Dire warnings about Libya dams went unheeded
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Usually structures will give some signs of impending failure, but also repair or remediation is usually very expensive and disruptive, and there are thousands of crumbling structures that require it. Only in retrospect is it obvious where we should have concentrated our limited resources.
I think Libya is the same? They just came out of a civil war.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/15/libya-and-moro...
Also French and British diplomats lied about strikes on civil population by Kaddafi to the US and the UN (unclear if the SIS/Mi6 was played by its French counterpart or participated on forging evidence).
At least the warchief that met Sarkozy was killed within the week Hillary received the information that he worked way too closely with the French, it might be happenstance, but I'd rather believe the Cia was involved somehow (if not, they're way, way less competent than everybody think)
Check for Blumenthal emails on wikileaks, you'll get even more details.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/03/22/libya-and-the-myth-of-h...
Libya had given up their quest to obtain nuclear weapons, yet they were still destroyed by the West. North Korea can read this history, so they dig in more fiercly to prevent a similar outcome.
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/30/how-the-miserable-death-of-m...
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_Accidents>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Perrow#Notable_works>
The USA is in a similar situation, many qualified people are entering retirement age, yes we have immigration but I don’t think there would be a huge number of qualified civil engineers coming to the USA and getting qualified to work here.
From TFA.
Neglect has accrued over 37 years. Only 12 have elapsed since the fall of Qaddafi. NATO's direct involvement was for a brief period in 2011.
And USA's direct involvement in Nagasaki Japan by dropping Little Boy was for a brief period on August 6 1945.
https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/history/little-boy-and-fat...
[1] https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/japan-reconst...
[2] https://www.amazon.com/Resurrecting-Nagasaki-Reconstruction-...
You yadda yadda'd the part where NATO destroyed the government.
The West just can't win. Everything is our fault.
Like who, the hundreds of civilians the US massacred at No Gun Ri ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Gun_Ri_massacre )? Or all the other civilians shot and bombed by the US Air Force, as internal documents and testimony attest to? Or the firebombing of cities by the US air force? Or the rapes and murders US military personnel have carried out in South Korea in the past decades? Or the decades of dictatorship in South Korea that the US military occupation shored up?
Millions of Americans suffer everyday from poverty, homelessness and not having access to healthcare.
We spread the shit within our own borders too.
Looking at the candidates for the next election actually scares me. It’s not good.
The first two are often overlooked because they've been so normalised: the US occupations of Germany and Japan in the post-war era, including the Berlin airlift which preserved the status of West Berlin, establishing new democratic governments in both countries and exceedingly vital economies, with both countries becoming powerhouses of the post-WWII global economy, as well as major trading partners of the US. As a post-conflict treatment by a conquering power of defeated enemies, this is exceptional in all of history, let alone the past century. I'd argue that in some ways this success possibly doomed or haunted other missions as the European and Japanese occupations were so successful.
Other post-war occupations and/or liberations include Italy (as with Germany, occupied by the Allies), also setting democratic governance and a successful economy, and the Philippines, which gained independence from the US (after being liberated from Japanese occupation) in 1946.
The US was a major participant in the Korean War, which prevented the Communist takeover of South Korea. Though South Korea was not especially democratic until the 1980s, it also fell under the US trade and economic umbrella and emerged as another Asian powerhouse economy.
The US assisted in the formation of Taiwan as an independent state and through military security guarantees has maintained its position against an aggressive PRC which continues to threaten independence to this day.
During the Greek civil war, the UK and US supported the Greek government against Soviet-backed rebels, under the Truman Doctrine, keeping that country in Western Europe and out of the Soviet Bloc.
The UK and US were also key players in establishing the State of Israel, which is admittedly something of a mixed bag. Jews gained a homeland, Palestinians lost one. The present State of Israel is quite arguably engaged in a genocide against the Palestinians, as many Jewish and Israeli critics of the government will argue quite persuasively.
The US-lead first Iraq War in 1990-91 to liberate Kuwait is another case of a largely justified and successful operation.
The 1990s also saw peacekeeping operations in Somalia and Bosnia, and acting with the UN, a mission to reinstate Jean-Bertrand Aristide as president of Haiti following a coup.
Keep in mind that there are other actions in which the US has played key roles with diplomatic, political, economic, and/or military support through other allegiances or organisations, most especially the United Nations and the 70 peacekeeping operations it has undertaken since 1948. With its permanent seat on the UN Security Council and corresponding veto power, those missions inherently require the support of the United States as well as the other four permanent member nations: China, France, Russia (formerly USSR), and the UK. Peacekeeping operations have occurred in India, Pakistan, the Congo, the Dominican Republic, Yemen, Cyprus, Middle East, Lebanon, Angola, Cambodia, El Salvador, Mozambique, Namibia, Rawanda, Somalia, Yugoslavia, and elsewhere.
<https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/our-history>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_interventions_by_the_U...>
That's at least a dozen, and possibly thirteen instances of positive engagement, excluding UN peacekeeping missions. There may be some other instances in the 200 or so foreign interventions. There are definitely interventions I'd consider net negatives, Iran 1953, Guatemala 1954, Bay of Pigs, Vietnam War (and related conflicts in Cambodia and Laos), Chile 1970-3, Nicaraguan Contras 1981-90, El Salvador 1979-90 most especially. Even in the case of the most egregious of those engagements though, Vietnam, the present relationship of the countries seems fairly good, which is worth pondering.
But to say that there have been no successful or positive interventions is simply not supported by facts.
And so did Saddam Hussein, for that matter...
And then a tragedy like this dam failure happens and we ask ourselves "How can the Libyans be so careless?" Indeed it must be their fault because they are less intelligent or more irresponsible or lazier than us. It's not because we have systematically made them poor and undermined any attempt of theirs to have some self determination. After all they've been free to do what they wanted since 2011! Before that even but they chose tyranny because they're stupid, not because the DGSE and CIA were in there creating dissident movements loyal to us.
The idea that there’s a war against Russia in another country that they invaded tells me all I need to know about how they write.
Which is often a strong disinfectant.
I'm going to suggest that the HN readership should be sufficiently literate to compare the two pieces, the narratives, facts, and shadings presented, and if it chooses to do so, assess and/or identify slants, defects, or strengths of each piece.
Which might be more productive than attacking someone who's already said that they don't endorse the piece.
I have this impression that the area has not been well governed (for more than a few years a t a time) for millennia; because people in other areas of the world find it convenient that it not be. Living in the crossroads of the world means you get stepped over by everyone i reckon.
I'd posted my own semi-informed assessment / speculation about the Derna dam failures in a thread yesterday, including the Beirut ammonia nitrate explosion as one of several similar incidents.
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37523055>
The NY Times piece largely corresponds to what I'd written, filling in numerous details, e.g.:
In 1986, a major storm convulsed the region, damaging the dams and shearing soil from the ground. The structures were damaged, Dr. Ashoor said, but again they held. Despite the stresses, repairs were minimal. In 1998, the Libyan government commissioned a study that revealed cracks and fissures in the dams, said Attorney General Sadiq al-Soor. Nearly 10 years later, a Turkish company was finally contracted to repair the dams, the prosecutor added. But the government dragged its feet in paying, and the project got underway only in 2010... Just four months later, in 2011, Libyans marched against Colonel el-Qaddafi’s 42-year grip on power... In the tumult, work on the dam ceased...
So, significant damage was incurred thirty-seven years ago, a study was commissioned over a decade later, work didn't commence for another thirteen years, and stopped shortly after, 12 years ago. Meantime, climate has been degrading, affecting both precipitation patterns and geology which amplifies impacts of storms.
Technical debt accumulates.
And both autocratic and failing states respond poorly to long-term, slowly-evolving risk.
As far as who's to blame, I'd suggest that another take is to look around to see what other locations might have similarly-accumulating risks.
There's been strong contrast made to disaster response in Libya vs. Morocco, despite some governmental dysfunction in the latter's case. Social cohesion and individual response in Morocco has been called out as specifically effective.
Failing states, complex infrastructure, and latent risks devolving from those, seem to me likely elsewhere in North Africa, have already been evidenced in Pakistan (truly massive flooding in 2022), are a factor in Ukraine (another dam failure, this tied to military aggression by Russia). There's a very high-risk dam in Mosul, Iraq, which has made headlines for years. Sri Lanka's economic collapse earlier this year would suggest that infrastructure maintenance may be lapsing. Afghanistan has numerous dams and hydrological projects which are now under the control of the Taliban, who've not proven to be especially capable administrators. Syria is another region with ongoing conflict. I suspect there's considerable rotting infrastructure in Russia. China is a country that's seen absolutely incredible growth and development in the past two decades, though with highly questionable quality and inspections practices.
As I'd noted in my earlier comment, even in wealthy, advanced, and reasonably institutionally-sound countries such as the US there've been numerous dam failures and near-failures over the past decade.
That’s an odd take. They’re a mess largely because of internal factors , not external ones. They were a mess before external interventions. Not saying it helped, but it’s not wholly responsible for the conditions either.
Having a strong military with competitive technology and training is also very important.
Having strong alliances is even more critical.
Or in the modern era, having nukes. Which is why isolated dictatorship countries want them so badly.
The US in particular, but also plenty of NATO and European powers, have not learned any lessons from the era of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan: supporting the most barbaric reactionary forces in a bid to destabilize/topple a disfavored central government, leads to widespread suffering in the region, and eventually on home turf.
And the US nearly directly caused a similar dam catastrophe in recent memory: https://archive.md/20230606233936/https://www.nytimes.com/20...
Reading about that conflict should remind people that the US military uses the same tactics that Russia is using right now in Ukraine (indiscriminate shelling), except with air superiority, the bombardment is more varied and destructive.
But it never actually had nuclear weapons to the best of my knowledge.
See:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libya_and_weapons_of_mass_dest...>
<https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/giving-the-bomb-revis...>
I think it's an important and interesting corrective, but fundamentally doesn't affect my argument about the intervention in Libya and its effects. It's just less ironic now.
That's been rare in this and a few related threads. I hope others might follow your lead.
I'd also like to point out that the situation is complicated, long-standing, has antecedents which trace back centuries, and has and is viewed as a chessboard for proxy battles by numerous foreign interests, as well as its own internal divisions.
And that some seem hell-bent on fighting ideological battles over a situation where 20,000 souls may well have been lost, which somewhat disappoints me.
That said: failed polities tend to result in failing infrastructures, increased stresses and strains (climate, economy, demographics, geopolitics, etc.) tend to interfere with effective polity, and as I've repeatedly pointed out in my comments to this thread, even in reasonably well-goverened and functioning societies, failures and close calls are disturbingly common.
The NY Times followed up with an article asking where else dams are at high risk. One point not raised in that article is what precautions can be taken, something I'd strongly encourage.
Even where a specific government is grossly incapable, both individuals and outside agencies in fact can anticipate and take steps to greatly reduce risks and harms from dam failures.
For starters, unlike numerous other mega-catastrophies, dams rarely fail utterly unexpectedly, both in the long term (problematic dams are problematic, often for decades, as here), or in the short term (severe weather events and dangerous geology and geography serve as triggers and amplifiers of risks).
Virtually all the risk comes in the initial flash flood and deluge itself. This risk is virtually completely mitigated by getting out of the way of and above the height of the flood. Knowing safe ground and/or creating evacuation facilities (strong construction, high walls, and out of the immediate water path) are both mitigations which are reasonably easily undertaken. Yes, vast areas may see property damage, but death, injury, and disease can be avoided.
Weather forecasting can predict dangerous storms often with up to a week's warning, and generally several days even where forecasting models perform poorly. Hours of advance notice can serve well. Radio and broadcast media remain effective for reaching large populations at low cost. Where local authorities fail to take these measures, foreign organisations, from broadcasters (BBC, VOA, DW, and commercial operators) to relief organisations (International Red Cross/Red Crescent) can both warn of and anticipate emergencies, warming up and pre-staging rescue and relief operations.
The second most vulnerable period is after the flood where people remain in damaged regions without infrastructure, most especially clean fresh water, sewerage capabilities, food, and medical care.
Note that unlike mass storms such as hurricanes, floods need not see wide-area evacuations. Rather than an entire county, state, or province, it's typically limited small settlements or specific neighbourhoods of larger cities which are most at-risk and which require evacuation. Moving only a few hundred metres may well be sufficient, or perhaps a few kilometres where a large flood-plain exists. Even in regions where transportation capabilities are limited, this is almost always possible.
The remaining issues are long-term recovery, rebuilding, and yes, tackling problematic dams and removing those which cannot be rehabilitated or have past any useful function.
And the worst part of this take is that is also denies agency for populations that had their own centennial empire at some point in history as if they were never more than paesant in some scheme. Thats deeply flawled in so many ways.
for those that downvoted this comment, lol open a book sometime.
If you specify millenia, the truth is the opposite:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Libya#Prehistoric_a...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Libya#Phoenician_an...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Libya#Achaemenid_an...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Libya#Roman_Libya
But things mostly went to crap ~975 years ago, when the ruling Zirid dynasty picked the wrong side in the Abbasid/Fatimid conflict...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zirid_dynasty#Apogee_in_Ifriqi...
Eastern Libya isn't exactly close to Lebanon.