LIBYAN forces trying to destroy Daesh (the so-called IS) in the country’s coastal town of Sirte suffered heavy casualties on Sunday as terrorists fought desperately for their lives. At least 35 of them were killed and approaching 200 injured as the militiamen, mostly from the city of Misrata, moved in on the terrorists’ final positions.
Unlike in October 2011, when Misratan forces led the final push on Gaddafi’s hometown which saw the dictator captured and butchered, the fight against the largely foreign Daesh killers has been extremely tough. More than 375 members of the attacking force, known as Bunyan Marsous, have died so far and nearly 2,000 wounded.
The terrorists have repeatedly delayed the advance with car and truck bombs and IEDs. Few of the Bunyan Marsous militiamen have any military training and therefore suffer casualties from inept tactics which expose them to deadly sniper fire.
But it seems that sheer numbers and military resources, which include precision strikes by US jets, will overwhelm the terrorists, though perhaps not as quickly as commanders are predicting.
However victory will not bring peace to a divided country whose UN-installed government in Tripoli is at odds with the elected parliament in Tobruk. Fayez Serraj, the leader of the Presidency Council and the Government of National Accord, has proved a huge disappointment to his backers in the international community. He arrived in Tripoli at the end of March to a country plagued by power cuts for much of every day, where a shortage of cash meant people could not get money out of the banks and where security, already bad, had just got worse, with daily kidnappings for ransom.
Had the UN thought it through, they could have organized emergency power generators and huge consignments of cash so that Serraj would have scored two easy early wins. But they did neither. The power cuts and the cash shortage have got worse and the original enthusiasm with which Serraj was greeted has turned to despair and even disdain.
He will try to claim credit for the final destruction of Daesh in Sirte but everyone knows that he has had nothing to do with the victory, which rather owes everything to the Misratans. Ever since the Libyan revolution, militias from this once-prosperous and bustling port city have been key power brokers in the west of the country. The crushing of Daesh will reinforce their belief that they have a particularly strong political and military voice.
The Misratans loathe the parliament-appointed head of the armed forces Khalifa Hafter, a former Gaddafi general, who is currently extending his control over Libya’s main oilfields. The UN is urging the country to reunite, but as long as Hafter is on the scene, Misratans will block any such moves. Hafter for his part has little time for Misrata. After almost two years, his troops are still battling Daesh and Al-Qaeda-linked terrorists in Benghazi, who have been supplied from the sea by Muslim Brotherhood members in Misrata.
The possibility of outright civil war between the east and west of the county is becoming ever more real. Power in Libya now comes mostly out of the barrel of a gun. Tripoli is run by militias many of which are also criminal gangs, while in the east Hafter is cracking down on dissent and replacing mayors with army officers. The prospects do not look good.
