Operation Oil Theft: Month 2, Week 4, Day 1.

On May 5th 2011 the international contact group on Libya held its second meeting in Rome. Coming just three days after America sensationally announced that it had killed Osama bin Laden the meeting, which US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton attended, was rather overshadowed and there was very little media coverage. This has led to Russia and China to call for more transparency in the way the contact group operates amid very serious concerns that it has massively overstepped it's United Nations mandate.

What we do know is that the contact group has given encouragement to the rebel's Transitional National Council (TNC) by throwing it's full support behind the TNC's rather vague road map for democracy in a post-Qaddafi Libya. It has also pledged US$250million in free money to keep the TNC solvent during the conflict. This figure includes the US$150million already pledged by Kuwait.

Since the meeting it has emerged that the rebels received their first payment for oil sales. This totals US$100million and was paid via a Qatari bank. More worryingly the rebels are also in the process of applying for around US$4billion in international loans which will garuntee Libya will be in debt for a long time should the rebels ever take power.

Within Libya the fighting continues pretty much as it has before with around two dozen fighters of both sides being killed each day as rebel and government forces clash on the outskirts of Ajdabiya in east and in the city of Misrata in the west. On Sunday (8/5/11) rebels in Misrata claimed that they only had one month of supplies left after government forces destroyed a fuel depot however this seems to be an attempt to gain more international support then a legitimate assessment of their situation. NATO claim to have destroyed around 70% of Libyan government forces but are still carrying out around 60 bombing missions per day and are talking about expanding the list of potential targets to include Libya's civilian infrastructure.

This seems to be NATO's mission in Libya now. In the 6-9 months it will take the rebels to raise their US trained army NATO bombing missions will try and do as much damage as possible to the country. This will ensure that regardless of their government the Libyan people will be totally dependent on western nations while they try and repair all the war damage. Turkey now fully support the NATO mission after being brought off with promises of receiving the majority of the reconstruction contracts.

This nihilistic approach has today (10/5/11) Baroness Amos, the UN Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs to call for all sides to temporarily halt the fighting. I would go further and say that the NATO mission against Libya needs to cease immediately. It's a shame then that Baroness Amos, a Brit, is only making this call to make it look like Britain and the UN actually care about the Libya people while knowing it won't change a damn thing.