LIBYA - The Ongoing Saga of a Failed Nation

IMHO:  Libya is a nation that has never known democratic principles AND is very tribal.  Tribe before nation.

"Understanding Libya’s complex web of conflict" PBS NewsHour 7/28/2014

Excerpt

JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour):  And with me now is Frederic Wehrey.  He’s a former U.S. Air Force officer who served as a military attack in Libya.  He’s been to the country often since the overthrow of Gadhafi, and is now a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Why this violence?  I mean, there are many different players involved, but give us a sense of who the key ones are.  What is going on?

FREDERIC WEHREY, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace:  Well, at a very basic sense, there are these two rival factions from rival towns, Misrata and Zintan.

The Zintanis have controlled the airport.  The Misratans are allied with an Islamist militia that enjoyed support in the previous parliament.  That parliament is no longer in power.  And I think these Islamist militias felt like the window was closing, that they had to act now to seize the airport from these Zintanis that were holding the airport there.

There is also some factional politics that relate to what is going on in the east.  You had a renegade general, General Khalifa Haftar, who launched an operation in the east against the Islamists.  He’s partnered with those Zintani militias that are controlling the airport.

So in this very complex web of dynamics, of alliances, it’s finally arrived to Tripoli, and these Misratans felt like they had to act.

JEFFREY BROWN:  And is it right to see this all within this larger context of post-Gadhafi Libya about what happened?  We talked about it as it was happening, I recall.

FREDERIC WEHREY:  Right.

It is.  I mean, this is a country that under Gadhafi really had no state institutions.  It didn’t have an army.  It didn’t have a police.  It’s only gotten worse since the revolution.  What has happened really is that the provisional government, the transitional government put these militias on its payroll.

The militias are getting funding from Libya’s oil wealth.  And they have really mushroomed.  They have become their own entities.  They have grabbed the oil ports.  They have grabbed the airports.  They control armories.  There is no mediator, there’s no referee to keep them apart.  And this is what we’re seeing right now with the fighting.