Africa: Libya B‑class Low‑importance

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Military history: African / Post-Cold War C‑class

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@Sakiv:, can you provide a source which states Egypt and UAE sent troops to assist Haftar in this offensive? There are the sources you claim should be cited: [1] describes Sisi meeting Haftar in the Arab Summit before this offesnvie even started in Tunisia. [2] describes Qatar's reaction to the UAE condemnation of this offensive.

Where does it says Egypt and UAE sent military forces to assist, or even endorsed this military offesnsive? [3] per this source, Egypt issued a deceleration of de-escalation. [4] per this source, UAE condemned the military offensive.

You're performing original research WP:OR Wikiemirati (talk) 00:54, 6 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Wikiemirati: They does not need to send troops to add them to the infobox. Previous support is as current support unless there is a source confirming the end of support. They have provided both military and diplomatic support to the LNA because it is fighting the Islamists. See this article for example Northern Aleppo offensive (February 2016). Saudi Arabia and Qatar did not send their troops to fight but gave arms to the rebels.--Sakiv (talk) 01:03, 6 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The arms support was provided prior to this offensive, hence Egypt, UAE, and Qatar are included in Libyan Civil War (2014–present) infobox. They did not however, provide arms for this particular offensive unless they release a statement saying they support it. You're including citations from prior to this offensive and combining it here WP:SYNTH. Wikiemirati (talk) 01:07, 6 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Your words are not true. They still support the Libyan national army. I have provided an Egyptian source acknowledging the support of UAE and Egypt for Haftar.--Sakiv (talk) 01:12, 6 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Diplomatic support is not the same as military support. Belligerent mean a nation or person engaged in war or conflict. France, Russia, Egypt, and UAE all diplomatically back Haftar's government, but they are not considered as "Belligerents" in this conflict. [5] This source states all these countries supported Haftar's government internationally, but backing doesn't mean sending weapons or troops in this particular offensive. Wikiemirati (talk) 01:17, 6 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with Wikiemirati, infobox is reserved for military, not diplomatic support. Prior support (before the offensive) does not mean there is military support now for this offensive. EkoGraf (talk) 15:54, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Under 8 April, I added Libya Observer's claim that Libya al-Ahrar TV claims that French experts arrived in Gharyan. Since we don't have Wikipedia articles on either Libya Observer or Libya al-Ahrar TV, it seems premature to me to include this info in the infobox. Better recognised French media will probably add more info one way or another soon - e.g. Le Canard enchaîné - which appears in print on Wednesdays, offline only or Charlie Hebdo, also appearing on Wednesdays and only in print. Boud (talk) 10:41, 9 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Please remember WP:RELTIME - Wikipedia is not a news desk. We can report information that happened recently according to WP:RS, but the information should be written in such a way that if Wikipedians suddenly stopped editing the page and made no more edits for 5-10 years, it would still be accurate according to the old sources of information. The hypothetical reader in this situation should not be misled into thinking that the events of April 2019 "are still happening" in April 2024. WP:RELTIME explains this nicely.

Wikipedia:As of can be quite useful here.

Boud (talk) 19:15, 6 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

If fighting escalates or continues into larger portions of Tripoli, would the title Battle of Tripoli (2019) be a better fit? Weathin (talk) 22:34, 6 April 2019 (UTC) Maybe.Alhanuty (talk) 19:01, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

We presently have HoR/LNA on the left half and GNA on the right half of the infobox. This is a situation where, even though the reality is more complicated than A versus B, the presentation is simplified, and there is a roughly west-east split, and we're showing the map in the conventional style of west-left, north-up, east-right, south-down. Since these conventions are heavily programmed into most of our minds, I propose to swap the left-right convention so that we have "west/GNA" on the left and "east/HoR/LNA" on the right. (I'm ignoring political left-right affiliations, since that's more abstract, and there's no well-publicised pro-workers vs pro-business division - at least not in the present state of this article and mainstream media articles.)

The point is to make it easier for the reader to anchor info in his/her mind. (For people familiar with US geography, imagine a California vs US-East-Coast war with US-East-Coast key text info on the left-hand side of the infobox and California key text info on the right-hand side of the infobox.)

Any objections? (If there are no objections and someone wants to do the swap, then go ahead without waiting for me.)

Boud (talk) 23:42, 12 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Done, since there were no objections. Boud (talk) 00:07, 15 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I've been reading in multiple articles that the Zintan Brigades, previously allied with Haftar, are now fighting with the anti-Haftar troops. However, we also know that the Zintan brigades were allied with Haftar at the war's start. The war map here on wikipedia also still shows Zintan as held by Haftar. So what's up? Does anyone have any more sources confirming a shift in allegiance by the Zintan brigades?Jogarz1921 (talk) 23:44, 12 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

After initial claims in the first few days by the GNA that Zintan was rushing to their aid, Zintan issued a statement saying they were with Haftar and all online maps show Zintan still under LNA control. EkoGraf (talk) 16:54, 14 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Do you have a source for that? Not accusing you of lying but given the two reports above I need something solid.Jogarz1921 (talk) 22:44, 20 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Here [6] Also, just look at any Libyan war online map. EkoGraf (talk) 09:56, 2 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The House of Representative's forces are the ones who initiated the offensive therefore it is more logical to place them in the left as it is on plenty of other articles such as the following:

Battle of Stalingrad
Akashat ambush
Battle of Baghuz Fawqani
Battle of the Karbala Gap (2003)

It would be best to return to the original format.

Takinginterest01 (talk) 06:02, 17 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Agree. EkoGraf (talk) 15:42, 17 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Why is so much in this article sourced to Twitter? SashiRolls ^{t · c} 23:19, 17 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Many news agencies will not publish an actual article unless a serious development has happened. A full article is only usually written when a town is captured, a major battle occurs, or a major figure is killed, thus leaving out many smaller engagements that, while only carrying local importance on their own, significantly change the perception of balance of power when taken together. Even when a serious development does occur, it may take a while for anything to get published, as a war in a third-world country isn't seen as a top priority by many agencies. Sometimes the only articles that get written are authored by biased news agencies. Many agencies instead publish smaller bits of information on twitter. So long as they are reputable and confirmed sources, and so long as reports corroborate, I don't see a reason why not to include them. I try to cite articles over tweets wherever I can, but that's not always possible. Goodposts (talk) 15:11, 18 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much for your answer. I think that as time goes by it would be best to replace those links with more synthetic references, of which a fair number are already & will (I suspect) be appearing. An insource:"twitter.com" search of en.wp currently turns up 39,208 pages which cite Twitter in some way,(§), up from 35,735 back in July 2018. This worries me, especially when we are referring to the Twitter account of a media organization we don't know much about (as on this page we refer to The Libya Observer's twitter feed, for example). As I said at ITN I think that a lot of good effort is being pored into this page, but that (as regards Twitter and other sources) it might be good to keep the wp:notnews policy and the wp:now! (essay) in mind. SashiRolls ^{t · c} 21:32, 20 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@SashiRolls: What would be good to handle this systematically would be a template mainly for twitter/fediverse references that does something like: if the tweet is older than (default = 3(?)) days, then warn the reader that although the reference was considered temporarily acceptable, it has to be replaced by a reliable source; optionally choose a different default number of days. Or better: add this as an optional parameter in a properly formatted cite template. This could be a bit tricky wikipedia-politically though, since it would imply that using unreliable sources is temporarily acceptable...

@Goodposts: I don't use tweets/toots as references myself, since I don't wish to have to update them later. I think that sooner or later a proper discussion and guideline (RFC?) will have to be done in WP: namespace (starting at WP:ITN somewhere?) about whether or not tweets/toots can be used as sources, and whether or not they are archivable (I haven't tried seeing if WebCite or the Wayback Machine can archive tweets/toots). The differences between the centralised, corporate-controlled Twitterverse and the decentralised Fediverse would have to be thought through too. Boud (talk) 20:08, 24 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Boud: I agree, the situation isn't ideal. However, I have also struggled in finding non-biased published sources for most of the article. Mostly the agencies that publish full articles on recent developments are those such as The Libya Observer, which has a very strong and definite pro-GNA bias. Their point of view undermines their credibility for issues outside of statements made by GNA officials. Having to choose between biased sources and verified twitter accounts is like choosing between the lesser of two evils, but I do belive the twitter sources, so long as they belong to reputable and unbiased organisations, can be helpful in this case. I do think it would be best if we could migrate some of them over to articles, but it would be a tough job. Best regards, Goodposts (talk) 20:58, 24 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Recent minor events of vandalism in the same style, from two different Croatian IPs:

• edit on 05:25, 21 April 2019 - undone in 50 mins
• edit on 21:10, 21 April 2019 - undone in 4 mins
• IP user 93.143.70.219 at 05:35, 24 April 2019 - undone in 90 mins
• IP user 93.143.70.219 at 17:01, 24 April 2019 - undone in 3 mins

The vandalism is minor and not very visible to a typical reader. I'm putting these here for convenient analysis. For the moment I wouldn't think that semi-protection is needed, given the cost of discouraging genuine IP users/novices. We have e.g. this constructive edit by an IP user.

If there's a keen Wikipedian for whom 05:30-ish UTC is a convenient time for editing, it might be useful to check this article around then. Boud (talk) 19:43, 24 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

If these edits become a trend, then we would require semi-protection. However, seeing as there are only a few of them so far and because they were quite minor, I think we ought not to hurry. Semi-protection discourages people from becoming editors and making good faith edits. Best regards, Goodposts (talk) 23:15, 24 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Just for the record (the status of minor annoyance rather than overwhelming vandalism is unchanged):

• 06:21, 30 April 2019‎ 78.0.191.209 - minor unobtrusive vandalism, undone in 12 mins

Boud (talk) 13:12, 30 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Infobox vandalism (from Indonesia/keduanya dari alamat IP di Indonesia)

• 04:28, 12 May 2019 114.125.110.82 - infobox vandalism - undone in under 1 min
• 06:41, 12 May 2019 36.74.3.22 - infobox vandalism - undone after 3h 50 mins

Neither edit made sense given the main content of the article, but they could have confused readers. Again, this is just for the record. There does seem to be a pattern that the edits slowest to be fixed are those around 5-6 UTC. US/Canada based Wikipedians willing to check watchslists/edit during afternoons would be useful here. Boud (talk) 19:37, 13 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Again, similar minor infobox vandalism:

• 16:26, 19 May 2019‎ 180.247.83.160 - fixed in 1 minute

The pattern is too consistent for this to be a "good faith edit". But it's still only a minor annoyance/embarrassment.

Boud (talk) 20:29, 19 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Minor infobox vandalism:

• 15:13, 2 June 2019 by 197.215.152.146 - fixed in 12 minutes.

Boud (talk) 22:11, 3 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know if it's Western mainstream media, Libyan online English-language media, or the general chaotic situation who is (are) responsible, but we have a whole bunch of Libya-related pages in which the HoR is described as a government instead of a legislative body, even though there's not much WP:RS'd info on the pages about the HoR voting on any legislation, getting Haftar as de facto head of state (of the "Tobruk government") to sign laws, and so on. Obviously, if both the HoR and the High Council of State (Libya) are both making laws and getting the de facto or de jure (depending on legal interpretations) laws signed by the de facto/jure heads of state, then the legal history of Libya is likely to be a big tangle - but that's not Wikipedians' problem.

What is a problem for Wikipedians is that this oversimplification (legislative body = civilian government = military government), apart from being misleading in itself, risks leading to confusion given that some of the HoR members will apparently meet in Tripoli to create two rival parts of the HoR, and have already declared rival "opinions of members of the HoR" regarding the Tripoli offensive. See the reference in House_of_Representatives_(Libya)#2019_Western_Libya_offensive for the planned Tripoli meeting.

This problem (government? parliament? real parliament? nominal-but-in-reality-close-to-fictive parliament?) seems to be on quite a few pages. Fixing this is not likely to be so easy since sources to describe the relations between individuals and institutions have to be sorted out. The reality is probably a lot more complex than a simple "west vs east".

Just as an example, the lead of this article presently says that Haftar "represents" the HoR. My understanding is that right now he's the de facto head of state and head of the armed forces of the "Tobruk government", which is closely related to the HoR. I'm not convinced that Haftar "represents" the HoR, but I'm not proposing to change it right now, since I don't see a simple compact alternative justified by the sources. Probably adding a solid, sourced, 2015-ish to 2019 section to the HoR article and also the same type of section to High Council of State (Libya) would make sense first. After that, key points could be used here in a compact form.

Boud (talk) 00:14, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Haftar claims to represent and work for the HoR, but pretty much everyone (except for a handful of pro-Haftar propagandists) agrees that it’s actually the other way around. The HoR is totally reliant on Haftar for its continued existence, even as Haftar has reduced it to a rubber stamp for his de facto military dictatorship. I think the article doesn’t want to make this quite clear for neutrality reasons, but it should since this is the nigh-universally agreed fact on the ground.Jogarz1921 (talk) 00:28, 20 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Concrete info based on WP:RS should go into the Haftar and HoR articles, or other articles where it makes sense and helps clarify things, and the info should respect WP:RELTIME. We don't want info that is only true "now". The present info has the HoR recently holding sessions in Tripoli, generally in opposition to Haftar's attack on Tripoli, so at least recently, it doesn't seem to have been either a rubber stamp for Haftar or reliant on him for its existence. Boud (talk) 22:38, 20 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I've done what I could to disambiguate, based on sources:

• Libyan Armed Forces - a historical overview, pointing to the two LNA and GNA (LA) components of Libyan armed forces
  • Libyan Army - the ground forces nominally controlled by the GNA/al-Sarraj/Tripoli
  • Libyan National Army - the ground forces nominally controlled by Haftar/Tobruk-HoR

Feel free to keep an eye on them (watchlist them) to make sure that they don't get messed up again.

There's still quite a lot of info in the higher-quality, in-depth sources (Wolfram Lacher SANA Briefing Report; Jason Pack ISPI report; see the ref lists) that could usefully be integrated into these articles. For example, both "sides" include Islamist militias, but with important nuances and differences that seem to be factual enough for inclusion, for someone interested in adding depth to the Wikipedia entries. Boud (talk) 01:09, 11 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

A Turkish military drone operated by the GNA. Since when does that count as a ‘’Turkish’’ loss? I don’t even think that you understood me. A Turkish built drone (Bayraktar) operated by the GNA was shot down. Do you have any source about Turkish operated drones (as in operated by the Turkish military) in Libya? These drones were sold to the GNA and used by them. Stop adding this as an Turkish casualty. Its already listed as a GNA casualty (12 bayraktars shot down claim: Per LNA). Gal17928 (talk) 23:28, 3 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I see that someone added the lost drone as a ‘’Turkish casualty’’. These Turkish made drones were sold to the GNA and are operated by them. It doesn’t make any sense to add them as ‘’Per Turkey’’ on the casualties list. Thats like adding a shot down libyan MIG aircraft as ‘’Russian’’ because Russia sold it to them. There is not a single source that confirms that these drones are operated by Turkish troops. If there is, then please show it Gal17928 (talk) 17:09, 2 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It´s indicated as a Turkish military aircraft. https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/libyan-rebels-shoot-down-turkish-plane-moments-after-ankara-approves-sending-troops

Mr.User200 (talk) 22:23, 3 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]