Libya with Andrew

Supreme leader of Iran, Ayatola Ali Kameni. In response to this Americans really aggression, Iran has retaliated by targets in both American bases and civilian and energy infrastructure in the neighboring countries that have facilitated American presence in the region.

With the strategically and economically critical straight off moods in jeopardy, with France, the UK, and Germany aka the usual suspects indicating potential involvement, and with the potential Russian and Chinese involvement also being floated in some circles, it seems to me that without any formal annow spun, the war on the world has escalated potentially to a point of no return. Hello, and welcome to it could happen here. I'm Andrew Sage andrewism on YouTube, and I'm joined again by.

was sweeping the Middle East and North Africa. Among the countries caught up in the fuva against the prevailing states was Libya, a North African state ruled for the previous forty two years by the Colonel Mumar Algernife's government. Masses had taken to the streets across the country, starting in Benghazi. The government had some successors in putting down the revolt, killing hundreds of rebels demonstrators alike, and some failures as

the masses managed to hold position. The people had many motivations, spaning Islamist, democratic, to militant, to tribal to just disaffected against a government intent on its continued survival, revolutions, uprisings, protests, revolts, they tend to be messy affairs. I'm sure James, you're well away of that.

it later becomes a something revolution. But especially in the Arab Spring, right like in that time, it was just like we've had enough of being under the boot of these regimes and it was extraordinarily heterodox and that was quite beautiful in the early.

be bad. And like in Iran, yeah, there is a monarchist opposition.

to govern themsels elves. And I don't believe that it's any less human if you live in North Africa or the Middle East or South Africa, or an island in the Caribbean, or an island in a Pacific, like I believe, it comes from our human nature, and so it strikes me is therefore obvious that there cannot be a country where people's human nature is fundamentally distinct and they're all just like knee jerk monarchists.

not ideologically committed one way or the other. Most people are just trying to live their lives and meet their basic needs, and they're submerged in society that lends them towards a particular inclination, but that's not set in stone. Most people in the Arab Spring likely sought just the end of whatever it was they were suffering under before.

And of course, in these kind of incidents, geopolitical actors will choose to back particular factions, lend them freedoms and prominence according to their geopolitical interests, but don't give them undue credit. You know, during the Cool War, for example, the US would have backed rebellions they believe benefit them, and vice versa, the USSR backed rebellions they thought would

benefit them. And even today, the US is claiming to care about freedom but has continued to work with the Saudis who infamously invaded Bahrain to crush the Arab Spring that occurred there. And at the time, France's love for democracy didn't exactly match their offer to aid Algeria and

Tunisia in putting down their own Arab springs. Now, as I've been saying quite often, pointing to our hypocrisy, it's kind of a baby's first geopisical analysis, right, None of these governments have any consistent values beyond their own interests. But I think it's important to make this kind of

heterodoxy in movements clear, to contextualize what happened next. There's another notion that US intervention is entering these countries during these conflicts that hold humanitaria and aims to liberate the women or to liberate the minorities in that region. The

United States, like all the governments, is opportunistic right. It is taking advantage of often genuine struggles by people of its own situation or goals without a care for what happens to those people, either opened the intervening or covidly intervening. Most obvious recent example is with the goods in Syria. At the time they were convenient the United States interests, and so they weren't and they were abandoned. And this is especially the case when resources like oil come into

the picture, and Libya is extremely oil rich. So tragically, the West saw this uprising in Libya as an opportunity. Following a timeline and Encyclopedia Britannica, on the nineteenth of March twenty eleven, Libya was attacked by the combined forces

of the United States, the UK, and France. These countries now condemned Kadafi as an oppressor of the civilians they were swooping in to say, though for years before the UK and France were selling him weapons, They alongside their Katari and Saudi allies, took advantage of the protests to assert their military might. This move was authorized by the UN Resolution nineteen seventy three, and NATO would soon take command of the operation. While claiming to protect civilians under

a responsibility to protect doctrine, they bombed them. An allegedly humanitarian intervention led to the deaths of tens of thousands of a national population of just over six million. He infrastructure was devastated by the Natal Woman campaign and by the struggles between the government and the now armed rebels

of the National Transitional Council or NTC. A quick note by the way the NTC appointed themselves as the leaders of the movement, and despite the struggle being kickstarted by mostly working and middle class militants, often of an Islamic orientation, the NTC was composed mainly of regime defectors, businessmen and exiles who had a broadly pro Western, conservative and free

market stance. Some of the elements in Gadaffi's government and military had defected to the rebels and equipped those pre unarmed protesters with firepower, and so up to now we only have estimates regarding the civilian death dool, infrastructural devastation, and arbitrary detentions, disappearances and kidnappings carried out by both Progadafi and Antigodafi forces, not to mention the Liberate targetsing of black Libyans and sub Saharan African migrants by rebel

forces that took place during and after the twenty eleven war, with the claim that they were Goodafi's hired mercenaries. Many of those Africans attempts to escape were met with callous disregard by Europe.

As Matt will Gress notes in Jack ben quote on the day Tripoly fell, the New York Times headline the scramble for access to Libya's oil wealth begins was telling Libya's vast oil reserves, along prize by the West for being the largest in Africa and incredibly close to Europe,

were now open to business for foreign investors. As is the case with all imperial interventions, the attempts to get profits fluent for multinational corporations comes long before any ideas of reconstructure such as esentral infrastructure projects or insurance services, and really up to now that infrastructure has not been established and even access to Libya's oil is not yet secured, even though they allegedly managed to loot some of that oil.

In twenty twelve, Nagurdafi himself fled after the fall of Tripoli, but he was found NATO bombed his convoy and he was captured alive, then executed by NTC forces in October twenty eleven, after which the war was declared over and the NTC declared Libya and Islamic democracy in their constitutional declaration. The NTC estimated thirty thousand dead, and a UN report from twenty twelve estimated that more than nine hundred thousand people had to leave the country since February of twenty eleven.

Many were not Libya nationals, but more than six hundred and sixty thousand Libyans also fled, and an estimated two hundred thousand people had been internally displaced, continuing without timeline. In twenty twelve, the NTC handed power over to the General National Congress or GNC, and despite a formal end to the war, Grafi loyalists, local militias, and tribes shaped against each other and the GenZ. The militias wouldn't disarm.

The Graffi loyalists continue to fight and the GNC failed to put forward a new constitution, so in twenty fourteen they were ousted by the newly elected House of Representatives and in twenty fourteen a second civil war would begin in Libya, with the nation split mainly between the House Representatives or ASHUAR with its Libya National Army or LNA, based in Tobruk to the east, and their rival, made up of mostly Islamists from the former GenZ with their

Libya Dawn Militia based in Tripoli to the west. They didn't win the election, they didn't consider it legitimate because of its low turnout, and they didn't appreciate the amount of former Goodaff supporters in the new government, so they rose up to fight, claiming to be the National Salvation Government or NSG. So you have the HR and you have the NSG. Beyond these two factions, yours had an al Qaeda affiliated militia and the Islamic State, both engaged

in insurgent and struggle around the country, sometimes holding entire cities. Eventually, the two governments came together to sign the LBA, the Libyan Political Agreement that formed the Interim Presidential Council and Government of National Accord or GNA in late twenty fifteen without attempt at cohesion didn't really work out, as the U went back to GNA, now based in Tripoli, couldn't

consolidate power. By the end of twenty sixteen, factions affiliated with the NSG still resisted the GNA, and the HR, still based Intobrook, refused to endorse the GNA's appointments, so they went from having two competing governments to kind of having three. So the main opposing forces when all the

g and the HR. The JNA was backed by Tiki, Qatar and the EU, especially Italy and the UN, while the HR was backed by Egypt, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the United Emirates, and to some extent, France, who technically recognized the GNA but also provided support to the HR for their struggle against the Islamists. The US was also supposed to be back in the GNA, but Trump jumped out to praise the HR at one point, so the

US's position was exposed as a lot more ambiguous in practice. Yeah, so the GNA and the HR would keep on struggling against each other for control over the central bank and

oil companies and territory over the years. By the end of one particularly significant offensive in terms of nineteen, which saw the country's largest oil field brought under HR control, the situation was such that the HR's leverage came from their control over the oil field, and the GNA's leverage was that it was internationally recognized and could legally sell

the oil. GNA leader Fayez Al Seraje and HR leader Shalifa Afta seemed to be developing in cooperative relations, and in March of twenty nineteen they were supposed to have a national unity conference, but then the HR tried to take Tripoli, whoopsie, so they kind of had to postpone that conference. The resultant fighting led to the HR take in Sirte, a major city between Libya's east and west halves.

With Turkish support, the JNA successfully repelled the HR from the Metropoli and the situation was stabilized with a battle line just east of Sirte.

in October twenty twenty. According to reporting by Al Jazeera. The UN initiated a new attempt at a unifying government in twenty twenty one, which was approved originally by both rival parliaments, leading to the establishment of the Interim Government of National Unity GNU in March twenty twenty one, thus

replacing the previously UN backed GNA. So we went from GNA to GNU, but then the GNU would be opposed by the HR, which withdrew from the GNU in September twenty twenty one and established the Government of National Stability GNS in March twenty two. So the GNA was replaced by the GNU and the GNU was now opposed by the GNS, and thus the country remains split into up to today between the UN back to GNU and the

hr slash Libya National Army backed GNS. And in all of this chaos, people on the ground have been suffering. They've been suffering human rights of uses, disappearances. Up to recently, the GNU imposed a morality police, and they have been numerous reports about open slave markets in Libya where migrant Black Africans are auctioned to the highest bidder. Yeah, this is a result of human trafficking and death bondage, so not exactly the same as chattel slavery, but the experience

and racial undertones are all too familiar. The suffering in Libya has also spread beyond its borders. Following Gaddafi's fall, the weapons of his military stockpiles ended up in the hands of militants across the Sahel region of Africa and even in Syria. You'll remember in my episode on the situation in Nigeria, some of those weapons ended up in the hands of Bokohoram and other Islamic militant groups in

the region, Pulani herdsman and so on. Tragically, because Libya just can't seem to catch a break at all, September twenty three also saw catastrophic floods devastating the country. The hurricane strong storm Daniel caused two dams to burst in the coastal city of Durna, which is within Jenness territory in eastern Libya. The flooding killed at least four thousand people or potentially even more, left one thousands missing and

displaced more than forty thousand others. Venetians, still wrought by civil war and still unrecovered from the devastation of the Natal Obomban campaign, surely could have mustered a more adequate

response to the tragedy if not for those conditions. In fact, it is theorized that the tragedy could have been avoided altogether because, according to reports by the Middle East Eye, a Turkish company was supposed to rehability to feel dams, but their works were reportedly interrupted by the twenty eleven uprising and subsequent civil war.

of their actions. I don't want people to get it twisted though, because in the time since, as people have observed the devastation wrought by the civil wars, there has been an effort to almost whitewash Gaddafi and to limit our vision of possibilities to a binary of either perpetual Gaddaffi rule on one end or perpetual civil war on

the other end. Those are not the only possibilities. So we've discussed the legacy of nature intervention, which deserves condemnation in this episode, and it should be an indication that who the Western invasions and war was not going to liberate anyone. Yeah, But aside from that accurate analysis of Libya, since the fall of Kadafie. I want to bring in some conversation on demand himself in the next episode. Until then, all powets to all the people. This has been, it

could happen here, have been are siege peace. It could happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.