BENGHAZI, LIBYA—Average U.S. gas prices now exceed $4.00 per gallon. The U.S. inability to stop Iran’s selective closure of the Strait of Hormuz threatens to increase the pain and may impact everything from air travel to food security.
How ironic, then, that Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Special Envoy Massad Boulos, and President Donald Trump’s broader Middle East team appear so invested in a backward and unrealistic Obama-era policy on Libya, that they undercut the top energy producer in the Mediterranean.
Most Americans know Libya through the lens of the 2012 murder of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens in Benghazi. Ansar al-Sharia Islamist extremists closed in on the U.S. consulate just after the Turkish consul left a meeting with Stevens. That the Turk drove past the converging mob but failed to warn Stevens or the State Department is a scandal for which Trump should demand an answer from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
U.S. diplomats assigned to the Libya file urge diplomats and businessmen to bypass the Haftars and suggest that any oil deal made with them would amount to theft.
After Stevens’ murder, Khalifa Haftar, a prominent former Qadhafi-era general who had spent years in American exile, led a campaign to rid Benghazi and the surrounding countryside of the extremists and terrorists. The Libyan sacrifice in Operation Dignity claimed the lives of 5,000 soldiers and civilians who fought door-to-door, liberated Benghazi, and now control 70 percent of the country. While Saddam Haftar increasingly takes over from his father, Benghazi is a completely different city from a decade ago. Men crowd cafes, children ride go-karts on the corniche, and women shop at stores selling the latest brand-name fashions from the United States and Europe.
Haftar and the Libyan National Army provide security for the oil fields, their transport, and their export. Rubio’s Libya country team—ironically based in Tunis because Tripoli does not have the security Benghazi does—insists, however, that Benghazi defer to Tripoli’s chaotic mix of militias and politicians. U.S. diplomats assigned to the Libya file urge diplomats and businessmen to bypass the Haftars and suggest that any oil deal made with them would amount to theft since, by fiat, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton decided Haftar was not legitimate.
This raises an important question, though: What is legitimacy? The mandate of elected governments in both west and east has expired. Is legitimacy, then, bestowed by diplomats abroad who too often like to play God? Or is it based upon control of territory, establishment of security, and facility of services? If the latter, then the Haftars are legitimate.
There are three reasons historically for deference to Tripoli. First, there is a belief that Tripoli is the capital and therefore the international community must defer to whomever is in Tripoli. Second, when the Islamists lost the 2012 elections, they threatened to rebel. Clinton was weak and urged dialogue, essentially empowering the Islamists to win through threats what they had not won at the ballot box. That legacy remains. Finally, many U.S. diplomats did not like Khalifa Haftar. He was blunt and, from the American perspective, he was stubborn. U.S. authorities also accused Haftar of double-dealing with Russia.
Any Libyan [oil] exports need not transit the Strait of Hormuz or the Bab el-Mandeb; they could go straight to Europe.
All these reasons, however, should be invalid. When Libya gained independence, it had two constitutional capitals: Tripoli and Benghazi. In this, it is no different than South Africa or Bolivia. By insisting on centralization, not only did Clinton—and now Rubio—commit to Qadhafi’s program of punishing Benghazi, but the secretary also acted against Libya’s original constitution.
Second, allowing Islamists to blackmail the West does not make America great again; instead, it rewards those groups the Tripoli government now funds—and which now regroup.
Finally, U.S. diplomats should not subordinate national security to their own fragile egos. Haftar did approach Russia, much like Erdoğan himself does, but unlike Erdoğan, he refused to subordinate Libyan interests to the Kremlin.
Put another way, first Khalifa and now Saddam Haftar put Libyan interests first. The question for Rubio, Boulos, and Trump should be, within the Venn diagram of U.S. and Libyan interests: Where is the overlap?
Working directly with Haftar to expand oil exports from Libya is the obvious answer. Any Libyan exports need not transit the Strait of Hormuz or the Bab el-Mandeb; they could go straight to Europe. And, in the interim, if they help Haftar expand security to 100 percent of Libya, that would be an outcome the entire region likely would welcome. If that hurts the feelings of U.S. diplomats in Tunis, so be it.
