Libya

Guns blazing, Libya’s various militias are showing little sign of laying down their arms and giving authority to the Libyan state. Even Mustafa Abdul Jalil, chairman of the National Transitional Council, has said that Libya faces a risk of widespread conflict, after a gun battle between militias in one of Tripoli’s busiest streets killed four fighters. Publicly, the militiamen are reluctant to lay down arms for fear of a rearguard pro-Gaddafi takeover. In reality, they like their newfound power and want to ensure that they swap their weapons for status and influence. How many of these groups exist is not clear — some estimate 100, with over 125,000 armed Libyans

To British ministers, the role that the International Criminal Court played over Libya was key – it made clear that Colonel Gaddafi’s actions were unacceptable and would be subject to international law. Tory MP Dominic Raab even wrote a piece in The Times about the need for Libyans to rely on the ICC in The Hague, rather than seek retribution and revenge against Gaddafi and his loyalists. And it wasn’t only the British government. German Chancellor Angela Merkel stated that the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi should be tried by the ICC: ‘Gaddafi should have a trial according to the law, something he never did with his opponents,’ Merkel said when

Yesterday saw three national polls and three different leaders in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. Politico’s Battleground poll (conducted early last week) shows Herman Cain leading Mitt Romney by two points. CNN’s latest (conducted over the weekend) has Romney narrowly leading Newt Gingrich, with Cain down in third. Most eye-catching of all is the PPP poll (also conducted over the weekend), which has Gingrich in first place, followed by Cain and then Romney in third. These polls do have one thing in common: they’re good news for Newt Gingrich. Whether he’s actually in the lead or not, he’s certainly well ahead of where he was last month. He’s

I’ve spent the last couple of days in the United States, far away from the brouhaha in Europe. What has struck me most during meetings with US officials is how low down their list of priorities Europe — and indeed Britain — comes. This is an Asian Century, and the US means to focus inwards and eastwards but not elsewhere. As an official put it to me, “we see Britain moving away from Europe and being distant to us.” There is even talk of closing down US European Command. This new focus will have a number of consequences. Take Libya, for instance. The UK and France could have fought the

Gaddafi was buried this morning, but Libya’s problems remain firmly above ground. The news emerging from the country is mostly grim: a possible massacre by anti-Gaddafi fighters; the hint of complicity on the part of Libya’s new leadership; Saif Gaddafi’s continuing elusiveness, and so on. Revolution and civil war are never done cleanly, sure. But just because the current situation is unsurprising doesn’t make it any less shocking. Unsurprising yet shocking. Much the same could be said of Mustafa Abdul-Jalil’s declaration that Islamic Sharia law would be the “main source” of all legislation in Libya from now on. Unsurprising, because Libya is, on the whole, a conservative Muslim country. Shocking,

The sight of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi blood-stained and bewildered, pulled around by a crowd in the final moments of his life is not a sight that will cause much pity. For more than four decades he had none for those Libyans whom he repressed and killed — anymore than he had for the victims on Pan Am Flight 103, his other multiple acts of terrorism, or his pointless and bloody interventions across Africa. Yet there is something pitiful about it: perhaps most obviously because watching his end is to watch the end of a delusion. Even more than Saddam Hussein crawling out of a hole in the ground and saying

Reading Fraser’s post last night, you’d be forgiven for thinking the BBC is running up the white flag in terms of its global reporting. Yesterday — as Gaddafi was breathing his last in Sirte — Coffee House was praising Sky and Al Jazeera, and pouring scorn on the BBC’s “stifling bureaucracy”, accusing us of being “short sighted”, “slow-moving” and being constantly “bested” by others in terms foreign news. There’s only one problem with Fraser’s analysis: the facts don’t stand up to scrutiny. Timing is everything. Yesterday the BBC’s Gabriel Gatehouse was the only UK broadcaster in Sirte. On the biggest day of the eight-month story, only the BBC was at

Now that Gaddafi has been killed, which television station will the world turn to? I suspect that, right now, Al Jazeera will be on in No.10 and the White House, and indeed television sets across Asia and India. At a time when the BBC is retreating from global news, its Doha-based rival is expanding — and this has harsh implications. The Arab Spring demonstrated the importance of media to world affairs, and the Americans are mindful that they’re losing this battle. The America-style television news formula — celebrity newscasters and short packages rather thin on analysis — go down badly outside America. ‘We are in an information war and we