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wmulnea

Strife in Libya Could Presage Long Civil War - NYTimes.com - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...libyan-unrest.html

shared by wmulnea on 21 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • Salah Badi, an ultraconservative Islamist and former lawmaker from the coastal city of Misurata.
  • Mr. Badi’s assault on Libya’s main international airport has now drawn the country’s fractious militias, tribes and towns into a single national conflagration that threatens to become a prolonged civil war. Both sides see the fight as part of a larger regional struggle, fraught with the risks of a return to repressive authoritarianism or a slide toward Islamist extremism.
  • the violence threatens to turn Libya into a pocket of chaos destabilizing North Africa for years to come.
  • ...37 more annotations...
  • Ansar al-Shariah, the hard-line Islamist group involved in the assault on the American diplomatic Mission in Benghazi in 2012
  • Their opponents, including the militias stocked with former Qaddafi soldiers
  • The ideological differences are blurry at best: both sides publicly profess a similar conservative but democratic vision.
  • an escalating war among its patchwork of rival cities and tribes.
  • Motorists wait in lines stretching more than three miles at shuttered gas stations, waiting for them to open. Food prices are soaring, uncollected garbage is piling up in the streets and bicycles, once unheard-of, are increasingly common.
  • Tripoli, the capital and the main prize, has become a battleground
  • The fighting has destroyed the airport
  • Constant shelling between rival militias has leveled blocks
  • Storage tanks holding about 25 million gallons of fuel have burned unchecked for a month
  • with daily blackouts sometimes lasting more than 12 hours.
  • many Libyans despaired of any resolution
  • In Benghazi, Libya’s second-largest city, the fighting has closed both its airport and seaport, strangling the city.
  • the rush toward war is also lifting the fortunes of the Islamist extremists of Ansar al-Shariah, the Benghazi militant group.
  • The United Nations, the United States and the other Western powers have withdrawn their diplomats and closed their missions
  • “We cannot care more than you do,” the British ambassador, Michael Aron, wrote
  • Until now, a rough balance of power among local brigades had preserved a kind of equilibrium, if not stability
  • the transitional government scarcely existed outside of the luxury hotels where its officials gathered, no other force was strong enough to dominate. No single interest divided the competing cities and factions.
  • But that semblance of unity is now in tatters, and with it the hope that nonviolent negotiations might settle the competition for power and, implicitly, Libya’s oil.
  • In May, a renegade former general, Khalifa Hifter, declared that he would seize power by force to purge Libya of Islamists, beginning in Benghazi. He vowed to eradicate the hard-line Islamists of Ansar al-Shariah, blamed for a long series of bombings and assassinations.
  • General Hifter also pledged to close the Parliament and arrest moderate Islamist members
  • he has mustered a small fleet of helicopters and warplanes that have bombed rival bases around Benghazi, a steep escalation of the violence.
  • moderate Islamists and other brigades who had distanced themselves from Ansar al-Shariah began closing ranks, welcoming the group into a newly formed council of “revolutionary” militias
  • a broad alliance of Benghazi militias that now includes Ansar al-Shariah issued a defiant statement denouncing relative moderates like the Libyan Muslim Brotherhood. “We will not accept the project of democracy, secular parties, nor the parties that falsely claim the Islamic cause,”
  • the general’s blitz has now stalled, it polarized the country, drawing alarms from some cities and tribes but applause from others.
  • the loudest applause came from the western mountain town of Zintan, where local militia leaders had recruited hundreds of former Qaddafi soldiers into special brigades
  • the rival coastal city of Misurata, where militias have allied with the Islamists in political battles and jostled with the Zintanis for influence in the capital
  • the Misurata and Islamist militias developed a reputation for besieging government buildings and kidnapping high officials to try to pressure the Parliament. But in recent months the Zintanis and their anti-Islamist allies have stormed the Parliament and kidnapped senior lawmakers as well.
  • the newly elected Parliament, led at first, on a seniority basis, by a member supportive of Mr. Hifter, announced plans to convene in Tobruk, an eastern city under the general’s control.
  • About 30 members, most of them Islamists or Misuratans, refused to attend,
  • Tripoli’s backup airport, under the control of an Islamist militia, has cut off flights to Tobruk, even blocking a trip by the prime minister.
  • a spokesman for the old disbanded Parliament, favored by the Islamists and Misuratans, declared that it would reconvene in Tripoli
  • In Tobruk, a spokesman for the new Parliament declared that the Islamist- and Misuratan-allied militias were terrorists, suggesting that Libya might soon have two legislatures with competing armies
  • Each side has the support of competing satellite television networks financed and, often, broadcast from abroad, typically from Qatar for the Islamists and from the United Arab Emirates for their foes.
  • Hassan Tatanaki, a Libyan-born business mogul who owns one of the anti-Islamist satellite networks, speaking in an interview from an office in the Emirates. “We are in a state of war and this is no time for compromise.”
  • Fighters and tribes who fought one another during the uprising against Colonel Qaddafi are now coming together on the same side of the new fight, especially with the Zintanis against the Islamists. Some former Qaddafi officers who had fled Libya are even coming back to take up arms again.
  • “It is not pro- or anti-Qaddafi any more — it is about Libya,” said a former Qaddafi officer in a military uniform
  • Beneath the battle against “extremists,” he said, was an even deeper, ethnic struggle: the tribes of Arab descent, like the Zintanis, against those of Berber, Circassian or Turkish ancestry, like the Misuratis. “The victory will be for the Arab tribes,”
  • andrea_hoertz on 21 Sep 14
     
    Article explains the civil war that is erupting in Libya. Islamist extremists are trying to take over the country and towns and tribes of Libya are choosing sides. Tripoli has been the biggest battle ground and its airport was destroyed.
  • wmulnea on 11 Apr 15
     
    This NYT article gives an excellent outline of the prominent factions fighting in Libya, and the purpose and goals of those factions as of Aug, 2014.
  • wmulnea on 11 Apr 15
     
    This NYT article gives an excellent outline of the prominent factions fighting in Libya, and the purpose and goals of those factions as of Aug, 2014.
mcooka

FRONTLINE/World I Pakistan: The Lost Generation I Watch Full Program Online I PBS - 0 views

www.pbs.org/...video_index.html

#Education #Middle East

shared by mcooka on 27 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • In Pakistan, public education has become a battleground. Members of Fatma’s local school council are outraged, saying the elite only care about themselves and keep the poor illiterate to stay in power.
  • Across town, another kind of school is functioning quite well. It has plenty of room and even provides free tuition and a hot meal. It is one of the country’s many madrassas, or religious schools, which are becoming an increasingly popular option for poor parents.
  • the Ministry of Education’s curriculum wing, the staff has been working on removing the militaristic tone of the curriculum. But the textbooks still include passages like these: “For the past three centuries the Europeans have been working to subjugate the countries of the Muslim world” and “The Christians and Europeans were not happy to see the Muslims flourishing in life. They were always looking for opportunities to take possession of territories under the Muslims.”
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • But ironically, others fear that the money will never reach the schools, anymore than the $100 million in U.S. aid over the past three years has.  Reformers believe the problems that Pakistani children face are so deep that money alone will not be enough to fix them
  • Just a few months ago, Paracha led a protest against the latest American aid package, which includes hundreds of millions of dollars earmarked for education reform. The religious parties say the United States. is using the aid to try to hijack Pakistani societ
  • mcooka on 27 Jan 16
     
    Education in Pakistan. The Threat to the elite and the poor illiterate suffering.
sambofoster

Gender and Equity in Access to Health Care Services in the Middle East and North Africa - 0 views

www.prb.org/...eMiddleEastandNorthAfrica.aspx

women health middle east

shared by sambofoster on 17 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • sambofoster on 17 Feb 16
     
    The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region has experienced major improvements in health over the past few decades. 1 Today, on average, a girl born in Egypt is expected to live for 72 years-nearly 20 years longer than if she had been born in the early 1970s-owing in large part to a 70 percent improvement in infant mortality rates over the same time period.
jherna2a

UN Panel Alleges Violations of International Law in Yemen - 0 views

www.voanews.com/...3164380.html

Yemen Saudi Arabia war international law

shared by jherna2a on 05 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • jherna2a on 05 Apr 16
     
    Saudi Arabia may be violating international humanitarian laws in their fight against Yemen. More than 82% of the population in Yemen are in need of food and medical care and there have been 5,800 casualties.
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