Interviewed for an article for The Guardian, I make the case that the recent killings in Libya are part of the larger situation and that groups that want the central government to fail are clearly taking aim at foreigners.
"I would stick my neck out and say this is some kind of Salafist or jihadist group," said Jason Pack, a researcher at Cambridge University who runs Libya-analysis.com. "The only people who randomly kill foreigners are the jihadists. These extreme tactics are being used by the Islamists at a time the population is turning against them and the government is trying to break free. When they don't know how to cut a pipeline, killing westerners is an easier way of keeping foreign investors away."The prospects of the killers being identified and of security being improved are undermined by the continuing anarchic conditions across post-Gaddafi Libya in which different localities are controlled by communal militias while peace and oil production is only maintained by local deals and pay-offs by the Tripoli government led by prime minister, Ali Zeidan, and the oil companies themselves. "This is part of a larger trend of extortion," Pack said."The 'political' agenda of these groups is merely a veneer for extortion. The Libyan government finds itself in a conundrum because it has practised appeasement and scrambled to meet the demands of the militias. It has laid down deadlines threatened to use force but has never carried out those threats."