UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is absolutely correct to condemn the move by Libya’s eastern strongman, Khalifa Haftar, to transfer control of the country’s oil assets in the east to a parallel National Oil Corporation.
The last thing Libya needs in its present chaos is any division of its sole source of national income, its oil and gas assets. This week, after his Libyan National Army (LNA) had once again wrested control of the Ras Lanuf and Sidra oil export terminals from local Islamists led by Ibrahim Jadhran, Haftar declared that the National Oil Corporation, based in Tripoli, would not be given back control of the terminals and the eastern oil fields as had happened the last time the LNA chased Jadhran and his Muslim Brotherhood-backed militia out of the region.
But in among the angry protests at Haftar’s decision, the reason he gave for the move is being largely ignored. At the heart of Libya’s present tragedy is the failure by the National Transition Council, the temporary political power during and immediately after the revolution that overthrew the regime of Muammar Gaddafi, to disband the militias once they had been victorious. Instead of recreating the Libyan armed forces and insisting that militiamen who wanted to continue to bear arms should enlist as individuals in the new army, the NTC took the easy option. It allowed the dozens of different militia groups to stay in being, in order to protect the reborn country from any counter-revolution. Worse, it compounded this error by paying the militias out of the state budget.
More than seven years on, these militias, despite their blatant involvement in people-trafficking, the smuggling of subsidized fuel, kidnappings, rape, murder and general criminality, are all continuing to draw generous subventions from the Central Bank of Libya. Yet their lawless existence is the very reason for the current Libyan anarchy. The internationally recognized Government of National Accord (GNA) led by Faiez Serraj only exists in the capital on sufferance from various bands of gunmen. Among them are avowedly Muslim Brotherhood and other violent Islamist formations, such as the Benghazi Defense Brigades, the remnants of the terrorists that Haftar finally drove out of Benghazi last year.
Haftar says that all of these criminal bands receive generous payments while his own LNA receives nothing. He also argues that, as long as the gangs can continue to milk the Libyan treasury, they have a vested interest in ensuring that chaos and factionalism will endure. Behind it they will continue their criminal activities.
Yet, however good his reasoning, Haftar has gravely miscalculated. It is not simply that the parallel NOC in Benghazi lacks the skills and the leadership provided in Tripoli by the dogged and highly capable chairman Mustafa Sanalla; it is the fact that there is virtually no chance that the east will be able to sell oil on its own account in the face of UN-sanctions which insist all exports must go through NOC in Tripoli. When Jadhran tried to export oil in 2014 when he still controlled the main eastern terminals, the tanker Morning Glory was arrested by the US navy. Nor is it likely that any reputable oil traders will take the risk of buying “illegal” oil. Haftar has blundered badly into an impossible situation which will seriously damage his international reputation.
