An explosion killed the military prosecutor Yussef Ali al-Asseifar in Benghazi last week

A little under two years ago, Philip Hammond, the Defence Secretary, urged British businessmen to begin “packing their suitcases” and to fly to Libya to share in the reconstruction of the country and exploit an anticipated boom in natural resources.
Yet now Libya has almost entirely stopped producing oil as the government loses control of much of the country to militia fighters.
Mutinying security men have taken over oil ports on the Mediterranean and are seeking to sell crude oil on the black market. Ali Zeidan, Libya’s Prime Minister, has threatened to “bomb from the air and the sea” any oil tanker trying to pick up the illicit oil from the oil terminal guards, who are mostly former rebels who overthrew Muammar Gaddafi and have been on strike over low pay and alleged government corruption since July.
As world attention focused on the coup in Egypt and the poison gas attack in Syria over the past two months, Libya has plunged unnoticed into its worst political and economic crisis since the defeat of Gaddafi two years ago. Government authority is disintegrating in all parts of the country putting in doubt claims by American, British and French politicians that Nato’s military action in Libya in 2011 was an outstanding example of a successful foreign military intervention which should be repeated in Syria.
In an escalating crisis little regarded hitherto outside the oil markets, output of Libya’s prized high-quality crude oil has plunged from 1.4 million barrels a day earlier this year to just 160,000 barrels a day now. Despite threats to use military force to retake the oil ports, the government in Tripoli has been unable to move effectively against striking guards and mutinous military units that are linked to secessionist forces in the east of the country.
Libyans are increasingly at the mercy of militias which act outside the law. Popular protests against militiamen have been met with gunfire; 31 demonstrators were shot dead and many others wounded as they protested outside the barracks of “the Libyan Shield Brigade” in the eastern capital Benghazi in June.
Though the Nato intervention against Gaddafi was justified as a humanitarian response to the threat that Gaddafi’s tanks would slaughter dissidents in Benghazi, the international community has ignored the escalating violence. The foreign media, which once filled the hotels of Benghazi and Tripoli, have likewise paid little attention to the near collapse of the central government.
The strikers in the eastern region Cyrenaica, which contains most of Libya’s oil, are part of a broader movement seeking more autonomy and blaming the government for spending oil revenues in the west of the country. Foreigners have mostly fled Benghazi since the American ambassador, Chris Stevens, was murdered in the US consulate by jihadi militiamen last September. Violence has worsened since then with Libya’s military prosecutor Colonel Yussef Ali al-Asseifar, in charge of investigating assassinations of politicians, soldiers and journalists, himself assassinated by a bomb in his car on 29 August.
Rule by local militias is also spreading anarchy around the capital. Ethnic Berbers, whose militia led the assault on Tripoli in 2011, temporarily took over the parliament building in Tripoli. The New York-based Human Rights Watch has called for an independent investigation into the violent crushing of a prison mutiny in Tripoli on 26 August in which 500 prisoners had been on hunger strike. The hunger strikers were demanding that they be taken before a prosecutor or formally charged since many had been held without charge for two years.
The government called on the Supreme Security Committee, made up of former anti-Gaddafi militiamen nominally under the control of the interior ministry, to restore order. At least 19 prisoners received gunshot shrapnel wounds, with one inmate saying “they were shooting directly at us through the metal bars”. There have been several mass prison escapes this year in Libya including 1,200 escaping from a prison after a riot in Benghazi in July.  
The Interior Minister, Mohammed al-Sheikh, resigned last month in frustration at being unable to do his job, saying in a memo sent to Mr Zeidan that he blamed him for failing to build up the army and the police. He accused the government, which is largely dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, of being weak and dependent on tribal support. Other critics point out that a war between two Libyan tribes, the Zawiya and the Wirrshifana, is going on just 15 miles from the Prime Minister’s office.
Diplomats have come under attack in Tripoli with the EU ambassador’s convoy ambushed outside the Corinthia hotel on the waterfront. A bomb also wrecked the French embassy.
One of the many failings of the post-Gaddafi government is its inability to revive the moribund economy. Libya is wholly dependent on its oil and gas revenues and without these may not be able to pay its civil servants. Sliman Qajam, a member of the parliamentary energy committee, told Bloomberg that “the government is running on its reserves. If the situation doesn’t improve, it won’t be able to pay salaries by the end of the year”.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/special-report-we-all-thought-libya-had-moved-on--it-has-but-into-lawlessness-and-ruin-8797041.html

Where are all the military intervention supporters on nairaland?

This pre-revolution assessment of Libya that you also might find insightful.

by Graham Brown / March 31st 2011

Libya: 42 years of oppression?

Having lived and worked in Libya from 2 weeks after the Revolution (or coup, as opponents call it) of September 1st 1969 for several years up until 1980, I feel I am able to provide some testimony as to the nature and achievements of the new regime that swept away a corrupt monarchy which condemned the majority of Libyans to poverty.

Whatever may be said about Gadaffi, I cannot understand how so many are referring to 42 years of oppression when, as I recall, the new leadership was greeted with something like euphoria in 1969 especially by the young some of whom I was teaching. I clearly remember my classes being cut short by my pupils eagerly streaming out of the classroom to join massive pro-government demonstrations. The new authority calling itself The Revolutionary Command Council initiated a socialist programme- first nationalising the oil companies, fixing a minimum wage, extending the welfare and health systems and slashing the obscene rents being charged by property owners. A limit was imposed on the rents that landlords could charge, fixing maximum rents at about one third of the pre-revolutionary level.

Tripoli untill then had been the most expensive city in the Middle East. Many large properties were taken over and let to the people at low rents. The vast sprawling shanty town just outside Tripoli was torn down and replaced by new workers' housing projects. The Kingdom of Libya became The Libyan Arab Republic and shortly after was re-named The Libyan Arab Socialist Jamahariyah (or State of the Masses). Later, a law was enacted making it illegal to own more than one house. I can recall an argument in one class with a student who attacked Gadaffi for this, with myself defending the law saying it would solve the housing problem in my country. With only about 20% literacy in 1969, by 1980 this had increased to over 90%. Education was given priority with a large proportion of the oil wealth being spent on new schools and colleges.

The new government quickly demonstrated its anti-imperialist credentials by kicking the Americans out of the huge Wheelus Air Base for which they never forgave Gadaffi as it was their key base in the Mediterranean. Similarly Britain was expelled from its military base at El Adem, and the days on which these events happened became national holidays. In the first year the large Italian community which owed its origin to the fascist occupation was expelled from the country, and the commercial life of Tripoli which Italians had dominated came under the control of Libyans. Libya joined the socialist countries in giving support and aid to anti-imperialist movements, especially to the Palestinian cause and the struggle of the ANC against the apartheid regime in South Africa.

It should be noted that Colonel Gadaffi was the first national leader whom Nelson Mandela visited after his release. When criticised for doing this, he countered by saying that Libya above all other countries had given the most support to the anti-apartheid movement and he wanted to thank the Libyan leader for this. Gadaffi outlined his concept of government in 'The Green Book', which essentially was an attempt to establish a form of government not based on representative institutions but on Peoples' Commitees which are supposed to deliver a form of grass roots directly participatory democracy. How effective this has been is difficult to assess, but it appears to have been a genuine attempt to empower ordinary Libyans.

To say, as many in the media and Libyan dissidents are claiming, that Libyans have been enduring 42 years of oppression since 1st September 1969 is not borne out by my own experience of living and working in Libya. During the four years I spent there between 1969 and 1980 at different periods I never sensed any atmosphere of repression. In fact the few Libyans I did encounter who criticised the government did not appear afraid to voice their opinions and among the large number I mixed with, including the many Libyan friends my wife and I had, most expressed their support. There are claims that the east, particularly Benghazi, has not received equal treatment with the west of Libya and that a feeling of being discriminated against in more recent years has led to the growth of an opposition which saw the events in neighbouring Tunisia and Egypt as an opportunity to rise up against the regime. This may be the case, though it seems likely that Gadaffi still commands widespread support in the rest of Libya, especially Tripoli where the majority of the population live.

The army, unlike in Tunisia and Egypt, has stayed largely loyal to the government and continues to fight bravely in spite of the airstrikes by NATO countries. Some will say that my experience of life in Libya was 31 years ago and that a lot could have changed since then and I have to accept that my knowledge of the history of the new Libya since 1980 is very limited. But I think that we need to be very suspicious of some of the negative propaganda furnished by the Western media.

The conviction of Al Megrahi for the Lockerbie bombing is almost certainly unsafe as it is far more likely to have been the work of Iran and the evidence presented was totally inadequate, which is the view of some of the victims' families. Many of the stories we read about are unsubstantiated, though it does seem that an Islamist insurgency in the 1990's was put down pretty ferociously and that a number of prisoners taken during that conflict were shot during a riot at Abu Salim prison. The figure of 1,000 put out by dissidents is no doubt a huge exaggeration. The riot as far as can be ascertained started after some prison guards were held hostage.

The assault on Libya has nothing to do with 'humanitarianism'. It has gone far beyond Security Council Resolution 1973 in taking sides with the anti-government forces in what is clearly a civil war. Now Cameron and Sarkozy are clamouring to actually arm the rebels, or should we call them insurgents, and US officials have admitted that CIA ground forces have been operating inside Libya for several weeks.

This is an imperialist intervention, with the aim of regaining Western control of a Third World country.

Life's a byt.ch, hence why I stay fvcking her everyday dog.gystyle!!

Anyway, you never know the value of what you have till you lose it. And also the devil you know is better than the angel you don't know.

Mummar Gaddafi wasn't perfect, however, he did a lot for Libya and Libyans. Yes, he was in power for too long. However, Libyans could've asked for reforms and let the political growth/evolution the country needed happen from within. For growth to be permanent, sustainable, progressive and worthwhile, it has to always happen from within. External interference has never helped and it'll never help.

Libyan's paid the ultimate prize for their pseudo-freedom. Gave away their country, freedom, gold, $140 billion foreign reserve, oil, infrastructures, hundreds of thousands of lives, and their future away on a platter of gold, to the destructive banksters, neo-cons, neo-liberals and the owners of the world.

Anyway, that's what you get when people get caught-up in western cultural imperialism and democracy. Everything isn't what it seems to on paper - most of the western values coloured people adore are just part of the dreams and weapons western countries are using to continue their unabated domination of the planet. Hence why coloured people need re-education and re-orientation, on how to solve their unique problems based on their own temperament and consciousness!

Finally, regardless of how one part of me feel sorry for the predicament the Libyan's are in at the moment, I also believe they deserve the hardship and torture they're going through now.

Qaddafi turned an extremely divided country, which was one of the poorest in Africa, into the most prosperous (measured by GDP per capita and average lifespan) in Africa. His government provided free healthcare, education and electricity - and if you couldn't get the healthcare you needed within Libya, the government would organise you treatment overseas. Not that I'm socialist, but from the results you can see Qaddafi was working towards the interests of Libyans and had a lot of success.
Qaddafi was a net positive of Libya and imperialism destroyed it.

shymexx: Life's a byt.ch, hence why I stay fvcking her everyday dog.gystyle!!

Anyway, you never know the value of what you have till you lose it. And also the devil you know is better than the angel you don't know.

Mummar Gaddafi wasn't perfect, however, he did a lot for Libya and Libyans. Yes, he was in power for too long. However, Libyans could've asked for reforms and let the political growth/evolution the country needed happen from within. For growth to be permanent, sustainable, progressive and worthwhile, it has to always happen from within. External interference has never helped and it'll never help.

Libyan's paid the ultimate prize for their pseudo-freedom. Gave away their country, freedom, gold, $140 billion foreign reserve, oil, infrastructures, hundreds of thousands of lives, and their future away on a platter of gold, to the destructive banksters, neo-cons, neo-liberals and the owners of the world.

Anyway, that's what you get when people get caught-up in western cultural imperialism and democracy. Everything isn't what it seems to on paper - most of the western values coloured people adore are just part of the dreams and weapons western countries are using to continue their unabated domination of the planet. Hence why coloured people need re-education and re-orientation, on how to solve their unique problems based on their own temperament and consciousness!

Finally, regardless of how one part of me feel sorry for the predicament the Libyan's are in at the moment, I also believe they deserve the hardship and torture they're going through now.

Some of us Predicted this and I remember saying on a thread here that foolish Libyans will regret the killing of Ghaddaffi before the 2nd anniversary of his death .. Sha the same thing is about to happen in Syria again and as usual fools on NL have taken sides with the rebel just because CNN says it right to do so

Libyans don enter one chance!

It's a sad sad thing. Life is really unfair. They went there because of oil and her foreign reserve. They stole and stole. Now, they're giving out food stamps to their own children in the West but Libyans are suffering. So unfair!

Foreign reserve gone. . . country dilapidated.

What is the name of the new president of Libya?

lakhadimar: What is the name of the new president of Libya?

David (Cameron) (Barack) Obama

Call 'him' David Obama

So much for a country where the religion of peace is being practised

I said it... Libya was d only African country without external debt... and now Libyan students enjoyed free education regarded as compulsory by the government... now?... everything with it's own consequence.. Rest in Peace Muammar Ghaddafi

PEStyOFlife: So much for a country where the religion of peace is being practised

....is d religion of peace not practiced in Quwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.... common don't be a senseless bigot

wasak: ....is d religion of peace not practiced in Quwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.... common don't be a senseless bigot

you call me a bigot......... i dont know who is more of a bigot me or one of your muslim brother gasing his fellow citizens(syria)...... You people claim to be peaceful but the fact is most wars being fought in the world is being fought by countries that practise islam..... Not to talk of how many people have been killed just because of islam.....

#just saying#