Losing Libya’s Revolution
Bayonet Brant's previous post refers to a war game 'Game Over', after reading the linked NYRB article earlier today the situation is more like 'Game is not Over':http://www.nybooks.com/articles/arch...o_Tz2i.twitter
Some classic passages, sometimes with Islam at the centre, others are legacy issues. Here is one:
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Benghazi, a city that farms out refuse collection to Bangladeshi and Sudanese migrant workers, still has five thousand Libyan garbage collectors on payroll. When an overconscientious official tried to stop paying them, hundreds stormed the municipality and chased out the councillors.
U.S. Raids in Libya and Somalia Strike Terror Targets
U.S. Raids in Libya and Somalia Strike Terror Targets
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Tripoli protest: brings out HMGs
Sadly the crazies, a Misrata militia this time, reacted badly to an un-armed protest calling for them to leave the city, amidst the weapons a "technical" with a heavy machine gun - which is shown firing at the crowds.
Photo:https://twitter.com/Morning_LY/statu...129537/photo/1 The photographer's FB has more:https://www.facebook.com/ejjawkolla
Some of the protestors went home and came back:
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Demonstrators, some of which had been carrying white flags, fled but then returned, heavily armed, to attack the compound, where the militiamen remained holed up until early morning as fighting continued. Rocket-propelled grenades could be heard.
Link to news report:http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2...n-tripoli?lite
Libya has dropped out of view of late, although I am sure SWC readers known it is unstable.
Making sense of Libya: cheering Humvees
An IISS Strategic Comment which IMHO describes the chaos that is the new or is it the old Libya:http://www.iiss.org/en/publications/...-militias-d401
Here is an illustration:
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The withdrawal of Misratan units was followed by that of other non-Tripoli militias, their place taken by the army's 151 and 166 brigades, newly trained and deploying with American equipment including tan-coloured humvees. Crowds cheered their arrival on the streets, though others remembered that the Misratans themselves had been cheered when they liberated the city two years before.
Libya’s Fractious South and Regional Instability
I noted some reporting via Twitter on the infighting in Southern Libya, but did not look further. Today this linked paper appeared and it opens with:
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A multitude of armed groups and smuggling networks with transnational reach are driving southern Libya’s integration into the Sahel–Sahara region. Contrary to widespread external perceptions, the extremist presence remains a marginal phenomenon in the southwest (Fezzan), at least in relation to the political struggles. Rivalries over the control of borders, smuggling routes, oilfields, and cities, as well as conflicts regarding the citizenship status of entire communities, are of far greater significance. These conflicts are centred on southern Libya, but have a regional dimension because of the transnational links of the parties involved.
Link:http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/sana/...ispatch-3.html
There is a section on the Tuareg's too. Yet more to read.
Making sense of chaos and a little oil
A little more reporting. AJ's headline 'Libyan parliament sacks PM after tanker escapes rebel-held port', although the story is based on Reuters, which starts:
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Libya's parliament voted Prime Minister Ali Zeidan out of office on Tuesday after rebels humiliated the government by loading crude on a tanker that fled from naval forces, officials said, in a sign of the worsening chaos in the OPEC member state.
Libyan gunboats later chased the tanker along Libya's eastern Mediterranean coast and opened fire, damaging it, a military spokesman said. Italian naval ships were helping move the tanker to a Libyan government-controlled port, he said. But Italy denied any of its vessels were in the area at the time and the reported firing incident could not be confirmed.
Link:http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/...A2A0R820140311
With a backgrounder on the bubbling along civil strife in Libya:http://www.theguardian.com/commentis...rea?CMP=twt_gu
Southern Libya (Fezzan): backgrounder
This hitherto remote region, known as Fezzan, has become a "hot spot" with rival militias, militants, arms smuggling and oilfields. An excellent backgrounder, using open sources and field interviews comes from the Swiss-based Small Arms Survey:http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/filea...uous-South.pdf
They conclude:
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Southern Libya is set to remain a source of regional instability for the foreseeable future, and is also likely to become a growing concern for the emerging Libyan state.
How this squares with the clear issues of control = where most Libyans live, along the coast - is not clear. The report had noted, just before this sentence:
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...the Libyan government appears preoccupied with developments in the country’s northwest and east.
I was fascinated by this paragraph:
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Most Tuareg soldiers of Sahelian origin stayed in southern Libya. Defectors from the Maghawir Brigade set up the first ‘revolutionary’ Tuareg armed group after Tripoli’s fall: the Ténére Brigade. The Brigade’s entry into Ubari in September 2011 was considered the town’s ‘liberation’, and the group emerged as one of the two largest units in the town. The largest was the Maghawir Brigade—renamed the Tendé Brigade—which kept its structure and its status as an official unit of the Libyan Army. According to the Tendé Brigade’s commander, the vast majority of Maghawir soldiers who escaped to Mali in 2011 have since returned to the unit. The commander cited several reasons for their return: their families had stayed in Libya, the political situation in Mali (where the MNLA was overtaken by extremist groups), and the dissipation of the threat of retaliation against Sahelian Tuareg.
If there is one takeaway it is that business is good, even if shared.
aking sense of chaos and a little oil: a film clip
Watch and draw your own conclusions - what did NATO do? Link to a short film clip and the English language used:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxB4...T6N1Z_Lk8ztP_Q
Cleaning up Benghazi; stalled or failed?
That little 'small war' which rarely gets MSM reporting, so a welcome update and hat tip to WoTR:http://warontherocks.com/2014/07/lib...mist-campaign/
Libya and the robbers: bankers and militias
A fascinating article 'How Libya Blew Billions and Its Best Chance at Democracy' that reveals that Libya's riches have been stolen on a huge scale amidst the chaos of militias vying for control:http://www.businessweek.com/articles...ational-wealth
A taster:
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Of the nine companies to which the LIA entrusted its $70 billion bankroll, almost all appear to have lost incredible amounts of money while charging sky-high fees. According to an audit conducted by KPMG, Socit Gnrale managed to lose more than half of a $1.8 billion investment, while charging the Libyans tens of millions for its financial expertise. London-based investment management firm Permal Group, which received $300 million from LIA, lost 40 percent of it while earning $27 million in fees. BNP Paribas (
BNP:FP) lost 23 percent: High fees have been directly responsible for the poor results, the auditor noted. Credit Suisse (
CS) lost 29 percent of the funds that it managed. Millennium Global Investments, based in London, apparently lost all of a $100 million investment in its emerging credit fund, while a $300 million investment in Lehman Brothers vanished from the books after Lehman collapsed in 2008.
Politics by Other Means: Conflicting Interests in Libya’s Security Sector
Small Arms Survey, 30 October 2014: Politics by Other Means: Conflicting Interests in Libya’s Security Sector
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....a new Working Paper from the Small Arms Survey’s Security Assessment in North Africa project, examines the rise and fall of hybrid security sector institutions in Libya, and the political interests at stake in security sector reform. It charts the evolution of the post-Qaddafi Libyan army, the SSC (the transitional government’s attempt to co-opt revolutionary fighters), and the LSF (the revolutionary fighters’ attempt to exert control on the transitional government), as well as their interaction with the transitional authorities.
Published earlier this month by NOREF, Stealing the Revolution: Violence and Predation in Libya, is an excellent - and brief - backgrounder on the fragmentation addressed in greater detail in the SAS paper.
A severely splintered and massively over-armed country
A short BBC News commentary, that rightly ends with:
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His legacy is awful to behold. The Gaddafi disease was terrible. The cure has not been found.
Link:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-30093893
Almost like Zimbabwe, even in Mugabe and cronies remain in power. I fear the West, if not many others will "wash their hands" of Libya and it will implode, like the Lebanon did. Who stopped that civil war, enforcing stability for a long time? Syria under Assad Senior, not to overlook Israel's contribution or others.
Libya 2015: Another front where victory was declared too soon.
Planes taking off from airfields in Libya and bombing Greek tankers sounds like a rerun of 1941.
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CAIRO (AP) — Fighter jets dispatched by Libya's internationally recognized government bombed a Greek-owned tanker ship at an eastern city controlled by Islamist extremists Monday, killing two crew members and wounding two, Libyan and Greek officials said.
The bombing highlights the chaos that's gripped Libya since its 2011 civil war that deposed and killed dictator Moammar Gadahfi. Libyan officials apologized for the bombing as the Greek Foreign Ministry demanded compensation for the victims' families and punishment for those behind the attack.
Libyan military spokesman Ahmed al-Mesmari said jets struck the Liberian-flagged Araevo twice in Darna before his government learned the vessel was commissioned by the local power station. Darna is a base for Islamic extremists who have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group.
http://news.yahoo.com/2-dead-unknown...092718995.html
Briefing: Libya’s Proxy Battlefield
Provided by the Oxford Research Group:http://www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.u...xy_battlefield
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On the eve of UN-brokered talks between rival Libyan leaders and militia due to convene in Geneva this briefing sets out the various rationales for intervention from Libya’s neighbours and other international actors and how these may impact on the case for peace through dialogue and reconciliation. It argues that now is a moment of opening that has the potential to save Libya from descent into full-blown civil war.
Don't panic: planning for Libya
Some of the recent reporting on Libya (not linked here) reminds me of the WW2 British slogan 'Don't Panic, Stay Calm and Carry On'.
Caveat aside there is a report by the London-based Quilliam Foundation, based on:
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On 23 January 2015, a prominent supporter of Islamic State (IS) – the group that now controls much of Iraq and Syria – uploaded an essay, written in Arabic, entitled “Libya: The Strategic Gateway for the Islamic State”, on why jihadists needed to urgently flock to Libya to assist supporters of the so-called caliphate in their jihad.
Link to report, note the actual ISIS document is only 6 pgs in 15 pgs:http://www.quilliamfoundation.org/wp...for-the-is.pdf
Whilst Quilliam do not name the author, the Daily Telegraph do:
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The Isil propagandist, who uses the alias Abu Arhim al-Libim...
Link:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...to-Europe.html
The Islamic State’s Strategy in Libya
A short explanation by Carnegie of the Islamic State’s Strategy in Libya; an example:
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..the Islamic State’s strategy in Libya seems to be directed instead at hastening state failure and fracturing the population’s sense of common nationhood. Meanwhile, it is also intensifying the conditions that will allow it to deepen its influence and form a national-religious identity in line with the caliphate’s own views.
Link:http://carnegieendowment.org/sada/20...-in-libya/i4w6
Moving up the agenda outside Libya?
The civil war, now with a dash of ISIS, does get some attention in the media, albeit with rare in-country reporting. Instead the consequences of the absence of a working Libyan state is seen in the number of emigrants, refugees and possible terrorists transiting the country to get a boat north to Europe - invariably Italy - are well reported here in Europe.
Just whether anyone will intervene in Libya is a moot point. One Italian minister has murmured about 'protection', but Italy has a rather violent history pre-1939 when it occupied and colonised the country. Egypt and another Gulf kingdom sometimes launch air strikes.
Just whether this headline is justified, even true is debateable and it is in The Daily Mail, albeit by a Franco-Algerian Muslim journalist:
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Britain is 'helping turn Libya into a cradle of terrorism' exporting killers to Europe amid thousands of illegal immigrants
Link:http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...mmigrants.html
Demise of an ex-Saddamist in Libya
A short comment by blogger Kyle Orton, it starts with:
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An Islamic State (ISIS) commander was killed in Libya in mid-June,
The Daily Beast reported yesterday, after being “paraded … through the streets amid the taunts of onlookers, and then walked … to a gallows, where he was hanged.” This occurred in the eastern city of Derna, long a
hotbed of Islamic militancy. The crucial thing about the “executed” ISIS operative is that he was an Iraqi and an FRE—a former (Saddam) regime element—who had been dispatched to Libya last year to oversee the cultivation of an ISIS branch.
Link:https://kyleorton1991.wordpress.com/...mist-in-libya/
This is a rich country, but they can't agree on who should run it.
Just two posts away I said:
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There is relatively little reporting on Libya....
This AM John Simpson, the BBC's Chief Foreign Correspondent, was on the radio from Tripoli:
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The main airport has been destroyed, all the main embassies have been closed down, the big international hotels all stand empty. There are long and frequent power cuts. And yet Tripoli appears entirely calm.
It is quiet because the city has been carved up by two rival warlords, and their forces are so finely balanced that it is not in the interests of either of them to attack the other. And directly you look below the surface, you start to find the problems that afflict people here.
No TV footage yet:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-33673034
The new Libya: various aspects
‘Confronting ISIS in Libya: The Case for an Expeditionary Counterinsurgency’
A SWJ article which includes a review of recent history regarding the civil war / insurgency, plus a few maps. A good read too.
2011 a taxi driver; 2015 an oil minister
Catching up, a three week old article from The Spectator, by a journalist who went there. With the title and sub-title:
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Cameron’s talking to the wrong Libyan government. He should call my old driverThere are real reasons to worry about Libya Dawn – but also real reasons to try to work with them
Link:http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/...my-old-driver/
Near the end:
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It’s not the first time the West has walked away from a land they supposedly liberated, leaving a mess, I pointed out. At some point, Libya will have to sort out its problems on its own.
IS Foothold in Libya Threatens Europe, West Africa
IS Foothold in Libya Threatens Europe, West Africa
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