Libya

Saudi Arabia tries to push Qatar into line

A simmering conflict between the Gulf State of Qatar and its larger neighbour, Saudi Arabia, has abruptly flared into an open, serious stand-off. Beginning on 5 June, a Saudi-led grouping of states including Egypt, Bahrain and UAE broke off diplomatic relations, and implemented travel and trade bans against Qatar. Qatar has said it will not retaliate.Saudi Arabia has closed Qatar’s only land border and ordered its citizens to leave Qatar. UAE, Egyptian and Saudi ports have refused to allow Qatari ships to dock.80% of Qatar’s food comes from its Gulf neighbours and 40% comes across the land...

Is Corbyn right on terrorism?

“Jeremy Corbyn has said that terror attacks in Britain are our own fault,” claimed Theresa May on Friday. “I want to make something clear… there can never be an excuse for terrorism, there can be no excuse for what happened in Manchester.” It is a measure of the cynicism — and desperation — of the Tories and their press that Corbyn’s speech this week has been attacked in this way. Corbyn did refer to British foreign policy as a factor in any explanation of terrorism, but only in similar terms to many commentators, and indeed some Tories. What Corbyn actually said was: “Many experts, including...

Daesh resurgence in Libya

The fact that the perpetrator of the Manchester bombing, Salman Abedi, may have been part of a Daesh network in Libya has focused attention on the group outside of its main territories in Iraq and Syria. Daesh is known to have groups allied to it across the Middle East, Africa and Asia but in recent years their strength has grown in Libya. The fall of Gaddafi lead to a series of fractured and splintered militias and rival governments fighting for control. The roots of Daesh in Libya lie with the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, formed in the 1990s from remnants of the mujahideen who fought the...

Whitewash on Regeni

At the end of February, a month after the disappearance in Cairo of Italian researcher Giulio Regeni, the official Egyptian investigation into his torture and death has reported. The murder, so the Minister of the Interior claimed, was “most likely” due to a “personal vendetta”, in a context of “young Arab/ foreign contacts” where drugs freely circulated. This cynical nonsense was of a piece with the same minister’s claim, when Regeni’s body was first found, that death was “most likely” due to the victim being struck by a car. The autopsy in Italy revealed no evidence of any drugs, but that...

300 migrants drown in Mediterranean

Over 300 migrants, thought to be from sub-Saharan Africa, drowned earlier this month, in an effort to reach Europe. It is thought that three inflatable boats each carrying around 100 people, on waters with temperatures barely above zero with waves as high as eight metres, capsized between North Africa and Sicily. The news came shortly after 29 migrants froze to death trying to make the same journey. There have been many similar stories over the past months. Last year, 3,419 migrants lost their lives in this way. At the end of last year, the Italian government gave in to anti-immigrant pressure...

Libya: the crisis and the constitution

Ongoing struggles between the Libyan government and militias may either be resolved or worsen on the 15 December. That is the date the government has set for the full incorporation of the militias — which have been at low level war with the government — into the army. Prime Minister Ali Zeidan had the militias on the pay roll; on 15 December that pay will stop. The crisis is acute; the Amazigh and Tibu tribes of the south have respectively stopped the gas and the petroleum supplies to the north. At the same time militias have stopped or are severely restricting the export of oil from the...

Malta plan to “push back” refugees halted after protests

A Maltese government plan to send back Somali refugees from Libya has been halted, for now, by protests, just hours before their midnight Air Malta flight to Tripoli's military airport. Dozens of people who had gathered outside the police HQ at Fontiana (just outside the capital Valletta's city gates) in a “stop the trucks” demo, cheered as they heard that the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) had issued an interim measure to stop the deportations. Over 1,000 black African refugees fled Libya over two days in a mass escape by sea in dingies and rafts. Many of Libya’s country’s already...

Libya: minority rights under attack

As events in Mali are described as “collateral damage” from the Libyan revolution, significant events in Libya have gained far less attention. Of all the North African and Middle Eastern rebellions, Libya is a comparative success story and is widely perceived as such by its population. Ethnic minorities and migrant labour have fared badly, the militias are worrisome — but Libya is a functioning liberal, secular democracy in all but name. Some critics say the new civil society has been based on the assumption that the state is controlled by sharia law. This is not so. There is a lot of popular...

Libya: defeating the Salafists

The attack and killings at the US consulate in Benghazi — killings orchestrated ostensibly around the protest against the Innocence of Muslims film — were, in reality it seems, long-planned. Many in Benghazi saw it as a reprisal attack for the US drone killing of a high-ranking Libyan al-Qaeda operative in Afghanistan. The attacks were widely seen as the work of Ansar al-Sharia, a recently emerging hardline Salafist grouping who have some support in eastern Libya and Benghazi specifically. They have been condemned for their attacks on Sufi shrines and the demolition of holy sites dedicated to...

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