French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian did not surprise when he said that a Syrian scenario is repeating itself in Libya and that the situation is very worrying.
Actually, Libya is experiencing a more serious and complex crisis than the Syrian crisis. Foreign ambitions are high and the international conflict over the resources of this Arab country is fierce.
Of course, the Libyan gas and oil revolution has drawn a convergence of the ambitions of many parties. Some interfere in the affairs of this Arab country for no other motive. Turkey, whose military intervention has become public, crude and direct, is defying the will of the world collective. The international community is totally incapable of dissuading Sultan Erdogan from tampering with the fate of yet another Arab country, over and above Turkey’s colonial practices in Syria.
In fact, clear international paralysis has given Turkey the impetus to undermine the decisions of the Berlin International Conference and the resolution adopted by the United Nations Security Council to stabilise it. Turkey is intervening directly with the military in an attempt to resolve the conflict for the benefit of its allies in the framework of the illegitimate government of entente.
The lack of a unified Arab role adds to the Libyan problem. Such a role should be the main objective in resolving the crisis and the main driving force behind international efforts.
Again, the main Arab mistake was precisely the lack of involvement in the Syrian crisis from the very beginning, which needed to be corrected. In that crisis, the main actors took action with no, not even minimal, Arab influence.
The Libyan situation is more difficult. It is not only foreign ambitions and conflicting regional and international agendas that come into play, but also the tendency of the Turkish side to establish itself in Libya in order to turn it into a thorn in Egypt’s side. This is the starting point for putting pressure on Cairo to settle scores at the expense of Libyan blood and the security and stability of this Arab territory.
It is imperative that the Arab States act together in the Libyan crisis, through the League of Arab States, in effective cooperation with the African Union and neighbouring countries, in order to save the Libyan people, drive out Turkey and put an end to its disturbing involvement in a second Arab country.
Turkey is conducting a suspicious presence in Libya. Sultan Erdogan’s policies have led the Turkish army to become directly involved in the conflict and to become a direct actor on the ground. In other words, the Turkish economy is even more devastated, the situation having initially deteriorated following the ill-considered military intervention in Syria.
Erdogan’s decisions will undoubtedly have dramatic consequences for Turkey, having led to unprecedented regional and international isolation.
Moreover, his disastrous contribution to the spread of extremism and terrorism and to the expansion of terrorism by moving terrorists from Syria to Libya is well known, a move aimed at exporting the danger of these organisations to Egypt.
Erdogan wants to turn these organizations into a pressure card aimed at exhausting that country, aware of the scale of the challenges facing Cairo, both economic and strategic, not to mention the crisis of Ethiopia’s Renaissance dam.
The Arabs must realise that the continuing carnage in Libya due to direct Turkish military intervention must come to an end. Libya’s neighbours can unite and coordinate their efforts by cooperating with the rest of the active Arab and Gulf countries in order to lead the international effort in this crucial phase of the crisis.
It is all too clear that the danger of chaos in Libya does not only mean the loss of an important Arab country and the displacement of its population. Rather, the redeployment of terrorist groups would give them a new field of work and movement, as well as get the diaspora to regroup and organize themselves to undercut the security of other Arab countries.
