Author: Rupert Wieloch

Early in January 2012, we hosted the three Permanent Under Secretaries of the UK’s Ministry of Defence, Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Department for International Development in Tripoli. This was a wide ranging visit to scope the future relationship between Britain and Libya and should have paved the way for close diplomatic, economic and security ties and facilitated the reconstruction of airports, harbours, schools and hospitals.

Their report, which was passed to all the members of the National Security Council, identified a number of dilemmas such as the demand for British advice, but “coolness towards any suggestion of the visible presence of Western government personnel on the ground”. The two key priorities were Security Sector Reform (reintegration of the militias) and Border Security (managing migration). They concluded: “There is an urgent need for HMG to get its planning in place.”

A week after they departed, I travelled to Bani Walid to assess the security situation in this gateway to the Sahara. There had been an uneasy peace following the death of Qadhafi and the local council imposed by the NTC had not been able to pacify the tribal elders. Soon after I arrived with a group of British special forces, the fighting began in earnest as a hundred fighters attacked the NTC’s military compound. A short time-out was called to allow US agency staff to leave the town, before the battle continued with dozens of casualties caused by the mortar bombs and machine gun fire.

This was the day, I knew that the honeymoon for the new government was over and that Libya was heading for a second civil-war, but the uprising was barely mentioned by the world’s press at the time and soon forgotten by the international community.

1922 was a dramatic and pivotal year for Libya. After Mussolini grasped power in Rome at the head of 30,000 Blackshirts, Emir Idris al-Sanussi withdrew to Egypt in self-imposed exile and the Tripolitanian Republic disintegrated as the brutal Italian conquest of the country began in earnest.

Meanwhile, the exploration of the Sahara continued apace. Following Rosita Forbes’ intrepid expedition to Kufra in 1921, Francis Rodd travelled into the heart of the Sahara and wrote about his time with the Tuareg in his book People of the Veil. At the end of the year, Ahmed Hassanein set out from Sollum and discovered two lost oases that opened new Saharan routes that were later used by British special forces.

Rodd and Hassanein were connected in two other ways. They both matriculated at Baliol College, Oxford and both were companions to the British diplomat, Milo Talbot, when he patiently negotiated the crucial peace treaty that ended the Sanussi Jihad in 1917 and allowed Edmund Allenby to focus solely on the Ottoman threat in the east.

Read more about Talbot’s forgotten mission and this period of the long Anglo-Libyan friendship in Part 2 of Liberating Libya.

With hope and belief, the Libyan government organised a disarmament conference on Christmas Day 2011 at the Radisson hotel in Tripoli. The British Ambassador was in England, so I represented the UK Government and was greatly honoured to meet the last living member of the original 1951 Senate, who was one of 24 Libyans from the three provinces chosen to sit in the upper house of government.

I spoke to the receptive audience about our long friendship and recent partnership to liberate Libya from the brutal shackles of the previous regime and was followed on the stand by the renowned revolutionary leader, Abdelhakim Bel Haj. He was very grateful for Britain’s support and looked forward to working with the United Nations on the disarmament project, but unfortunately, this cordial relationship was paused when London issued instructions to forbid any further dialogue with him.

See chapter 16 of Liberating Libya for the story of Bel Haj’s subsequent legal challenge and the embarrassing admission of the UK government.

News is coming through that the Libyan parliament has postponed Friday’s presidential election in Libya as the ballot papers for nearly 90 candidates have not been circulated in time for voting.

This has been the most likely outcome for the past three weeks ever since Libya’s Higher National Elections Commission realised it could not deliver the complete technical and logistic support needed for a transparent, free and fair election.

It does not help that the judiciary has allowed high-profile candidates, who have broken eligibility rules to stand for president, or that the government cannot guarantee the safety of international monitors as local militia deny the voters full access to the candidates.

This was the main topic of discussion at The Oriental Club where I recently joined a panel of speakers about the future prospects for Libya. We concluded that the government is in between the rocks of “Scylla” and whirlpool of “Charybdis” over the issue of holding the elections on the 70th anniversary of independence. If they hold them on Christmas Eve, the losers will refuse to recognise the results because the legal framework is flawed. However, postponing them risks deepening the divide between the three main regions Cyrenaica (East), Tripolitania (West) and Fezzan (South); and strengthening the position of those who wish to maintain the status quo.

At least the UN Secretary General has now appointed a competent Special Adviser in Stephanie Williams to mediate between the opposing parties. Having been Head of the UN Support Mission in Libya, she knows the challenges and understands how important the economic and military tracks are to political progress in 2022.

The news that some European leaders have vetoed a US proposal for NATO to provide direct military support to Ukraine in their border dispute with Russia reminds me of another important connection with Libya.

In Churchill’s Abandoned Prisoners, I wrote that Ukraine’s geography made “the establishment of defence in depth almost impossible”. With its open countryside lending itself to “outflanking and turning movements”, I went on to explain how the new Polish army discovered this after it captured Kiev in May 1920. The Red Army was already very adept at the tactics which would defeat Hitler’s army and nearly surrounded the Poles by counter-attacking on the northern route from the Dvina to the Dnieper. The effect was recorded by the British Prime Minister’s envoy, Sir Maurice Hankey, who commented that: “The ill-advised advance to Kiev and the inevitable retreat have reacted disastrously on this young and inexperienced [Polish] army”.

The connection with Libya is that the desert area that witnessed the toing and froing of the Allied and Axis tank formations in World War II proved to be a similar battle ground to the vast steppe-like open plains in Ukraine. Some towns and cities in Cyrenaica exchanged hands five times between January 1941 and December 1942 because Eastern Libya needed either to be fully occupied or totally abandoned since it offered few natural defensive barriers.

NATO had to relearn this military reality during the Libyan revolution in 2011 and one hopes that it will not make the same mistake in Ukraine in 2022.

For the past five years there has been talk about a United Nations Peacekeeping operation in the Donbass region of Eastern Ukraine. Unfortunately, the Kremlin’s vision of this mission is very different to the view from Kiev. Their historical animosity was explained to me by the Ukrainian attaché in Tripoli, who remained in Libya throughout the 2011 revolution, together with their doctors and medics working for the Libyan people.

Libya has some of the largest reserves of natural gas in the world. If European countries had not pulled out in 2012, they could have established a gas pipeline that would have been much cheaper than the one laid from Russia that is increasing European dependency on Russia. The Kremlin knows this and it is one of the reasons why they are helping Khalifa Haftar to disrupt the West’s efforts at establishing a democratic country and reintegrating Libya into the international community.

The G7’s threats of economic sanctions on Moscow over their build-up of their armed forces on the Ukrainian border sounds pretty hollow because there is little evidence that they are willing to deploy capable military boots on the ground (not a shop window force) to back up their rhetoric. Unfortunately, their record in Afghanistan, Syria and Libya provides little confidence that the West’s strategy and commitment is capable of outmatching Putin. A change in foreign affairs is needed now.

This week has seen progress with the US$1.5 Billion project to develop a deep water container port at Marsa Susah. Known in ancient times as Apollonia, this was one of five cities in Cyrenaica established in the seventh century BC by King Battus that made up Pentapolis. It was the port used by the British archaeologists, Smith and Porcher, during their excavations at Cyrene one hundred and sixty years ago and it was where Geoffrey Keyes was landed by submarine on his way to being awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross, leading the failed Special Forces attempt to capture Erwin Rommel in November 1941.

This project has been on the table for a long time and is critical to re-booting the Libyan economy. It is envisaged that Susah will serve as the main port of entry for goods into Libya by sea. The natural self-dredging harbour with a sea depth of 18 meters will be constructed in four-phases and will primarily focus on container processing, grain handling and other bulk cargoes. With the signing of the master agreement this week, the beginning of construction is in sight, although probably not until 2023.

See Liberating Libya for Smith and Porcher’s life among the Bedouin and the controversy surrounding the death of Geoffrey Keyes.

The Libyan elections are heating up. Following the deadline for the Presidential nominations closing on 24 November, the electoral commission has been busy removing many of the 98 candidates from the list. Saif al-Islam Gadhafi has been disqualified for his previous conviction, whereas the former Prime Minister and Human Rights Lawyer, Ali Zidan, lost his place for continuing to hold more than one nationality.

There is an appeal process and the UN is worried that the court deciding Saif’s case, in the south-west city of Sebha, was raided by an armed group soon after he submitted his appeal.

Meanwhile, the Head of the UN Support Mission In Libya, Jan Kubis has resigned his post claiming that the headquarters must return from Tunisia and re-establish itself in Tripoli. With less than a month to go to the elections, this is a brave move and is very significant because it could help reintegrate Libya into the international community. However, there are plenty of risks attached to this relocation since there are still many internal and external actors who do not want to see the UN succeed and so the Mission will have to drastically improve its security to remain for the long term.

There is an irony in Saif al-Islam Gadhafi registering as a presidential candidate in Libya ten years to the week that he was captured near the Nafusa mountains. Meeting the the lawyers and elders outside the Zintan prison, I was informed that Saif would not be released to the International Criminal Court, but little did I suspect that he would survive a decade, let alone gather enough support to return to the political arena.

Although he has drawn the headlines, there are in fact six other registered candidates, all of whom were born in Cyrenaica (Eastern Libya), or Misratah. They include the military leader, Khalifa Hafter, a senior officer in the revolution who was snubbed by the transitional government in 2012, as well as a respected scholar and distinguished political leaders.

Inevitably, we will see a great deal of misinformation and interference in the next month as external actors promote their preferred candidates and denigrate their rivals. Given that Libya remains in the top ten countries for proven oil reserves, there is much to play for as we approach the elections on the 70th anniversary of independence. For more comment on the future of the country, see Chapter 16 and Jason Pack’s Afterword in Liberating Libya.

If you were wondering why the Heads of State of France, Germany and Italy (and the Vice President of the USA) were not at COP26 in Glasgow on Friday, it is because they were attending the International Conference For Libya in Paris. The declaration that was published at the end of the conference has received scant attention in the media, but it is probably the best work on Libya since the Pandemic began because it deals equally with the political, security and economic lines of activity, as well as highlighting the humanitarian needs. However, just like the COP26 statement, it is not the talking, but the doing that will make the difference; and the first doing is the free and fair elections that will take place on the 70th anniversary of Libyan independence next month.

Meanwhile, I was delighted to be able to pay tribute to those who gave their lives in World War II in Libya during a wide ranging discussion with Dan Snow for his History Hit website. The interview is available for free as a podcast here https://play.acast.com/s/dansnowshistoryhit/colonelgaddafiandlibya