Death from the Skies of Libya, Part III: The largest drone war in the world

An analysis of how Libya has become an epicentre of drone warfare in the wake of the 2011 revolution.

Photo by Pavel Vanka on Flickr.

“Today I have decided to try to throw bombs from the aeroplane”. So recounted a young Italian airman, Giulio Gavotti, after he tossed a bomb at pro-Turkish forces during his country’s invasion in 1911 of Ottoman-held Libya, ushering in the age of aerial bombing. More than a century later, Libya still feels its consequences very keenly, albeit in high-tech, remote-controlled form.

The massacre of 26 cadets on January 4, 2020 was the handiwork of a Chinese drone operated by forces of the United Arab Emirates. Ultimately, however, it was on Libyan soil, upon young Libyan men, that this destruction was wrought. Why did post-2011 Libya appear to Gavotti’s Emirati successors to be such fertile ground for drone warfare?

Arguably, the fragmented nature of the country, a consequence of the uprising that toppled the Gaddafi regime, contributed both to the utility of drones in this particular battlespace, and to the rise of warlord Khalifa Haftar, on whose behalf the Emiratis have employed them. We must thus go back to the revolution of 2011 to understand how drones have impacted the fortunes of war in its wake.

Revolution, fragmentation and the rise of Haftar

Galvanised by the earlier revolutions in neighbouring Tunisia and Egypt, revolts sprang up independently in several different areas of Libya. It began in the city of Benghazi on February 15, 2011, when hundreds gathered at a courthouse to protest the arrest of a lawyer who had been representing the families of earlier regime atrocities. The tear gas and water cannons that comprised the security forces’ reply triggered several more days of violence, with the death toll standing at more than 100 by February 20.

Benghazi was far from alone in its experience of regime violence. In city after city, spontaneous protests gave rise to repression by Gaddafi’s forces, which further ignited the protests. Yet Gaddafi remained defiant, thundering a haughty speech on February 22 in which he condemned protestors as “rats” who would be hunted down “inch by inch, house by house, street by street, person by person, until the country is clean of dirt and impurities.”

However, his forces could not stem the tide. Armed groups sprang up in cities across Libya, particularly the revolutionary strongholds of Zintan and Misrata, to combat the regime’s onslaught. Since the uprising was less a coordinated struggle and more the result of local interactions between civilians and regime forces, these groups emerged as highly localised entities. When Tripoli finally fell in August, they quickly rushed to fill the void.

And so the collapsing central authority of the Gaddafi regime was replaced with a plethora of competing power centres across the country – many of them having been forged as cohesive groups by the experience of civil war. Militias from Zintan and Misrata, through having shared a common foe in Colonel Gaddafi, ended up at each other’s throats – competing for state resources and even waging armed conflict against one another. The country was in a state of military and political fragmentation.

Out of this anarchy emerged one fighting force arguably more effective than the rest. Khalifa Haftar’s “Libyan National Army” (LNA) first built its power base in the country’s east, where competition was somewhat less cutthroat than in the west.

As argued by political scientist Wolfram Lacher, the consolidation of cohesive armed groups in western cities such as Zintan and Misrata was a result of the intense conflict that plagued them during the 2011 civil war. Regime violence, or the threat thereof, spurred social communities to unite under arms and form military structures to combat a danger deemed existential. Being based in their social communities of origin – from which they drew support and personnel – these groups were effective yet invariably local in their extent. The relative lack of violence experienced in the east meant there were fewer of these cohesive, socially-embedded groups, opening the way for the rise of Haftar.

The Gaddafi-era military officer was able to escape these social constraints and turn his force into a “professionalised” militant group, less bound to the structures of an existing community and more free to pursue what Haftar deemed to be in its strategic interest. As Lacher explained in his book “Libya’s Fragmentation”, a contributing factor was that Haftar did not depend solely on local sources of support, instead receiving “external backing from Egypt and the UAE in the form of weapons, equipment and, almost certainly, cash.” No other Libyan actor “benefited from support even remotely comparable in magnitude and constancy”, according to Lacher. 

With this kind of  external support, and an environment largely bereft of the competitive cohesive groups found in the west, Haftar was able to expand his reach to much of the country’s east and south, finally launching a full-scale assault on Tripoli on April 4, 2019. The Emiratis extended their support to direct airstrikes in these battles, many of them involving unmanned drones.

In this technology, the Emiratis found a weapon uniquely suited for waging war in chaotic and fragmented environments. Its capabilities may also address the more general pressures that befall the Emirati military, rendering it invaluable for the UAE’s intervention in Libya.

A tactical capability

By definition, unmanned drones forgo the need for a human pilot. Operationally, this allows drones to stay airborne for longer and carry a greater weapons payload for their weight. However, most important is that no personnel have to be put in harm’s way, satisfying the Emirati military’s strong aversion to combat casualties.

The UAE’s armed forces are drawn mainly from the federation’s poorer northern emirates. The leadership in Abu Dhabi hopes to take advantage of this to “instill nationalist sentiment in the northern emirates through cultivating a military ethos”, thus staving off the potentially destabilising combination of “economic inequalities and political Islam” (read Part I). Yet, who knows how long this endeavour will hold should their sons begin to return in body bags, fostering resentment that may threaten Abu Dhabi’s entire nationalist project. Better instead  to lose a piece of machinery.

Tactically, combat drones also exhibit certain advantages in the kinds of warfare that the Emiratis are waging in Libya. The country’s endemic fragmentation has meant that the UAE has entangled itself in a highly complex conflict consisting of irregular warfare among numerous armed groups vying for influence. These militants might hide in remote areas or blend into local populations – a far cry from the sort of conventional combat waged between regular armies.

In such an environment, there is a premium on the ability to locate and track targets for a strike, on top of launching the strike itself. Drones combine both these capabilities. Without the problem of pilot fatigue, they are able to “remain on-task for very extended periods of time … loiter[ing] over a location for much longer than other platforms, [and] reducing the risk of losing contact with the target.” After locating the target, the drone’s strike capability then allows it to minimise “the time gap between target acquisition and the potential decision to strike high-profile or time-sensitive targets”, making it an effective instrument of death in chaotic combat environments where intelligence is scarce. It is this unique capacity for targeted killing in such environments that the Emiratis have utilised to deadly effect in warzones such as Yemen, where they have used Chinese-made drones to assassinate Houthi leaders. And of course, this includes Libya.

The largest drone war in the world

Since 2016, the Emiratis have been in possession of Chinese-made Wing Loong I drones, and in early 2018 began receiving purchases of the Wing Loong II. They have deployed them to significant effect in Haftar’s 2019-2020 offensive against the UN-recognised Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli. According to Alex Gatopoulos, a defence analyst at Al-Jazeera, the “relatively flat featureless desert terrain” places a premium on air power, whilst the “antiquated and poorly maintained” fighter jets of both the GNA’s and Haftar’s air forces render unmanned drones an invaluable alternative. As such, Libya has become an epicentre for drone warfare, with former UN envoy Ghassan Salamé dubbing it “the largest drone war in the world”.

Chinese-made Emirati drones were reportedly first used in mid-2018, during a military campaign waged by Haftar to capture the city of Derna from Islamist militants. However, they really came into their own after Haftar began his 14-month siege of Tripoli in April 2019. As Gatopoulos describes, “[Tripoli] government forces were repeatedly pushed back into a tight pocket as the capital was besieged by [Haftar] … There were now doubts that the UN-recognised GNA … could hold out much longer”. GNA fighter Adam Alburki claims that “we used to be afraid of air strikes by the UAE’s drones. It stopped us from making any significant counter-offensives because they were extremely accurate.” 

Then in the spring of 2020, the tide turned. In November 2019, the GNA and the government of Turkey had signed two separate agreements; one was a maritime boundaries deal that handed Turkey an advantageous position in the eastern Mediterranean. The second, which acted as a carrot for the first, was a military accord that provided for Turkish troops to be deployed at the assistance of the GNA. With the blessing of Turkey’s parliament, forces began to deploy in early January 2020.

And of course, it was not just ground troops. A Washington Institute analysis claims that “a boost in Turkish drones and air defense [sic] systems enabled forces in Tripoli to establish local air superiority and ease pressure on the capital.” Electronic jamming systems from Turkey interfered with Haftar’s anti-air capabilities and the communication frequencies used by Wing Loong drones, “account[ing] for the increased survivability of the GNA drone force and recent disruptions to [Haftar’s] drone operations”. By June, Haftar’s siege had ended in failure.

It would be a stretch to claim that drone power was the sole or even primary reason for the victory of the GNA’s Turkish-backed forces. However, this conflict did demonstrate the effectiveness of a technology that is making ever further inroads into the battlefields of the 21st century. This is a trend that is likely to continue in the years to come.

And so, while the slaughter of 26 cadets on January 4 was a heinous, singular act – it was also the culmination of at least four trends that have gained increased impetus over the past decade: the Emirati pushback against Islamism, China’s arms diplomacy, Libya’s fragmentation, and the increasing prominence of drone warfare. Trends like these have stamped an indelible mark on the world we live in. They must be understood if we are to prepare ourselves for the tragedies they may reap.