Sunday, March 20, 2011

Is Libya to follow suit after Somalia?

Arab world was experiencing political tremors, starting from Tunisia, whereby the decades-long leader was forced to flee out of country. Then a domino effect that was left to run alone in general. Until.
With Tunisia as eye-opener, virtually every Arabic nation in North Africa and Middle East felt the stirring, clamouring for changes, amongst the younger citizenry, to rid themselves of royal and despots rule. Eventually this scalar wave hit a spot, Libya. The world has heard of stories how Libyan leader of many years, Colonel Muammar Qaddafi carves the national cake for all Libyans to share with generosity, to an extent there cannot be uprising due to dissatisfaction.
Meanwhile, The West held Qaddafi , despite all effort by him to mend fences, play a good peer. So the Arab revolution of these few months provided a way to do something about the man they reluctantly "deblacklisted" as supporter of terrorism.
When uprising was still in its zygotic stage, French leader Sakozy declared recognition of the new opposition government in Libya. Sometimes back, the first wife of Sarkozy (before Karla Bruni) negotiated a deal that released Bulgarian nurses who had been convicted of infecting Libyan kids with HIV. Her heroic action earned her a divorce, it seems, and thereafter Bruni. Methinks the haste of endorsing opposition may have relationship to this incident. I am at loss how he managed to convince other western powers including US to support this funny setup (no-fly zone ha-ha) aimed at flattening Libya and starting awarding contracts for digging Libya oil for woman-made "humanitarian reasons"
After a lot of Tomahawks found their target in the Tripoli presidential residence (do disable anti-aircraft batteries, the invading forces said) African Union at last woke up and called for immediate cessation of military operations in the Libya domain. I don't see anyone heeding this call, considering all the firepower building up in the Mediterranean right now. Jane's Defense must be having their day in weaving stories of the latest in war toys, with precision of homing on target with accuracy of ±0.27 mm (hey, I made this up, but that's how, er, silly some of these things are reported).
Who makes a decision to go into military offensive in America? Going by what we hear, a typical American wouldn't be able to locate Libya on a map, less so worry about the people of Libya getting an unfair deal from their leader. Obama wouldn't spend a cent to worsen the already troubled US economy. That leaves Pentagon who may whisper to government something like "we have this new DNA-guided missile we wanna test, we already have Qaddafi DNA" or "We still lack sufficient experience of war in Africa deserts" met by budgeted emergency funds (and sometimes when real emergencies such as Katrina come around they find govts with their pants down). I've read enough LeCarre and Forsyth to get a hang on behind-the-scenes decision synthesis of the war machinery. I wait and see.

Saturday, March 05, 2011

Middle East and North Africa Political Revolution

Here were a handful of countries that were doing well, were peaceful and unassuming. Until something triggered a domino effect that started with Tunisia and shook the entire MENA. Tunisian big man bolted, left the country. Egyptian president stepped down. Other countries in the region quickly started providing consessions to keep their people happy, promising they would allow for leadership change.
Libya also found itself in this wave. I had been hearing that Qaddafi was so good for his people, everything was free and plentiful, why would anyone rise up against this person? Well, I do have a reason to believe that in this one case there could be some external coercing: The country is rich in oil, and many a power would like to lay its hands on that oil, they can't do it with Muamar Qadaffi in power. So when this godsend of turmoil in the region ensued, the agents went into an overdrive to see to it that something gets done. As the situation there is far from stable, with loyalists and militants still in running battles, time will tell.
I've also been thinking who might benefit most if almost all MENA countries changed governments or became lawless like the Somalia of today. I wonder if some little, cunning, non-arab country in the region is behind this caper!