Libya instability will backfire on West - Abayomi Azikiwe
Press TV has conducted an interview with Abayomi Azikiwe, an editor with Pan-African News Wire, from Detroit, to discuss the deteriorating situation in Libya.
- How do you see the situation in Libya? What challenges does the prime minister face?
- The situation is deteriorating on a daily basis. The problem with the oil ministry and the country’s major export...has of course been detrimental to any type of stability inside of Libya itself.
You have to understand that there’s no, really, national security apparatus. There’s no uniform political system inside of Libya. The country is deeply fractured. There are armed groups even at oil fields in the west of the country which are, in fact, preventing exports of oil from Libya to the European countries, which are their major suppliers.
This situation, of course, is going to deteriorate even further because the prime minister at this point has lost legitimacy among the forces that have controlled the country over the last year and a half. I believe there’s going to be more civil unrest with the kidnapping of the daughter of the former intelligence director, Abdullah Senussi - illustrates that the country has drifted into complete lawlessness and political destabilization.
- Another question that comes to mind is just how vital is Libya’s oil supply to the world considering the situation now?
- We’ve seen the volatility in the price of oil in the Western countries. Here in the United States, the oil prices have been going up largely depended upon the uncertainty that’s been generated in Libya, even though Europe gets a lot more oil from Libya than the United States. But, it still has an impact on the stability of the crisis.
Also, the threatened bombing of Syria has also caused a lot of consternation within the international oil markets and this, of course, is causing the rise in oil prices.
I believe very strongly that this ongoing instability in Libya and throughout the entire region is going to backfire on the Western countries who, in fact, were the ones who engineered the overthrow of the Gaddafi government in 2011.
It is they who have been providing political support to the General National Congress government. They still have, in fact, personnel inside Libya, CIA personnel as well as Marines.