Libya is a
big country. We've got everything
we need to develop. We've got the sea, a huge desert,
mountains, oil, gas, gold mines, all kinds
of minerals. All this for a population
of about 6 million. But the countries around
us just can't leave us alone. Emad Shanab is a Libyan,
fighting against foreign interference in his country. Europe, Turkey, Russia, the
US, our neighboring countries... they’re all trying to exploit
Libya for their own interests. They’re slicing up
Libya like a cake. Since Muammar Gaddafi was ousted,
Libya has had nine governments. 142 political parties
have been founded, and every new attempt to hold
elections has reignited conflict. As Africa's fourth-largest oil
producer, Libya rouses great interest. And its chronic instability has
attracted many dubious actors. This nation has become the
playground of the world’s great powers raising a key question: Who
is sowing chaos in Libya? In the beginning, the Libyan
revolution seemed full of hope. It put an end to the 42-year reign of
a dictator: Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. But after the
fall of Gaddafi, the revolutionaries did
not lay down their arms. The country
was divided. The three big cities that
spurred the revolution vied for power and
control of the oilfields. The western cities of Tripoli
and Misrata were on the one side, facing the eastern city
of Benghazi on the other. The split began in 2014,
during the first election. Tripoli and Misrata were the
Western command centers. And in the
East, Benghazi. The population
gradually took sides, and it wasn’t long before
the guns started going off. Islamic extremists soon
seized the opportunity to infiltrate the vulnerable
country. They sowed terror
among the population. They took away the
revolutionaries’ weapons. In the midst
of this chaos, one man decided to take
matters into his own hands. His name:
Khalifa Haftar. He declared he would take
over the country in order to unify it. He appointed himself
leader of the Libyan army. The Libyan National
Army has been mobilized. Saving the
country is its duty. We don't want to
seize power or govern. We want to restore peace and
conduct free, democratic elections. Who was this
mysterious figure? And how could a man
without financial resources or political support mobilize
an army to back him? All state
representatives, police officers and soldiers are to
report to their barracks and bases. Our goal is to
save the nation. The key to the mystery might lie
in the commander's career path. Khalifa Haftar was a top military
officer in the Gaddafi regime. In 1987, on behalf
of the dictator, Haftar led an offensive against
the neighboring country of Chad. He was taken as
a prisoner of war. It was during this period that
Haftar was recruited by the CIA to topple Gaddafi, as
reported in the New York Times: When his mission fell through, Haftar
went into exile in the United States. He started attracting the interest of
external actors, especially in the West. The US and France especially
were interested in the role Haftar could play in helping
fight terrorism. His army’s top goal was
fighting terrorism - which it did do. It fought terrorism in Derna, in
Benghazi, in Syrte, and in Fezzan. Terrorism was a real and
serious threat, for us as well. And his army, with our support,
won big victories against this threat. After 27 years
of exile in the US, Khalifa Haftar reappeared
onto the Libyan political scene. He seemed to be the only
figure capable of standing up to the so-called Islamic
State terrorist group, whose advances across the
Middle East had the West worried. This isn’t a
coup d’état. It’s not a coup d’état in the
traditional sense of the term. Many Libyans in the
East rallied to his side. But Tripoli and Misrata
refused to fall in line with Haftar, whom they saw
as a new dictator. War broke out. To oppose
Haftar’s army, the western cities armed their young
men and prepared them for battle. Emad Shanab was one
of the first to join the fight. Emad, I met you when you
were a student at university. Now you’re in uniform
carrying a gun... Yes. And this is Oussama,
he's a student too. We're here to
help with the war. We're civilians, but we
dropped out of school to lend our revolutionary
brothers a hand. It’s the right thing to do
because their struggle is just. We believe in them. It's as simple
as that. Are you afraid of dying? Are you afraid of dying? Death can
strike at any time. Haftar's bombs could
land on us at any second. Right here, at my home,
at my school, in the street. We have to fight so
that our younger brothers and our children can
live in peace in Libya. I face death
every single day. A few years later, Emad
would lose both his brother and his friend Oussama
on the battlefield. In 2014, I was only two
years away from graduating. I was studying the
architecture of Spain, the United States, France, Italy,
Dubai... and I thought to myself: My greatest wish is for
Libya to develop that way and I’m helping
make that happen. I never would have imagined,
even in my worst nightmares, that our country would be divided
between Benghazi and Misrata, between the
West and the East. Never. Nobody could have
imagined such a thing. Libya plunged
into endless war. The country went from ceasefires
to conflict, and back again. There were
international conferences, and the UN Security Council
issued report after report, but nothing changed
on the ground. Five years into the conflict,
the battle lines hadn’t budged. Nobody could
win... until 2019. Khalifa Haftar launched
a large-scale offensive, conquering 85%
of the country. He advanced to the
gates of the Libyan capital. Fighters from Misrata flocked
to Tripoli to bolster the forces of the Government
of National Accord. They tried to defend the
city from Haftar’s attack. We were all surprised by
the swiftness and violence of Haftar's
attack on Tripoli. It baffled us. Who was backing this powerful
force that had covered 1200km from East to
West so quickly? We had lots
of questions. On the ground, both
sides fought ferociously for control of
Tripoli airport. Our intelligence
was clear. Initially we intercepted
messages, but we still had doubts. We eventually confirmed
they were Russian mercenaries working for the
Wagner Group, one of the world's biggest
private military companies. Libya has become a war
theater for other countries. Those nations fight
each other here. Unfortunately, we're
only their puppets. A UN Security Council
report confirmed: The same report confirms the
Wagner Group's presence in Tarhouna, just outside Tripoli,
and crucially, near Libya's three
most important oilfields. We saw Wagner intervene in Syria,
and we’re seeing Wagner intervene in the Central African
Republic and in Libya. They follow the same
pattern every time. They come in and start waging
war without answering to anybody, because they supposedly operate
independently of any world power. They don't admit to
working for the Russian state, but their militias
obey Russia's orders. They help
themselves to oil here, or a gold mine there, or a diamond
mine in the Central African Republic. The method is always the
same, and it’s not acceptable. My question is for the
Russian President, Mr. Putin. Can you confirm that the Wagner
Group has 2,000 mercenaries in Libya? Or tell us how many Russian and
Wagner mercenaries are fighting there? If these soldiers are indeed
there and Russian citizens, they’re not acting on
behalf of the Russian state, nor do they receive financial
support from the Russian state. But Russia isn't the only foreign
country interfering in Libya. In 2019, Sudanese fighters appeared on
Libyan soil, alongside Haftar's forces. Abd Illah's story, like
hundreds of others, started with a work contract
in the United Arab Emirates. I left Sudan
with big dreams. I was going to
work in Abu Dhabi, send money to my family and save up to
start my own business back in Sudan. This was an
unbelievable opportunity. When we arrived at the airport in
Abu Dhabi, we saw Emirati troops. We were brought to a military
camp and started asking ourselves: we came here for jobs as
civilians, so what are we doing here? They started training
us to use weapons. We started with Kalashnikovs,
then moved on to more powerful stuff: rocket launchers,
grenades, and machine guns. After four months of training,
Abd Illah was sent to Libya along with 600 other
Sudanese, with no explanation. When we understood we’d
landed in Libya, it all became clear. They’d turned me
into a mercenary. I thought: I’m here to
fight, but against whom? And why? And how
can I escape? I told myself: You’ve got a 1%
chance of getting out of this alive. I’d simply
been sold. I told him I'd take
on the case pro bono, because it was a
matter of humanity, of the honor and dignity of
civilians that had been trampled on. Here's the proof, in
chronological order. First, the Emirati
work contract. This contract states they were
hired to work as security guards. They look happy
in these photos. Yes, they thought they’d
landed a civilian job... Now they’re depressed
and unemployed. Some of them had
given up their jobs, others had sold the land they lived
on to be able to leave the country. Is there no justice for them?
There’s no justice - none at all. This is al-Kadissi, a Libyan who's
one of Haftar's officers in the army. I believe
he’s Russian. Black Shield is a company
registered in the Emirates, but it really operates under the
authority of the Intelligence Service. The man who calls
himself the CEO is actually an Emirati
intelligence officer. He's the one in charge
of the war in Libya. Young Sudanese men
became cannon fodder in the deadliest
theaters of war in Libya. Many of them
never returned. You don’t appreciate what
you have until you lose it. For young people like me,
life is hard here in Sudan. But the day I came back and
saw the look on my mother’s face... That look, the love I have for
her, it was such an intense feeling. It's very difficult to
explain. Very difficult. I’d escaped death. Or better said, it was like I
had died and come back to life. Foreign powers supplied Haftar
with both troops and weapons. In 2015, the East and
the West fought each other with an arsenal from the Gaddafi
days, as seen in this footage. Then in 2019, a new
military era dawned in Libya. The weapons
appeared new. Russian
battle tanks North American
heavy artillery and many Serbian
portable rocket launchers. In these few seconds of footage,
ten mortar shells go up in smoke. They’re worth more
than half a million euros. This is all despite
the arms embargo that the United Nations Security
Council imposed on Libya in 2011. As a member of the army, I’m not
allowed to talk about these things, but I’ll summarize
the situation. Today, it’s become routine: the land
borders are open, especially with Egypt, and all kinds of weapons
can be smuggled unimpeded, despite the
international embargo. From the Emirates to Egypt
and then to the city of Tobruk. It’s easy. The land and air
borders will remain open as long as Haftar
controls this region. Even a nuclear bomb
could be brought in. Very few countries have
respected the UN embargo. The problem with
the United Nations is they have no intelligence
agency or satellites. They have to rely on the generosity
of the world's greatest powers, who can do
three things. They can say: You're
doing great work, so we’ll share all the
information you need. That I
haven't seen. Or they can give you nothing,
as is most often the case. Or they can mislead you, if
what they're really trying to do is protect their
allies on the ground. The weapons come in
directly by land, sea or air. All kinds of weapons
have entered Libya. The European Union, the
United Nations, the African Union all these organizations
are just full of empty words. With the arrival of new, high-tech
weapons, the war took a turn. Strategic sites were
struck without warning. When I arrived
at the academy, I was overwhelmed by the smell of
blood running through the courtyard. It was an
anti-personnel missile, a fragmentation missile that
blasts out over a wide area, to kill as many
people as possible. Those are
painful memories. Imagine if your child
was at that academy. I felt like I’d
lost 26 children. It was horrific. The officers and students
were all in a state of hysteria. They didn't know which
way to run to escape. I went there hoping to
find my son still standing. Can you imagine
how it feels for a father, to find his child dead, his body in
pieces spread out all over the ground? 24 hours before he died, before
the strike, I was with my son. I visited him at
the academy. He looked handsome, he was freshly
shaven and proud of his uniform. All the boys
looked good. You leave with that image
of your son, and the next day, you find him
in pieces. That’s how
I found him. This was the weapon:
the Wing Loong II. This Chinese-manufactured
drone can carry projectiles weighing
up to 480kg. How could such advanced
technology get into a country that has been under an arms
embargo for so many years? With a range
of 4,000km, the drone can take off from
any of these Libyan airbases. So far, the drone has been
spotted twice on Libyan soil. At the Al-Jufra
military airbase in 2019, and at the El Khadim
military base in 2020. At the time, both bases were under the
control of the same man: Khalifa Haftar. He has never been held
to account for the crime. Any intentional attack
against civilian targets can be considered a war crime. The memo I put out
that day said exactly that. According to a
document we obtained, only four countries have
purchased the Wing Loong II: Egypt, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia,
and the United Arab Emirates. But the UAE is the only country
to have bought both the drone and missiles from the
Chinese manufacturer. 15 drones and 500 missiles,
for about 50 million dollars. Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al
Nahyan, today president of the UAE, never made a secret of his
friendship with Khalifa Haftar. Two weeks after the deadly
airstrike, he was in Berlin for a conference that aimed to
put an end to the conflict in Libya by halting foreign
weapons deliveries. Today, all participants committed
to refrain from interference in the armed conflict or
internal affairs of Libya. Khalifa Haftar had the
support of Russia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab
Emirates, and Egypt. He had the
better weapons. And he was on the verge
of taking the Libyan capital. To turn the
tide of the war, the UN-recognized
government in Western Libya appealed to
Turkey for help. This confidential
footage shows a meeting between the Turkish Defense Minister
and the then-Libyan Interior Minister. There was a point in late summer
2019, in September or October, when Fayez al Sarraj's UN-recognized
government was really struggling. The Haftar-led troops, supported by
Wagner and other foreign mercenaries, had reached the
outskirts of Tripoli. That’s when the government,
as Mr. Sarraj informed me, reached out to several
other countries for help, including the US but
also Algeria and Turkey. Turkey was the only
one to answer the call. I had several meetings
with Turkish officials. When the Wagner
mercenaries got involved, we had to strike a legal
agreement with Turkey. Foreign intervention wasn't something
we ever wanted, but we had no choice. We chose the Turks
because, like us, they need to defend
their economic interests, which are worth
tens of billions. Don't forget that President
Sarraj's government was formed under
the Skhirat Accord. As a provisional
government, it didn't have the power to enter
into international agreements. But they
did anyway. And the Turks took advantage of that
agreement to resettle Syrians in Libya. This “Syrianization” was
completely irresponsible. We now have Turks, Syrians, Russians
and Sudanese living on Libyan soil. That’s a result
of this situation. If anybody actually wants to help
us, they can do it through education, technology, construction,
and health services, so we can build a sound
economy shored up by our oil. That's what we need. Turkey became the main
backer of the Western Libyan forces. In exchange for
this military aid, Turkey was allowed
to drill for oil and gas in the waters off
the Libyan coast. Turkey supplied the western forces
with drones and state-of-the-art communications and
frequency-jamming systems. These Turkish-made weapons
would tip the war in Tripoli's favor. I can confirm that our
drones are Turkish-made and that Libyans have
been trained to use them. There are Libyans being
trained in Turkey as we speak. As you well know, there are a
tremendous number of weapons on Libyan soil. The Turkish
representatives justified it as a request from the
Libyan government. They had the letter
and the two agreements, and additional
agreements they'd signed. They saw it as one legal
pact against another. The UN Security Council resolution
against the bilateral agreement they'd
entered into. And they had the other
interventions as a precedent. There'd been so many
interventions already. They upended the power
balance in the spring of 2020, forcing Haftar to withdraw
his troops from Western Libya. This portable electronic jamming
system created protective “bubbles,” neutralizing attacks
by Haftar's army. It was deployed up and
down the Libyan coast. The East lost its main
weapon: airstrikes. Turkish drones
entered the fray, targeting strategic sites and
wiping out Haftar's ground forces. The Eastern
army retreated. This footage shows Russian mercenaries
pulling out of the Tripoli suburbs. Fighting has largely stopped,
and a ceasefire has been signed. And in one of
history's great ironies, the line dividing the
Eastern and Western forces stands in exactly the same
place it did a decade ago. At least 15,000
people have been killed. At least 200,000 civilians have been
displaced and hundreds of Libyans are considered
missing. How long can
this go on? What are we
supposed to do? Leave the country? Die?
Is dying our only choice? War, death - it’s the
same on both sides. Young people have no choice
but to take one side or the other. I don’t want to
think about it. It's too painful. It makes me cry. I need to somehow draw strength
from all these painful memories. Those who have died give me
strength to carry on in their stead. I don't want to
think about all this. I don't want to think
about it anymore. Libya needs
strength now. All the young people we lost
during this dark and difficult period are in our hearts
and minds. We'll never
forget them. And we'll keep
fighting for them. To build up Libya so I can
live in my own country in peace, like young people do in France,
and Europe, and America. I'm just like all the other young
people all around the world. I want to live in peace and take
part in the development of my country, the land where my children and
my children's children will live. That's what I need. What do Europeans
want from Libya? The Gulf nations, the
Americans, the Russians, the Turks what do they
want from Libya? What are we going
to do with them? I've changed in the
last seven years. I had to. I said to myself: We, young Libyans, need to start a political movement to
secure our rights. We're the ones paying
the price for this war. We know
what we need. It’s my duty to travel
across this big country, contending with
threats and clashes. Our young people, whether
in the West or in the East, they're all
Libyans in the end. That's all
that counts. We need to talk
to one another and find a way to live
together in this country. So that one day, the
history books will say that we managed to achieve
peace and reconciliation. I'd give my life to make
that dream come true. Either I’ll make it come
true, or I’ll die trying.
I’m already questioning what kind of documentary this is going to be. “Destruction of a nation” implies they’re not trying to pretend the 2011 regime change op wasn’t a disaster. The fact that they put Putin’s smirking face in the thumbnail and not Obama’s seems like a very odd choice considering who is actually responsible for this disaster.