Libya, Libya, Libya.

It would appear that over the weekend Libya has become the latest nation to fall victim to the revolutionary hysteria that is sweeping the middle-east. Although it's very difficult to find out what's true and what's just rumour it appears that events in Libya seem to be following the template laid out during Iran's failed Green Revolution.

It begins with foreign agitators encouraging political rivals of the existing leadership to get their supporters to mount small anti-government protests. In Libya's case this is being done by tribal warlords based around the north-eastern city of Banghazi. Then wild and unfounded rumours are circulated both about the size and success of these protests and the brutality the authorities have used to suppress the protests. In Iran these included entirely false claims that the Iranian army were using helicopters to attack protesters with chemical weapons and people, including news organisations like CNN and the BBC, trying to pass off stock footage of the 2008 Greek revolt as evidence that rioting was spreading across Iran. The idea is that these rumours will help spread small, localised protests across the country both by convincing people that there is more opposition to the government then there really is and by undermining the government and state run broadcasters by making it look like they're lying when they're really telling the truth. As a general rule the more extreme the rumours become then the less success the protests are actually having. In Libya this seems to be forcing the already heavily armed warlords to move away from a popular revolution in favour of an armed insurgency leading to the prospect of a Nigeria style civil war.

As to why Libya is experiencing this instability it's really quite simple and exactly the same reason why Nigeria experienced it. Libya has got lots of oil. Since Qaddafi has been bringing the country in from the diplomatic cold post-9/11 there has been increasing competition between western oil companies over who gets to profit from that oil. A few years ago British Petroleum (BP) thought they'd got an edge in that contest by helping to broker a deal between the Libyan and British government that saw the Lockerbie bomber released from prison early. However just as soon as al-Megrahi was released BP realised that Gaddafi had played them and had no intention of selling them oil rights. Therefore Britain is driving Libya's unrest in order to replace one Libyan dictator with another Libyan dictator who is more likely to do business with BP. In fact I wouldn't be too surprised to learn that the majority of those 300 or so supposed killed were actually oil company funded mercenaries shooting it out amongst themselves much like the do in Nigeria or Angola.