UN acts as if new Libyan unity government is certain even though there is no agreement

The Libyan Government of National Accord(GNA) is the unity government proposed in the Libyan Political Agreement(LPA). The final draft of the LPA was presented to the two rival governments some time ago by Bernardino Leon, then UN Special Envoy to Libya.

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The new UN Special Envoy to Libya, Martin Kobler, who took over on November 17, has continued where Leon left off by putting pressure on the two rival regimes to sign on to the LPA. In spite of constant pressure, Leon was unable to get either the internationally-recognized House of Representatives(HoR) in Tobruk or the General National Congress(GNC) in Tripoli to vote to approve the LPA. Both parliaments have issued statements opposing the LPA as it is, but Leon insists there are majorities favoring it but are prevented from voting by hard-liners.

Since Kobler took over he has been seeking and getting support for convincing the parties to sign the LPA and then moving ahead with formation of the GNA from many countries.Just recently he went to Qatar and the UAE. The UAE supports the HoR and its armed forces commander, Khalifa Haftar. Qatar looks more favorably on the GNC. Kobler also got support from the EU: The High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs, Federica Mogherini, has expressed the union’s readiness to aid Libya and its expected Government of National accord (GNA) with a substantial 100-million-euro aid package.Mogherini delivered a warning that "Libya will face the further spread of insecurity and instability, an increased threat from terrorist groups, a worsening economic and financial situation, and a growing humanitarian crisis" if the talks continue to halt.

There is no sign Kobler is showing the least degree of flexibility even though both sides demand changes to the final draft and reject at least some of the names proposed for the GNA. He did, it seems, manage to persuade the HoR to meet to discuss the LPA, but the session was suspended after a fight, again with no vote. The pro-HoR Libya Herald reported 92 members had signed a statement supporting the LPA before the meeting. However, this is simply not true.The support was with the proviso that Haftar, the commander of the Libya National Army, retain his job. The group also did not accept some of the names that the UN put forward as members of the GNA. The present LPA would give the role of commander-in-chief of the Libyan National Army to senior members of the the GNA, not Haftar. What the Herald calls "supporting the GNA" is just another form of rejection, but many do not even agree to that. There is no news as to what, if anything, is happening in the GNC parliament although it too is supposed to meet and vote on the LPA. There is not a peep out of the UN website about any of this, The mostrecent release is all about aid specialists meeting from across Libya:A UN-organized meeting of Libyan specialists involved in aid coordination in key national institutions from across Libya convened in Tunis on 25-26 November 2015 with a view to improve aid coordination and delivery mechanism as well as provide a solid plan for humanitarian and development assistance to the future Government of National Accord.This is not even the first meeting, as there was a meeting in October in London which also focused on support for the GNA.

At his first meetings after taking over, Kobler met not only with representatives of the two rival governments but senior members of the GNA named by Leon the Presidency Council. These people have no status since neither of the two parties have yet approved of the LPA and both have rejected some of the names in the draft. The proposed prime minister of the GNA is treated as if he is already an official with visits to Cairo to talk with officials there and also to Algiers.

It is hardly surprising that a group from the HoR rejects the GNA and describes it as "foreign tutelage." A meeting of Libyan mayors declared there was no international solution to Libya's problems — that Libya's problems can only be solved through a dialogue between Libyans without international participation.

Military report on Kunduz hospital attack leaves out key evidence it was no mistake

A U.S. military fact-finding investigation into an October 3 attack by an AC-130 gunship that killed 30 people found the pilot aimed at the hospital by mistake, intending to hit a compound nearby from which Taliban were firing.

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The hospital was run by Doctors Without Borders. It has demanded an independent investigation which both the U.S. and Afghan authorities have yet to approve.

General John Campbell, the top military and U.S. commander in Afghanistan, said: "The proximate cause of this tragedy was the direct result of avoidable human error, compounded by process and equipment failures." These failures are almost beyond belief and give rise to one ofmany different accounts of what happenedThe US has been accused of changing its version of events four times in the days after the incident, which is now the subject of three inquiries – by the US, Nato and Afghanistan.Several military personnel closely associated with the attack have been suspended from duties until the full adjudication process is complete, General Campbell said.

The crew of the AC-130 gave the coordinates of their target to command headquarters, who knew those coordinates were of a hospital and yet somehow managed not to conclude that the strike was on a hospital:The aircrew provided the coordinates of the trauma center -- a known protected site -- as their intended target one minute prior to firing, the report said. The operational headquarters at Bagram Airfield were aware of the coordinates for the trauma center Campbell said, but "did not realize the grid coordinates for the target matched a location on the no-strike list or that the aircrew was preparing to fire on a hospital."Such incompetence seems highly improbable to me. More likely technical people are having to take the rap for a story concocted to show that the U.S. would never intentionally attack a medical facility. But Afghan special forces, trained by the U.S., had already attacked the Kunduz hospital:In July... Reuters reported that Afghan special forces “raided” this exact MSF hospital in Kunduz, claiming an al Qaeda member was a patient. This raid infuriated MSF staff: The French aid group said its hospital was temporarily closed to new patients after armed soldiers had entered and behaved violently towards staff."

Afghan officials have long been resentful of the fact that the Kunduz hospital treats Taliban and government forces wounded equally. At first, the Afghans insisted the hospital was being used as a command center by the Taliban. Early reports also claimed U.S. and Afghan forces had been under attack from the hospital. A version quickly jettisoned. The early reports in mainstream media claiming the hospital was being used as a Talban base are now all deleted from memory:Fox News yesterday, citing anonymous “defense officials,” said that while they “‘regret the loss’ of innocent life, they say the incident could have been avoided if the Taliban had not used the hospital as a base, and the civilians there as human shields.” In its first article on the attack, the Washington Post also previewed this defense, quoting a “spokesman for the Afghan army’s 209th Corps in northern Afghanistan” as saying that “Taliban fighters are now hiding in ‘people’s houses, mosques and hospitals using civilians as human shields.'” AP yesterday actually claimed that it looked at a video and saw weaponry in the hospital’s windows, only to delete that claim

Even some Afghan officials continued with the narrative that the attack was justified. Abdul Paiman a member of parliament from Kunduz said; “I know that there were civilian casualties in the hospital, but a lot of senior Taliban were also killed,.”

There are other reports indicating that US special operations analysts had been gathering intelligence on the hospital days before it was attacked since they also though that it was being used by a Pakistani operative to coordinate Taliban activity:The special operations analysts had assembled a dossier that included maps with the hospital circled, along with indications that intelligence agencies were tracking the location of the Pakistani operative and activity reports based on overhead surveillance, according to a former intelligence official who is familiar with some of the documents describing the site. The intelligence suggested the hospital was being used as a Taliban command and control center and may have housed heavy weapons.This has all been deleted from the memory banks of the mainstream press, it appears.

According to the official narrative, the crew of the gunship found the coordinates provided them by the Afghan authorities turned out to be an empty field. They decided they would attack the hospital nearby since it roughly met the description of the target. The hospital had two large flags on top identifying it as a hospital. Not surprisingly Doctors Without Borders was not enthusiastic about the report: “It appears that 30 people were killed and hundreds of thousands of people are denied life-saving care in Kunduz simply because the MSF hospital was the closest large building to an open field and ‘roughly matched’ a description of an intended target.”

General Campbell did not take questions nor would any official comment on whether they thought an independent investigation should be conducted. It took 17 minutes for the U.S. military to respond to the 18 frantic calls from the hospital to stop the attack. This gave the gunship enough time to finish its attack.