Rome // Egyptian president Abdel Fattah El Sisi has warned western powers that Libya could spiral out of control if they try to intervene militarily in the conflict-wracked North African state.
Mr El Sisi said the West and its allies should instead concentrate on strengthening the army of Libya’s internationally recognised government and let it do the job of stabilising the country.
The army is commanded by Khalifa Haftar, an officially retired general who spent 20 years in exile in the United States and has been described as a potential “Libyan Sisi” because of his fierce opposition to extremist groups.
"If we provide arms and support to the national Libyan army it can do the job better than anyone else, better than any outside intervention which would risk dragging us into a situation that risks getting out of hand and triggering uncontrollable developments," Mr El Sisi told Italy's La Repubblica in an interview published on Thursday.
Western powers have become increasingly concerned about the rise of ISIL in Libya, which has taken advantage of the chaos of a civil war between two rival governments to seize pockets of territory. The Pentagon estimates that the extremist group has between 5,000 and 6,000 fighters in the country, many from abroad.
Mr El Sisi, a former army chief, said history had “spoken clearly” about the difficulty of trying to impose peace from outside.
“Two lessons must be kept in mind: that of Afghanistan and that of Somalia,” he said. “Those were long foreign interventions [that started] more than 30 years ago and what progress has been made since?
“The results are there for everyone to see.”
He also suggested that European governments were underestimating the scale of extremist influence in Libya.
“Europeans look at Libya as if ISIL was the only threat,” he said.
“That is a serious mistake. We have to be aware that we are up against different acronyms with the same ideology: what do we say about Al Qaeda networks like Ansar Al Islam, like Somalia’s Shabab or Boko Haram in Africa.”
Italy has said it is prepared to lead a UN-backed international peace force into Libya if and when the country proves capable of establishing a national unity government with the authority to ask for outside security help.
Mr El Sisi said such a mission would be fraught with difficulty and it would be better to concentrate on building up Gen Haftar’s forces.
Gen Haftar was involved in the 1969 military coup which brought former dictator Muammar Qaddafi to power in Libya. He later fell out with Qaddafi and was forced into exile, returning in 2011 to take part in the uprising that toppled the dictator.
He has long had close relations with the Egyptian military, having served alongside their forces in the Sinai desert as a young Libyan officer during the 1973 Arab-Israeli war.
* Agence France-Presse
