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Whatever happened to Libya? How are they doing now? Who are the people [really] in power there? There was a lot of brouhaha in the mass media about "liberating

Whatever happened to Libya? How are they doing now? Who are the people [really] in power there? There was a lot of brouhaha in the mass media about "liberating" them, then nothing.

lenkite 7y ago
It is now a nation in continual civil war between a warring bunch of factions. People are desperate to emigrate from there and a lot of area is controlled by human traffickers. This is the end result of military intervention against Gaddafi. This was a nation that had free health care for the public. A lot of people are dying daily, but you don't hear about it since international journalists are afraid to enter the area - they will be taken as hostages by one group or another immediately. Instead of waging War, international negotiation for the succession of power with guarantees of safety should have been performed painstakingly - with lots of carrots offered, but there are just too many warmongers in the US and even the UN.
- powerapple 7y ago
  International journalists weren't afraid of reporting other things they don't have access of though.
  - Symbiote 7y ago
    There's an article on Libya every 2-4 days in the Guardian. Most are about the migrant crisis, but the rest are about the ongoing war. https://www.theguardian.com/world/libya https://www.theguardian.com/world/libya
- notahacker 7y ago
  When one faction rules out negotiating any outcome that doesn't involve Gadaffi's removal (and doesn't have much unity beyond that) and the other faction is Gadaffi and his loyalists that don't want to move, the chances of negotiating a peaceful transition were always going to be slim. Revolutions often don't have happy endings. Libya had free healthcare, but it also was also the fiefdom of a dictator who said that those who didn't love him didn't deserve to live. Not every violent conflict has to be the fault of the US and the UN, and the argument they ought to have intervened more to stabilise the country afterwards is at least as plausible as the argument that they intervened too much. (The conspiracy theory that Western intervention had something to do with Gadaffi's gold dinar idea doesn't have much to rest on either. Round about the time Gadaffi was talking up one of the oldest ideas in Islam as part of his vision for Africa and not getting anywhere even when he was the African Union president, a Malaysian state actually introduced one and was roundly ignored, even by the Malaysian government.)
  - lenkite 7y ago
    If you have to choose between one evil and another - its probably better not to choose at all. Non-intervention would have been the best policy to follow here. Hysteria raised by journalists should not be the primary motivating factor for waging war. No one did the cost analysis for lives ended by anarchy and extra-ordinary poverty and suffering caused by complete national economic breakdown. This is just my personal opinion - but military intervention should be only used for self-defence and the defence of one's allies. And for nothing else.
  - newsgremlin 7y ago
    It's not our fault, until we get involved. This faux crusade of democracy our politicians use as justification just reeks of imperialism, destablising these countries so they are no longer able to sustain any form of government without a puppet government backed by our nations. In a democracy we as the electorate like to pretend we have no involvement in this decision making, yet we pride ourselves on the system of government that apparently represents 'the people' the most. "Don't blame us, it's just our government!"
- golemiprague 7y ago
  You don't hear about it because it was a UK and Obama "the peace noble prize winner" led war and it happened after they already had experience with the dire consequences of the Iraq war. They can't even excuse themselves with 9/11 shock or not knowing how things are going to develop like Bush might have excused itself. I can guarantee you that if it was Trump doing it you would have heard about it non stop.
- Grue3 7y ago
  >This was a nation that had free health care for the public Oh well, that's alright then. Does Mussolini get a pass because he made trains run on time?
  - lenkite 7y ago
    Mussolini was invading other nations. Which nation was Gaddafi invading ? If Mussolini wasn't carrying out invasions, he would have definitely got a pass.
    - Xixi 7y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chadian%E2%80%93Libyan_conflict https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chadian%E2%80%93Libyan_conflic... Albeit long before being removed from power.
- tim333 7y ago
  There must be a better way of dealing with murderous dictators. Though it's politically incorrect these days there might be something to said for something like the old British colonialism in those cases where you go in and take over the country under foreign governance for a while. Maybe governance by some UN body rather than Brits and for a limited time, say 10 years, followed by elections.
- vkreso 7y ago
  I agree. It is about time we move more towards less autodestructive international power communication.
- eaurouge 7y ago
  Libya was in the midst of a civil war before the UN military intervention you referred to. In fact, the military intervention occurred mere hours before Gaddafi's plans to obliterate Benghazi could be implemented. The military intervention was a no-fly zone to prevent Gaddafi's forces from killing civilians [0]. So people are dying daily, not because of a UN intervention, but because Gaddafi's ouster created a vacuum that resulted in a power struggle. Note that the only other alternative would have been for Gaddafi to retain power at the cost of significant loss of life. The other point is that the people desperate to emigrate are non-Libyan Africans using Libya as a port of departure. These people have suffered rape, mutilation etc at the hands of the various warring factions. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_military_intervention_in_Libya https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_military_intervention_in_...
jotm 7y ago
Same with Ukraine, the media stopped caring as there's no "news", just another ongoing conflict.
- dmix 7y ago
  Ukraine is at least way more stable than Libya is… There’s still serious violence going on in Libya all the time. Ignoring Libya is more of a regional thing as well. Being seen as part of the middle east / North African mess which the whole American public got their fill of for two decades. If there was still airstrikes happening in Ukraine it’d certainly get more coverage than Libya.
Tuna-Fish 7y ago
They enthusiastically tried democracy for a while, but quickly learned that it doesn't really work when the country consists of many factions that have no shared values. After multiple weak coalition governments that could get absolutely nothing done, in the last elections many of the previously governing parties were voted out in an election that had a turnout of 18%. This lead to the start of the second Libyan civil war. The newly elected House of Representatives, (from now on, "Tobruk government") wanted to take power, but the parties that lost the elections refused to yield it, passing a measure that granted them temporary special authority, and formed the "National Salvation Government". The various Islamist groups in the country declared that neither government represented them, and took the black flag as many different factions, most important of them being "The Libyan provinces of ISIL" and "The Shura council of Benghazi revolutionaries". The war from then on had many twists and turns, with the UK, US, France, Russia, Turkey, Egypt, Chad, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Algeria, Jordan, Belarus, Italy, Germany, EU, Qatar and Iran supporting a faction or another at any time. The only really consistent part of this was that the western powers were stumbling over each other to bomb ISIL and other Islamists. The end result was that a shrewd Libyan-American warlord named Khalifa Haftar (his tagline being that he fought with and against every major faction at some point or another) essentially took over the Libyan National Army (LNA) and the Tobruk Government (they still exist and maintain all the trappings and procedures of democracy, but do so in a building where the security is provided by Haftar, and would never go against his will), and conquered most of the country, including most of the economically significant oil and water resources. Haftars winning strategy was largely realizing that the western powers would support anyone fighting Islamists, so instead of directly challenging his main opponents, he cleared out all the Islamists he found and took their territory. He might have "encouraged" areas that would not otherwise have flown the blag flag to do so, before crushing them. He had a lot of western support on the way, but his policy of not taking Islamists prisoner and just having them summarily executed seems to have cooled those ties. Since 2016, he's been courting for Russian support, and seems to have gained it. If you asked this question in early April, I'd have said that it seems like Haftar will be the next Gaddafi, as his forces were finally moving on the capital and the remaining territory not held by him, but this offensive seems to have failed because of strong Turkish support. LNA withdrew for a time, and Haftar ordered LNA to target any Turkish ships, companies and arrest Turkish nationals found in the country. It seems like he's building up for attempt two. Also, Haftar is 75 years old, and no-one has any clue what would happen to his forces if he died.

Whatever happened to Libya? How are they doing now? Who are the people [really] in power there? There was a lot of brouhaha in the mass media about "liberating" them, then nothing.

lenkite 7y ago

It is now a nation in continual civil war between a warring bunch of factions. People are desperate to emigrate from there and a lot of area is controlled by human traffickers. This is the end result of military intervention against Gaddafi. This was a nation that had free health care for the public. A lot of people are dying daily, but you don't hear about it since international journalists are afraid to enter the area - they will be taken as hostages by one group or another immediately. Instead of waging War, international negotiation for the succession of power with guarantees of safety should have been performed painstakingly - with lots of carrots offered, but there are just too many warmongers in the US and even the UN.

powerapple 7y ago
International journalists weren't afraid of reporting other things they don't have access of though.
- Symbiote 7y ago
  There's an article on Libya every 2-4 days in the Guardian. Most are about the migrant crisis, but the rest are about the ongoing war. https://www.theguardian.com/world/libya https://www.theguardian.com/world/libya
notahacker 7y ago
When one faction rules out negotiating any outcome that doesn't involve Gadaffi's removal (and doesn't have much unity beyond that) and the other faction is Gadaffi and his loyalists that don't want to move, the chances of negotiating a peaceful transition were always going to be slim. Revolutions often don't have happy endings. Libya had free healthcare, but it also was also the fiefdom of a dictator who said that those who didn't love him didn't deserve to live. Not every violent conflict has to be the fault of the US and the UN, and the argument they ought to have intervened more to stabilise the country afterwards is at least as plausible as the argument that they intervened too much. (The conspiracy theory that Western intervention had something to do with Gadaffi's gold dinar idea doesn't have much to rest on either. Round about the time Gadaffi was talking up one of the oldest ideas in Islam as part of his vision for Africa and not getting anywhere even when he was the African Union president, a Malaysian state actually introduced one and was roundly ignored, even by the Malaysian government.)
- lenkite 7y ago
  If you have to choose between one evil and another - its probably better not to choose at all. Non-intervention would have been the best policy to follow here. Hysteria raised by journalists should not be the primary motivating factor for waging war. No one did the cost analysis for lives ended by anarchy and extra-ordinary poverty and suffering caused by complete national economic breakdown. This is just my personal opinion - but military intervention should be only used for self-defence and the defence of one's allies. And for nothing else.
- newsgremlin 7y ago
  It's not our fault, until we get involved. This faux crusade of democracy our politicians use as justification just reeks of imperialism, destablising these countries so they are no longer able to sustain any form of government without a puppet government backed by our nations. In a democracy we as the electorate like to pretend we have no involvement in this decision making, yet we pride ourselves on the system of government that apparently represents 'the people' the most. "Don't blame us, it's just our government!"
golemiprague 7y ago
You don't hear about it because it was a UK and Obama "the peace noble prize winner" led war and it happened after they already had experience with the dire consequences of the Iraq war. They can't even excuse themselves with 9/11 shock or not knowing how things are going to develop like Bush might have excused itself. I can guarantee you that if it was Trump doing it you would have heard about it non stop.
Grue3 7y ago
>This was a nation that had free health care for the public Oh well, that's alright then. Does Mussolini get a pass because he made trains run on time?
- lenkite 7y ago
  Mussolini was invading other nations. Which nation was Gaddafi invading ? If Mussolini wasn't carrying out invasions, he would have definitely got a pass.
  - Xixi 7y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chadian%E2%80%93Libyan_conflict https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chadian%E2%80%93Libyan_conflic... Albeit long before being removed from power.
tim333 7y ago
There must be a better way of dealing with murderous dictators. Though it's politically incorrect these days there might be something to said for something like the old British colonialism in those cases where you go in and take over the country under foreign governance for a while. Maybe governance by some UN body rather than Brits and for a limited time, say 10 years, followed by elections.
vkreso 7y ago
I agree. It is about time we move more towards less autodestructive international power communication.
eaurouge 7y ago
Libya was in the midst of a civil war before the UN military intervention you referred to. In fact, the military intervention occurred mere hours before Gaddafi's plans to obliterate Benghazi could be implemented. The military intervention was a no-fly zone to prevent Gaddafi's forces from killing civilians [0]. So people are dying daily, not because of a UN intervention, but because Gaddafi's ouster created a vacuum that resulted in a power struggle. Note that the only other alternative would have been for Gaddafi to retain power at the cost of significant loss of life. The other point is that the people desperate to emigrate are non-Libyan Africans using Libya as a port of departure. These people have suffered rape, mutilation etc at the hands of the various warring factions. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_military_intervention_in_Libya https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_military_intervention_in_...

jotm 7y ago

Same with Ukraine, the media stopped caring as there's no "news", just another ongoing conflict.

dmix 7y ago
Ukraine is at least way more stable than Libya is… There’s still serious violence going on in Libya all the time. Ignoring Libya is more of a regional thing as well. Being seen as part of the middle east / North African mess which the whole American public got their fill of for two decades. If there was still airstrikes happening in Ukraine it’d certainly get more coverage than Libya.

Tuna-Fish 7y ago

They enthusiastically tried democracy for a while, but quickly learned that it doesn't really work when the country consists of many factions that have no shared values. After multiple weak coalition governments that could get absolutely nothing done, in the last elections many of the previously governing parties were voted out in an election that had a turnout of 18%. This lead to the start of the second Libyan civil war. The newly elected House of Representatives, (from now on, "Tobruk government") wanted to take power, but the parties that lost the elections refused to yield it, passing a measure that granted them temporary special authority, and formed the "National Salvation Government". The various Islamist groups in the country declared that neither government represented them, and took the black flag as many different factions, most important of them being "The Libyan provinces of ISIL" and "The Shura council of Benghazi revolutionaries". The war from then on had many twists and turns, with the UK, US, France, Russia, Turkey, Egypt, Chad, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Algeria, Jordan, Belarus, Italy, Germany, EU, Qatar and Iran supporting a faction or another at any time. The only really consistent part of this was that the western powers were stumbling over each other to bomb ISIL and other Islamists. The end result was that a shrewd Libyan-American warlord named Khalifa Haftar (his tagline being that he fought with and against every major faction at some point or another) essentially took over the Libyan National Army (LNA) and the Tobruk Government (they still exist and maintain all the trappings and procedures of democracy, but do so in a building where the security is provided by Haftar, and would never go against his will), and conquered most of the country, including most of the economically significant oil and water resources. Haftars winning strategy was largely realizing that the western powers would support anyone fighting Islamists, so instead of directly challenging his main opponents, he cleared out all the Islamists he found and took their territory. He might have "encouraged" areas that would not otherwise have flown the blag flag to do so, before crushing them. He had a lot of western support on the way, but his policy of not taking Islamists prisoner and just having them summarily executed seems to have cooled those ties. Since 2016, he's been courting for Russian support, and seems to have gained it. If you asked this question in early April, I'd have said that it seems like Haftar will be the next Gaddafi, as his forces were finally moving on the capital and the remaining territory not held by him, but this offensive seems to have failed because of strong Turkish support. LNA withdrew for a time, and Haftar ordered LNA to target any Turkish ships, companies and arrest Turkish nationals found in the country. It seems like he's building up for attempt two. Also, Haftar is 75 years old, and no-one has any clue what would happen to his forces if he died.