The new Libya: various aspects

[smellthebeans]

Anyone here actually been watching what has been occurring in Libya (Sirte, Derna, Benghazi) over the last 45 days?

[davidbfpo]

Anyone here actually been watching what has been occurring in Libya (Sirte, Derna, Benghazi) over the last 45 days?

Like others in Europe I have watched the civil war develop, now with ISIS on the prowl and sadly recoiled from too close a watch. Civil wars are rarely simple and invariably horrible.

There is relatively little reporting on Libya, in part as I suspect most media outlets rarely venture there, so one relies on agency and other sources.

The increasing flow of migrants via Libya across the Mediterranean to Italian territory gets more attention than the civil war, aided by the ability to report and of course endless pictures.

If you have been watching perhaps you can help to explain what has happened?

[davidbfpo]

A short comment by blogger Kyle Orton, it starts with:

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/

[davidbfpo]

Just two posts away I said:

There is relatively little reporting on Libya....

This AM John Simpson, the BBC's Chief Foreign Correspondent, was on the radio from Tripoli:

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

[smellthebeans]

A short comment by blogger Kyle Orton, it starts with:
Link:https://kyleorton1991.wordpress.com/...mist-in-libya/

If this did indeed occur where are all the photographs? Social Media would be blown up with this. Especially when you consider the Mujahideen Shura Council Derna's recent public affairs blitz.

[CrowBat]

By far not everything is caught by the 'social media'; and 90% of what is reported on social media in Arabic never reaches English-language 'areas'.

[smellthebeans]

Good point!

But there are a couple of reliable observers on Twitter. Charlie Winters, Daniele Raineri, Mary Fitzger to name a few.

[smellthebeans]

Much of the news reporting recently has pointed to this U.N. report.

Dash's long term prospects not good because they are seen as a foreign entity. True and when compared to AQ tied leaders & brokers the deficit looks pretty big.

http://untribune.com/wp-content/uplo...-Libya-ENG.pdf