Al-Watiya was a product of the Gaddafi years, when Libya bought combat aircraft by the hundred from France and the Soviet Union and needed somewhere to keep them safe. English Wikipedia describes a base of 43 hardened aircraft shelters and two parallel asphalt runways, each 3,200 metres long, at an elevation of about 77 metres. The sources checked do not say when it was built or by whom; that is left open here rather than guessed.

Its alternative name, Okba (Uqba) ibn Nafi, honours the Arab general who carried Islam across North Africa in the seventh century. The name causes confusion: after the Americans left Wheelus Air Base in Tripoli in 1970, the Libyan Arab Republic Air Force renamed that base Okba Ben Nafi too, and it is today Mitiga airport. Reports that mention "Okba ibn Nafi" therefore need reading in context.

When the uprising of February 2011 turned into war and NATO enforced the no-fly zone of UN resolution 1973, Al-Watiya “escaped total destruction”, in English Wikipedia’s phrase. Strikes hit several munition depots and three shelters, eliminating the last operational Mirage F1BD trainer and two Su-22M3 bombers. The rest of what sat inside the shelters — Su-22s, Mi-25 helicopters and, by one count, up to 21 Mirage F1EDs — had already been withdrawn from service.

On 9 August 2014, as Libya split between the Operation Dignity coalition in the east and the Libya Dawn alliance in Tripoli, pro-LNA forces captured Al-Watiya. English Wikipedia lists what they found: 10 to 12 decommissioned Su-22s, several Mi-25 attack helicopters and possibly up to 21 retired Mirage F1EDs. Losing that store, it argues, cost the Tripoli-aligned air arm its main source of spare parts.

The new owners set about making some of the hulks fly again. The French aviation historian Arnaud Delalande reported on the AeroHisto blog on 3 December 2015 that a Mirage F1AD, serial 402, had been rebuilt at Al-Watiya by cannibalising other airframes, and that a two-seat Su-22UM3K had also been returned to service; he counted ten to twelve Su-22Ms that had survived NATO in the shelters. His account rests on photographs, not official statements, and is attributed to him here.

When Haftar launched his offensive on Tripoli on 4 April 2019, Al-Watiya was the LNA’s nearest jet base to the capital. On 8 April, Anadolu Agency reported, aircraft of the UN-recognised Government of National Accord struck the base; the same day Haftar’s aircraft bombed the runway at Mitiga, and Al Jazeera reported passengers being evacuated. English Wikipedia says the LNA jets that hit Mitiga were MiG-21s flying from Al-Watiya. GNA claims of June 2019 to have destroyed an Su-22 on the runway there were, Wikipedia notes, never independently confirmed.

By the spring of 2020 Turkish drones and air defences had changed the balance over western Libya. Tripoli’s forces besieged Al-Watiya in mid-April; an LNA counter-attack, English Wikipedia records, took the town of Al-Aqrabiya just north of the base. On 5 May the GNA opened a new offensive as part of its Operation Peace Storm, and its military spokesman, named by Anadolu Agency as Muhammed Kununu, said 24 air operations had been flown against the base since the previous morning, destroying Grad launchers and ammunition vehicles. The LNA’s figures for its own losses were not published.

On 18 May 2020 the GNA announced that it had taken the base. Mustafa al-Majaei, spokesman of its Volcano of Rage operation, told the Libyan Express that Haftar’s forces had “escaped from Al-Watiya airbase this morning”; Al Jazeera’s correspondent called it the LNA’s last stronghold in western Libya and said it would shift the balance of power. Among the equipment left behind was a Russian-made Pantsir-S1 air-defence system, which the Libyan Express, citing GNA sources, said the UAE had supplied to the LNA.

That Pantsir had an afterlife. In January 2021 The Times reported, and The War Zone relayed, that a US Air Force C-17 had collected it from Zuwara airport in June 2020 and flown it to Ramstein in Germany for examination. A Russian official was quoted as saying Moscow knew of the removal but that the system had limited intelligence value. Neither the UAE nor the LNA confirmed the supply.

Within weeks Turkey moved air-defence equipment into Al-Watiya. Al Arabiya, citing a Turkish source, reported in July 2020 that Ankara was negotiating with the GNA to set up two military bases in Libya, Al-Watiya among them; the Turkish defence minister, Hulusi Akar, was in Tripoli on 3 and 4 July.

That night unidentified aircraft bombed the base. Middle East Eye reported that MIM-23 Hawk missile systems had been hit and quoted a Turkish official: “whoever did this made a big mistake. There will be retribution.” A second Turkish official told the site the jets were probably Emirati Mirages, and Libyan sources close to the GNA suggested they had flown from an Egyptian base. An LNA military source told Al Arabiya the strikes were carried out by “unknown aircraft”; a Turkish military source confirmed material losses but gave no casualty figures, and Middle East Eye was told there were no human casualties.

English Wikipedia adds that a KORAL electronic-warfare system was destroyed and that Turkey withdrew a substantial part of its garrison afterwards, the latter reported by LNA officials and local sources to Al Arabiya. No government has claimed the raid. The United Arab Emirates did not confirm involvement in the sources checked, and the attribution remains Turkish and GNA-side suspicion, reported as such.