Submitted by Steve Brown…
Besides Syria, the US-inspired ‘Arab Spring’ has resulted in ongoing chaos for Libya, with the oil-rich state still in play, contested between Sarraj’s GNA and Haftar’s Libyan National Army.
Submitted by Richard Galustian…
The deaths in Libya, due to the continuing battle for Tripoli in particular, since Haftar’s Libyan National Army’s (the LNA) assault on the capital, have been mounting per week but are still, in the main, only in the double figures.
Generally those who do not know Libya think that for the past 8 years, since Ghaddafi’s death, it has been a place where there is an ongoing veritable daily blood bath caused by firefights between combatants.
Submitted by Richard Galustian…
Over this weekend, news has been emerging of a united and hardening position of all branches of US Government, including the White House, stridently speaking out against Haftar’s efforts to take militarily Tripoli.
This development effectively renders Trump’s now famous call to Haftar as irrelevant.
The catalyst that sent the overall situation into an uncontrolled spiral was the phone call made on the 15th April by US President Donald Trump to Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar declaring his support for Haftar. The Trump call was clearly unbeknownst to the US State Department and probably other US agencies and departments, and even some of Trump’s closest advisors.
The last few days of April feel like Shakespeare’s ides of March for geopolitical star gazers in the MENA region. It’s often written that weak elites in the region are watching Algeria and Libya very carefully to see how much of a people’s revolution can permeate into other countries. But in reality all leaders of the MENA region are studying the events there, in particular Libya – a country which Russian President Putin felt was lost to the West, when in 2011, the UN voted to bomb it, which, unwittingly perhaps led to the overthrow of Gaddafi.
The Duran’s Alex Christoforou and Editor-in-Chief Alexander Mercouris take a look at a US President Trump’s apparent support for Khalifa Haftar, the leader of the Libyan National Army trying to capture Tripoli from the UN backed government of Prime Minister Fayez al-Serraj.
Field Marshall Haftar’s forces control much of the eastern and southern parts of Libya. The LNA has steadily gained more territory as they march toward Tripoli. At the moment Haftar’s advance on the Libyan capital has been stalled by militias from Tripoli, Misrata, and Zintan.
The Duran’s Alex Christoforou and Editor-in-Chief Alexander Mercouris examine the unfolding, and possibly final, conflict in Libya…eight years removed from an American led regime change nightmare, that saw the most prosperous nation in Africa, torn apart and turned into a failed state, terrorist haven, where slave trade is now common practice.
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The prize is Tripoli, for anyone that can take it and secure it by this summer. That will, it’s felt by many, stabilise Libya or, conversely, at worse, make Her descend into a greater quagmire resulting in a new phase of very intense fighting and all out civil war.
Not much hope, at this moment, to feel optimism for a peaceful conclusion in Libya between the warring parties.
(ANTIMEDIA) Russia has had a busy month regarding its affairs in the Middle East. On March 9, Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The next day, Putin met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and on March 14, Russian Deputy Minister Mikhail Bogdanov met with Libyan General Khalifa Haftar’s envoy in Moscow.
