Despite faltering on the frontline in Ukraine, Vladamir Putin cannot be underestimated. Whilst Russia’s war effort has pushed it into deals with dictators for munitions, such as Kim Jong Un in North Korea, Putin remains a calculated tactician. After 24 years in power, he continues to extend Russia’s reach in new covert ways, mining global events to secure advantages for Russia at every turn.
Bogged down in Ukraine, Putin has turned to Africa as a new front in which to challenge Western values and interests, dangling the carrot of corruption to support authoritarian factions within struggling democracies. Across the Sahel and in places like the Central African Republic, he has fast forged friendships with those who are disdainful of human rights and democracy, while “political technologists” from the Wagner Group use disinformation to drive a wedge between ordinary people and the West.
A case in point is Libya, the former stronghold of Muammar Gaddafi. Using the ongoing civil tensions and flare ups between the UN-backed government of Abdelhamid Dbeibeh in the West and the warlord General Haftar in the East, Putin has fully supported Haftar’s bid to create a new dynasty that will take Libya back into dictatorship.
This new friendship has not only enabled him to flow his mercenary forces into the country and beyond, destabilising much of sub-Saharan Africa in the process, but it has also allowed discussions to begin on a new Russian nuclear submarine base to be constructed in the Libyan port of Tobruk. To my mind, this evokes a Cuban Missile Crisis scenario, only this time with Europe in the crosshairs and the Mediterranean Sea a possible new battleground for Western Europe.
Our leaders must wake up to these political games by Putin. Whilst Ukraine is important and needs our full support, we cannot think that Putin has only a single military campaign in mind.
One place to start is to look at the sources of power for Putin’s new allies and ensure that they cannot flourish and further embolden the Kremlin’s dangerous ambitions.
For General Haftar, the same money that flowed into the bank account of Muammar Gaddafi is now funnelling into his personal militias. In theory, Libya’s staggering oil wealth should have eased the path towards economic prosperity and a functioning state after the revolution in 2011, but instead it has been used to thwart the democratic ambitions of the Libyan people at every turn.
Led by Ferhat Bengdara, the National Oil Corporation (NOC) is central to this missed opportunity. The soaring corruption and mismanagement within the NOC are well-documented and endemic. Serious issues have been flagged in recent months, including billions of dollars’ worth of finances missing from the NOC’s accounts, questions over fulfilling energy agreements with Europe and the commissioning of new oil field projects in backroom deals. This corruption has been facilitated by a clear sense of impunity combined with General Haftar’s commitment to appropriating national resources as his own and to foiling the democratic process.
Meanwhile, Libyans struggle to put food on the table, to light their homes and, perversely, to fuel their generators, given that they sit atop a sea of oil. Libya’s infrastructure, which sorely needs investment, is ignored by officials who line their pockets while General Haftar and Putin rub their hands. The deadly consequences of this systematic theft were demonstrated all too starkly by the collapse of the Derna Dam last year and the loss of 5000 innocent lives.
Unless this oil corruption is confronted head-on, Libya will continue down a path of destruction. Western governments are understandably distracted from developments in nations like Libya by Ukraine and by immediate domestic priorities. The danger of this, however, is clear to see. Despots and dictators will find their way to power across strategic continents such as Africa, looking to murderous tyrants like Putin to underwrite their oppressive rule in exchange for access to natural resources, techniques for sanctions-busting and opportunities to harass the West.
The new British government must not let this happen. We must recognise that Putin’s geopolitical games extend much further than Ukraine. In Libya, for example, the fight against oil corruption has to be prioritised before all hope for democracy fades. Otherwise, General Haftar will position himself as the right-hand of Putin in Africa, using Libya as a platform for Russia to gain control over key parts of the Mediterranean and to shift a prolonged conflict over Ukraine to new battlegrounds in the global South.
Source Agencies
