bout de papier, Vol. 30, No. 2 (2017), pp. 24–26
Shortly after we crossed into Tunisia during the evacuation of the Canadian Embassy to Libya,
a few members of our protection team decided to exchange some cash at the gaggle of moneychangers gathered by the side of the road. There was no real reason to bother — the team was flying out the next day — but there was something symbolic about ridding
Less than twelve hours later, the members of OP LOBE boarded a charter bus to the airport, clean-shaven and dressed in civilian clothes. With their “combat beards” gone, the guys looked like freshly shorn sheep, younger and far less intimidating than the group of close protection operators who had spirited us to safety the day before.
Our cross-border evacuation was the culmination of one hundred and twenty hours of frenetic work shutting down our embassy in Tripoli. The short notice was a stark reflection of just how quickly the situation in the country had gone from bad to untenable. We received the order to evacuate at 01:30 local on 24 July, 2014. We were given five days to plan and implement the evacuation.
The Canadian embassy in Tripoli had a notional complement of six Canada Based Staff (CBS), but at the time of the evacuation, only four were in-country. Ten months after the departure of Ambassador Michael Grant, we were still without a permanent replacement. The team was down to me as Senior Trade Commissioner, our Security Program Manager (SPM) Hanna Guenoun, Management & Consular Officer Steve Tremblay, and Military Police Security Services (MPSS) Detachment Commander Sergeant Steven Boyd. Protecting us was OP LOBE, a group of Canadian Armed Forces members assigned to provide diplomatic armed escort (DAE) support for TRPLI CBS after the revolution.
Daily life in Tripoli revolved around a grand total of four places: the Palm City Residences where all CBS and DAE quarters were located, the chancery in Tripoli Towers, the “Glass Souk” which had the most accessible grocery store in the city, and the shawarma shop close to home. For the first eight months of my time in Libya, there was some flexibility to attend evening functions with pre-approval from the task force commander. Even this limited freedom disappeared as the situation worsened. Eventually, all discretionary movement was curtailed, severely impacting our quality of life.
Palm City was no Kabul: there were generally fewer direct threats, but there were also fewer security measures between us and the fighting. Gunfire provided the soundtrack to our evenings, the lower percussion of anti-aircraft guns playing against the crack of AK-47 fire well into the night.
Nothing about our routine in Tripoli was simple. All movement outside Palm City or the Tripoli Towers was done with a protection team. Even at the grocery store we were required to have a DAE member with us at all times, never out of sight. Night moves were done in convoy, so attending receptions required a four-person team to work late. On the few occasions we were able to attend events at the UN compound, we never stayed too long. There was always the understanding that our team was waiting outside for us.
After my arrival in Tripoli on 12 July 2013, I didn’t have to wait long for things to get interesting. On 23 July, the CBC reported that a car bomb had exploded near the Canadian embassy. The report was inaccurate, but the reality wasn’t much comfort. The explosion was actually an attempt to fire a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) from an improvised launch tube. The attack targeted a major hotel close to the embassy. When the rocket fired, the car in which it was placed was thrown sideways, causing the rocket to hit a nearby apartment building, and leaving behind a burning wreck. The rocket hit a balcony, causing damage but thankfully no injuries.
The diplomatic community in Tripoli found itself specifically targeted at times. In January 2014, forces from the Libya Revolutionaries Operations Room kidnapped five Egyptian diplomats, causing concern among international staff. This wasn’t the last time diplomats were targeted: a South Korean trade official was also taken in January, and in April, Jordan’s ambassador to Libya and a Tunisian diplomat were kidnapped in separate incidents. All were released unharmed.
There were also attacks on diplomatic properties around the city. Two weeks after my arrival, unknown gunmen fired an RPG at the UAE mission. In October 2013, an armed mob stormed the Russian embassy, damaging property and tearing down the Russian flag. No diplomats were hurt in these attacks, but in the shadow of Benghazi, it was unnerving.
These events were symptomatic of greater problems facing the country. The descent into civil war had started out slowly, with news of a retired general, Khalifa Haftar, organising troops in the east. Nobody seemed to believe that he was a credible threat, but in the aftermath of the contentious 2014 elections, there was a vacuum to be filled. While the situation was never stable during my posting in Libya, the mobilisation of troops and the launch of “Operation Dignity” against the General National Congress and Islamist militias in May 2014 marked the beginning of a period of escalating conflict in the country.
I did not escape the security situation even when I was on leave outside of Libya. On my way to London Heathrow to fly back to Tripoli after a reunification with my wife, I got a call from our SPM. A militia had attacked the airport, blowing a hole in the main runway. Unsurprisingly, Lufthansa had suspended flights to Libya indefinitely. The kind British lady at the service desk managed to get me rebooked onto a Libyan Airlines flight, but not without asking if I wouldn’t rather stay in London. I flew back the next morning. I had work to do.
On 5 July 2014, sustained fighting broke out between rival militias occupying the area around Palm City. This led to a temporary closure of the Embassy, and the implementation of a heightened security posture, with strict limitations on CBS movements. Four days later the UN Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) evacuated half of its staff. There was no plan to close the Embassy at that point — operations were still sustainable.
When I became a trade commissioner in 2006, I never expected to go on posting anywhere like Libya — my interests lay in Asia. Prior to joining the department, I attended the Royal Military College of Canada, ending up as a Logistics Officer in the Air Force. I left the military in 2004, but the attraction to work in challenging environments never went away. Libya filled that void for me.
The experiences that come with operating in a conflict zone can be surreal: being whisked away from a function because the protection team thought we might be under surveillance; having a truck-mounted antiaircraft gun track our armoured vehicle (AV) around a traffic circle; arriving back in our neighborhood to find a poster of a man who had been tortured to death for resisting a carjacking; and listening to artillery booming across Tripoli while playing cards with Americans who were
Ryan Ward with Protection Team
not officially in Libya. This is not what I thought I was getting myself into, but I wouldn’t have traded it for anything.
By mid-July 2014, clashes around Tripoli International Airport intensified to the point that the airport was closed to all air traffic, taking away our best option for getting out of Libya. The fighting caused significant damage to the airport control tower, destroyed a number of aircraft, and rendered the runways unusable. The Brega fuel depot nearby was repeatedly hit by rockets and mortars, causing its storage tanks to catch fire. They burned for more than a week, lighting up the sky at Palm A month before we departed, I stayed home to supervise a contractor installing blast film on my apartment’s floor to ceiling windows. Everything went well, and the contractor left on time. A half hour later I was on Skype with my wife when there was an explosion outside my apartment. I told my wife I would call her back, and got in touch with the security team. As far as we could tell, a militia had launched a rocket from the area of the airport. It passed just over my roof, landing a hundred metres away in the Mediterranean. That was the closest call I had in Libya. After we had left Tripoli, a similar rocket struck one of the apartment buildings on the compound. There were no casualties, but
it drove home the fact that we were right to get out when we did.
Canada was one of the last countries to close its embassy and evacuate from Libya. The British pulled a number of their military staff the day before our departure, using the same land route we were planning to take. News soon came in that they had been attacked. Gunmen had tried to carjack the armoured vehicles, brandishing AK-47s and firing on the convoy. Thankfully, the protection worked as intended, and there were no casualties. When we passed through that area, known as Camp 22, we were escorted by a contingent from the local militia, including
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three Toyota pickups with mounted antiaircraft guns and two SUVs carrying militiamen. For some reason, nobody bothered us.
Throughout the lead-up to the evacuation, we had been holding regular videoconferences with headquarters. By the final day of the shutdown, power had been lost for half of the chancery. The videoconference system was working, but the lights and air-conditioning were not. We sat in the dark, sweating in the forty degree heat, flashlights illuminating our faces. We briefed management on progress and final planning while the sound of artillery echoed outside the chancery. Throughout the process of closing the mission, the Director General in charge, Mark Gwozdecky, was the calm voice on the other end of the video link, keeping us on track and ensuring we were supported.
TRPLI closed and sealed its doors 18:00 EET on Monday, 28 July 2014. All milestones in the shutdown plan were achieved.
The night before our departure, a group of local friends invited some of us to dinner to celebrate Eid-al-Fitr, marking the end of Ramadan. They were planning a bigger party the next night, and wanted to make sure we would be there. To protect the security of our evacuation plans, we had to lie to them, promising that we would come.
In the days following our departure, the friends and locally engaged staff we left behind were never far from our thoughts. We stayed in touch and helped when we could. After the evacuation, my trade commissioner assistant was hired on in Tunis to provide ongoing support to the remaining TPRLI CBS on site. He’s still with the department, and is now working as a Trade Commissioner in DOHA.
At 06:45 on 29 July 2014, TRPLI’s four remaining CBS, accompanied by my Libyan cat and escorted by OP LOBE, departed Palm City in convoy. Our drive out brought its own excitement. En route to the border, one of the vehicles in our convoy was involved in an accident, rear-ending a local vehicle. The driver of the other vehicle got out, obviously upset at the damage. We came to a stop facing the scene, and watched as our interpreter went to speak with the other driver.
The driver was angry, yelling and flailing his hands. After a few minutes of trying to talk the driver down, the interpreter gave up. He returned to his AV. Seeing this, the driver ran towards the AV, grabbed a stick off the ground, struck the AV, then moved to the AV’s still-open door, hauling the interpreter out by his shirt collar.
At this point, one of TRPLI’s LES, who had been at the front of the convoy and had not seen the accident, arrived back on the scene. He talked to the driver and managed to de-escalate the situation. Throughout the confrontation, one of the other passengers in the vehicle had been on the phone. We had no way of knowing ifhe was calling for a tow truck or rounding up a local militia to get involved. In the end, we got back on the road, a bit late but no worse for wear.
We arrived at the border three hours after leaving Palm City. Following an uneventful (if tense) crossing, the convoy proceeded to Tunis. Our vehicles entered the TUNIS chancery at 20:15; the total transit had taken thirteen and a half hours.
We rolled in to a warm welcome from the TUNIS team, who had been providing dedicated support throughout the evacuation. The next morning, we bid farewell to our colleagues from OP LOBE, who flew out on a Canadian Air Force CC-130J.
Thanks to the unfailing support of OP LOBE, and some measure of luck, the shutdown and evacuation took place without major incident. That said, it did have a lingering impact.
The last few nights in Tripoli, when the gunfire and shelling around our compound were particularly bad, I didn’t feel safe sleeping in my bedroom, with its large outward-facing windows. My cat and I slept on a bed made of couch cushions in the hallway, listening to the sounds of intense fighting late into the night.
It was the memories of indiscriminate shelling that led to the one real negative reaction I had after my return to Ottawa. I was walking with my wife in Stanley Park and the guns at Parliament Hill began firing an artillery salute. I didn’t feel safe until I got home.
After the evacuation, I was sent on the “Decompression & Reintegration” course offered to CBS coming out of posts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq, as well as Libya. We were asked to describe our progress through the stages of culture shock. For me, the excitement of the posting had balanced out the challenges of being away from my wife and working in an unstable environment. The most difficult time for me was not during the fighting or the violence. It came when we were told that TRPLI was not going to reopen. The feeling of leaving a job unfinished was hard to accept.
In retrospect, my posting in Libya turned out nothing like I had expected, but it was the most rewarding and intense experience of my career so far. I was honoured to work with a great team in TRPLI, and with the men and women of OP LOBE, whose professionalism and dedication kept us all safe, and got us out unharmed. For that, PII always be grateful.
Ryan Ward is currently posted in Nairobi, Kenya, as Regional Senior Trade Commissioner for Eastern Africa. He was in Libya from 12 July 2013 until the evacuation of the embassy on 29 July 2014.
Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 30, No. 2 (2017), pp. 24–26. Read the rest of this issue →
