Can Restoring Libya’s Monarchy Fix the Post-Gaddafi Chaos?

Oct 4, 2024 | The legacy of the Senussi family hangs in the balance, as does the future of Libya. With Mohamed El Senussi leading the charge, the possibility of a new dawn—defined by unity, justice, and stability—approaches. As he stands at the threshold of history, the question remains: will Libya embrace its past to forge a brighter future? Only time will tell.


WIKIPEDIA: Mohammed El Senussi »

The official site in English of Prince Mohammed El Senussi here and in Arabic here.

WIKIPEDIA: Senusiyya »

Son of a Dictator | Reupload | ARTE.tv Documentary

Jul 20, 2024 | From his gilded youth in Europe to the bloody repression of the Arab Spring, this is the engrossing story of Muammar Gaddafi's second son who, despite arrest warrants for crimes against humanity, is running for election in Libya.

How Libya's Governing Authorities Are Handling the Aid Effort | DW News

Sep 18, 2023 | One week on from Libya's devastasting floods, the UN is warning about two more dams in the east, that could burst near Benghazi. The UN's humanitarian office says the dams are under massive pressure, after torrential rains. Local authorities say both dams are in good condition.

Residents in Derna say similar warnings went unheeded for years, before two dams ruptured last week, releasing a wall of water, that swept whole neighborhoods out to sea. The World Health Organization says nearly 4,000 people have been counted dead, and 9,000 are still missing. The aid effort is gathering pace.

Libya Flooding: Recovering and Identifying the Dead in Derna – BBC News

Sep 18, 2023 | A week after catastrophic floods devastated the Libyan city of Derna, rescue teams are continuing to recover dead bodies. The UN says the death toll so far stands at some 11,300. The final total remains unclear - although the one thing that is certain is the sheer scale of this catastrophe. More than 10,000 people remain officially missing, according to figures from the UN's Office for the Co-Ordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

How the People of Libya Have to Deal with Devastation, Spreading Diseases and Trauma | DW News

Sep 15, 2023 | Libya's Red Crescent says more than 11,000 people have died in floods in the city of Derna. But that death toll has yet to be verified, and Libyan officials say it is likely to rise.

Large parts of the coastal city were swept away after torrential rain caused two dams to burst. Now there are concerns about the spread of disease, with many bodies lying among the ruins.

For more we talk to Ahmed Bayram. He is with the relief organization Norwegian Refugee Council, and he joins us from neighboring Tunisia. And we talk to Aya Burweila in Athens. She's a widely published expert and commentator on security with a special focus on Libya.

Gaddafi: The Endgame : State of Denial | Documentary

Dec 23, 2011 | State of Denial is the story of the fall of the Gaddafi regime as told by the insiders, defectors and military advisors who helped to bring it about.

Written and directed by Anne Reevell of Moonbeam Films, the film offers a revealing behind-the-scenes account of a revolution, a slice of history in which people took back power.

"The disintegration of the Gaddafi regime in Libya surprised and confused the world - not because it happened in the first place, but because Gaddafi's government remained convinced it could prevail - despite defections, NATO airstrikes and a popular mass uprising," says Reevell.

As the rebels continue to advance towards Tripoli, the Libyan authorities there are in a state of denial, convinced they can still talk to the British government, denouncing the foreign media, burning the homes of Libyan exiles and organising anti-NATO demonstrations in London.

The message they relay says there is 'no compromise on leadership,' but do they mean it or are hairline fractures beginning to emerge?

Using the oral diary of a Tripoli-based insider, as well as interviews with the UK prime minister's senior advisor on Libya and leading figures in Benghazi and Tripoli, State of Denial explores the demise of Gaddafi's powerbase and charts the twists and turns of a regime in denial.

Libya and Morocco: Two Very Different Responses to Catastrophe

THE GUARDIAN: The aftermath of an earthquake in Morocco and flooding in Libya has shown up the state of the two nations

Not one but two disasters have struck in recent days – the earthquake in Morocco and devastating flooding in Libya.

At least 2,900 people are known to have died in the 6.8-magnitude earthquake that struck in Morocco’s High Atlas mountains a week ago, and the authorities say the death toll will rise.

Three days later, on 11 September, intense flooding in Libya led to the collapse of two dams that unleashed a torrent of mud and water into Derna, destroying large parts of the eastern city.

On Friday morning, the Libyan Red Crescent said the number of people who had died in the city had risen to 11,000 and was expected to rise further as rescue teams arrived and helped to retrieve more bodies from the mud. Officials said 30,000 people were missing.

The full scale of the disaster may be far greater, as few international aid agencies or news reporters have been able to reach the flood-hit area. This area is controlled not by the government in Tripoli but by a rival warlord.

Morocco and Libya may be geographically relatively close to each other – just a 2,000km hop across Algeria – but they could not be two more different countries. This has had a huge impact on their ability to respond to the disasters. » | Rupert Neate and Peter Beaumont | Friday, September 15, 2023

Libya Flooding: Most Deaths Could Have Been Avoided, Says UN - BBC News

Sep 14, 2023 | Most of the thousands of deaths in the Libya floods could have been avoided, the UN's World Meteorological Organization has said.

The UN's meteorological branch has criticised the warning systems that were in place in Libya. "If they would have been a normally operating meteorological service, they could have issued warnings," World Meteorological Organization (WMO) secretary-general Petteri Taalas said.

After two dams failed, whole neighbourhoods were swept away in the torrents.

Libya Flooding: Fears of Up To 20,000 Dead - BBC News

Sep 14, 2023 | The mayor of the eastern Libya port city of Derna estimates between 18,000 and 20,000 people have died in the catastrophic flooding.

Abdulmenam Al-Ghaithi told al-Arabiya TV his estimate was based on the number of districts completely destroyed when two burst dams.

More than 5,000 people are known to have died, and at least 10,000 are missing.

Streets were swept away in the torrents and bodies are being recovered from the sea.

The Unimaginable Has Happened in Libya

OPINION : GUEST ESSAY

A man surveys the damage in Derna, Libya, on Sept. 12.Credit...Esam Omran Al-Fetori/Reuters
THE NEW YORK TIMES: This week, the worst storm in recent memory pounded the Green Mountains in eastern Libya with rain, pushing two poorly maintained, half-century-old dams to their limit. Just before 3 a.m. on Sept. 11, the first dam collapsed. An enormous wall of water surged into a riverbed that bisects the coastal city of Derna. It stalled briefly at the second dam eight miles downstream and then scooped that and everything else up in its path, tossing the debris into the sea. By dawn, a third of the city was gone, leaving thousands missing. The number of dead may reach as high as 10,000, Libyan aid coordinators say.

Many people in Libya are calling what happened a tsunami, not a flood, to attempt to capture the physics and power of the devastation. Derna’s nearly 100,000 residents, now stranded, urgently need shelter, food, water and medical care. They need temporary bridges to replace those that were washed out and engineers to rebuild all the roads and fix parts of the city’s operational but battered port. They need cellphone service to reach family members and friends and body bags for the corpses being pulled out of the sea. Thousands are homeless, and officials fear other dams in the area may also burst. » | Ethan Chorin, Dr. Chorin is the author of “Benghazi! A New History of the Fiasco That Pushed America and Its World to the Brink.” | Wednesday, September 13, 2023

Catastrophic Floods Devastate Libya

Thousands of people have been killed after heavy rains flooded parts of the country’s northeast, a disaster exacerbated by the collapse of two dams in the coastal city of Derna.

Libyan Flood Survivor Recounts Horror After Dams Burst: “We walked out barefoot and saw our friends and neighbors dying,” said a woman from the hard-hit city of Derna. More than 5,000 are reported dead and 10,000 more are believed to be missing. »

Related article here.

‘Sea Is Constantly Dumping Bodies’: Fears Libya Flood Death Toll May Hit 20,000

THE GUARDIAN: Full scale of devastation in north African nation still not clear as aid agencies struggle to reach cut-off areas

International aid is slowly starting to reach the devastated port city of Derna as questions are raised over how as many as 20,000 people may have perished when Storm Daniel hit the northern coast of Libya on Saturday night.

Ten thousand people had been declared missing by official aid agencies such as the Libyan Red Crescent, but the new, ominous higher estimate of 20,000 deaths came from the director of al-Bayda medical centre, Abdul Rahim Maziq.

Corpses still litter the street, and drinkable water is in short supply. Whole families have been wiped out by the storm and with the remoteness of some villages and the rudimentary nature of municipal government, it will take time for the death toll to be confirmed. (With video) » Patrick Wintour, Diplomatic editor | Wednesday, September 13, 2023

Rotes Kreuz rechnet mit 10.000 Vermissten in Libyen

Überschwemmung in Libyen
ZEIT ONLINE: Nach Überschwemmungen in Libyen schätzen das Rote Kreuz und der Rote Halbmond die Zahl der vermissten Menschen auf etwa 10.000. Zudem könnte es tausende Todesopfer geben.

Nach dem verheerenden Unwetter im Osten Libyens werden nach Angaben des Internationalen Komitees vom Roten Kreuz und Roten Halbmond noch etwa 10.000 Menschen vermisst. Es könnte tausende Todesopfer geben, sagte Organisationsvertreter Tamer Ramadan in einer Videokonferenz. "Wir bestätigen anhand unserer unabhängigen Informationen, dass die Zahl der vermissten Personen bei etwa 10.000 liegt." » | Quelle: ZEIT ONLINE, AP, dpa, Reuters, voi | Dienstag, 12. September 2023

Libya: 10,000 missing after unprecedented floods, says Red Cross: Neighbourhoods washed away in port city of Derna, where two dams burst »

Omar Sharif Jr. | Coming Out in the Middle of a Revolution | 2016

Omar Sharif Jr.'s talk at the 2016 Oslo Freedom Forum. See more talks like this at oslofreedomforum.com and follow @OsloFF for updates.

For your information, this blog, as far as I am aware, has NEVER had even one visitor from Egypt! I get visitors from ALL OVER THE WORLD, but never from Egypt. That repressive government doesn't even allow its citizens to access gay-friendly blogs; and let's get this straight: This website is nothing but a gay-friendly blog. It is NOT a gay blog as such.

Further, I do frequently get lots of visitors from Morocco, and some from Algeria, Tunisia and Libya. I even get visitors from from Saudi Arabia – daily! Kudos Saudi Arabia! But never from Egypt! That tells its own story. – © Mark Alexander

Revealed: King of Jordan Used Swiss Accounts to Hoard Massive Wealth

Queen Rania and King Abdullah. Composite: Rex/Shutterstock
THE GUARDIAN: Leak shows King Abdullah was beneficial owner of at least six Credit Suisse accounts

In 2011, as popular revolts reverberated around the Middle East, a monarch in the midst of it all made some banking decisions. Sometime that year, as neighbouring Egypt and Syria withered in the face of momentous civil protests, King Abdullah II of Jordan opened two new accounts with Credit Suisse, the Swiss bank that had discreetly served the region’s well-heeled for decades.

Abdullah, one of the world’s longest-serving current monarchs, had chosen a banker that shared his approach to secrecy, particularly surrounding his personal wealth. Over the next five years, the king was the beneficial owner of at least six accounts with Credit Suisse, while his wife, Queen Rania, had another.

According to a massive trove of data leaked from the bank that names both royals as account holders, one account would later be worth a remarkable 230m Swiss francs (£180m).

At home, King Abdullah had been experiencing a rocky ride. The revolts, which came to be known as the Arab spring, led to leaders being toppled in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen, and a brutal, protracted war breaking out in Syria. Jordan, one of the region’s more efficient security states, was able to stave off a threat from a nascent opposition, through suppression of dissent and promises of better days.

But in the decade since, a struggling economy, persistent levels of poverty, high unemployment, cuts to welfare and seemingly ever-present austerity measures have continued to stir resentment across the country. One particular gripe has been the juxtaposition between the apparent wealth of the king and the constant grind endured by most citizens just to get by. As the IMF agreed to bail out Jordan, on the condition that its people tighten their collective belts, the king was moving enormous amounts between his Swiss accounts. » | Martin Chulov, Middle East correspondent | Monday, February 21, 2022

Wherever you look, to whichever country you turn your sights, the rich élite are playing the people for fools! And we, the people, the fools, are playing along with their game. – © Mark

The Observer View on the Unfolding Crisis in Lebanon

Demonstrators spray the shields of riot police during a protest by the families of the Beirut blast victims.Photograph: AFP/Getty
THE OBSERVER: A new failed state in the Middle East would spell chaos for us all

Amid so much trouble around the world, the crisis in Lebanon has received relatively little attention, especially from British politicians and media. This is a serious oversight. It’s not inconceivable Lebanon could soon become a “failed state” on a par with Libya or Yemen. That would be a disaster for its people, but also, as recent history shows, for the region, Europe and the UK.

The crisis has many aspects. The most pressing is the mounting human cost. The chronic devaluation of the Lebanese pound – it has lost about 90% of its value in the past 18 months – is taking a terrible toll on ordinary families. About 30% of Lebanese children go to bed hungry, the UN says. Most households are short of food. At least half the population has slipped into poverty.

Resulting hyperinflation, caused by adverse trading conditions during the pandemic but also by grossly irresponsible financial mismanagement by Lebanon’s politicians and bankers, means subsidies of essential foodstuffs, medicine and fuel no longer cover their true cost. People with deadly diseases such as diabetes or heart conditions cannot get the help they need. » | Observer editorial | Sunday, July 25, 2021

Related links here, here, here and here.

Billionaire tycoon named as Lebanese PM as economic crisis bites: Protesters wanted someone from outside the elite, but parliament went for Najib Miqati, who has led the country twice before »

Ten Years after the Arab Spring, Is There Still Hope for Democracy? 2/2 | DW Documentary

A decade after the Arab Spring, this film tells the story of the uprisings known as the "Arabellion." The protagonists describe how it started, what happened and what life is like today in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt.

In despair about the hopelessness of his life, Tunisian street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire on December 10, 2010. His fate moved hundreds of thousands of mostly young people to take to the streets in protest against the regime. The protests not only ousted the dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, they also sparked a series of uprisings that rocked the Arab world. A new era of democracy, dubbed the "Arabellion” or "Arab Spring," seemed to be dawning; it was hoped that authoritarian structures would be swept away. Taking stock a decade on, however, is sobering. All across the Arab world, old regimes have been restored, wars have broken out and people are fleeing their homelands. Yet the Arabellion was not in vain, because the pressure for reform is as great as ever. This documentary gives a comprehensive overview of developments, looking for similarities between the 2011 uprisings and the current unrest in Lebanon and Iraq. The Arabellion is recounted from today’s vantage point and through the eyes of local protagonists. What is life like today in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, ten years later?

‘Global Britain’ Is Willing to Trade Away Everything. Including Scruples

THE GUARDIAN: The UK’s new deal with Turkey ignores appalling human rights abuses and should have been scrutinised by parliament

The UK’s new trade agreement with Turkey, signed last week, ignores the Turkish government’s continuing human rights abuses, boosts its dangerous president, and undermines ministerial pledges that “global Britain” will uphold international laws and values. The deal took effect on 1 January without even rudimentary parliamentary scrutiny. Here, stripped of lies and bombast, is the dawning reality of Boris Johnson’s scruple-free post-Brexit world.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey’s “strongman” leader, is pleased as punch. He’s the new, biggest fan of Britain’s international trade secretary, Liz Truss, whose shabby work this is. Erdoğan hailed the deal as the start of a “new era” and a landmark for Turkey. After years of disastrous economic mismanagement and fierce rows with the US and EU over Turkish policy towards Russia, Syria, Libya, Greece and Cyprus, Erdoğan badly needed a win. Hapless Truss delivered.

The fact that Johnson used the spectre of Turkish migrants to frighten Leave voters in 2016 appears forgotten now. His government has created a favourable bilateral trade framework, and promised bespoke “upgrades”, to a leader who frequently mocks the EU and faces possible European trade sanctions. How does that square with Johnson’s vow to be “the best friend and ally the EU could have”? The level playing field is already tipping. » | Simon Tisdall | Sunday, January 3, 2021

Macron Criticises Turkey's 'Imperial Inclinations' as Row between Countries Escalates

THE GUARDIAN: In an interview with al-Jazeera, the French president also tried to calm tensions with the Muslims world over caricatures of the prophet Muhammad

The French president Emmanuel Macron has accused Turkey of adopting a “bellicose” stance towards its NATO allies, saying tensions could ease if his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdoğan showed respect and did not tell lies.

In an interview with al-Jazeera broadcast on Saturday, Macron condemned Turkey’s behaviour in Syria, Libya and the Mediterranean and said: “Turkey has a bellicose attitude towards its NATO allies.”

He also sought to calm flaring tensions with Muslims around the world after increasingly heated rhetoric following the murder of French school teacher, Samuel Paty, who showed caricatures of the prophet Muhammad alongside other cartoons as part of a discussion on free speech.

Macron said that France’s wish was that things “calm down” but for this to happen, it was essential that the “Turkish president respects France, respects the European Union, respects its values, does not tell lies and does not utter insults”.

He noted that France had offered its condolences to Turkey following the deadly earthquake in the Aegean and had also offered to send help to the scene. » | Agence France-Presse | Sunday, November 1, 2020

Turkey threatens legal action over Charlie Hebdo's caricature of president »

France Urges Arab Nations to Prevent Boycotts over Macron's Cartoons Defence

BBC: France has urged Middle Eastern countries to prevent any boycott of its goods in protest at President Emmanuel Macron's defence of the right to show cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

The French foreign ministry said the "baseless" calls for a boycott were being "pushed by a radical minority".

French products have been removed from some shops in Kuwait, Jordan and Qatar.

Meanwhile, protests have been seen in Libya, Syria and the Gaza Strip.

The backlash stems from comments made by Mr Macron after the gruesome murder of a French teacher who showed cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in class.

The president said the teacher, Samuel Paty, "was killed because Islamists want our future", but France would "not give up our cartoons". » | Sunday, October 25, 2020