A Close-Up of Commander Isa Abd al-Majid Mansur of the Tubu Front for the Salvation of Libya

A Close-Up of Commander Isa Abd al-Majid Mansur of the Tubu Front for the Salvation of Libya

Isa Abd al-Majid Mansur is the leader of the southern Libyan ethnic political and militant movement the Tubu Front for the Salvation of Libya (TFSL). He is in his early-40s and is a native of the Libyan oasis town of Kufra in the southeastern Cyrenaica region. The TFSL, one of the most powerful ethnic Tubu movements in the country, is believed to have several hundred fighters in its military wing and is strongest in and around Kufra, which it seized from forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi during the 2011 Libyan Civil War (ash-Sharq al-Awsat [London], February 21, 2011; Terrorism Monitor Brief, May 5, 2011; Terrorism Monitor February 23, 2012). Mansur, as the commander of the TFSL, is one of the most important Tubu leaders in Libya and he holds de facto authority to police the active trans-Sahara smuggling routes utilized by international criminal and jihadist networks that extend through southern Libya’s desert regions that border Niger and Algeria in the west and run along the border of Chad to Sudan in the east (Libyan Herald [Tripoli], January 13; Terrorism Monitor, January 25).

He founded the TFSL in Kufra in 2007 as an ethnic Tubu opposition movement seeking the restoration of the community’s civil rights, including Libyan citizenship, access to social services such as education and healthcare and better employment opportunities. He fled into exile in Paris in the same year, under pressure from the Gaddafi government (Jeune Afrique [Paris], May 16, 2012). Soon after founding the TFSL, Mansur allegedly stated on the Lebanese Hezbollah-run al-Manar television channel that the TFSL was going to target foreign oil company employees working in southern Libya. His opponents also asserted that he had connections with two Tubu militant movements based in neighboring countries: the Revolutionary Armed Movement of the Sahara (FARS) in Niger and the Movement for Democracy and Justice (MDJT) in Chad (Agadez-Niger, October 1, 2007). 

The Gaddafi government, in response to the formation of TFSL, engaged in a low-intensity conflict with the TFSL in and around Kufra, while promising to improve public education and employment for the Tubu community in the area (World Tribune, December 9, 2007). At a subsequent meeting staged by the Libyan government, Tubu leaders in the Kufra region issued strong statements of loyalty for Gaddafi and denounced Mansur as an irresponsible, corrupt and foreign propagandist (Jamahiriya News Agency [Tripoli], November 20, 2008). 

While in exile in Oslo, Mansur remained a committed opponent of the Gaddafi government and a strident advocate for his community’s civil rights who was willing to frequently call for international intervention in southern Libya on behalf of the Tubu. He compared the Tubu people’s plight in Libya to that of the Darfur tribes in Sudan, called for the Arab League to intervene in Libya in order to prevent the development of an international issue in the region and threatened that the Tubus would wage a guerilla war against Libyan and foreign commercial interests in southern Libya if these demands were not met (ash-Sharq al-Awsat [London], July 28, 2008). Mansur also authored an open letter to U.S. President Barack Obama asking for the United States to pressure the Gaddafi government to restore the Tubu community’s rights to citizenship, education, work and property and, to grant them the freedom of movement that they once enjoyed (Toubou Front for the Salvation of Libya [Oslo], June 5, 2009). Mansur returned to Kufra through Egypt in 2011 shortly after the start of the Libyan civil war (Jeune Afrique [Paris], May 16, 2012). 

The TFSL was one of the first movements to revolt against the government of Muammar Gaddafi and was an early participant in the revolutionary National Transition Council (NTC). During the Libyan civil war, Mansur stated that the TFSL was an ally of the revolutionary forces against Gadaffi and sought to work with other Libyan rebels to build a democratic, pluralistic country that protected the rights of its people, including the Tubu (Free Libya Channel, April 28, 2011). He also asserted to international media that the TFSL was the only revolutionary movement operating in southern Libya, that it held a secular, non-Islamist ideology and was championing for the empowerment of all communities in the country (TV5MONDE [Paris], February 22, 2011). The NTC designated the task of patrolling Libya’s southern border to the TFSL during the civil war (al-Jazeera [Doha], December 3, 2012). 

Mansur gained a degree of notoriety throughout the Middle East during the Libyan Civil War for alleging that the Lebanese Shi’ite religious and political leader Sayyid Musa al-Sadr, who disappeared in Libya in 1977 while a guest of Muammar Gaddafi, was still alive. He stated that Sadr, whose disappearance is one of the great, unsolved mysteries of modern Middle Eastern history, was being held in a Libyan government prison in the southwestern city of Sabha (Ruhama, February 22, 2011). He had made a similar, but generally underreported, claim in 2008 while in exile in Oslo. He had stated at that time that the TFSL had presented a memorandum to the Gaddafi government seeking the release of Sayyid Musa (al-Arabiyya [Dubai], February 16, 2008).  

Since the defeat of Gaddafi, Mansur has had a tumultuous relationship with the new Libyan government. Following the ethnic conflict between Tubu and Arab Zuwaya tribesmen in February 2012 that killed over 100 people, left hundreds more wounded and resulted in the deployment of NTC-commanded fighters in Kufra, he accused the NTC of supporting the Zuwaya, of acting in the same manner toward the Tubu as Muammar Gaddafi had done and of executing an active policy to ethnically cleanse the Tubu. He announced the “reactivation” of the TFSL, called for international military intervention by the European Union and United Nations in Libya and threatened to seek a separate Tubu state in the south of the country if attacks by Arab tribesmen against the Tubu persisted (Agence France Presse, March 27, 2012; Terrorism Monitor, February 23, 2012). The NTC subsequently issued an arrest warrant against Mansur, alleging that he had instigated Tubu tribesmen to attack the Zuwaya; it did not act on the warrant (Libyan News Agency [Tripoli], April 24, 2012).   

The acrimony between the NTC and Mansur continued when the Libyan government charged that Chadian Tubu fighters had entered Libya on Mansur’s invitation to support the TFSL against NTC commanded “Libyan Shield” forces that were trying to assert government authority over Kufra (Libya Herald [Tripoli], June 16, 2012). Libyan Shield fighters, nominally acting as peacekeepers between the Tubu and Zuwaya communities, alleged that Chadian Tubu fighters had armed the TFSL fighters (The New Age [Parktown], May 22, 2012). Subsequent fighting between the Zuwaya, Tubu and NTC forces resulted in the death of 47 people and wounded hundreds. The TFSL alleged that fighters had been sent by the Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir to encircle and defeat the Tubu fighters (Liberation [Paris], July 1, 2012). In response to these events, Mansur threatened to organize a boycott of the July 7, 2012 Libyan parliamentary elections if the NTC did not withdraw its military forces from Kufra; a threat he did not carry out (Associated Press, July 1, 2012). Mansur accused the Libyan government of continuing Gaddafi-era policies of refusing to share oil revenue with the Tubu (al-Assema TV [Tripoli], November 29, 2012). 

Currently, Mansur is attempting to position the TFSL as an essential partner for regional and Western security services against international jihadist organizations utilizing trans-Sahara smuggling routes. He has stated that the TFSL is concerned with securing oil fields, rare-earth mineral mines and the Gaddadi-era water project, which provides water from large southern Libyan aquifers to feed the demand of the northern, more heavily populated region of the country (Inter-Press Service, October 11, 2012). Mansur has also asserted to international media outlets that the Tubu would be a valuable ally for the Libyan government, the European Union and the United States military’s African Command (AFRICOM) in their efforts to combat militant jihadist organizations such as AQIM. Mansur has also claimed that the Tubu of southern Libya are actively seeking to prevent the smuggling of weapons and supplies to militant jihadist groups through the Sahara (al-Jazeera [Doha], December 3, 2012). As a result of the strategic position of the Tubu in the Sahara, the dissatisfaction of the Tubu community generally with the Libyan government, the willingness of the TFSL to engage in armed conflict with local and trans-national antagonists and Isa Abd al-Majid Mansur’s frequent calls for the TSFL’s cooperation with foreign militaries against al-Qaeda, Mansur is increasingly becoming one of the most important leaders of post-revolutionary Libya and the wider Sahara region.