Libya - Destruction of a nation | DW Documentary

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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.

👍︎︎ 3 👤︎︎ u/Shillforbigusername 📅︎︎ Oct 27 2022 🗫︎ replies
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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.
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Channel: DW Documentary
Views: 379,591
Rating: undefined out of 5
Keywords: Documentary, Documentaries, documentaries, DW documentary, full documentary, DW, documentary 2022, documentary, Libya, Gaddafi, civil war, Arab Spring, arms embargo, United Nations
Id: JvF6w_r56EA
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Length: 42min 26sec (2546 seconds)
Published: Wed Oct 26 2022
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