Episode 55. The US and Libya’s Civil War with General Thomas Waldhauser and Ambassador Peter Bodde

Episode Transcript:

Amb. McCarthy: [00:00:13] From the American Academy of Diplomacy. This is The General and The Ambassador. Our podcast brings together senior diplomats and senior US military leaders to discuss their work overseas in advancing US national security interests. I am Deborah McCarthy, the producer and host the General and the Ambassador is a production of the American Academy of Diplomacy in partnership with UNC Global at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Today we will focus on US security interests in Libya. Our guests are General Thomas Waldhauser and Ambassador Peter Bodde. General Thomas Waldhauser served as the Commander of US Africa Command 2016 to 2019. He previously served as senior military assistant to the Secretary of Defense, Commanding General, Marine Expeditionary Force, and Commanding General United States Marine Forces Central Command. Ambassador Peter Bodde served as the US Ambassador to Libya from late 2015 to 2017. Following a brief retirement, he returned again as Chief of Mission from 2018 to 2019. Previously, he served as the US Ambassador to Nepal and to Malawi. His other senior assignments include Assistant Chief of Mission in Baghdad and Deputy Chief of Mission in Pakistan and in Nepal. General Waldhauser. Ambassador Bodde, welcome to the General and the Ambassador, and thank you for joining us to talk about the US security relationship with Libya. You were responsible for this relationship during a particularly difficult period which stretched from 2015 to 2019, which will get into. But to start out, I'd like to remind our listeners that in an earlier podcast on Libya with General Carter Ham and Ambassador Gene Cretz, we covered the 2011 uprising against the dictator Gaddafi, as well as Operation Unified Protector, in which the US, NATO and others bombed Gaddafi's forces to prevent him from massacring his people.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:02:21] That operation ended in October 2011. Since then, Libya has not been able to form a stable government. Different factions have vied for power backed by different foreign countries. Today, Libya is essentially split into two regions. In the West, the government of National Accord, the GNA is supported by the UN, the US, Turkey and many other countries in the eastern part of the country. There is a rival government that includes leaders of Libya's House of Representatives and they are allied with a military force called the Libyan National Army, or LNA, led by Khalifa Haftar. The LNA is backed by Russia, Egypt and the UAE. Underlying this country's split are many elements, including historic grudges, ethnic and tribal identities. As well as ideological and resource rivalries. During the 2011 uprising, the US evacuated its embassy in Tripoli. It reopened later that year. In September 2012, Islamic militants attacked the US consulate in Benghazi, killing the US ambassador Chris Stevens and three other American colleagues. The US embassy in Tripoli continued to operate until 2014, when it had to close due to a deteriorating security situation. Today, the US embassy to Libya operates out of neighboring Tunisia. So let me start with you, Ambassador Bodde. You became the ambassador to Libya in 2016, and as I just said, operated your embassy out of Tunisia. How did this work? Operating from afar and how did you engage with the government in Tripoli?

Amb. Bodde: [00:04:06] Thank you, Deborah. And thank you for having me. Tell him that I come and do this session today. Think we're both looking forward to it. Think we have an interesting story to tell. It was a challenge. We have what we call the LEO, the Libya External Office, which was a small rump operation out of our embassy in Tunis and went out there with a few very clear priorities. One was to support the efforts to get the government of National Accord back to Libya. At that time, they weren't even in Tripoli at the time to support those efforts in the UN efforts. But two, we were a small operation in a foreign country trying to deal with a government in exile, and then as they went back to Tripoli, had to deal with them there. I had a couple of things. One, I wanted to regularize the operations of our Libya external office. And if you can imagine, we basically were an embassy doing the work of an entire embassy, but we're doing it with a staff of about 12 people in Tunis. We had some eight folks located in Frankfurt, and we did a lot of things offshore back in the States.

Amb. Bodde: [00:05:04] But it was a real challenge. We, fortunately, because of the incredible warm hosting of the government of Tunisia, Libyan officials were welcome in Tunis. So we often met with them in Tunis. They came out regularly. But I would go and travel all around Europe, all around the Middle East. Anywhere we had to. I think at one point I even traveled to New York to meet with the prime minister, Sarraj. I think my last year in Tunis, I probably did over 100,000 miles of shuttle diplomacy just trying to get the job done. But one of the priorities throughout all of this was when I went in, one of my real concerns was how do we achieve some normalcy and achieve a normal operation. And for me, it will not be a normal operation until we have some sort of embassy operating back in Tripoli. And as you know, that still hasn't taken place. That was always a high priority of mine in both administrations. I pushed it all the way up each time. And as you can see, thus far, we've not been successful.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:06:01] Libya is in the area of responsibility of US AFRICOM based in Stuttgart, Germany, and AFRICOM, which we have done a podcast on covers the entire continent except for Egypt. General, can you outline what your top objectives were vis a vis Libya and how you coordinated with Ambassador Bodde's diplomatic efforts to move on reconciliation between the two rival governments? 

Gen. Waldhauser: [00:06:29] I think just to begin to provide some context, I became the commander of US Africa Command in July of 2016, And at that time, I think it's important to point out that ISIS, Libya controlled the largest stronghold outside of Syria and Iraq in a seaside city called Sirte. Sirte is located about 230 miles east of Tripoli in the Gulf of Sidra. And for a couple of years prior to that, ISIS had created a stronghold there with a couple thousand individuals that really took on and imposed severe restrictions in all aspects of life. Sirte had a population of several hundred thousand, but as the time went on over those several years, it dwindled down to well into the ten 20,000 range. At that point in time. As Peter pointed out, in March of 2016, just before I came to AFRICOM. Sarraj finally came ashore in Tripoli on a boat in the port there to take over the government of National Accord. And he was dealing, obviously, with this issue of ISIS, trying to set up really another key location inside Libya. As you may recall at the time, one of the first things that Prime Minister Sarraj did was ask the US for assistance.

Gen. Waldhauser: [00:07:37] So at that point in time, in July and August of 2016, United States identified really the ends of what the military tool would do to support, and that would be to disrupt ISIS, Libya and provide some support to the to rid Sirte of those individuals. And then at the same time, we were tasked to provide support to the political process through the UN and through Ambassador Bodde. So really, in the first week or so of taking over at AFRICOM, we had now the ends and we were given the ways the authorities and we were given the means, the military hardware, to provide really air support for the Government of National Accord and the various militias that supported them to rid Sirte of ISIS. For the next six months, really until the end of the year into December, we provided daily support, hundreds and hundreds of airstrikes utilizing marine aircraft on ships from the sea, utilizing unmanned aircraft from various locations to provide hundreds of strikes inside Sirte, where there's some really serious house to house fighting, that the militias that work for them took on ISIS and eventually got them out of Sirte.

Amb. Bodde: [00:08:41] Deborah, I think if I could add a really crucial point there is that all of this was done with the total cooperation of the Government of National Accord. Before we engage in these efforts, we would brief the Prime minister. We would get his blessing to do them. General Waldhauser and I made a point of briefing the results of what happened. And the other thing that's I think, particularly noteworthy, where I have always admired AFRICOM's efforts is this was done with virtually no loss of civilian life, and it was done very, very strategically and really, I think, done in a way that did as little damage to the physical structure of Sirte as humanly possible. But this was a cooperative effort between the United States, and we all played a special, unique role to play in there. And I think that role and how well AFRICOM worked with the embassy and the really made it successful.

Gen. Waldhauser: [00:09:30] You know, Deborah, one of the things that happened early on, it was in late August, actually, really several weeks after we started to provide air support for the Ambassador Bodde and Prime Minister Sarraj came to Stuttgart and we spent the day with them because we met. We, Ambassador Bodde and myself met with Sarraj on numerous occasions during this timeframe. First of all, establishing a relationship, establishing the really the necessary trust that we would need to have in the months ahead, and really opened the curtain up to what our operations were, showed them our operations center, talked them through how we worked with the forces on the ground, how we conducted strikes, and showed him the painstaking process that we went through to identify targets and certainly minimize casualties. So that was really, I think, a critical piece Ambassador Bodde pulled together because that really established a long term relationship with the prime minister. You know, he was only supposed to be there for a year or maybe two at the most. But, you know, he's still there today. He's going to be leaving here shortly after this. You know, the new government hopefully gets approved. The new interim government gets approved. But nonetheless, it was key, I think, to establishing a very good and trustful relationship that we needed to have as the months and the years went by with the activities, especially with the military support that we provided in country.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:10:44] Well, can I ask a follow up question? Both ISIS and al-Qaeda operate in Libya and what kind of threats do they pose to us, the US, to our allies in the region, as well as to Europe?

Gen. Waldhauser: [00:11:00] Initially in that 2016 time frame? I mean, the two primary interests that the United States had at that time was the safety and security of US citizens in Libya and also regional stability for our US interests, stability in the region, because Sirte was intended to be kind of a fallback position as the US and the Iraqis started to wind up some of the caliphate that had been established, the high water mark there in that time frame, there was communication that perhaps would be the backup place to go to place if you had to flee Iraq and Syria. So there's no doubt about the fact they had a large presence there. And there is no doubt about the fact that it could get bigger. The US interests there were the safety and security and stability really, you know, for US people and also for the region writ large with ISIS. 

Amb. Bodde: [00:11:46] They pose a threat not just to us in Libya, but elsewhere. And this was where they were trying to reform. They moved with impunity in Sirte. They controlled everything. And we were able to get them out of there. And basically, with very few exceptions over the next year, rid them of ISIS throughout Libya and also the al Qaeda presence there. But this was a concerted effort over a long period of time. Certainly the region is safer. Deborah, as you know, from your many years in diplomacy, you never know quite what you prevented. But in my mind, there's no doubt we probably did prevent some very bad things from happening, not just in Libya, but perhaps elsewhere.

Gen. Waldhauser: [00:12:22] You know, one of the things in Libya is they don't agree on much. The various factions, the various militias don't agree on much. But one thing they do agree upon is the issue of ISIS or al Qaeda and terrorists on their soil. You know, our ability to work there to provide airstrikes. First of all, as Peter indicated, we had painstaking efforts to minimize and have really no civilian casualties that we were aware of during all those strikes. And at the same time, really, there was no pushback in the region at all. As long as we continue to operate with trust of the government and trust of Sarraj and we conducted ourselves in a professional manner. The elimination of ISIS and AQ type groups was something that the Libyans really agreed upon.

Amb. Bodde: [00:13:03] As soon as the airstrikes stopped, as we tried to get in whatever aid we possibly could using our traditional assistance means. I know we invited the mayor of Sirte. He came out to Tunis. He worked with my staff. We very, very quickly got some small projects going because we wanted to show that it wasn't just about our efforts in us. Interest didn't stop When the kinetic piece stopped, we wanted to show that we wanted to help them rebuild and get things back to normal as soon as possible. Did we do enough? I think we all felt this is an area we could never do enough, but it was an effort and it was appreciated.

Gen. Waldhauser: [00:13:34] You know, one of the things that was a common phrase is that the situation or the challenges in Libya, you know, a military solution was not the answer. And we all knew that. But the military solution in those first few months was necessary and contributed greatly to the support of the overall political solution that would come in the future. And I think that, as Peter just indicated, we worked hard with Sarraj because one of the things he wanted to do was he wanted to demonstrate to the people of Sirte that the could provide these type of services once the terrorists were gone. So we worked hard and we tried to provide support as we could. But as Peter indicated, the USAID and others really did some small things, but they were things nonetheless. Really, after that period there, we had one last large strike. This was the night before the Obama administration turned over. We had 43 simultaneous targets in the desert where ISIS had gone after they left Sirte. And that was one of the last big strikes that we had. And I would just say that throughout 2017 and 18, we did not have a large number of strikes, but we continued to provide that service.

Gen. Waldhauser: [00:14:35] And every one of those strikes, Ambassador Bodde coordinated those directly with Sarraj, even sometimes with Haftar. And I know that Peter will talk more a little bit about how we engage both sides, even though we supported the we would certainly alert and get the concurrence, if you will, of the GNA and Sarraj particular Ambassador Bodde would take part of that whenever we conduct strikes after 2017, 2018, because ISIS didn't go away, they certainly were diminished. But they look for ungoverned or poorly governed spaces. They went out to the desert. It was in their interest to try to keep demonstrating cracks in the GNA of their ability to govern. So they attack targets and so forth. And we utilize the intelligence that was provided from the Libyans as well as our people on the ground. And although the strikes certainly were the numbers that they were in 2016 and early 17, we continued to provide that with full concurrence and full support of the GNA.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:15:30] Well, both of you engaged with Mr. Haftar, the head of the Libyan National Army. How did that process work and how did it weave with what the UN has been trying to do since 2011 on reconciliation?

Amb. Bodde: [00:15:45] Let me separate the peace with Haftar first, because basically our US policy throughout the whole thing was to support the UN effort that the Government of National Accord was the internationally recognized government and to put them in place to have them succeed in a way that could lead to elections in a more permanent solution. They were always seen as a temporary government. So US policy for the last few years has been to support that effort until most recently. There's a subsequent effort underway and we worked hand in glove to support the UN effort and we also worked very closely with our allies the Brits, the French, the Italians, the Egyptian government, the UAE. We worked with everybody to support these efforts. The other thing there was was the arms embargo. And we were adamant that that should be maintained. That policy has not changed at all. Sort of a separate track. We had bilateral discussions with General Haftar. The first one of this I did during the Obama administration with our then special envoy, Jonathan Winer. That was not a particularly successful meeting. It was long. People went all day. We were in Cairo, if I remember right, a few months after that. We were in the new administration, also decided that we had to engage in some sort of discussion with General Haftar, got permission to do so. We started a series of negotiations of what it would take to try and get him to come into the fold of what the UN was trying to do, i.e. civilian oversight of the military support of the in all of these discussions. I think it's a really crucial part.

Amb. Bodde: [00:17:13]  AFRICOM was part of them. A senior member of General Waldhauser staff was always with me. I'm a good diplomat, but I'm wise enough to know that when a diplomat gets in a room with a field marshal, it's always good to have a general there with you. They played a very critical role in the discussions, but it was a combined effort. These lasted the whole time I was there. I retired out of Tunisia the first time in December of 17 and then was brought back in the Foreign Service in 19 to go back to Libya, charge and restarted the talks with my exchange with Haftar. Then those continued by the various people that had been serving out there in the meantime. But this obviously was not successful. He never agreed to civilian oversight of the military. And as you know, Deborah, and Waldhauser is more expert than both of us. When you do anything with the United States in terms of military cooperation, there's a set of rules and laws you have to agree to. And we do this with every nation in the world, whether it's Great Britain or anyone we do military cooperation with. And General Haftar was never willing to do that. They never got further than that in terms of working with the UN. In the end, in 19 when we were working on this on Salame and I were both in the UAE, we both were meeting with Haftar at the same time, but we always had the same goal as to try and get them to become part of the process. Sadly, that didn't work.

Gen. Waldhauser: [00:18:31] The four main tasks that we had specifically at AFRICOM during this timeframe was to degrade the terrorists, was to prevent civil war, support the political reconstitution and whatever we could do to curb the migrant flow across the med. What Peter just mentioned about Haftar, I never personally met with Haftar, and that was by design. Even though after a meeting every once in a while, Haftar would release in the media that he had met with me. Sarraj was well aware of these meetings. He really approved them because Ambassador Bodde and he talked about them. And this was a way to try to bring these two camps together. Sarraj was aware of it, and Haftar wanted some of the same support that Sarraj was getting. But this was one of the things until he would abide by international law, until he would talk about civilian oversight of the military becoming part of the armed forces for the day. This wasn't going to happen for him. But this was all designed, I think, to a large degree about this task, about trying to prevent civil war and also to support the political process. So we were hand in hand with Ambassador Bodde and those efforts. And I think it sent a strong signal on numerous occasions. It was something that I think we both felt good about in terms of how we orchestrated those particular engagements.

Amb. Bodde: [00:19:44] I think another key point there is General Haftar clearly wanted us recognition. He wanted to get our support. But one of the reasons we kept the negotiations at my level. If you look at what other countries did, like France welcomed him, he went there. He was treated like a national leader. He had similar receptions in Russia, similar receptions in Italy. We never gave him that status because he hadn't signed on to the peace process. My personal goal as ambassador was to keep our policy constant, that until that happened, it wouldn't do it. Because I have to say, while he did get a lot of very positive international recognition in these capitals, having the support of the United States is something different. We had congressional interests with people trying to meet with them. We were able to suggest that until he joined on to the effort. We were successful in doing that with some very senior officials, including Senator McCain.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:20:35] Well, I noticed in 2017 you both went to Tripoli together to meet with the Prime Minister, the head of the government, and also that he went and had a White House visit. So those were also important signals.

Gen. Waldhauser: [00:20:48] I believe that Sarraj went to the White House in December of 2017 after that trip. And Peter, I think will underscore this as well. He became better as the prime minister. I mean, he had been to Washington. He had been in the White House. He talked to the president, and he became far more forthcoming and far more confident in his job. You know, we had met with Sarraj in numerous places in Tunisia. Like I said, at Stuttgart. But we needed to get into Tripoli. And Peter was adamant about that, that to try to get into Tripoli at that point in time would have been the first time since Benghazi that the US had an official capacity inside Tripoli. So the security aspect of this was very, very crucial. And I'd like to just give a lot of credit to Secretary Mattis and Secretary Tillerson at the time, because the ability to do that really came from the top. In fact, Peter and I used to laugh because Peter had more time in the Secretary of Defense's office than I did, and I had more time with Secretary Tillerson because he had come through Germany on a trip. And I stopped in to see him and we talked about Libya and other things. So it was kind of funny. The ambassador had more time at the Pentagon and the general had more time with the Department of State, relatively speaking. But the point is, is that Secretary Mattis would always talk about how the military is there to support the political efforts, and he backed that up.

Gen. Waldhauser: [00:22:00] You know, if you're going to provide political support to the political solution, then how do you do that? And so in this particular case, the assets required to make sure security was appropriate was something that the Department of Defense took on board. But I really go back to the chain of command in DOD that allowed this to happen because we did take key precautions when we were flying into Tripoli, into the airfield there. They were watching this back in Stuttgart in the operations center. And one of my guys said they're rolling out the red carpet for him. The people didn't understand what that meant, because I will say that not all the people in AFRICOM were proponents of doing this. They didn't think the time was right. They didn't think the security situation lent itself to doing this. So it wasn't a unanimous agreement. So there certainly was some risk involved. But when they put the word out that they're rolling out the red carpet back in the ops center, they said, no, no, there really are rolling out the red carpet. And when we got off the airplane there, I think in some of the photos that I showed you, they had rolled out a red carpet. Now, there was all kinds of security around and so on and so forth. But nonetheless, it just demonstrated, I think, really the relief, if you will, the support, if you will, that GNA and Libya in particular, their delight to have a US ambassador back on the ground in Tripoli.

Amb. Bodde: [00:23:10] Remember, they also had a band welcoming us and it was one of those great moments as an ambassador and I think as a general, when you hear our national anthem being played, it was really important. And the Herculean effort that AFRICOM had to go through along with other commands to secure us and make it possible for us to do that. But it sent a symbol because it was the first time we'd had any senior American presence on the ground in Libya since the embassy had had to evacuate and we were able to get back there again later, I believe in 2019. We went back one more time. I got on the ground, I believe, to Misrata. But it still goes back to the point I raised earlier, is until we have a mission on the ground, some sort of embassy so we can be there permanently, we're not going to be able to have the influence that we really feel we need to have and get the work done. It's just too hard to do it from afar.

Gen. Waldhauser: [00:23:57] Peter left shortly thereafter in May or June of 2017, and then we went for a while with Chargés, Stephanie Williams, who recently did yeoman's work in pulling together the Libya political dialogue here, which is being enacted at the moment. Stephanie Williams was in charge for a while. Stephanie and I went back into Tripoli as well. We took a trip there and then she was going to go back in a second time on her own, but the security situation didn't work out. We had to scrub the mission. She left. And then Donald Blum, who now is the ambassador to Tunisia, took over as the chargé as well, until Peter came back in November of 2018. I must say that those two individuals, Stephanie Williams and Donald Blum, did a great job. They did yeoman's work. But I will tell you that when the US, if Libya is a high priority but the US goes for whatever it was, nine months to a year without an ambassador, that's a significant challenge because although they did great work but they didn't have the title. And so we need to make sure if we're going to as a government, if we're going to say that this is a high priority for us, we need to have those ambassadorships filled because it's very, very important. It sends a very strong signal.

Amb. Bodde: [00:25:05] Tom raised an interesting point here is we didn't just go into the capital together. We did some other travel. I think our trip to Egypt is particularly noteworthy in terms of the series you're doing there. We were General Waldhauser as the commander of AFRICOM, going into CENTCOM with the American ambassador to Libya to meet with I think we met with the number two in the army there who had the portfolio of Libya. And it was an incredibly. Productive meeting. Well, was happy to go in and do the meeting. The meeting was a much better meeting than the discussions went better because General Waldhauser was there with me and again, as an ambassador, having a general there to meet with other senior generals. It was a real, real plus. And we just we made it work. And I think we all felt we made some progress there.

Gen. Waldhauser: [00:25:50] One of the things we had to do from the military side, certainly in 2017 and 2018, was to make sure the military tool didn't get out in front of the political tools. We just had to make sure we stayed in step.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:26:01] Well, I wanted to turn now to talk a little bit about the role of Russia and Turkey in Libya. Russia, as we know, is increasing its military footprint in Africa, though it is using surreptitious means in many cases in support of the LNA. It has sent advisers, mercenaries, fighter aircraft, military armored vehicles and air defense systems. Tom, in your testimony in February 2019, you noted that Russia is using, and I'll quote, "oligarch funded, quasi mercenary military advisors," unquote, in the region seeking to gain access not only to Libya's vast oil resources, but also to its coastal areas along the Mediterranean Sea. Can you walk us through Russia's growing presence in Libya, including its facilitation of this private group called Wagner, which is sending lots of mercenaries into the country.

Gen. Waldhauser: [00:26:55] During the timeframe that we're talking about here today, really 2016 to 2019? The Russian presence was always there and we made that known in the media or in testimony and the like for Russia in a public way. It was for reconciliation and bringing everybody together. And I believe Sarraj did go visit Russia as well, but Haftar was entertained on the ship and they were providing support to Haftar kind of under the table while publicly talking about we should let the process, the Libyan political agreement at the time, let that work itself out. But their presence was always there during the time that Haftar was in the east in the Benghazi area, fighting the terrorists there that he had taken on for really several years that occupied his time for the first 18 months or so, if you will, of my tenure at AFRICOM. He was in the East fighting terrorist organizations there, bogged down in the Benghazi area. But the Russians were certainly providing support and the Wagner group people were there. And we let that be known. Now, if you fast forward a little bit to today and you go to April of 19, when unfortunately Haftar made the decision to go ahead and attack Tripoli.

Gen. Waldhauser: [00:27:56] The Wagner group and the Russians have increased their footprint on the ground. They've increased the weapons systems that they've provided for Haftar significantly. And I think US Africa Command has done a very good job and recently released images and data and so forth that really document what the Russians have done in terms of their increase and so forth. But at the same time, the Turks during my tenure were not really a strong player. Obviously, they came in after the attack Tripoli in April because they came to the aid of the GNA and Sarraj and quite frankly turned the tide after a stalemate had occurred there. So we didn't during my timeframe, really not anything with the Turks, but with the Russians. I mean, we made it known that they were there. And for all the reasons that you described, I mean, to have them on the southern part of the Mediterranean, their presence there is significant. I mean, they had contracts years ago for all kinds of oil and this type of thing, and they certainly want the oil, but they also want the influence and they want the location just on the southern belly of NATO, if you will, on Libyan soil.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:28:58] Peter, can you talk a little bit about our engagement, whether in the UN context or separately as Russia, frankly, was violating the UN embargo, in sending in what it was sending in? What was the diplomatic response to all this?

Amb. Bodde: [00:29:14] Well, it was limited. In fairness, they certainly weren't the only ones violating the arms embargo, but because of the way the arms embargo was set up, the way that the structure of the Security Council that was on the diplomatic effort, there was very little done about it. This remains an issue today. We have always abided by it, as have certain other countries. But it remains a problem that countries are not doing it, and there has been no serious diplomatic efforts to engage it. The one sort of diplomatic efforts you have seen not so much on the arms embargo, but individuals have been sanctioned in the past about violations, but not regarding the arms embargo.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:29:49] Well, no, Turkey itself came in later in the game after the onslaught on Tripoli. In your time, what role did Turkey play in the reconciliation process, if any?

Amb. Bodde: [00:30:04] During our tenure there, they didn't. Their engagement basically started with Haftar's invasion and the request from the to support them.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:30:12] And this Haftar attempt to do a surge or whatever you want to call it. Do you have a sense of what drove him to do it, though? It was not successful.

Amb. Bodde: [00:30:22] It's something that he had talked about wanting to do for a long, long time. We had always told him, don't do it. We maintain. Position very clearly, but think he felt that he had the support from others in the region, particularly the UAE, that he could do it. One thing about it, and Tom's more in a position to discuss this, but Haftar's military capabilities without external support are extremely limited. His ability to without equipment, without all sorts of things, he can't be successful. And I think we felt that he's being given the nod from others that they would support him, as they clearly have, and this is why it happened. But our position was clear do not do this. And the other thing I want to say, we haven't said this before this session is we have always told him that he could be part of the solution. And if he agreed to civilian oversight of the military, if he came in and supported the peace efforts, even if he won in a free, fair and credible election, that we would recognize that. But clearly, that didn't matter.

Gen. Waldhauser: [00:31:19] Peter's right, Deborah. I mean, Haftar needed all kinds of support externally in all kinds of support internally from other militias and so forth that would allow him to, in fact, take Tripoli, which we had, as Peter said, told him time and time again, do not do this. The other phenomena that took place inside Tripoli, for the most part or in that vicinity was when Haftar came to attack. It really galvanized a lot of militia members who had laid down their weapons from years past and brought them back into the fight to defend Tripoli. He galvanized those particular people. But then ultimately, I think when Sarraj made some overtures to Turkey and Turkey provided support in terms of weapons and whatnot, that really turned the tide. But then today, one of the tenants of the cease fire is all these militias and other armies are supposed to leave. But now you have the Russians and the Turks who are building bases and are really dug in quite well. Turks, for example, signed training agreements for the military and offshore agreements for natural gas and oil. There are some significant challenges now that have been brought in because inside Libya, as Stephanie Williams put it, you've got other countries that have really laid down markers in the middle of all this, which is going to be a significant challenge going forward.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:32:30] In your views, what kind of diplomatic and military options does the US have going forward in Libya?

Amb. Bodde: [00:32:38] First and foremost, I think we have to continue to support the UN efforts and we have to support what they're trying to do in terms of it. I've always felt that we will not see any solution in Libya until two things happen. The foreign negative influence which currently there now step back a little bit, but there has to be an election quickly and there has to be a government that's chosen by the Libyan people. This, I think, is in the realm of the possible, but it would take a lot of hard work to do. And Stephanie and her efforts laid the groundwork for this. But as Tom mentioned, because of some of the stuff that happens recently, it's going to be hard to do. But I think whatever we do, we should take a multilateral approach. I think we also have to work with our traditional allies, how should we say this engaged in independent solutions or policies, looking for solutions there like the French, others there, that we have to do this together or it's not going to happen in terms of the arms embargo and everything else. And quite frankly, unless our traditional allies put up a common stance against Russia's doing there, we're not going to be successful. And I think that's one of the things we have to do. The other thing I think we have to do is we have to realize that we're going to have influence there. We have to establish some sort of a permanent presence. And I'm not talking something along the lines of what we have in Kabul or in Iraq, but we have to have some sort of way that we can get our people in there regularly to conduct business and do the things embassies do. I'll stop there.

Gen. Waldhauser: [00:34:00] What I would say is really the Libya Political Dialogue forum. You know, they have established what's called now the GNU, the Government of National Unity. And this is an interim government which is supposed to be in place until December 24th when elections are supposed to be held. And so really the task they have now to the end of the year is to really unify the country, which is an extremely Herculean effort. And they've got to implement the cease fire, which means the removal of all these militias and various other armies. They're supposed to begin to provide essential public services to the people they're supposed to initiate recognition of the various agencies and so forth, and basically organize for the national election on 24th December, because, as Peter just said, the Libyans will never accept an imposed government. And so the pathway here is elections on December 24th. And these individuals who are part of the interim government, the new prime minister and the new presidential council, they cannot run for office on that ticket later this year. That's a lot of work to be done to have an election by the end of the year. From a military perspective, I think the military tool needs to really be a lot of caution right now because the militias are really the ones that play a key role here. And one of the things that needs to take place and they haven't had a good track record there in Libya is this whole business of disarming and demobilizing and reintegrating.

Gen. Waldhauser: [00:35:18] And this is an effort that the militias know needs to take place. But at the same time, you know, they don't want to give up their power, their weapons, the money that they're making in various nefarious ways. That's another key challenge. So militarily right now, I mean, I think we can assist with still watching the counterterrorism effort that becomes a necessity. But as far as the military tool at the moment goes, it has to be very, very cautious because you don't want to start going in there and doing things like training a national army. And it turns out that these guys, you know, are going to break away and go on the wrong side. So I just would express caution in whatever the military can do to support getting the country to elections on December 24th is what needs to happen, because that would be a pathway to kind of breaking what's happened over the last several years with Sarraj, because as we said earlier, Sarraj was an interim prime minister, supposed to be there for a year and maybe two, five years later, he's still there. So hopefully this Libyan political dialogue forum has created a pathway that can lead to some success.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:36:17] Well, this has been excellent, gentlemen, because it's a very complicated situation. I think a lot of citizens don't understand what we're doing there, why we're there. And it's very hard to piece together. So you certainly contributed mightily as well as to the purpose of the podcast, which is to explain why we need our leading military leaders and our leading diplomats to work hand in hand, or sometimes one in front of the other to accomplish what we set out to achieve. So thank you. Thank you very much. This has been a new episode in the series, The General and the Ambassador, A Conversation. Thank you for listening. Our series is a production of the American Academy of Diplomacy in partnership with UNC Global at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. You can find our podcasts on all major podcast sites and on our website: GeneralAmbassadorpodcast.org. Do follow us on Twitter and Facebook and we welcome all input and suggestions. You can mail us directly at general.ambassador.podcast@gmail.com. Thank you for listening.