Washington and Paris ought to shoulder responsibility for open warfare in Libya

Political analysts say that Western countries must now recognize the magnitude of their awesome errors committed by their 2011 military intervention in Libya, by “rushing” to topple the late Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi’s regime, a decision which steeped the North African and the Sahel regions into a spiral of political and security turmoil, with adverse implications stretching onto Europe.

This belated recognition came in the words of Mr John R. Phillips, Ambassador of the United States in Italy, who said that “the overthrow of Gaddafi had not been prepared properly” during a speech delivered on Monday at the Faculty of Journalism of the University of Salerno in southern Italy, and reported by an Italian news agency.

In this connection, Algeria was one of the first world countries that opposed the NATO military intervention in Libya in 2011, and warned then against the hovering risks of destabilization in the region  coupled with nefarious repercussions in Europe itself, but the Western countries did not heed Algeria’s warnings, and  this led to the leaking from strife-torn Libya of  millions of pieces of arms which fell into the hands of terrorist and criminal groups, which turned the Sub-Saharan-Sahel region into a genuine powder keg which could explode at any moment.

The US senior diplomat held former French President Nicolas Sarkozy responsible for the “ inadequate” military intervention in Libya and for the ensuing chaos which woefully befell the North African country, stressing that  “we must remember that France itself pressed for the military intervention in order to overthrow the Gaddafi regime and not the United States,” as he put it.