[Midden-Oosten] Following Syria success, Russia exports counterrevolution to Libya

[Jeff]

Russian Snipers, Missiles and Warplanes Try to Tilt Libyan War

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/05/world/middleeast/russia-libya-mercenaries.html

Moscow is plunging deeper into a war of armed drones in a strategic hot 
spot rich with oil, teeming with migrants and riddled with militants.


By David D. Kirkpatrick
New York Times

     Nov. 5, 2019

TRIPOLI, Libya — The casualties at the Aziziya field hospital south of 
Tripoli used to arrive with gaping wounds and shattered limbs, victims 
of the haphazard artillery fire that has defined battles among Libyan 
militias. But now medics say they are seeing something new: narrow holes 
in a head or a torso left by bullets that kill instantly and never exit 
the body.

It is the work, Libyan fighters say, of Russian mercenaries, including 
skilled snipers. The lack of an exit wound is a signature of the 
ammunition used by the same Russian mercenaries elsewhere.

The snipers are among about 200 Russian fighters who have arrived in 
Libya in the last six weeks, part of a broad campaign by the Kremlin to 
reassert its influence across the Middle East and Africa.

After four years of behind-the-scenes financial and tactical support for 
a would-be Libyan strongman, Russia is now pushing far more directly to 
shape the outcome of Libya’s messy civil war. It has introduced advanced 
Sukhoi jets, coordinated missile strikes, and precision-guided 
artillery, as well as the snipers — the same playbook that made Moscow a 
kingmaker in the Syrian civil war.

“It is exactly the same as Syria,” said Fathi Bashagha, interior 
minister of the provisional unity government in the capital, Tripoli.

Whatever its effect on the outcome, the Russian intervention has already 
given Moscow a de facto veto over any resolution of the conflict.

The Russians have intervened on behalf of the militia leader Khalifa 
Hifter, who is based in eastern Libya and is also backed by the United 
Arab Emirates, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and, at times, France. His backers 
have embraced him as their best hope to check the influence of political 
Islam, crack down on militants and restore an authoritarian order.

Mr. Hifter has been at war for more than five years with a coalition of 
militias from western Libya who back the authorities in Tripoli. The 
Tripoli government was set up by the United Nations in 2015 and is 
officially supported by the United States and other Western powers. But 
in practical terms, Turkey is its only patron.

The new intervention of private Russian mercenaries, who are closely 
tied to the Kremlin, is just one of the parallels with the Syrian civil 
war.

The Russian snipers belong to the Wagner Group, the Kremlin-linked 
private company that also led Russia’s intervention in Syria, according 
to three senior Libyan officials and five Western diplomats closely 
tracking the war.

In both conflicts, rival regional powers are arming local clients. And, 
as in Syria, the local partners who had teamed up with the United States 
to fight the Islamic State are now complaining of abandonment and 
betrayal.

The United Nations, which has tried and failed to broker peace in both 
countries, has watched as its eight-year arms embargo on Libya is 
becoming “a cynical joke,” as the United Nations special envoy recently 
put it.

Yet in some ways, the stakes in Libya are higher.

More than three times the size of Texas, Libya controls vast oil 
reserves, pumping out 1.3 million barrels a day despite the present 
conflict. Its long Mediterranean coastline, just 300 miles from Italy, 
has been a jumping-off point for tens of thousands of Europe-bound 
migrants.

And the open borders around Libya’s deserts have provided havens for 
extremists from North Africa and beyond.

The conflict has become a bipolar combination of the primitive and 
futuristic. Turkey and the Emirates have turned Libya into the first war 
fought primarily by clashing fleets of armed drones. The United Nations 
estimates that during the past six months, the two sides have conducted 
more than 900 drone missions.

But on the ground, the war is between militias with fewer than 400 
fighters typically engaged on both sides at any time. The fighting 
happens almost exclusively in a handful of deserted districts on the 
southern outskirts of Tripoli, while in neighborhoods just a few miles 
away, streets are clogged with civilian traffic and espresso bars bustle 
amid heaps of uncollected garbage.

“There is a huge discrepancy between the Libyan fighting on the ground 
and the advanced technology in the air from the meddling foreign 
powers,” said Emad Badi, a Libyan scholar at the Middle East Institute 
who visited the front in July. “It’s like they are different worlds.”

On a recent tour of the front-line district of Ain Zara, a Tripoli 
militia officer, Muhammad el-Delawi, passed out stacks of cash to 
fighters in T-shirts or mismatched camouflage uniforms, some in tennis 
shoes or sandals, others only with bare feet. The twisted wreckage of an 
ambulance hit by a drone missile sat by the side of the road.

The arrival of the Russian snipers is already transforming the war, Mr. 
el-Delawi said, recounting the deaths of nine of his fighters the 
previous day — one of them shot in the eye.

“The bullet was as long as a finger,” he said.

One European security official said the absence of exit wounds, a mark 
of hollow-point ammunition, matches injuries inflicted by Russian 
snipers in eastern Ukraine.

By the beginning of April, the conflict had largely died down and the 
United Nations secretary general, António Gutteres, arrived in Tripoli 
to try to finalize a peace deal. But the next day Mr. Hifter launched a 
surprise assault on the capital, restarting the civil war.

Officials of the Tripoli government say Russia is now bringing in more 
mercenaries by the week.

“It is very clear that Russia is going all in on this conflict,” said 
Gen. Osama al-Juwaili, the top commander of the forces aligned with the 
Tripoli government. He complained that the West was doing nothing to 
protect that government from the foreign powers determined to push Mr. 
Hifter into power.

“Why all this pain?” he said sardonically. “Just stop this now and 
assign the guy to rule us.”

Russia had previously stayed in the background while the United Arab 
Emirates and Egypt took the leading roles in military support for Mr. 
Hifter. But by September, his assault on Tripoli seemed to have stalled 
and Russia apparently saw an opportunity.

Given the amateurish nature of the ground fighting, some diplomats said, 
the arrival of 200 Russian professionals could have an outsized impact.

A spokesman for Mr. Hifter’s forces did not respond to a request for 
comment.

Having collapsed into feuding city-states after the overthrow of the 
longtime Libyan dictator Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi in 2011, Libya is less 
a functioning state than a vast and bloated public payroll. Citizens and 
towns are united only by a shared dependence on the oil revenue flowing 
through the national bank in Tripoli to a vastly inflated government 
work force. Some of those salaries ultimately end up paying fighters on 
all sides of the war.

Control of the central bank and the oil revenue has made Tripoli the 
war’s grand prize.

Mr. Hifter, 75, was a former army general under Colonel el-Qaddafi who 
defected and lived in Northern Virginia as a C.I.A. client for more than 
a decade. Returning to Libya in 2011, he sought but failed to win a 
leading role in the uprising.

Five years ago, he vowed to rule Libya as a new military strongman, but 
his progress has been halting. His limited success has depended heavily 
on his regional backers and, until now, Russia appeared to have hedged 
its bets.

The Kremlin has maintained contacts with the authorities in Tripoli as 
well as with former el-Qaddafi officials, even as its support for Mr. 
Hifter has been vital and growing.

Russia has printed millions of dollars’ worth of Libyan bank notes and 
shipped them to Mr. Hifter. By 2015, Russia had set up a base in western 
Egypt to help provide technical support and repair equipment, according 
to Western diplomats. By last year, Russia had also sent at least a 
handful of military advisers to Mr. Hifter’s forces in Benghazi.

Last November, Mr. Hifter was filmed at a table in Moscow with both the 
Russian defense minister and the head of the Wagner Group, Yevgeny 
Prigozhin, the close ally of Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin. Mr. 
Prigozhin is under indictment in the United States for involvement in 
the internet “troll farm” that sought to influence the 2016 presidential 
election.

As in Syria, the Russian escalation in Libya has drawn complaints from 
former American allies that Washington has abandoned them.

Even though it officially supports the United Nations-recognized 
government, the United States has largely disengaged and President Trump 
has appeared to endorse Mr. Hifter. Mr. Trump called Mr. Hifter a few 
days after he began his assault on Tripoli to applaud his “role in 
fighting against terrorism.”

Now Mr. Hifter’s forces are conducting airstrikes against militias from 
western Libya that had previously worked closely with American military 
forces to expel a branch of the Islamic State from its stronghold in the 
city of Surt.

“We fought with you together in Surt and now we are being targeted 10 
times a day by Hifter,” Gen. Muhammad Haddad, now a commander for the 
Tripoli forces, said he told American officials.

When Mr. Hifter began his assault on Tripoli in April, his biggest 
advantage was the use of armed drones: The United Arab Emirates 
furnished Chinese-made Wing Loong drones, purchased for $2 million each.

General al-Juwaili blamed drone strikes for nearly two-thirds of the 
casualties among Tripoli government forces. United Nations officials 
estimate that more than 1,100 have died in the fighting but say the real 
number is likely more than double.

“In the beginning, we were terrified,” said Mr. el-Delawi, the officer 
of the Tripoli-backed militia at Ain Zara. “We just heard a scary noise 
and we did not know what to do.”

Since then, he said, fighters have learned to listen for the whirring 
noise and hide as the drones approach. They say Mr. Hifter’s forces can 
fly only three drones at a time, and that each drone fires a maximum of 
eight missiles. Each must then disappear to reload — allowing the 
fighters a chance to regain lost ground.

Realizing that the drones target heat sources, the fighters also learned 
to hide more effectively, including by refraining from smoking.

“The drone can see a fighter smoking a cigarette inside a car,” Mr. 
el-Delawi explained.

In May, the Tripoli government began buying drones from Turkey: The 
Bayraktar TB2 sold for $5 million each and is manufactured by the family 
business of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s son-in-law, Selcuk 
Bayraktar.

“The Turks saved us just in time,” said Mr. Bushagha, the interior 
minister of the Tripoli government.

Turkish drones helped the Tripoli forces recapture the strategic city of 
Gheryan in June, and since then, the battle lines have barely shifted.

Taking Tripoli may require far more Russian support than a couple 
hundred mercenaries, given the bloody block-by-block nature of urban 
combat. But by propping up Mr. Hifter, diplomats said, Moscow has 
already claimed a major say in any negotiations over Libya’s future.

In an interview, the United Nations envoy, Ghassan Salame, said Libyans 
could patch up their differences if foreign powers stopped arming rival 
factions. He has organized a conference in Berlin later this year to try 
to stop that interference.

“Otherwise, this could either go on for an eternity as a low intensity 
conflict, like a fire that is not extinguished,” he said, “or even 
escalate, with a doubling down by the international forces intervening, 
if they believe they can somehow end it for their own advantage.”



Michael Schwirtz contributed reporting from New York.

David D. Kirkpatrick is an international correspondent based in the 
London bureau. He was previously the Cairo bureau chief, a Washington 
correspondent and a national correspondent based in New York. @ddknyt

A version of this article appears in print on Nov. 6, 2019, Section A, 
Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Moscow Muscles Into 
Libyan War


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