Watching Libya June 11/12, 2011

The exodus of Libyans across the border with Tunisia continues unabated. In the night between Wednesday, June 8, and Thursday June  9,  around 923 people entered the Tunisian territory. The official Tunisian news agency TAP announced yesterday (June 9) that  891 Libyan nationals, 8 Tunisians and 24 other individuals holding British, Egyptian, Australian, Sudanese, German, American and Algerian passports crossed into Tunisia. Most of the Libyans were fleeing from fighting in the Nafusa mountains, as well as from the Gazaya and Jefara areas. For background to the strategic importance of the Jabal Nafusa see Watching Libya April 29, 2011, Watching Libya April 25, 2011, Watching Libya March 25, 2011 and Watching Libya March 16, 2011 below. It also reported that the Tunisian army and the national guard had intensified land and airborne surveillance of the frontier with Libya. Read the original report.

Meanwhile there are rumours of new defections. The Tunisian route has, so far, been the most usual one taken by high Tripoli-based officials to abandon the regime.  High profile figures such as Gheddafi’s former foreign minister Moussa Koussa and the former National Oil Company (NOC) chairman (and one time prime minister) Shukri Ghanem, 69, had also driven into Tunisia through the Ras Ejder crossing on the coast on their way to the airport at Djerba.

Ghanem’s defection, though it aroused less awe in the media than Moussa Koussa’s, may have dealt an even greater blow to the regime. Ghanem’s competence and experience in the energy sector made him Libya’s natural interlocutor in the eyes of the world’s oil companies. Although he never hid his disdain for the incompetence, bureaucratic lethargy and corruption of many Libyan officials –a trait that partly explains why he was demoted from prime minister to chairman of NOC – Gheddafi had no choice but to keep him on as Libya’s energy supremo.

Ghanem entered Tunisia on May 16 or 17 and checked into a hotel at Djerba. On May 31, he arrived in Rome, where – on  June 1 – he told the press: "In this situation you can no longer work, so I have left my country and my work to unite myself with the choice of young Libyans to fight for a democratic country." (ANSA).  Tripoli initially denied Ghanem’s defection – pointing out that he was due to represent Libya at the 159th meeting of OPEC in Vienna last Wednesday, June 8 – but then conceded that they had “lost contact” with him. Read more about Ghanem at Watching Libya April 8, 2011 and Watching Libya March 2, 2011, below.

In fact Libya was represented at the OPEC meeting by loyalist Omran Abukraa, a former head of the Libyan electricity board.  See page 19 of OPEC’s Press Information Booklet for the meeting.

This must have disappointed the TNC as it deprived it of an excellent opportunity to occupy Libya’s seat at OPEC. Surprisingly, Libya’s status within OPEC’s quota system was not reviewed. Delegates had been expected to either reduce its quota to nil – which would  have reflected  the fact that it is currently not producing any oil – and reallocate it elsewhere, or to suspend it from the production system, as they had done with Iraq. As it is, Libya’s status is unchanged with an allocation of 1.47 million bbd. At the beginning of this year (2011), its output stood at 1.58 million bbd.  The peaking of Brent crude at $ 125 per barrel in April 2011, is also – but not exclusively, of course - due to Libya’s non-performance following the outbreak of hostilities.

The latest high level defection from Tripoli observed by the Tunisian authorities at Ras Jedir  prior to Ghanem’s  is that of Abdallah Mahmoud al-Hijazi, former adviser to the Foreign Affairs General Secretariat  (foreign ministry) and number two of the regime’s military intelligence, on May 14. With him were four former high civil servants. Read TAP’s original report. Insistent rumours of military personnel going to the TNC's side in the Jabal Nafusa, and of deserting isolated units crossing the border in the remoter frontier areas await confirmation.