Paris // Libya’s United Nations-backed government on Thursday protested against the presence of French special forces in the country, a day after president Francois Hollande said three personnel had been killed in a helicopter crash.
The presidential council of the Government of National Accord (GNA) chided Paris for not informing it of French special operations in the country.
“The Presidential Council expresses its deep discontent at the French presence in eastern Libya without coordination with the Council,” the GNA’s statement said. Street protests against the French presence were held in Tripoli and Misurata and several other western towns and cities.
France has yet to give full details of what Mr Hollande described as a “dangerous intelligence operation” or release names of the dead men.
But there is speculation in Libya that the three men who died in the crash on Sunday were in a helicopter of the army of Gen Khalifa Haftar in eastern Libya.
A militia, the Benghazi Defence Brigades (BDB), said it shot down the helicopter, while a military spokesman for Gen Haftar’s army said the three Frenchmen were killed when the helicopter crashed as the result of an accident south of Benghazi.
Reports of French, British and American special forces in Libya have been circulating for months, with the Pentagon admitting earlier this year that its units were helping Libyan forces battle ISIL.
Commanders of GNA forces now besieging the headquarters of ISIL in Sirte say British special forces are acting as advisers. The presence of French special forces in Libya was first highlighted in February in a report in Le Monde, which asserted the units were deployed at Benina airport in the eastern city of Benghazi.
The newspaper on Wednesday quoted French sources as saying the dead men were from the Directorate-General for External Security, known as the DGSE, which is France’s primary intelligence arm.
The BDB, which is not supported by the GNA, consists of militia fighters aligned to the Shura Council militia alliance, which has been fighting Gen Haftar’s forces for control of Benghazi since May 2014.
In February this year, Gen Haftar’s Operation Dignity, an alliance of regular army and militia units, overran most Shura Council territory in the city. Soon afterwards the BDB, made up of Benghazi exiles, formed in Tripoli and this month began an offensive to break through gen Haftar’s lines to relieve Shura units trapped inside the city.
The BDB offensive has evolved into a see-saw battle across the desert south of the city, with the militia advancing and then retreating in the face of air strikes. It was this battle that the French personnel appear to have been studying.
However, the presence of French special forces aiding Gen Haftar has given Libya’s already complicated political landscape a new twist.
Officially, France, along with the European Union and the United States, supports the GNA.
Gen Haftar has refused to recognise the GNA’s authority, instead deferring to the elected House of Representatives parliament in Tobruk which has appointed him its army commander and has also not backed the GNA.
The general is a highly polarising figure in Libya. He is hated among many in western Libya, but supported by much of the east for his campaign against Shura Council militias.
The refusal of the general to acknowledge the GNA is a key obstacle to the GNA achieving control of the country.
European diplomats have been trying to persuade gen Haftar to support the GNA, but Martin Kobler, chief envoy of the United Nations Special Mission to Libya told Associated Press this week that the general has ignored his requests for a meeting.
While the GNA has not objected to special forces aiding its own units, it has objected to France aiding gen Haftar, saying in its statement that there could be “no compromise” to Libya’s national sovereignty.
France’s help to Gen Haftar is likely to strengthen his power in eastern Libya, undermining the GNA’s credibility. That credibility is already suffering over the new government’s failure, after three months in Tripoli, to tame the capital’s militias or prevent chronic power cuts and bank cash shortages which have triggered protests across the city this month.
foreign.desk@thenational.ae