🇱🇾 Libyan War Thread: Turkey is sending troops to Libya? Egypt is worried? Greece and Israel pissed? RUSSIA RELOCATING FROM SYRIA?
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Dorian Breh
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Exclusive: 2,000 Syrian troops deployed to Libya to support regime
Anti-Turkish sentiment could grow after Ankara agrees to help fight against insurgency
Bethan McKernanWed 15 Jan 2020 00.00 EST
Libyan National Army forces, led by Khalifa Haftar, are being opposed by new troops from Syria. Photograph: Esam Al-Fetori/Reuters
A total of 2,000 Syrian fighters have travelled from Turkey or will arrive imminently to fight on the battlefields of Libya, Syrian sources in all three countries have said, in an unprecedented development that threatens to further complicate the north African state’s intractable civil war.
The deployment came after Turkey agreed last month to come to the aid of the Libyan prime minister, Fayez al-Sarraj, who is backed by the UN, in the face of a months-long campaign by his rival, the warlord Khalifa Haftar.
Ankara has supported the Syrian opposition since the early days of the battle against the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, even as the original Free Syrian Army umbrella group grew weak and splintered because of infighting and the growth of Islamist elements within rebel ranks. Turkey now uses some rebel fighters as proxies against Kurdish-led forces despite allegations of human rights abuses from watchdogs.
“This is a very different situation to Syria,” said Claudia Gazzini, a senior Libya analyst with the International Crisis Group. “Anti-Turkish sentiment is already strong because of Ankara’s intervention and could grow as a result of this, playing in Haftar’s favour.”
An initial deployment of 300 men from the second division of the Syrian National Army (SNA), an umbrella of Syrian rebel groups funded by Turkey, left Syria through the Hawar Kilis military border crossing on 24 December, followed by 350 more on 29 December.
They were then flown to Tripoli, the Libyan capital, where they have been posted to frontline positions in the east of the city.
Another 1,350 men crossed into Turkey on 5 January. Some have since been deployed to Libya with others still undergoing training at camps in southern Turkey. More men from the Islamist Sham Legion are also considering travelling to Libya.
The figures are significantly higher than most previous estimates.
Once source said the Syrian men are expected to coalesce into a division named after Libyan resistance leader Omar al-Mukhtar, who was executed by Italy in 1931 and became popular in Syria during the 2011 Arab spring.
The fighters have signed six-month contracts directly with the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA), rather than with the Turkish military, SNA sources said, for $2,000 (£1,500) a month – a vast sum compared with the 450-550 Turkish lira (£52-£72) a month they earn in Syria. All have been promised Turkish nationality, a carrot Ankara has used to cajole fighters in brigades on its payroll for several years.
Turkey is also paying medical bills for injured soldiers and is responsible for repatriating the dead to Syria. At least four Syrians have died in Libya already, the Guardian can confirm, although their units said they died while stationed on front lines against Kurdish-led forces in north-east Syria.
Last month phone footage of men with Syrian accents claiming to be in Tripoli surfaced on social media, in which one man said: “The Free Syrian Army is in Libya to defend Islam.”
“We liberated this entire military camp from Haftar’s forces,” said another, before turning to a colleague to ask: “What is his name? Haftar? Hantar?”
The footage was questioned by many who wondered how and why Syrian men – nominally still fighting in the nine-year-old war against Assad – had ended up so far from home.
Both Ankara and Tripoli have repeatedly denied the presence of Syrian fighters in Libya, as has the SNA. The Guardian understands that Syrian fighters in the country have since been banned from posting any evidence of their whereabouts to social media.
Turkey itself has so far sent just 35 soldiers to Tripoli in an advisory capacity, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said last week. Unlike last October’s incursion into Kurdish-held parts of Syria, intervention in Libya has little support among the Turkish public.
Speaking on Tuesday, however, after Haftar walked away from talks in Moscow without agreeing to a ceasefire, Erdoğan said Turkey would not refrain from “teaching a lesson he deserves” to the Libyan warlord.
Haftar is supported by Egypt, France, Jordan, Russia and the United Arab Emirates, while Sarraj is backed by Italy, Qatar and Turkey. Officials from Sarraj’s internationally recognised government have expressed anger that their allies, other than Turkey, have effectively abandoned them since Haftar declared his intention to capture Tripoli last April.
The GNA was reportedly initially reluctant to accept Syrian fighters instead of Turkish troops but accepted the idea when Haftar’s forces drew closer to the capital.
Last month, the Guardian reported that an influx of 3,000 Sudanese had been sent to Benghazi to fight for Haftar, joining around 600 Russian mercenaries, in another sign the conflict’s parameters are growing.
“Letting Syrian proxies do the fighting means that Ankara can avoid its own troops potentially clashing with Russian mercenaries,” said Gazzini. “The next question is – will [Russian President Vladimir] Putin continue to greenlight this? Or will Libya take a backseat if Russia and Turkey decide to prioritise their other overlapping strategic interests?”
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Thread by @ClaudiaGazzini: 1/29 For Libya, 2020 kicked off with a storm of fast-paced events, each overtaking the next: ➨ #Turkey authorized a military intervention ➨…
1/29 For Libya, 2020 kicked off with a storm of fast-paced events, each overtaking the next:
➨ #Turkey authorized a military intervention
➨ Haftar’s forces captured Sirte
➨ Turkey & #Russia called for a ceasefire.
What do these developments all mean? A THREAD
2/ Turkey’s decision to intervene directly in support of Libya’s UN-recognised gov’t comes in reaction to covert military support offered by Ankara’s Arab rivals and Russia to rebel forces led by General Khalifa Haftar.
3/ Since April, Haftar’s armed groups, the Libyan Arab Armed Forces or LAAF, aided by non-Libyan fighters, military experts and foreign airpower and funds, have been carrying out a military “operation to liberate Tripoli”.
4/ Haftar and his supporters, including Qadhafi-era personalities ousted in 2011 & the parallel East-based gov’t, say they seek to rid Tripoli of militias and unify the Libyan state that has been institutionally divided since 2014.
5/ The UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) in #Tripoli and its Libyan allies consider this an outright aggression and an attempt to subvert the political order in Libya and impose a return to military rule.
6/ Fighting in Tripoli has been stalemated for months with Haftar making minor gains in November with increased airstrikes.
The war has killed over 2,000 people, including more than 200 civilians, and displaced 200,000 more.
7/ In December, Tripoli requested direct military support from and .
But only Ankara agreed.
8/ On 2 January, Ankara authorised the military intervention in Libya.
Turkey aims to help Tripoli stop Haftar’s offensive and prevent the collapse of the GNA headed by Prime Minister Serraj.
9/ Turkish officials hope its military presence will rebalance power on the ground and create the conditions for a ceasefire.
But they also seek to protect geostrategic interests in the Mediterranean Sea, namely a maritime delimitation deal signed with Serraj in December.
10/ The maritime deal, which creates an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) , is key to Ankara’s ambition to block an East Med gas pipeline to Europe and disrupt an axis that includes and some EU countries that seek to contain Turkey in the region.
11/ Would Turkey have intervened so boldly without first securing the maritime deal? Possibly not.
Turkish officials I met in early November showed no sign that they were preoccupied with the military setbacks that Tripoli forces were incurring.
12/ They were instead supportive of the Berlin peace process. They had slowed military supplies to Tripoli in September, which in part led to Tripoli’s military setbacks.
But the maritime deal changed Turkey’s calculations.
13/ So far there has been no major Turkish deployment.
Only a few army officers & some new equipment, mainly air defenses, have arrived. Reports suggest fighters from Syrian Free Army have also arrived, although Tripoli denies their presence.
14/ Nevertheless, pro-GNA personalities remain confident that Turkish military support will make a strategic and military difference.
This has bolstered the feeling that a counteroffensive to push back Haftar forces or even strike them in East Libya is on the cards.
15/ This week, GNA forces managed to carry out an airstrike against the Haftar-controlled airport of Wutiya in western Libya.
But mainly the GNA suffered setbacks.
16/ An airstrike by Haftar’s forces on a GNA military academy in Tripoli killed 30, further inflaming public rhetoric against Haftar.
After initially taking responsibility, Haftar’s forces denied the strike & blamed terrorists.
17/ On 7 January, Haftar won the coastal city of Sirte in central Libya from the GNA.
The pro-GNA forces from Misrata that were stationed there withdrew without a fight.
18/ The capture of Sirte is the first serious military advance by Haftar’s forces in months.
The surprise is not that he took Sirte, but rather that he waited so long to do so. It is strategically located with vast airbase, and has symbolic status as former Qadhafi stronghold.
19/ As expected, a Sirte-based armed group called Brigade 604 welcomed Haftar’s arrival. It kept ties to Haftar after a number of its fighters joined his forces in 2015.
Arabic spkers will enjoy a recording the brigade issued explaining their position
bit.ly/35yZdvD20/ The Turkish build-up, and the takeover of Sirte, highlight two major risks:
➨ Haftar could now move to take Misrata while pro-GNA factions prepare for a counterattack.
➨ Arab nationalist sentiments could ignite a jihad against Turkey’s “neo-Ottoman ambitions”
21/ Meanwhile, the UN has renewed calls for de-escalation and for foreign powers to convene in Berlin-hosted talks that it has been pursuing since September last year.
22/ Yesterday – out of the blue – Russian President Putin and Turkish counterpart Erdogan announced a joint call for a ceasefire in Libya starting this Sunday as well as their support for political negotiations.
23/ While calls for a ceasefire are always welcome, some questions remain:
➨ Were there consultations with Libyan partners?
➨ Is the ceasefire unconditional or will it follow the withdrawal of forces?
➨ Are other regional Haftar-backers on board?
24/ Sources in Tripoli are still confident that Turkey will not sell them out. They say Ankara remains supportive of their demands for Haftar to withdraw to the pre-April positions and be excluded from political talks.
In any case, they vow to fight on.
25/ Haftar’s forces have shown no sign of supporting the ceasefire, at least so far.
In apparent defiance, they yesterday declared a no-fly zone over Western Libya, including Tripoli airport Meitiga. Talk of their continuing advance to Tripoli is still in air. [continues]
26/ Egypt reacted coldly to the Turkish-Russian announcement.
Cairo and Moscow have close military ties, but has its own set of geopolitical and counterterrorism priorities in . It is unlikely to remain passive in the face of a TU-RU deal, if it goes against its interests.
27/ TU-RU’s call for a ceasefire is more a statement of intent rather than a deal that is certain to materialise.
But whether this will be respected or not, closer cooperation between Moscow & Ankara could enable both to scale down their involvement and avoid further escalation
28/ What all sides need to watch out for at this point is how Cairo and Washington react.
A scheduled meeting between the US delegation & Haftar is taking place today.
29/ To sum up, Libya remains in a state of uncertainty. The risk of escalation remains real, as intersecting geopolitical interests collide and the chances of persuading the parties to go to the negotiating table remain relatively low.
But always, inshallah kheir. 1/29
