Libya has plunged unnoticed into its worst political and
economic crisis since the defeat of Gaddafi
利比亚在推翻卡扎菲后悄悄的陷入了经济和政治危机中。
A little under two years ago, Philip Hammond, the Defence Secretary,
urged British businessmen to begin “packing their suitcases” and to
fly to Libya to share in the reconstruction of the country and
exploit an anticipated boom in natural resources.
Yet now Libya has almost entirely stopped producing oil as the
government loses control of much of the country to militia fighters.
Mutinying security men have taken over oil ports on the Mediterranean
and are seeking to sell crude oil on the black market. Ali Zeidan,
Libya’s Prime Minister, has threatened to “bomb from the air and the sea”
any oil tanker trying to pick up the illicit oil from the oil terminal guards,
who are mostly former rebels who overthrew Muammar Gaddafi and have
been on strike over low pay and alleged government corruption since July.
As world attention focused on the coup in Egypt and the poison gas
attack in Syria over the past two months, Libya has plunged unnoticed
into its worst political and economic crisis since the defeat of Gaddafi
two years ago. Government authority is disintegrating in all parts of the
country putting in doubt claims by American, British and French politicians
that Nato’s military action in Libya in 2011 was an outstanding example
of a successful foreign military intervention which should be repeated in Syria.
In an escalating crisis little regarded hitherto outside the oil markets,
output of Libya’s prized high-quality crude oil has plunged from 1.4 million
barrels a day earlier this year to just 160,000 barrels a day now.
Despite threats to use military force to retake the oil ports, the government
in Tripoli has been unable to move effectively against striking guards
and mutinous military units that are linked to secessionist forces in
the east of the country.
Libyans are increasingly at the mercy of militias which act outside the law.
Popular protests against militiamen have been met with gunfire;
31 demonstrators were shot dead and many others wounded as they
protested outside the barracks of “the Libyan Shield Brigade”
in the eastern capital Benghazi in June.
Though the Nato intervention against Gaddafi was justified as a
humanitarian response to the threat that Gaddafi’s tanks
would slaughter dissidents in Benghazi, the international community
has ignored the escalating violence. The foreign media, which once
filled the hotels of Benghazi and Tripoli, have likewise paid little
attention to the near collapse of the central government.
The strikers in the eastern region Cyrenaica, which contains most
of Libya’s oil, are part of a broader movement seeking more autonomy
and blaming the government for spending oil revenues in the west of
the country. Foreigners have mostly fled Benghazi since the American
ambassador, Chris Stevens, was murdered in the US consulate by
jihadi militiamen last September. Violence has worsened since then with
Libya’s military prosecutor Colonel Yussef Ali al-Asseifar, in charge of
investigating assassinations of politicians, soldiers and journalists,
himself assassinated by a bomb in his car on 29 August.
利比亚主要产油区，东部的昔兰尼加地区因为不满石油的税收大部分用于西部地区，
也在发起众多抗议来谋取更多的自治权。由于去年九月，美国驻利比亚大使可
莱丝·斯蒂芬斯被圣战组织残忍杀害，导致班加西的外国人几乎逃亡殆尽。
自从利比亚临时政府的军事检察官 Colonel Yussef Ali al-Asseifar刺杀官员，
士兵和记者开始，暴力事件在利比亚越发严重，
这位检察官在在8月29日也死于一次汽车炸弹袭击。
Rule by local militias is also spreading anarchy around the capital.
Ethnic Berbers, whose militia led the assault on Tripoli in 2011,
temporarily took over the parliament building in Tripoli.
The New York-based Human Rights Watch has called for an i
ndependent investigation into the violent crushing of a prison
mutiny in Tripoli on 26 August in which 500 prisoners had
been on hunger strike. The hunger strikers were demanding that
they be taken before a prosecutor or formally charged since
many had been held without charge for two years.
The government called on the Supreme Security Committee, made up
of former anti-Gaddafi militiamen nominally under the control of the
interior ministry, to restore order. At least 19 prisoners received gunshot
shrapnel wounds, with one inmate saying “they were shooting directly
at us through the metal bars”. There have been several mass prison
escapes this year in Libya including 1,200 escaping from a prison
after a riot in Benghazi in July.
The Interior Minister, Mohammed al-Sheikh, resigned last month in
frustration at being unable to do his job, saying in a memo sent to
Mr Zeidan that he blamed him for failing to build up the army and
the police. He accused the government, which is largely dominated by
the Muslim Brotherhood, of being weak and dependent on tribal support.
Other critics point out that a war between two Libyan tribes, the
Zawiya and the Wirrshifana, is going on just 15 miles from the
Prime Minister’s office.
Diplomats have come under attack in Tripoli with the EU ambassador’s convoy
ambushed outside the Corinthia hotel on the waterfront. A bomb also
wrecked the French embassy.
One of the many failings of the post-Gaddafi government is its inability
to revive the moribund economy. Libya is wholly dependent on its oil and
gas revenues and without these may not be able to pay its civil servants.
Sliman Qajam, a member of the parliamentary energy committee,
told Bloomberg that “the government is running on its reserves.
If the situation doesn’t improve, it won’t be able to pay salaries
by the end of the year”.
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