In 2011 when Muhammar Qaddafi
refused to leave quietly as ruler of Libya, the Obama Administration,
hiding behind the skirts of the French, launched a ferocious bombing
campaign and a “No Fly” zone over the country to aid the so-called
fighters for democracy.
The US lied to Russia and China with
help of the (US-friendly) Gulf Cooperation Council about the Security
Council Resolution on Libya and used it to illegally justify the war.
The doctrine, “responsibility to protect” was used instead, the same
doctrine Obama wants to use in Syria. It’s useful top look at Libya two
years after the NATO humanitarian intervention.
Chaos in oil industry
Libya’s economy is dependent on oil.
Just after the war, Western media hailed the fact the oil installations
were not damaged by the population bombing and oil production was near
normal at 1.4 million barrels/day (bpd). Then in July the armed guards
hired by the government in Tripoli suddenly revolted and seized control
of the eastern oil field terminals they were supposed to protect. There
is where the vast bulk of Libya’s oil is produced, near Benghazi. It
goes by pipeline to tankers on the Mediterranean for export.
When the government lost control of the
terminals production and export fell sharply. Then another armed tribal
group seized control of two oilfields in the south blocking oil flow to
terminals on the northwest coast. The tribal occupiers demanded more pay
and went on strike to demand pay and an end to corruption. The end
result is today, early September Libya pumped a mere 150,000 barrels of
its capacity of 1.6 million bpd. Exports have fallen to 80,000 barrels
per day. [1]
Armed Militias vs Muslim Brotherhood
Libya is an artificial state like much
of the Middle East and Africa, carved out in the colonial era of World
War I by Italy. It is ruled by tribal consensus among numerous tribes.
Qaddafi was chosen in a long process of voting by tribal elders that can
take up to 15 years I was told by one expert. When he was murdered and
his family hunted, NATO forced rule by a Muslim Brotherhood-dominated
National Transitional Council (NTC).
Now in August a new Assembly was elected
dominated again by the Brotherhood as in Morsi Egypt or Tunisia.
Sounds nice on paper. The reality is that, by all accounts lawless
bands, armed for the first time during the war with modern weapons,
including foreign Al Qaeda and other jihadists are carrying out daily
bombings across the country for local control. Tripoli itself has
numerous armed gangs controlling sections of the capitol. It is turning
into an armed battle between local tribal millitias that are forming and
the Brotherthood that controls the central government. Leaders in the
provinces of Cyrenaica and Fezzan are considering breaking away from
Tripoli and rebel militias mobilizing across the country. [2]
Bombings in Tripoli are daily as lawlessness spreads
Nuri Abu Sahmain, Muslim Brotherhood
President of the newly elected Congress has summoned militias allied to
the Brotherhood to the capital to try to prevent a coup, in a move the
opposition sees very much like a coup by the Brotherhood. The main
opposition party, a center-right National Forces Alliance, as a result
just deserted Congress together with several smaller ethnic parties,
leaving the Brotherhood’s Justice and Construction party heading a
government with crumbling authority. “Congress has basically collapsed,”
said one diplomat in Tripoli. [3] The Obama Administration has promoted
a takeover across the Muslim world from Egypt to Tunisia to Syria by
the secretive Muslim Brotherhood as part of its long-term strategy of
controlling the Muslim Arc of Crisis from Afghanistan to Libya. As the
Saudi-backed military coup against Brotherhood president Muhammed Morsi
in Egypt in July showed, the Obama strategy has some problems.
Riots and lawlessness
With rising violence the Interior
Minister Mohamed Khalifa al Sheikh resigned in August. Some 500
prisoners in Tripoli jail did a hunger strike to protest being held two
years without charges. When the government ordered the Supreme Security
Committee to restore order, they began shooting prisoners through the
bars. In July 1200 prisoners escaped a jail after a riot in Benghazi. In
short lawlessness and anarchy is spreading. [4]
Ethnic Berbers, whose militia led the
assault on Tripoli in 2011, temporarily took over the parliament
building in Tripoli. Because the US and NATO was adamant it wanted no
“boots on the ground,” instead they freely gave arms to any and all
rebels who would shoot at the Qaddafi government troops. Now they still
have the guns and Libya was described to me by one French journalist who
had recently been there as “the world’s largest open air arms bazaar,”
where for cash anyone can buy any modern NATO weapon.
Foreigners have mostly fled Benghazi
since the American ambassador was murdered in the US consulate by jihadi
militiamen last September. And Libya’s military prosecutor Colonel
Yussef Ali al-Asseifar, in charge of investigating assassinations of
politicians, soldiers and journalists, was himself assassinated by a
bomb in his car on 29 August. [5]
Prospects are grim as the lawlessness
spreads. Sliman Qajam, a member of the parliamentary energy committee,
told Bloomberg that “the government is running on its reserves. If the
situation doesn’t improve, it won’t be able to pay salaries by the end
of the year.”
The Obama Administration argues that the
not-yet-proven use by the Assad government of chemical weapons in Syria
justifies a bombing war by NATO and allies such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar,
Turkey and Jordan, based on the “humanitarian” doctrine deceptively
known as “responsibility to protect,” which argues that certain
violations of human rights or safety are so serious as to transcend
international law, UN Charters or US constitutional requirements and
allow on moral grounds any US President to bomb any country he or she
chooses. Something is not quite right here…
Endnotes
[4] Patrick Cockburn, op. cit.
