LIBYA SITUATION ANALYSIS BIS 1.2.2016

Politically overshadowed, Libya, in spite of its tumultuous irony with Arab Spring hardly marks advent into limelight.

With a government that barely exists, Washington is preparing to take “decisive military action” in Libya against the alarming growth of ISIS.

“Action in Libya is needed before Libya becomes IS sanctuary, before they become extremely hard to dislodge,” said US Defense Official.

A British RAF team and MI6 operatives flew to an airbase near the eastern Libyan city of Tobruk, which is under control by internationally recognized militia forces.

In March 2011, NATO launched attacks that led to the overthrow of the Libyan leader Gadaffi.

The majority of Libyans are demonstrably worse off today than they were under Gaddafi, notwithstanding his personality cult and authoritarian rule.

The slaughter is getting worse by the month and is engulfing the entire country.

There is an ongoing civil war between Tobruk HoR and its supporters, GNC in Tripoli and its supporters and various jihadists and tribal elements controlling parts of the country. While foreign pressure builds to tackle a threat from IS, Libya’s internationally recognized parliament, based in the east, has rejected a main article in UN accord as well as a proposed list of ministers.

Libya’s warring factions signed UN-backed peace deal in Morocco designed to establish a unity government that could lead a military push against IS.

Libya now has three governments and two parliaments, with the internationally recognized authorities based in the east and a militia-backed authority in the capital Tripoli.

However, earlier this week Libya’s internationally recognized parliament rejected the proposed new government.

Noted journalists rightly stated ‘Human rights organisations have had a much better record in Libya than the media since the start of the uprising in 2011. They discovered that there was no evidence for several highly publicised atrocities supposedly carried out by Gaddafi's forces that were used to fuel popular support for the air war in the US, Britain, France and elsewhere.’

Libya is imploding.

Its oil exports have fallen from 1.6 million barrels a day in 2011 to 335,000 barrels a day.

Militias hold 8,000 people in prisons, many of whom say they have been tortured.

Unfortunately, the militias are getting stronger not weaker.

Libya is a land of regional, tribal, ethnic warlords who are often simply well-armed racketeers exploiting their power and the absence of an adequate police force.

Nobody is safe.

Libya represents a classic case of the failure of Arab Spring. Even though pro-democracy outbursts took place in 2011, after the death of Gadaffi, Libya has descended into a political morass.

NATO intervention in Libya with the imposition of a ‘No Fly Zone’, camouflaging Western vested interests of implementing neo-conservative regime have failed in Libya as it did earlier in Iraq.

There are few hard-line questions though that makes Libya a difference.

Firstly, media blackout regarding the political condition in Libya is making it very difficult to meticulously decipher what is happening in the country. Whether the media blackout is deliberate or just because Libya is unsafe for journalists, still can be debated.

Secondly, media is flooded with news and narratives about the refugees from Syria but why no one talks about Libyan refugees. What happened to them, in addition to quanties in Tunisia and Algeria amidst the tribal and ethnic tension that catapulted the state into complete failure

Thirdly, there are numerous militants being recruited from Libya into IS. The main question here is how they are getting arms and financed.

There is hardly any concrete evidence regarding it.

The revolution has failed in Libya for sure, but what about the future, what about the solution?

The western countries are hardly interested in a non ambiguous plan of action along with UN.

So, will be mutely be spectators as Libya’s case worsens and it implodes?