(Ecofin Agency) - The British parliament, in a report released on September 14, 2016, blames former French President Nicolas Sarkozy and UK’s ex-Prime Minister David Cameron for politic instability and mayhem in Libya following the military intervention that led to the death of the North African nation’s former leader, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, in 2011.

According to the British Foreign Affairs Committee Report, Sarkozy’s decision to send troops to Libya was driven by five main reasons, knowingly: “increase France’s influence in North Africa, to bolster electoral prospects, for the French army to reassert its position in the world, gain a greater share of Libyan oil production and halts Gaddafi’s projects to overshadow France in French-speaking part of Africa”

As for David Cameron, Westminster says he was “ultimately responsible for the failure to develop a coherent Libya strategy”. The report states that “the government failed to identify from intelligence reports that the threat to civilians was overstated and that the rebels included a significant Islamist element, that it took Gaddafi’s rhetoric at face value”.

The strategic goal of the UK-France military intervention backed the US and the United Nations, with its 1973 mission,   “to protect the people of Benghazi, threatened by Gaddafi, rapidly switched to regime change”, the parliament said. It resulted in“political and economic collapse, inter-militia and inter-tribal warfare, humanitarian and migrant crises, widespread human rights violations, the spread of Gaddafi regime weapons across the region and the growth of ISIS [Islamic State] in North Africa”.

Alain Okpeitcha