CIA Activities in Libya - Libyan Civil War

Libyan Civil War

After the Arab Spring movement overthrew the rulers of Tunisia and Egypt, its neighbours to the west and east respectively, Libya had a major revolt beginning in February 2011. In response, the Obama administration sent in CIA Special Activities Division paramilitary operatives to assess the situation and gather information on the opposition forces.

During the early phases of the Libyan air strike offensive, paramilitary operatives assisted in the recovery of a U.S. Air Force pilot who had crashed due to mechanical problems. There was also speculation in The Washington Post that President Obama issued a covert action finding in March 2011 that authorized the CIA to carry out a clandestine effort to provide arms and support to the Libyan opposition.

Muammar Gaddafi was ultimately overthrown in the Libyan civil war.

Read more about this topic:  CIA Activities In Libya

Famous quotes containing the words civil war, civil and/or war:

    Colonel Shaw
    and his bell-cheeked Negro infantry
    on St. Gaudens shaking Civil War relief,
    propped by a plank splint against the garage’s earthquake.
    Robert Lowell (1917–1977)

    ...I was confronted with a virile idealism, an awareness of what man must have for manliness, dignity, and inner liberty which, by contrast, made me see how easy living had made my own group into childishly unthinking people. The Negro’s struggles and despairs have been like fertilizer in the fields of his humanity, while we, like protected children with all our basic needs supplied, have given our attention to superficialities.
    Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 1, ch. 19 (1962)

    Once lead this people into war and they will forget there ever was such a thing as tolerance.
    Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)