The thick black smoke escaping from a few boats moored in the port of Al-Maya, visible in a video shared on social networks, leaves no doubt about the violence and precision of the drone strikes that targeted the locality located about thirty kilometers west of Tripoli on Sunday May 28.
The harbour, accustomed to the continuous flow of migrants disembarked after having been intercepted offshore by the various armed groups forming the Libyan coast guard, had been the target since May 25 of the forces of the “government of national unity” (GUN) sitting in Tripoli. Other places around the city of Zaouïa were also affected. The results of these air raids show at least two dead and several injured.
The Ministry of Defense of the GUN – authority exercising mainly in Tripolitania (west) – explained that it wanted to “clean up the areas of the west coast and the rest of Libya from criminality” by hitting “the caches of gangs of traffickers of fuels, narcotics and human beings”. “Seven boats used for human smuggling, six warehouses of drug traffickers, weapons and equipment used by criminal gangs and nine tank trucks used in fuel smuggling were targeted,” the ministry detailed on Monday. who praised the “success of the security operations”.
The Zaouïa region is ultra-sensitive for Libya. From the desert south of the country where the main gas and oil fields are located, several pipelines converge on this coastal city which is home to a major refinery, a power station and a crude export terminal.
Struggles for influence between rival militias
With the Oil Crescent bordering the Gulf of Sirte in Cyrenaica (east) – a region controlled by the rival power of Marshal Khalifa Haftar -, Zaouïa is one of the major exit doors for Libyan hydrocarbons, essential to oil and gas revenues. The city of nearly 200,000 inhabitants is the regular scene of clashes and struggles for influence between rival militias. In recent weeks, residents of the city have repeatedly demonstrated against the prevailing insecurity.
The operation launched on the orders of the leader of the GNA, Abdelhamid Dbeibah, who also serves as defense minister, has aroused strong objections in a country fragmented between several political and military forces. The General Administration of Coastal Security, one of the Coast Guard entities, strongly condemned the strikes which destroyed some of its boats. The House of Representatives (Parliament) based in Tobruk and dominated by supporters of Marshal Haftar also denounced “in the strongest terms” the military operation in Zaouïa and threatened to seize the UN Security Council and the International Criminal Court.
Khaled Al-Mishri, president of the High Council of State, an assembly based in Tripoli and endowed with simple advisory powers, for his part directly accused Prime Minister Dbeibah of being involved in the same criminal activities that he claims to be fighting. Mr. Al-Mishri called on the Presidential Council – the second pole of executive power alongside the GNA – to prevent Dbeibah from using drones to “terrorize and confront his political opponents”.
The nephew of parliamentarian Ali Bouzribah was injured by one of the strikes, the latter said on social networks, adding that his house was targeted. The influential family, very established in Zaouïa, has regularly been opposed to armed groups loyal to the Prime Minister.
“It can really get out of hand”
“It is necessarily guided by a political motivation, analyzes Jalel Harchaoui, associate researcher at the Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies. The strongest, most consistent and politically opposed voice to Dbeibah is that of the Bouzribah family. »
The fact that the Prime Minister deliberately targeted groups opposed to his authority is indicative, according to Mr. Harchaoui, of the tenor of the operation: “There are notorious smugglers who are completely spared by Dbeibah. In Zaouïa, all the sites that have been hit are not linked to his political friends who are themselves involved in criminal activities. This is not an operation against crime. »
The case has diplomatic ramifications. “The Libyan leaders must do everything possible to defuse [the crisis in Zaouïa] and take all precautions to protect the lives of civilians”, called the American embassy in Tripoli which ensures “close monitoring” the situation in Zaouïa. The British Embassy, ??for its part, described as “unacceptable” the use of weapons “endangering the lives of civilians”.
On the ground, tension remains high. In protest against the drone strikes, several local militias blocked the road linking Tripoli to the Tunisian border as well as supplies to the Zaouïa power plant, stoking fears of major cuts to the national grid. “It can really get out of hand,” fears researcher Jalel Harchaoui. Already, the closure of the Zaouïa power plant is worrying. Behind it may be the closure of the crude port or the seizure of the energy complex. You can end up with a civil war in the middle of a city of 200,000 people and infrastructure. I’m not sure Dbeibah knows what he’s doing. »
In the night from Sunday to Monday, fighting broke out in the capital Tripoli without the two events being directly linked. For several hours, the “Al-Radaa Force” (“deterrence”) and “Brigade 444”, two groups supporting the Prime Minister, exchanged gunfire in the heart of the city. These events come as Libya faces a political stalemate after the abortion of the elections scheduled for December 2021, a failure which has reopened the fractures as much between Tripolitania and Cyrenaica as within Tripolitania itself.