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Libya Today: 2 Governments, Many Militias, Infinite Chaos

The headquarters of the National Oil Corporation in Tripoli are gleaming, the floors marble, the offices decked out with black leather chairs and fake flowers. It seems far from the fighting going on over oil terminals around the country.

But the man in charge looks at production and knows the future is bleak.

"We cannot produce. We are losing 80 percent of our production," says Mustapha Sanallah, the chairman of Libya's National Oil Corporation.

He looks like a typical executive, decked out in a suit and glasses. But beneath his calm veneer, he's worried.

"Now we have two problems: low production and low price," he says.

At the current rate, he expects that the country won't even earn 10 percent of the budget money Libya had in 2012, before militias started taking oil infrastructure hostage.

"If there is security in Libya, we can resume production within a few days," Sanallah says.

If there's one thing that has a chance of keeping Libya from totally falling apart, it's oil. It provides nearly all the country's revenue. It's what militias are fighting over. And it's the prize coveted by the two rival governments — one in Tripoli, the other in Libya's east — that claim to be running the country.

The Tripoli faction is seen as Islamist, the eastern government as anti-Islamist — but the fighting is mainly over turf and resources like oil, rather than ideology.

The international community has recognized the eastern government, but it opposes what it sees as the east's divisive attempt to set up a rival national oil company and take control of the industry, something Sanallah says is impossible anyway.

"We are still the NOC [National Oil Company]; the legal NOC is here. I am the chairman of NOC," he says. "[The east] nominated a new chairman of NOC, but there's no staff, there's no people, there's no hardware, there's no software."

International mediators are trying to keep the oil company independent of either side, but oil fields are under attack. One tanker was bombed, and another one was threatened.

Sanallah says he wants to keep oil out of the fight.

"I hope so. I hope so," he says — but he doesn't sound convinced.

His employees are fighting fires at major oil terminals, and with no real security forces, it only takes a few gunmen to shut things down or hold them hostage.

"I think the message was clear to the oil company: There is no security, good security. Otherwise a few people cannot control the vein of the blood of Libya," he says.

And with the terminals closing, Libya's battered economy is taking even more blows because foreign oil companies are pulling out. Libya is only producing about 330,000 barrels a day, increasing the economic burden.

"When you are closing the terminals, it means you cannot produce oil, and if you cannot produce oil, then you cannot produce gas. So we are making up the gas by importing diesel. This is another burden on the shoulders of NOC," he says.

Again, oil is basically what pays for any central Libyan government. How much? "All — 90 to 95 percent. There is no revenue but oil," he says.

If negotiations don't end the fighting, Sanallah says, the country will collapse. A functioning oil industry could be all that stands between Libya as a nation, and Libya as a failed state.

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The Federal Aviation Administration has released long-awaited draft rules on the operation of pilotless drones, opening the nation's airspace to the commercial possibilities of the burgeoning technology, but not without restrictions.

In short, the proposed rules that have been a decade in the making would limit drones to flying no more than 100 mph at an altitude no higher than 500 feet. The FAA bans their use at night and says they cannot be operated over people not directly involved in the flight.

The FAA also will require anyone using Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) for commercial purposes to obtain a special pilot certification to operate them.

In a statement, the White House called drones "a potentially transformative technology in diverse fields such as agriculture, law enforcement, coastal security, military training, search and rescue, first responder medical support, critical infrastructure inspection, and many others."

The statement says that the proposed rules ensure "that the Federal Government's use of UAS takes into account ... important concerns and in service of them, promotes better accountability and transparent use of this technology."

Reuters, quoting industry experts, calls the new rules "relatively benign."

Even so, the news agency says, "the rule was unlikely to help Amazon.com in its quest to deliver packages with unmanned drones, since its approach requires an FAA-certified small drone pilot to fly the aircraft and keep it line of sight at all times — factors not envisioned in the online retailer's plan."

The draft regulations must still undergo public comment and revision before being officially adopted.

FAA Drone Rules

FAA

drones

The cease-fire in eastern Ukraine appears to be largely holding — at least for the moment, defying skepticism that the second truce in six-months between government forces and Russian-backed separatists might immediately collapse.

The cease-fire went into effect at midnight Sunday (Saturday at 5 p.m. ET).

The Washington Post reports: "Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and pro-Russian rebel leaders ordered their fighters to hold fire just after midnight Sunday, bringing a tenuous pause to fighting that had been rapidly escalating in recent days, with violence ratcheting up particularly strongly since the two sides agreed to the midnight deadline in peace talks in Minsk, Belarus, Thursday."

On Sunday, a spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin was quoted by Reuters as saying that the package of measures making up the latest Minsk agreement must be "unconditionally observed" for the deal to hold.

Even so, The Associated Press says that regular shelling could still be heard today from Luhansk and The Guardian says there was "steady shelling [in the morning] near the besieged city of Debaltseve," where some 8,000 Ukrainian troops have been under attack in recent weeks.

Reuters quotes a senior rebel commander as saying the separatists have the right to fire on Debaltseve because it is "our territory."

The Wall Street Journal adds:

"In the run-up to the deadline, each side accused the other of preparing to breach the agreement brokered by European leaders.

"The truce is seen as a possible last chance to put an end to a surge in the deadly fighting, which has killed more than 5,000. But a previous deal in September collapsed, and doubts about the implementation of the new agreement grew as both sides squabbled over the specifics and violence continued."

crisis in Ukraine

Russia

The graffiti in Snuny — an Iraqi city at the base of Mount Sinjar that Kurdish peshmerga fighters recently regained control of — provides a kind of shorthand for its recent history.

There's black graffiti on some buildings, proclaiming "This is the Islamic State." It's been scribbled out.

Over it, there's green or red graffiti, which proclaims "This is now the property of the Kurdish peshmerga."

Over the summer, the world focused on Mount Sinjar, a remote mountain in northern Iraq where thousands of people were under assault by the group that calls itself the Islamic State, or ISIS.

Many starving, terrified people were evacuated from that mountain.
The surrounding area fell to ISIS, including Snuny.

We arrive at the mayor's office, where about a half-dozen men in fatigues with guns greet us and escort us in.

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Mayor Nayef Sado Kasim is the first man we've seen all day who is not wearing camouflage. He has a sharp gray suit and tie, buzz-cut silver hair, and a thick black moustache.

He's obviously trying to project an air of normalcy and control in a city that is far from normal.

The center of this town is safe, he says. But it's surrounded on three sides by ISIS — and sometimes they attack.

Before the war, he says, Snuny had a population of nearly 150,000 — a mix of Kurdish Muslims and Yazidis, who belong to a religious ethnic minority in this region.

Today, he estimates that about 10,000 people have come back. Many single men have returned, but few families, the mayor says.

He gives us an armed escort to go see for ourselves, and we begin to drive. There are some obvious signs that life is coming back to this city. People are selling fruits and vegetables at markets. We see a man tending his olive trees, and shepherds herding their flocks of sheep.

We meet a man named Suleman Fanno, who runs eight local community centers in the surrounding villages.

He says there's no electricity, no water, no street cleaning and no trash collection. He says they will have a long way to go before people can return to their normal lives.

In some newly liberated Kurdish cities, there have been reports of revenge killings — villagers taking out their anger on their neighbors who supported ISIS.

In Snuny, locals tell us there were few ISIS sympathizers in the first place, and most of them fled with retreating forces.

Finally our escort leads us to a mud brick house where a woman stands with her three young children. A lamb and a few chickens and pigeons roam the yard.

Wedat Kasim tells us that her family stayed on Mount Sinjar through the long siege, from early August until this city was freed in late December.

"There was nothing to eat," she says. "There was no water to drink. No soap. We had maybe a little rice or cracked wheat each day."

i

Wedat Kasim and her family stayed on Mount Sinjar through the long siege, from August until December. Ari Shapiro/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Ari Shapiro/NPR

Wedat Kasim and her family stayed on Mount Sinjar through the long siege, from August until December.

Ari Shapiro/NPR

Her children are 3, 5, and 6. They would eat once a day. Instead of bathing, she would try to wipe down their faces with a little water.

They didn't understand what was happening, she says. They would just cry and ask me to give them food. They would say, "It's cold. We're hungry."

Then she turns from my interpreter to me and says in Kurdish, I have a question for you.

As difficult as our lives are here, she says, thousands of women are still being held by ISIS. Their lives are worse. What about them?

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Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant

Islamic State of Iraq and Syria

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