(2011-02-16) Libya Revolt

Libya is now in the RevoltsOf2011 game. On the evening of 15 February approximately 200 people began demonstrating in front of police headquarters in Benghazi following the arrest of Libyan human rights activist Fethi Tarbel.

Feb21

• update - Libyan leader Muammar Al Gaddafi is believed to have fled the capital Tripoli after anti-government demonstrators breached the state television building and set government property alight.

• Tribal leaders railed against Gaddafi while reports swirled of soldiers defecting from their units to the opposition. There were also reports of senior Libyan officials resigning from their posts, outraged by the killings carried out by security forces.

• Juan Cole says: The residents are alleging that the Qaddafi regime has scrambled fighter jets to strafe civilian crowds, has deployed heavy artillery against them, and has occupied the streets with armored vehicles and strategically-placed snipers.

Mar19: a multi-state coalition began a military intervention in Libya, ostensibly to implement United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973. The United Nations Intent and Voting was to have "an immediate ceasefire in Libya, including an end to the current attacks against civilians, which it said might constitute crimes against humanity"

Mar31: "Whence Libya? Why Libya? Whither Libya?" by W R Polk. Finally, what is the alternative today in Libya? At this point there are no attractive or easy alternatives. That was true in Vietnam and Iraq; it is certainly also true of Afghanistan. So the easy thing is to keep on doing the same thing. But doing the same thing also causes the costs to rise and only rarely produces conditions conducive to policy change. A more sensible course of action is to try to stop digging the hole into which one is falling.

Aug'2011: fall of Tripoli

Oct20: Gaddafi killed by NTC.

The 2012 Benghazi attack took place on the evening of September 11, 2012, when Islamic militants attacked the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, killing U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and U.S. Foreign Service Information Management Officer Sean Smith.

• Oct'2012: Lt Col AndrewWood answered that AlQaeda is now more established in Libya than it was prior to the 2011 intervention, and that the terrorist group is "certainly more established than we are." There were concerns during the intervention that the US and our NATO allies did not even know who made up the forces that were fighting to oust dictator Col. Muammar Ghaddafi. Similar concerns have arisen as the civil war in Syria escalates.

The civil war's aftermath led to violence and instability across the country, which erupted into renewed civil war in 2014... when General Khalifa Haftar launched Operation Dignity against Islamist groups. *The Second Libyan Civil War[53][54] is an ongoing conflict between four rival organizations seeking to control Libya:

• the internationally recognized government of the Council of Deputies that was elected democratically in 2014, also known as the "Tobruk government" and internationally known formally as the "Libyan Government", which has the loyalty of the Libyan Army under the command of General officer Khalifa Haftar and has been supported by air strikes by Egypt and the UAE.;[55]
• the rival Islamist government of the new General National Congress based in the capital Tripoli, led by the Muslim Brotherhood, backed by the wider Islamist coalition known as "Libya Dawn"[56][57] and aided by Qatar, Sudan, and Turkey;[55][58]
• the Islamist Shura Council of Benghazi Revolutionaries, led by Ansar al-Sharia (Libya), which has had the support of the New General National Congress and the unrecognised government in Tripoli led by former Prime Minister Omar Al-Hassi, stating that Ansar al-Sharia are "simple, beautiful and amiable" as well as being engaged in “missionary work";[59]
• and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant's Libyan provinces.*