01/05/15 – Bel Trew – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, you guys, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
And like I promised last Friday, I got Belle True on the line.
And, oh, no, I'm sorry, I am unprepared.
I am paging down, hoping there's a good bio at the bottom of this piece here so I can give her a good introduction.
Nope, unfortunately not.
But I will tell you that this great piece is at foreignpolicy.com.
A ground invasion of the capital is imminent, in quotes.
That's the title there, a quote from General Haftar, I believe.
A ground invasion of the capital is imminent.
Welcome back to the show, Belle.
How are you doing?
I'm good, thank you.
How are you?
I'm doing real good.
I appreciate you joining us.
And I'm so sorry I'm not prepared here.
Could you please introduce yourself?
Who are you, right, for?
I'm Belle True, and I am a reporter mostly for the Times of London, based in Egypt, but I cover the Middle East.
Okay, great.
Sunday Times, London Times, there we go.
Okay, so, yeah, and we've spoken about Libya and I think Egypt one time in the past, if people want to check the archives there.
So this is a great article about Libya, and it really stands out on its own, but also in comparison to the real lack of information coming out of there, at least in American media, about what has been going on there.
And you really break it down very well here.
So I guess if we could start with a bit of the who's who here.
I think I must be a bit confused, or maybe the confusion is reality's fault.
But am I right that you write that the Islamists have more say in the West, and the quote-unquote secularists, at least, have more say in the East, even though back in the Civil War in 2011, it was more the Islamist rebels backed by NATO moving from the East to the West to sack the pseudo, whatever you call them, secularist militarist power of Qaddafi out of Tripoli.
Do I have that right?
Yeah, I mean, it's a very, obviously, Libya is a bit of a mess, as happens with civil war.
But if you want to put it in quite simple terms, you've got to divide now between two sides of the country, East and West.
In the West, we've got this coalition called Libya Dawn of militias, some Islamist-leaning politicians, and also jihadi groups, which they admitted to me.
And they've got control of Tripoli and large swathes of territory in the West.
In the East, where you've got the official internationally recognized government, which, as you said, is more secular, they are in exile in the East at the moment.
They've got their own recently rebranded Libyan National Army, and they are battling different groups in the East.
But their sort of stronghold is in the far eastern towns near the Egyptian border.
And now what about the Americans and the European Union and NATO, the spies, the special forces?
Are they picking sides in this thing?
Well, they've definitely backed what is being regarded as the official government, which, as I said, is in exile in the East.
And that's because that comes off the back of an election.
There's an elected parliament.
It was elected over the summer last year.
And they were based in Tripoli until the sort of fighting grew so intense that they were forced to the East by these militias and Islamist-leading politicians in the West.
So in terms of America, NATO, the EU, Western politicians, they are backing what they call the government that's based in the East at the moment.
And as you say in the article, the Egyptians, the Saudis and the United Arab Emirates are playing a role there, too.
Can you describe to what degree they're backing them?
I mean, is this a real effort to help them win in the short term somehow?
Well, over the course of last year, we had some mysterious airstrikes in Tripoli where quite advanced fighter jets just appeared out of nowhere and started bombing the positions of the kind of Islamist side in the capital.
And no one has claimed responsibility for that.
But U.S. government officials and intelligence said that it was Egypt and the UAE.
Now, I know for a fact that Egypt, the UAE and Saudi have definitely supplied weapons, intelligence and funds to the Libyan, let's put it in quote unquote, governments in the East.
And that's something that the Libyan government have told me has happened and the Egyptians have tentatively agreed to as well.
In terms of these mysterious airstrikes, no one has claimed responsibility for them.
But if it was Egypt and the UAE, that would mean that they're really putting in a lot of effort to help that side win.
All right.
Now to the title here, and I know writers don't always pick their titles, but the title is a ground invasion of the capital is imminent.
And if I remember right, that is a quote from General Haftar, correct?
The guy that lived in Virginia for 30 years?
Yeah.
General Khalifa Hift is an interesting character.
He was a military commander under the former dictator, the Muammar Gaddafi, until they fell out over the Chad war.
And he escaped supposedly under the help of the CIA to Virginia, where he lived for several years.
He sort of built himself up as an opposition figure against Gaddafi and finally returned during the civil war as a sort of victorious returning opposition hero who led the front line battles against Gaddafi.
Since the civil war, he's become a little bit of a difficult character.
In February of last year, he suddenly declared that he'd overthrown the last parliament, which was met with some sort of sarcastic rebuffs by the government at the time.
And he started to wage a self-proclaimed war against Islamist militias and jihadis that were taking over the second city of Benghazi, which is in the east.
So he was a bit of an outlawed figure.
He was rejected from the military.
And the government at the time said he was basically acting on his own.
But in the recent few months with the internationally recognized government having no power, no sort of military power of their own, realizing they can't fight this battle against the militias, the Islamists and the jihadis with just words alone, they've accepted him back into the fold.
And he's now the sort of military commander of, as I said, the rebranded Libyan National Army.
And he told me that his troops were poised to enter the capital.
That hasn't happened yet.
And there's still fierce fighting now happening across the country, both in the west, in the center, in the east, in the south, everywhere.
It's complete chaos.
So he's still vowing that he's going to have his troops in central Tripoli to take it back from the Islamist militias who took over last August.
But when that's going to happen, we'll have to see.
Yeah, that was going to be my question was, are you buying that at all?
What does his strength look like?
I was reminded when I was reading this of a recent article about I think it was in Afghanistan where.
Oh, no, no.
I know it was it was Kurdish fighters outside of Mosul talking about how.
Oh, yeah, we're about to walk right into Mosul here just the day after tomorrow and claiming thousands and thousands more fighters than they really have.
That kind of thing, because, of course, the bigger the boast, the greater likelihood of more CIA money coming in to help them actually get bigger.
That kind of thing.
Right.
Yeah, I mean, definitely this is somewhat or it has become somewhat of an evergreen statement now from General Hifter.
The problem is that his actual troops are in the east to fighting jihadi groups and militias allied with the Islamists in the west in cities like Benghazi.
And also in some of the big eastern oil fields and ports in the kind of central strip of the country.
He's got some groups which are backing him who are armed.
I guess you could say that they were formerly militias and now they've been absorbed into what's called the Libya National Army.
That's by Tripoli.
And they're trying to enter the capital, but they're not very strong on the ground.
And as I said that there are these battles happening across the country.
So he's sending over his fighter jets at the moment to bomb parts of Tripoli and nearby Misrata and some of these central oil fields which are contested at the moment.
But I don't see him marching in Tripoli anytime soon simply because there are so many front lines.
You know, his troops, his fighter jets are spread across the country.
And don't forget these militias are really well armed.
Gaddafi left huge stockpiles of weapons after he was ousted in 2011, which people were basically allowed to pick up anyone.
I mean, Libya is awash with weapons.
Even civilians have AK-47s at home.
So these militias are charging around the place with anti-aircraft guns, some surface-to-air missiles, planes.
It's a serious force that he's fighting.
So I can't see him sort of charging into Tripoli in the next week.
Right.
And now, well, music's playing.
So we'll have to take this break.
But when we get back, I have a lot more questions for you.
First one, I think, will be along the lines of just how many different militias and tribal, sectarian, Islamists, this, that, the other groups fighting here.
Major battle lines are one thing.
Minor ones are many more things.
But we'll be right back with Belle True on the other side of this break.
The great article at foreignpolicy.com is called The Ground Invasion of the Capital is Imminent.
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All right, you guys, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott.
I'm talking with Belle True.
She writes for The Times in London.
And this one is at foreignpolicy.com.
A ground invasion of the capital is imminent, a great write-up on the current crisis in Libya.
And so, yeah, you mentioned there, Belle, about how there are just so many different well-armed militias all over the place.
Do you have any kind of ballpark estimate as to how many actual different groups we're talking about and the different ranks and loyalties and just how much of a grudge they each have?
Are they fighting for their own little piece of territory?
Do they each have grand plans for Tripoli someday?
What's the deal?
Well, basically, to give you a bit of a background, these are ex-rebels.
Most of them are ex-rebels.
They fought against Gaddafi.
They were armed by countries like America, the U.S., and, of course, through NATO.
And after the fall of Gaddafi, they were basically, the government at the time didn't know what to do with them.
They had huge amounts of weapons.
They weren't going to go home.
They certainly weren't going to put down their anti-aircraft guns.
So at the time, the Libyan transitional government basically absorbed them into the interior ministries and the defense ministries, which means they put them on the government payroll.
So that means there's about 1,500 different militias who are officially on the government books and are still being paid by the government because the budget is an old one that was set by law and can't be changed.
So we have a ridiculous situation right now where the elected parliament and its cabinets are fighting over 1,500 militias who are being paid by the government to continue their work.
That can't be changed until the next financial year, the next budget, which will be set at some point in the middle of this civil war.
So those are just the militias that are officially registered by the government.
There's a lot of other groups.
They have conflicting allegiances.
They want different parts of territories.
They have their own brigade commanders.
It's really haphazard.
We're talking about basically normal people who picked up a lot of weapons during the civil war and have been charging around with those weapons ever since.
And on top of that, as you mentioned before the break, there's also the tribes as well.
There are dozens of tribes who have their own allegiances who are also very heavily armed and occupying different parts of the country, protecting their territory.
So it's a total mess and a massive headache with all sides receiving funds, being massively heavily armed, having access to airports, planes, you name it.
All right.
So, well, yeah, we've seen the battle for the Tripoli airport and all the refineries on fire, all this stuff.
But now, so what about ISIS?
We see lots of headlines about those declaring loyalty to the Islamic State running around fighting in Libya.
But what's the truth of that on the ground, do you think?
Well, what we're seeing at the moment is quite a worrying bubbling of extremism coming through Libya.
Imagine how huge Libya is.
It's over 2,000 kilometers long.
It has enormous borders with Egypt, with Tunisia, with all the different countries.
And those borders are completely unguarded.
They're open.
There's no control.
There's no state.
There's no police.
There's no military.
There's no nothing.
And meanwhile, you've got a lot of heavily armed people, many of them with quite a strong Islamic.
I'd say we can't even really call this Islamic because the kind of extremist jihadist ideology doesn't reflect Islam at all, but extremist thoughts charging about the country.
So what we've seen is a movement of groups, first of all, towards al-Qaeda, with one of the biggest terrorist organizations that's been designated a terrorist organization by the U.N., called Ansar Sharia.
And now, most recently, different splinter groups from that declaring allegiance to the Islamic State.
That happened just literally on Halloween, the last day of October.
And these groups are quite serious about it.
It's mostly centered around a city in the east called Darna, which has basically been occupied by these kind of jihadi groups for over a year now.
It's becoming to look a bit like Libya's version of Raqqa in Syria.
It's controlled by these extremists.
They've declared allegiance to ISIS.
They're imposing Sharia law.
They have their own Sharia law courthouse, their own Sharia law police force.
They have beheaded activists who are writing against them.
They've killed a lot of different soldiers and taken other groups hostage.
So we are, unfortunately, seeing ISIS very much happening in Libya.
And at the same time, we've also got reports that they're running training camps, which would make sense considering Libya has such open borders and it's bordering countries like Tunisia.
It has airports so you can easily fly to Turkey to enter Syria or Iraq.
Well, going back a couple of years, we saw how the war immediately spread into Mali, where the jihadists hijacked the Tuareg rebellion there, the Tuareg rebellion that had kind of been doubled in power because of Qaddafi's weapons and all that mess.
But now, so when we have, I mean, if they're really turning Darna into Raqqa over there, in that kind of situation, does that mean that it's just a matter of time before Egypt invades or are they just going to let that fester that way?
I mean, after all, like you said, the government is paying their enemies because they have to, like some episode of Yes Minister or whatever.
So why not let them stay?
I don't know.
I mean, Egypt is definitely looking across its borders with a lot of concern.
There was a cross-border attack last year which killed a lot of Egyptian soldiers as supposedly jihadis managed to cross over into Egypt and attack Egyptian soldiers.
We know that there has been sort of pledges of allegiance between Egypt's domestic terrorist groups and Libya's.
And of course, this new declaration of ISIS means we've got this kind of international brand extremist group, you know, in all these countries.
So, I mean, at the same time, I don't think Egypt wants to get involved in an international conflict.
It's already got its hands full dealing with domestic terrorism problems and also trying to silence dissents.
There's been obviously its own uprising back in 2011 and in 2013, the military takeover.
And since then, quite a brutal crackdown.
So the government's got its hands full here and doesn't really want to engage in any kind of direct combat with heavily armed Libyan jihadis.
But certainly, it's a problem that can't be left alone.
And it's certainly, as an observer, you know, having traveled around Libya extensively recently, it's something that I think is extremely worrying, particularly given the, you know, openness of Libya's borders and the fact that these jihadi groups have access to airports and heavy weaponry.
Well, yeah, I think it's just a matter of time.
It's sort of an irresistible temptation of probably it may have to wait for Hillary or Jeb to do it to get the Americans involved.
But that's sure to only make matters worse regardless.
But I could see them trying because what else are you going to do?
Let it become a declared affiliate of the Islamic State and loyal to Caliph Ibrahim and all this?
I mean, that's a PR catastrophe too far for Washington, D.C. there, I think, right?
I mean, absolutely.
I think the Americans are keeping a much closer eye on Libya than they profess to be doing in the media.
If you speak to people who are living in Benghazi, which is, as I said, the second city in the east, that's been a massive battleground between General Hifta's forces and the militias and jihadi groups against him.
There are American drones flying above Benghazi almost every single day.
They're keeping a really close eye on what's going on, particularly after the 2012 attack on its own on the American consulate, which killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens.
And of course, you know, we're seeing the trial of those Libyans who are accused of being involved in that attack, that brutal attack at the moment.
So the Americans are certainly watching this with a lot of interest.
Whether they're going to act is yet to be seen.
I mean, they do hold a lot of responsibility, as does the U.K. and other NATO countries, for intervening in the civil war and, you know, arming the rebels essentially just and then essentially leaving the federal government to deal with the mess afterwards.
And that's why you're seeing such a disastrous collapse in the civil war at the moment.
Whether they'll risk coming back into Libya and attempting to intervene as they are in Syria and Iraq is yet to be seen.
I think they have lost, as you said, a massive PR battle with all their international wars they've been fighting recently.
Yeah.
All right.
Now, so here's a subject that was a real big deal back in 2011 and 2012 and then just disappeared from pretty much all reporting that I know of.
And that is the plight of sub-Saharan black Africans in Libya after the initial mass racial pogroms that took place at the hands of the rebels that America and NATO fought for.
I guess some of these same groups that we're talking about right now.
Whatever happened to them?
Are they OK?
Or did they flee the country?
Were they killed?
How many people are we talking about?
Does anyone even know?
I mean, definitely Libya is quite, I mean, I'll get into trouble with Libyans, I know, but it's a fairly racist country in the sense that there is a big difference between those who classify as Libyans and anyone who's regarded as a sub-Saharan African.
At the moment, we've still seen, I mean, there's been a lot of attacks on Libyan tribes who, like the Tuaregans, who actually, whose tribes actually are also in Libya and also other African countries.
And they're labelled as kind of foreigners and they are still living in displacement camps now.
Three years after the toppling of Gaddafi, they were forced out of their camps and charged with supporting Gaddafi, sorry, out of their homes and charged with supporting Gaddafi.
And they've been living in refugee camps ever since.
And their situation is very, very dire.
In addition to that, you've obviously got the sub-Saharan African workers who have a sort of force to come to Libya to get work and try and make that perilous journey through to Italy via the Lampedusa crossing.
They are still very much around in Tripoli and the other cities trying to make a living.
And, of course, dying in their thousands as they make that dangerous crossing by the sea.
So it's still very much happening.
Of course, the government's had no control over the state.
So it can't do anything to help any targeted minorities or any persecution of any groups.
It can't even get back into the capital and control its own ministerial buildings, let alone the behavior of heavily armed groups who bear grudges.
Right.
It's just incredible.
And then if they did start talking about it, that would probably just, you know, presage an invasion, another stage of intervention here.
It's almost better ignored, it seems like, before the Americans come again and make it that much worse.
But I know that's a pretty cynical take, but I couldn't see him making it better.
When, you know, as Matthew, pardon me, Michael Hastings reported about Hillary, which I called it before he reported it, but her whole strategy with the Libya war in 2011 was just because America looked so bad for obviously backing the fascist military dictatorship in Egypt that the entire people seemingly rose up to overthrow that they tried to confuse the issue by saying, well, look, in Libya, we're on the side of the people, protesters versus the evil dictator, because it made for a simple headline for the Saturday morning newspaper, something for the American people to be confused as to whether America backs dictatorships in the region or not.
And here was her chance to, as she said, get the Arab Spring off on the right foot from a public relations point of view by stabbing Gaddafi in the back after he'd come in from the cold back in 2003, that he'd been finally let back in and made his deal with George Bush and all that.
And so it was simply, you know, a PR stunt, you know, like the Waco massacre.
So nothing more than a PR stunt.
They pull off and create a catastrophe.
So I don't know how President Hillary is going to come and clean up the mess, but I would rather, I guess, the American people just forget about it than get obsessed with it, if you know what I mean.
Yeah, I mean, I think also a lot of the interest from sort of Western forces in the Libyan civil war was probably also motivated by the huge amount of oil that's in Libya.
Libya is one of the largest oil producers in the whole of Africa.
And those opportunities to make money out of that is pretty huge.
Again, the sort of similar ideas to why they intervened in Iraq, although I don't want to simplify things.
But I think at the moment, another reason why the states simply can't get involved is because we're seeing an enormous proxy war happening in Libya.
Like I said, we've got Egypt, Saudi, UAE on one side.
On the other side, you've got Qatar and Turkey, who are supposedly supporting the Islamists and the militias.
So if America was to intervene, that's going to upset the balance of the region, considering Turkey is meant to be NATO's ally, and of course, you know, helping them along, or supposedly helping them along with their battle against ISIS and the Syrian regime in Syria and Iraq.
So I think for the Americans, anything public, they possibly have learned their lesson, but anything public at the moment would stir a hornet's nest in the region when we're seeing all these proxy wars taking place in all these different countries as these superpowers, regional superpowers, back their different horses.
All right.
Thank you very much, Belle.
I sure appreciate it.
Thank you very much.
All right, y'all.
That's Belle True.
She's at the London Times and at foreignpolicy.com.
This one is called A Ground Invasion of the Capital Is Imminent.
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