An interview in Russian state media Tuesday indicates that one of Libya’s rival governments is looking increasingly to Moscow as a patron, a move that’s concerning U.S. military commanders in the region.
Aguila Saleh, speaker of the House of Representatives (HoR), told RIA Novosti, a Kremlin-controlled news agency, that he’s asked Russia to help train Libyan National Army fighters led by General Khalifa Haftar and has invited Russian lawmakers to visit eastern Libya.
Most of our officers were trained in Russia and many speak Russian, and they know how to use Russian equipment, Saleh is reported as saying. He promised Libya will pay $4 billion in Gadhafi-era military debt owed to Russia and added the Kremlin has promised to help in the fight against terrorism.
FILE – President of the Libyan House of Representatives Aguila Saleh attends the closing session of an Arab summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, in the South Sinai governorate, south of Cairo, March 29, 2015.
FILE – President of the Libyan House of Representatives Aguila Saleh attends the closing session of an Arab summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, in the South Sinai governorate, south of Cairo, March 29, 2015.
His remarks come just a day after the Kremlin denied multiple reports that a team of Russian special forces and drones have been deployed to a military base in Egypt near the Libyan border — part of a push by Moscow to support renegade military commander Haftar, U.S. military commanders think.
The Libyan National Army (LNA) is loyal to the HoR, but Haftar is an independent-minded commander who doesn’t always see eye-to-eye with HoR politicians.
Russia connections
According to Saleh, the Kremlin has promised to treat wounded LNA soldiers in Russia. He disclosed that a delegation from the HoR will visit Moscow shortly. The HoR has withheld support from the U.N.-brokered and internationally recognized Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli.
The Reuters news agency, citing both Egyptian and U.S. officials, reported Monday that that a 22-member Russian special force unit had been deployed to the Egyptian airbase Sidi Barrani, 100 kilometers from the Libyan border.
But Russian lawmakers dubbed the report fake news, and the deputy chairman of the Russian Duma’s defense panel, Andrei Krasov, dismissed the report as a deliberate act of misinformation.
Egyptian officials also denied the claims. There is no foreign soldier from any foreign country on Egyptian soil, Egyptian army spokesman Tamer Al-Rifai said.
Saleh’s interview, though, will add to the alarm of U.S. military commanders.
FILE – Marine Gen. Thomas Waldhauser is seen at Camp Pendleton, Calif., March 30, 2012. Last week in Washington, Waldhauser, the head of U.S. Africa Command, talked to lawmakers on the Senate Armed Services Committee
FILE – Marine Gen. Thomas Waldhauser is seen at Camp Pendleton, Calif., March 30, 2012. Last week in Washington, Waldhauser, the head of U.S. Africa Command, talked to lawmakers on the Senate Armed Services Committee
Last week in Washington, Gen. Thomas Waldhauser, the head of U.S. Africa Command, told lawmakers on the Senate Armed Services Committee: Russia is trying to exert influence on the ultimate decision of who becomes and what entity becomes in charge of the government inside Libya.
Syrian scenario
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham then asked whether Moscow is trying to do in Libya what it has been doing in Syria, which has been to manipulate a political outcome. Waldhauser responded: Yes, that’s a good way to characterize it.
General Haftar toured a Russian warship in January and held talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Moscow in November.
Analysts say Russia appears to playing all sides in the conflict in Libya. Earlier this month, the prime minister of the GNA, Fayez al-Sarraj, held talks with Russian officials in Moscow.
While it’s too early to tell if Russia has chosen sides in the ongoing Libyan conflict, it is clear that Moscow has decided to expand its stake there, said Ilan Berman, vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council, a Washington-based think tank.
Just as importantly, it’s evident that the various political parties have begun to view the Kremlin as a key power broker – and have begun to act accordingly,” Berman told VOA.
Lia Quartapelle, an Italian lawmaker and member of the foreign affairs committee in Italy’s parliament, said she thinks Moscow is looking to cement a role in Libya ahead of any policy shift toward Libya by U.S. President Donald Trump.
Libya
Libya
Italian politicians say Russia’s mounting interest in Libya appears be part of a larger bid to rekindle Soviet-era influence in the Middle East and North Africa.
Five years after Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi, who oversaw a four-decade-long republic of fear, was ousted in a NATO-backed popular uprising, three governments are still embroiled in a deadly competition for power in the North African country.
Tripoli-based government
Last year, with the backing of Western powers, the U.N. oversaw the formation of the Tripoli-based GNA. But two rump parliaments, a mainly Islamist dominated General National Congress in Tripoli, and the HoR, which backs General Haftar, have withheld support from the GNA.
The high revolutionary hopes of 2012 have been dashed as the country struggles with militia and crime-based violence, the rise of an Islamic State affiliate and sharp ideological and regional divisions.
This week, violence intensified in the Libyan capital, where the children’s ward of Tripoli’s Hadba Hospital was hit by a missile and clashes escalated near the Rixos Hotel between local armed groups and militias from the powerful town of Misrata, who have occupied part of the city.
On Tuesday, rocket-propelled grenades struck a high-rise office building as well as the Marriott Hotel in a business district. Key junctions in the city have been blocked by barricades, say residents.
In February a bleak assessment by European border officials of the turmoil in Libya cast doubt on the prospects for European Union efforts to work more closely with authorities in the strife-torn country to curb migration flows across the Mediterranean.
The report by officials with the EU Border Assistance Mission in Libya painted a grim picture of factional dysfunction and chaos within Libyan law enforcement bodies and its ministries, which are barely operating.
Due to the absence of a functioning national government, genuine and legitimate state structures are difficult to identify, in particular, given the dynamic and ever-changing landscape of loyalties, the officials said in their 56-page report, which was leaked to the website statewatch.org.
EU governments and the United States have urged General Haftar to hand back the ports of Ras Lanuf and al-Sidra, two of Libya’s main oil terminals, which his forces captured recently.
In a joint statement they expressed strong concern regarding violence in the oil crescent, adding that the oil facilities belong to the Libyan people and must remain under the exclusive control of central authorities.
Source: Voice of America
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UN Report: Rights Violations, Fighting Spike in South Sudan
In a new report presented to the United Nations Human Rights Council, a top U.N. official warned that conditions in South Sudan have gone from bad to worse in the last few months, and urged the council to launch a new investigation into potential human rights violations.
Yasmin Sooka, chairperson of the Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan, also said a hybrid court, agreed to in a 2015 peace agreement, should be operational by the end of this year.
During a regular session of the Human Rights Council Tuesday, Sooka told observers that unlawful arrests and detentions, torture, rape and killings have become the norm in South Sudan, the world’s youngest country.
What’s chilling is that they are occurring in many more parts of the country than before. Whole villages burnt to ashes, attacks on hospitals and churches, bodies dumped in rivers, allegations of young girls held as sexual slaves, women, young and old, gang raped and boys and men forcibly recruited, Sooka said.
The U.N. official is calling for an impartial and independent investigation to be launched by the United Nations to look into reports of crimes committed in South Sudan. Sooka said that unfortunately, impunity is the norm in South Sudan, so the mere knowledge that credible information is being gathered can act as a deterrent to future rights violations.
Government often seen as culprit
In the last nine months alone, Sooka said, there has been a massive increase in gross human rights violations and abuses, as well as an escalation in fighting in many parts of the country, putting millions of lives at risk. She indicated to the council that the government is often behind such abuse.
The government has also conducted a brutal campaign of repression to silence civil society. Journalists who write about the daily suffering of South Sudanese citizens find themselves accused of being the enemy of the state. Civil society activists and their families are threatened,” she said. “The commission regrets that many U.N. and IGAD monitoring staff have been detained by the National Security Service – some for nearly three years – despite repeated demands from the U.N. for access and their release. These are employees of international and regional bodies who have been accused of opposition sympathies and detained without charge.
She also said South Sudanese officials repeatedly obstruct and manipulate humanitarians from reaching people in need, and reported the commission has found a pattern of ethnic cleansing and population engineering in the country.
When the commission visited the northern town of Malakal we saw how the redrawing of state boundary lines had helped depopulate the town of its Shilluk and Nuer inhabitants,” Sooka said. “Civil servants had been forcibly relocated out of the town on the basis of their ethnicity. The commission has been subsequently told that a number of Dinka, who fled Yei last year and settled around the airport in Juba, were airlifted by the government to Malakal in February this year, just after fighting emptied nearby Wau Shilluk of its Shilluk population. .
Government counters
Paulino Wanawila, South Sudan’s minister for justice, said the commission’s assessment overlooks the government’s efforts to implement the 2015 peace deal signed by the two warring parties and other representatives in South Sudan.
The government of South Sudan – to improve the human rights for the people – one of them is acceptance [of] the protection force which we are waiting for. Another one is the evacuation and the collecting of over 200 illegal arms from the people, said Wanawila.
Despite the government’s statement to the council that 2017 has been a year of peace and prosperity, Sooka said, Sadly, this is surreal in a country enduring one of Africa’s worst wars.
In the last month alone, she pointed out to the council, there has been a serious escalation of fighting in parts of greater Upper Nile and the greater Equatoria region, with dire consequences for the civilian population. She noted that in recent months, at least seven civilian officials and military commanders have resigned their posts, protesting the government’s ethnic bias and tribalism.
Sooka said the hybrid court must be established immediately and cases prosecuted. She said the alternative is a policy of appeasement, making the U.N. complicit in the bloodshed.
Source: Voice of America