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September 27, 2013
Just after the war, Western media hailed the fact the oil installations were not damaged by the population bombing and oil production was near normal at 1.4 million barrels/day (bpd).
Then in July the armed guards hired by the government in Tripoli suddenly
revolted and seized control of the eastern oil field terminals they were
supposed to protect. There is where the vast bulk of Libya’s oil is
produced, near Benghazi. It goes by pipeline to tankers on the Mediterranean
for export.
The tribal occupiers demanded more pay and went on strike to demand pay and an end to corruption. The end result is today, early September Libya pumped a mere 150,000 barrels of its capacity of 1.6 million bpd.
Exports have fallen to
80,000 barrels per day. [1]
It is ruled by tribal consensus among numerous tribes.
Qaddafi was chosen in a long process of
voting by tribal elders that can take up to 15 years I was told by one
expert. When he was murdered and his family hunted, NATO forced rule by a
Muslim Brotherhood-dominated National Transitional Council (NTC).
The reality is that, by all accounts lawless bands, armed for the first time during the war with modern weapons, including foreign Al Qaeda and other jihadists are carrying out daily bombings across the country for local control.
Tripoli itself has numerous armed gangs controlling sections of the capitol. It is turning into an armed battle between local tribal militias that are forming and the Brotherthood that controls the central government.
Leaders in the provinces
of Cyrenaica and Fezzan are considering breaking away from Tripoli and rebel
militias mobilizing across the country. [2]
The main opposition party, a center-right National Forces Alliance, as a result just deserted Congress together with several smaller ethnic parties, leaving the Brotherhood’s Justice and Construction party heading a government with crumbling authority.
The Obama Administration has promoted a takeover across the Muslim world from Egypt to Tunisia to Syria by the secretive Muslim Brotherhood as part of its long-term strategy of controlling the Muslim Arc of Crisis from Afghanistan to Libya.
As the
Saudi-backed military coup against Brotherhood president Muhammed Morsi in
Egypt in July showed, the Obama strategy has some problems.
Some 500 prisoners in Tripoli jail did a hunger strike
to protest being held two years without charges. When the government ordered
the Supreme Security Committee to restore order, they began shooting
prisoners through the bars. In July 1200 prisoners escaped a jail after a
riot in Benghazi. In short lawlessness and anarchy is spreading. [4]
Because the US and NATO was adamant it wanted no "boots on the ground," instead they freely gave arms to any and all rebels who would shoot at the Qaddafi government troops.
Now they still have the guns and Libya was described to me by one French journalist who had recently been there as,
Foreigners have mostly fled Benghazi since the American ambassador was murdered in the US consulate by jihadi militiamen last September.
And
Libya’s military prosecutor Colonel Yussef Ali al-Asseifar, in charge of
investigating assassinations of politicians, soldiers and journalists, was
himself assassinated by a bomb in his car on 29 August. [5]
Sliman Qajam, a member of the parliamentary energy committee, told Bloomberg that,
The Obama Administration argues that the not-yet-proven use by the Assad government of chemical weapons in Syria justifies a bombing war by NATO and allies such as,
...based on the "humanitarian" doctrine deceptively known as "responsibility to protect," which argues that certain violations of human rights or safety are so serious as to transcend international law, UN Charters or US constitutional requirements and allow on moral grounds any US President to bomb any country he or she chooses.
Something is not quite right here…
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