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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsAssassination pushes Libya towards civil war two years after Gaddafi death.
Libya marks the second anniversary of the death of Muammar Gaddafi with the country on the brink of a new civil war and fighting raging in the eastern city of Benghazi, birthplace of its Arab spring revolution.
Violence between radical militias and regular forces broke out on Friday night and continued yesterday, while the capital Tripoli is braced for fallout from the kidnapping earlier this month of prime minister Ali Zaidan. Federalists in Cyrenaica, home to most of Libya's oil, open their own independent parliament in Benghazi this week, in a step that may herald the breakup of the country.
For months, radical militias and regular forces in Benghazi have fought a tit-for-tat war. Last week two soldiers had their throats slit as they slept in an army base. But Friday's killing of Libya's military police commander, Ahmed al-Barghathi, shot as he left a mosque, has became the trigger for wider violence. Hours after an assassination branded a "heinous act" by US ambassador Deborah Jones, armed units stormed the Benghazi home of a prominent militia commander, Wissam Ben Hamid, with guns and rockets.
Fighting continued into the night, with army units heading for the home of a second militia commander, Ahmed Abu Khattala, indicted by the US for the killing of US ambassador Chris Stevens last year. There, they were turned back by powerful militia units.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/19/assassination-libya-civil-war-gaddafi-benghazi
malaise
(269,054 posts)TwilightGardener
(46,416 posts)Fantastic Anarchist
(7,309 posts)Not another civil war.
SoCalDem
(103,856 posts)A longtime dictator makes enemies and various factions plot against him and contemplate what THEY will do when they get a chance. It's almost "normal" for these factions to go to war against each other when the power vacuum occurs. It really sucks to be an ordinary person in the line of fire, but it's just the way it is.
Migration is the best choice, but many get caught in the crossfire.
Comrade Grumpy
(13,184 posts)It's not "just the way it is;" it's the way we helped make it.
SoCalDem
(103,856 posts)civil wars happen everywhere and have been happening since homo sapiens stood on two feet.
Comrade Grumpy
(13,184 posts)The results of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the Libyan intervention are worth pondering as we slither our way into ever deeper involvement in the Syrian civil war.