US Time magazine has attributed the ongoing clashes over Libya’s Ras Lanuf and Sidra oil ports to fears by battling Libyan Islamist militias that Egypt will reinforce the Tubruq-based Libyan government.
The fighting led to the closure of the two oil ports and showed how fears of Egyptian intervention in Libya could escalate armed conflicts, the magazine said.
Claudia Gazzini, a senior Libya analyst based in Tripoli with the International Crisis Group told Time that the Fajr Libya troops “had information or belief that the Tobruk side was being reinforced in its military capacities.”
“The more evidence there is of Egyptian involvement, the greater the risk the opposing side might make abrupt strategy choices, like the one we saw over the weekend,” Gazzini told Time.
President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who led a military overthrow against the former Islamist President Mohamed Morsy in 2013, according to Gazzini, considers Tubruq government as his ally within the regional conflict against political Islam.
Frederic Wehrey, a senior associate in the Middle East Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, told TIme there's a desire to reshape the political arena in Libya in a way that guarantees absence of any strong role by the Muslim Brotherhood or political Islamists.
“The larger fear of having a country next door or where the Brotherhood is dominant is a real political concern for them.”
Despite official Egyptian denial of direct military intervention in Libya, Egypt took several steps to support the government in Tubruq, Time said. In August, US officials said Egypt allowed use of its air forces by United Arab Emirates to launch surprise aerial attacks in Libya. In November, Egypt dispatched special troops to Libya according to the New York Times.
