Libyan Proxy War
Having briefly looked at the Libyan “Proxy War” ongoing to write up a note for a US Client looking at North African wind energy potential (mostly Morocco it must be said), it has always been about the hydrocarbons. Surprise. These things usually are when you put aside all the shallow bullshit rhetoric from blundering incompetent frontmen like Sarkozy, Cameron and whoever was nominally in charge in Italy and look at some maps and figure out who paid for it. The 6 months of “Benghazi 2011” was essentially done for BP-TOTAL-ENI to secure the very large future reserves, to try to ensure a friendly regime in place to keep that situation safe — supposedly.
The primary problem was they had no idea who the players really were or who was behind them. The next problem was, as ever, that the population of 7 million are not all stupid and knew that based upon the past, the foreign oil companies with their fighters flying overhead on their behalf did not give a shit about them, their homes or their families. People tend not to listen to empty lies and rhetoric from outside their country if it runs counter to what they see and know.
Now we have two strange consortia teams, UN/US/Turkey/Qatar/ENI Vs Egypt/KSR/UAE/Jordan/TOTAL with Russia acting as Chief Marshall calling their shots for Haftar in inimitable fashion. Poor little Britain nowhere to be seen nowadays. That’s it, French TOTAL is with Russkie backed eastern “Warlord”, Italian ENI is backing the Tripoli side.
That pair of paid-up coalitions is close to an all-out proxy war as they face off against each other at Sirte, the UN-NATO legitamised hotch-potch of al-Sarraj in Tripoli and “warlord” Haftar’s LNA in the east looking like a good bet for a win. Great. Maybe now the oil business is heading for the door fast there can be an end to the sort of pseudo-colonial badly thought out gunboat crap seen in 2011. Perhaps not until the men who decide to do that die off. Easy to say in hindsight? Maybe, or maybe just easy to say. In the meantime, Europe/NATO/US is well fucked up, focused on whatever it is that can keep them running around like headless chickens gabbling on about viruses and other distractions while matters are steadily resolved elsewhere. After Iraq, Syria and now Libya I really do hope we can wean away from hydrocarbons really fast, but money and ignoramuses often have their say.
www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/russia-sending-reinforcements-to-help-haftar-in-libya/1894167
www.petroleum-economist.com/articles/politics-economics/middle-east/2018/map-libyas-conflict
