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AFP
Imagine that the house next door is on fire and there is no fire department to call to prevent a serious disaster that will deceive you and your family.
That’s how Egypt has seen Libya since the brutal end of former Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and his regime in 2011.
Libya has no well-functioning state institutions, no unified army or security forces to talk about, and, crucially, no border guards on the side of its porous 1,100 km (685-mile) long desert border. Plus the country is tired with weapons.
The fire began to erupt when Libyans disagreed on a way forward, militias of all kinds proliferated, jihadists were re-emerged to pursue their dream of creating an Islamic state in Libya and beyond.
Egypt – whose military Islamic President Mohammed Morsi overthrew in 2013, and imprisoned him and other leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood – became a major target:
- In June 2014, smugglers killed six Egyptian border guards
- In 2017, a group of jihadists crossed into Egyptian territory and attacked a security check, killing 16 soldiers and wounding 13 others
- Within Libya itself, Egyptian workers were targeted. In 2015, Islamic State militants abducted and beheaded 21 Egyptian Christians, apparently in retaliation for the removal of President Morsi.
Post-Gaddafi Libya was quickly caught up in the clamor that has polarized and paralyzed politics in almost the entire Middle East and North Africa.
It is the struggle between the proponents of political Islam, in the first place of which the transnational Muslim Brotherhood and its many offshoots are, and secular as well as quasi-secular forces and old-fashioned nationalists.
A deal with UN brokers who set up a provisional government in Tripoli failed to disarm the militias or create the national reconciliation for which it was made.
Turkey, the turning point
When Libya broke between an Islamist-dominated West and anti-Islamist East – it was only natural for Egypt, which had declared the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization, to throw its weight behind the man who fought in Libya declared, Khalifa Haftar.
He had fought against them and removed Benghazi and other important urban centers in the east and south of Islamic militants.
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Reuters
Gen Haftar troops have been repulsed since Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan intervened in the conflict
For the past six years, Egypt’s main goal has been to contain the fire within the Libyan borders by providing secret support for Gen Haftar.
But things took a dramatic turn late last year when Turkey – the region’s biggest supporter of political Islam – decided to throw its weight behind the beleagured UN brokerage government.
It provided technical and military support that ultimately helped stop the advance of Gen Haftar’s troops to capture Tripoli.
More on the Libyan crisis:
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Encouraged by his gains on the battlefield, the Turkish-backed Tripoli administration promised to march to capture the rest of the country and completely defeat Gen Haftar.
Alarmed by reports of Turkey transferring thousands of hard-line Syrian monsters and jihadists to Tripoli and setting up Turkish bases in western Libya, Cairo felt it had no choice but to respond.
In June, after inspecting rows of tanks and rocket launchers and viewing a view of the air force with its top military brass in a base near the border with Libya, Egyptian President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi made a dramatic announcement.
‘Red line’
Striking from a pan-Arab agreement, he said that given the historical ties between the peoples of Libya and Egypt, Cairo had a legitimate right to intervene to defend the national interests of the two peoples against “foreign arrangements”.
There was no explicit reference to Turkey, but everyone understood where he was referring to. A Libyan delegation of tribal leaders in the auditorium cheered him on.
President Sisi had drawn a line in the sand – between Sirte on the Mediterranean Sea and the area around the Jufra air base in central Libya – as the ‘red line’ of Egypt.
Any attempt to make that cross by the militias loyal to Tripoli would be a direct threat to national security, he said.
A few days later, the Egyptian parliament stamped out a mandate for the president, who is also the army’s top commander, to deploy troops as he saw fit.
The Tripoli-based administration reacted angrily to President Sisis’ threat of military intervention, describing it as a “declaration of war”.
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President Sisi (L), who is commander-in-chief of the Egyptian army, now has permission to deploy troops to Libya if he wishes
Is this a serious threat or just saber rattling?
Observers outside Egypt were quick to ask questions about the Egyptian army and its capabilities.
But at home, public discussion about the army and its achievements is strictly forbidden.
Local media applauded the president, citing the Egyptian army as one of the strongest in the world, and even comparing it to the Turkish army, leveling the usual dose of vitriol against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Libyan “stooges” in Tripoli.
Unchangeable dilemma
However, a few moderate voices called for caution out of fear that Egypt would be sucked into the Libyan quagmire.
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Some are worried about Egypt’s conventional army in militia warfare
It is reasonable to assume that the Egyptian military is aware of intervention, not least because of the long supply lines that would be required between Egypt and central Libya – the scene of any possible confrontation
There is also concern that something could start if a surgical intervention could quickly develop into a military morass during Libya’s invincible civil war.
The observers also noted that the Egyptian military has not had a battlefield experience since 1973 and its last war against Israel along the Suez Canal and the Sinai Desert.
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Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, who was assassinated by Islamists nearly 40 years ago, visited military positions in 1973
The most recent experience of fighting Islamist militants in northern Sinai is not particularly impressive.
A war in the Libyan desert between a conventional army and an abundance of militias could become even more difficult.
Yet having made the announcement and drawn its line in the sand, Egypt finds itself with an unforgettable dilemma:
- To act early to prevent all possible attempts to conquer Jufra and Sirte in advance, which could provoke the whole war the threat of intervention being attempted
- Or wait until the other side crosses that line, which may prove too late for Egypt and its Libyan allies
