Episode Notes:

Earlier this week, Libya’s foreign minister fled the country after her Israeli counterpart revealed they had met in Rome. Here to tell us about the fallout is Jalel Harchaoui. In addition to writing for War on the Rocks, Jalel is an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, London.

[:40] Overview

[2:26] Libyan-Israeli relations

[3:43] Substance of meeting

[5:21] Political fallout

[7:24] Haftar's ties with Israel

[8:45] Wagner in Libya

Episode Transcript

Nicholas Danforth: My name is Nicholas Danforth and I'm an editor at War on the Rocks. You are listening to the Warcast, the members only podcast for what you need to know now. Earlier this week, Libya's foreign minister fled the country after her Israeli counterpart revealed they had met secretly in Rome. Here to tell us about the fallout is Jalel Harchaoui. In addition to writing for War on the Rocks, Jalel is an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London. Welcome back to the Warcast.

Jalel Harchaoui: Hey Nick. Thank you for having me.

Nicholas Danforth: Give us some background on this meeting. What was the Libyan government's emerging relationship with Israel like and how did they get to the point that these foreign ministers were even having at private meeting in Rome?

Jalel Harchaoui: First of all, there were multiple leaks over the last 18 months, particularly in 2022, indicating that both the Eastern Libyan camp and the Western Libyan camp were both entertaining a dialogue with Israel. But those were basically discovered by the public through leaks, which were never officially confirmed. It was never about formal meetings. And what made the incident last Sunday peculiar was the fact that it was effectively not a leak. It was confirmed by foreign ministry of Israel and also the venue Italy. Everybody knows that the UAE has been one of the nations that have been supportive of Prime Minister Dbeibeh in Tripoli.

And here we are talking about the government of Prime Minister Dbeibeh. No focus should be put on the Foreign Minister of Libya, Najla Mangoush, who fled. There were other men, other officials from Libya in that meeting, it was a big meeting that lasted two hours. It wasn't about her, it wasn't her initiative. It was really part of a very concerted, deliberate effort on the part of the Prime Minister. So we should focus on the Prime Minister. And that particular day, the Libyan public found out through the state of Israel, and that's what made it so different and so shocking in some ways.

Nicholas Danforth: So let's unpack this in a couple different stages. First, what was the Prime Minister hoping to get out of this relationship, out of deepening this relationship with Israel?

Jalel Harchaoui: We’re talking about a prime minister who rose to power in March 2021. So it's definitely a post Abraham Accords Arab leader. And all Arab nations know that if they do join the Abraham Accord framework, then they will be seen differently from Washington and other western capitals. And we saw, for example, before the Sudan War that Sudan did join the Abraham Accords. And today there are indications that at least part of the state of Israel is actually supportive of the rapid support forces in the conflict. So you have this default assumption that you can actually have as someone who would like to stay in power, is that if you would like to maximize your support from Washington, if you could deliver this splash, this media splash, this announcement that you have actually shaken hands with Israel and that you are joining the Abraham Accord framework, then it should help you reap a greater amount of support from Washington. At least that's the assumption.

Nicholas Danforth: Now, tell us a little bit more about the substance of this meeting on Sunday. What were they talking about?

Jalel Harchaoui: Well, first of all, we don't know what was being discussed. What we do know is that it was one meeting among a series. There was some information I was able to get. If you look at the social media, a lot of observers assume that it was Washington pushing the Libyan Prime Minister or his entire government into talking with Israel. In fact, it was not in that direction, it was the other way around. There was an expectation on the part of the Libyan government in Tripoli that maybe if they show a sufficient level of cordiality and goodwill vis-a-vis Israel, then Israel would be able to promote a more positive perception of that particular government in Washington.

We could also mention the fact that the same foreign minister of Libya, Najla Mangoush, actually visited Iran just a couple of weeks prior. So there was this idea, if you don't talk to me, then I will go to the enemy. So you have this very conscious, very deliberate effort to draw positive attention to Tripoli, but of course not vis-a-vis the Libyan public. All of that was supposed to happen behind closed doors, and all of it went awry when, for reasons that are not completely understood, when the foreign minister of Israel actually decided to make all of that public, which will come at a cost for Rome, for Jerusalem, and for Tripoli.

Nicholas Danforth: Okay. And so now tell us about that cost. What has happened since? What's the follow-up been since this was made public?

Jalel Harchaoui: Well, obviously the main result was a very substantial amount of anger on the part of the street, not just in Tripoli, but the outskirts of Tripoli and a series of other municipalities, including in the eastern part of Libya. So there's an authentic aspect to the anger that was expressed in the form of protests. Some of the protests were repressed. Some of them I think were probably not completely organic and not completely spontaneous, but orchestrated for political reasons. And we also know at this late stage that the amount of anger is not sufficient, is certainly not sufficient if your hope would be to see Prime Minister Dbeibeh actually get toppled by this incident. So it's a bad incident, but it's not sufficiently big to actually precipitate the fall of this very interesting politician who is liked a lot of Libyans, but also hated by some of them.

Nicholas Danforth: And if I remember correctly, he responded by suggesting this meeting had taken place without his knowledge in that I assume no one believed that.

Jalel Harchaoui: Yeah.

Nicholas Danforth: Are people pretending to believe that? Has that given him any plausible deniability?

Jalel Harchaoui: Yeah, I think at the beginning, you could see that a lot of the anger who was focused on this lady. This is one of the first female ministers in the Arab world, we should bear that in mind. And it's easier to get angry at a woman in those contexts, and we did see that. And he actually used it. He threw her under the bus. He said that it was, he didn't say it directly, but the doubt was basically conveyed by his office. And also there was this idea that it was just a 10-minute accidental meeting when in fact it was completely planned. It lasted almost two hours and it was part of a series of meetings.

Nicholas Danforth: Brief question before, I want to ask you about Wagner before we close out here, but just to close this out, you mentioned also that the government in the East had had its own history of contacts with Israel. Can you tell us a little bit more about those?

Jalel Harchaoui: Yeah. We can start by mentioning that in 1987 when this Gaddafi aligned colonel by the name of Khalifa Haftar was captured in Chad and was offered to become an anti Gaddafi figure by the CIA, he became a commander or contra commander supported by a series of US allies, including Saddam Hussein of Iraq at the time, Saudi Arabia, and also Israel. So the first contacts between Haftar and Israel actually traced back to this incident in 1987.

And we did see a lot of indications over the last couple of years that Saddam Haftar his most active son, apparently, and I believe actually it was the case, he visited Israel to promise that the eastern part of Libya was going to be probably a more reliable friend, a more reliable partner to Israel. So you have almost a race among all those Libyan elites to please Israel and collect the benefits in the eyes of Washington.

Nicholas Danforth: So final question, again, I can't let you leave before we ask you this. It's something I've read about in the last couple of days. It's something you wrote a lot about for us in the past. Everyone's been very interested in Wagner's activities in Libya. What's going to happen to them now that Prigozhin is dead?

Jalel Harchaoui: Well, I'd like to begin by saying two things. First of all, this Russian object that exists in Libya, we're talking about probably 1000 or 1200 Russian citizens, an additional 1500 Syrian citizens, and they constitute what you could call the Russian footprint. So some people call it Wagner. But here what I would like to say is that to build this kind of entrenchment that has not just a military aspect, but also political intelligence related and also economic to some extent, this object was not just built by Wagner. There were multiple steps in the construction of this footprint that could have been performed only by one actor, namely the Russian state. So it's a baby that is not just Wagner's baby, but also the Russian state's. So we're not talking about something that was completely constructed by Prigozhin. And during the mutiny, I began looking at potential changes and I saw nothing.

The presence is still there. The activities are basically perpetrated with no disruption. And after the death of Prigozhin, the same thing. Nobody's leaving. I'm not saying that they're particularly active, but they were not very active before the mutiny. They're just there. It's just a presence that is trying to not be mentioned by the media, just trying to stay at a minimum. It's pretty small because the high watermark in terms of the number of personnel was probably 3000 or more a couple of years ago. So my observation, first of all, is that nothing has changed. I can say that factually, and I don't think we should expect any change going forward. A lot of the clandestine presence will have to remain in the clandestine space. It cannot be officialized like some Wall Street Journal article implied a few days ago.

That cannot be done because a lot of the activities that are needed to sustain the presence are inherently illegal and criminal in character. So you cannot move to the official space. You cannot call it the Ministry of Defense of Russia. You cannot make it an avert presence because you have to continue, if you Russian, if you're part of this thing that needs to be maintained, you need to continue engaging in some activities that are inherently elicit in character.

Nicholas Danforth: So basically, the Russian state has always been secretly involved in this and will continue to be secretly involved in this under whatever name.

Jalel Harchaoui: Absolutely. And of course, the political influence, there's going to be probably a slight better control to avoid a mutiny incident in the future like what happened with Prigozhin. But I don't think we should expect any spectacular change.

Nicholas Danforth: Always a pleasure having you on the Warcast. Thanks again.

Jalel Harchaoui: Thank you so much, Nick.