The Libya Observer | Tobruk parliament forms new dialogue team The Libya Observer Earlier this month, the House of Representatives set preconditions, which it called the national constants, in order to resume talks with rival political institutions. Libya has plunged into political chaos since 2014 with two rival parliaments and ... |
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Tobruk parliament forms new dialogue team - The Libya Observer
By Richard Lobban
Strategic thinking focuses on historical trends, the balance of forces, national and economic interests, ideology, naval choke points, diplomacy, information and the military capacity of friends and foes.
So it was in the bipolar Cold War until the 1990s, followed by a descendant multi-polar world, which is now evolving into a precarious new world order that needs strategic recalibration, especially along the southeastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea.
Obviously, the Suez Canal is a highly strategic choke point.
Oil-addicted global economies make for energy vulnerability. The old cleavage between communistversus capitalist worlds is surmounted by revivalist extremisms in religion and nationalism. Weapons are widespread. Failed, failing or dictatorial states have thwarted the Arab Spring" of 2011. Major undersea oil and gas fields are contested by Cyprus, Lebanon and Israel.
New Egyptian offshore gas fields and oil fields in the Western desert may resuscitate its ailing political economy. Two amphibious assault ships, built by France for Russia, were insteadsoldto Egypt along with new German submarines, to protect its new fields.
The unsolved Palestine-Israel-Gaza-Hamas-Sinai conflicts stay on a timer fuse. Thousands of African refugees are trafficked across, or drowning in, the Mediterranean while destabilizing a fearful, polarized Europe. The prolonged catastrophes in Syria (and its Putin-Assad alliance), South Sudan and Yemen have daily hemorrhages of horror. The "punitive" attack by President Donald Trump on Syrian aircraft has only resulted in "red lines" dripping more blood in high heat, but little light. Trans-Saharan insurgent-terrorists add their destabilizing and depressing miseries, making uslong for the "good old days" of the Cold War.
For decades, Muammar Gaddafi ruled erratically with his Green Book to develop Libya while fomenting revolts, assassinations, corruption and harsh domestic repression, sustained by vast oil wealth and a small population.
The Arab Spring ignited in Tunisia in 2010, and spread in 2011 to Egypt, Bahrain, Syria, Yemen and Libya,where it became an existential threat to both Gaddafi and his citizens. He was killed on Oct. 20, 2011.
Arms flooded across Libya and the Sahel. The success of the Libyan revolution created optimism in the West that the country would turn to democratic elections and a multiparty parliament.
Instead, on Sept. 11-12, 2012, Libyan extremists killed U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three aides in the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. After spending millions of dollars andweekson accusations of blame, U.S. Special Forces captured two of the alleged attackers.
By January 2014, the Libyan General National Congress (GNC) was deadlocked by diverse local militias. Aspiring strongman Khalifa Haftar (now field marshal of the Libyan National Army) called for the overthrow of Libyan Islamists. By summer 2014, open warfare unfolded between Tripoli and Misrata militias against Haftar, who had ties to Gaddafi and the Central Intelligence Agency.
Elections promised for June 25, 2014, were stillborn. Haftars Operation Dignity was marketed by his enemies as an attempted coup, while the Islamist Ansar esh-Sharia disrupted Benghazi, and the war on terrorism was inconclusive. The oil economy and the 2014 elections faltered; militia skirmishes worsened.
The new parliament was failing when Dawn factions from Misrata seized the Tripoli airport that July 13. By September 2014, the GNC, or Dawn, backed by the United Nations, Europe, Turkey, Qatar, the United States and various militias, clashed with Dignity, backed by Egypt, Russia, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates.
These militias did rout Sirte of its murderous ISIS franchise but threatened critical oil ports. Now, in 2017, some oil production is restored, but remains vulnerable. Both the Tripoli "government" and the Benghazi "government" are being wooed by Moscow, with Haftar flying to Moscow and the Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov steaming by Libya.
The Moroccan Accord of 2015, the cease-fires, and peace and unity negotiations, have all failed. Will the legitimate GNC al-Hisi prevail over Haftars LNA as new proxies of a warming Cold War? Will Western collaboration with Islamist militias be fatal? Will Haftars increasing control of the oil fields make him stronger or betray his personal ambitions?
It is late for a serious strategic doctrine based in morality and law rather than hand-wringing that addressesthe interconnected high-stakes issues. Without it, it is impossible to fashion the tactical toolkit to see the way out, or ahead.
Richard Lobban is an adjunct professor of African (Security) Studies at the Naval War College. He is coauthor of "Libya: History and Revolution" and "African Insurgencies" with U.S. Marines Lt. Col. Christopher Dalton.
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Richard Lobban: Powers wage new 'cold war' in Libya - The Providence Journal
The Italian prosecutor in Sicily yesterday accused migrant rescue organisations of colluding with human traffickers in Libya.
We have evidence that there are direct contacts between certain NGOs and people traffickers in Libya, Carmelo Zuccaro told Italian newspaper La Stampa.
We do not yet know if and how we could use this evidence in court, but we are quite certain about what we say; telephone calls from Libya to certain NGOs, lamps that illuminate the route to these organisations boats, boats that suddenly turn off their transponders, are ascertained facts.
Zuccaro leads a group of prosecutors investigating the trafficking and exploitation of migrants.
The Public Prosecutors Office in Catania, Sicily, has opened an investigation to determine who funds the organisations and for what purpose.
Read: Italy and Libyan tribes agree on deal to curb migrant flow
The European Border and Coast Guard Agency said in a report published in December that there is possible collaboration between human traffickers and NGOs migrants rescue boats that roam the Mediterranean.
Some of the organisations involved in migrant rescues include Doctors Without Borders, Medecins Sans Frontieres, SOS Mediterranee and Save the Children.
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Italy: NGOs collaborate with human traffickers in Libya - Middle East Monitor
New York Times | No US Military Role in Libya, Trump Says, Rejecting Italy's Pleas New York Times We need a stable and unified Libya, Mr. Gentiloni, who has been in office since November, said, discussing a conflict that has sent thousands of asylum seekers across the Mediterranean to Italy and other European countries. A divided country, and in ... Donald Trump remarks raise fears of US disengagement in Libya Could Italy Get Trump to Care About Fixing Libya? Trump, alongside Italian PM, says no US role in Libya |
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No US Military Role in Libya, Trump Says, Rejecting Italy's Pleas - New York Times
By Lori Hinnant, The Associated Press
TUNIS, Tunisia Almost the only home this toddler is known is a Libyan prison. He already marked one birthday there and in a few days will reach another, turning 3. He is an orphan of the caliphate: His parents, both Islamic State group members, were killed in an airstrike.
Tamim Jaboudi is among hundreds of children fathered by the Islamic State's foreign fighters or brought to the self-proclaimed caliphate by their parents who are now imprisoned or in limbo with nowhere to go, collateral victims as the militant group retreats and home countries hesitate to take them back.
Since his parents were killed in February 2016, Tamim has been living among some two dozen Tunisian women and their children in Tripoli's Mitiga prison, raised by a woman who herself willingly joined the Islamic State group. The captives are under guard by a militia that tightly controls access to the group, despite repeatedly claiming they have no interest in preventing their return home.
"What is this young child's sin that he is in jail with criminals?" asked Faouzi Trabelsi, the boy's grandfather who has traveled twice to Libya trying to retrieve the boy and twice returned home emptyhanded. "If he grows up there, what kind of attitude will he have toward his homeland?"
European governments and experts have documented at least 600 children of foreign fighters who live in or have returned from IS territory in Syria, Iraq or Libya. But the numbers are likely far higher.
The children and families often find it impossible to escape IS-held areas. And even if they do, their native countries are deeply suspicious and fearful of returnees sometimes even children. Tunisia, France and Belgium have all suffered major attacks from trained IS fighters, and Western intelligence officials have said the group is deploying cells of attackers in Europe.
Although the Islamic State group says women have no role as fighters, France in particular has detained women returnees and some adolescent boys who it believes pose a danger. Young children often go into foster care or end up with extended family. In the Netherlands, anyone over nine is considered a potential security threat, since that is said to be the age IS extremists begin teaching boys to kill.
In Libya, their fate is particularly uncertain. The North African nation descended into chaos after the 2011 civil war, which ended with the killing of dictator Moammar Gadhafi. The country has been split into competing governments, each backed by a set of militias, tribes and political factions. Militias in December captured the main IS stronghold in Libya, Sirte, effectively breaking the group's efforts to build territory there, at least for now.
Tunisia is working to bring back the women and 44 children held in Tripoli and elsewhere in Libya. But so far the only result has been repeated hold-ups and miscommunications.
"There is no wrong in being born in a conflict zone. Once their Tunisian citizenship is confirmed, they will have an individual treatment," said Chafik Hajji, a Tunisian diplomat who handles the cases of the country's citizens who joined IS.
Meanwhile, the women and children are held in a "big and comfortable" space in the prison, according to Ahmed bin Salem, spokesman of the Libyan militia that runs the facility. The prison was set up several years ago in a building inside Mitiga Air Base, a military facility that is now also used for commercial flights including daily ones from Tunis because it is the only functioning airport in Tripoli.
Few if any of the women and children at Mitiga or another group of 120 foreign women and children jailed in the city of Misrata in Libya have valid ID papers, according to Hanan Salah, a Human Rights Watch researcher who specializes in Libya.
While it is unclear how many children were born in IS territory in Iraq, Syria, Libya and elsewhere, a snapshot of the group at its height showed as many as 31,000 women were pregnant at any given moment, many of them wives of jihadis encouraged to have as many babies as possible to populate the nascent caliphate, according to the Quilliam Foundation, a British counter-extremism research group.
Quilliam researcher Nikita Malik said 80 British children were inside Islamic State territory. France estimated 450 of its children, including around 60 born there; Dutch and Belgian intelligence each estimated 80 children.
"In the long term, there is the new generation of ISIS, of Daesh. These are the newborns, the children of the marriages," said Mohammed Iqbel, whose Association of Tunisians Trapped Abroad advocates for the families of those who have left. "And if we don't save them, they will be a new generation of terrorism."
By many estimates, Tunisia sent more jihadis to the war zones than any other country, with official figures at 3,000 and some analysts doubling that number.
Trabelsi's daughter and son-in-law were among them.
His forehead bearing the bruise-colored mark from prayer, Trabelsi spoke with The Associated Press in his spotlessly clean living room in Tunis. Outside, the neighborhood was rough at the edges, its streets pitted with neglect. Around the corner, adolescent boys brawled as a crowd watched.
Trabelsi's daughter, Samah, married a young man from the neighborhood after a monthlong courtship, he said. The newlyweds left for Turkey, a common jumping off point for Europeans and North Africans joining extremist groups.
Tamim was born there on April 30, 2014. The couple returned to Tunisia, then went on to neighboring Libya, where they remained for two years, he said.
The Islamic State group paid particular attention to recruiting families, boasting that it would build a society that would endure for generations. Its early propaganda showed children eating sweets and playing in peaceful streets. Foreign fighters who brought wives and children were told their housing and utility bills would be covered, with money for food. Their children, they were told, would grow up to be "true Muslims."
To reassure recruits, an Australian doctor appeared in a widely viewed propaganda video that showed a pristine neonatal clinic in Raqqa.
Reality was another story. The families of foreign fighters, in many cases, took over the homes of Syrians who had fled. Movement was highly restricted, and medical care was rudimentary at best, according to court testimony and interviews from former recruits who have returned.
For foreign recruits in particular, extricating themselves has proven exponentially more difficult than joining.
Tamim's mother made it out once, Trabelsi said, but she was demoralized by what he described as harassment from Tunisian intelligence agents. His daughter gave no warning before she left for the second time, he said. She took all her documents and nearly all the family photos.
A copy of her ID card shows a veiled young woman gazing directly at the camera.
When she did call, she said nothing about where they were, Trabelsi said. "Her husband told her to be quiet and not to tell us anything."
The couple was among at least 40 people killed in a U.S. airstrike on an IS training camp in the city of Sabratha in February 2016. The Pentagon at the time said the target was Noureddine Chouchane, a Tunisian suspected in a 2015 attack on the Bardo Museum in Tunis in which 22 people died.
Six months later, word filtered back to his grandfather that Tamim was alive and in Mitiga. He began pressing to get him back.
A low point came when Trabelsi was permitted to take Tamim outside the prison and sit with him in a car. He wondered, he said, if he should just drive away with the child, who by now was closer to the prison warden than his own grandfather.
"He is clean, he is in good shape. They told me they bring him out to play and see other children," he said. "But he should be allowed back. He is in a prison."
Salah, the Human Rights Watch researcher, said that for both the Tunisians and the Libyans, keeping the women and children in the prison "is the easy way out, and that's what we object to."
Over a month ago, Tunisian officials pledged on a national talk show to bring Tamim home that very week. They never even left.
One problem is that the Tunisian government is reluctant to deal officially with the militia that runs Mitiga prison since it is not a government body, while the militia demands the Tunisians talk to it directly.
Last week, an unofficial Tunisian delegation went to negotiate for the children, only to be turned back by the Libyans because it did not get permission prior to the visit. On Wednesday, another delegation was due at the prison but the visit was cancelled when the group demanded to see the families and transfer them on the same day without going through proper procedures, according to the militia's spokesman bin Salem. He said the delegation also failed to show up on time.
Meanwhile, the women and children had been brought to an auditorium to wait in vain.
"As a government, they are not paying attention to us," Asmaa Qoustantini, cloaked in a black abaya and veil hiding her face, said while holding a toddler with pink bows in her hair. She spoke to a handful of Libyan cameras allowed into the room by the militia.
Security officials say they find themselves forced to treat children of IS parents both as victims and as potential threats.
Louis Caprioli, France's former anti-terrorism chief and an executive at the risk firm GEOS, said the fear is the children of foreign fighters will ultimately feel they should continue the fight started by their parents. He asked: "How are these children going to evolve?"
For Trabelsi, the question is irrelevant. He wants Tamim home with him or to stay with him in Libya.
"It was your government's airstrike that put Tamim in the prison," he told an American reporter. "The least you can do is help get him out."
- Associated Press writer Maggie Michael in Cairo contributed to this report.
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2-year-old orphan of jihad trapped in Libyan prison - Worcester Telegram