The Civil War in Libya

Aren't Iranians are a different kind of Arab ethnic group? I know most of them spoke farsi and Islam is the majority religion. The Saudis are not too favorable about the Iranian government for some reason other than nuclear power.

Iranians are persians not arabs.

They have their own language, just writing it with arabic alphabet. They took up islam but adopted their version (shiite). It's their way of remaining distinctive over the rest of the arabic world.

no_name said:

Iranians are persians not arabs.

They have their own language, just writing it with arabic alphabet. They took up islam but adopted their version (shiite). It's their way of remaining distinctive over the rest of the arabic world.

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Civilization in Arabia is much older than Islam, but in Iran it is much older. They were civilized while European still wore bear skins, as the saying is. The Arabs tend to neglect their pre-islam civilization, the Iranians don't.

delft said:

Civilization in Arabia is much older than Islam, but in Iran it is much older. They were civilized while European still wore bear skins, as the saying is. The Arabs tend to neglect their pre-islam civilization, the Iranians don't.

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Interesting...what about Egypt? I figured the Egyptian would be proud of their ancient histories dating back to the Pharaohs.

Equation said:

Interesting...what about Egypt? I figured the Egyptian would be proud of their ancient histories dating back to the Pharaohs.

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The Egypt of today is not the Egypt of the Pharos. I am no Egyptologist, but the Greeks, the Romans, Arabs and the Ottoman Turks have occupied the once proud civilization. Even their language is different. I’m sure that there may be an Egyptian in the Sinodefense forum that could shed some light on the culture, both present and past.

Miragedriver said:

The Egypt of today is not the Egypt of the Pharos. I am no Egyptologist, but the Greeks, the Romans, Arabs and the Ottoman Turks have occupied the once proud civilization. Even their language is different. I’m sure that there may be an Egyptian in the Sinodefense forum that could shed some light on the culture, both present and past.

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I think ancient Egypt is even older than civilizations in the fertile crescent. They blossomed early and faded away early too. I think Egypt's geography is hard to defend against too, a long string of settlements and cities along the Nile, facing threats from both south and north, and a flat geography.

China is not really that old as far as current archaeological records go. There may have been the odd characters engraved on rocks from 8000 years ago, but meaningful city states (as opposed to simple tribal-chieftain society) did not evolve until much later. Even though 5000 years is boasted, I think 4000-4500 would be near the limits. Still, China is fortunate to more or less continue her lineage to the current age, so she should be proud of being the longest continuous civilization that currently exist.

MwRYum said:

Indeed, keeping Qaddafi around instead would've been the lesser evil (Benghazi might get flattened, though, along with a 5-digit casualty statistic)

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You think upwards of 100,000 dead is a lesser evil? To me that's a very good reason to try to stop a nutter like Gaddafi.

now Libya is a tribal/secular warfare hotspot, classic failed state

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That's a very premature assessment. Libya will be facing some big challenges in the coming years. But it's hardly a failed state now.

plawolf said:

Just how many times does the western governments need to be reminded of the fact swooping in with jet fighters and bombs does not solve problems?

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If anything the Libyan operation showed that intervention can work. The objective was not to make Libya a more modern state, it was to stop Gaddafi from murdering tens or hundreds of thousands of people. What happens now is up to the Libyan people. They have a choice in how things move forward. The Allied operation was to give them that opportunity to choose, not to make a choice for them.

Mr. T ... I had great laugh when I read you're totally uninformed piece above.

You totally took the hook and sinker.

Just imagine. A country with a high human development index, faced with an insurgency, armed and co-ordinated by special forces, by the very countries that enforce the "no-fly zone". Bombing one party but not the other. Asking the Libyan authority not to bomb the armed insurgency because they are killing "peaceful and unarmed" protestors. Bringing the whole country to the current Iraq level of development with Somalia type of situation.

No sensible, independent thinking individual will have opinions like yours. What would you think if Libya is your country.

No amount of your propaganda is going to convince me... not even the drive to regime change Syria.

Plenty of innocent women and babies are going to die, for what ? for Israel, US, Brits and France imperialistic policies ?

Mr T said:

You think upwards of 100,000 dead is a lesser evil? To me that's a very good reason to try to stop a nutter like Gaddafi.



That's a very premature assessment. Libya will be facing some big challenges in the coming years. But it's hardly a failed state now.

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If anything the Libyan operation showed that intervention can work. The objective was not to make Libya a more modern state, it was to stop Gaddafi from murdering tens or hundreds of thousands of people. What happens now is up to the Libyan people. They have a choice in how things move forward. The Allied operation was to give them that opportunity to choose, not to make a choice for them.

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You either too young or too naive to know, so I'd make it as short as I can...

Qaddafi, however a despot he was (by fact or by western propaganda), Libya under his reign was a functional state with as many modern fixtures and infrastructures (software and hardware wise) paid for with oil money; Qaddafi was a power broker - and nonetheless an effective one - in a region that has always been dominated by tribal and secular politics/violence...and now, the power broker is gone, and there's no effective replacement in the new government, and thus as you can see, the tribes and secular militias fight amongst themselves. Sure they do have a choice, but for all the time they could remember if there's no strongman around to play power broker, they fight against each other to see who's the strongest.

There has been no news to Libya's oil production resumed to their previous levels, why? If the area is still in a flux, without solid security in the form of national army or local warlord's militia, the foreign companies just won't go back, neither would any of the engineers - remember, Libya's oil production was predominately operated by foreign manpower...for comparison, Iraq's oil production got back into gear because of security in the form of US coalition.

So what'd happen to Libya now? Without somebody rise up to the "power broker" role (even more remote would be an overlord of any sort), there'll be no national government left to implement modern & important amenities - education and health care, for instance...fatalities in civil war is bad enough, the percentage of minors to survive into adulthood will definitely drop due to breakdown in national healthcare and vaccination programmes, common diseases will claim more lives; and education...well there might be replacement in providers but pretty certain most would be in the form of religious schools - like those that churn out Taliban and extremists of all sorts; or training camps for terrorists in this now lawless land.

So that's why I said Libya is now qualifies as a failed state.

The most immediate concerns, though, would be weapons - a lesser known fact is that Qaddafi really horde weapons, and many now are unaccounted for. The "good" news would be some of them already expended during the fighting in the last 12 months; "not as good" news are some in the hands of the not-effective government and various militia's active service; the bad news is those that has been stash away or simply nobody know where they are now...the natural law pertain to stuff like that is, simply put, will find their way into black market - they could ended up in the hands of AQ cells worldwide, Chechen rebels, Somali pirates, African warlords who paid for in blood diamonds, or some "lone wolfs" who could cough up enough cash and things like that whack-job in Norway last year.

And I'm not just talking about crates of RPGs or Kalashnikov, or even the MANPADs - to this day Libya's stockpile of chemical weapon has not been dealt with. Although now the known stash are under guard, as various articles claimed, it's not far fetch that they could "lose" a few...the specter of a WMD attack in the world's metropolitan region is never gone.

Let me remind you that people have been tolerating lesser evil for as long as history itself everywhere - as little as live with inconveniences as opposed to spending more on something, to electing a lesser arse into office, to "allow" the existence of dictators so long they don't cross certain bottom lines (brinkmanship IS negotiation tactics), one of which is to keep the suffering within their borders...so long they remember they're somebody's pawns in the bigger game they'll be fine. Saddam Hussein and Qaddafi made the same mistake of pissing off the superpowers, and they both ultimately paid for it one way or the other.

And damn, I tried to keep this short yet look at how much I ended up with...

no_name said:

I think ancient Egypt is even older than civilizations in the fertile crescent. They blossomed early and faded away early too. I think Egypt's geography is hard to defend against too, a long string of settlements and cities along the Nile, facing threats from both south and north, and a flat geography.

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Besides the Nile Egypt consists of the Western desert and the Eastern Desert, as well as the Sinai. The desert contains a number of oases, but the people of one oasis or even of all together have always been so much less in number than the inhabitants of the Nile valley that from the sides in the whole of recorded history Egypt has been safe until the appearance of the infernal combustion engine. The only danger was along the Nile from Sudan or from the Delta.
Even then such danger only appeared in times of drought when the Egyptian state failed due to famine.