{"id":86281,"date":"2019-04-13T13:30:00","date_gmt":"2019-04-13T17:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=86281"},"modified":"2019-04-13T12:50:29","modified_gmt":"2019-04-13T16:50:29","slug":"libya-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=86281","title":{"rendered":"Libya – Again"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Gen.<\/p>\n

Gen. Kalifa Hifter – Photo: Mohammed El-Sheikhy\/AP<\/p>\n

Earlier this week, there was an article about AFRICOM withdrawing some US troops from Libya.<\/p>\n

“A small contingent of U.S. troops has been in Libya to help local forces combat Islamic State<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0al-Qaida-aligned militants<\/a>, as well as to protect diplomatic facilities.<\/p>\n

\n

Some of those troops were\u00a0temporarily pulled from Libya<\/a>, AFRICOM announced Sunday.” – Article<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

https:\/\/www.airforcetimes.com\/news\/2019\/04\/11\/a-us-citizen-has-amassed-his-forces-near-tripoli-but-us-troops-arent-the-solution-officials-say\/<\/a><\/p>\n

This current article indicates that a Libyan with dual US-Libya citizenship,\u00a0 Gen. Khalifa Hifter, has been consolidating his own forces in the eastern part of Libya. He was Libya’s top army chief and someone who originally helped Mohammar Qadafi overthrow the Libyan monarchy in 1969, then left for the USA after Qaddafi’s attempt to take over\u00a0 Chad.<\/p>\n

The assessment is that the solution to Libya will be political, not military, and that Hifter’s presence while busying himself putting his military backup together will be mostly show, rather than warfare.<\/p>\n

Meantime, the Russians (yes, they’re in this, too!) are attempting to make nice with Hifter by using the same tactics for weapons sales that they used when Qaddafi was in power, as well as acquiring oil contracts. Now, since Russia has the reportedly largest oil shale reserves in the world, you’d have to ask why they’d want to go after Libya’s light sweet crude. They deny that they’re backing Hifter, but they’re still trying to do business with him.<\/p>\n

Since Qaddafi bit the Big One, there have been many fires at the oil storage centers that were difficult and dangerous, and nearly impossible, to put out. This hampered sales, obviously, especially with ISIS running rampant through northern Africa early on in their game. Now ISIS’s teeth have been pulled, but they still have some chops left, according to the news article.<\/p>\n

Meantime, perhaps it is wisest to pull our people out. We have large oil reserves, too.<\/p>\n

This should be interesting. Stock up on popcorn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gen. Kalifa Hifter – Photo: Mohammed El-Sheikhy\/AP Earlier this week, there was an article about AFRICOM … Libya – Again<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":653,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[307,174,5,384],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-isis","category-libya","category-politics","category-russia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/653"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=86281"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86281\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86282,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86281\/revisions\/86282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=86281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=86281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=86281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}