'West forgot after-sales service'

Should the West have intervened in Libya to overthrow the "Kafkaesque" regime of strongman Muammar Gaddafi?

Surveying the chaos in the north African country five years on, with rival authorities and factions vying for power, many now concede a disastrous lack of planning.

US leader Barack Obama has cited the Libya intervention as the worst mistake of his presidency, telling Fox News that he regretted having failed "to plan for the day after, what I think was the right thing to do, in intervening in Libya".

In Britain, a scathing parliamentary report last month found former prime minister David Cameron "ultimately responsible for the failure to develop a coherent Libya strategy".

Nicolas Sarkozy, who is angling to win back the French presidency next year, has defended France's role in Gaddafi's ouster, while admitting that after the country held elections in 2012 "we let Libya drop".

Today, the UN-backed unity government is struggling to assert its authority nationwide since arriving in Tripoli in March, with a rival parliament in the east refusing to cede power to it.

In the aftermath of Gaddafi's overthrow, the dictator's arsenals were looted, fighters fanned out through neighbouring Niger, Mali and Tunisia, and the Islamic State jihadist group gained a foothold on Europe's doorstep.

In March 2011 the West, led by Britain and France and backed by Nato, enjoyed broad support for the intervention to support the revolution which was sparked by neighboring Tunisia.

It opened the way to Western and Arab air strikes, leading eight months later to the overthrow and death of Gaddafi, who was lynched after his convoy was hit by a Nato air strike.

By then, the conflict had claimed more than 30,000 lives.

Five years on, Chadian President Idriss Deby is just one of the regional leaders to accuse the West of failing to follow up on the overthrow of Gaddafi.

"You forgot about after-sales service," he has often said.

The repercussions are also felt in relations with Russia, with President Vladimir Putin defending Moscow's role in Syria where it backs strongman Bashar al-Assad.

"Some of the responsibility for what is happening... lies especially with our Western partners, above all the US and its allies," Putin told French television.

"Remember how everyone rushed to support the Arab Spring? Where is that optimism now?" he asked. "Remember what Libya or Iraq looked like before these countries and their organisations were destroyed as states?"