Ali Zeidan, post-kidnapping.
Photo: MAHMUD TURKIA/AFP/Getty Images
A few hours after being kidnapped by militants from the Tripoli hotel where he lives — retaliation for the Libyan government secretly condoning U.S. raids on its soil — Libyan prime minister Ali Zeidan was released unscathed. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the “semiautonomous militias” who serve as the “government’s primary police and security force” can readily kidnap the prime minister — or worse — whenever the mood strikes. In a more general sense, the bad news is that Libya is, as the Times puts it, “sliding toward anarchy.”
