UN snubs Libyan appeal for help

Libya’s new parliament has called for an immediate United Nations-monitored ceasefire among its warring militias, but it is unclear whether the UN will accept the role.

In its first act since coming to power, the House of Representatives meeting in the eastern city of Tobruk called on Wednesday for an end to fighting that has turned its principle cities, Tripoli and Benghazi, into war zones, leaving several hundred dead.

Battles rage in both cities, with civilian districts being shelled, airports wrecked, hospitals overwhelmed and foreign diplomats fleeing.

With Libya’s government having no security forces of its own, many Libyans see some form of foreign intervention as the only solution.

In July foreign minister, Mohammed Abdul Aziz, asked the UN Security Council to send military advisors, but found no takers. The UN did not reject the request, but neither did it say yes.

Calls for UN intervention were backed this week by French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy, who performed a key advisory role in the decision by former French president Nicholas Sarkozy to join a NATO coalition supporting Libya’s rebels with air strikes in the war of 2011.

“It is five minutes to midnight, but it is not too late,” Levy wrote in the British New Statesman. “An international force mandated by the United Nations would be welcomed with open arms and would have little trouble taming the death squads.”

Formally, the UN has the power to intervene if, as is the case, civilians are being hit in the wild fighting raging in Libya. That power comes from UN resolution 1973, which cleared the way for NATO strikes that toppled Muammar Gaddafi.

But the reality now is more complicated. The victorious militias of the revolution are now fighting each other, with munitions from both sides striking civilian targets.

“Potentially you could end up having to bomb all sides, it would be messy,” said one foreign diplomat.

The same problem confronts Libya’s attempts to persuade the UN to deploy troops, be they peacekeepers or ceasefire monitors.

Last month the UN evacuated its 200 staff from Tripoli as fighting worsened, followed in recent days by the United States and other embassies. Warships from Britain, France and Greece have plucked several hundred foreigners from Tripoli, leaving almost no foreign officials on Libyan soil.

The international community has backed the parliament, the House of Representatives, and support for its ceasefire proposal came on Wednesday in a joint statement from the US and North African countries at a summit in Washington DC which expressed “deep concern” about the fighting.

But so far there have been no offers of assistance.

The battles are between two loose coalitions, one comprising Islamists joined with militias from Misrata, Libya’s third largest city. Its forces are pitted against a range of tribal forces and sections of the small army and air force.

In Tripoli, a three-week offensive by Misratan and Islamist units against Zintan tribal militias has failed to capture the city airport, although the bombardment has left it smoking ruin. Zintani units have strengthened their positions in the south west of the city in recent days, capturing a key Islamist base, Camp 27, which guards the coastal highway to Tunisia, after a joint attack with artillery support from Washafani tribal militias west of the capital. Allied militias have also arrived from the southern ethnic Tobu tribe to bolster the front lines, leaving the Misratans and Islamists holding central and eastern Tripoli, and the Zintani-led forces holding much of the south-west.

Four hundred miles east, an alliance of Islamist forces, including Ansar Al Sharia, who are blamed by Washington for the killing of its ambassador Chris Stevens two years ago, have captured three army bases in Benghazi.

The capture represents a significant victory for Islamist brigades, who have been under attack from a combined force of army, air force and the militia of former general Khalifa Hiftar since May 16.

One problem confronting all sides is the lack of offensive military hardware they can deploy. The fighting is done by militias who have only a handful of ancient tanks and few armored vehicles, making it difficult to assault enemy positions without frontal attacks by infantry, a tactic abandoned by most armies last century.

Instead, each army has begun relying on long-distance attacks using tanks, artillery, and hundreds of grad artillery rockets, resulting in stalemate and high civilian casualties.

Another complication is that the Islamist-Misrata coalition is refusing to recognize the new parliament. This coalition held power in the former parliament, the General National Congress, but captured only 30 of the 200 seats in the new parliament.

Those 30 lawmakers are staying away, insisting the House of Representatives is unconstitutional because it refused to participate in a formal handover ceremony this week with the former congress in war-ravaged Tripoli.

They have the support of the Grand Mufti, Libya’s highest spiritual leader, who declared from London that the new parliament was unconstitutional, making it unlikely the coalition will obey parliament’s ceasefire call.

One lawmaker, speaking off the record, said parliament, having demanded a ceasefire, may go a step further, and cut funding for the militias refusing to accept it.

A striking aspect of the current fighting is that all the militias, including Ansar Al Sharia, who publicly oppose democracy itself, are paid by the government, and enjoy official status as government security forces. The handsome pay packets have seen numbers swell to nearly quarter of a million, each funded by different parties in the former congress.  Cutting their status, and pay, would deal a damaging blow to the militias, but not a fatal one, as they remain in being and well-armed.

Meanwhile, Libya continues to disintegrate. The Misratan bombardment has left Tripoli airport a smashed ruin, with 21 planes, representing much of Libya’s commercial fleet, wrecked. Benghazi airport is also wrecked, and the fighting has also put in question promises that rebels would end a year-long blockade of oil ports.

Tripoli’s hospitals are in crisis with drugs running short and a mass evacuation by Fillipino doctors and nurses, who make up much of the medical staff, after one nurse was kidnapped last week. Power cuts are blanketing the country and four thousand Libyans are crossing into Tunisia each day desperate for safety.

If there is intervention, it may come from neighbours Algeria and Egypt. Both governments are wary of jihadist groups based in Libya, fearing they will use Libya as a springboard for cross-border attacks. 

In January last year an Al Qaida affiliated group did just that, crossing from Libya to strike Algeria’s In Amenas gas plant, killing 50 workers.  Egypt says units crossing from Libya were responsible for the killing of 21 border guards close to the frontier last month. Its former foreign minister Amr Moussa called in a statement on August 3 for Egypt to “build the necessary support in case we have to exercise our right to self-defence.”

An invasion by either country would likely target Islamist units, and Algerian and Egyptian mechanized brigades have the combat power to overwhelm the more lightly-armed militias. But an invasion would be highly controversial, both internationally and in Libya, where it might provoke a popular backlash.