Why doesn’t the war stop in Libya?

For a year now, Libya has been fighting for the country’s main city after Haftar launched an attack on Tripoli on April 4, 2019. Despite repeated promises by the parties to abide by the ceasefire in force on January 12 and move towards a peaceful settlement, including amid the coronavirus pandemic, the PNS and LNA continue clashes, constantly accusing each other of violating the ceasefire. During the year of fighting for the capital, almost 5 thousand people became victims, including more than 500 civilians, more than 12 thousand were injured.

Only on press releases and statements by both parties can it be noted that in the last week the hostilities between the LNA and the allied PNS forces in Tripoli are more intense than ever. Having refused all negotiations with the Minister of Internal Affairs and Defense of the PNS, Fathi Bachaga, the commander of the LNA, Khalifa Haftar, has now focused on the topic of depriving the enemy of air support and blocking his air channels with weapons and ammunition.

Haftar’s drone attacks and artillery attacks could not completely paralyze the operation of both airports controlled by the PNS forces. The Boeing 747 cargo plane of the Moldovan company AeroTransCargo, flying from the Belgian Ostend, landed in Misurata on March 31, officially with equipment for combating coronavirus (such equipment was there, but there were also spare parts for various types of weapons). And on the same day, a Libyan airline Airbus A320 passenger plane arrived in Tripoli from Istanbul.

According to the official representative of the PNS command, Colonel Mohammed Kanuno, a military transport aircraft was hit in the area of ​​Tarhuna (60 km southeast of the capital). The Libyan Air Force attacked a cargo plane with a batch of ammunition for the Haftar formations immediately after it landed in the vicinity of Tarhuna. According to the Libyan news portal Al-Unvan, a Turkish-made drone was involved in the shelling, which attacked a transporter with medicines and equipment designed to equip field hospitals deployed by LNA as part of preventive measures to counteract the spread of coronavirus.

Since negotiations on overcoming the crisis are now blocked, both Libyan camps continue to receive logistical support from abroad. The parties began to actively use the thesis of quarantine and the coronavirus pandemic to cover their logistics operations. All this once again testifies to two main points.

1. The main sponsors of the opposing forces, in general, ignore all calls of the world community for a ceasefire and are actively preparing for a new round of struggle for Tripoli by intensifying the material and technical supply of the parties to the Libyan conflict that they support.
2. The UN arms embargo on deliveries to Libya by parties to the conflict and a number of countries is not openly respected.

According to a number of sources, the LNA Khalifa Haftara and Turkey in mid-March created a secret communication channel to try to de-escalate the military situation. However, negotiations failed, and each side believed that the other would quickly make concessions. Much more important in this regard is that these contacts should be seen as an attempt by Egypt and the UAE to reach a compromise with Turkey in a more global sense than just the release of the hostages.

We are talking about Cairo’s proposals to agree to the withdrawal of LNA forces from near Tripoli in exchange for stopping the transfer of Syrian mercenaries to Libya. This was probably the main topic of the informal consultations that took place in February-March this year. The hostages were just the background. And it is logical that these consultations ended in nothing: the transfer of Syrian militants and employees of the Turkish PMC SADAT to Libya, their rotation in the metropolitan direction of the front is Ankara’s main trump card, which she is not going to refuse.

The presence of a “third force” distant from local realities at the front leveled Haftar’s main advantage — the frank bribing of local field commanders from the warring camp, which actually ensured to a large extent the military progress of the LNA on the battlefield much more than the combat potential of the LNA. And it made it possible for the PNS to maintain control over part of the Libyan coast.