STS Bulletin no. 34

"Imposing a no fly zone over Libya"

translates as

Bombing Tripoli.


I'm trying to get a grip on what's going on in Libya. Unfortunately everybody involved is lying; the "coalition", the Gadhafi gang, the insurgents. The British media are spinning like Mevlevi dervishes. Nothing credible can be gleaned from the BBC's 24 hour news service. The one truthful statement coming out of the media and independent observers is that nobody knows who the insurgents are - what organisations are leading, guiding, manipulating them.
One independent journalist claimed this morning that British special forces are fighting beside the insurgents. Everyone seems to be agreed that land forces will be sent in eventually, leading some to wonder when, once installed, they will ever withdraw.
This adventure was undertaken, according to mealy-mouthed politicians, to prevent the slaughter of innocent civilians, but their tactic of dropping bombs on cities doesn't sit well with their declared aims. That "dirty little three-letter word" (George Galloway) keeps coming to mind, and some sceptics allege that the need to protect British and other investments in Libya's oil industry is a leading motive for Cameron's war.
The aim behind the bombing of Tripoli is either to smoke Gadhafi, or to demoralise the population to the extent that they will decide that taking on the dictator and his troops is no more dangerous that waiting to become collateral damage.
I get the impression that the size of Gadhafi's support among the Libyan population has been underestimated by western observers. Add to that the mix of monarchists, Sanusiyya and former Gadhafi yes-men, who present themselves as the opposition, there doesn't seem much to choose between the factions.

When I was doing part of my army time in Libya in the late fifties, the country was, not to mince words, a shithole. It was ruled by a British protegé who had been installed as king. The economy seemed to depend mainly on a British and US military presence, providing menial jobs for the lower orders, and - I assume - featherbedding His Majesty, and the in-crowd. The only national product to be seen was dates. Middling businesses seemed in the main to be in the hands of Italian colons, who had been shipped over by Mussolini in the days of his new Roman Empire. The native population might be street pedlars or stallholders.
Later, in the 1960s oil was discovered and the oil-slickers moved in. Any profits going to the Libyans went straight to HM who shared it with a chosen few. Until 1969 when the army decided enough was enough. Enter Mu'ammar Gadhafi, future bogeyman of the West. The oil profits began to be used for social purposes, healthcare, housing, etc. The people were now better off than they'd ever been. The British, the Yanks and the Italians were served eviction orders.
It couldn't last. Gadhafi began to see himself as a Messiah, and began to spread the word beyond his country's borders, mainly by means of firearms and explosives. The West began its futile attempts to undermine him; bungled assassinations, etc., fuelling his paranoia.
So here we are. The beast must die. The oil flow must be under the control of a more amenable thug.
Personally, I suspect that some of Gadhafi's hard core support must come from the older folks who remember the tyrant who kept them in poverty, and prefer the tyrant who brought some improvement to their lives. Whichever tyrant the Western invaders impose won't be any more liberal than the Sanusi or the false Messiah.

I still believe that Gadhafi was fitted up for the Lockerbie bomb. That the guilty party was Iran who contracted the job out to Jibril's mercenaries; revenge for the Iranian airbus atrocity . But the White House and the CIA wanted Gadhafi's head on a plate, so the evidence was manufactured to suit. More here.