After Daesh defeat in Sirt, war in Libya is not over: the trap is in the south of the country.
A more decisive military intervention in Libya could be effective on the coast but will destabilize the inland and cause the collapse of the entire region. It is therefore important that military leaders do not underestimate the risks of a possible escape of Islamic extremism to the south
The Ouagadougou conference center of Sirte, built by EMACO (ex Enterprise was Emaco subsidiary with Administration city), former base Isis recaptured by the Misurati troops of Serraj
Despite the retreat from Sirte, the self-styled Islamic State - also in trouble in Syria and Iraq - directly retains several key provinces control: the Libyan coast from the borders of the oil installations 40 km west of Sirte to Al Sidr, Tikah the area south of Benghazi, the coast between Battah and the suburbs of Derna. But the self-proclaimed caliphate also governs Sabratah and then Ra's Ajdir on the Tunisian border. The interior holds numerous strongholds; the largest province is located in Bani Waled area. To these are added a myriad of other areas, each under the control of some of the many tribes and more or less directly connected to the Islamist terrorism.
The American bombing to be effective and have enabled ground troops loyal to the government of national agreement in Tripoli to regain almost entirely Sirte, where the caliphate had set up their headquarters right in the complex of Ouagadougou, the command center built by Gaddafi.
But it looks increasingly unlikely that the unified national unity government recognized by the UN can - without a strong external help - unite the nation and deploy an army capable of eliminating the threat posed by Isis, by Ansar al-Sharia and the numerous tribes extremist. At the moment, it is considered inevitable substantially wider military intervention under UN guidance and more or less officially requested by the government in power.
The tribal mosaic
After the Libyan revolution of 2011, the tribal conflicts repressed by Gaddafi for forty years are effectively re-exploded. Numerous militias were established in a mosaic of areas restricted by substituting the inexistent state authorities. For five years each tightens with its neighbors ephemeral alliances alternating with bloody conflicts in line with the interests of the leaders of the moment. While monitoring in the northern region - where various oil terminals - allows to have a clear view of the forces at work on the coast, is not so clear the strategic situation in the areas far from the Mediterranean and ethnic relations, religious and political tribes that control them.
Terrorist groups are concentrated on the coast and threaten cities, ports and oil infrastructures, but they understood the strategic importance and the interior of the vast reserves of energy and water vital for the survival of the entire region.
Who controls the south decides whether Tripoli and Benghazi can turn on the light or turn on water and if workers can receive their salaries. But also controls the trade arteries, arms smuggling, drug trafficking, armed militants and waves of desperate people willing to risk their lives to reach the Mediterranean and cross it.
Despite the retreat from Sirte, Isis has several key provinces control: the Libyan coast from the borders of the oil installations 40 kilometers west of Sirte to Al Sidr, the Tikah area south of Benghazi, the coast between Battah and the suburbs of Derna. But also Sabratah and then Ra's Ajdir on the Tunisian border. The interior holds a myriad of other areas under the control of the many tribes linked to Islamist terrorism
The military situation
France, Italy, United Kingdom and United States have already - in the air or on the ground - special unit training tasks and monitoring, and limited interventions, but are considering more and more seriously on a larger scale intervention aimed at eliminating the Islamic State and stop the waves of refugees. After the wars in the Gulf, no nation is ready to return to see planeloads of coffins, but it is not at all clear that foreign intervention would cause an aversion of the Libyan population already suffering from past experience, but also a marked expansion of Isis that aims as a defender of Islam and the country against the hordes of the colonialists infidels.
Geography and infrastructure
Libya is composed of three main regions: Tripolitania in Northwest, Cyrenaica in the east, the Fezzan in the southwest. While the settlements, foreign interests and energy terminals are located along the coast, most of the water reserves and Libya's energy found in the south, an area of rocky plateaus (hamadat) and sand seas end (Ramlat) , dotted with small oases and occasional lakes. The mountain areas include the Tadrart Acacsus near Ghat in Fezzan, Bikku Mitti mountains along the border with Chad, and the Jabal Uwaynat in the southeast. The average temperature above 30 degrees and the sand storms have always kept away foreign armies. In addition, a network of dried up beds of ancient rivers drains the water produced by the rare rains and is commonly used to hide the movement of troops and convoys of smugglers.
The Great Man-Made River era Gaddafi collects immense fossil water reserves trapped Nubian sandstone aquifer that lies beneath the desert and through a network of smaller aqueducts, feeds the towns and agricultural areas along the Mediterranean. It is the largest aqueduct in the world, stretches for 4000 km carrying six million cubic meters of water daily from south to north along two parallel channels that start from Fezzan and Kufra. 70% of the Libyan population depends on this infrastructure, and underground piping in concrete can easily be interrupted at any point of the route.
Neglecting the offshore oil fields (Eni ones are defended by the Sea Safe operation forces of the Navy) there are five large oil and gas fields: Ghadames / Berkine (in the desert of Tripoli), Sirte (the largest on the coast) , Murzuq (in the center of Fezzan), the large Cyrenaica platform and finally, Kufra (in the deep south of Cyrenaica).
The roads used to connect the southern settlements with the coast unite with each other oases that offer water and eateries. The networks of aqueducts, oil and gas pipelines crossing the desert following the same paths leading to the strategic importance of the oases, villages and mountain passes crossing.
While the settlements, foreign interests and energy terminals are located along the coast, most of the water reserves and Libya's energy found in the south
TRIBES & ETHNIC GROUPS
The Arabs settled in the south fear the arrival from abroad of tens of thousands of non-Arab, such as the Tuareg and Tubu. On the other hand, they feel threatened by the Arabs. The Tubu, natives of Central Africa, coming from the northeast of Niger, the extreme southern Libya but, above all, from the Tibesti Mountains in northern Chad. The Tuareg are a Berber indigenous group dispersed in various confederations and spread in much of the Sahel and the Sahara, where they maintain control of the connections across the desert. In Libya, the Tuareg are mainly settled in the southwest and are part of the Kel Ajjar confederation extending to eastern Algeria.
Strategic areas in the southern region
During the Ottoman Empire, the Italian colonial period and the Gaddafi regime, the inaccessible southern Libya constituted a safe haven for tribal groups, religious and political conflict with the regime of the moment. Now it offers working space to extremist groups driven from neighboring areas such as northern Mali. In anticipation of a military intervention to remove the caliphate from the coastal regions, the nerve nodes of southern Libyan described above can be both a haven for terrorists is a point from which to build new bases can indirectly control the energy infrastructure and the life same coastal cities.
In addition, the south of Libya includes about a thousand kilometers of porous border with Algeria and the same with Chad, as well as approximately 400 kilometers with both the Sudan with Niger. Most of the Libyan tribes has derived no profit from the exploitation of oil fields in the southern areas, but bases its "gross domestic product" on the smuggling of people, weapons and drugs. From here Jiihadisti can connect to other terrorist groups in the entire basin of the Sahel.
A military intervention on the coast can easily unleash the tribes of southern Libya. But this can lead to destabilization of the entire region through the uncontrolled infiltration of terrorists in a zone characterized by the dangerous combination of a network of vital economic installations and by the total absence of central control
In conclusion, a military intervention on the coast can easily unleash the tribes of southern Libya. But this can lead to destabilization of the entire region through the uncontrolled infiltration of terrorists in a zone characterized by the dangerous combination of a network of vital economic installations and by the total absence of central control. Foreign intervention in a historically hostile area by both foreign regimes as the central government, it can pull together this mosaic of tribes hostile to each other and weld them with jihadist extremism bringing the conflict in a huge region from which it is unlikely to be flushed out.
As long as a government of national unity will settle and be recognized by most of the population and can not deploy military units recognized instead of local militias, the water and energy infrastructure of the entire region will be an easy target - and at the same time a meeting point - to terrorists, insurgents and criminal organizations throughout central Africa.
The IS was a calming , attracting him that the international spotlight has overshadowed the real problems of Libya, which is now returning all afloat while Baghdadi followers crumble under the advancing militias loyal to the government of Tripoli and bombs dropped by US planes: the lack of liquidity, the budget that is falling apart, the continuous and prolonged power outages, hospital closures; but also the situation of the sovereign fund, the oil companies and the Central Bank, the institutions that should be anchors of hope for the people and instead are a battleground for internal rift.
Despite the prime minister planned by the peace process conveyed by the United Nations, Fayez Serraj , both in Libya for months, getting a relative power: has the credibility and the almost complete diplomatic support (except for Russia and Egypt and a few others), but in Libya can not rule over a large chunk of the eastern country, Cyrenaica, where, however, according to the UN project called Libyan Political Agreement (Lpa), should reach the final vote endorsing its legitimacy of government. But from the East they arrive only shifts to agendas regionalized (led in part from Cairo). The military, responding to orders from the armed wing of the Eastern problem , Khalifa Haftar , not fighting in Sirte, but they try to liberate Benghazi (and Derna), which feed on direct interests; politics, led by Saleh Agila HoR president, the parliament in exile in Tobruk that still has the legitimacy of the popular vote received two years ago (and for the passage of Lpa is a necessary tool to fully function Serraj) , boycott any kind of assembly, in order to postpone that vote that would allow Tripoli to form a permanent government. The future intentions of leaving power: the HoR has moved to a new building.
THE "HEADACHE" LIBYAN
Missy Ryan, in an article in the Washington Post, the headline "A former CIA agent has become a headache for the United States in Libya" writes that Americans and allies "can not understand what to do with Haftar"; the reference to the CIA is due to the long residence of the American general, during which he worked with the Central Intelligence as a person informed of the facts Libyans, persecuted by the regime after a sort of mutiny / repudiation in Chad, and anti-Islamist certificate (they were the years in which Washington hunted terrorists linked to Gaddafi Gaddafi). With men of the Islamic State defeated in Sirte, the main obstacle to the current project of peace and democracy in Libya (dream dance from 2011, when it was the same general to make a contribution in overthrowing the regime, then return to Virginia to "enjoying the grandchildren" as he confessed to the New Yorker ) seems to be Heftar, who fights according to their own agenda in Cyrenaica, where in 2014 he announced a crooked sort of coup, and this gets armed wing of the interests of Europe country (sponsored by Egypt of General): the East after the failure coup that was mocked succumbed to its charm and the military has put in charge of the military forces. "Even if there was unity of thought within the US government, we did not have the ability to marginalizzarlo and we were not able to integrate it," said an unnamed official at WaPo: "It's a free electron." At his side have sided men of the French special forces, who have links with the Egyptians, but also Americans and probably Italian, engaged in horseback missions between the intelligence and military advising, because what you're doing in Cyrenaica not Haftar it can be left uncovered; "Regional support is a key factor," said Frederic Wehrey , a Libya expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
THE WAR FOR OIL
Last week the UN envoy Martin Kobler, the man who more than any other has exposed his face because the international community asserted Serraj, admitted in an interview with the Swiss Neue Zuercher Zeitung that the support for the government units (Jon) "is slipping away", and this can mean the reopening of an internal military dispute, which could also go to support jihadist groups, which, according to the reconstructions of the Wall Street Journal are trying to regroup in the south in order to reorganize clandestinely, covering shifts with waves of suicide operations. It was precisely the General Haftar to give another sign of this can drift inside, announcing that his troops, that General freelance calls so foolhardy Libyan National Army (Lna), will undertake to secure the oil fields. The risk is huge, while the Tripoli government is trying to revive the trade of crude oil, which is the main economic asset of the country in crisis: if the militia led by Cyrenaica Haftar should be located in areas where there are Eastern militias , or rather those who support Tripoline or misuratine Serraj, or those of oil Pfg militia, armed confrontation may be unavoidable, given that these groups hate the more extensive the longitudinal distance that separates them. It all started after July 31 Presidential Council led by Serraj had announced plans to reopen the ports Zueitina, Es Sider and Ras Lanuf (closed in January for safety reasons: they had been subject to attacks of the SI) signing a security agreement with the controversial Pfg of Ibrahim Jadrhan . The leadership of the NOC, the oil company, which have also turned their noses to the presence of Jadhran, had spoken of an ambitious plan to triple the annual productions, still three years around 300 thousand barrels daily. Cyrenaica, however, claims the operation of a parallel structure (illegitimate), the so-called Noc-Benghazi, which would have rights to the wells (which are almost all in the eastern part of the country) and considers Pfg militias "outlaw forces" and thus It would ban the entry of export ships for cargoes to ports. The governments of France, Germany, Italy, Spain, United Kingdom and the United States issued a few days ago, a joint statement with which to support the decision to Serraj, excommunicate any non-centralized initiative (ie, delegitimize the Noc-Benghazi) and you say "concerned" about the situation of Zuetina, which is as close to Benghazi port where a LNA brigade has penetrated up to deal with the blockade of the port.
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