The latest estimate is now at more than 20k dead people. Still rising…
I find that article terribly patronising by the way. The UK were among the nations which decided to bomb Lybia at the time, and transform a quite well-organised, although non-democratic state, into a chaos of permanent civil war. Yet, there is no hint in the article about that. In my book, the UK is in part responsible for the lawlessness that article keeps lamenting about, along with France and other NATO nations.
Yes, Gaddafi wasn’t very palatable, and Derna was apparently neglected during his reign, but that is nothing compared with what all Lybians have had to endure since.
I’m surprised that a river in Libya (Sahara) can have so much water to wash away an entire city. I thought it was a tidal surge from the Mediterranean.
The cyclon hit Lybia with devastating strength and with an immense amount of water. That water went down the river towards the first dam, which broke under the added stress. Then, the whole mess went down towards the second dam, which broke as well.
The result is the combined effect of a truly out-of-scale storm (due to the Mediterranean Sea warming up like never before this summer, it gained an unprecedented strength), poor conception and maintenance of the two dams, and unregulated city growth in dangerous areas below the dams.
Previously to the catastrophe, there wasn’t one single well-functioning hospital in this city of 100k inhabitants. I don’t dare imagining what happens right now there. Beyond the deads, there must be an awful lot of injured people as well. Who takes care of them?
Weren’t they already in a civil war by the time the UN passed any resolution of any sort? At least from the brief look I took on Wikipedia, the first UN resolution freezing Gaddafi’s assets was on 26 February, the rebels already managed to seize the eastern areas, including Derna.
Pakistan has had those floods recently as well. For countries with limited infrastructure and where corruption stops most meaningful govt activity , These disasters take a huge toll. As much as it’s a natural disaster , there are exacerbated by human interventions and activities as well
Yeah indeed, there was a rebellion, but the rebels couldn’t topple Gaddafi, and were in danger of being squarely beaten by the government’s armed forces. That’s the point when a coalition of several NATO states decided to take out Gaddafi and bomb Lybia (with the benediction of the UN, which was at the time still largely in the hands of the US). The US, UK and France were the leading nations carrying out that abomination.
That’s a very strange characterisation of a situation that was essentially developing into a stalemate. I can’t speak as to the motivation behind the enforcing of the no-fly zone without much more research, or to the effects of not having one, since I’m not a prophet, but just from a cursory look at at this Wikipedia article and its sources, I don’t think it seems very likely that it would have been a very swift end to the war as you seem to think it will be.
Your initial suggestion was that the actions of NATO led to this situation, whereas it’s quite clear that NATO did not precipitate the civil war, unless you’re suggesting that secret elements of the deep state agitated and fomented the uprising. Now, you’re suggesting that the rebels would have lost quickly without NATO intervention, whereas the situation was a lot more up in the air than that, with the rebels holding onto their strongholds, while making some small gains even prior to any NATO intervention, despite the counteroffensive by Gaddafi’s forces.
Who’s to say that the relevant counterfactual here isn’t that the country would have been devastated even more by an ongoing, entrenched civil war from a stalemate arising without intervention?
Even if the civil war had gone further (you might be right, it’s some time ago already, I don’t remember all aspects of this), I don’t think it could have been worse than what happened after NATO’s intervention, as the whole infrastructure of the country was pulverized, and civil war had extended to its entirety. It perdured until 2020, and even now, the country is split, with the consequences we know. The Lybian people have had to go through hell, and NATO has its big part of responsibility in this. Apart from the Western multinational oil companies and the arms merchants, no-one comes out of this better.
It was a case of scope creep for NATO. It was under a UN resolution and should have been carried out under a UN peacekeeping force. As it was, NATO withdrew as soon as Gaddafi was dead and there was no support or peacekeeping to replace it.
Countries should stay off of interference with other countries. No matter how repugnant the likes of Gaddafi and Saddam were , the alternate for the people of Libya and Iraq was far worse.
Good question. There was no formal NATO involvement, but Russia’s massive involvement created similar havoc than NATO’s in Lybia. On the other side, the West still provided some djihadist fighters with arms and logistical support.
As @Sithbare said above: foreign military interference always makes things worse than they already were.
(Sahara) can have so much water to wash away an entire city. I thought it was a tidal surge from the Mediterranean.