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Richard Galustian

Libya...War Crimes on Both Sides?

Wednesday July 3, 2019

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A major escalation of the Libyan war has commenced.

On Monday 1st July, Libyan National Army (LNA) Commander Mohamed Manfour announced the beginning of a new aerial bombardment campaign after "traditional means" to "liberate Tripoli" had been exhausted.

Rumours abounded two weeks ago that the militias of Tripoli were beginning to show signs of buckling under the pressure from Field Marshall Khalifa  Haftar’s LNA. The LNA Airforce’s looked like it had achieved air superiority over Tripoli, then an unexpected turn occurred: Turkey upped their ante and embarked on a resupply of defence equipment to the Tripoli and Misrata militias.

The consequences on the ground in Libya of Turkey’s interference were immediate. A major setback resulted for Haftar on the 27th of June when the pro-Tripoli GNA Forces "liberated" Gharayan and forced Haftar’s LNA army to retreat from the town.

Haftar's Libyan National Army (LNA), said on Sunday (30th June) its air force destroyed a Turkish drone parked at Mitiga International Airport.
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US and UK Policy Toward Libya Shifts to ISIS and the Brotherhood

Thursday May 23, 2019

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“The West” is much divided over what should happen in Libya. This is particularly true for France and Italy, who each have vast oil and gas economic interests and are increasingly at odds with one another. 

While admittedly the US and UK have an eye on their potential economic interests in a future Libya, theirs is more of an anti-terrorism focus aimed at eradicating ISIS’s presence in Libya and specifically to find ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi who is thought to have recently moved to Libya and set up his new HQ. 

ISIS released a few weeks ago an 18 minute video (which TV stations around the world only had access to a few minutes) of him speaking, thought to have been taped in Libya, the first such video showing al-Baghdadi, providing proof of life, to be released in five years.

In the intervening current period, the battle to take Tripoli continues by Field Marshall Khalifa Haftar’s forces.

Also in almost tandem with the US/UK concentration on finding extremist terrorists in Libya (and elsewhere of course), views on the Muslim Brotherhood are being re-evaluated.
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Libya's Peace Process Dies in Palermo

Friday November 16, 2018

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“Resounding flop” was the verdict of Italy’s former prime minister Matteo Renzi on this week’s Libya peace conference held in Palermo. He’s not wrong. The conference hosted by Italy’s new government achieved the remarkable feat of making Libya’s tensions worse, not better. Acrimony broke out between the parties, and Turkey’s delegation walked out, its vice president Fuat Oktay accusing unnamed States of trying to "hijack the process.”

Some sources in Palermo suggested, yet to be verified, that the US thought the Conference was not too bad: a joke if true.

Moreover the mystery we might ask is what “process” is there to hijack? Because the truth is, the peace plan the conference was supporting is already dead.

That plan was the brainchild of the United Nations, launched more than a year ago with the aim of ending Libya’s split between warring Eastern and Western governments with elections in December. 

Even before the first delegates set foot in the pleasant Sicilian city of Palermo this week, the UN admitted the election date of December 10 they had decided to scrap.
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Khashoggi, Skripal, and the End of Morality in International Relations

Monday October 29, 2018

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Politics attracts psychopaths like honey attracts bears. Questions of morality are irrelevant for today’s politicians, along with questions of principle, honor and integrity -- things frequently written about by the great thinkers of the 20th Century, particularly Huxley and Orwell who are more and more referenced particularly in social media these days and rightly so.

On a point of detail, but one of importance and relevance to mention, is the response to Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s “disappearance” being in stark contrast to the West’s reaction to the alleged poisoning -- note not killing -- of Sergei Skripal, the former Russian intelligence officer who worked as a British double-agent, after he was found slumped on a bench in England with his daughter Yulia in March of this year.

You might say to yourself what has the Skripals got to do with the heinous murder of Jamal Khashoggi?

Well for one both Skripals have now “disappeared” in UK. Suffice to say that both men (Khashoggi and Skripal) went “missing” yet examine carefully the different reactions by the international community to both “missing” persons. While by the by no hard evidence of proof of life (or death) of either man was or has yet been produced at time of writing.
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A Milestone in Afghanistan

Friday August 17, 2018

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Sometime late next year, possibly as early as September, news crews will gather in Afghanistan for a unique event: To interview an American serviceman or woman who was not born when the war they are fighting began. He or she will not remember 9/11, and will have grown up with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as background noise. No doubt also a senior commander will be on hand to pronounce that the war against the Taliban is making progress, the same pronouncements the young recruit will have seen on TV all his or her life.

It will be a stark reminder that America has been at war for 225 of the 242 years of its existence: A handful of those conflicts -- the defeat of Hitler and Japan, for example  --  go down as "good wars." But most go down as operations that cost dearly in blood and treasure for little appreciable result.

In 1961, ​Dwight D. Eisenhower, the only American to make it to the highest offices in both politics and the military, warned, on leaving the presidency more than half a century ago, of the power of the  “military industrial complex”, and how war can become an end in itself.
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The Very Unhinged John Brennan

Wednesday July 18, 2018

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Winston Churchill said all there is to say about political summits with his quote: “Jaw jaw is better than war war.”

That is the thing to bear in mind when examining the rights and wrongs of the The Trump-Putin summit: Two leaders of two of the world’s most powerful nations, in Trump’s words "competitors" sorting out differences eyeball to eyeball.

Both men share Churchill’s approach, with Putin saying: “As nuclear powers, we bear special responsibility” for international security.

Putin said Russia (as a devout Christian country) considered it necessary for the two countries to work together on nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation – and to avoid weapons being placed in space.

“Even during the tensions of the Cold War, the US and the Soviets were able to maintain a strong dialogue (with now Russia),” said Trump. “But our relations (with now Russia) have never been worse than they are now. However that changed as of about four hours ago."
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Explosions Rock Tripoli Election Commission: Who's Trying to Prevent the Vote?

Wednesday May 2, 2018

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To underscore the dire situation in Libya and the extent to which extremists will go, on Wednesday at around noon two huge explosions occurred at the HNEC, the Higher National Election Commission's HQ, in Tripoli, killing over 15 people and wounding many more. The attack suggests that fanatics may be concerned over the rising popularity of Field Marshall Khalifa Haftar and fear that the controversial Haftar could win in the upcoming elections. They may be seeking to derail the vote. If so, their gambit may have the opposite effect: it could actually galvanize Libyan support for elections as a way out of the current political chaos and conundrum.

No doubt a contributing factor to this tragic bombing was the return on Thursday of Field Marshall Khalifa Haftar from a Paris hospital, via Cairo, to Libya on a proverbial "white horse" seen by some to be a drama giving an appearance of a triumphant return to Libya. 

Recovered after two weeks of alleged illness, which was much exaggerated by the media and by those hoping, like the UN, to see the back of him.

If as widely reported he was on death’s door, he would not have smiled for the bevy of photographers and TV cameras, even laughing and joking as he was met by dignitaries at the airport in Benghazi following his flight arrival from Cairo.
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UK Government Falling Apart, Changes Subject by Kicking Russia

Tuesday March 27, 2018

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The British government has never been more unpopular amongst the British people. It’s being crushed by problems entirely of its own making and undone by its own neglect and incompetence over a disastrously handled Brexit, crippling austerity measures, a general public still reeling from the horror of the Grenfell fire, and an ever-failing National Health Service, which, given that it is the fourth largest employer in Europe, is a deeply worrying and resonant issue.

In light of this, the response by British diplomat Mr. Stuart Gill OBE in his OpED to the Sunday Times of Malta, where he asserts that, “Today, only Russia combines a record of state-sponsored assassinations with an avowed motive for targeting Sergei Skripal – and a history of producing ‘Novochok’ agents,” reads like another desperate repetition of the falsehoods and insults towards Russia issued by Theresa May’s lame duck Government. (Note that the inventor of Novochok moved to the US over twenty years ago.)

Mr. Gill’s remark is just one of numerous outrageous and childish insults currently bandied around. Outbursts from UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and the inexperienced Minister of Defence, Gavin Williamson -- such as Russia should, “Shut up and go away” or “Putin is like Hitler” and “Russia probably did it” -- have been unprofessional, to say the very least, not to mention an offence to Russians of today and their relatives who died in the tens of millions fighting Hitler and the Nazis in WWII. 

But word on British streets suggests something different afoot, with many members of the public stating that they have serious reservations about the veracity of their government’s statements. Not just the public, but professionals and academics from all over the world have been clear that they think it’s nonsense. 
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Double Standards in Libya

Friday March 9, 2018

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Two weeks ago Interpol issued a Red Notice for the Libyan National Army "Saiqa" Special Forces Major, Mahmoud Werfalli. 

According to the notice, Werfalli is "wanted by the Judicial Authorities of the International Criminal Court."

As to the Werfalla case, the Libya National Army (LNA) had twice announced Werfalla’s questioning and arrest, and his subsequent release twice, amid its own ongoing internal investigation.

But the Red Notice muddies a wider, more complicated picture.

First, what is the nature of Libya’s war? To understand go back to June 2014 when Libya held elections for a new parliament, the House of Representatives (HOR). When the results came in, the Islamists, including the Muslim Brotherhood and allied coalition parties who had controlled the previous parliament, called the General National Congress (GNA), realised they had lost big at the polling booth.
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Libya: Seven Years of Failed Western Diplomacy

Friday February 16, 2018

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The approaching seventh anniversary of the "Libyan revolution," (where the celebratory date was last week arbitrarily moved to the 18th of February -- a bit like moving the 4th of July to the 8th) under what a majority of Libyans feel is an illegitimate, solely UN appointed government headed by a man not elected but chosen by foreigners, Prime Minister, Fayez Serraj, is a good time to reflect on the past seven years of abject failure of the West, UN, EU, and NATO in Libya.

At least the new French "boy" President had the honesty to declare recently that it was "a mistake" to remove Gaddafi from power. Most of the other countries involved who led the charge for regime change continue their delusional reflection of the good that has been achieved by their decision.

The UK in particular should be singled out for exceptional hypocrisy because of its insistence that the regime change in 2011 that followed the military action with NATO was a great success.

If polled, most Libyans will not be in any way celebrating the anniversary on now the 18th of February of their "revolution." Quite the opposite.
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