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Türkiye Once Again Denies Request to Inspect Ship Bound for Libya

A ship that belongs to the European Union Naval Force Mediterranean Operation IRINI to oversee an arms embargo on Libya. (AFP)
A ship that belongs to the European Union Naval Force Mediterranean Operation IRINI to oversee an arms embargo on Libya. (AFP)
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Türkiye Once Again Denies Request to Inspect Ship Bound for Libya

A ship that belongs to the European Union Naval Force Mediterranean Operation IRINI to oversee an arms embargo on Libya. (AFP)
A ship that belongs to the European Union Naval Force Mediterranean Operation IRINI to oversee an arms embargo on Libya. (AFP)

Türkiye denied on Monday a flag state consent request from Operation IRINI, launched by the European Union to oversee an arms embargo on Libya, to inspect one of its ships.

The European Union Naval Force Mediterranean Operation IRINI (EUNAVFOR MED IRINI) said Ankara refused the inspection of its MV MATILDE A, in accordance with the United Nations Security Council resolution 2292 (2016) on the arms embargo on Libya.

It recalled in a statement the Security Council’s call upon all UN members to cooperate with inspections.

This incident has been repeated frequently due to Ankara's position on the European operation since its launch in 2020.

The Council of the European Union decided to launch, on 31 March 2020, a new Operation called EUNAVOR MED IRINI, mainly maritime and focused on implementing the UN arms embargo on Libya.

IRINI was launched on March 31, 2020 after the first Berlin Conference, with the primary mission to enforce the UN arms embargo to Libya due to the second Libyan civil war.

Since then, it has investigated more than 7,298 ships, conducted almost 385 visits (so-called Friendly Approaches) onboard merchant vessels and 24 inspections.

Furthermore, the Operation has investigated 1,010 suspect flights and provided 40 special reports to the UN Panel of Experts on Libya, most of which referred to violations or possible violations of the arms embargo and oil smuggling activities in the West and in the East of the Country.

It also issued, through the embedded Crime Information Cell, to the relevant Law Enforcement agencies 69 recommendations for inspection of suspect vessels in EU member states’ ports, 54 of which were conducted.

It further inspected 24 suspect vessels, two of which were diverted to a port of an EU member state where their cargo was seized.

It announced in its September report that it monitored 38 suspect flights and continued to monitor 25 airports (and landing strips) and 16 ports (and oil terminals).

It also investigated 156 merchant vessels via radio calls and carried out 18 visits on ships with Masters’ consent.

The report indicated that Türkiye denied consent to board and inspect suspect vessels on eight occasions.

In July, the Turkish ship, MV Parpali, bound for the Libyan port of Misrata, denied request for inspection by Operation IRINI.

Ankara considers the operation “biased.”

Thousands of Turkish forces have been sent to Libya to fight along dozens of mercenaries from armed factions loyal to Türkiye.

This comes in line with the memorandum of understanding on security and military cooperation signed in November 2019 between Türkiye and the Government of National Accord (GNA) then headed by Fayez al-Sarraj.

There are currently about 7,000 mercenaries from armed factions loyal to Türkiye in Libya despite international demands to withdraw all foreign forces.

Türkiye considers its military presence in Libya “legal.”

Ankara says its presence in Libya is aimed at helping the country establish a unified army that brings together all the forces from the east and west under one umbrella.

The Turkish parliament approved in June to extend the armed forces' mandate in Libya for another 18 months from July 2, at the request of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

A ship that belongs to the European Union Naval Force Mediterranean Operation IRINI to oversee an arms embargo on Libya. (AFP)

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Arab World

As Flooding Becomes a Yearly Disaster in South Sudan, Thousands Survive on the Edge of a Canal

Children ride in a small canoe around the area where they live in Jonglei state, South Sudan. (Photo: AP)
Children ride in a small canoe around the area where they live in Jonglei state, South Sudan. (Photo: AP)
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As Flooding Becomes a Yearly Disaster in South Sudan, Thousands Survive on the Edge of a Canal

Children ride in a small canoe around the area where they live in Jonglei state, South Sudan. (Photo: AP)
Children ride in a small canoe around the area where they live in Jonglei state, South Sudan. (Photo: AP)

Long-horned cattle wade through flooded lands and climb a slope along a canal that has become a refuge for displaced families in South Sudan. Smoke from burning dung rises near homes of mud and grass where thousands of people now live after floods swept away their village.
“Too much suffering,” said Bichiok Hoth Chuiny, a woman in her 70s. She supported herself with a stick as she walked in the newly established community of Pajiek in Jonglei state north of the capital, Juba, The Associated Press said.
For the first time in decades, the flooding had forced her to flee. Her efforts to protect her home by building dykes failed. Her former village of Gorwai is now a swamp.
“I had to be dragged in a canoe up to here,” Chuiny said. An AP journalist was the first to visit the community.
Such flooding is becoming a yearly disaster in South Sudan, which the World Bank has described as “the world’s most vulnerable country to climate change and also the one most lacking in coping capacity."
More than 379,000 people have been displaced by flooding this year, according to the UN humanitarian agency.
Seasonal flooding has long been part of the lifestyle of pastoral communities around the Sudd, the largest wetlands in Africa, in the Nile River floodplain. But since the 1960s the swamp has kept growing, submerging villages, ruining farmland and killing livestock.
“The Dinka, Nuer and Murle communities of Jonglei are losing the ability to keep cattle and do farming in that region the way they used to,” said Daniel Akech Thiong, a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group.
South Sudan is poorly equipped to adjust. Independent since 2011, the country plunged into civil war in 2013. Despite a peace deal in 2018, the government has failed to address numerous crises. Some 2.4 million people remain internally displaced by conflict and flooding.
The latest overflowing of the Nile has been blamed on factors including the opening of dams upstream in Uganda after Lake Victoria rose to its highest levels in five years.
The century-old Jonglei Canal, which was never completed, has become a refuge for many.
“We don’t know up to where this flooding would have pushed us if the canal was not there,” said Peter Kuach Gatchang, the paramount chief of Pajiek. He was already raising a small garden of pumpkins and eggplants in his new home.
The 340-kilometer (211-mile) Jonglei Canal was first imagined in the early 1900s by Anglo-Egyptian colonial authorities to increase the Nile’s outflow towards Egypt in the north. But its development was interrupted by the long fight of southern Sudanese against the Sudanese regime in Khartoum that eventually led to the creation of a separate country.
Gatchang said the new community in Pajiek is neglected: "We have no school and no clinic here, and if you stay for a few days, you will see us carrying our patients on stretchers up to Ayod town.”
Ayod, the county headquarters, is reached by a six-hour walk through the waist-high water.
Pajiek also has no mobile network and no government presence. The area is under the control of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-in-Opposition, founded by President Salva Kiir’s rival turned Vice President Riek Machar.
Villagers rely on aid. On a recent day, hundreds of women lined up in a nearby field to receive some from the World Food Program.
Nyabuot Reat Kuor walked home with a 50-kilogram (110-pound) bag of sorghum balanced on her head.
“This flooding has destroyed our farm, killed our livestock and displaced us for good," the mother of eight said. “Our old village of Gorwai has become a river.”
When food assistance runs out, she said, they will survive on wild leaves and water lilies from the swamp. Already in recent years, food aid rations have been cut in half as international funding for such crises drops.
More than 69,000 people who have migrated to the Jonglei Canal in Ayod county are registered for food assistance, according to WFP.
“There are no passable roads at this time of the year, and the canal is too low to support boats carrying a lot of food,” said John Kimemia, a WFP airdrop coordinator.
In the neighboring Paguong village that is surrounded by flooded lands, the health center has few supplies. Medics haven’t been paid since June due to an economic crisis that has seen civil servants nationwide go unpaid for more than a year.
South Sudan’s economic woes have deepened with the disruption of oil exports after a major pipeline was damaged in Sudan during that country's ongoing civil war.
“The last time we got drugs was in September. We mobilized the women to carry them on foot from Ayod town,” said Juong Dok Tut, a clinical officer.
Patients, mostly women and children, sat on the ground as they waited to see the doctor. Panic rippled through the group when a thin green snake passed among them. It wasn't poisonous, but many others in the area are. People who venture into the water to fish or collect water lilies are at risk.
Four life-threatening snake bites cases occurred in October, Tut said. “We managed these cases with the antivenom treatments we had, but now they’re over, so we don’t know what to do if it happens again.”