Libya Truce in ‘Name Only’ as Foreign Troops and Arms Pour In

(Bloomberg) -- The hard-won truce in Libya is all but dead as foreign powers ship in fighters and weapons, making a mockery of their commitments to the cease-fire and risking a broader conflict, the United Nations envoy said Thursday.

In his briefing to the UN Security Council, Ghassan Salame painted a bleak portrait of truce violations that led to the deaths of several school children in shelling this week, and warned that the conflict could trigger a wave of refugees and disrupt energy supplies from Africa’s largest proven oil reserves.

“There are unscrupulous actors inside and outside Libya who cynically nod and wink toward efforts to promote peace,” Salame said at the briefing, without naming the countries he blamed. “Meanwhile, they continue to double down on a military solution, raising the frightening specter of a full-scale conflict and further misery for the Libyan people.”

The 10 months of conflict since eastern commander Khalifa Haftar began his offensive on Tripoli have seen more than 2,000 people killed and tens of thousands displaced. The first significant hit to Libya’s energy industry came when Haftar’s forces shut down ports in show of strength ahead of peace talks in Berlin on Jan. 19.

“The truce holds in name only,” Salame said.

The United Arab Emirates and Egypt have been backing Haftar as he advances on Tripoli, while Turkey has been sending troops and supplies to the internationally recognized government.

Their proxy war has inflamed regional and international rivalries, with Turkey parlaying its support for the Tripoli-based administration into a maritime agreement that supports its claims to gas rich waters off the Greek island of Crete.

There have been regular cargo flights from the U.A.E. to eastern Libya where Haftar’s forces are based, according to flight tracking websites. More than 1,400 Russian mercenaries headed by a confidant of Russian President Vladimir Putin are also backing Haftar on the ground, western officials say.

On the other side, they estimate that Turkey has sent about 2,000 Syrian militiamen to back the UN-backed government. Turkish naval frigates also accompanied a cargo ship that unloaded fighting vehicles in Tripoli this week, a Libyan security official said.

Air Defense Systems

Over the past month, Turkey has also moved in advanced air-defense systems to protect government installations from airstrikes conducted by the U.A.E., Libyan and western diplomats said. That deployment has evened out the balance of power in the conflict. Before the two sides agreed a truce in early January, Haftar was making advances.

“We’ve seen an uptick in fighting and strikes with heavy artillery over the past week,” said Claudia Gazzini, the International Crisis Group’s senior Libya analyst. “Will this actually constitute an outright escalation is another question. I expect low intensity fighting -- deadly fighting, of course -- in the next few weeks.”

The Libyan rivals had agreed a truce after Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan resolved to end the conflict at a meeting in Istanbul. But that deal would have elbowed out neighbor Egypt, which views Libya as its backyard, and the U.A.E., which has blamed the Tripoli government for supporting Islamists.

An Arab official familiar with the topic said the war effort would likely continue so long as Turkey maintained a presence in Libya -- while Erdogan has warned that Turkey would teach Haftar a “lesson” if he continued his offensive.

To contact the reporters on this story: Samer Khalil Al-Atrush in Cairo at skhalilalatr@bloomberg.net;Mohammed Abdusamee in Cairo at mabdusamee@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Lin Noueihed at lnoueihed@bloomberg.net, Ben Sills, Mark Williams

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