When the climate crisis meets a failed state, the outcome is the kind of disaster that Libya is witnessing in Derna. Any city would have struggled with the extraordinary level of precipitation that Storm Daniel visited upon Libya’s northern coast. In its earlier, milder form, the storm caused severe damage in Greece before it crossed the Mediterranean.
Nevertheless, the extent of the devastation – a quarter of a city was swept into the sea in what is being described as Libya’s 9/11 – is also a function of the country’s failed politics.
After the bloody western-backed ousting of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, the country has mainly been governed by two rival administrations, one in Tripoli and the other in Tobruk, each supported by an assembly of rival external actors including Turkey, the UAE, Qatar, Egypt and Russia’s Wagner group….
After the truth-shower 