Libya News and Interests

[anatta]

Who did that, was it Hafter's forces?

see post above..
It's in dispute but who else would be bombing anything near Tripoli? Not the GNA militias..onless itwasn't an airstrike.

Thousands remain in detention centers run by Libyan militias or in homes near front-line fighting, exposed to airstrikes and mortar and rocket fire. Indiscriminate gunfire has wounded some of them, while the militias have tried to forcibly recruit young migrants, according to migrants and humanitarian officials. Food is running short inside detention centers, and some migrants locked inside have died by suicide, aid workers said.


U.N. officials say more than 6,000 migrants and refugees remain in the country’s 34 detention centers, including 3,300 held in facilities in and around Tripoli. Some centers are run by militias involved in human smuggling, and migrants in interviews have described torture and slavery-like conditions. Other migrants are in schools that have become displacement centers, dependent on charities for survival. None of the detention centers have been evacuated after the Tajoura tragedy, Ekholm said.

^ Not that the GNA has any moral authority either.

[anatta]

Migrants, Stuck in Libya, Demand Evacuation as Conflict Escalates
https://www.voanews.com/middle-east/...lict-escalates

[anatta]

German minister calls for 'rescue mission' for migrant camps in Libya
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/201...t-camps-libya/

[anatta]

Erdoğan’s meddling in Libya could lead to new setback for Turkey – Arab Weekly
https://ahvalnews.com/libya-turkey/e...ey-arab-weekly





Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, whose political sway is waning inside the country, has chosen to play outside Turkey, in Libya, to regain some of his former lustre, wrote Iraqi writer Farouk Yousef in the Arab Weekly.

The Turkish strongman’s meddling in Libya, however, could lay the groundwork for another setback for the country, the article said.

Libya is in the midst of its third civil war since the 2011 ousting and killing of Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi after four decades in power.

The Libyan National Army (LNA), led by commander Khalifa Haftar, controls much of the east and south of the North African country, and in April launched an offensive that threatened to capture the Libyan capital city from the internationally recognised Islamist-rooted Libyan Government of National Accord (GNA).

Turkey supports the GNA government in Tripoli while LNA is supported by Turkey’s regional rivals Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states.

The LNA accuses Turkey of funding and arming Islamist factions in Libya fighting on the side of the GNA, a claim Turkey initially denied, but has since accepted.


Erdoğan’s support of the Islamist militias that rule Tripoli “might be ideological first and foremost so he can justify to his party and the Turkish people his intervention in a distant country, should his action be challenged legally,’’ Yousef said.

The GNA, while having the legitimacy of international recognition by its side, uses the rogue armed militias to defend itself, the article said, adding that the Turkish President wants to have a place in that party, using his ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) relations with groups close to the Muslim Brotherhood in Libya.

Erdoğan on on Saturday met with GNA head Fayez al-Sarra in Istanbul, reiterating his support for the Tripoli government.

The Turkish president’s desire to prove to his opponents and pundits that, under his leadership, the new Turkey is the strongest, Yousef wrote, has at times terribly backfired.

The article pointed to downing of a Russian plane in November 2015 and his legal struggle with the United States over Ankara’s planned purchase of the Russian S-400 system, among others.

Erdogan’s uninformed meddling in the Libyan war could lead to another Turkish setback, the article concluded.

[Bill]

Migrants, Stuck in Libya, Demand Evacuation as Conflict Escalates
https://www.voanews.com/middle-east/...lict-escalates

Is the EU done taking them in?? Wasn't this one of the real sore spots in England & other countries in Central & Easter Europe didn't have to take in any or very, very few..

[anatta]

Is the EU done taking them in?? Wasn't this one of the real sore spots in England & other countries in Central & Easter Europe didn't have to take in any or very, very few..

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...s-europe-unhcr
in southern Tripoli, Abu Salim offers something close to respite for those who have been on the road for weeks if not months. Run by the interior ministry, it’s one of the few detention sites in Libya that journalists can safely visit.
There’s a health clinic, a kitchen, dormitories and mattresses, spaces for prayer.

But there is little hope. The 150 or so migrants who are stuck here have made perilous journeys from Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Cote d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Gambia, Guinea, Senegal, but Abu Salim is the end of the road.
It is likely to be the closest they will get to Europe. The next, final stage of their journey will be a return trip home.

Since the EU intensified efforts earlier this year to prevent African migrants from travelling north in their thousands, Libya, once a funnel to Europe, has now largely turned into a dead end. The authorities have been convinced by a string of diplomatic deals to beef up their efforts; many of the smuggling gangs too have been co-opted, for now.

[anatta]

Since Muammar Gaddafi was ousted in 2011, Libya has served as both a magnet and a funnel for migrants desperate to start new lives in Europe.

After record-breaking numbers of arrivals in Italy in 2016 and unprecedented numbers dying in the Mediterranean over the past two years, the EU signalled a new determination to head of the migration problem closer to the source with a series of deals with Libya earlier this year.

One part of the strategy involved the south of the country - where more than 2,500km (1,550 miles) of desert borders with Algeria, Chad, Niger and Sudan provide multiple channels north.

A series of consultations was established between the Italian interior minister, Marco Minniti, and south Libyan mayors, who represent local groups and tribes. The deal pinpointed seven “elements” to pacify the different factions, from the Tebu to the Beni Suleiman, in the name of a common commitment to halt migrant trafficking. This project was heavily supported by Ahmed Maetig, vice-president of the Libyan presidential council, and greeted warmly in southern Libya, by the mayor of Sebha, Hamed Al-Khayali.

“The project we are carrying forward now with Italy involves the development and growth of southern Libya within the framework of the fight against illegal immigration,” Khayali said.

As part of this cooperation, Italy has helped to secure the border, offered support for towns in terms of infrastructure and electricity, and has pledged to help improve employment prospects for young people. In addition, there is a scheme to train military units tied to the army of the legitimate Libyan government, specialised in operations in the south of the country.

Further north, the emphasis has been on a new Italian mission to support the Libyan coastguard in the Mediterranean, and partly through an “under the radar” deal between Italians and leading figures who control the coastline and the trafficking that occurs there. Boats no longer leave the shore, and migrants like Ali and Mokhtar are interned.

nothing is straightforward in a country with two antagonistic governments, many fiefdoms and strongmen, few legitimate ways of earning a living and myriad trafficking groups jostling for status, territory and business.

For example, the EU diplomatic offensive succeeded, for a while, in placating the smuggling hub of Sabratha in western Libya. But since the beginning of October, different groups have been fighting hard for control of the city. Those militias that are not part of the deal with the European Union and Italy are under pressure because they lack funding.

“We have seen fighting between the different groups in Sabratha,” said Mignone. “One of them advanced and the authorities later uncovered thousands of people who were detained by smugglers. Now, they are trying to get these people to detention centres run by the government, but they are already overcrowded.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...s-europe-unhcr

[dukkha]

JAVELIN ( wireless TOW missiles) -2 mile range

[dukkha]

In Libya's south, the Tuareg, a Berber ethnic group, are using the conflict to build their sphere of influence, counteracting decades of social stigma and reasserting their national identity.
https://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/in...desertic-south

Tuareg tribesmen sit together during a traditional ceremony in the Libyan desert [Getty]

Eight years after the death of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, two factions are still fighting for control of Libya.

In the western city of Tripoli, Libya's capital, the Government of National Accord (GNA) under Libyan Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj has gained diplomatic recognition from the United Nations but struggled to establish itself on the ground, reliant on support from a constellation of Libyan militias.

In the east, the would-be strongman Khalifa Haftar has used his own militia, the Libyan National Army (LNA), to conquer the cities of Benghazi and Derna and launch an offensive on Tripoli.



While the best-known battles of the Libyan Civil War have remained confined to Libya's coast, home to most of the country's population, a quiet conflict has been raging in the desertic south.

There, the GNA and the LNA have competed for the allegiance of several non-Arab ethnic groups. They include the Tuareg, a minority group with a history of marginalisation at the hands of the Libyan state.

Often considered a subgroup of the Berbers, a North African people, the Tuareg form a sizeable minority in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger. An additional community inhabits the southern Libyan region of Fezzan, where nomadic Tuareg tribes have worked as merchants and smugglers for millennia.

Gaddafi encouraged the immigration of Tuareg from Mali and Niger and recruited them into his military, through which some Tuareg acquired Libyan citizenship.

The eccentric autocrat heralded them as "Arabs of the south," yet he also discriminated against them, expelling thousands from Libya in the 1980s.

"Before the Libyan conflict, the Tuareg were divided between those with Libyan citizenship and those without," said Claudia Gazzini, the International Crisis Group's senior analyst for Libya. "Gaddafi nonetheless employed citizens and non-citizens alike in his security agencies."

Gaddafi incorporated the Tuareg into his erratic foreign policy, training some to rebel against his Malian and Nigerien rivals. The minority also inspired his notorious, mansion-sized tent.

"The Tuareg fascinated Gaddafi," said Dr Igor Cherstich, a social anthropologist at University College London and author of an upcoming book on the Libyan Revolution.

"Gaddafi romanticised the Tuareg lifestyle, one example being the tent that he always used during travel abroad. Even so, Gaddafi frequently described the Tuareg as Arabs, completely reinventing their identity."
Gaddafi romanticised the Tuareg lifestyle, one example being the tent that he always used during travel abroad. Even so, Gaddafi frequently described the Tuareg as Arabs, completely reinventing their identity

As Gaddafi fought a losing battle against rebels in his own country, some of the Libyan, Malian, and Nigerien Tuareg whom he had bankrolled over the years supported him during his last stand.

When Libyan rebels killed Gaddafi in October 2011, many of the West African Tuareg who had joined his army returned to their countries of origin. Libyan Tuareg, however, suffered reprisals from Arab neighbours who backed the rebellion and blamed the minority as a whole for the actions of pro-Gaddafi Tuareg.

"Under the Gaddafi regime, the Tuareg were partially integrated into a brigade of the Libyan Army called the Islamic Legion," said Dr Ricardo René Larémont, a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and a professor of sociology at Binghamton University.

"With the fall of Gaddafi, they lost their erstwhile patron and are largely fending for their own in southern Libya and eastern Mali."

Though Gaddafi had offered the Tuareg opportunities for advancement, he had also deprived the minority of its culture. The pan-Arab strongman had refused to recognise the distinctiveness of the Tuareg ethnicity, but, with his death, Tuareg began asserting their rights and forming associations.

"After the revolution, the Tuareg – and more generally Libyan Berbers – finally felt free to celebrate their cultural heritage," Cherstich told The New Arab.

Prior to the Libyan Revolution, Gaddafi had oppressed his country's minorities, declaring in 2010 that Berbers "no longer existed."

Many Berbers viewed the rebellion against him as a rare opportunity to reclaim their cultural heritage after decades of Arabisation. Following the fall of Gaddafi's government, Berber veterans of the war against him celebrated by placing their flags in cities across Libya.

"It is important to understand that the Tuareg are a Berber ethnic confederation – though, in Libya, they often stress that their identity differs from that of coastal Berbers," said Cherstich. "Under Gaddafi, Berbers were discouraged from using their language and expressing their own culture."

As Libyan warlords backed by regional powers took advantage of the power vacuum sparked by Gaddafi's death, Libya's minorities soon realised that they had little reason to rejoice.

Amid the country's descent into chaos, few of the country's new leaders seemed concerned with the wellbeing of the Tuareg.
Instead, well-armed militias prioritised capturing Libya's oil reserves, ousting the Islamic State group (IS) from the Libyan coast, and trafficking migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa to the Mediterranean Sea.

"The Tuareg were controlled and used by Gaddafi, excluded from the most important positions of the regime, and too many times forgotten," said Dr Federica Saini Fasanotti, a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of Libya 1922–1931: The Italian Counterinsurgency.

"Sarraj has tried to be more inclusive, but certainly what has been done so far cannot be called sufficient."
Under Gaddafi, Berbers were discouraged from using their language and expressing their own culture

Rather than uniting the Tuareg and other Libyan minorities, the aftermath of Gaddafi's downfall has divided the fractious ethnicities further. Just as Tuareg fought on both sides of the Libyan Revolution, they have spent the last eight years clashing with each other on behalf of rival Libyan governments.

"The two main Libyan coalitions are trying to entice Tuareg fighters with offers of citizenship and payment," said Gazzini. "This time, the Tuareg are divided between the LNA and the GNA."

In addition to the internal divisions created by the Libyan Civil War, the Tuareg have battled the Tebu, another minority in Fezzan, and the Awlad Suleiman, a southern Arab tribe.

[dukkha]

In 2014, simmering tensions between Tebu and Tuareg militias led to clashes in the Tuareg-majority city of Ubari, spreading as far as the southern oasis of Sabha, hometown of the Awlad Suleiman, by 2015.

"While the LNA and various militias are vying for control of the north, the south has become an ungoverned space where the Awlad Suleiman, the Tuareg, and the Tebu are competing for control," observed Larémont. "At this moment, the Tebu have the upper hand."

Alliances always seem to be shifting in Fezzan. In March 2017, representatives from the Tuareg, Tebu, and Awlad Suleiman signed a peace treaty in Rome as a replacement for a failed 2015 ceasefire brokered by Qatar.

By February 2019, Tebu and Tuareg militias were mobilising under the GNA-aligned Tuareg commander Ali Kanna, a veteran of Gaddafi's security forces, after Haftar allied himself with the Awlad Suleiman and the LNA attempted to seize Tuareg-controlled oil wells in the Murzuq Desert.

"After the death of Gaddafi, all the dynamics of the past were cancelled," Saini Fasanotti told The New Arab.

"The people of Fezzan have tried to find a space within the new Libyan reality, but – once again – they have not been sufficiently listened to. Thousands of kilometres away from the capital, they have been seen as an absolutely secondary problem. In this void, inhabitants of the region have carved out their own space that – by the way – already has deep roots.

"The people of Fezzan have always been used to thinking about their own interests, since no one has ever done it for them."
The two main Libyan coalitions are trying to entice Tuareg fighters with offers of citizenship and payment... This time, the Tuareg are divided between the LNA and the GNA

Devoid of consistent allies or patrons, the Tuareg have tended to look to one another as the most reliable partners in their ongoing battle for survival.

As many as 90 percent of Libyans belong to one tribe or another, a relationship that has only grown stronger in the absence of a central government.

"Many of Libya's social groups – including the Tuareg – have turned to tribal networks out of self-preservation in the absence of a unified Libyan state," said Cherstich.

Despite promising signs of unity among the Tuareg and southern Libyan minorities in general, the future of Fezzan looks bleak.

Pointing to economic stagnation, unemployment, a lack of healthcare, poor living conditions, and skyrocketing crime rates in the south, Tuareg activists and community leaders argue that the downfall of Gaddafi has done little to change their status as second-class citizens.

Electrical grids, schools, and water supply networks in Ubari have all but collapsed. Meanwhile, IS has established itself in Fezzan after a coalition of militias banished the militants from the coast several years ago.

"The southern situation is dire," said Gazzini. "Many Tuareg feel the need to join militias to have an income. Others have moved to Tripoli only to be forced out in the recent round of violence."

The GNA and LNA's competition over Fezzan's oil reserves has the potential to reignite tensions not only between the Tuareg, Tebu, and Awlad Suleiman but also among the Tuareg themselves.

Like the GNA, Haftar has earned the allegiance of a Tuareg militia, further dividing the minority.

"If anything, the developments in the north have negatively affected the Tuareg," Gazzini told The New Arab. "The conflict there has not translated into any form of Tuareg empowerment."

The Tuareg represent what has become an all-too-common feature of the world's conflict-prone countries: a well-armed, long-disenfranchised social group deprived of any political avenues to express its grievances.

For now, most Tuareg appear to see the GNA as the lesser of two evils.

"Of course, the situation is fluid," noted Larémont. "It can change at any time."

[dukkha]

Libya's NOC mulls cooperation with China's oil firms
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-N...For-Help.html#

While there, the Libyan delegation met with CNPC and other companies to discuss “cooperation in Libyan exploration and development, oilfield services, and trading of Libyan crude, with parties potentially cementing future relations through the signature of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) at their next meeting,” NOC’s statement read.

“With a more stable security environment, we could easily add between 300-400,000 barrels to daily production and grow oil revenue receipts. Our long-term strategy is to produce 2.1 million bpd by 2023. China can help us on that journey,” NOC Chairman Mustafa Sanallah said.

That “more stable security environment” has proved rather elusive for Libya, with unrest disrupting oil production and exports on a semi-regular basis. The last such disruption resulted in a force majeure after an unidentified group closed a pipeline valve that halted production in the El Sharara oilfield. The disruption cascaded into the Port of Az Zawiyah, which was closed.

Libya managed in Q2 to increase its oil production over Q1, but lower oil prices in 2019 hurt Libya’s oil revenues, which for the first six months of 2019 lagged H1 2018 by 11.2 percent, coming in at $10.2 billion. This revenue is critical to Libya, relying on oil almost completely for its revenue. In H1, 92.8 percent of Libya’s total income was from oil.

Continued lower prices and further production disruptions, particularly of Libya’s largest oilfield, may seek to dissuade foreign investments into its oil industry, even eager ones such as China.

[dukkha]

Up to 150 people may have drowned in a shipwreck off the coast of Libya, the UN refugee agency says.
A further 150 people were rescued by fishermen and returned to Libya by coastguards, the UNHCR said.
It is not clear if the migrants were on one or two boats that left the Libyan town of al Khoms, some 120km (74.5 miles) east of Tripoli.
If confirmed, it would be the deadliest shipwreck in the Mediterranean so far this year.

[Bill]

Cool, you're doing videos now.....

So where do you think they should be sent to/back to??

[dukkha]

Cool, you're doing videos now.....

So where do you think they should be sent to/back to??

I do vids when I'm too lazy to look for text.
I still hate them as a waste of my time many times..

I don't know if it's possible to "send them back" send them back to what? how?

Libya's southern border is long and undermanned ( and no doubt corruptable)

[dukkha]

current map