Many of the rebel factions making up the National Transitional Council (NTC) fighters are backtracking on a pledge to give up their weapons, contributing to the still-lacking stability in Libya after the killing of Muammar Gadhafi and widespread pronouncements of victory.
The militias are one of the most urgent facing Libya’s new interim government as many of them are defiantly demanding their own local autonomy, still heavily armed from the eight month NATO-backed battle for regime change.
“Nobody wants to give up arms now, and many tribes and cities are accumulating arms ‘just in case,’ ” said Mahmoud Shammam, a spokesman for the NTC’s executive board.
Sporadic fighting between NTC fighters and remaining Gadhafi loyalists is ongoing, along with reports of vigilante revenge killings and the like. But some skirmishes are arising between rebel fighters themselves. A shootout in a hospital over a personal feud between fighters ended in one dead and five wounded over two days of battles.
A new, post-war interim government is in the midst of being formed, but continuing fighting and unrest, loose weapons caches, and a war-torn country are undermining the process.
I still would love to know who the rebels are? I read that armed thugs were imported by the thousands to pull off the land war. Did anyone really think the armed thugs would just leave with all the ability to really steal everything in Libya?
Libya will be in a civl war for a very long time.
“Nobody wants to give up arms now, and many tribes and cities are accumulating arms ‘just in case,’ ”
Well – duh.
I'm still eager to find out when and where those missing SAMs will spring up. We'll find out who the highest bidder was.
Stop trying to create a central government and the civil war would cease. Instead, just allow a multitude of autonomous tribal cities with their own militias, governance, etc.
Nobody gives up arm right after a revolution, even a "civilized" (haha) revolution.
The only people surprised by this are those who honestly thought we were involved in a humanitarian mission to help the Libyan people who were in revolt. There were more people who supported Ghadaffi than didn't, I'd be very surprised if 50 percent of the rebels were Libyan (and those were Islamic extremists who hated the secular society, free everything and the most independent and educated women on the continent). NATO knew who they were supporting because the CIA was helping them from the gitgo. But as long as there's oil to be had and China and Russia get a black eye, the actual rebellion was just the MaGuffin. "You boys can play, just stay away from the oil fields, okay?" NATO would sleep with rattlesnakes if it meant it had the inside track to rip off a country's resources from under the nose of the Russians and Chinese.
FREEDOM — EQUAL DEADLY FORCE
“Nobody wants to give up arms… tribes and cities are accumulating arms”
So, the Special Forces of France, Germany, UK and USA are all over Libya assassinating Gaddafi and anyone else they can who might prevent their invasion and occupation, filling mass graves with blacks to justify a call for their occupation and now they want to disarm the people so that they have a monopoly on the use of force and violence.
As for myself, as a pacifist in a most imperfect world who strives to know the better of two evils, I could never understand the logic of allowing government to have greater deadly force then the citizens who must from time to time overthrow it.
So, forget who has the weapons, open up the polls immediately, find out what kind of government the people want and give it to them.