Libya: The Complications of Intervention

The Takeaway

Foreign governments have yet to settle on a strategy for how to respond to the fighting in Libya. Over the weekend, a covert British team entered Libya by helicopter during the night, and was quickly detained by anti-Gadhafi forces. They were ultimately released, but what followed was an awkward conversation between the British ambassador to Libya, Richard Northern and a senior rebel leader. The ambassador sounds like he didn’t fully grasp why the special ops team had entered in such a suspicous way. “We sent a small group just to find if there was a hotel,” Northern said. Middle East editor for The Guardian, Ian Black, explains what happened with the British team and why it’s so challenging to come up with a coherent international response to the situation in Libya.

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