Gorka has alarmed foreign diplomats with his views on Libyas future. The map he drew on a napkin during the transition period cut Libya into three sections, apparently based on the old Ottoman provinces of Cyrenaica in the east, Tripolitania in the north-west and Fezzan in the south-west.

Mattia Toaldo, a Libya expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations thinktank, said: This is like a litmus test of how much you know about Libya. If you the only thing you know is that it was cut into three, then it shows you are clueless about the situation in Libya.

Gorkas rivals for the envoy job include Pete Hoekstra, a former congressman and lobbyist, and Phillip Escaravage, a former US intelligence official who worked on Libya for more than a decade.

Escaravage is generally considered to be the clear favourite to take on the unpaid role. He is believed to have put forward a peace proposal heavily dependent on tens of billions of dollars in western financial support.

At least one European ally has privately expressed frustration at the US state departments lack of a position on Libya, voicing concerns over Russias growing influence.

While separatists who support partition claim that a viable state could be built in eastern Libya, most experts agree that the move would stoke another civil war because the boundaries would be hotly disputed.

Representatives of the Tobruk government, including Haftar, have sought to influence the Trump administration, calling for the US to radically change its position and withdraw support for the Sarraj government.

In a phone interview with the Guardian, Ari Ben-Menashe, an Israeli security consultant based in Canada, whose company has a $6m (4.9m) contract to lobby on behalf of Haftar and Aguila Saleh Issa, the head of the Libyan house of representatives in Tobruk, said the White House had been briefed on Libya and was willing to play on our terms.

There is not going to be a partition, Ben-Menashe said. None of them [Trump administration officials] really knew anything about what was going on. They were briefed pretty extensively by us and ... they understand that Sarraj will never work.

Ben-Menashe said it was understood by the Trump administration that a central Libyan government acceptable to the west and east of the country could be created in three days if Russia were more involved. The Trump administration, he added, was interested in getting the help of Russians and interested in getting them to resolve it.

Support for the eastern government was growing in parts of Europe, including the UK, Ben-Menashe said. We have talked to the Brits, the Norwegians, the Swiss. We did a lot of work on this, he added.

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Trump aide drew plan on napkin to partition Libya into three - The Guardian