Canada took part in secret operation to destroy Libyan chemical weapons

By: ROBERT FIFE - OTTAWA BUREAU CHIEF
The Globe and Mail

Canada took part in an international operation to secretly remove deadly chemicals – often turned into weapons – from Libya to keep them out of the hands of Islamic State fighters.

The disarmament mission concluded last week when a Danish ship unloaded 500 metric tonnes of the chemicals at a German port for destruction at a commercial facility in the city of Munster over the next nine months. The maritime operation also involved the British, Spanish and Italian navies.

Canada provided $725,000 to the multinational effort. Some of that money went to buy 20 new safe chemical tanks, fitted with GPS tracking devices. The tanks containing the hazardous chemicals were taken by armed convoy across the desert to the coastal city of Misrata, Libya, and onto Germany in utmost secrecy.

Officials involved in the operation provided details to The Globe and Mail on Canada’s role.

“This operation happened because Canada was able to buy these new tanks for transferring the materials and also the U.S. donated some tanks as well,” said Deepti Choubey of the Hague-based Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which co-ordinated the operation. “It is a huge success story. ”

The United States, European allies and Canada became alarmed in May when Islamic State militants killed two security officers at a checkpoint about 1.6 kilometres from Libya’s sole remaining chemical-weapons site in Ruwagha.

“ISIS was operating very close and we knew it was a matter of time when they would attack the site because the site is also a huge bankers bazaar of conventional weapons,” Libya’s representative to the OPCW, Ali Gebril, told The Globe and Mail. “That’s why we started a very serious process and Canada was one of the partners who supported us financially and played an active role in the consultations.”

The United States and its allies were concerned because the chemicals, which included phosphorus trichloride and 2-chloroethanol, could be turned into 100 metric tonnes of nerve agent and 30 metric tonnes of sulfur mustard, commonly known as mustard gas.

Officials were already aware that the Islamic State had used sulfur mustard in Syria in 2015 and feared they would raid the Ruwagha site to obtain the chemicals.

The operation was not without danger. Some of the chemicals were stored in 25-year-old barrels that had corroded and were leaking. The Islamic State also has lookouts along the route from Ruwagha to Misrata.

“The [largest] concern was how to remove the chemicals from location in Ruwagha to the north. It was a huge challenge because of the ongoing battle between the Libyan forces and [IS],” Dr. Gebril said.

The Libyans transferred the chemicals to the Canadian tanks in mid-July and then to an unidentified safe storage site before they were shipped to Misrata and loaded on the Danish ship in late August.

Libyan officials had hoped to destroy the chemical precursors by using sophisticated Canadian plasma technology, but the deal fell through because of Islamic State attacks and waves of kidnappings.

“We had a very successful negotiation in Canada. We got an offer but unfortunately the situation in Libya was very dangerous to bring such technology to Libya to deal with these chemicals,” Dr. Gebril said.

The removal of the last of Libya’s chemical weapons came as U.S. fighter jets continue to pound Libya’s coastal city of Sirte, an Islamic State stronghold.

Canada has played a leading role in the elimination of Libya’s chemical weapons program since 2012, when it contributed $6-million to the OPCW, the global chemical-weapons watchdog.

“We commend the OPCW for co-ordinating this complex undertaking and Libya’s Government of National Accord for in requesting and then facilitating the removal of these chemicals,” Foreign Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion said in a statement to The Globe and Mail.

U.S. prepares to send troops to Libya. Will Canada follow?

By: David Pugliese, Defence Watch 

In 2011 the Canadian government and military joined with other nations to overthrow Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi.

(Then) Prime Minister Stephen Harper, middle, gets a tour of Canada's CF-18s by Lt.-Col. Daniel McLeod, left, and Gen. Charles Bouchard prior to delivering a speech at Camp Fortin on the Trapani-Birgi Air Force Base in Trapani, Italy. After seven months in the country, the Canadian Forces will be back in Canada Friday. (Sean Kilpatrick/Canadian Press)

The Canadian government and military played key roles in overthrowing Gadhafi and highlighted those efforts as a significant victory both for Libya and Canadians.

At the time then Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird reinforced Canada’s support for the rebel groups fighting Gadhafi, pointing out they had a well developed plan that would transform the country into a democracy. “The one thing we can say categorically is that they couldn’t be any worse than Col. Gadhafi,” said Baird.

But there was no plan. In fact, Canada and other nations who took part in the Libya war ignored intelligence that among the freedom-loving “rebels” were Islamic extremists.

The country promptly fell apart into a new civil war. The Islamic State has carved out portions of Libya for its staging and training areas. Other Islamic extremists have their portions of the country.

In September 2014, Prime Minister Stephen Harper defended Canada’s role in Libya, suggesting that neither it nor NATO can be held responsible for the chaos that has since engulfed that country.

Now it seems the U.S. military is getting ready to send troops back to Libya. The Canadian government has suggested it could follow.

Here is some background reading on the developing situation. The two articles below were written by the Associated Press:

The number of Islamic State militants in Libya has doubled in the last year or so to as many as 6,000 fighters, with aspirations to conduct attacks against the U.S. and other nations in the West, says the top U.S. commander for Africa.

Army Gen. David Rodriguez, head of U.S. Africa Command, said that local Libya militias have had some success in trying to stop the Islamic State from growing in Benghazi and are battling the group in Sabratha. But he said that decisions to provide more military assistance to the Libyans await a working national government.

The latest numbers for IS in Libya make it the largest Islamic State branch of eight that the militant group operates outside Iraq and Syria, according to U.S. defense officials. The officials were not authorized to provide details of the group and spoke only on condition of anonymity.

The U.S. has conducted two airstrikes in Libya in recent months targeting Islamic State fighters and leaders, but Rodriguez said that those are limited to militants that pose an “imminent” threat to U.S. interests. He said it’s possible the U.S. could do more as the government there takes shape.

The U.S. and its allies are hoping that a U.N.-brokered unity government will be able to bring the warring factions together and end the chaos there, which has helped fuel the growth of the Islamic State. The U.S. and European allies would like the new government to eventually work with them against IS.

The U.S., France and other European nations have sent special operations forces to work with Libyan officials and help the militias fight. In February, American airstrikes hit an Islamic State training camp in rural Libya near the Tunisian border, killing more than 40 militants. And last November, a U.S. airstrike killed top Islamic State leader Abu Nabil in Libya. He was a longtime al-Qaida operative and the senior Islamic State leader in Libya.

Rodriguez said, however, that it will be a challenge for the Islamic State to become as big a threat as it is in Iraq and Syria because of resistance from local Libyan fighters and the population, which is wary of outside groups.

He said the militias in Libya have fought Islamic State militants in Benghazi and Derna with some success, and fought hard in Sabratha with more limited gains. Efforts to battle the group in Sirte have not worked as well, he said. Their biggest problem, he said, is that often the militias fight among themselves.

“It’s uneven and it’s not consistent across the board,” Rodriguez told reporters at a Pentagon briefing. “We’ll have to see how the situation develops, but they are contesting the growth of ISIS in several areas across Libya, not all of it.”

Asked if waiting for the new government to form will allow the Islamic State more time to gather momentum, Rodriguez downplayed the risk.

“It’s going to be a challenge for them to get to that point because of the Libyan population, people and militias that are out there,” he said. “It could be a bigger fight and everything. But again, we’re watching that very carefully and taking action as we see those threats develop.”

SECOND ASSOCIATED PRESS ARTICLE

In a move fraught with risk, the United States and other world powers said they would supply Libya’s internationally recognized government with weapons to counter the Islamic State and other militant groups gaining footholds in the chaos-wracked country’s lawless regions.

Aiming at once to shore up the fragile government, and prevent Islamic State fighters and rival militias from further gains, the U.S., the four other permanent U.N. Security Council members and more than 15 other nations said they would approve exemptions to a United Nations arms embargo to allow military sales and aid to Libya’s so-called “Government of National Accord.”

In a joint communique, the nations said that while the broader embargo will remain in place, they are “ready to respond to the Libyan government’s requests for training and equipping” government forces.

“We will fully support these efforts while continuing to reinforce the UN arms embargo,” the communique said.

With support from all five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, the plan is unlikely to face significant opposition from any quarter.

The communique was issued at the end of the talks that gathered U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and top officials from more than 20 other nations to discuss ways to strengthen Libya’s fledgling government. The aim is to give the internationally recognized administration more muscle in fighting Islamic State radicals and end its rivalry with a group to the east claiming legitimacy.

The step will boost the government’s efforts to consolidate power and regain control over Libyan state institutions like the central bank and national oil company. However, it also comes with risks, not least of which is that the arms may be captured or otherwise taken by the Islamic State or other groups.

Kerry called the plan “a delicate balance.”

“But we are all of us here today supportive of the fact that if you have a legitimate government and that legitimate government is fighting terrorism, that legitimate government should not be victimized by (the embargo),” he told reporters.

Libyan Premier Fayez al-Sarraj said his government would soon submit a weapons wish list to the Security Council for approval.

“We have a major challenge ahead of us,” in fighting extremists, he said. “We urge the international community to assist us.”

Before the meeting, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier outlined the high stakes at hand.

“The key question is whether Libya remains a place where terrorism, criminal human smuggling and instability continue to expand, or if we are able, together with the government of national unity to recover stability,” he told reporters.

The challenges are daunting.

Libya descended into chaos after the toppling and death of Moammar Gaddafi five years ago and soon turned into a battleground of rival militias battling for powers. More recently, the power vacuum has allowed Islamic State radicals to expand their presence, giving them a potential base in a country separated from Europe only by a relatively small stretch of the Mediterranean Sea.

Also worrying for Europe is the potential threat of a mass influx of refugees amassing in Libya, now that the earlier route from Turkey into Greece has been essentially shut down. British Foreign Secretary David Hammond said his government had received a request from the Libyan government to bolster its Coast Guard — a project “which will address Libyan concerns about smuggling and insecurity on their border but will also address European concerns about illegal migration.”

In Libya, meanwhile, the U.N.-established presidency council on Monday effectively gave the go-ahead for 18 government ministers to start work, even though they have not received backing from the parliament.

The council was created under a U.N.-brokered unity deal struck in December to reconcile Libya’s many political divisions. It won the support of a former powerbase in the country’s capital, Tripoli, but failed to secure a vote of confidence by the country’s internationally recognized parliament, based in Tobruk, a city in eastern Libya.

The U.N. deal also created the internationally recognized government, through a de facto Cabinet to administer the country under Prime Minister-designate Fayez Serraj and the 18 ministers will answer to him.

Divisions in the Tobruk parliament between boycotters and supporters of the new government have prevented the house from reaching a quorum to endorse the council.

UN report: Spartan APC deal to Libya by Canadian firm violated international embargo

By: STEVEN CHASE
OTTAWA — The Globe and Mail
Published Tuesday, Apr. 05, 2016 10:14PM EDT
Last updated Tuesday, Apr. 05, 2016 10:15PM EDT

A new UN panel report says a shipment of armoured personnel carriers to Libya from a Canadian-owned company’s Mideast facilities several years ago violated an international arms embargo – an incident that raises questions about how extensively Ottawa should be policing the defence and military trade conducted by its citizens abroad.

The March 2016 report, which flagged a transfer of armoured vehicles produced by Streit Group, a company first established in Ontario in the 1990s, was drawn up by experts monitoring global compliance with the United Nations Security Council arms embargo against Libya in place since 2011.

Streit is owned by Guerman Goutorov, a Canadian citizen who lives in the United Arab Emirates. His Canadian-based company is Streit Manufacturing in Innisfil, Ont.

The UN panel’s reporting on what it calls an “illicit transfer” of armoured personnel carriers comes amid a growing debate in Canada over the military and defence goods that Canadians sell to Mideast countries – including a $15-billion deal with Saudi Arabia – and increasing concern that Ottawa is not doing enough to monitor, control and shine a light on this flourishing business.

Libya has been engulfed in civil war since dictator Moammar Gadhafi lost power in 2011. The top U.S. general in Africa last month described Libya as a “failed state.”

In 2012, when this Streit shipment took place, transfers of armoured personnel carriers to Libya required advance approval from the UN sanctions committee overseeing the embargo. But, the UN report says, the United Nations wasn’t notified about this 2012 delivery before it occurred – meaning “the transfer occurred in violation of the arms embargo.”

Asked for comment on the matter, Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion’s office left it to public servants at the Department of Global Affairs to answer questions.

A spokeswoman said Ottawa is in no way responsible for arms shipments between two foreign countries – even if there is connection to Canada.

“This is ‎an export exclusively from the United Arab Emirates to Libya, which is outside of Canada’s export-controls jurisdiction,” Amy Mills, a spokeswoman for Global Affairs Canada said in a prepared statement. “There is no information to suggest otherwise.”

Canadian diplomats in the UAE have nevertheless publicly supported Streit as a Canadian company. Claudio Ramirez, an economic and finance counsellor who works at the Canadian embassy in Abu Dhabi, made a point of announcing on Twitter in 2015 when “Canada’s Streit Group” expanded a UAE factory. Canada’s ambassador to the UAE, Arif Lalani, used the social-media platform in 2013 to speak supportively of this “Canadian company” whose armoured vehicles he said once protected him.

Ken Epps with Project Ploughshares, an anti-war group in Waterloo, Ont., that tracks the arms trade, said Canada is shirking its responsibility over the overseas defence business activities of Canadians. He said an exception exists today where Canadians can take blueprints and technology abroad and sell to foreigners while avoiding scrutiny by Canada’s arms-control regime.

“It is a loophole and one that Canada should close,” Mr. Epps said.

He pointed out that laws and regulations enacted by the Canadian government set penalties for Canadian citizens, even “outside Canada,” when it comes to contravening UN arms embargoes.

Asked about this, another Global Affairs spokesperson said the government was studying the UN panel report.

The limited responsibility Ottawa assumes for overseas military and security sales differs from a far more interventionist approach it takes in other foreign activities of Canadian businesspeople.

For instance, several years ago, the government introduced corporate ethics rules, enforced with the threat of withdrawal of trade-promotion services, that govern the conduct of Canadian mining and energy operations in foreign countries.

“If you don’t play ball by doing business the Canadian way, then we won’t go to bat for you,” was how former international trade minister Ed Fast explained it in 2014.

Canada also claims jurisdiction over the conduct of Canadians abroad when it comes to bribery of foreign officials; federal legislation carries the threat of fines and imprisonment.

The UAE paperwork accompanying the 2012 shipment lists four countries of origin for the 131 armoured vehicles it says were transferred to Libyans: Japan, the United States, the UAE and Canada. Not all vehicles were armoured personnel carriers – the item of interest to the UN expert panel. Some were armour-plated cars.

Streit officials could not be reached for comment. However, the company told the UN panel that it did nothing wrong and had received export approval from the UAE.

Streit told the UN experts that it “strenuously reject[s] any suggestion that Streit Group could knowingly or otherwise break national or international law.” The company said its actions were in complete accord with UAE laws and regulations.

The UN panel said the end user for this 2012 shipment was listed as the “Libyan Ministry of the Interior.” But the transfer occurred amid the ongoing political upheaval in Libya, as factions jostle for control of the government and a black market for diverted weapons flourishes. The panel said it tried to get more details on the customer from the United Arab Emirates government, which should have notified the UN about the shipment in the first place, but, it said, “no response was received.”

The United Nations is having serious difficulty enforcing the arms embargo against Libya as it tries to ensure the UN-backed “government of national accord” succeeds in the face of challenges including Islamic State militants, the expert panel report said.

“Continuous violations … are having a negative impact on the security situation in Libya and its political transition: better-equipped armed actors may be less inclined to agree to ceasefires or to accept the authority of the future government of national accord and its security arrangements.”

Since 2011, UN embargo rules have been relaxed so that a category of shipments to Libya that includes armoured personnel carriers no longer requires approval from sanctions officials. The experts monitoring Libya pointedly disagrees with this, saying these vehicles “significantly increase the military capability of armed groups.”

In 2015, Streit incurred millions of dollars in penalties from the U.S. government for exporting armoured vehicles without obtaining proper approvals several years ago.

In September of 2015, the government agency responsible for enforcing American export controls announced it had imposed a $3.5-million fine on Streit Group affiliated companies and two corporate officers for completing at least nine unlicensed transfers, or sales, of U.S.-made armoured vehicles to foreign countries between 2008 and 2009. Of this penalty, $1.5-million was suspended.

Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Export Enforcement, David W. Mills, said in a statement on the September, 2015 announcement that it “highlights the fact that both exporters and foreign re-exporters face consequences if they do not comply with U.S. export-control regulations.”

CAF Heading back to Libya?

Written by David Pugliese, 

There has been a lot of talk about a new coalition to intervene against Islamic extremists in Libya. Those extremists took over parts of the country in the wake of the 2011 removal by rebels of Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi.

The opposition groups had support from NATO and Canadian CF-18s and other aircraft took part in that bombing campaign.

Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan has suggested that Canada might take part in a new mission to Libya to deal with ISIL operating from that country, if that comes about.

“There’s a much more significant threat of ISIL in that region and that’s the reason we are having greater discussions on that,” Sajjan recently told journalists.

The Pentagon is reported to have presented U.S. President Barack Obama with plans for extensive airstrikes against ISIL training camps in Libya.

It could be a long haul, however, to get Libya stable. The top U.S. general in Africa says the country is now a failed state.

Army Gen. David Rodriguez said that foreign fighters, weapons and illegal migrants are flowing through the oil-rich North African country, supplying the conflicts in Syria and Iraq with combatants and threatening U.S. allies, the Associated Press writes.

Here is the rest of the Associated Press article:

In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Rodriguez said the recent agreement to form a unity government in Tripoli is an important step. Yet even with strong international support, the new government will struggle for the “foreseeable future” to establish its authority and secure Libya’s people and borders, he said.

Rodriguez estimated that it would take “10 years or so” to achieve long-term stability in Libya. He cited a “fractured society” and the lack of government institutions as major hurdles to overcome.

“The continued absence of central government control will continue to perpetuate violence, instability and allow the conditions for violent extremist organizations to flourish until the (government) and appropriate security forces are operational within Libya,” Rodriguez told the committee.

Rodriguez’s assessment comes nearly two weeks after Secretary of State John Kerry stopped short of declaring Libya as failed, citing the selection of a prime minister-designate to lead the new government.

“It’s close,” Kerry said last month during testimony before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee. “If they cannot get themselves together, yes, it will be a failed state.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., asked Rodriguez to quantify how much of Libya is under the control of extremist groups. Rodriguez replied that the Islamic State group controls the area in and around its stronghold city of Sirte.

The Islamic State has been recruiting militants from abroad into Libya in an effort to exploit years of chaos and expand its foothold there.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said the Islamic State now commands 5,000 fighters in Libya.