Aftermath of military intervention: Libya is a mess.

[cali]

Traffic crawled along a street just off the palm-lined Martyr's Square, when a blaring loudspeaker atop a bus announced a demonstration calling for the reestablishment of the regular army and police and a push to secure the country’s lawless southern border region. The announcement is code in Tripoli for the rebuilding of a state to take back power from the dizzying array of armed groups that have usurped it.

My driver, Mohammed, nodded at the bus driver ahead of us, saying, “If the militia guys see this, they're going to beat him in the street.”

On a summer return to Tripoli, it seemed surprising that for all their power, the militias were hard to spot. They manned check points outside the city but had withdrawn to strategic sites they had seized (airports, hotel complexes, and farms of presumed loyalists). Or else they were hiding in plain sight, donning an armband with the emblem of state authority, working on government security contracts. These days, the bands of Mad Max-looking guerrillas that had been parading through the streets and firing into the air after liberation were no longer in sight. Until suddenly they were.

Now there are mounting fears in Libya that these armed militias are squaring off against each other, along lines that pit forces allied with the Muslim Brotherhood against a coalition of opponents. The rebels have reportedly blockaded key oil ports and in the capital, Tripoli, they are bracing for armed confrontation.

<snip>
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/groundtruth/how-militias-took-control-post-gaddafi-libya


http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/01/why-theres-a-war-in-mali-because-we-bumped-off-libyas-gaddaffi.html
http://www.businessinsider.com/recent-prison-breaks-are-fueling-al-qaedas-global-comeback-2013-7

[Starry Messenger]

1. k&r

[Douglas Carpenter]

2. that's what almost always - if not always - happens after militry interventions

when an old order collapses or is removed by military force - the social glue simply evaporates - it takes a long, long time for things to be put back together again. Many people believe in the Hollywood version of history - where the tyrant is driven from power, the people are freed and then live happily ever after. I agree that there are times when military intervention is the right thing to do - but the suffering caused both directly and indirectly along with long periods of chaos should make anyone only want to approach it with much fear and trembling and only when one can be reasonably confident that they are not causing more harm than good.

[Celefin]

3. Tsk tsk... you Gaddafi lover you

You're not supposed to mention that clusterfuck.
We have a new war (humanitarian intervention) to launch.

On a serious note, this has played out exactly the way a lot of people her on DU predicted it would.
Military interventions without a realistic plan for the aftermath always end in chaos.
Removing Gaddafi was in itself not a bad goal...
One would expect that some lessons could be learnt, but apparently that isn't the case.

[kelliekat44]

9. Removing Gaddafi was, indeed, a bad goal considering the stability and welfare of the Libyan

people and the lies and fabrications that were told about Gaddafi when in fact he had come around to almost be an ally in the region. He was paying up of Lockerbie, helping us against Al Quaeda, and still supplying us with oil. He really had to go because he was making a liar out of the PNAC interests in the region. It was so plain and painful to see. Iraq, Libya, Lebanon,...sometimes we can't see the TREES because of the smoking forest.

[Celefin]

10. Ah, I forgot.

So many wars, so little time.
You are most likely right, of course.

[Scootaloo]

4. It took the nascent United States a long time to get its shit in order

Lessee... near economic collapse immediately following the Revolution, separatist and anti-government groups staging rebellions in the next two decades, cwar with britain, war with Mexico, crisis after crisis between slave and free states, then the big grandaddy crisis of a civil war, followed by a total abandonment of abolitionist principle and an adoption of imperialism, both domestic and abroad...

Let's be honest, the only thing that kept the United States from turning into Haiti is the fact we had the resources of two rapidly-emptying continents (natural resources of North America, human and monetary resources of Africa) to draw from.

[Boom Sound 416]

5. What was the DU mood on

Action in Libya (before my time)

[cali]

6. split, but the pro-intervention crowd was larger than the syria

pro intervention crowd.

[Boom Sound 416]

7. That's war fatigue for you

[pampango]

8. Excellent article from Global Post, cali. All sides seem happy that Qaddafi is gone, but little else

Support was widespread for proposed legislation known as the Isolation Law that would bar some former regime officials from power. Debate over the law stretched on for months, impeding progress on Congress's primary responsibility, which is paving the way to draft a new constitution and hold elections. It also brought to light a deep divide in the country.

On one side stood the Muslim Brotherhood and allied Salafis as well as representatives from cities that had sacrificed the most blood and treasure during the civil war. These hardliners were pushing for an ongoing revolution to uproot just about all of those who played a role in the former regime. In the opposite camp stood the National Forces Alliance. They are sometimes called “liberals,” which critics would say is misleading.

Rather than a more moderate law that would apply based on an individual’s conduct under the regime, the version that passed cuts wide and deep across Libyan society, and makes no exception for those who played a significant role in the revolution.

Libya is grappling with the legacies of Muammar Gaddafi’s reign and the civil war that unseated him. In many ways, the real divide is between the people, tribes, and cities that Gaddafi pitted against each other in a strategy of divide and rule, whether they stood with or against him during the war, and how much they suffered.

Part of the divide in Libya seems to be between those who want to bar from government everyone who had anything to do with the Qaddafi dictatorship and those who want to consider "an individual's conduct under the regime" and whether each played a role on the revolution that ousted Qaddafi.

Playing politics by certain rules does not seem to be a lesson that Qaddafi taught Libyans. Rule by gun was the lesson they learned. Libyans will have to unlearn the latter and learn the former in the long run, but that has been true of most revolutions throughout history.

[yoloisalie]

11. Lets not forget what happened to the black Libyan

And other sub Saharan Africans who were enjoying a good life in Libya. They are mostly dead now or run out of town after the western countries accused them of being spies and mercenaries. Libya was the Saudi Arabia of Africa without the whole religious extremism that came with it but because it lacked democracy, we had to take it over.

Sad sad moment for Africa to see our American son attack one of our success story.