Bloodshed in Libya escalating

This is an Australian government map of Libya. The whole country is red, meaning ‘Do not travel‘.

Today, Dutch NOS TV reports on the escalation of bloodshed in NATO’s ‘new’ Libya. The proxy war about oil there between the French Macron government and the Italian Salvini government; though the NOS does not call it that.

They write that the paramilitary force of warlord Haftar has reached a point 40 kilometer south of the capital Tripoli, where Haftar’s enemies govern.

They remark that Haftar from the 1980s till 2011 lived in exile in the USA. They don’t mention he was a CIA asset then.

After the 2011 NATO war, including the murder of Colonel Gaddafi, Haftar was back in Libya as boss of one of many outfits killing each other and civilians.

They quote Dutch ‘Libya expert’ Gerbert van der Aa (translated):

[Haftar] “has delusions of grandeur. …

People long for the time when Libya was the richest country in Africa. For most Libyans things went well at the time.”

The militia leader [Haftar] is not known for his respect for human rights. The International Criminal Court is investigating various videos that show how Haftar’s opponents are executed with a shot in the neck. The shooter is still walking around freely despite an international arrest warrant. Haftar does nothing about it.

The NOS article mentions that the Egyptian Sisi dictatorship, the Saudi absolute monarchy and the French Macron administration support Haftar.

Van der Aa expects that the whole European Union will come around to ‘preferring a strongman’ (Haftar).

So, the pretext for the NATO 2011 regime change oil war was that Colonel Gaddafi was a dictator. And now, eight years later, they may welcome a Haftar dictatorship. With the difference that since 2011, slavery, abolished in Libya in the 1850s, has returned. That, since 2011, there are many more torture jails and very many less hospitals with very many less life-saving medicines. That women’s rights have gone down the drain. That many militia men and still more Libyan and refugee civilians have been killed.