As previously reported in MEB (“Libya on the Brink of the Full-blown Civil War?”), General Khalifa Haftar, the head of the Libyan National Army (LNA), seized control over the three vital oil ports in the country’s “oil crescent” on September 11, driving out the Petroleum Facilities Guard (PFG) of Ibrahim Jathran, in a military route that resulted in little bloodshed. For more than two years, Jathran’s militia had controlled the ports at Ras Lanuf, al-Sidra and Zueitina, and had kept them shut, resulting in an estimated loss of revenue from oil exports of over $100 billion.
Since taking over the three ports, General Haftar, who is backed by the House of Representatives (HOR) government-in-internal exile in Tobruk, has reopened the ports, and already 1.2 million barrels of oil, much of it stored in reserve for the past several years, have been shipped to Italy and Spain in two shipments. The first shipment left port at Ras Lanuf on September 21, just ten days after Haftar’s forces established control. General Haftar has vowed to maintain security at the oil ports, and has turned over the operations to Libya’s National Oil Corporation (NOC). Most important, the payments for the oil deliveries were received at the Libyan Central Bank, which is under the control of the Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli. The HOR has, so far, refused to recognize the GNA as the legitimate government of the country. Nevertheless, General Haftar has permitted the NOC and the Central Bank to handle the export transactions and has, thus, earned the widespread support of the Libyan people.
General Haftar is playing a sophisticated “long game,” aimed at assuring his own position of power, while helping to avert an otherwise inevitable resumption of bloody civil war that benefits no Libyan faction.
By working with the NOC and the Central Bank in kick-starting Libya’s petroleum sector, General Haftar has generated urgently needed revenue at a critical moment in the country’s shaky progress towards stability. And while General Haftar has continued to criticize the GNA as a United Nations-imposed slap at Libya’s national sovereignty, it appears that a four-way deal has been struck between the General, the NOC, the Central Bank and the GNA.
The day that the first shipment of oil to Italy left port, the NOC announced that it had received a payment of $224 million (310 million Libyan dinars) from the United Nations-backed Presidential Council (the executive body of the GNA), to cover the costs of urgently needed repairs at Ras Lanuf and the other two oil port facilities. The Presidential Council pledged two more payments before the end of the year of $224 million each.
The rival Misurata militias, which are backing the GNA in Tripoli, are in the final stage of driving the last remaining Islamic State (ISIL) fighters out of Sirte. President Barack Obama, at the request of the GNA’s Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj, has approved a third month of U.S. military support to the anti-ISIL effort, which consists largely of close air support for the Misurata militia fighters, and some limited Special Forces ground intelligence assistance.
On October 1-2, U.S. pilots carried out 20 air strikes against Islamic State positions inside the last two remaining neighborhoods of Sirte, under ISIL control. Marine Corps AH-1W Super Cobra attack helicopters and Harrier jets have been flying most of the manned missions off of the USS Wasp, an amphibious assault ship sitting off of the Libyan coast. A second U.S. warship, the destroyer USS Carney, is serving as the escort ship and has provided further cover for the Misurata militia ground operations. The close air and artillery support is vital, because the last remaining ISIL fighters in Sirte are maintaining sniper positions on rooftops that can only be attacked from the air.
The success against ISIL has reduced the threat of terrorist attacks on vital oil facilities, including pipelines, refineries and the ports. This further opens the prospect of oil production reaching a level of one million barrels a day by early 2017 (as of this week, it has reached 450,000 barrels a day). Prior to the outbreak of civil war in 2011, Libyan oil production had reached 1.6 million barrels a day. Libya has the largest proven oil reserves on the African continent, estimated at 48 billion barrels.
The timing of General Haftar’s action also coincides with a looming deadline for Prime Minister al-Sarraj to name a new government. On September 27, al-Sarraj announced that he would be appointing General Haftar or some of his closest aides to posts in the new cabinet. “We have no other choice but dialogue and reconciliation,” al-Sarraj told AFP during a late September visit to Paris. “We should be united to fight the terrorism that is spreading in Libya.”
During al-Sarraj’s stop-over in Paris, where he met with President Francois Hollande, the French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told a parliamentary commission that he had asked Egypt and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to broker a meeting between the UN-backed prime minister and General Haftar, who enjoys close relations with both the UAE and Egypt.
On September 8, the Obama Administration’s special envoy for Libya, Jonathan Winer held a meeting with representatives of General Haftar and the GNA, aimed at reaching a deal on renewing oil exports and bringing together both sides in a unity government.
Later in September, a top aide to General Haftar, Abdel Badri, traveled to Moscow, where he met with Mikhail Bogdanov, Deputy Foreign Minister and President Vladimir Putin’s special envoy to the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). General Haftar had been in Moscow himself in June. While reports on the Badri-Bogdanov meeting are sketchy, the subject of a Russian initiative to have the United Nations arms embargo on Libya lifted, to allow weapons to flow officially into the hands of the Libyan National Army, did reportedly come up.
While nothing is yet settled regarding the future governance of Libya, and the country is still a long way off from reviving its potentially vast oil sector, what is clear is that General Khalifa Haftar has successfully positioned himself as the “go to” man for all international parties looking to bring some measure of security to Libya and to the neighboring states of the Maghreb region.