United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres said on Tuesday that the situation in Libya is a “scandal” and expressed his frustration over countries pushing for progress and then not backing it up in their actions.
The Secretary General focused on countries that participated in last month’s peace talks in Berlin, vowing not to interfere in the Libyan process and to honor a UN arms embargo, but reports from Libya suggest that has not happened.
At the same time, a new round of talks are underway, led by the UN’s envoy to Libya, Ghassan Salame, or reports “a good start” to negotiations to end violence that includes a push by Libyan General Khalifa Haftar to take control of Tripoli.
This week, The Cipher Brief published a background brief on the situation, Piecing Together a Fragile Libya and today, we are publishing our full interview with Cipher Brief Expert, Ambassador Jonathan M. Winer, who served as US Special Envoy to Libya. In 2016, he was awarded for leading US policy in Libya.
The Cipher Brief: What was your reaction to last month’s Libya summit in Berlin?
Winer: The agreement from the Berlin summit covers every good thing that needs to happen with Libya, and if we went right down the list of points and lived by them, Libya could move ahead towards becoming a very successful country for the Libyan people. The unity of all its institutions, a national security force, and a national integrated military force state monopoly on legitimate use of violence, agreed upon political process and economic reforms including revenue sharing.
All of that follows an arms embargo and the departure of all foreign forces from the country. Have any of those things happened over the last few years? No. It's gone exactly the opposite of all of those requirements. Has General Haftar said that he's going to accept any of the points in the Berlin agreement? No, actually what he said is that he's happy to move ahead with a ceasefire after the GNA disarms, I guess as a prelude to bowing down before him and submitting their hands for handcuffs.
It's a completely uncompromising position on his part. If you look at Haftar's behavior over the last several years, he's been very consistent. He announced a coup in February, 2014. The country ignored it. He then went east, got support from Egypt and the Emiratis. He then used that to retake Benghazi from the Islamists. He then used the infrastructure he built with that support and with billions of dollars in counterfeit Libyan dinars produced for almost nothing by Russia, to strengthen patronage networks. And of course, this also created massive inflation of the Libyan economy because you can't just have billions of dollars in a counterfeit currency and put them in circulation backed by nothing without having an impact on everything else. He's had these resources to play with for a very long time, so why does he have an incentive to compromise? If you look at his history, Haftar was part of the original cabal in 1969 that overthrew King Idris. He was a loyal Colonel for Gaddafi. He got captured in Chad in 1987. Gaddafi then abandoned him.
He was then rescued by the United States in 1990. He came to the United States went to work for the United States for the purpose of the Reagan era to overthrow Gaddafi. When Reagan decided that he no longer worked so well for the United States, they gave up on Haftar in the process. It was no longer a major US policy. He then had to spend decades in northern Virginia cooling his heels in exile. Throughout that whole time, he's thinking to himself, "It should have been me. Look at this guy Gaddafi. It should have been me. Not him." He then gets a chance to make it him instead of Gaddafi with a revolution, and when he returns to Libya, the Libyans say, "No, not you. You've been in exile all these years. It's Abdul Fatah Younis who's going to lead the revolution, the uprising." Younis then gets killed. Haftar still doesn't get the lead position, and so he plots for a while. He tries a coup. The coup is ignored. The coup was done exactly the way that Gaddafi did it, on television. Only this time nobody reacted, and then he decided to go to build a military force. Playing by the rules hadn't worked for him.
He felt he had been betrayed by everybody and he was going to correct the arc of history and take what he felt was his rightful spot as the leader of Libya.
How do I know that this is the case? I know because some of this, Haftar told me personally. He told me he was going to invade Tripoli. He told me that “All politicians in Libya were worthless.” He did not feel that the country was ready for democracy or civilian rule, and said he would run the country until it was ready, and then he would, at some future date, go back to his barracks. That's what he told me in 2016.
He also told me through his sons and a military advisor in late 2016 that he would take Tripoli in two weeks. He's got a thing about taking places in two or three weeks. He was going to take Benghazi in two to three weeks. It actually took months. He predicted he'd take Tripoli in two weeks and of course that was not the case. So, from my point of view, this is consistent with what he has said he intended from the beginning. He's never wavered from it. And anyone who believes that he is doing this on behalf of some plan other than being a dictator for life and delivering the country to his sons is, in my opinion, diluting themselves. I think he has a fixed intention to correct the arc of history as I've described. And that's what's going on and everything else is just imposture.
As long as he's getting money and mercenaries from Russia and military support from the Emirates, why should he change if they're, in fact, only giving lip service to their commitments in Berlin? Until the foreigner actors decide that they want the war to end, the war will continue. And if they decide they want the war to end, they have the tools to prevent Haftar from taking Tripoli, which by the way I don't think he can do. Do the foreign actors have the tools to make him stop? Yes. Don't give him any more money and weapons and take away the foreign fighters.
What I will be looking for is intelligence from on the ground as to whether or not the foreign fighters are going away. Speaking for foreign actors in Libya, the Syrians are a disaster. Why would you want Syrian jihadists entering Libya after all the blood, sweat, and turmoil and Libyan lives that were given up, to get rid of the Islamic state just three years ago? It's an absolute nightmare to bring them in. It's equally a nightmare to bring in Russian mercenaries to train in North Africa. The Russians always go back when they're not wanted. Ask the Afghans. It's feels absolutely like these people have all forgotten history.
The Cipher Brief: How do you think both the Syrians and the Russians are being received by the people in Libya?
Winer: I can't imagine that any Libyan wants to have foreign mercenaries killing Libyans. Why would you want that? People don't want foreign mercenaries coming in and killing their own people. Yeah, there are people who would like to see Haftar take Libya and all the booty that entails. Remember, this is about booty. It is about controlling Libya's oil resources, which need to be shared across the board. Every Libyan has a stake in it. Every Libyan should be sharing this. And that's really what needs to happen, but Haftar's not about that. His own people will tell you privately, because they've said this to me, that he doesn't share. He controls. And there are deep concerns about ongoing corruption in how Haftar is using the resources available to him now.
The Cipher Brief: What's your prediction for the near term in Libya?
Winer: It depends really on whether the humiliations that he's visited upon Putin, Macron, and Conte so far creates a meaningful reason for those countries and the other countries to pull back from Haftar. The Emirates and Egyptians know what he is, and everybody knows better.
If you think about the point of view from Tripoli, the last thing they need or want is to have a dictator telling them what to do and taking all the money and controlling everything they get. They're not going to do that again. So, what you're talking about is street to street, neighborhood to neighborhood battles, and a new environment space for the so-called Islamic State to come back. We’re likely to see the continued importation of Islamic fighters from Syria, and the acclimation of Russian mercenaries to this environment, both of which are terrible developments. There will be continued polarization in the country. The grabbing of oil resources by whoever's physically able to grab them, and essentially taking the country hostage with oil. Libya's oil infrastructure is set up with terminals on the coast, and pipelines feeding into the interior, and you have the oil production in the far interior. It's really easy to turn off the spigots and shut down the ports. That's what Haftar has now done. He is now engaged in oil hostage-taking. When he does that, that's depriving every Libyan of portions of their patrimony, because it's taking funds from the treasury. And that's very, very dangerous for Libya. The last time it was done, eventually all of Libya lost revenues as one group after another said, "Well, since you're going to do it, we're going to do it too.”
The tragedy here is that the ambitions of a single man to be a dictator have essentially kidnapped the country and put it in civil war. Do you need to deal with militias? Absolutely. You need to do it with national forces which could have been well underway if Haftar had allowed a national government to go forward. He did not. Are there Eastern and Western Libyans who should be part of the government? Absolutely, and in senior roles. Will it be Islamist-controlled? No. And in my view, the word Islamist attempts to label people as unacceptable. In terms of politics, the question to ask is, is the person able to participate in an integrative, inclusive government in which power is shared among different groups, constituencies, tribes and regions in ways that are transparent and avoid corruption? Is the person willing to commit to that? If the answer is yes, great. If the answer is no, then there's a problem. And the big no for some years now has been Haftar. Fayez al-Sarraj has been willing to get there, at least in principle, though he hasn't been challenged very much because Haftar has so dominated the decision-making. Libyans deserve to have a political process that allows for enough compromise so that they can have elections again. All of that is in the 57-point plan that was agreed to in Berlin.
The Cipher Brief: What should the U.S. do?
Winer: The U.S. military needs to make sure that it gets very good information on the Syrians coming in and the risks of the civil war creating new opportunities for the Islamic state, which we spent a lot of time and resources to get out of the Sirte basin before. And they need to be in a position so that if they detect that, they can share information with allies and ultimately with the American public and to figure out how to stop that from happening. That's one thing that we should be doing and it’s very important.
In the civil war itself, we need to make sure that we're not creating incentives for people to try and conquer Libya. If you do that, one would-be dictator can be replaced by another would-be dictator. You create permanent instability. We need to show the world that only political solutions work. Libya needs political solutions that the U.S. backs with both words and deeds. The way to do that is to make clear to countries that have violated the arms embargo that we're not going to be quiet anymore about arms embargo violations. Whenever we detect them, we're going to publicize them, regardless of who does it, whether it's Turkey or Russia, the Emirates or Egypt, we're going to make it public. So, you inflict transparency on the world so that everybody can see what's going on and it gets beyond the propaganda campaigns of East and West, where each side accuses the other of breaking the cease fire. Libya is after all a place that is a desert, which means you can see things very well, and because you can see things very well, the U.S., using our reconnaissance capabilities, should be able to see what's going on. That could provide some real assurance to the world as to whether the foreigners are living up to their commitments from Berlin.
Doing that in good faith in a neutral and partial way would help restore an important role for the United States and provide an opportunity for the Trump administration, the diplomats and our military to create a common understanding of what's going on in a way that could provide meaningful information.
There are a lot of people who would love to be able to rely on the United States for exactly that kind of truthful and impartial information and that's something we could do immediately. Post Berlin, Germany should be continuing to take the lead and try to get the enforcement mechanisms in place that Germany and the UN have pushed. And the United States should be completely supportive of Germany and the UN's efforts to do that.
Read also How Did Libya get where it is Today with Cipher Brief Expert, Ambassador Deborah Jones.
Read more national security insights, perspectives and analysis in The Cipher Brief
