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Libya's violent free-for-all
TRIPOLI, Libya — On paper, Libya should be booming. It’s one of the world’s top 10 countries in oil reserves.
It has more than a thousand miles of coastline on the Mediterranean. And it serves as a vital conduit linking Africa, Europe and the Middle East.
Once Qadaffi was shot to death after being droned abd chased into a drainage pipe in the coastal city of Sirte by the US and France , militias that had been organized along tribal or ideological lines turned on each other.
With no true national actor among them (politics is a local affair in Libya, a result of Kadafi playing off different sides so a clear challenger would never emerge), the country fractured into a vicious free-for-all. Criminal and Islamist groups, including Al Qaeda and Islamic State, operated in full view of a government unable (and often unwilling) to do anything about them.
Last month, Khalifa Haftar, who served under Kadafi as a general but eventually sought to overthrow him, launched an all-out offensive to wrest Tripoli, the capital, from the U.N.-recognized Government of National Accord. But his self-styled Libyan National Army, despite having made significant gains in eastern and southern Libya, has been stymied in attempts to enter the capital, home to more than 2.5 million people, by armed factions loyal to the GNA.
Libya’s violent free-for-all | National | heraldmailmedia.com
TRIPOLI, Libya — On paper, Libya should be booming. It’s one of the world’s top 10 countries in oil reserves.
It has more than a thousand miles of coastline on the Mediterranean. And it serves as a vital conduit linking Africa, Europe and the Middle East.
Once Qadaffi was shot to death after being droned abd chased into a drainage pipe in the coastal city of Sirte by the US and France , militias that had been organized along tribal or ideological lines turned on each other.
With no true national actor among them (politics is a local affair in Libya, a result of Kadafi playing off different sides so a clear challenger would never emerge), the country fractured into a vicious free-for-all. Criminal and Islamist groups, including Al Qaeda and Islamic State, operated in full view of a government unable (and often unwilling) to do anything about them.
Last month, Khalifa Haftar, who served under Kadafi as a general but eventually sought to overthrow him, launched an all-out offensive to wrest Tripoli, the capital, from the U.N.-recognized Government of National Accord. But his self-styled Libyan National Army, despite having made significant gains in eastern and southern Libya, has been stymied in attempts to enter the capital, home to more than 2.5 million people, by armed factions loyal to the GNA.
Libya’s violent free-for-all | National | heraldmailmedia.com
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