Turkish drones have changed the colour of the Libyan conflict
When Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar launched his attack on the legitimate Government of National Accord in early April last year, he grandly claimed that no force could stop his capturing of the capital Tripoli - the ultimate prize of the civil war.
Backed by Russia, France, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, as well as being emboldened by thousands of mercenaries recruited for services to him across Africa, Haftar’s so-called Libyan National Army , based in Benghazi, in the east of the country, pounded the capital’s suburbs with both aerial and artillery attacks. Haftar believed that the GNA, who can only count on Turkey, Italy and Qatar as allies, could not resist a long siege. But it appears that Haftar has vastly miscalculated the determination of Ankara. Its drones are operated by the Libyan army, but it has also recently shifted the war in favour of the Tripoli government and in doing so, has helped GNA forces defeat Haftar on various battlefields across the country’s crucial western and central territories. “You have to understand the Libyan geography. Libya is a vast country with open spaces and semi-desert areas even in coastal areas where no one basically can hide troop movements,” said Salah Bakkoush, a Libyan political analyst and a former advisor to the High Council of the Libyan state. “In this case, you need very much air cover [in order to survive militarily]. If you do not have air cover, you will be easily hit by the opposing side [with a better air force] . That’s what has happened to us until we got the Turkish drones,” Bakkoush told“The Turks saved us just in time,” the GNA Interior Minister, FathiTurkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan meets with Libya's internationally recognised Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj in Istanbul, Turkey, November 27, 2019. Before the Turkish drone assistance, Haftar’s own air force, supported by the UAE, Egyptians and Russians, “wreaked havoc on the GNA forces with heavy casualties,” Bakkoush said. “The introduction of drones with the experience being gained in Idlib and other parts of Syria was very effective, countering Haftar’s air force and allowing the GNA to use its advantage in terms of troops numbers and experience,” Bakkoush opined. In early March, during Operation Spring Shield in Syria’s Idlib, which aimed to protect Turkish observatory posts in de-escalation zones and to prevent any bloodshed in the region, Ankara showed its military might via its drone fleet against Assad regime forces. “I know the fact that Turkish military experts have trained Libyans on how to fly these drones since December or January,” he said. Like Bakkoush, other experts have been sharing their thoughts on how crucial air superiority will ultimately prove in determining the outcome of the Libyan civil war. “The GNA has built its recent military victories, which have reclaimed nearly all of western Libya from Haftar’s forces, around the support of Turkish air defence systems and a drone campaign targeting Haftar’s bases and supply lines,”a policy fellow with the North Africa and Middle East programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations, in a recent article. Since April, GNA forces have recaptured a number of cities between Tripoli and the Tunisian border, putting the LNA
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