#post-gaddafi libya

Libya’s defense minister has been relieved from his post following deadly clashes in the capital Tripoli, Prime Minister Ali Zeidan said in a televised news conference on Thursday.

“He previously submitted his resignation but we asked him to stay,” Zeidan said, referring to when Defense Minister Mohammed al-Bargathi submitted his resignation last month.

“But after what happened yesterday, it has been decided that he will be relieved from his position. We will name a new minister as soon as possible.”

Tension was palpable in the Libyan capital on Thursday, a day after deadly fighting broke out between groups of ex-rebels, highlighting the country’s continuing insecurity nearly two years after dictator Muammar Gaddafi fell.

Five people were killed and nearly 100 were wounded in clashes between rival armed militias in Tripoli on Wednesday, Health Minister Nurideen Doghman said.

“In total 97 people were wounded and five were killed in yesterday’s clashes,” Doghman said on state television.

Loud explosions and gunfire rocked Tripoli late into the night – the second day of violence in the city, highlighting the rivalries between heavily armed groups that have plagued the country since the 2011 uprising against Gaddafi.

Much of Libya’s recent unrest has centered on the eastern city of Benghazi, the cradle of the uprising, where attacks blamed on Islamists have targeted both the authorities and Western interests.

But it now seems to be spreading to Tripoli, where brigades of ex-rebels remain entrenched despite government efforts to disarm them and impose its authority.

Since the fall of Gaddafi’s regime, militia groups, mostly ex-rebels, have managed border controls, prisons, strategic facilities in the country and vital institutions.

Coming from different parts of the country, representing different tribes and with varying ideologies, they have received salaries and perks from the authorities, and some have even benefited from smuggling and extortion.

Deadly events on Tuesday and Wednesday epitomized the sense of lawlessness that surrounds them.

A group of armed men from the city of Zintan who had been guarding oil facilities in the southern desert, attacked the Tripoli headquarters of the petroleum industry security force on Tuesday.

They had been replaced by another group and wanted their jobs back.

Another “brigade” of ex-rebels, loosely attached to interior ministry’s high security commission, intervened in the fighting. Five people were killed and five of the Zintanis seized.

On Wednesday, armed Zintanis attacked the Tripoli headquarters of the brigade, located in the capital’s Abu Slim district. They ransacked it and freed their comrades.

Five people were also killed in that fighting and another 97 wounded, the health ministry said.

The interim head of Libya’s army, General Salem al-Konidi, said “we tried to intervene, but our resources did not allow it”.

“The government refuses to equip the army,” Konidi told Libya al-Ahrar television.

On Thursday, military police remained deployed at key points along the airport road near Abu Slim, having arrived during the previous days clashes.

While there were no outright threats, there was a sense among people in the city that there could be more inter-militia clashes.

Konidi also disowned the Zintanis, who are officially attached to the defense ministry, saying “forces that don’t follow our orders don’t belong to us”.

The government limited itself to issuing a statement overnight in which it regretted the “deplorable acts” and affirmed its intention to enforce its decision to remove “illegal militias” from the capital.

That decision had been taken by the General National Congress (GNC), the country’s highest legislative and political authority, after deadly fighting in Benghazi three weeks ago.

And the government said on Thursday that, during the course of the day, Prime Minister Ali Zeidan would speak about the latest clashes.

But while violence hit Tripoli, there were deadly attacks elsewhere in the country.

Overnight, three car bombs exploded in Sebha, 700 kilometers south of the capital. Two people died and 17 were wounded in the blasts, which came at roughly half-hour intervals, officials said.

And in Benghazi on Wednesday, an army officer died after a bomb placed in his official vehicle exploded.

"[On June 20th], the Libyan people will go to the polls. It will be the first election of its kind in Libya, but not the first election in the country. Qaddafi’s Jamahiriya held elections, but these turned out to be very large rubber stamps for a regime that conducted the spectacular trick of centralization in the name of de-centralization. But this is going to be a fraught election."

Armed checkpoints are back on the streets of Tripoli. Fighting in west Tripoli late into Monday night resulted in the death of at least one militia member. Mohamed Nasr Hrizi of the National Transitional Council finally gave a reason for [the commander of the Awfeya battalion from the town of Tarhuna, Abu-Ajilah] al-Habshi’s arrest [*]. Hrizi told a televised press conference that al-Habshi had been driving armed vehicles without authorization. His future is in question.

The black vomit of oil profits seep into coffers that are absent popular control. Oil contracts have to be doled out with the NATO member states first in the queue. A salty Islamist, [Abdel Hakim] Belhaj, is the most popular figure amongst the masses and his political ambitions must be denied. There is too much at stake for the US, its European allies, and the neoliberal clique that runs the National Transitional Council. They are alert to their responsibilities to themselves as the political grammar is written for Libya. Considerations of geo-politics prevent the views of the Libyans from coming to the surface. Bans on political parties are only one part of the muzzle. An amnesty for the crimes of the thuwars [revolutionaries] means that their victims feel like strangers in their land, and they hold tighter to their guns. This amnesty is of a piece with NATO’s refusal to allow an evaluation of its bombardments on Libya.

Abu-Ajilah Habshi has vanished into the pit of the Libyan prisons. He joins the almost seven thousand detainees who have not been brought before a court. They are on the other side of the line drawn by the Libyan authorities: those on their side are good, and the others are bad.

TRIPOLI, Libya: Libya’s interim ruling council has fired the nation’s Cabinet just five months after it took office, citing incompetence, two senior officials said Thursday, just two months before the country’s first national election.

National Transitional Council official Fathi Baja told The Associated Press that 65 of the NTC’s 72-members approved a no-confidence motion against Prime Minister Abdurrahim el-Keib in a meeting Wednesday.

TRIPOLI, Libya — A Libyan government spokesman says authorities have issued a law banning the formation of political parties based on religious principles.

Mohamed al-Hareizi, from the National Transitional Council, said the law passed Wednesday was designed to preserve “national unity.”

But it is sure to infuriate religious parties such as the Muslim Brotherhood, Libya’s most organized political group.

Islamists, like all political or religious groups in Libya, were long suppressed by former dictator Muammar Qadhafi. He was killed by Libyan rebels in October after eight months of fighting.