Russia eyes Libya to replace Syria as Africa launchpad

Russian soldiers stand by military pickups as they prepare to evacuate a position in Qamishli in northeastern Syria on December 12, 2024. (AFP)
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Updated 12 January 2025
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Russia eyes Libya to replace Syria as Africa launchpad

  • On December 18 the Wall Street Journal, citing Libyan and American officials, said there had been a transfer of Russian radars and defense systems from Syria to Libya, including S-300 and S-400 anti-aircraft batteries

PARIS: The fall of Russian ally Bashar Assad in Syria has disrupted the Kremlin’s strategy not only for the Mediterranean but also for Africa, pushing it to focus on Libya as a potential foothold, experts say.
Russia runs a military port and an air base on the Syrian coast, designed to facilitate its operations in the Mediterranean, the Middle East, and sub-Saharan Africa, especially the Sahel, Sudan, and the Central African Republic.
However, this model is in jeopardy with the abrupt departure of the Syrian ruler.
Although Syria’s new leader, Ahmed Al-Sharaa, has called Russia an “important country,” saying “we do not want Russia to leave Syria in the way that some wish,” the reshuffling of cards in Syria is pushing Russia to seek a strategic retreat toward Libya.
In Libya, Russian mercenaries already support Khalifa Haftar, a field marshal controlling the east of the country, against the Tripoli-based Government of National Unity (GNU) which has UN recognition and is supported by Turkiye.
“The goal is notably to preserve the ongoing Russian missions in Africa,” said Jalel Harchaoui at the RUSI think tank in the UK.
“It’s a self-preservation reflex” for Russia which is anxious “to mitigate the deterioration of its position in Syria,” he told AFP.
In May 2024, Swiss investigative consortium “All Eyes On Wagner” identified Russian activities at around 10 Libyan sites, including the port of Tobruk, where military equipment was delivered in February and April of last year.
There were around 800 Russian troops present in February 2024, and 1,800 in May.
On December 18 the Wall Street Journal, citing Libyan and American officials, said there had been a transfer of Russian radars and defense systems from Syria to Libya, including S-300 and S-400 anti-aircraft batteries.

Since Assad’s fall on December 8, “a notable volume of Russian military resources has been shipped to Libya from Belarus and Russia,” said Harchaoui, adding there had been troop transfers as well.
Ukrainian intelligence claimed on January 3 that Moscow planned “to use Sparta and Sparta II cargo ships to transport military equipment and weapons” to Libya.
Beyond simply representing a necessary replacement of “one proxy with another,” the shift is a quest for “continuity,” said expert Emadeddin Badi on the Atlantic Council’s website, underscoring Libya’s role as “a component of a long-standing strategy to expand Moscow’s strategic foothold in the region.”

According to Badi, “Assad offered Moscow a foothold against NATO’s eastern flank and a stage to test military capabilities.”
Haftar, he said, presents a similar opportunity, “a means to disrupt western interests, exploit Libya’s fractured politics, and extend Moscow’s influence into Africa.”
The Tripoli government and Italy, Libya’s former colonial master, have expressed concern over Russian movements, closely observed by the European Union and NATO.
Several sources say the United States has tried to persuade Haftar to deny the Russians a permanent installation at the port of Tobruk that they have coveted since 2023.
It seems already clear the Kremlin will struggle to find the same level of ease in Libya that it had during Assad’s reign.
“Syria was convenient,” said Ulf Laessing, the Bamako-based head of the Sahel program at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation.
“It was this black box with no Western diplomats, no journalists. They could basically do what they wanted,” he told AFP.
“But in Libya, it will be much more complicated. It’s difficult to keep things secret there and Russian presence will be much more visible,” he said.
Moscow will also have to contend with other powers, including Turkiye, which is allied with the GNU, as well as Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, who are patrons of Haftar.
In Libya, torn into two blocs since the ouster of longtime leader Muammar Qaddafi in February 2011, “everybody’s trying to work with both sides,” said Laessing.
Over the past year, even Turkiye has moved closer to Haftar, seeking potential cooperation on economic projects and diplomatic exchanges.
Russia will also be mindful to have a plan B should things go wrong for its Libyan ally.
“We must not repeat the mistake made in Syria, betting on a local dictator without an alternative,” said Vlad Shlepchenko, military correspondent for the pro-Kremlin media Tsargrad.
Haftar, meanwhile, is unlikely to want to turn his back on western countries whose tacit support he has enjoyed.
“There are probably limits to what the Russians can do in Libya,” said Laessing.
 

 


Palestinian behind Oscar-winning documentary arrested by Israeli army — co-director

Updated 25 March 2025
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Palestinian behind Oscar-winning documentary arrested by Israeli army — co-director

  • Dozens of settlers attacked the Palestinian village of Susiya in the Masafer Yatta area, destroying property
  • They attacked Hamdan Ballal, one of the documentary’s co-directors, leaving his head bleeding, the activists said

JERUSALEM: Israeli settlers beat up one of the Palestinian co-directors of the Oscar-winning documentary film “No Other Land” on Monday in the occupied West Bank before he was detained by the Israeli military, according to two of his fellow directors and other witnesses.
The filmmaker Hamdan Ballal was one of three Palestinians detained in the village of Susiya, according to attorney Leah Tsemmel. Police told her they’re being held at a military base for medical treatment and she said she hasn’t been able to speak with them.
Basel Adra, another co-director, witnessed the detention and said around two dozen settlers — some masked, some carrying guns, some in Israeli uniform — attacked the village. Soldiers who arrived pointed their guns at the Palestinians, while settlers continued throwing stones.
“We came back from the Oscars and every day since there is an attack on us,” Adra told The Associated Press. “This might be their revenge on us for making the movie. It feels like a punishment.”
The Israeli military said it detained three Palestinians suspected of hurling rocks at forces and one Israeli civilian involved in a “violent confrontation” between Israelis and Palestinians — a claim witnesses interviewed by the AP disputed. The military said it had transferred them to Israeli police for questioning and had evacuated an Israeli citizen from the area to receive medical treatment.
“No Other Land,” which won the Oscar this year for best documentary, chronicles the struggle by residents of the Masafer Yatta area to stop the Israeli military from demolishing their villages. Ballal and Adra, both from Masafar Yatta, made the joint Palestinian-Israeli production with Israeli directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor.
The film has won a string of international awards, starting at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2024. It has also drawn ire in Israel and abroad, as when Miami Beach proposed ending the lease of a movie theater that screened the documentary.
Adra said that settlers entered the village Monday evening shortly after residents broke the daily fast for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. A settler — who according to Adra frequently attacks the village — walked over to Ballal’s home with the military, and soldiers shot in the air. Ballal’s wife heard her husband being beaten outside and scream “I’m dying,” according to Adra.
Adra then saw the soldiers lead Ballal, handcuffed and blindfolded, from his home into a military vehicle. Speaking to the AP by phone, he said Ballal’s blood was still splattered on the ground outside his own front door.
Some of the details of Adra’s account were backed up by another eyewitness, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisal.
A group of 10-20 masked settlers with stones and sticks also assaulted activists with the Center for Jewish Nonviolence, smashing their car windows and slashing tires to make them flee the area, one of the activists at the scene, Josh Kimelman, told the AP.
Video provided by the Center for Jewish Nonviolence showed a masked settler shoving and swinging his fists at two activists in a dusty field at night. The activists rush back to their car as rocks can be heard thudding against the vehicle.
Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war, along with the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem. The Palestinians want all three for their future state and view settlement growth as a major obstacle to a two-state solution.
Israel has built well over 100 settlements, home to over 500,000 settlers who have Israeli citizenship. The 3 million Palestinians in the West Bank live under seemingly open-ended Israeli military rule, with the Western-backed Palestinian Authority administering population centers.
The Israeli military designated Masafer Yatta in the southern West Bank as a live-fire training zone in the 1980s and ordered residents, mostly Arab Bedouin, to be expelled. Around 1,000 residents have largely remained in place, but soldiers regularly move in to demolish homes, tents, water tanks and olive orchards — and Palestinians fear outright expulsion could come at any time.
During the war in Gaza, Israel has killed hundreds of Palestinians in the West Bank during wide-scale military operations, and there has also been a rise in settler attacks on Palestinians. There has been a surge in Palestinian attacks on Israelis.


South Sudan is teetering on the edge of renewed civil war, UN envoy says

Updated 25 March 2025
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South Sudan is teetering on the edge of renewed civil war, UN envoy says

  • The country slid into a civil war in December 2013 largely based on ethnic divisions
  • More than 400,000 people were killed in the war, which ended with a 2018 peace agreement
  • The latest tensions stem from fighting in the country’s north between government troops and a rebel militia, known as the White Army

UNITED NATIONS: South Sudan is teetering on the edge of renewed civil war, the top UN official in the world’s youngest nation warned on Monday, lamenting the government’s sudden postponement of the latest peace effort.
Calling the situation unfolding in the country “dire,” Nicholas Haysom said international efforts to broker a peaceful solution can only succeed if President Salva Kiir and his rival-turned-vice president, Riek Machar, are willing to engage “and put the interests of their people ahead of their own.”
There were high hopes when oil-rich South Sudan gained independence from Sudan in 2011 after a long conflict. But the country slid into a civil war in December 2013 largely based on ethnic divisions when forces loyal to Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, battled those loyal to Machar, an ethnic Nuer.
More than 400,000 people were killed in the war, which ended with a 2018 peace agreement that brought Kiir and Machar together in a government of national unity. Under the agreement, elections were supposed to be held in February 2023, but they were postponed until December 2024 — and again until 2026.
The latest tensions stem from fighting in the country’s north between government troops and a rebel militia, known as the White Army, which is widely believed to be allied with Machar.
Earlier this month, a South Sudanese general was among several people killed when a United Nations helicopter on a mission to evacuate government troops from the town of Nasir, the scene of the fighting in Upper Nile state, came under fire. Days earlier on March 4, the White Army overran the military garrison in Nasir and government troops responded by surrounding Machar’s home in the capital, Juba, and arresting several of his key allies.
Haysom said tensions and violence were escalating “particularly as we grow closer to elections and as political competition increases, sharpens between the principal players.”
He said Kiir and Machar don’t trust each other enough to display the leadership needed to implement the 2018 peace deal and move to a future that would see a stable and democratic South Sudan.
“Rampant misinformation, disinformation and hate speech is also ratcheting up tensions and driving ethnic divisions, and fear,” Haysom said.
“Given this grim situation,” he said, “we are left with no other conclusion but to assess that South Sudan is teetering on the edge of a relapse into civil war.”
Haysom, who heads the nearly 18,000-member UN peacekeeping mission in South Sudan, warned that a relapse into open war would lead to the same horrors that ravaged the country, especially in 2013 and 2016.
He said the UN takes the threat of the “ethnic transformation” of the conflict very seriously.
To try to prevent a new civil war, the UN special envoy said the peacekeeping mission is engaging in intense shuttle diplomacy with international and regional partners, including the African Union.
Haysom said the collective message of the regional and international community is for Kiir and Machar to meet to resolve their differences, return to the 2018 peace deal, adhere to the ceasefire, release detained officials and resolve tensions “through dialogue rather than military confrontation.”


Israeli strikes on Gaza killed 23 people overnight

Updated 25 March 2025
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Israeli strikes on Gaza killed 23 people overnight

  • The dead include three children and their parents, who were killed in a strike on their tent near the southern city of Khan Younis

Palestinian medics said Israeli strikes killed at least 23 people in the Gaza Strip overnight into Tuesday.
The dead include three children and their parents, who were killed in a strike on their tent near the southern city of Khan Younis, according to Nasser Hospital, which has received a flood of dead and wounded since Israel resumed heavy bombardment of Gaza last week, shattering the ceasefire that had halted the 17-month war.
Israel’s campaign in Gaza has killed more than 50,000 Palestinians and wounded more than 113,000, according to the Health Ministry, which does not say how many were civilians or combatants. Israel says it has killed around 20,000 militants, without providing evidence.
Israel launched the campaign vowing to destroy Hamas after its Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel, in which militants killed some 1,200 people and abducted 251. Israel says it only targets militants and blames Hamas for civilian deaths because it operates in densely populated areas.


Israel strikes Syria bases again despite EU warning

Updated 43 min 26 sec ago
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Israel strikes Syria bases again despite EU warning

  • Israeli shelling kills at least four in Syrian province of Daraa
  • The violence along the border area marks increased friction between Israel and Syria

BEIRUT: Israeli shelling killed at least four people in southern Syria on Tuesday, Syria’s state news agency reported, after the Israeli military said its troops had clashed with militants there who had opened fire on them.
The violence along the border area marks increased friction between Israel and Syria, where a new Islamist-led leadership has been installed after rebels ousted former leader Bashar Assad from power in December.
Israel has since said it will not tolerate an Islamist militant presence in southern Syria and sent its own troops into Syria’s border zone. Syria’s leadership has said it does not intend to open a front against Israel.
On Tuesday, the Israeli military said militants in southern Syria opened fire toward Israeli troops, without specifying whether the Israeli troops were within Syrian territory when they were targeted.
The Israeli military said its troops returned fire and that an Israeli warplane struck the militants. It gave no details on casualties but said “hits were identified.”
Syria’s state news agency said Israeli tank fire on Koya, a town in the southern province of Daraa, had killed four people and wounded others, including a woman. A Syrian security source told Reuters the death toll was expected to rise.
Earlier, Israel said it had attacked two military bases in Homs province in central Syria.
“A short while ago, the IDF struck military capabilities that remained at the Syrian military bases of Tadmur and T4,” an Israeli military statement said.
Israel spent years carrying out airstrikes on Syria during Assad’s rule, targeting Iran-linked military installations and weapons transfers from Tehran intended for the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, which was deployed in Syrian territory.
That arms route was cut when Assad was toppled but Israel has continued to carry out strikes on Syrian military bases.
The European Union’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas warned on Tuesday that Israel’s strikes into Syria “risk further escalation.”
Speaking at a joint press conference with Israel’s foreign minister Giden Saar, Kallas said the pair had discussed Israel’s actions.
“And we (the EU) feel that these things are unnecessary, because Syria is right now not attacking Israel,” Kallas said. 


US airstrikes targeting Yemen’s Houthis kill at least 2 people, group says

People look at the site of a U.S. strike in Sanaa, Yemen March 24, 2025. (REUTERS)
Updated 25 March 2025
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US airstrikes targeting Yemen’s Houthis kill at least 2 people, group says

  • The American strikes on the militia, who threaten maritime trade and Israel, entered their 10th day without any sign of stopping

DUBAI: US airstrikes targeting Yemen’s Houthi militia pounded sites across the country into early Tuesday, with the group saying one attack in the capital killed at least two people and wounded more than a dozen others.

The American strikes on the militia, who threaten maritime trade and Israel, entered their 10th day without any sign of stopping. They are part of a campaign by US President Donald Trump targeting the rebel group while also trying to pressure Iran, the Houthis’ main benefactor.

So far, the US has not offered any specifics on the sites it is striking, though Trump’s national security adviser Mike Waltz claimed the attacks have “taken out key Houthi leadership, including their head missileer.” That’s something so far that’s not been acknowledged by the Houthis, though the militia have downplayed their losses in the past and exaggerated their attacks attempting to target American warships.

“We’ve hit their headquarters,” Waltz told CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “We’ve hit communications nodes, weapons factories and even some of their over-the-water drone production facilities.”

An apparent US strike Sunday hit a building in a western neighborhood of Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, killing at least two people and wounding 13 others, the rebel-controlled SABA news agency said, citing health officials. Footage released by the militia showed the rubble of a collapsed building and pools of blood staining the gray dust covering the ground.

A building next to the collapsed structure still stood, suggesting American forces likely used a lower-yield warhead in the strike.

The Houthis also described American airstrikes targeting sites around the city of Saada, a Houthi stronghold, the Red Sea port city of Hodeida and Marib province, home to oil and gas fields still under the control of allies to Yemen’s exiled central government. Those strikes continued into early Tuesday as the Houthis separately launched a missile attack on Israel.

The campaign of airstrikes targeting the militia, which killed at least 53 people immediately after they began March 15, started after the Houthis threatened to begin targeting “Israeli” ships again over Israel blocking aid entering the Gaza Strip. The militia in the past have had a loose definition of what constitutes an Israeli ship, meaning other vessels could be targeted as well.

The Houthis had targeted over 100 merchant vessels with missiles and drones, sinking two vessels and killing four sailors during their campaign targeting ships from November 2023 until January of this year. They also launched attacks targeting American warships, though none have been hit so far.

The attacks greatly raised the Houthis’ profile as they faced economic problems and launched a crackdown targeting any dissent and aid workers at home amid Yemen’s decadelong stalemated war that has torn apart the Arab world’s poorest nation.