Black US President wants to arm al Qaeda rebels who massacre black Africans?
It could only happen on mad bad Planet Earth.
===============================
From http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/mar2011/rebe-m31.shtml
Libyan rebels massacre black Africans
By Wolfgang Weber
31 March 2011
The opposition forces in Libya attempting to march on Tripoli with the assistance of American, French and British bombs are far removed from the image of innocent civilians fighting for freedom and democracy promoted by the media and political circles.
This is made clear in a March 22 article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung by Gunnar Heinsohn, the author of Encyclopaedia of Genocide (Rowohlt, 1998).
Heinsohn cites a report by the well-known Zimbabwean journalist and documentary filmmaker Farai Sevenzo dealing with barbaric, pogrom-like massacres perpetrated by the so-called “rebels” against black African workers in Libya. The article states:
“Because mercenaries from Chad and Mali are presumed to be fighting for him [Gaddafi], the lives of a million African refugees and thousands of African migrants are at risk. A Turkish construction worker told the British radio station BBC: ‘We had seventy to eighty people from Chad working for our company. They were massacred with pruning shears and axes, accused by the attackers of being Gaddafi’s troops. The Sudanese people were massacred. We saw it for ourselves.’ ”
The genocide authority Heinsohn explains: “It is standard knowledge in genocide research that minorities come under attack in civil wars because at least one party to the conflict accuses them of collaborating with the enemy….
“Whoever wants to prevent crimes against humanity with the use of force...is always in danger of helping one side in the neutralisation or even extermination of the other side…. UN Security Council Resolution 1973 of March 17 against the Libyan government provides a perfect example.
“All the stops of international criminal law have been pulled against those prepared to bloodily defend their power. The material assets at risk are meticulously listed. But neither in the text of the resolution nor in the speeches of US Secretary of State Clinton or French President Sarkozy is any mention made of warnings or legal threats directed to the insurgents. The use of ‘mercenaries’ by the Libyan leadership is expressly condemned. But genocidal acts conducted under the same pretext—such as the mass killings of black African workers reported by Farai Sevenzo—go unmentioned…. A cloak of complete silence is being thrown up surrounding the deeds of his [Gaddafi’s] opponents.”
On February 28, the Arab TV station Al Jazeera reported the racist massacre of black African workers by so-called “freedom fighters” as follows: “Dozens of workers from sub-Saharan Africa, it is feared, have been killed and hundreds are hiding because angry opponents of the government are hunting down black African mercenaries, witnesses reported…. According to official reports, about 90 Kenyans and 64 people from southern Sudan, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Zambia, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone and Burundi landed in Nairobi today.
“One of them, Julius Kiluu, a 60-year-old construction manager, told Reuters: ‘We were attacked by people from the village. They accused us of being murderous mercenaries. But in reality they simply refuse to tolerate us. Our camp was burnt down. Our company and our embassy helped us get to the airport.’
“Hundreds of black immigrants from the poorest African countries, who work mainly as low-wage day labourers in Libya, have been wounded by the rebels. From fear of being killed, some of them have refrained from going to a doctor.”
At the time of the outbreak of civil war, about 1.5 million black Africans were employed in Libya as labourers in the oil industry and the construction, agriculture and service sectors.
Copyright © 1998-2011 World Socialist Web Site - All rights reserved
Thursday, March 31, 2011
AL QAEDA 100% PENTAGON RUN
This short precise report exposes how the Arabs have been used as tools of empire.
The British manipulated the Arabs in WW1 to kick out the Ottomans, promising freedom and democracy to the Arabs (where have we heard that recently?), but then installed puppet kings, allowed mass Jewish immigration and gave the Ibn Saud tribe the vast land of Saudi Arabia, with all that lovely lovely oil. With the profits from this oil the Saudis have been able to fund their own private army of terror, with the total complicity of the New World Order.
Afghanistan in 1980, to destroy the USSR to permit NATO to takeover East Europe.
Serbia in 1999, to finally destroy the former vast Yugoslavia opposing the EU and NATO.
WTC and Pentagon in 2001, to provide the pretext to invade Iraq and Afghanistan in line with the PNAC Rebuilding America's Defenses/A Clean Break agenda.
And now in Libya, to remove the pro-African, state-building Gaddafi, forging business and political relationships outside of the control of the New World Order.
To instigate and assist this rebellion in Libya, we have sent in the SAS!
The British manipulated the Arabs in WW1 to kick out the Ottomans, promising freedom and democracy to the Arabs (where have we heard that recently?), but then installed puppet kings, allowed mass Jewish immigration and gave the Ibn Saud tribe the vast land of Saudi Arabia, with all that lovely lovely oil. With the profits from this oil the Saudis have been able to fund their own private army of terror, with the total complicity of the New World Order.
Afghanistan in 1980, to destroy the USSR to permit NATO to takeover East Europe.
Serbia in 1999, to finally destroy the former vast Yugoslavia opposing the EU and NATO.
WTC and Pentagon in 2001, to provide the pretext to invade Iraq and Afghanistan in line with the PNAC Rebuilding America's Defenses/A Clean Break agenda.
And now in Libya, to remove the pro-African, state-building Gaddafi, forging business and political relationships outside of the control of the New World Order.
To instigate and assist this rebellion in Libya, we have sent in the SAS!
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
IF TERRORISM STRIKES THE UK SOON THEN ARREST CAMERON
I am not joking.
Cameron publicly stated that he knew that by involving the UK in a civil war in Libya he would be risking terrorism in this shattered, defrauded and corrupt United Kingdom.
There was no legal reason for the UK to get involved in Libya.
But then they cooked up UN SCR 1973 with its very useful and convenient reference to "all necessary measures" to protect civilians.
Now this "all necessary measures" is being twisted to permit the arming of the Libyan al Qaeda rebs.
And if that doesn't work and the rebs keep running away, what next?
Open air support and land invasions in favour of the rebs?
All this would serve the agenda of a false flag terrorism to be blamed on Gaddafi.
If such an event occurs, remember I did not provoke it.
I called for non-intervention.
I called for examination of our role in provoking and assisting the rebellion against Gaddafi.
I will also call for the government to not capitalise on such an atrocity.
But you can bet that the government will.
Cameron publicly stated that he knew that by involving the UK in a civil war in Libya he would be risking terrorism in this shattered, defrauded and corrupt United Kingdom.
There was no legal reason for the UK to get involved in Libya.
But then they cooked up UN SCR 1973 with its very useful and convenient reference to "all necessary measures" to protect civilians.
Now this "all necessary measures" is being twisted to permit the arming of the Libyan al Qaeda rebs.
And if that doesn't work and the rebs keep running away, what next?
Open air support and land invasions in favour of the rebs?
All this would serve the agenda of a false flag terrorism to be blamed on Gaddafi.
If such an event occurs, remember I did not provoke it.
I called for non-intervention.
I called for examination of our role in provoking and assisting the rebellion against Gaddafi.
I will also call for the government to not capitalise on such an atrocity.
But you can bet that the government will.
TRILLIONS ARE STILL MISSING
As stated a week or so ago, trillions have gone missing from the Pentagon and trillions have gone missing from the Federal Reserve bailout schemes (the banks won't say where it went so for all intents and purposes it is missing).
This blatant mass fraud can only have taken place if the perps are sure they will get away with it.
So how can they get away with it?
Well, one way would be to start another world war and hope everyone forgets about it.
Another way would be set off some dirty nukes, blame it on Gaddafi or 'home grown terrorists' or whoever the bogeyman is at the time, and implement a tyrannical government with martial law and no human rights that would not recognise or ignore such fraud.
Whatever. There has been a census in the UK run by the military-industrial complex, via Lockheed Martin. They will soon have your name and address on the database. That claim that the data will be used for transport and health planning is all BS. You need far more detailed data than knowing that someone takes the bus to work. To implement an efficient public transport system you need times of the day, days of the week, etc.
There are other ways, but I'll leave you to think of those.
This blatant mass fraud can only have taken place if the perps are sure they will get away with it.
So how can they get away with it?
Well, one way would be to start another world war and hope everyone forgets about it.
Another way would be set off some dirty nukes, blame it on Gaddafi or 'home grown terrorists' or whoever the bogeyman is at the time, and implement a tyrannical government with martial law and no human rights that would not recognise or ignore such fraud.
Whatever. There has been a census in the UK run by the military-industrial complex, via Lockheed Martin. They will soon have your name and address on the database. That claim that the data will be used for transport and health planning is all BS. You need far more detailed data than knowing that someone takes the bus to work. To implement an efficient public transport system you need times of the day, days of the week, etc.
There are other ways, but I'll leave you to think of those.
AT LONG LAST! AN INVESTIGATION OF THE AUDITORS.
There are three sets of perps behind the current financial crisis; the banks, the rating agencies (paid by the banks to classify their junk debt as AAA) and the auditors (paid by the banks to say their balance sheets smell of chocolate and roses).
And the role of the auditors in this crisis has at last been recognised by the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee, who have called for the Office of Fair Trading to complete a detailed investigation of the auditors.
Not that I expect anything major to happen.
=========================
From http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/8415860/House-of-Lords-report-attacks-complacency-of-Big-Four-auditors-in-financial-crisis-urges-competition-investigation.html
House of Lords report attacks 'complacency' of Big Four auditors in financial crisis, urges competition investigation
House of Lords has recommended that Britain's competition authorities investigate the world's "Big Four" auditing firms who failed to warn regulators about banks before the financial crash.
A report by the upper chambers' Economic Affairs Committee said PwC, Deloitte, Ernst & Young and KPMG dominated the UK audit market for large companies.
In 2010 they audited 99 of the companies in the FTSE 100, which on average only change auditors "every 48 years".
"It is clearly an oligopoly with all the attendant concerns about competition, choice, quality and conflict of interest. It gave no warning of the banking crisis," said the report, published on Wednesday.
© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2011
And the role of the auditors in this crisis has at last been recognised by the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee, who have called for the Office of Fair Trading to complete a detailed investigation of the auditors.
Not that I expect anything major to happen.
=========================
From http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/8415860/House-of-Lords-report-attacks-complacency-of-Big-Four-auditors-in-financial-crisis-urges-competition-investigation.html
House of Lords report attacks 'complacency' of Big Four auditors in financial crisis, urges competition investigation
House of Lords has recommended that Britain's competition authorities investigate the world's "Big Four" auditing firms who failed to warn regulators about banks before the financial crash.
A report by the upper chambers' Economic Affairs Committee said PwC, Deloitte, Ernst & Young and KPMG dominated the UK audit market for large companies.
In 2010 they audited 99 of the companies in the FTSE 100, which on average only change auditors "every 48 years".
"It is clearly an oligopoly with all the attendant concerns about competition, choice, quality and conflict of interest. It gave no warning of the banking crisis," said the report, published on Wednesday.
© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2011
THEY MAY BE AL QAEDA, BUT THEY'RE OUR AL QAEDA
They may be al Qaeda, but they're our al Qaeda.
That's what we're being asked to accept about the Libyan rebs without question today.
Never mind that al Qaeda allegedly killed 3000 on 9/11.
Never mind that al Qaeda bearded guy Osama bin Whathisname is still at large.
Never mind that al Qaeda killed our guys in Iraq, Afghanistan and anywhere else where we have tried to export our unique brand ofimperialism freedom and democracy.
If al Qaeda wants to serve as our puppets and oust Gaddafi, then let them. Let them spill their blood for Bilderbergism.
Give them arms, finance, the SAS, oil. Whatever it takes!
But hang on!
If they're our al Qaeda now, then were they our al Qaeda on 9/11?
You'd better believe it.
That's what we're being asked to accept about the Libyan rebs without question today.
Never mind that al Qaeda allegedly killed 3000 on 9/11.
Never mind that al Qaeda bearded guy Osama bin Whathisname is still at large.
Never mind that al Qaeda killed our guys in Iraq, Afghanistan and anywhere else where we have tried to export our unique brand of
If al Qaeda wants to serve as our puppets and oust Gaddafi, then let them. Let them spill their blood for Bilderbergism.
Give them arms, finance, the SAS, oil. Whatever it takes!
But hang on!
If they're our al Qaeda now, then were they our al Qaeda on 9/11?
You'd better believe it.
WHAT IS RUSSIAN FOR LIMEADE?
Alot of Russians are drinking limeade right now, direct from the UK, USA, France, and even from that little beacon of freedom and democracy, Qatar.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
A WORK IN PROGRESS
Even though Hillary Clinton says that she does not know who the Libya al-Qaeda rebs are, she and a few others want to arm them! This proposal to 'relax' the embargo on supplying arms in UN SCR 1973 to arm the rebs is what the Imperialists want out of the London Conference on Libya.
How Clinton can say she doesn't know who the rebs are is of great concern and questionable, when the SAS and probably US special forces too have been in Libya for at least a month helping the rebs.
She described the relationship between the Imperialists and the Libyan al-Qaeda rebs as "a work in progress".
How Clinton can say she doesn't know who the rebs are is of great concern and questionable, when the SAS and probably US special forces too have been in Libya for at least a month helping the rebs.
She described the relationship between the Imperialists and the Libyan al-Qaeda rebs as "a work in progress".
THE SPECTRE OF NATO GROUND TROOPS IN LIBYA HAS RISEN
Admiral James Stavridis, the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, today proposed that NATO ground troops may be required as a stabilisation or peacekeeping force in a post-Gaddafi Libya. This is the ideal scenario for the North Africa Takeover Organisation, for humanitarian and stabilisation/peacekeeping problems. Yeah, problems as in problem-reaction-solution.
The problem is that once they're in they rarely leave.
And we take note of NATO current operations, the Never A Trustworthy Organisation has far exceeded its original charter, and just keeps on expanding and expanding and expanding...
===========================
From http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/03/nato-chief-opens-the-door-to-libya-ground-troops/
NATO Chief Opens The Door to Libya Ground Troops
* By Spencer Ackerman Email Author
* March 29, 2011 |
* 11:21 am |
* Categories: Rogue States
*
The mantra, from President Obama on down, is that ground forces are totally ruled out for Libya. After all, the United Nations Security Council Resolution authorizing the war explicitly rules out any “occupation” forces. But leave it to the top military officer of NATO, which takes over the war on Wednesday, to add an asterisk to that ban.
During a Senate hearing on Tuesday, Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island asked Adm. James Stavridis about NATO putting forces into “post-Gadhafi” Libya to make sure the country doesn’t fall apart. Stavridis said he “wouldn’t say NATO’s considering it yet.” But because of NATO’s history of putting peacekeepers in the Balkans — as pictured above — “the possibility of a stabilization regime exists.”
So welcome to a new possible “endgame” for Libya. Western troops patrolling Libya’s cities during a a shaky transition after Moammar Gadhafi’s regime has fallen, however that’s supposed to happen. Thousands of NATO troops patrolled Bosnia and Kosovo’s tense streets for years. And Iraq and Afghanistan taught the U.S. and NATO very dearly that fierce insurgent conflict can follow the end of a brutal regime. In fact, it’s the moments after the regime falls that can be the most dangerous of all — especially if well-intentioned foreign troops become an object of local resentment.
In fact, Stavridis told Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma that he saw “flickers of intelligence” indicating “al-Qaeda [and] Hezbollah” have fighters amongst the Libyan rebels. The Supreme Allied Commander of NATO noted that the leadership of the rebels are “responsible men and women struggling against Col. Gadhafi” and couldn’t say if the terrorist element in the opposition is “significant.” But the U.S. knows precious little about who the Libyan rebels are.
The new prospect of NATO force on the ground in Libya seemed to alarm Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who got Stavridis to say that there’s “no discussion of the insertion of ground troops” in NATO circles. (And “to my knowledge” there aren’t troops there now, he said.) But Stavridis told Reed that the memory of the long NATO peacekeeping efforts in the Balkans is “in everyone’s mind.”
President Obama boasted about the rapidity with which the U.S. and its allies got involved in Libya. Some defense wonks, like Andrew Exum of the Center for a New American Security, criticized Obama’s team for not exhibiting diligent planning before Operation Odyssey Dawn began. Obama didn’t signal an endgame in his Monday speech, just vowing not to use any ground forces to get there.
That was exactly what President Clinton promised in Bosnia — right before sending 20,000 U.S. soldiers to enforce the 1995 Balkans peace deal. Because of the U.S.’ commitments to NATO and NATO’s commitments to enforcing the peace accord, U.S. peacekeepers ended up staying there for a decade. That history may be weighing on officers in Europe, but the Obama administration doesn’t seem to be so troubled.
Wired.com © 2011 Condé Nast Digital. All rights reserved.
The problem is that once they're in they rarely leave.
And we take note of NATO current operations, the Never A Trustworthy Organisation has far exceeded its original charter, and just keeps on expanding and expanding and expanding...
===========================
From http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/03/nato-chief-opens-the-door-to-libya-ground-troops/
NATO Chief Opens The Door to Libya Ground Troops
* By Spencer Ackerman Email Author
* March 29, 2011 |
* 11:21 am |
* Categories: Rogue States
*
The mantra, from President Obama on down, is that ground forces are totally ruled out for Libya. After all, the United Nations Security Council Resolution authorizing the war explicitly rules out any “occupation” forces. But leave it to the top military officer of NATO, which takes over the war on Wednesday, to add an asterisk to that ban.
During a Senate hearing on Tuesday, Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island asked Adm. James Stavridis about NATO putting forces into “post-Gadhafi” Libya to make sure the country doesn’t fall apart. Stavridis said he “wouldn’t say NATO’s considering it yet.” But because of NATO’s history of putting peacekeepers in the Balkans — as pictured above — “the possibility of a stabilization regime exists.”
So welcome to a new possible “endgame” for Libya. Western troops patrolling Libya’s cities during a a shaky transition after Moammar Gadhafi’s regime has fallen, however that’s supposed to happen. Thousands of NATO troops patrolled Bosnia and Kosovo’s tense streets for years. And Iraq and Afghanistan taught the U.S. and NATO very dearly that fierce insurgent conflict can follow the end of a brutal regime. In fact, it’s the moments after the regime falls that can be the most dangerous of all — especially if well-intentioned foreign troops become an object of local resentment.
In fact, Stavridis told Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma that he saw “flickers of intelligence” indicating “al-Qaeda [and] Hezbollah” have fighters amongst the Libyan rebels. The Supreme Allied Commander of NATO noted that the leadership of the rebels are “responsible men and women struggling against Col. Gadhafi” and couldn’t say if the terrorist element in the opposition is “significant.” But the U.S. knows precious little about who the Libyan rebels are.
The new prospect of NATO force on the ground in Libya seemed to alarm Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who got Stavridis to say that there’s “no discussion of the insertion of ground troops” in NATO circles. (And “to my knowledge” there aren’t troops there now, he said.) But Stavridis told Reed that the memory of the long NATO peacekeeping efforts in the Balkans is “in everyone’s mind.”
President Obama boasted about the rapidity with which the U.S. and its allies got involved in Libya. Some defense wonks, like Andrew Exum of the Center for a New American Security, criticized Obama’s team for not exhibiting diligent planning before Operation Odyssey Dawn began. Obama didn’t signal an endgame in his Monday speech, just vowing not to use any ground forces to get there.
That was exactly what President Clinton promised in Bosnia — right before sending 20,000 U.S. soldiers to enforce the 1995 Balkans peace deal. Because of the U.S.’ commitments to NATO and NATO’s commitments to enforcing the peace accord, U.S. peacekeepers ended up staying there for a decade. That history may be weighing on officers in Europe, but the Obama administration doesn’t seem to be so troubled.
Wired.com © 2011 Condé Nast Digital. All rights reserved.
BILDERBERG POST ADMITS NATO TAKING SIDES IN LIBYA
Now even The Bilderberg Washington Post admits that NATO has taken sides in Libya. It cites the fact that the aircraft now being used in Libya have been specifically designed for the battlefield and close contact with the enemy to bomb convoys and kill ground troops.
[source : U.S. deploys low-flying attack planes in Libya, WP, 29/3/2011]
But despite this evidence, despite all the demands for Gaddafi to go, and despite that all the statements that Gaddafi cannot be left in control of Libya, it is still being denied that sides have been taken.
The use of the aircraft, during days of heavy fighting in which the momentum seemed to swing in favor of the rebels, demonstrated how allied military forces have been drawn deeper into the chaotic fight in Libya. A mission that initially seemed to revolve around establishing a no-fly zone has become focused on halting advances by government ground forces in and around key coastal cities.
The AC-130s, which fly low and slow over the battlefield and are typically more vulnerable to enemy fire than fast-moving fighter jets, were deployed only after a week of sustained coalition attacks on Libyan government air defenses and radar sites. These aircraft, armed with heavy machine guns and cannons that rake the ground, allow strikes on dug-in Libyan ground forces and convoys in closer proximity to civilians.
[source : U.S. deploys low-flying attack planes in Libya, WP, 29/3/2011]
But despite this evidence, despite all the demands for Gaddafi to go, and despite that all the statements that Gaddafi cannot be left in control of Libya, it is still being denied that sides have been taken.
THE EGYPTIAN RE-REVOLUTION
Trouble is again brewing in Egypt. Those who rebelled two months ago have now realised that things have not changed, and are organising another million man march this friday.
======================
From http://www.presstv.ir/detail/172079.html
Egypt braces for million-man rally
Tue Mar 29, 2011 4:8AM
Egyptians have prepared for another million-man rally to “save the revolution” as officials loyal to the ousted regime of President Hosni Mubarak still hold on to power.
The January 25 coalition called on fellow citizens to participate in the demonstrations on Friday, warning that true reform only comes with the trial of the 'corrupt' officials of the Mubarak regime, a Press TV correspondent reported.
The anti-government protesters will also call on Egyptian officials loyal to beleaguered Mubarak to leave office immediately.
The movement said it is provocative to see officials belonging to the previous regime on TV interviews.
Egyptians, who led the wave of popular protests that overthrew Mubarak on February 11, want a radically new constitution that would break the total control the presidency held over the government during Mubarak's rule.
The announcement for the rally comes as the country's controversial emergency law is to be removed before the parliamentary elections set for September.
The emergency law, in place since former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was assassinated and Mubarak assumed power, allows authorities unfettered powers to arrest people without charge and ban protests.
It also ended up giving Mubarak powers to crackdown on the opposition.
The Egyptian Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which placed Mubarak and his family under house arrest on Monday, has come under pressure to hand over power to a civilian government.
Activists have demanded the release of political prisoners, the lifting of a 30-year-old state of emergency and the disbandment of military court.
More than 380 protesters were killed during the demonstrations which kicked off on Jan. 25 and ended by forcing Mubarak to abandon power on Feb. 11.
Thousands of demonstrators were also injured during the protests when police forces fired rubber bullets, live ammunition, water cannon and tear gas at peaceful protesters.
SB/GHN/HRF
© Copyright 2010 Press TV. All rights reserved.
======================
From http://www.presstv.ir/detail/172079.html
Egypt braces for million-man rally
Tue Mar 29, 2011 4:8AM
Egyptians have prepared for another million-man rally to “save the revolution” as officials loyal to the ousted regime of President Hosni Mubarak still hold on to power.
The January 25 coalition called on fellow citizens to participate in the demonstrations on Friday, warning that true reform only comes with the trial of the 'corrupt' officials of the Mubarak regime, a Press TV correspondent reported.
The anti-government protesters will also call on Egyptian officials loyal to beleaguered Mubarak to leave office immediately.
The movement said it is provocative to see officials belonging to the previous regime on TV interviews.
Egyptians, who led the wave of popular protests that overthrew Mubarak on February 11, want a radically new constitution that would break the total control the presidency held over the government during Mubarak's rule.
The announcement for the rally comes as the country's controversial emergency law is to be removed before the parliamentary elections set for September.
The emergency law, in place since former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was assassinated and Mubarak assumed power, allows authorities unfettered powers to arrest people without charge and ban protests.
It also ended up giving Mubarak powers to crackdown on the opposition.
The Egyptian Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which placed Mubarak and his family under house arrest on Monday, has come under pressure to hand over power to a civilian government.
Activists have demanded the release of political prisoners, the lifting of a 30-year-old state of emergency and the disbandment of military court.
More than 380 protesters were killed during the demonstrations which kicked off on Jan. 25 and ended by forcing Mubarak to abandon power on Feb. 11.
Thousands of demonstrators were also injured during the protests when police forces fired rubber bullets, live ammunition, water cannon and tear gas at peaceful protesters.
SB/GHN/HRF
© Copyright 2010 Press TV. All rights reserved.
Sunday, March 27, 2011
EVEN BBC REPORTERS ARE NOW QUESTIONING NEUTRALITY OF NATO IN LIBYA
A BBC reporter on BBC Radio 5 Live this morning at 1025, who is on the ground with the Libyan al Qaeda rebs, questioned the neutrality of NATO's bombing of Libya. When asked by the radio show host Russell Fuller how the rebs managed to destroy Gaddafi's military so quickly the reporter replied that it was not the rebs but NATO strikes, and there is no way that the rebs could have come so far and so fast as they have in the last few days without the air support of NATO.
The reporter was then asked if NATO was bombing in advance of the rebs, to clear a path for them, and the reporter replied yes, and that this brings into question the purpose of the military action.
WELL, DUUH!
Meanwhile, NATO is seriously taking the limeade out of Russia.
The reporter was then asked if NATO was bombing in advance of the rebs, to clear a path for them, and the reporter replied yes, and that this brings into question the purpose of the military action.
WELL, DUUH!
Meanwhile, NATO is seriously taking the limeade out of Russia.
THEY CLAMPDOWN ON THE CENSUS BUT NOT ON DERIVATIVES
A census is supposed to take place today. They say they are clamping down on people who don't answer very intrusive questions.
Meanwhile quadrillions in unregulated derivatives contracts are in place and are being negotiated, derivatives similar to those that caused the current financial crisis for which the muggins British taxpayer (and census sufferer) will pay the price with severe austerity, and derivatives which if go wrong again will cause an even bigger financial crisis in which the muggins British taxpayer (and census sufferer) will be asked to bailout the Tory friends the Nazi gambling banks again, and suffer even more austerity.
Meanwhile quadrillions in unregulated derivatives contracts are in place and are being negotiated, derivatives similar to those that caused the current financial crisis for which the muggins British taxpayer (and census sufferer) will pay the price with severe austerity, and derivatives which if go wrong again will cause an even bigger financial crisis in which the muggins British taxpayer (and census sufferer) will be asked to bailout the Tory friends the Nazi gambling banks again, and suffer even more austerity.
I'LL NEVER FORGET OSAMA BIN WHATSHISNAME
I'll never forget Osama bin Whatshisname. The Pentagoonz have. Perhaps you have too.
But I won't.
What was his name?
Osama bin Garden?
Osama bin Hard On?
Osama bin...[sounds of clicking fingers as I desperately try to remember whatshisname's name]
Osama bin Pentagon?
Naa. Now that would be ridiculous.
Osama bin Beard On?
Osama bin Pardon?
Ah! That's it!
Osama bin Forgotten!
YES! That's it!
Osama bin Forgotten!
Whatever happened to him? Didn't he do 9/11, or something?
But I won't.
What was his name?
Osama bin Garden?
Osama bin Hard On?
Osama bin...[sounds of clicking fingers as I desperately try to remember whatshisname's name]
Osama bin Pentagon?
Naa. Now that would be ridiculous.
Osama bin Beard On?
Osama bin Pardon?
Ah! That's it!
Osama bin Forgotten!
YES! That's it!
Osama bin Forgotten!
Whatever happened to him? Didn't he do 9/11, or something?
Friday, March 25, 2011
WHO ARE THE LIBYAN REBS AND THEIR PATRONS?
In support of the great article by Webster Tarpley on the Libyan rebs, Peter Dale Scott has written his analysis of who the rebs are and who is sponsoring them. Scott almost agrees with Tarpley. Scott suggests that there is some al-Qaeda influence on the rebs, but the argument is mainly tribal. And the rebs are being armed by Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
========================
From http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=23947
Who are the Libyan Freedom Fighters and Their Patrons?
by Prof. Peter Dale Scott
Global Research, March 25, 2011
The Asia-Pacific Journal Vol 9, Issue 13 No 3, March 28, 2011.
Preface
The world is facing a very unpredictable and potentially dangerous situation in North Africa and the Middle East. What began as a memorable, promising, relatively nonviolent achievement of New Politics - the Revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt - has morphed very swiftly into a recrudescence of old habits: America, already mired in two decade-long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and sporadic air attacks in Yemen and Somalia, now, bombing yet another Third World Country, in this case Libya.
USS Barry launches a Tomahawk missile in support of Operation Odyssey Dawn in the Mediterranean Sea, March 19, 2011. US government handout
The initially stated aim of this bombing was to diminish Libyan civilian casualties. But many, senior figures in Washington, including President Obama, have indicated that the US is gearing up for a quite different war for regime change, one that may well be protracted and could also easily expand beyond Libya.1 If it does expand, the hope for a nonviolent transition to civilian government in Tunisia and Egypt and other Middle East nations experiencing political unrest, may be lost to a hard-edged militarization of government, especially in Egypt. All of us, not just Egyptians, have a major stake in seeing that that does not happen.
The present article does not attempt to propose solutions or a course of action for the United States and its allies, or for the people of the Middle East. It attempts rather to examine the nature of the forces that have emerged in Libya over the last four decades that are presently being played out.
To this end I have begun to compile what I call my Libyan Notebook, a collection of relevant facts that underlie the present crisis. This Notebook will be judgmental, in that I am biased towards collecting facts that the US media tend to ignore, facts that are the product in many instances of investigative reporting that cuts to the heart of power relations, deep structures, and economic interests in the region including the US, Israel, and the Arab States as these have played out over the last two decades and more. But I hope that it will be usefully objective and open-ended, permitting others to draw diverse conclusions from the same set of facts.2
I wish to begin with two ill-understood topics: I. Who Are the Libyan Opposition, and II. Where Are the Libyan Rebel Arms Coming From?
I. Who Are the Libyan Opposition
1) Historically:
"If Muammar Al Gaddafi behaved paranoid, it was for good reason. It wasn't long after he reached the age of 27 and led a small group of junior military officers in a bloodless coup d'état against Libyan King Idris on September 1, 1969, that threats to his power and life emerged - from monarchists, Israeli Mossad, Palestinian disaffections, Saudi security, the National Front for the Salvation of Libya (NFSL), the National Conference for the Libyan Opposition (NCLO), British intelligence, United States antagonism and, in 1995, the most serious of all, Al Qaeda-like Libyan Islamic fighting group, known as Al-Jama'a al-Islamiyyah al-Muqatilah bi-Libya. The Colonel reacted brutally, by either expelling or killing those he feared were against him."3
2) National Front for the Salvation of Libya (NFSL)
"With the aim of overthrowing Libyan strongman Muammar Khadafy, Israel and the U.S. trained anti-Libyan rebels in a number of West and Central African countries. The Paris-based African Confidential newsletter reported on January 5th, 1989, that the US and Israel had set up a series of bases in Chad and other neighboring countries to train 2000 Libyan rebels captured by the Chad army. The group, called The National Front for the Salvation of Libya, was based in Chad."4
"US official records indicate that funding for the Chad-based secret war against Libya also came from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco, Israel and Iraq. The Saudis, for instance, donated $7m to an opposition group, the National Front for the Salvation of Libya (also backed by French intelligence and the CIA). But a plan to assassinate Gadafi and take over the government on 8 May 1984 was crushed. In the following year, the US asked Egypt to invade Libya and overthrow Gadafi but President Mubarak refused. By the end of 1985, the Washington Post had exposed the plan after congressional leaders opposing it wrote in protest to President Reagan."5
"The FNSL [National Front for the Salvation of Libya] was part of the National Conference for the Libyan Opposition held in London in 2005, and British resources are being used to support the FNSL and other 'opposition' in Libya.... The FNSL held its national congress in the USA in July 2007. Reports of 'atrocities' and civilian deaths are being channeled into the western press from operations in Washington DC, and the opposition FNSL is reportedly organizing resistance and military attacks from both inside and outside Libya."6
3) National Conference for the Libyan Opposition (NCLO),
"The main group leading the insurrection is the National Conference for the Libyan Opposition which includes the National Front for the Salvation of Libya (NFSL). The NFSL, which is leading the violence, is a U.S.-sponsored armed militia of mostly Libyan expatriates and tribes opposed to al-Qaddafi."7
4) Al-Jama'a al-Islamiyyah al-Muqatilah bi-Libya (Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, LIFG)
"The LIFG was founded in 1995 by a group of mujahideen veterans who had fought against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Upon their return to Libya they grew angry about what they viewed as the corruption and impiety of the Libyan regime and formed the LIFG to create a state that would show what they believed to be the true character of the Libyan people.
The most significant LIFG attack was a 1996 attempt to assassinate Gadhafi; LIFG members led by Wadi al-Shateh threw a bomb underneath his motorcade. The group also stages guerilla-style attacks against government security forces from its mountain bases. Although most LIFG members are strictly dedicated to toppling Gadhafi, intelligence reportedly indicates that some have joined forces with al-Qaida to wage jihad against Libyan and Western interests worldwide. ....
As recently as February 2004, then-Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee that "one of the most immediate threats [to U.S. security] is from smaller international Sunni extremist groups that have benefited from al-Qaida links. They include ... the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group."8
"In recent days Libyan officials have distributed security documents giving the details of Sufiyan al-Koumi, said to be a driver for Osama bin Laden, and of another militant allegedly involved in an "Islamic emirate" in Derna, in now-liberated eastern Libya. Koumi, the documents show, was freed in September 2010 as part of a "reform and repent" initiative organised by Saif al-Islam, Gaddafi's son....
The LIFG, established in Afghanistan in the 1990s, has assassinated dozens of Libyan soldiers and policemen. In 2009, to mark Gaddafi's 40 years in power, it apologised for trying to kill him and agreed to lay down its arms. MI6 [British Intelligence] has been accused in the past of supporting it. Six LIFG leaders, still in prison, disavowed their old ways and explained why fighting Gaddafi no longer constituted "legitimate" jihad. Abdul-Hakim al-Hasadi, another freed LIFG member, denied the official claims. "Gaddafi is trying to divide the people," he told al-Jazeera. "He claims that there is an Islamist emirate in Derna and that I am its emir. He is taking advantage of the fact that I am a former political prisoner."
Derna is famous as the home of a large number of suicide bombers in Iraq. It is also deeply hostile to Gaddafi. "Residents of eastern Libya in general, and Derna in particular, view the Gaddadfa (Gaddafi's tribe) as uneducated, uncouth interlopers from an inconsequential part of the country who have 'stolen' the right to rule in Libya," US diplomats were told in 2008, in a cable since released by WikiLeaks.
The last 110 members of the LIFG were freed on 16 February, the day after the Libyan uprising began. One of those released, Abdulwahab Mohammed Kayed, is the brother of Abu Yahya Al Libi, one of al Qaida's top propagandists. Koumi fled Libya and is said to have ended up in Afghanistan working for Bin Laden. Captured in Pakistan, he was handed over to the US and sent to Guantánamo Bay in 2002. In 2009 he was sent back to Libya.9 US counter-terrorist experts have expressed concern that al-Qaida could take advantage of a political vacuum if Gaddafi is overthrown. But most analysts say that, although the Islamists' ideology has strong resonance in eastern Libya, there is no sign that the protests are going to be hijacked by them.10
"Fierce clashes between [Qadhafi's] security forces and Islamist guerrillas erupted in Benghazi in September 1995, leaving dozens killed on both sides. After weeks of intense fighting, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) formally declared its existence in a communiqué calling Qadhafi's government "an apostate regime that has blasphemed against the faith of God Almighty" and declaring its overthrow to be "the foremost duty after faith in God." [3] This and future LIFG communiqués were issued by Libyan Afghans who had been granted political asylum in Britain.... The involvement of the British government in the LIFG campaign against Qadhafi remains the subject of immense controversy. LIFG's next big operation, a failed attempt to assassinate Qadhafi in February 1996 that killed several of his bodyguards, was later said to have been financed by British intelligence to the tune of $160,000, according to ex-MI5 officer David Shayler. [4] While Shayler's allegations have not been independently confirmed, it is clear that Britain allowed LIFG to develop a base of logistical support and fundraising on its soil. At any rate, financing by bin Laden appears to have been much more important. According to one report, LIFG received up to $50,000 from the Saudi terrorist mastermind for each of its militants killed on the battlefield." [2005]11
"Americans, Britons and the French are finding themselves as comrades in arms with the rebel Islamic Fighting Group, the most radical element in the Al Qaeda network [to bring down Gaddhafi]. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton admitted the risks of the unholy alliance in a congressional hearing, saying that the Libyan opposition is probably more anti-American than Muammar Gaddhafi. A decade ago, this very same delusion of a Western-Islamist partnership in Kosovo, Bosnia and Chechnya ended abruptly in the 9/11 attacks."12
5) Transitional National Council
"A RIVAL transitional government to the regime of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi looks set to win US and other international support as momentum builds to oust the longtime dictator.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton confirmed yesterday that the Obama administration was reaching out to opponents of Colonel Gaddafi. She said the US was willing to offer ‘any kind of assistance' to remove him from power.
Protest leaders who have taken control in Libya's eastern cities claim to have established a transitional "national council" that amounts to rival rule. They have called on the country's army to join them as they prepare for an attack on the capital, Tripoli, where the Libyan leader retains control.
Confident the Libyan leader's 42-year rule was coming to an end, Mrs Clinton said yesterday: ‘We are just at the beginning of what will follow Gaddafi.'"13
6) Facebook
"He [Omar El- Hariri, Chief of Armed Forces for the Transitional National Council] remained under close surveillance by the security forces until Feb. 17, when the revolution started. It was not initiated by prominent figures of the older generation, he said, but began spontaneously when Tunisia and Egypt inspired the youth. ‘Children of Facebook!' he declared, in English, with a broad smile."14
7) Oil
"Libyan rebels in Benghazi said they have created a new national oil company to replace the corporation controlled by leader Muammar Qaddafi whose assets were frozen by the United Nations Security Council.
The Transitional National Council released a statement announcing the decision made at a March 19 meeting to establish the ‘Libyan Oil Company as supervisory authority on oil production and policies in the country, based temporarily in Benghazi, and the appointment of an interim director general" of the company.
The Council also said it "designated the Central Bank of Benghazi as a monetary authority competent in monetary policies in Libya and the appointment of a governor to the Central Bank of Libya, with a temporary headquarters in Benghazi."15
Peter Dale Scott's Libyan Notebook
II. Where Are the Libyan Rebel Arms Coming From?
Robert Fisk, "Libya in turmoil: America's secret plan to arm Libya's rebels;
Obama asks Saudis to airlift weapons into Benghazi," Independent, March 7, 2011:
"Desperate to avoid US military involvement in Libya in the event of a prolonged struggle between the Gaddafi regime and its opponents, the Americans have asked Saudi Arabia if it can supply weapons to the rebels in Benghazi. The Saudi Kingdom, already facing a "day of rage" from its 10 per cent Shia Muslim community on Friday, with a ban on all demonstrations, has so far failed to respond to Washington's highly classified request, although King Abdullah personally loathes the Libyan leader, who tried to assassinate him just over a year ago.
Washington's request is in line with other US military co-operation with the Saudis. The royal family in Jeddah, which was deeply involved in the Contra scandal during the Reagan administration, gave immediate support to American efforts to arm guerrillas fighting the Soviet army in Afghanistan in 1980 ....
But the Saudis remain the only US Arab ally strategically placed and capable of furnishing weapons to the guerrillas of Libya. Their assistance would allow Washington to disclaim any military involvement in the supply chain - even though the arms would be American and paid for by the Saudis.
The Saudis have been told that opponents of Gaddafi need anti-tank rockets and mortars as a first priority to hold off attacks by Gaddafi's armour, and ground-to-air missiles to shoot down his fighter-bombers.
Supplies could reach Benghazi within 48 hours but they would need to be delivered to air bases in Libya or to Benghazi airport. If the guerrillas can then go on to the offensive and assault Gaddafi's strongholds in western Libya, the political pressure on America and Nato - not least from Republican members of Congress - to establish a no-fly zone would be reduced.
US military planners have already made it clear that a zone of this kind would necessitate US air attacks on Libya's functioning, if seriously depleted, anti-aircraft missile bases, thus bringing Washington directly into the war on the side of Gaddafi's opponents.
For several days now, US Awacs surveillance aircraft have been flying around Libya, making constant contact with Malta air traffic control and requesting details of Libyan flight patterns, including journeys made in the past 48 hours by Gaddafi's private jet which flew to Jordan and back to Libya just before the weekend.
Officially, Nato will only describe the presence of American Awacs planes as part of its post-9/11 Operation Active Endeavour, which has broad reach to undertake aerial counter-terrorism measures in the Middle East region.
The data from the Awacs is streamed to all Nato countries under the mission's existing mandate. Now that Gaddafi has been reinstated as a super-terrorist in the West's lexicon, however, the Nato mission can easily be used to search for targets of opportunity in Libya if active military operations are undertaken.
Al Jazeera English television channel last night broadcast recordings made by American aircraft to Maltese air traffic control, requesting information about Libyan flights, especially that of Gaddafi's jet.
An American Awacs aircraft, tail number LX-N90442 could be heard contacting the Malta control tower on Saturday for information about a Libyan Dassault-Falcon 900 jet 5A-DCN on its way from Amman to Mitiga, Gaddafi's own VIP airport.
Nato Awacs 07 is heard to say: "Do you have information on an aircraft with the Squawk 2017 position about 85 miles east of our [sic]?"
Malta air traffic control replies: "Seven, that sounds to be Falcon 900- at flight level 340, with a destination Mitiga, according to flight plan."
But Saudi Arabia is already facing dangers from a co-ordinated day of protest by its own Shia Muslim citizens who, emboldened by the Shia uprising in the neighbouring island of Bahrain, have called for street protests against the ruling family of al-Saud on Friday.
After pouring troops and security police into the province of Qatif last week, the Saudis announced a nationwide ban on all public demonstrations.
Shia organisers claim that up to 20,000 protesters plan to demonstrate with women in the front rows to prevent the Saudi army from opening fire.
If the Saudi government accedes to America's request to send guns and missiles to Libyan rebels, however, it would be almost impossible for President Barack Obama to condemn the kingdom for any violence against the Shias of the north-east provinces.
Thus has the Arab awakening, the demand for democracy in North Africa, the Shia revolt and the rising against Gaddafi become entangled in the space of just a few hours with US military priorities in the region. "16
"Libya rebels coordinating with West on air assault," Los Angeles Times, March 24, 2011
"Reports from the region suggest that the Saudis and Egyptians have been providing arms. Though U.S. officials could not confirm that, they say it is plausible."17
"Egypt Said to Arm Libya Rebels," Wall Street Journal, March 17, 2011:
"CAIRO-Egypt's military has begun shipping arms over the border to Libyan rebels with Washington's knowledge, U.S. and Libyan rebel officials said.
The shipments-mostly small arms such as assault rifles and ammunition-appear to be the first confirmed case of an outside government arming the rebel fighters. Those fighters have been losing ground for days in the face of a steady westward advance by forces loyal to Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.
The Egyptian shipments are the strongest indication to date that some Arab countries are heeding Western calls to take a lead in efforts to intervene on behalf of pro-democracy rebels in their fight against Mr. Gadhafi in Libya. Washington and other Western countries have long voiced frustration with Arab states' unwillingness to help resolve crises in their own region, even as they criticized Western powers for attempting to do so.
The shipments also follow an unusually robust diplomatic response from Arab states. There have been rare public calls for foreign military intervention in an Arab country, including a vote by the 23-member Arab League last week urging the U.N. to impose a no-fly zone over Libya.
The vote provided critical political cover to Western powers wary of intervening militarily without a broad regional and international mandate. On Thursday evening, the U.N. Security Council voted on a resolution endorsing a no-fly zone in Libya and authorizing military action in support of the rebels.
Within the council, Lebanon took a lead role drafting and circulating the draft of the resolution, which calls for "all necessary measures" to enforce a ban on flights over Libya. The United Arab Emirates and Qatar have taken the lead in offering to participate in enforcing a no-fly zone, according to U.N. diplomats.
Libyan rebel officials in Benghazi, meanwhile, have praised Qatar from the first days of the uprising, calling the small Gulf state their staunchest ally. Qatar has consistently pressed behind the scenes for tough and urgent international action behind the scenes, these officials said.
Qatari flags fly prominently in rebel-held Benghazi. After pro-Gadhafi forces retook the town of Ras Lanuf last week, Libyan state TV broadcast images of food-aid packages bearing the Qatari flag.
The White House has been reluctant to back calls from leaders in Congress for arming Libya's rebels directly, arguing that the U.S. must first fully assess who the fighters are and what policies they will pursue if they succeeded in toppling Col. Gadhafi. U.S. officials believe the opposition includes some Islamist elements. They fear that Islamist groups hostile to the U.S. could try to hijack the opposition and take any arms that are provided.
The Egyptian weapons transfers began ‘a few days ago' and are ongoing, according to a senior U.S. official. ‘There's no formal U.S. policy or acknowledgement that this is going on,' said the senior official. But ‘this is something we have knowledge of.'
Calls to Egypt's foreign ministry and the spokesman for the prime minister seeking comment went unanswered. There is no means of reaching Egypt's military for comment. An Egyptian official in Washington said he had no knowledge of weapon shipments.
The U.S. official also noted that the shipments appeared to come "too little, too late" to tip the military balance in favor of the rebels, who have faced an onslaught from Libyan forces backed by tanks, artillery and aircraft.
"We know the Egyptian military council is helping us, but they can't be so visible," said Hani Souflakis, a Libyan businessman in Cairo who has been acting as a rebel liaison with the Egyptian government since the uprising began.
"Weapons are getting through," said Mr. Souflakis, who says he has regular contacts with Egyptian officials in Cairo and the rebel leadership in Libya. "Americans have given the green light to the Egyptians to help. The Americans don't want to be involved in a direct level, but the Egyptians wouldn't do it if they didn't get the green light."
Western officials and rebel leaders in Libya said the U.S. has wanted to avoid being seen as taking a leadership role in any military action against Mr. Gadhafi after its invasions of Iraq and Afganistan fueled anger and mistrust with Washington throughout the region.
But the U.S. stated clearly it wants Mr. Gadhafi out of power and has signaled it would support those offering help to the rebels militarily or otherwise.
A spokesman for the rebel government in Benghazi said arms shipments have begun arriving to the rebels but declined to specify where they came from.
"Our military committee is purchasing arms and arming our people. The weapons are coming, but the nature of the weapons, the amount, where it's coming from, that has been classified," said the spokesman, Mustafa al-Gherryani.
The U.S. official said Egypt wanted to keep the shipments covert. In public, Egypt has sought to maintain a neutral stance toward the rebel uprising in Libya. Egypt abstained during the Arab League's vote calling for the U.N. to impose a no-fly zone on Mr. Gadhafi, according to people familiar with the internal Arab League deliberations.
Hundreds of thousands of Egyptian laborers are believed to still be in Libya.
On the other hand, the Egyptian military's covert support for the rebels suggests that it has calculated that Mr. Gadhafi is unlikely to remain in power, at least in the eastern half of the country, and therefore Egypt is eager to begin to build good relations with the rebels.
Rebel forces in the past 24 hours appeared to make some progress fending off pro-Gadhafi forces' assaults and have rolled out new weapons for the first time since the uprising began last month. Among them are rebel tanks that have taken up positions on the front lines in recent days. Rebels also launched fighter-jet attacks on government positions on Wednesday for the first time so far.
The tanks and fighter jets are believed to have been among the weapons seized by rebels from defected units of the Libyan army in the eastern half of the country, but they have received spare parts or trained mechanics from outside the country to help them deploy them, some rebel officials have speculated.
-Sam Dagher and Adam Entous contributed to this article.18
Benjamin Gottlieb, "Egypt Arms Libyan Rebels As Gaddafi's Conquest Continues," NeonTommy Annenberg Digital News, March 17, 2011:
Arms shipments from Egypt's military have begun flowing across the border into Libya with U.S. knowledge, Libyan rebels and U.S. officials said Thursday.
Made up mostly of small arms, such as assault rifles and ammunition, the shipments are the first confirmed reports of an outside government supporting rebel fighters with weapons. Rebels have been loosing ground for days against pro-Gaddafi forces aiming to end the conflict before foreign intervention plans are finalized.
Although the U.N. approved a "no-fly zone" over Libya late Thursday, rebel forces fear that any planned foreign intervention would be too little to late.
The shipment of arms indicated an unusually bold response by an Arab nation intervening in a conflict outside its borders. There have also been rare public decrees for the West to intervene in the conflict - the Arab League voted 23-0 last week encouraging the U.N. to impose the "no-fly zone" over Libya.
In spite of reports of arms flowing across the Egyptian boarder, Egyptian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Menha Bakhoum told Reuters that Egypt would not be involved in any military intervention in neighboring Libya.
"Egypt will not be among those Arab states. We will not be involved in any military intervention. No intervention period," Bakhoum said.
Bakhoum was responding to comments by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who said Thursday that discussions were on the table regarding Arab involvement in U.S. and European intervention in the conflict.
Clinton has said repeatedly that the U.S. desires involvement from a neighboring Arab nation in any planned intervention.
A Libyan rebel government spokesman in Benghazi, Mustafa al-Gherryani, said rebels have begun receiving arms shipments from neighboring nations, however he declined to reveal their origin.
"Our military committee is purchasing arms and arming our people. The weapons are coming, but the nature of the weapons, the amount, where it's coming from, that has been classified," he said.19
Yoichi Shimatsu, "Mideast Revolutions and 9-11 Intrigues Created in Qatar," New America Media, March 1, 2011
"It may puzzle and perhaps dismay young protesters in Benghazi, Cairo and Tunisia that their democratic hopes are being manipulated by an ultra-conservative Arab elite which has underhandedly backed a surge of militant Islamist radicals across North Africa. Credible U.S. intelligence reports have cited evidence pointing to Qatar's long-running support for the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda and jihadist fighters returning from Afghanistan.
The links to Qatar uncovered by anti-terrorism investigators in the wake of 9-11 need to be reexamined now that the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), an on-and-off affiliate of Al Qaeda, has seized armories across half of the North African country. Libya's well-stocked arsenals contain high-power explosives, rocket launchers and chemical weapons. LIFG is on the State Department's terrorist list.
Most worrying, according to a U.S. intelligence official cited by CNN, is the probable loss of chemical weapons. The Federation of American Scientists reports that, as of 2008, only 40 percent of Libya's mustard gas was destroyed in the second round of decommissioning. Chemical canisters along the Egyptian border were yet to be retrieved and are now presumably in the hands of armed militants.
After initially letting slip that the earliest Libyan protests were organized by the LIFG, Al Jazeera quickly changed its line to present a heavily filtered account portraying the events as ‘peaceful protests'. To explain away the gunshot deaths of Libyan soldiers during the uprising, the Qatar-based network presented a bizarre scenario of 150 dead soldiers in Libya having been executed by their officers for ‘refusing to fight'. The mysterious officers then miraculously vacated their base disappearing into thin air while surrounded by angry protesters! Off the record, one American intelligence analyst called these media claims an ‘absurdity' and suggested instead the obvious: that the soldiers were gunned down in an armed assault by war-hardened returned militants from Iraq and Afghanistan....
According to a Congressional Research Service report of January 2008, ‘Some observers have raised questions about possible support for Al Qaeda by some Qatari citizens, including members of Qatar's large ruling family. According to the 9/11 Commission Report, Qatar's Interior Minister provided a safe haven to 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed during the mid-1990s, and press reports indicate other terrorists may have received financial support or safe haven in Qatar after September 11, 2001.'
The national security chief, Interior Minister Abdullah bin Khalid al-Thani, is further mentioned as paying for a 1995 trip by Khalid Shaikh Mohammed ‘to join the Bosnia jihad.' The report recalls how after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, FBI officials "narrowly missed an opportunity to capture" the suspect in Qatar. ‘Former U.S. officials have since stated their belief that a high-ranking member of the Qatari government alerted him to the impending raid, allowing him to flee the country.'"20
Peter Dale Scott, a former Canadian diplomat and English Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, is the author of Drugs Oil and War, The Road to 9/11, The War Conspiracy: JFK, 9/11, and the Deep Politics of War. His most recent book is American War Machine: Deep Politics, the CIA Global Drug Connection and the Road to Afghanistan. Peter Dale Scott is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
His most recent book is American War Machine: Deep Politics, the CIA Global Drug Connection and the Road to Afghanistan.
His website, which contains a wealth of his writings, is here.
Notes
1 “Defense Secretary Gates, who recently warned against any further protracted US ground war, said on March 23 that the end of military action in Libya is unknown and could last longer than a few weeks. ‘I think there are any number of possible outcomes here and no one is in a position to predict them,’ Gates told reporters in Egypt” (C-Span, March 24, 2011).
2 Interested readers may wish to consult my first exploration, “Googling ‘Revolution’ in North Africa.”
3 Dan Lieberman, “Muammar Al Gaddafi Meets His Own Rebels,” CounterCurrents.org, March 9, 2011.
4 Joel Bainerman, Inside the Covert Operations of the CIA & Israel's Mossad (New York: S.P.I. Books, 1994), 14.
5 Richard Keeble, “The Secret War Against Libya,” MediaLens, 2002.
6 "Petroleum and Empire in North Africa. NATO Invasion of Libya Underway," By Keith Harmon Snow, 2 March 2011.
7 Ghali Hassan, “U.S. Love Affair with Murderous Dictators and Hate for Democracy.” Axis of Logic, Mar 17, 2011.
8 Center for Defense Information, “In the Spotlight: The Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG),” January 18, 2005
9 Qadhafi was concerned about Al Qaeda terrorism in Libya, and in 1996 Libya became the first government to place Osama bin Laden on Interpol’s Wanted List (Rohan Gunaratna, Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror [New York: Columbia UP, 2002], 142). Thereafter American and Libyan intelligence collaborated closely for some years against Al Qaeda. Beginning when?
10 Ian Black, “Libya rebels rejects Gaddafi's al-Qaida spin,” Guardian, March 1, 2011.
11 Gary Gambill, "The Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), Jamestown Foundation," Terrorism Monitor, May 5, 2005,; citing Al-Hayat (London), 20 October 1995 [“communiqué”]; "The Shayler affair: The spooks, the Colonel and the jailed whistle-blower," The Observer (London), 9 August 1998; Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquié, Ben Laden: La Verite interdite (Bin Ladin: The Forbidden Truth). Cf. also Annie Machon, Spies, Lies and Whistleblowers: MI5, MI6 And the Shayler Affair (Book Guild Publishing, 2005) [Shayler].
12 Yoichi Shimatsu, “Attack on Libya: Why Odyssey Dawn Is Doomed,” New America Media, March 20, 2011.
13 “US reaches out to Libyan insurgents,” The Australian, March 1, 2011,
14 “How a onetime friend to Gadhafi became his rival,” Globe and Mail [Toronto], March 4, 2011.
15 Libyan Rebel Council in Benghazi Forms Oil Company to Replace Qaddafi’s,” Bloomberg, March 22, 2011.
16 Robert Fisk, “America's secret plan to arm Libya's rebels,” Independent, March 7, 2011.
17 “Libya rebels coordinating with West on air assault,” Los Angeles Times, March 24, 2011.
18 “Egypt Said to Arm Libya Rebels,” Wall Street Journal, March 17, 2011,
19 Benjamin Gottlieb, “Egypt Arms Libyan Rebels As Gaddafi's Conquest Continues,” NeonTommy Annenberg Digital News, March 17, 2011.
20 Yoichi Shimatsu, “Mideast Revolutions and 9-11 Intrigues Created in Qatar,” New America Media, March 1, 2011. The al-Thani family’s protection of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed is confirmed by former CIA officer Robert Baer (Los Angeles Times, March 23, 2003). Cf. Robert Baer, Sleeping with the Devil (New York: Crown, 2003); Peter Lance, Triple Cross (New York: Regan/HarperCollins, 2006), 234-37.
Peter Dale Scott is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Peter Dale Scott
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From http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=23947
Who are the Libyan Freedom Fighters and Their Patrons?
by Prof. Peter Dale Scott
Global Research, March 25, 2011
The Asia-Pacific Journal Vol 9, Issue 13 No 3, March 28, 2011.
Preface
The world is facing a very unpredictable and potentially dangerous situation in North Africa and the Middle East. What began as a memorable, promising, relatively nonviolent achievement of New Politics - the Revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt - has morphed very swiftly into a recrudescence of old habits: America, already mired in two decade-long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and sporadic air attacks in Yemen and Somalia, now, bombing yet another Third World Country, in this case Libya.
USS Barry launches a Tomahawk missile in support of Operation Odyssey Dawn in the Mediterranean Sea, March 19, 2011. US government handout
The initially stated aim of this bombing was to diminish Libyan civilian casualties. But many, senior figures in Washington, including President Obama, have indicated that the US is gearing up for a quite different war for regime change, one that may well be protracted and could also easily expand beyond Libya.1 If it does expand, the hope for a nonviolent transition to civilian government in Tunisia and Egypt and other Middle East nations experiencing political unrest, may be lost to a hard-edged militarization of government, especially in Egypt. All of us, not just Egyptians, have a major stake in seeing that that does not happen.
The present article does not attempt to propose solutions or a course of action for the United States and its allies, or for the people of the Middle East. It attempts rather to examine the nature of the forces that have emerged in Libya over the last four decades that are presently being played out.
To this end I have begun to compile what I call my Libyan Notebook, a collection of relevant facts that underlie the present crisis. This Notebook will be judgmental, in that I am biased towards collecting facts that the US media tend to ignore, facts that are the product in many instances of investigative reporting that cuts to the heart of power relations, deep structures, and economic interests in the region including the US, Israel, and the Arab States as these have played out over the last two decades and more. But I hope that it will be usefully objective and open-ended, permitting others to draw diverse conclusions from the same set of facts.2
I wish to begin with two ill-understood topics: I. Who Are the Libyan Opposition, and II. Where Are the Libyan Rebel Arms Coming From?
I. Who Are the Libyan Opposition
1) Historically:
"If Muammar Al Gaddafi behaved paranoid, it was for good reason. It wasn't long after he reached the age of 27 and led a small group of junior military officers in a bloodless coup d'état against Libyan King Idris on September 1, 1969, that threats to his power and life emerged - from monarchists, Israeli Mossad, Palestinian disaffections, Saudi security, the National Front for the Salvation of Libya (NFSL), the National Conference for the Libyan Opposition (NCLO), British intelligence, United States antagonism and, in 1995, the most serious of all, Al Qaeda-like Libyan Islamic fighting group, known as Al-Jama'a al-Islamiyyah al-Muqatilah bi-Libya. The Colonel reacted brutally, by either expelling or killing those he feared were against him."3
2) National Front for the Salvation of Libya (NFSL)
"With the aim of overthrowing Libyan strongman Muammar Khadafy, Israel and the U.S. trained anti-Libyan rebels in a number of West and Central African countries. The Paris-based African Confidential newsletter reported on January 5th, 1989, that the US and Israel had set up a series of bases in Chad and other neighboring countries to train 2000 Libyan rebels captured by the Chad army. The group, called The National Front for the Salvation of Libya, was based in Chad."4
"US official records indicate that funding for the Chad-based secret war against Libya also came from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco, Israel and Iraq. The Saudis, for instance, donated $7m to an opposition group, the National Front for the Salvation of Libya (also backed by French intelligence and the CIA). But a plan to assassinate Gadafi and take over the government on 8 May 1984 was crushed. In the following year, the US asked Egypt to invade Libya and overthrow Gadafi but President Mubarak refused. By the end of 1985, the Washington Post had exposed the plan after congressional leaders opposing it wrote in protest to President Reagan."5
"The FNSL [National Front for the Salvation of Libya] was part of the National Conference for the Libyan Opposition held in London in 2005, and British resources are being used to support the FNSL and other 'opposition' in Libya.... The FNSL held its national congress in the USA in July 2007. Reports of 'atrocities' and civilian deaths are being channeled into the western press from operations in Washington DC, and the opposition FNSL is reportedly organizing resistance and military attacks from both inside and outside Libya."6
3) National Conference for the Libyan Opposition (NCLO),
"The main group leading the insurrection is the National Conference for the Libyan Opposition which includes the National Front for the Salvation of Libya (NFSL). The NFSL, which is leading the violence, is a U.S.-sponsored armed militia of mostly Libyan expatriates and tribes opposed to al-Qaddafi."7
4) Al-Jama'a al-Islamiyyah al-Muqatilah bi-Libya (Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, LIFG)
"The LIFG was founded in 1995 by a group of mujahideen veterans who had fought against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Upon their return to Libya they grew angry about what they viewed as the corruption and impiety of the Libyan regime and formed the LIFG to create a state that would show what they believed to be the true character of the Libyan people.
The most significant LIFG attack was a 1996 attempt to assassinate Gadhafi; LIFG members led by Wadi al-Shateh threw a bomb underneath his motorcade. The group also stages guerilla-style attacks against government security forces from its mountain bases. Although most LIFG members are strictly dedicated to toppling Gadhafi, intelligence reportedly indicates that some have joined forces with al-Qaida to wage jihad against Libyan and Western interests worldwide. ....
As recently as February 2004, then-Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee that "one of the most immediate threats [to U.S. security] is from smaller international Sunni extremist groups that have benefited from al-Qaida links. They include ... the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group."8
"In recent days Libyan officials have distributed security documents giving the details of Sufiyan al-Koumi, said to be a driver for Osama bin Laden, and of another militant allegedly involved in an "Islamic emirate" in Derna, in now-liberated eastern Libya. Koumi, the documents show, was freed in September 2010 as part of a "reform and repent" initiative organised by Saif al-Islam, Gaddafi's son....
The LIFG, established in Afghanistan in the 1990s, has assassinated dozens of Libyan soldiers and policemen. In 2009, to mark Gaddafi's 40 years in power, it apologised for trying to kill him and agreed to lay down its arms. MI6 [British Intelligence] has been accused in the past of supporting it. Six LIFG leaders, still in prison, disavowed their old ways and explained why fighting Gaddafi no longer constituted "legitimate" jihad. Abdul-Hakim al-Hasadi, another freed LIFG member, denied the official claims. "Gaddafi is trying to divide the people," he told al-Jazeera. "He claims that there is an Islamist emirate in Derna and that I am its emir. He is taking advantage of the fact that I am a former political prisoner."
Derna is famous as the home of a large number of suicide bombers in Iraq. It is also deeply hostile to Gaddafi. "Residents of eastern Libya in general, and Derna in particular, view the Gaddadfa (Gaddafi's tribe) as uneducated, uncouth interlopers from an inconsequential part of the country who have 'stolen' the right to rule in Libya," US diplomats were told in 2008, in a cable since released by WikiLeaks.
The last 110 members of the LIFG were freed on 16 February, the day after the Libyan uprising began. One of those released, Abdulwahab Mohammed Kayed, is the brother of Abu Yahya Al Libi, one of al Qaida's top propagandists. Koumi fled Libya and is said to have ended up in Afghanistan working for Bin Laden. Captured in Pakistan, he was handed over to the US and sent to Guantánamo Bay in 2002. In 2009 he was sent back to Libya.9 US counter-terrorist experts have expressed concern that al-Qaida could take advantage of a political vacuum if Gaddafi is overthrown. But most analysts say that, although the Islamists' ideology has strong resonance in eastern Libya, there is no sign that the protests are going to be hijacked by them.10
"Fierce clashes between [Qadhafi's] security forces and Islamist guerrillas erupted in Benghazi in September 1995, leaving dozens killed on both sides. After weeks of intense fighting, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) formally declared its existence in a communiqué calling Qadhafi's government "an apostate regime that has blasphemed against the faith of God Almighty" and declaring its overthrow to be "the foremost duty after faith in God." [3] This and future LIFG communiqués were issued by Libyan Afghans who had been granted political asylum in Britain.... The involvement of the British government in the LIFG campaign against Qadhafi remains the subject of immense controversy. LIFG's next big operation, a failed attempt to assassinate Qadhafi in February 1996 that killed several of his bodyguards, was later said to have been financed by British intelligence to the tune of $160,000, according to ex-MI5 officer David Shayler. [4] While Shayler's allegations have not been independently confirmed, it is clear that Britain allowed LIFG to develop a base of logistical support and fundraising on its soil. At any rate, financing by bin Laden appears to have been much more important. According to one report, LIFG received up to $50,000 from the Saudi terrorist mastermind for each of its militants killed on the battlefield." [2005]11
"Americans, Britons and the French are finding themselves as comrades in arms with the rebel Islamic Fighting Group, the most radical element in the Al Qaeda network [to bring down Gaddhafi]. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton admitted the risks of the unholy alliance in a congressional hearing, saying that the Libyan opposition is probably more anti-American than Muammar Gaddhafi. A decade ago, this very same delusion of a Western-Islamist partnership in Kosovo, Bosnia and Chechnya ended abruptly in the 9/11 attacks."12
5) Transitional National Council
"A RIVAL transitional government to the regime of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi looks set to win US and other international support as momentum builds to oust the longtime dictator.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton confirmed yesterday that the Obama administration was reaching out to opponents of Colonel Gaddafi. She said the US was willing to offer ‘any kind of assistance' to remove him from power.
Protest leaders who have taken control in Libya's eastern cities claim to have established a transitional "national council" that amounts to rival rule. They have called on the country's army to join them as they prepare for an attack on the capital, Tripoli, where the Libyan leader retains control.
Confident the Libyan leader's 42-year rule was coming to an end, Mrs Clinton said yesterday: ‘We are just at the beginning of what will follow Gaddafi.'"13
6) Facebook
"He [Omar El- Hariri, Chief of Armed Forces for the Transitional National Council] remained under close surveillance by the security forces until Feb. 17, when the revolution started. It was not initiated by prominent figures of the older generation, he said, but began spontaneously when Tunisia and Egypt inspired the youth. ‘Children of Facebook!' he declared, in English, with a broad smile."14
7) Oil
"Libyan rebels in Benghazi said they have created a new national oil company to replace the corporation controlled by leader Muammar Qaddafi whose assets were frozen by the United Nations Security Council.
The Transitional National Council released a statement announcing the decision made at a March 19 meeting to establish the ‘Libyan Oil Company as supervisory authority on oil production and policies in the country, based temporarily in Benghazi, and the appointment of an interim director general" of the company.
The Council also said it "designated the Central Bank of Benghazi as a monetary authority competent in monetary policies in Libya and the appointment of a governor to the Central Bank of Libya, with a temporary headquarters in Benghazi."15
Peter Dale Scott's Libyan Notebook
II. Where Are the Libyan Rebel Arms Coming From?
Robert Fisk, "Libya in turmoil: America's secret plan to arm Libya's rebels;
Obama asks Saudis to airlift weapons into Benghazi," Independent, March 7, 2011:
"Desperate to avoid US military involvement in Libya in the event of a prolonged struggle between the Gaddafi regime and its opponents, the Americans have asked Saudi Arabia if it can supply weapons to the rebels in Benghazi. The Saudi Kingdom, already facing a "day of rage" from its 10 per cent Shia Muslim community on Friday, with a ban on all demonstrations, has so far failed to respond to Washington's highly classified request, although King Abdullah personally loathes the Libyan leader, who tried to assassinate him just over a year ago.
Washington's request is in line with other US military co-operation with the Saudis. The royal family in Jeddah, which was deeply involved in the Contra scandal during the Reagan administration, gave immediate support to American efforts to arm guerrillas fighting the Soviet army in Afghanistan in 1980 ....
But the Saudis remain the only US Arab ally strategically placed and capable of furnishing weapons to the guerrillas of Libya. Their assistance would allow Washington to disclaim any military involvement in the supply chain - even though the arms would be American and paid for by the Saudis.
The Saudis have been told that opponents of Gaddafi need anti-tank rockets and mortars as a first priority to hold off attacks by Gaddafi's armour, and ground-to-air missiles to shoot down his fighter-bombers.
Supplies could reach Benghazi within 48 hours but they would need to be delivered to air bases in Libya or to Benghazi airport. If the guerrillas can then go on to the offensive and assault Gaddafi's strongholds in western Libya, the political pressure on America and Nato - not least from Republican members of Congress - to establish a no-fly zone would be reduced.
US military planners have already made it clear that a zone of this kind would necessitate US air attacks on Libya's functioning, if seriously depleted, anti-aircraft missile bases, thus bringing Washington directly into the war on the side of Gaddafi's opponents.
For several days now, US Awacs surveillance aircraft have been flying around Libya, making constant contact with Malta air traffic control and requesting details of Libyan flight patterns, including journeys made in the past 48 hours by Gaddafi's private jet which flew to Jordan and back to Libya just before the weekend.
Officially, Nato will only describe the presence of American Awacs planes as part of its post-9/11 Operation Active Endeavour, which has broad reach to undertake aerial counter-terrorism measures in the Middle East region.
The data from the Awacs is streamed to all Nato countries under the mission's existing mandate. Now that Gaddafi has been reinstated as a super-terrorist in the West's lexicon, however, the Nato mission can easily be used to search for targets of opportunity in Libya if active military operations are undertaken.
Al Jazeera English television channel last night broadcast recordings made by American aircraft to Maltese air traffic control, requesting information about Libyan flights, especially that of Gaddafi's jet.
An American Awacs aircraft, tail number LX-N90442 could be heard contacting the Malta control tower on Saturday for information about a Libyan Dassault-Falcon 900 jet 5A-DCN on its way from Amman to Mitiga, Gaddafi's own VIP airport.
Nato Awacs 07 is heard to say: "Do you have information on an aircraft with the Squawk 2017 position about 85 miles east of our [sic]?"
Malta air traffic control replies: "Seven, that sounds to be Falcon 900- at flight level 340, with a destination Mitiga, according to flight plan."
But Saudi Arabia is already facing dangers from a co-ordinated day of protest by its own Shia Muslim citizens who, emboldened by the Shia uprising in the neighbouring island of Bahrain, have called for street protests against the ruling family of al-Saud on Friday.
After pouring troops and security police into the province of Qatif last week, the Saudis announced a nationwide ban on all public demonstrations.
Shia organisers claim that up to 20,000 protesters plan to demonstrate with women in the front rows to prevent the Saudi army from opening fire.
If the Saudi government accedes to America's request to send guns and missiles to Libyan rebels, however, it would be almost impossible for President Barack Obama to condemn the kingdom for any violence against the Shias of the north-east provinces.
Thus has the Arab awakening, the demand for democracy in North Africa, the Shia revolt and the rising against Gaddafi become entangled in the space of just a few hours with US military priorities in the region. "16
"Libya rebels coordinating with West on air assault," Los Angeles Times, March 24, 2011
"Reports from the region suggest that the Saudis and Egyptians have been providing arms. Though U.S. officials could not confirm that, they say it is plausible."17
"Egypt Said to Arm Libya Rebels," Wall Street Journal, March 17, 2011:
"CAIRO-Egypt's military has begun shipping arms over the border to Libyan rebels with Washington's knowledge, U.S. and Libyan rebel officials said.
The shipments-mostly small arms such as assault rifles and ammunition-appear to be the first confirmed case of an outside government arming the rebel fighters. Those fighters have been losing ground for days in the face of a steady westward advance by forces loyal to Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.
The Egyptian shipments are the strongest indication to date that some Arab countries are heeding Western calls to take a lead in efforts to intervene on behalf of pro-democracy rebels in their fight against Mr. Gadhafi in Libya. Washington and other Western countries have long voiced frustration with Arab states' unwillingness to help resolve crises in their own region, even as they criticized Western powers for attempting to do so.
The shipments also follow an unusually robust diplomatic response from Arab states. There have been rare public calls for foreign military intervention in an Arab country, including a vote by the 23-member Arab League last week urging the U.N. to impose a no-fly zone over Libya.
The vote provided critical political cover to Western powers wary of intervening militarily without a broad regional and international mandate. On Thursday evening, the U.N. Security Council voted on a resolution endorsing a no-fly zone in Libya and authorizing military action in support of the rebels.
Within the council, Lebanon took a lead role drafting and circulating the draft of the resolution, which calls for "all necessary measures" to enforce a ban on flights over Libya. The United Arab Emirates and Qatar have taken the lead in offering to participate in enforcing a no-fly zone, according to U.N. diplomats.
Libyan rebel officials in Benghazi, meanwhile, have praised Qatar from the first days of the uprising, calling the small Gulf state their staunchest ally. Qatar has consistently pressed behind the scenes for tough and urgent international action behind the scenes, these officials said.
Qatari flags fly prominently in rebel-held Benghazi. After pro-Gadhafi forces retook the town of Ras Lanuf last week, Libyan state TV broadcast images of food-aid packages bearing the Qatari flag.
The White House has been reluctant to back calls from leaders in Congress for arming Libya's rebels directly, arguing that the U.S. must first fully assess who the fighters are and what policies they will pursue if they succeeded in toppling Col. Gadhafi. U.S. officials believe the opposition includes some Islamist elements. They fear that Islamist groups hostile to the U.S. could try to hijack the opposition and take any arms that are provided.
The Egyptian weapons transfers began ‘a few days ago' and are ongoing, according to a senior U.S. official. ‘There's no formal U.S. policy or acknowledgement that this is going on,' said the senior official. But ‘this is something we have knowledge of.'
Calls to Egypt's foreign ministry and the spokesman for the prime minister seeking comment went unanswered. There is no means of reaching Egypt's military for comment. An Egyptian official in Washington said he had no knowledge of weapon shipments.
The U.S. official also noted that the shipments appeared to come "too little, too late" to tip the military balance in favor of the rebels, who have faced an onslaught from Libyan forces backed by tanks, artillery and aircraft.
"We know the Egyptian military council is helping us, but they can't be so visible," said Hani Souflakis, a Libyan businessman in Cairo who has been acting as a rebel liaison with the Egyptian government since the uprising began.
"Weapons are getting through," said Mr. Souflakis, who says he has regular contacts with Egyptian officials in Cairo and the rebel leadership in Libya. "Americans have given the green light to the Egyptians to help. The Americans don't want to be involved in a direct level, but the Egyptians wouldn't do it if they didn't get the green light."
Western officials and rebel leaders in Libya said the U.S. has wanted to avoid being seen as taking a leadership role in any military action against Mr. Gadhafi after its invasions of Iraq and Afganistan fueled anger and mistrust with Washington throughout the region.
But the U.S. stated clearly it wants Mr. Gadhafi out of power and has signaled it would support those offering help to the rebels militarily or otherwise.
A spokesman for the rebel government in Benghazi said arms shipments have begun arriving to the rebels but declined to specify where they came from.
"Our military committee is purchasing arms and arming our people. The weapons are coming, but the nature of the weapons, the amount, where it's coming from, that has been classified," said the spokesman, Mustafa al-Gherryani.
The U.S. official said Egypt wanted to keep the shipments covert. In public, Egypt has sought to maintain a neutral stance toward the rebel uprising in Libya. Egypt abstained during the Arab League's vote calling for the U.N. to impose a no-fly zone on Mr. Gadhafi, according to people familiar with the internal Arab League deliberations.
Hundreds of thousands of Egyptian laborers are believed to still be in Libya.
On the other hand, the Egyptian military's covert support for the rebels suggests that it has calculated that Mr. Gadhafi is unlikely to remain in power, at least in the eastern half of the country, and therefore Egypt is eager to begin to build good relations with the rebels.
Rebel forces in the past 24 hours appeared to make some progress fending off pro-Gadhafi forces' assaults and have rolled out new weapons for the first time since the uprising began last month. Among them are rebel tanks that have taken up positions on the front lines in recent days. Rebels also launched fighter-jet attacks on government positions on Wednesday for the first time so far.
The tanks and fighter jets are believed to have been among the weapons seized by rebels from defected units of the Libyan army in the eastern half of the country, but they have received spare parts or trained mechanics from outside the country to help them deploy them, some rebel officials have speculated.
-Sam Dagher and Adam Entous contributed to this article.18
Benjamin Gottlieb, "Egypt Arms Libyan Rebels As Gaddafi's Conquest Continues," NeonTommy Annenberg Digital News, March 17, 2011:
Arms shipments from Egypt's military have begun flowing across the border into Libya with U.S. knowledge, Libyan rebels and U.S. officials said Thursday.
Made up mostly of small arms, such as assault rifles and ammunition, the shipments are the first confirmed reports of an outside government supporting rebel fighters with weapons. Rebels have been loosing ground for days against pro-Gaddafi forces aiming to end the conflict before foreign intervention plans are finalized.
Although the U.N. approved a "no-fly zone" over Libya late Thursday, rebel forces fear that any planned foreign intervention would be too little to late.
The shipment of arms indicated an unusually bold response by an Arab nation intervening in a conflict outside its borders. There have also been rare public decrees for the West to intervene in the conflict - the Arab League voted 23-0 last week encouraging the U.N. to impose the "no-fly zone" over Libya.
In spite of reports of arms flowing across the Egyptian boarder, Egyptian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Menha Bakhoum told Reuters that Egypt would not be involved in any military intervention in neighboring Libya.
"Egypt will not be among those Arab states. We will not be involved in any military intervention. No intervention period," Bakhoum said.
Bakhoum was responding to comments by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who said Thursday that discussions were on the table regarding Arab involvement in U.S. and European intervention in the conflict.
Clinton has said repeatedly that the U.S. desires involvement from a neighboring Arab nation in any planned intervention.
A Libyan rebel government spokesman in Benghazi, Mustafa al-Gherryani, said rebels have begun receiving arms shipments from neighboring nations, however he declined to reveal their origin.
"Our military committee is purchasing arms and arming our people. The weapons are coming, but the nature of the weapons, the amount, where it's coming from, that has been classified," he said.19
Yoichi Shimatsu, "Mideast Revolutions and 9-11 Intrigues Created in Qatar," New America Media, March 1, 2011
"It may puzzle and perhaps dismay young protesters in Benghazi, Cairo and Tunisia that their democratic hopes are being manipulated by an ultra-conservative Arab elite which has underhandedly backed a surge of militant Islamist radicals across North Africa. Credible U.S. intelligence reports have cited evidence pointing to Qatar's long-running support for the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda and jihadist fighters returning from Afghanistan.
The links to Qatar uncovered by anti-terrorism investigators in the wake of 9-11 need to be reexamined now that the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), an on-and-off affiliate of Al Qaeda, has seized armories across half of the North African country. Libya's well-stocked arsenals contain high-power explosives, rocket launchers and chemical weapons. LIFG is on the State Department's terrorist list.
Most worrying, according to a U.S. intelligence official cited by CNN, is the probable loss of chemical weapons. The Federation of American Scientists reports that, as of 2008, only 40 percent of Libya's mustard gas was destroyed in the second round of decommissioning. Chemical canisters along the Egyptian border were yet to be retrieved and are now presumably in the hands of armed militants.
After initially letting slip that the earliest Libyan protests were organized by the LIFG, Al Jazeera quickly changed its line to present a heavily filtered account portraying the events as ‘peaceful protests'. To explain away the gunshot deaths of Libyan soldiers during the uprising, the Qatar-based network presented a bizarre scenario of 150 dead soldiers in Libya having been executed by their officers for ‘refusing to fight'. The mysterious officers then miraculously vacated their base disappearing into thin air while surrounded by angry protesters! Off the record, one American intelligence analyst called these media claims an ‘absurdity' and suggested instead the obvious: that the soldiers were gunned down in an armed assault by war-hardened returned militants from Iraq and Afghanistan....
According to a Congressional Research Service report of January 2008, ‘Some observers have raised questions about possible support for Al Qaeda by some Qatari citizens, including members of Qatar's large ruling family. According to the 9/11 Commission Report, Qatar's Interior Minister provided a safe haven to 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed during the mid-1990s, and press reports indicate other terrorists may have received financial support or safe haven in Qatar after September 11, 2001.'
The national security chief, Interior Minister Abdullah bin Khalid al-Thani, is further mentioned as paying for a 1995 trip by Khalid Shaikh Mohammed ‘to join the Bosnia jihad.' The report recalls how after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, FBI officials "narrowly missed an opportunity to capture" the suspect in Qatar. ‘Former U.S. officials have since stated their belief that a high-ranking member of the Qatari government alerted him to the impending raid, allowing him to flee the country.'"20
Peter Dale Scott, a former Canadian diplomat and English Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, is the author of Drugs Oil and War, The Road to 9/11, The War Conspiracy: JFK, 9/11, and the Deep Politics of War. His most recent book is American War Machine: Deep Politics, the CIA Global Drug Connection and the Road to Afghanistan. Peter Dale Scott is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
His most recent book is American War Machine: Deep Politics, the CIA Global Drug Connection and the Road to Afghanistan.
His website, which contains a wealth of his writings, is here.
Notes
1 “Defense Secretary Gates, who recently warned against any further protracted US ground war, said on March 23 that the end of military action in Libya is unknown and could last longer than a few weeks. ‘I think there are any number of possible outcomes here and no one is in a position to predict them,’ Gates told reporters in Egypt” (C-Span, March 24, 2011).
2 Interested readers may wish to consult my first exploration, “Googling ‘Revolution’ in North Africa.”
3 Dan Lieberman, “Muammar Al Gaddafi Meets His Own Rebels,” CounterCurrents.org, March 9, 2011.
4 Joel Bainerman, Inside the Covert Operations of the CIA & Israel's Mossad (New York: S.P.I. Books, 1994), 14.
5 Richard Keeble, “The Secret War Against Libya,” MediaLens, 2002.
6 "Petroleum and Empire in North Africa. NATO Invasion of Libya Underway," By Keith Harmon Snow, 2 March 2011.
7 Ghali Hassan, “U.S. Love Affair with Murderous Dictators and Hate for Democracy.” Axis of Logic, Mar 17, 2011.
8 Center for Defense Information, “In the Spotlight: The Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG),” January 18, 2005
9 Qadhafi was concerned about Al Qaeda terrorism in Libya, and in 1996 Libya became the first government to place Osama bin Laden on Interpol’s Wanted List (Rohan Gunaratna, Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror [New York: Columbia UP, 2002], 142). Thereafter American and Libyan intelligence collaborated closely for some years against Al Qaeda. Beginning when?
10 Ian Black, “Libya rebels rejects Gaddafi's al-Qaida spin,” Guardian, March 1, 2011.
11 Gary Gambill, "The Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), Jamestown Foundation," Terrorism Monitor, May 5, 2005,; citing Al-Hayat (London), 20 October 1995 [“communiqué”]; "The Shayler affair: The spooks, the Colonel and the jailed whistle-blower," The Observer (London), 9 August 1998; Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquié, Ben Laden: La Verite interdite (Bin Ladin: The Forbidden Truth). Cf. also Annie Machon, Spies, Lies and Whistleblowers: MI5, MI6 And the Shayler Affair (Book Guild Publishing, 2005) [Shayler].
12 Yoichi Shimatsu, “Attack on Libya: Why Odyssey Dawn Is Doomed,” New America Media, March 20, 2011.
13 “US reaches out to Libyan insurgents,” The Australian, March 1, 2011,
14 “How a onetime friend to Gadhafi became his rival,” Globe and Mail [Toronto], March 4, 2011.
15 Libyan Rebel Council in Benghazi Forms Oil Company to Replace Qaddafi’s,” Bloomberg, March 22, 2011.
16 Robert Fisk, “America's secret plan to arm Libya's rebels,” Independent, March 7, 2011.
17 “Libya rebels coordinating with West on air assault,” Los Angeles Times, March 24, 2011.
18 “Egypt Said to Arm Libya Rebels,” Wall Street Journal, March 17, 2011,
19 Benjamin Gottlieb, “Egypt Arms Libyan Rebels As Gaddafi's Conquest Continues,” NeonTommy Annenberg Digital News, March 17, 2011.
20 Yoichi Shimatsu, “Mideast Revolutions and 9-11 Intrigues Created in Qatar,” New America Media, March 1, 2011. The al-Thani family’s protection of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed is confirmed by former CIA officer Robert Baer (Los Angeles Times, March 23, 2003). Cf. Robert Baer, Sleeping with the Devil (New York: Crown, 2003); Peter Lance, Triple Cross (New York: Regan/HarperCollins, 2006), 234-37.
Peter Dale Scott is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Peter Dale Scott
AFRICAN UNION TO BROKER AGREEMENT BETWEEN GADDAFI AND LIBYA AL CIADA REBS
But will NATO and AFRICOM accept it?
============================
From http://www.presstv.ir/detail/171635.html
Libya says ready to accept AU mediation
Fri Mar 25, 2011 5:51PM
Senior Libyan officials say the country's longtime ruler Muammar Gaddafi is ready to accept an African Union-mediated political solution to the unfolding crisis in the country.
"We are ready to implement the Road Map envisaged [by] the High-Level Committee mandated by the Peace and Security Council of the African Union," the Libyan delegation to AU talks said in a statement in Addis Ababa on Friday.
This comes after the African leaders gathered in the Ethiopian capital to discuss the ongoing Libyan crisis.
Gaddafi had also dispatched a high-level delegation to join the African Union talks.
The talks also included EU, UN and Arab League representatives.
It could not immediately be confirmed if representatives from the Benghazi-based National Libyan Council were present at the talks.
The council, headed by Libya's former Justice Minister Mustafa Abdel Jalil, plans to lead the country to an election.
Jalil was among the first high-profile Libyan figures to join protesters following the Gaddafi regime's brutal crackdown on the opposition.
Latest reports say US-led Western warplanes have struck Libyan ground forces for a seventh consecutive day near strategically-important towns.
The US and its Western allies have carried out a bombing campaign against Libya since the Security Council ratified the no-fly zone over the African nation.
Libya says many civilians have been killed in the airstrikes.
The developments also come as revolutionary forces are gearing up for a new attack on troops loyal to Gaddafi to win back the eastern city of Adabiyah.
JR/HGH/MMN
© Copyright 2010 Press TV. All rights reserved.
============================
From http://www.presstv.ir/detail/171635.html
Libya says ready to accept AU mediation
Fri Mar 25, 2011 5:51PM
Senior Libyan officials say the country's longtime ruler Muammar Gaddafi is ready to accept an African Union-mediated political solution to the unfolding crisis in the country.
"We are ready to implement the Road Map envisaged [by] the High-Level Committee mandated by the Peace and Security Council of the African Union," the Libyan delegation to AU talks said in a statement in Addis Ababa on Friday.
This comes after the African leaders gathered in the Ethiopian capital to discuss the ongoing Libyan crisis.
Gaddafi had also dispatched a high-level delegation to join the African Union talks.
The talks also included EU, UN and Arab League representatives.
It could not immediately be confirmed if representatives from the Benghazi-based National Libyan Council were present at the talks.
The council, headed by Libya's former Justice Minister Mustafa Abdel Jalil, plans to lead the country to an election.
Jalil was among the first high-profile Libyan figures to join protesters following the Gaddafi regime's brutal crackdown on the opposition.
Latest reports say US-led Western warplanes have struck Libyan ground forces for a seventh consecutive day near strategically-important towns.
The US and its Western allies have carried out a bombing campaign against Libya since the Security Council ratified the no-fly zone over the African nation.
Libya says many civilians have been killed in the airstrikes.
The developments also come as revolutionary forces are gearing up for a new attack on troops loyal to Gaddafi to win back the eastern city of Adabiyah.
JR/HGH/MMN
© Copyright 2010 Press TV. All rights reserved.
ENDGAME : DIVIDE, RULE AND GET THE OIL
This is a good and more accurate analysis of the kinetic military action on Libya, or to be more accurate deep inside Libya.
But I can't stop thinking that the actual endgame will end in or at least involve Iran in a big way. And from there a big time conflict with Russia and/or China.
And why did Russia and China allow NATO and AFRICOM to get a foothold in Africa when no African nation would host AFRICOM?
==========================
From http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MC25Ak01.html
THE ROVING EYE
Endgame: Divide, rule and get the oil
By Pepe Escobar
To follow Pepe's articles on the Great Arab Revolt, please click here.
Without cutting through the fog of war it's impossible to understand what's really going on in Libya.
Odyssey Dawn is only happening because the 22-member Arab League voted to impose a no-fly zone over Libya. The Arab League - routinely dismissed in Western capitals as irrelevant before this decision - is little else than an instrument of the House of Saud's foreign policy.
Its "decision" was propelled by Washington's promise to protect
the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) kings/sheikhs/oligarchs from the democratic aspirations of their own subjects - who are yearning for the same democratic rights as their "cousins" in eastern Libya.
This is exactly the same GCC, posing for Saudi Arabia that invaded Bahrain to help the Sunni al-Khalifa dynasty to crush the pro-democracy movement. The GCC gang is considered by the West as "our" bastards, while Colonel Muammar Gaddafi - according to the Western narrative - is a terrorist who went to rehab and is now a thug.
The GCC comprises stalwart egalitarians Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It was the GCC that first voted for a no-fly zone; then top dog Saudi Arabia twisted arms/promised bribes to extract an Arab League endorsement (Syria and Algeria, for instance, were seriously against it).
For the opportunist Arab League secretary-general Amr Moussa, who is already running for the presidency of Egypt, this was a great deal; he took his marching orders from Riyadh while at the same time polishing his CV with Washington.
For Saudi Arabia this was a great deal; the perfect chance for King Abdullah to get rid of Gaddafi (the bad blood between both since 2002 is legendary), and the perfect chance for the House of Saud to lend a hand to a bewildered Washington.
Odyssey Dawn has no inbuilt endgame. US President Barack Obama has made it clear numerous times that his endgame means "Gaddafi must go". This is called "regime change". Or, in the new two-pronged Obama doctrine, "US outreach" (directed towards opponents of "evil regimes"). Not-so-evil regimes, as in Bahrain or Yemen, are encouraged towards "regime alteration".
The problem is "regime change" is not mandated by UN Resolution 1973.
Odyssey Dawn is the first African war of the latest Pentagon overseas military command, Africom. Soon it will turn into the first African war of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Although sold as a "limited mission", Odyssey Dawn - as in just imposing and maintaining a no-fly zone - will cost at least $15 billion a year. Members of the Arab League are supposed to be footing a substantial part of the bill - since the only one to have committed military forces is Qatar (two Mirage fighters).
The whole ongoing circus revolves around how to "transition" the war from the Pentagon in Africa - which is based in Stuttgart, Germany, because none among 53 African countries wanted it - to the Pentagon in Europe, also known as NATO.
NATO already interfered in Somalia in 2010 - airlifting thousands of Ugandan troops. It is now conducting operation Ocean Shield off the Horn of Africa. And before Odyssey Dawn had already placed Libya under 24-hour surveillance by its AWACS planes - part of the nearly 10-year-old Operation Active Endeavor.
In the big picture, the combined role of the Pentagon global tentacles falls under the Full Spectrum Dominance doctrine, which aims to prevent any developing nation, or group of nations, from establishing alliances or preferential relationships with both China and Russia.
China and Russia are among the top four BRIC countries, along with Brazil and India. All four abstained from the UN vote. Only 48 hours before the rushed-in vote, Muammar Gaddafi had threatened that if attacked by the West he would transfer Libya's juicy energy contracts to companies from Russia, India and China.
War by committee
The Libyan opposition is a motley crew of disaffected tribes, the well-meaning youth movement, civilian and military defectors from the Gaddafi regime, Central Intelligence Agency-sponsored assets (such as sinister former justice minister Mustafa Abdel-Jalil), Muslim Brotherhood-related (and unrelated) Islamists, and monarchist Senussi tribesmen. The Senussi is the top tribe in the Benghazi area; most of the keffiah-and-Kalashnikov "rebels" are Senussi, as was King Idris, overthrown by Gaddafi in 1969.
The Libyan transitional council now calls itself an "interim government" - although still committed, in its own words, to a unified Libya. But partition cannot be ruled out - because historically Cyrenaica has always been at odds with Tripolitania. If Gaddafi can muster majority tribal support, the regime won't crumble.
All eyes will be on a "green march" now announced by the one million-strong al-Warfalla tribe, Libya's largest; they had defected to the opposition but now are eager to show their loyalty to Gaddafi.
There's no guarantee the February 17 Movement, the political force at the forefront of the Libyan revolt, with a democratic platform for human rights, a state of law and free and fair elections, will have the upper-hand in a post-Gaddafi environment.
The West will privilege a leadership speaking English, and cozy with Washington and European capitals. Preferably a pliable puppet. Oil may corrupt the new leadership to the core. Add to it the spicy bit of news of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) - arguably yet one more CIA front - with its maximum of 800 jihadis, already supporting the "rebels". No wonder Armageddon scenarios swirl - the fall of Gaddafi having the potential to produce another Afghanistan or another Iraq.
The agreement reached by Obama, UK Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Nicolas Sarkozy is that NATO will play "a key role" in Odyssey Dawn. Translation; for all practical purposes NATO will be in charge. The political leadership will fall to a "steering committee" of foreign ministers - an Anglo-French-American club with a sprinkling of Arab League. They are supposed to meet soon in Brussels, London or Paris.
Obama phoned Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and apparently convinced him about the arrangement - although in a speech to his ruling Justice and Development Party Erdogan said that Turkey "will never point a gun at the Libyan people".
French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said that since not all members of the military coalition are members of NATO "this is therefore not a NATO operation". Make no mistake; it is.
This "now you NATO, now you don't" war is roughly what Sarkozy wanted - a "heroic" platform to save his re-election in 2012. But the West's motivation, above all, tastes like oil. Since Saudi Arabia is not on the market, Libya is a spectacular piece of real estate for the energy-hungry West; a giant gas station in the desert with very few people around.
The bulk of Libya's proven oil and gas reserves lie in "rebel" Cyrenaica. Oil and gas account for 25% of the economy, 97% of exports and 90% of government revenue. Sarkozy - as well as the West - fear a protracted war. France wants it to end now. Unlike Germany, Britain and Italy - they're already in - France is salivating to get a huge piece of the oil action.
There's absolutely nothing humanitarian about the current casino inside the EU and NATO. The only thing that matters is the right positioning towards the post-Gaddafi era - the energy bonanza, geostrategic primacy in the Mediterranean and the Sahara-Sahel space, juicy business "reconstruction" opportunities.
Regime change or balkanization?
So Western moral uprightness may be summed up like this. If you sell us a lot of oil, buy our weapons, and smash al-Qaeda, that's fine with us. You may even kill your own people, provided it's just dozens, not thousands.
That's how Saudi Arabia can get away with anything in the current counter-revolution climate, with the House of Saud pulling all stops to crush any measure of democratic aspirations in the Persian Gulf.
As for those regimes that kill perhaps thousands of their own people - and have oil, and threaten to sell the oil to the Russians or the Chinese, their destiny is to fight a UN/Tomahawk resolution.
The forces of counter-revolution are now joined at the hip with the West. Saudi Arabia's military will remain inside Bahrain. The GCC legitimizes the Western war in Libya. The favorite Western endgame in Libya is divide and rule, and roll with the oil. Is the great 2011 Arab revolt about to crash-land in the desert sands?
Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).
He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.
(Copyright 2011 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
But I can't stop thinking that the actual endgame will end in or at least involve Iran in a big way. And from there a big time conflict with Russia and/or China.
And why did Russia and China allow NATO and AFRICOM to get a foothold in Africa when no African nation would host AFRICOM?
==========================
From http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MC25Ak01.html
THE ROVING EYE
Endgame: Divide, rule and get the oil
By Pepe Escobar
To follow Pepe's articles on the Great Arab Revolt, please click here.
Without cutting through the fog of war it's impossible to understand what's really going on in Libya.
Odyssey Dawn is only happening because the 22-member Arab League voted to impose a no-fly zone over Libya. The Arab League - routinely dismissed in Western capitals as irrelevant before this decision - is little else than an instrument of the House of Saud's foreign policy.
Its "decision" was propelled by Washington's promise to protect
the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) kings/sheikhs/oligarchs from the democratic aspirations of their own subjects - who are yearning for the same democratic rights as their "cousins" in eastern Libya.
This is exactly the same GCC, posing for Saudi Arabia that invaded Bahrain to help the Sunni al-Khalifa dynasty to crush the pro-democracy movement. The GCC gang is considered by the West as "our" bastards, while Colonel Muammar Gaddafi - according to the Western narrative - is a terrorist who went to rehab and is now a thug.
The GCC comprises stalwart egalitarians Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It was the GCC that first voted for a no-fly zone; then top dog Saudi Arabia twisted arms/promised bribes to extract an Arab League endorsement (Syria and Algeria, for instance, were seriously against it).
For the opportunist Arab League secretary-general Amr Moussa, who is already running for the presidency of Egypt, this was a great deal; he took his marching orders from Riyadh while at the same time polishing his CV with Washington.
For Saudi Arabia this was a great deal; the perfect chance for King Abdullah to get rid of Gaddafi (the bad blood between both since 2002 is legendary), and the perfect chance for the House of Saud to lend a hand to a bewildered Washington.
Odyssey Dawn has no inbuilt endgame. US President Barack Obama has made it clear numerous times that his endgame means "Gaddafi must go". This is called "regime change". Or, in the new two-pronged Obama doctrine, "US outreach" (directed towards opponents of "evil regimes"). Not-so-evil regimes, as in Bahrain or Yemen, are encouraged towards "regime alteration".
The problem is "regime change" is not mandated by UN Resolution 1973.
Odyssey Dawn is the first African war of the latest Pentagon overseas military command, Africom. Soon it will turn into the first African war of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Although sold as a "limited mission", Odyssey Dawn - as in just imposing and maintaining a no-fly zone - will cost at least $15 billion a year. Members of the Arab League are supposed to be footing a substantial part of the bill - since the only one to have committed military forces is Qatar (two Mirage fighters).
The whole ongoing circus revolves around how to "transition" the war from the Pentagon in Africa - which is based in Stuttgart, Germany, because none among 53 African countries wanted it - to the Pentagon in Europe, also known as NATO.
NATO already interfered in Somalia in 2010 - airlifting thousands of Ugandan troops. It is now conducting operation Ocean Shield off the Horn of Africa. And before Odyssey Dawn had already placed Libya under 24-hour surveillance by its AWACS planes - part of the nearly 10-year-old Operation Active Endeavor.
In the big picture, the combined role of the Pentagon global tentacles falls under the Full Spectrum Dominance doctrine, which aims to prevent any developing nation, or group of nations, from establishing alliances or preferential relationships with both China and Russia.
China and Russia are among the top four BRIC countries, along with Brazil and India. All four abstained from the UN vote. Only 48 hours before the rushed-in vote, Muammar Gaddafi had threatened that if attacked by the West he would transfer Libya's juicy energy contracts to companies from Russia, India and China.
War by committee
The Libyan opposition is a motley crew of disaffected tribes, the well-meaning youth movement, civilian and military defectors from the Gaddafi regime, Central Intelligence Agency-sponsored assets (such as sinister former justice minister Mustafa Abdel-Jalil), Muslim Brotherhood-related (and unrelated) Islamists, and monarchist Senussi tribesmen. The Senussi is the top tribe in the Benghazi area; most of the keffiah-and-Kalashnikov "rebels" are Senussi, as was King Idris, overthrown by Gaddafi in 1969.
The Libyan transitional council now calls itself an "interim government" - although still committed, in its own words, to a unified Libya. But partition cannot be ruled out - because historically Cyrenaica has always been at odds with Tripolitania. If Gaddafi can muster majority tribal support, the regime won't crumble.
All eyes will be on a "green march" now announced by the one million-strong al-Warfalla tribe, Libya's largest; they had defected to the opposition but now are eager to show their loyalty to Gaddafi.
There's no guarantee the February 17 Movement, the political force at the forefront of the Libyan revolt, with a democratic platform for human rights, a state of law and free and fair elections, will have the upper-hand in a post-Gaddafi environment.
The West will privilege a leadership speaking English, and cozy with Washington and European capitals. Preferably a pliable puppet. Oil may corrupt the new leadership to the core. Add to it the spicy bit of news of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) - arguably yet one more CIA front - with its maximum of 800 jihadis, already supporting the "rebels". No wonder Armageddon scenarios swirl - the fall of Gaddafi having the potential to produce another Afghanistan or another Iraq.
The agreement reached by Obama, UK Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Nicolas Sarkozy is that NATO will play "a key role" in Odyssey Dawn. Translation; for all practical purposes NATO will be in charge. The political leadership will fall to a "steering committee" of foreign ministers - an Anglo-French-American club with a sprinkling of Arab League. They are supposed to meet soon in Brussels, London or Paris.
Obama phoned Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and apparently convinced him about the arrangement - although in a speech to his ruling Justice and Development Party Erdogan said that Turkey "will never point a gun at the Libyan people".
French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said that since not all members of the military coalition are members of NATO "this is therefore not a NATO operation". Make no mistake; it is.
This "now you NATO, now you don't" war is roughly what Sarkozy wanted - a "heroic" platform to save his re-election in 2012. But the West's motivation, above all, tastes like oil. Since Saudi Arabia is not on the market, Libya is a spectacular piece of real estate for the energy-hungry West; a giant gas station in the desert with very few people around.
The bulk of Libya's proven oil and gas reserves lie in "rebel" Cyrenaica. Oil and gas account for 25% of the economy, 97% of exports and 90% of government revenue. Sarkozy - as well as the West - fear a protracted war. France wants it to end now. Unlike Germany, Britain and Italy - they're already in - France is salivating to get a huge piece of the oil action.
There's absolutely nothing humanitarian about the current casino inside the EU and NATO. The only thing that matters is the right positioning towards the post-Gaddafi era - the energy bonanza, geostrategic primacy in the Mediterranean and the Sahara-Sahel space, juicy business "reconstruction" opportunities.
Regime change or balkanization?
So Western moral uprightness may be summed up like this. If you sell us a lot of oil, buy our weapons, and smash al-Qaeda, that's fine with us. You may even kill your own people, provided it's just dozens, not thousands.
That's how Saudi Arabia can get away with anything in the current counter-revolution climate, with the House of Saud pulling all stops to crush any measure of democratic aspirations in the Persian Gulf.
As for those regimes that kill perhaps thousands of their own people - and have oil, and threaten to sell the oil to the Russians or the Chinese, their destiny is to fight a UN/Tomahawk resolution.
The forces of counter-revolution are now joined at the hip with the West. Saudi Arabia's military will remain inside Bahrain. The GCC legitimizes the Western war in Libya. The favorite Western endgame in Libya is divide and rule, and roll with the oil. Is the great 2011 Arab revolt about to crash-land in the desert sands?
Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).
He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.
(Copyright 2011 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
NATO CURRENT OPERATIONS
NATO lists its current operations as
1. Afghanistan
2. Horn of Africa
3. Iraq
4. Kosovo
5. Mediterranean
6. supporting African Union in Somalia
[source : NATO operations and missions, http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/topics_52060.htm]
To which we can now add Libya, ie North Africa.
In other words, NATO is a long way from home, on mission creep.
How long will it be before NATO is in South Africa or Indonesia or Peru or New Zealand?
1. Afghanistan
2. Horn of Africa
3. Iraq
4. Kosovo
5. Mediterranean
6. supporting African Union in Somalia
[source : NATO operations and missions, http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/topics_52060.htm]
To which we can now add Libya, ie North Africa.
In other words, NATO is a long way from home, on mission creep.
How long will it be before NATO is in South Africa or Indonesia or Peru or New Zealand?
MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD URGES EGYPT ARMY TO BREAK ISRAELI BLOCKADE OF GAZA
The Muslim Brotherhood has urged the Egyptian military to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza. This comes at a time when friction between Gaza and Israel are heating up again.
===========================
From http://www.presstv.ir/detail/171551.html
Egypt's MB urges army to end Gaza siege
Fri Mar 25, 2011 6:34AM
Major Egyptian political party, the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), has demanded that the country's Supreme Council of the Armed Forces takes action in breaking the siege of Gaza.
The group hailed the Egyptian army's support for a peaceful popular revolution, urging the junta to recognize the desire of Egyptians for ending the siege of Gaza, according to a Thursday statement published by the organization's official English website, Ikhwanweb.
The opposition group also called on all Arabs to take a decisive stand against the siege that has been “suffocating the lives of the people in Gaza.”
Egypt's ousted regime under Hosni Mubarak served the interests of Israel by assisting and keeping silent on the killing of Gazans, the statement by the MB said.
Now that the Arab world is getting rid of their US-backed authoritarian regimes in recent popular revolutions, the time has come for Egypt's ruling government to help Arab brothers in Gaza, the group said.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Nabil Elaraby has reportedly warned Israel against launching a military operation in Gaza.
Meanwhile, Israel has not allowed a cement convoy, sent by the International Egyptian Federation, to enter the Gaza Strip through Egypt's Rafah border crossing, although the Egyptian organization had received a permit to travel to Gaza via Rafah border.
Israeli interests in Egypt seem to be at stake now that the current interim Egyptian government is obliged to more-or-less reflect the desires of its people.
A pipeline carrying natural gas from Egypt to Israel was exploded on February 5, just days before Mubarak's regime was overthrown. The resulting damage to Israel's economy has been estimated to be about 1.7 million dollars per day.
© Copyright 2010 Press TV. All rights reserved.
MA/MB
===========================
From http://www.presstv.ir/detail/171551.html
Egypt's MB urges army to end Gaza siege
Fri Mar 25, 2011 6:34AM
Major Egyptian political party, the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), has demanded that the country's Supreme Council of the Armed Forces takes action in breaking the siege of Gaza.
The group hailed the Egyptian army's support for a peaceful popular revolution, urging the junta to recognize the desire of Egyptians for ending the siege of Gaza, according to a Thursday statement published by the organization's official English website, Ikhwanweb.
The opposition group also called on all Arabs to take a decisive stand against the siege that has been “suffocating the lives of the people in Gaza.”
Egypt's ousted regime under Hosni Mubarak served the interests of Israel by assisting and keeping silent on the killing of Gazans, the statement by the MB said.
Now that the Arab world is getting rid of their US-backed authoritarian regimes in recent popular revolutions, the time has come for Egypt's ruling government to help Arab brothers in Gaza, the group said.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Nabil Elaraby has reportedly warned Israel against launching a military operation in Gaza.
Meanwhile, Israel has not allowed a cement convoy, sent by the International Egyptian Federation, to enter the Gaza Strip through Egypt's Rafah border crossing, although the Egyptian organization had received a permit to travel to Gaza via Rafah border.
Israeli interests in Egypt seem to be at stake now that the current interim Egyptian government is obliged to more-or-less reflect the desires of its people.
A pipeline carrying natural gas from Egypt to Israel was exploded on February 5, just days before Mubarak's regime was overthrown. The resulting damage to Israel's economy has been estimated to be about 1.7 million dollars per day.
© Copyright 2010 Press TV. All rights reserved.
MA/MB
RIFKIND WANTS THE LIBYAN AL QAEDA REBS ARMED
Malcolm Rifkind, who really pushed for military action in Libya, is now joining in the calls to arm the al-Qaeda rebs in Libya. Rifkind also acts as an al-Qaeda PR agent in suggesting that the rebs not be called rebs but insurgents or opposition fighters instead.
Rifkind's three point plan in assisting the al-Qaeda rebs (sorry Malcolm, that's what they are) is
1. call the al-Qaeda rebs insurgents or opposition fighters
2. formal discussions with the Libyan National Council
3. the overt or covert supply of military equipment to the al-Qaeda rebs
Points 2 and 3 go well beyond the letter and spirit of UN SCR 1973.
These suggestions would drag us into a civil war in Libya. But that is a moot point.
As reported in The Daily Mail today several hundred SAS have been in Libya for a month at least, obviously interfering in the civil war and guiding the al-Qaeda rebs.
==================
From http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/8404827/Libya-Now-we-must-arm-the-insurgents-so-that-Gaddafi-can-be-toppled.html
Libya: Now we must arm the insurgents so that Gaddafi can be toppled
Liberation can only be achieved by a transformation of the status and powers of those who have risen against Gaddafi. That will require three important decisions to be taken by Britain and the international community.
First, we must stop referring to the anti-Gaddafi fighters as "rebels". Describing them as such implies that the Gaddafi regime is still some sort of legitimate government. It is not. The regime has, effectively, become an outlaw in the eyes of the Libyan people, of the Arab world and of the international community. As it is no longer legitimate, those fighting against it are no longer rebels. They are best described as insurgents or opposition fighters.
Second, although it is too early to recognise the Libyan opposition as an alternative government, the United Kingdom, and other nations, must enter into formal discussions with the Libyan National Council, as the representative of the insurgents, and facilitate the early supply not only of humanitarian aid, but also of advice and help on how to create the institutions of government, the rule of law and a free media. That is not only urgently needed, but would help ensure that the ultimate replacement for Gaddafi would be a new government supportive of democratic reform, rather than one willing to install a new secular or religious tyranny.
But there is a third arm of the strategy, without which the others will have only modest impact: the overt or covert supply of military equipment to the insurgents. Even without aircraft, Gaddafi has a massive advantage over the opposition with his tanks and heavy artillery. It is difficult to see how he can be overthrown in the short to medium term unless there is a massive popular rising in Tripoli or a mass defection of his army to the insurgents. Neither is impossible, but nor can either be assumed given the fear that Gaddafi still inspires.
Rifkind's three point plan in assisting the al-Qaeda rebs (sorry Malcolm, that's what they are) is
1. call the al-Qaeda rebs insurgents or opposition fighters
2. formal discussions with the Libyan National Council
3. the overt or covert supply of military equipment to the al-Qaeda rebs
Points 2 and 3 go well beyond the letter and spirit of UN SCR 1973.
These suggestions would drag us into a civil war in Libya. But that is a moot point.
As reported in The Daily Mail today several hundred SAS have been in Libya for a month at least, obviously interfering in the civil war and guiding the al-Qaeda rebs.
==================
From http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/8404827/Libya-Now-we-must-arm-the-insurgents-so-that-Gaddafi-can-be-toppled.html
Libya: Now we must arm the insurgents so that Gaddafi can be toppled
Liberation can only be achieved by a transformation of the status and powers of those who have risen against Gaddafi. That will require three important decisions to be taken by Britain and the international community.
First, we must stop referring to the anti-Gaddafi fighters as "rebels". Describing them as such implies that the Gaddafi regime is still some sort of legitimate government. It is not. The regime has, effectively, become an outlaw in the eyes of the Libyan people, of the Arab world and of the international community. As it is no longer legitimate, those fighting against it are no longer rebels. They are best described as insurgents or opposition fighters.
Second, although it is too early to recognise the Libyan opposition as an alternative government, the United Kingdom, and other nations, must enter into formal discussions with the Libyan National Council, as the representative of the insurgents, and facilitate the early supply not only of humanitarian aid, but also of advice and help on how to create the institutions of government, the rule of law and a free media. That is not only urgently needed, but would help ensure that the ultimate replacement for Gaddafi would be a new government supportive of democratic reform, rather than one willing to install a new secular or religious tyranny.
But there is a third arm of the strategy, without which the others will have only modest impact: the overt or covert supply of military equipment to the insurgents. Even without aircraft, Gaddafi has a massive advantage over the opposition with his tanks and heavy artillery. It is difficult to see how he can be overthrown in the short to medium term unless there is a massive popular rising in Tripoli or a mass defection of his army to the insurgents. Neither is impossible, but nor can either be assumed given the fear that Gaddafi still inspires.
WHEN IS AN OCCUPATION NOT AN OCCUPATION?
UN SCR 1973 states
Yet the SAS have been in Libya in strength and for a month, at least!
So when is an occupation not an occupation?
==================
From http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1369763/350-British-special-forces-deep-inside-Libya--ready-deployed.html
350 British special forces already deep inside Libya... and more are ready to be deployed
By David Williams and Tim Shipman
Last updated at 12:14 AM on 25th March 2011
Hundreds of British troops have been deployed deep inside Libya targeting Colonel Gaddafi’s forces – and more are on standby.
While Chancellor George Osborne repeated that UK ground troops would not be involved, the Daily Mail can reveal there are an estimated 350 already mounting covert operations.
In total it is understood that just under 250 UK special forces soldiers and their support have been in Libya since before the launch of air strikes to enforce the no-fly zone against Gaddafi’s forces.
Drawn from a squadron of SAS and SBS personnel, some have been in Libya for a month and are being re-supplied with water, food and ammunition via airdrops from Cyprus.
Those numbers were further boosted by nearly 100 this week when paratroopers from the Special Forces Support Group (SFSG) were sent to Libya as coalition commanders prepare to increase the tempo of operations.
A further 800 Royal Marines are on five days’ notice to deploy to the Mediterranean to support humanitarian relief and aid operations.
4. Authorizes Member States that have notified the Secretary-General, acting nationally or through regional organizations or arrangements, and acting in cooperation with the Secretary-General, to take all necessary measures, notwithstanding paragraph 9 of resolution 1970 (2011), to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, including Benghazi, while excluding a foreign occupation force of any form on any part of Libyan territory, and requests the Member States concerned to inform the Secretary-General immediately of the measures they take pursuant to the authorization conferred by this paragraph which shall be immediately reported to the Security Council;
Yet the SAS have been in Libya in strength and for a month, at least!
So when is an occupation not an occupation?
==================
From http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1369763/350-British-special-forces-deep-inside-Libya--ready-deployed.html
350 British special forces already deep inside Libya... and more are ready to be deployed
By David Williams and Tim Shipman
Last updated at 12:14 AM on 25th March 2011
Hundreds of British troops have been deployed deep inside Libya targeting Colonel Gaddafi’s forces – and more are on standby.
While Chancellor George Osborne repeated that UK ground troops would not be involved, the Daily Mail can reveal there are an estimated 350 already mounting covert operations.
In total it is understood that just under 250 UK special forces soldiers and their support have been in Libya since before the launch of air strikes to enforce the no-fly zone against Gaddafi’s forces.
Drawn from a squadron of SAS and SBS personnel, some have been in Libya for a month and are being re-supplied with water, food and ammunition via airdrops from Cyprus.
Those numbers were further boosted by nearly 100 this week when paratroopers from the Special Forces Support Group (SFSG) were sent to Libya as coalition commanders prepare to increase the tempo of operations.
A further 800 Royal Marines are on five days’ notice to deploy to the Mediterranean to support humanitarian relief and aid operations.
NATO BEGINS ITS NATO
NATO has formally begun its North Africa Take Over (NATO).
NATO will be the world army, enforcing the will of the world government, the United Nations.
This military intervention in Libya by the United Nations is illegal.
The United Nations was financed by the Rockefellers.
The League of Nations was financed by the Rockefellers.
In his memoirs David Rockefeller proudly boasts of his work in creating a world government.
NATO was initially an alliance to defend West Europe from the USSR. Today it is trying to consume former USSR states Georgia and Ukraine having already consumed most of Eastern Europe. NATO is also contemplating admitting Israel!
Now NATO's tentacles are reaching into North Africa. Once in North Africa it will move south. That's why Africom was created after the bogus 9/11 attacks.
Do not be fooled. NATO is on the march.
And neither Russia of China is doing nothing about it.
=============================
From http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/24/france-turkey-nato-libya
Libya: Nato to control no-fly zone after France gives way to Turkey
• Climbdown by Sarkozy ends infighting among western allies
• Nato secretary-general contradicts western officials
Ian Traynor in Brussels and Nicholas Watt
The Guardian, Friday 25 March 2011
Western allies and Turkey have secured a deal to put the entire military campaign against Muammar Gaddafi under Nato command by next week, UK and French sources have told the Guardian.
The US, Britain, France and Turkey agreed to put the three-pronged offensive – a no-fly zone, an arms embargo, and air strikes – under a Nato command umbrella, in a climbdown by France that accommodates strong Turkish complaints about the scope and control of the campaign.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2011
NATO will be the world army, enforcing the will of the world government, the United Nations.
This military intervention in Libya by the United Nations is illegal.
The United Nations was financed by the Rockefellers.
The League of Nations was financed by the Rockefellers.
In his memoirs David Rockefeller proudly boasts of his work in creating a world government.
NATO was initially an alliance to defend West Europe from the USSR. Today it is trying to consume former USSR states Georgia and Ukraine having already consumed most of Eastern Europe. NATO is also contemplating admitting Israel!
Now NATO's tentacles are reaching into North Africa. Once in North Africa it will move south. That's why Africom was created after the bogus 9/11 attacks.
Do not be fooled. NATO is on the march.
And neither Russia of China is doing nothing about it.
=============================
From http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/24/france-turkey-nato-libya
Libya: Nato to control no-fly zone after France gives way to Turkey
• Climbdown by Sarkozy ends infighting among western allies
• Nato secretary-general contradicts western officials
Ian Traynor in Brussels and Nicholas Watt
The Guardian, Friday 25 March 2011
Western allies and Turkey have secured a deal to put the entire military campaign against Muammar Gaddafi under Nato command by next week, UK and French sources have told the Guardian.
The US, Britain, France and Turkey agreed to put the three-pronged offensive – a no-fly zone, an arms embargo, and air strikes – under a Nato command umbrella, in a climbdown by France that accommodates strong Turkish complaints about the scope and control of the campaign.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2011
Thursday, March 24, 2011
TARPLEY ON THE LIBYAN REBS : WHO ARE THEY?
A recent report in The Australian stated that Gaddafi had given the names of al-Qaeda members in Libya to the CIA and MI6[1]. Vincent Cannistraro, who framed Libya for Pan Am 103, stated the info was rubbish.
But Webster Tarpley has now investigated who the Libyan rebels actually are, and has concluded that the rebs, that we are now protecting, are in fact al-Qaeda.
[1] Gaddafi regime fed names of jihadists to the CIA and to Britain, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/gaddafi-regime-fed-names-of-jihadists-to-uk-cia/story-fn7ycml4-1226025836662
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From http://tarpley.net/2011/03/24/the-cia%E2%80%99s-libya-rebels-the-same-terrorists-who-killed-us-nato-troops-in-iraq/
The CIA’s Libya Rebels: The Same Terrorists who Killed US, NATO Troops in Iraq
[Translate]
2007 West Point Study Shows Benghazi-Darnah-Tobruk Area was a World Leader in Al Qaeda Suicide Bomber Recruitment
“Serpents, thirst, heat, and sand … Libya alone can present a multitude of woes that it would beseem men to fly from.”
Lucan, Pharsalia
Webster G. Tarpley, Ph.D.
TARPLEY.net
March 24, 2011
Washington DC, March 24, 2011 — The current military attack on Libya has been motivated by UN Security Council resolution 1973 with the need to protect civilians. Statements by President Obama, British Prime Minister Cameron, French President Sarkozy, and other leaders have stressed the humanitarian nature of the intervention, which is said to aim at preventing a massacre of pro-democracy forces and human rights advocates by the Qaddafi regime.
But at the same time, many commentators have voiced anxiety because of the mystery which surrounds the anti-Qaddafi transitional government which emerged at the beginning of March in the city of Benghazi, located in the Cyrenaica district of north-eastern Libya. This government has already been recognized by France and Portugal as the sole legitimate representative of the Libyan people. The rebel council seems to be composed of just over 30 delegates, many of whom are enveloped in obscurity. In addition, the names of more than a dozen members of the rebel council are being kept secret, allegedly to protect them from the vengeance of Qaddafi. But there may be other reasons for the anonymity of these figures. Despite much uncertainty, the United Nations and its several key NATO countries, including the United States, have rushed forward to assist the armed forces of this rebel regime with air strikes, leading to the loss of one or two coalition aircraft and the prospect of heavier losses to come, especially if there should be an invasion. It is high time that American and European publics learned something more about this rebel regime which is supposed to represent a democratic and humanitarian alternative to Gaddafi.
The rebels are clearly not civilians, but an armed force. What kind of an armed force?
Since many of the rebel leaders are so difficult to research from afar, and since a sociological profile of the rebels cannot be done on the ground in the midst of warfare, perhaps the typical methods of social history can be called on for help. Is there a way for us to gain deeper insight into the climate of opinion which prevails in such northeastern Libyan cities as Benghazi, Tobruk, and Darnah, the main population centers of the rebellion?
West Point Study - cover
Download West Point Study (pdf)
It turns out that there is, in the form of a December 2007 West Point study examining the background of foreign guerrilla fighters — jihadis or mujahedin, including suicide bombers — crossing the Syrian border into Iraq during the 2006-2007 timeframe, under the auspices of the international terrorist organization Al Qaeda. This study is based on a mass of about 600 Al Qaeda personnel files which were captured by US forces in the fall of 2007, and analyzed at West Point using a methodology which we will discuss after having presented the main findings. The resulting study1 permits us to make important findings about the mentality and belief structures of the northeastern Libyan population that is furnishing the basis for the rebellion, permitting important conclusions about the political nature of the anti-Qaddafi revolt in these areas.
Darnah, northeast Libya: World Capital of Jihadis
The most striking finding which emerges from the West Point study is that the corridor which goes from Benghazi to Tobruk, passing through the city of Darnah (also transliterated as Derna) them represents one of the greatest concentrations of jihadi terrorists to be found anywhere in the world, and by some measures can be regarded as the leading source of suicide bombers anywhere on the planet. Darnah, with one terrorist fighter sent into Iraq to kill Americans for every 1,000 to 1,500 persons of population, emerges as suicide bomber heaven, easily surpassing the closest competitor, which was Riyad, Saudi Arabia.
Libya map
According to West Point authors Joseph Felter and Brian Fishman, Saudi Arabia took first place as regards absolute numbers of jihadis sent to combat the United States and other coalition members in Iraq during the time frame in question. Libya, a country less than one fourth as populous, took second place. Saudi Arabia sent 41% of the fighters. According to Felter and Fishman, “Libya was the next most common country of origin, with 18.8% (112) of the fighters listing their nationality stating they hailed from Libya.” Other much larger countries were far behind: “Syria, Yemen, and Algeria were the next most common origin countries with 8.2% (49), 8.1% (48), and 7.2% (43), respectively. Moroccans accounted for 6.1% (36) of the records and Jordanians 1.9% (11).”2
This means that almost one fifth of the foreign fighters entering Iraq across the Syrian border came from Libya, a country of just over 6 million people. A higher proportion of Libyans were interested in fighting in Iraq than any other country contributing mujahedin. Felter and Fishman point out: “Almost 19 percent of the fighters in the Sinjar Records came from Libya alone. Furthermore, Libya contributed far more fighters per capita than any other nationality in the Sinjar Records, including Saudi Arabia.” (See the chart from the West Point report, page 9)3
West Point Study - page 9
But since the Al Qaeda personnel files contain the residence or hometown of the foreign fighters in question, we can determine that the desire to travel to Iraq to kill Americans was not evenly distributed across Libya, but was highly concentrated precisely in those areas around Benghazi which are today the epicenters of the revolt against Colonel Gaddafi which the US, Britain, France, and others are so eagerly supporting.
As Daya Gamage of the Asia Tribune comments in a recent article on the West Point study, “…alarmingly for Western policymakers, most of the fighters came from eastern Libya, the center of the current uprising against Muammar el-Qaddafi. The eastern Libyan city of Darnah sent more fighters to Iraq than any other single city or town, according to the West Point report. It noted that 52 militants came to Iraq from Darnah, a city of just 80,000 people (the second-largest source of fighters was Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, which has a population of more than 4 million). Benghazi, the capital of Libya’s provisional government declared by the anti-Qaddafi rebels, sent in 21 fighters, again a disproportionate number of the whole.”4 Obscure Darnah edged out metropolitan Riyadh by 52 fighters to 51. Qaddafi’s stronghold of Tripoli, by contrast, barely shows up in the statistics at all. (See chart from West Point report, page 12)
What explains this extraordinary concentration of anti-American fighters in Benghazi and Darnah? The answer seems related to extremist schools of theology and politics which flourished in these areas. As the West Point report notes: “Both Darnah and Benghazi have long been associated with Islamic militancy in Libya.” These areas are in theological and tribal conflict with the central government of Colonel Gaddafi, in addition to being politically opposed to him. Whether such a theological conflict is worth the deaths of still more American and European soldiers is a question which needs urgently to be answered.
West Point Study - page 12
Felter and Fishman remark that “The vast majority of Libyan fighters that included their hometown in the Sinjar Records resided in the country’s northeast, particularly the coastal cities of Darnah 60.2% (52) and Benghazi 23.9% (21). Both Darnah and Benghazi have long been associated with Islamic militancy in Libya, in particular for an uprising by Islamist organizations in the mid-1990s. The Libyan government blamed the uprising on ‘infiltrators from the Sudan and Egypt’ and one group—the Libyan Fighting Group (jama-ah al-libiyah al-muqatilah)—claimed to have Afghan veterans in its ranks. The Libyan uprisings became extraordinarily violent.”5
Northeastern Libya: Highest Density of Suicide Bombers
Another remarkable feature of the Libyan contribution to the war against US forces inside Iraq is the marked propensity of the northeastern Libyans to choose the role of suicide bomber as their preferred method of struggle. As the West Point study states, “Of the 112 Libyans in the Records, 54.4% (61) listed their ‘work.’ Fully 85.2% (51) of these Libyan fighters listed “suicide bomber” as their work in Iraq.”6 This means that the northeastern Libyans were far more apt to choose the role of suicide bomber than those from any other country: “Libyan fighters were much more likely than other nationalities to be listed as suicide bombers (85% for Libyans, 56% for all others).”7
The anti-Qaddafi Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) Merges with al Qaeda, 2007
The specific institutional basis for the recruitment of guerrilla fighters in northeastern Libya is associated with an organization which previously called itself the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG). During the course of 2007, the LIFG declared itself an official subsidiary of al Qaeda, later assuming the name of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). As a result of this 2007 merger, an increased number of guerrilla fighters arrived in Iraq from Libya. According to Felter and Fishman, “The apparent surge in Libyan recruits traveling to Iraq may be linked the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group’s (LIFG) increasingly cooperative relationship with al-Qaeda, which culminated in the LIFG officially joining al-Qaeda on November 3, 2007.”8 This merger is confirmed by other sources: A 2008 statement attributed to Ayman al-Zawahiri claimed that the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group has joined al-Qaeda.9
Terrorist “Emir” Touts Key Role of Benghazi, Darnah in al Qaeda
The West Point study makes clear that the main bulwarks of the LIFG and of the later AQIM were the twin cities of Benghazi and Darnah. This is documented in a statement by Abu Layth al-Libi, the self-styled “Emir” of the LIFG, who later became a top official of al Qaeda. At the time of the 2007 merger, “Abu Layth al-Libi, LIFG’s Emir, reinforced Benghazi and Darnah’s importance to Libyan jihadis in his announcement that LIFG had joined al-Qa’ida, saying: ‘It is with the grace of God that we were hoisting the banner of jihad against this apostate regime under the leadership of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which sacrificed the elite of its sons and commanders in combating this regime whose blood was spilled on the mountains of Darnah, the streets of Benghazi, the outskirts of Tripoli, the desert of Sabha, and the sands of the beach.’”10
This 2007 merger meant that the Libyan recruits for Al Qaeda became an increasingly important part of the activity of this organization as a whole, shifting the center of gravity to some degree away from the Saudis and Egyptians who had previously been most conspicuous. As Felter and Fishman comment, “Libyan factions (primarily the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group) are increasingly important in al-Qa’ida. The Sinjar Records offer some evidence that Libyans began surging into Iraq in larger numbers beginning in May 2007. Most of the Libyan recruits came from cities in northeast Libya, an area long known for jihadi-linked militancy.”11
The December 2007 West Point study concludes by formulating some policy options for the United States government. One approach, the authors suggest, would be for the United States to cooperate with existing Arab governments against the terrorists. As Felter and Fishman write, “The Syrian and Libyan governments share the United States’ concerns about violent salafi-jihadi ideology and the violence perpetrated by its adherents. These governments, like others in the Middle East, fear violence inside their borders and would much rather radical elements go to Iraq rather than cause unrest at home. U.S. and Coalition efforts to stem the flow of fighters into Iraq will be enhanced if they address the entire logistical chain that supports the movement of these individuals—beginning in their home countries — rather than just their Syrian entry points. The U.S. may be able to increase cooperation from governments to stem the flow of fighters into Iraq by addressing their concerns about domestic jihadi violence.”12 Given the course of subsequent events, we are on firm ground in concluding that this option was not the one selected, neither in the closing years of the Bush administration nor during the first half of the Obama administration.
The West Point study also offers another, more sinister perspective. Felter and Fishman hint that it might be possible to use the former LIFG components of Al Qaeda against the government of Colonel Qaddafi in Libya, in essence creating a de facto alliance between the United States and a segment of the terrorist organization. The West Point report notes: “The Libyan Islamic Fighting Group’s unification with al-Qa’ida and its apparent decision to prioritize providing logistical support to the Islamic State of Iraq is likely controversial within the organization. It is likely that some LIFG factions still want to prioritize the fight against the Libyan regime, rather than the fight in Iraq. It may be possible to exacerbate schisms within LIFG, and between LIFG’s leaders and al-Qa’ida’s traditional Egyptian and Saudi power-base.”13 This suggests the US policy we see today, that of allying with the obscurantist and reactionary al Qaeda fanatics in Libya against the Nasserist modernizer Qaddafi.
Arming the Rebels: The Experience of Afghanistan
Looking back at the tragic experience of US efforts to incite the population of Afghanistan against the Soviet occupation in the years after 1979, it should be clear that the policy of the Reagan White House to arm the Afghan mujahedin with Stinger missiles and other modern weapons turned out to be highly destructive for the United States. As current Defense Secretary Robert Gates comes close to admitting in his memoirs, Al Qaeda was created during those years by the United States as a form of Arab Legion against the Soviet presence, with long-term results which have been highly lamented.
Today, it is clear that the United States is providing modern weapons for the Libyan rebels through Saudi Arabia and across the Egyptian border with the active assistance of the Egyptian army and of the newly installed pro-US Egyptian military junta.14 This is a direct violation of UN Security Council resolution 1973, which calls for a complete arms embargo on Libya. The assumption is that these weapons will be used against Gaddafi in the coming weeks. But, given the violently anti-American nature of the population of northeast Libya that is now being armed, there is no certainty that these weapons will not be soon turned against those who have provided them.
A broader problem is represented by the conduct of the future Libyan government dominated by the current rebel council with its large current majority of northeastern Islamists, or of a similar government of a future Cyrenaica rump state. To the extent that such regimes will have access to oil revenues, obvious problems of international security are posed. Gamage wonders: “If the rebellion succeeds in toppling the Qaddafi regime it will have direct access to the tens of billions of dollars that Qaddafi is believed to have squirreled away in overseas accounts during his four-decade rule.”15 Given the northeast Libyan mentality, we can imagine what such revenues might be used for.
What is al Qaeda and Why the CIA Has Used It
Al Qaeda is not a centralized organization, but rather a gaggle or congeries of fanatics, dupes, psychotics, misfits, double agents, provocateurs, mercenaries, and other elements. As noted, Al Qaeda was founded by the United States and the British during the struggle against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Many of its leaders, such as the reputed second-in-command Ayman Zawahiri and the current rising star Anwar Awlaki, are evidently double agents of MI-6 and/or the CIA. The basic belief structure of Al Qaeda is that all existing Arab and Moslem governments are illegitimate and should be destroyed, because they do not represent the caliphate which Al Qaeda asserts is described by the Koran. This means that the Al Qaeda ideology offers a ready and easy way for the Anglo-American secret intelligence agencies to attack and destabilize existing Arab and Muslim governments as part of the ceaseless need of imperialism and colonialism to loot and attack the developing nations. This is precisely what is happening in Libya today.
Al Qaeda emerged from the cultural and political milieu of the Moslem Brotherhood or Ikhwan, itself a creation of British intelligence in Egypt in the late 1920s. The US and the British used the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood to oppose the successful anti-imperialist policies of Egyptian President Nasser, who scored immense victories for his country by nationalizing the Suez Canal and building the Aswan High Dam, without which modern Egypt would be simply unthinkable. The Muslim brotherhood provided an active and capable fifth column of foreign agents against Nasser, in the same way that the official website of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb is trumpeting its support for the rebellion against Colonel Qaddafi.
I have discussed the nature of Al Qaeda at some length in my recent book entitled 9/11 Synthetic Terrorism: Made in USA, and that analysis cannot be repeated here. It is enough to say that we do not need to believe in all the fantastic mythology which the United States government has spun around the name of Al Qaeda in order to recognize the basic fact that militants or patsies who spontaneously join al Qaeda are often sincerely motivated by a deep hatred of the United States and a burning desire to kill Americans, as well as Europeans. The Bush administration policy used the alleged presence of Al Qaeda as a pretext for direct military attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq. The Obama administration is now doing something different, intervening on the side of a rebellion in which Al Qaeda and its co-thinkers are heavily represented while attacking the secular authoritarian government of Colonel Gaddafi. Both of these policies are bankrupt and must be abandoned.
Rebel Leaders Jalil and Younis, Plus Most of Rebel Council are Members of the al Qaeda-linked Harabi Tribe
The result of the present inquiry is that the Libyan branch of Al Qaeda represents a continuum with the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group centered in Darnah and Benghazi. The ethnic base of the Libyan Islamic fighting group is apparently to be found in the anti-Qaddafi Harabi tribe, the tribe which makes up the vast majority of the rebel council including the two dominant rebel leaders, Abdul Fatah Younis and Mustafa Abdul Jalil. The evidence thus suggests that the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, the elite of the Harabi tribe, and the rebel council supported by Obama all overlap for all practical purposes. As the late Foreign Minister of Guyana Fred Wills, a real fighter against imperialism and neo-colonialism, taught me many years ago, political formations in developing countries (and not just there) are often a mask for ethnic and religious rivalries; so it is in Libya. The rebellion against Qaddafi is a toxic brew compounded of fanatical hatred of Qaddafi, Islamism, tribalism, and localism. From this point of view, Obama has foolishly chosen to take sides in a tribal war.
When Hillary Clinton went to Paris to be introduced to the Libyan rebels by French President Sarkozy, she met the US-educated Libyan opposition leader Mahmoud Jibril, already known to readers of Wikileaks document dumps as a favorite of the US.16
While Jibril might be considered presentable in Paris, the real leaders of the Libyan insurrection would appear to be Jalil and Younis, both former ministers under Qaddafi. Jalil seems to be the primus inter pares, at least for the moment: “Mustafa Abdul Jalil or Abdul-Jalil (Arabic: مصطفى عبد الجليل, also transcribed Abdul-Jelil, Abd-al-Jalil, Abdel-Jalil or Abdeljalil; and frequently but erroneously as Abud Al Jeleil) (born 1952) is a Libyan politician. He was the Minister of Justice (unofficially, the Secretary of the General People’s Committee) under Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi…. Abdul Jalil has been identified as the Chairman of the National Transitional Council based in Benghazi… although this position is contested by others in the uprising due to his past connections to Gaddafi’s regime.”17
As for Younis, he has been closely associated with Qaddafi since the 1968-9 seizure of power: “Abdul Fatah Younis (Arabic: عبد الفتاح يونس) is a senior military officer in Libya. He held the rank of General and the post of Minister of Interior, but resigned on 22 February 2011….”18
What should concern us most is that both Jalil and Younis come from the Haribi tribe, the dominant one in northeast Libya, and the one that overlaps with al Qaeda. According to Stratfor, the “…Harabi tribe is a historically powerful umbrella tribe in eastern Libya that saw their influence wane under Col. Gadhafi. The Libyan leader confiscated swaths of tribal members’ land and redistributed it to weaker and more loyal tribes…. Many of the leaders now emerging in eastern Libya hail from the Harabi tribe, including the head of the provisional government set up in Benghazi, Abdel Mustafa Jalil, and Abdel Fatah Younis, who assumed a key leadership role over the defected military ranks early in the uprising.”19 This is like a presidential ticket where both candidates are from the same state, except that Libya’s ferocious tribal rivalries make the problem infinitely worse.
The Rebel Council: Half the Names Are Kept Secret; Why?
This picture of a narrow, sectarian tribal and regional base does not improve when we look at the rebel council as a whole. According to one recent version, the rebel council is “chaired by the well-spoken former justice minister for Libya, Mustafa Abdul Jalil, [and] consists of 31 members, ostensibly representatives from across Libya, of whom many cannot be named for “security reasons”…. “The key players on the council, at least those who we know about, all hail from the north-eastern Harabi confederation of tribes. These tribes have strong affiliations with Benghazi that date back to before the 1969 revolution which brought Gaddafi to power.”20 Other accounts agree about the number of representatives: “The council has 31 members; the identities of several members has not been made public to protect their own safety.”21 Given what we know about the extraordinary density of LIFG and all Qaeda fanatics in northeast Libya, we are authorized to wonder as to whether so many members of the council are being kept secret in order to protect them from Qaddafi, or whether the goal is to prevent them from being recognized in the west as al Qaeda terrorists or sympathizers. The latter seems to be a more accurate summary of the real state of affairs.
Names released so far include: Mustafa Abduljaleel; Ashour Hamed Bourashed of Darna city; Othman Suleiman El-Megyrahi of the Batnan area; Al Butnan of the Egypt border and Tobruk; Ahmed Abduraba Al-Abaar of Benghazi city; Fathi Mohamed Baja of Benghazi city; Abdelhafed Abdelkader Ghoga of Benghazi city; Mr. Omar El-Hariri for Military Affairs; and Dr. Mahmoud Jibril, Ibrahim El-Werfali and Dr. Ali Aziz Al-Eisawi for foreign affairs.22
The State Department needs to interrogate these figures, starting perhaps with Ashour Hamed Bourashed, the delegate from the terrorist and suicide bomber stronghold of Darnah.
How Many al Qaeda Members, Veterans, or Sympathizers are on the Rebel Council?
Seeing as clearly as we can in the fog of war, it looks like slightly more than a dozen of the members of the rebel council have had their names officially published — in any case, not more than half of the reported 31 members. The US and European media have not taken the lead in identifying for us the names that are now known, and they above all have not called attention to the majority of the rebel council who are still lurking in the shadows of total secrecy. We must therefore demand to know how many LIFG and/or al Qaeda members, veterans, or sympathizers currently hold seats on the rebel council.
We are thus witnessing an attempt by the Harabi tribe to seize dominance over the 140 tribes of Libya. The Harabi are already practically hegemonic among the tribes of Cyrenaica. At the center of the Harabi Confederation is the Obeidat tribe, which is divided into 15 sub-tribes.23 All of this might be of purely academic ethnographic interest, were it not for the fact of the striking overlap between the Harabi tribe and the LIFG and al Qaeda.
The Senussi Movement of Libya — Monarchist Democracy?
The political-religious tradition of northeast Libya makes this area such fertile ground for the more extreme Muslim sects and also predisposes it to monarchism rather than to the more modern forms of government favored by Qaddafi. The relevant regional tradition is that of the Senussi or Sanussi order, an anti-western Moslem sect. In Libya the Senussi order is closely associated with monarchism, since King Idris I, the ruler installed by the British in 1951 who was overthrown by Gaddafi in 1969, was also the leader of the Senussi order. The Senussi directed the rebellion against Italian colonialism in the person of Marshal Rodolfo Graziani and his army in the 1930s. Today, the rebels use the monarchist flag, and may advocate the return to the throne of one of the two pretenders to the Idris line. They are far closer to monarchism than to democracy
King Idris, Revered by the Libyan Rebels of Today
Here is the Stratfor view of King Idris and the Senussi: “King Idris came from a line of rulers of the Sanussi order, a Sufi religious order founded in 1842 in Al Bayda, that practices a conservative and austere form of Islam. The Sanussiyah represented a political force in Cyrenaica that preceded the creation of the modern state of Libya, and whose reverberations continue to be felt to this day. It is no coincidence that this region is the home of Libyan jihadism, with groups like the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG). The Gadhafi family has thus been calling the current uprising an elaborate Islamist plot….”24 Under the monarchy, Libya was by some estimates absolutely the poorest country in the world. Today, Libya ranks 53 on the UN Human Development Index and qualifies as the most developed country in Africa, ahead of Russia, Brazil, Ukraine, and Venezuela. Qaddafi’s stewardship has objective merits which cannot be seriously denied.
Glen Ford’s Black Agenda Report has correctly sought to show the racist and reactionary character of the Libyan insurrection. The tribes of southern Libya, known as the Fezzan, are dark skinned. The tribal underpinning of the Gaddafi regime has been an alliance of the tribes of the West, the center, and the southern Fezzan, against the Harabi and the Obeidat, who identify with the former monarchist ruling class. The Harabi and Obeidat are known to nurture a deep racist hatred against the Fezzan. This was expressed in frequent news reports from the pro-imperialist media at the beginning of the rebellion evidently inspired by Harabi accounts, according to which black people in Libya had to be treated as mercenaries working for Gaddafi — with the clear implication that they were to be exterminated. These racist inventions are still being repeated by quackademics like Dean Slaughter of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton. And in fact, large numbers of black Africans from Chad and other countries working in Libyan have been systematically lynched and massacred by the anti-Gaddafi forces. The Obama White House, for all its empty talk of not wanting to repeat the massacre in Rwanda, has conveniently ignored this shocking story of real genocide at the hands of its new racist friends in Cyrenaica.
Against the obscurantism of the Senussi, Qaddafi has advanced the Moslem equivalent of the priesthood of all believers, arguing that no caliphate is necessary in order to discover the meaning of the Koran. He has supplemented this with a pan African perspective. Gerald A. Perreira of the Black Agenda Report writes the following about the theological division between Gaddafi and the neo-Senussi of northeast Libya, as well as other obscuranitsts: “Al Qaeda is in the Sahara on his borders and the International Union of Muslim Scholars is calling for [Qaddafi] to be tried in a court…. [Qaddafi] has questioned the Islam of the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda from a Quranic/theological perspective and is one of the few political leaders equipped to do so…. Benghazi has always been at the heart of counter-revolution in Libya, fostering reactionary Islamic movements such as the Wahhabis and Salafists. It is these people who founded the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group based in Benghazi which allies itself with Al Qaeda and who have, over the years, been responsible for the assassination of leading members of the Libyan revolutionary committees.”25 And what would be for example the status of women under the neo-Senussi of the Benghazi rebel council?
Al Qaeda from Demon to US ally in Libya
For those who attempt to follow the ins and outs of the CIA’s management of its various patsy organizations inside the realm of presumed Islamic terrorism, it may be useful to trace the transformation of the LIFG-AQIM from deadly enemy to close ally. This phenomenon is closely linked to the general reversal of the ideological fronts of US imperialism that marks the divide between the Bush-Cheney-neocon administrations and the current Obama-Brzezinski-International Crisis Group regime. The Bush approach was to use the alleged presence of Al Qaeda as a reason for direct military attack. The Obama method is to use Al Qaeda to overthrow independent governments, and then either Balkanize and partition the countries in question, or else use them as kamikaze puppets against larger enemies like Russia, China, or Iran. This approach implies a more or less open fraternization with terrorist groups, which was signaled in a general way in Obamas famous Cairo speech of 2009. The links of the Obama campaign to the terrorist organizations deployed by the CIA against Russia were already a matter of public record three years ago.26
But such a reversal of field cannot be improvised overnight; it took several years of preparation. On July 10, 2009, The London Daily Telegraph reported that the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group had split with Al Qaeda. This was when the United States had decided to de-emphasize the Iraq war, and also to prepare to use the Sunni Moslem Brotherhood and its Sunni Al Qaeda offshoot for the destabilization of the leading Arab states preparatory to turning them against Shiite Iran. Paul Cruikshank wrote at that time in the New York Daily News about one top LIFG honcho who wanted to dial back the relation to al Qaeda and the infamous Osama Bin Laden; this was “Noman Benotman, a former leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group. While mainstream Muslim leaders have long criticized Al Qaeda, these critics have the jihadist credentials to make their criticisms bite.”27 But by this time some LIFG bosses had moved up into al Qaeda: the London Daily Telegraph reported that senior Al Qaeda members Abu Yahya al-Libi and Abu Laith al-Libi were LIFG members. Around this time, Qaddafi released some LIFG fighters in an ill-advsided humanitarian gesture.
Northeast Libyan Jihadis Killing US, NATO Forces in Afghanistan Right Now
One of the fatal contradictions in the current State Department and CIA policy is that it aims at a cordial alliance with Al Qaeda killers in northeast Libya, at the very moment when the United States and NATO are mercilessly bombing the civilian northwest Pakistan in the name of a total war against Al Qaeda, and US and NATO forces are being killed by Al Qaeda guerrillas in that same Afghanistan-Pakistan theater of war. The force of this glaring contradiction causes the entire edifice of US war propaganda to collapse. The US has long since lost any basis in morality for military force.
In fact, terrorist fighters from northeast Libya may be killing US and NATO troops in Afghanistan right now, even as the US and NATO protect their home base from the Qaddafi government. According to this account, a top Al Qaeda commander in northwest Pakistan was killed by US action as recently as October 2010: “A senior al Qaeda leader who serves as al Qaeda’s ambassador to Iran, and is wanted by the US, is reported to have been killed in a Predator air strike in Pakistan’s Taliban-controlled tribal agency of North Waziristan two days ago…. [This was] Atiyah Abd al Rahman, a Libyan national who has been based in Iran and served as Osama bin Laden’s ambassador to the mullahs. Unconfirmed press reports indicate that Rahman was killed in an airstrike….”28 The US State Department’s Rewards for Justice page for Atiyah Abd al Rahman notes that he was al Qaeda’s “emissary in Iran as appointed by Osama bin Ladin.” Atiyah “recruited and facilitated talks with other Islamic groups to operate under” al Qaeda and was “also a member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group and Ansar al Sunna.”29 Rahman was ranked high enough in al Qaeda to be able to give orders to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of al Qeada in Iraq, in 2005.
Also killed in Pakistan was another apparent northeast Libyan going by the name of Khalid al Harabi, whose choice of a nom de guerre may well link him to the jihadi farm among the Harabi tribe in Cyrenaica. According to one account, “Khalid al Harabi is an alias for Khalid Habib, al Qaeda’s former military commander who was killed in a US Predator strike in October 2008.”30
The Scenario Uncovered by the 1995 Shayler Affair is Operative Today
In 1995, David Shayler, an official of the British counterintelligence organization MI-5, became aware that his counterpart at the British foreign espionage organization MI-6 had paid the sum of £100,000 to an Al Qaeda affiliate in exchange for the attempt to assassinate Qaddafi. The assassination attempt did occur, and killed several innocent bystanders, but failed to eliminate the Libyan ruler. As Shayler understood the MI-6 scenario, it included the liquidation of Gaddafi, followed by the descent of Libya into chaos and tribal warfare, with a possible option for a direct seizure of power by al Qaeda itself. This situation would then provide a pretext for Britain, probably but not necessarily acting together with the United States or other countries, to invade Libya and seize control of the oil fields, probably establishing a permanent protectorate over the oil regions, the pipelines, and the coast.31 This remains the goal today.
Timed to coincide with the attempt to assassinate Qaddafi, MI-6 and other Western secret intelligence agencies fomented a considerable insurrection in northeast Libya, almost precisely in the same areas which are in rebellion today. Its insurrection was successfully crushed by Qaddafi’s forces by the end of 1996. The events of 2011 are simply a reprise of the imperialist attack on Libya 15 years ago, with the addition of outside intervention..
The War Against the Nation State
Today’s attack on Libya comes in the context of a broad attack on the institution of the sovereign nation state itself, as it has existed since the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. The United States and the British are deeply concerned by the large number of nations which are seeking to escape from Anglo-American hegemony by actively pursuing large-scale cooperation with Russia on security, with China on economic questions, and with Iran for geopolitical considerations. The CIA/MI-6 response has been a wild orgy of destabilizations, people power coups, color revolutions, and palace putsches, signaled by the document dumps by the CIA limited hangout operation known as Wikileaks, which has targeted names of the CIA hit mist from Ben Ali to Qaddafi. The Obama strategy would have preferred an exclusive reliance and the illusion that the Arab Spring was really a matter of youthful visionary idealists gathering in the public square to praise democracy, the rule of law, and human rights. This was never the reality: the actual decisions were being made by brutal cliques of generals and top officials bribed or blackmailed by the CIA who were moving behind the scenes to oust such figures as Ben Ali or Mubarak. Whatever else Qaddafi has done, he has undoubtedly forced the CIA and NATO to drop the pleasant mask of youthful idealism and human rights, revealing a hideous visage of Predator drones, terror bombing, widespread slaughter, and colonialist arrogance underneath. Qaddafi has also ripped the mask of “Yes We Can” off Obama, revealing a cynical warmonger intent on the continuation of Bush’s infamous “Dead or Alive” and “Bring it on” policies, although by other means.
A Distant Mirror for Imperialists in Libya: Lucan’s Pharsalia
Modern imperialists eager to rush into Libya should ponder Lucan’s Pharsalia, which treats of warfare in the Libyan desert during the contest between Julius Caesar and Pompey the Great at the end of the Roman Republic. A critical passage in this Latin epic is the speech by Cato of Utica, a follower of Pompey, who urges his soldiers to undertake a suicide mission into Libya, saying: “Serpents, thirst, heat, and sand … Libya alone can present a multitude of woes that it would beseem men to fly from.” Cato goes forward, and finds “a little tomb to enclose [his] hallowed name, Libya secured the death of Cato….”32
Let us not imitate this folly.
Investigative leads from the West Point Study: An Appeal to Scholars
The West Point study, as noted, was conducted on the basis of almost 700 Al Qaeda personnel files captured by coalition forces in Iraq.33 The authors of the study have promised to keep available online the documentary basis of this investigation, both in the form of the raw Arabic language al Qaeda personnel files34, and also of the same file cards in English translation.35 Assuming that this material remains available, it might be possible for researchers and reporters, and especially those with capabilities in Arabic not possessed by the present writer, to investigate the Libyan fighters who went into Iraq with a view to determining whether any of them are family members, neighbors, or even political associates of the known members of the Benghazi rebel council or of other anti-Qaddafi forces. Such a procedure could contribute to allowing the European and American public as well as others around the world to better understand the nature of the military adventure currently unfolding in Libya by gaining a more specific knowledge of who the Libyan rebels actually are, as distinct from the hollow panegyrics purveyed by the controlled Western media.
References:
1 Joseph Felter and Brian Fishman, “Al Qa’ida’s Foreign Fighter in Iraq: A First Look at the Sinjar Records,” (West Point, NY: Harmony Project, Combating Terrorism Center, Department of Social Sciences, US Military Academy, December 2007). Cited as West Point Study.
2 Joseph Felter and Brian Fishman, “Al Qa’ida’s Foreign Fighter in Iraq: A First Look at the Sinjar Records,” (West Point, NY: Harmony Project, Combating Terrorism Center, Department of Social Sciences, US Military Academy, December 2007). Cited as West Point Study.
3 West Point Study, pp. 8-9.
4 Daya Gamage, “Libyan rebellion has radical Islamist fervor: Benghazi link to Islamic militancy, U.S. Military Document Reveals,” Asian Tribune, March 17, 2011, at http://www.asiantribune.com/news/2011/03/17/libyan-rebellion-has-radical-islamist-fervor-benghazi-link-islamic-militancyus-milit
5 West Point Study, p. 12.
6 West Point Study, p. 19.
7 West Point Study, p. 27.
8 West Point Study, p. 9.
9 http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2008/04/200861502740131239.html; http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Security/?id=1.0.2055009989;
10 West Point Study, p. 12.
11 West Point Study, p. 27.
12 West Point Study, p. 29.
13 West Point Study, p. 28.
14 See “Egypt Said to Arm Libya Rebels, Wall Street Journal, March 17, 2011, at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704360404576206992835270906.html; see also Robert Fisk, “America’s secret plan to arm Libya’s rebels,” Independent, Mach 7, 2011, at http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/americas-secret-plan-to-arm-libyas-rebels-2234227.html
15 Gamage.
16 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12741414
17 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustafa_Abdul_Jalil
18 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustafa_Abdul_Jalil
19 Stratfor, “Libya’s Tribal Dyanmics, February 25, 2011, available at http://redstomp.org/forums/showthread.php?1109-Libya-s-Tribal-Dyanmics
20 Venetia Rainey, “Who are the rebels we are fighting to protect,” The First Post, http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/76660,news-comment,news-politics,who-are-the-rebels-we-are-fighting-to-protect#ixzz1HMRIrUP9
21 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Transitional_Council
22 Statement by “Transition National Council,” Benghazi, March 5, 2011 at http://www.libyanmission-un.org/tnc.pdf; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Transitional_Council
23 Massimo Introvigne, “L’occidente alla guerra delle tribù,” La Bussola quotidiana, March 22, 2011, at http://www.cesnur.org/2011/mi-rivolte-05.html
24 Stratfor, “Libya’s Tribal Dyanmics, February 25, 2011, available at http://redstomp.org/forums/showthread.php?1109-Libya-s-Tribal-Dyanmics
25 Gerald A. Perreira, “Libya, Getting it Right: A Revolutionary Pan-African Perspective,” Black Agenda Report, March 2, 2011, at http://blackagendareport.com/content/libya-getting-it-right-revolutionary-pan-african-perspective
26 Webster G. Tarpley, “Obama Campaign Linked To Chechen Terrorism: Grant Of Taxpayer-Funded U.S. Asylum For Chechen Terror Envoy Gave Obama Foreign Policy Guru Zbigniew Brzezinski ‘One Of The Happiest Days Of My Life,’” February 2, 2008, Obama the Postmodern Coup: The Making of a Manchurian Candidate (Joshua Treet CA: Progressive Press, April 2008), pp. 97-115, online at http://tarpley.net/2008/02/03/obama-campaign-linked-to-chechen-terrorism/
27 Paul Cruikshank, “How Muslim extremists are turning on Osama Bin Laden,” New York Daily News, June 8, 2008, at http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nydailynews.com%2Fopinions%2F2008%2F06%2F08%2F2008-06-08_how_muslim_extremists_are_turning_on_osa.html&date=2009-08-05. Cruickshank is a fellow at the NYU Center on Law and Security and the co-author, with Peter Bergen, of the … cover story in the New Republic, “The Jihadist Revolt against Bin Laden.”
28 http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2010/10/al_qaeda_leader_link.php
29 http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2010/10/al_qaeda_leader_link.php#ixzz1HNoUTmn5
30 http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2010/10/al_qaeda_leader_link.php#ixzz1HNmzsjat
31 See Machon, Annie (2005). Spies, Lies & Whistleblowers. MI5, MI6 and the Shayler Affair. Lewes, East Sussex: The Book Guild Ltd. 185776952X; Hollingsworth, Mark; Nick Fielding (1999). Defending the Realm: MI5 and the Shayler Affair. Andre Deutsch Ltd. ISBN 0233996672; see also Guardian, April 10, 2000 http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2000/apr/10/davidshayler.richardnortontaylor
32 Lucan, Pharsalia, Book IX, trans Riley (London: Bell, 1903), p. 355.
33 http://www.ctc.usma.edu/harmony/pdf/CTCForeignFighter.19.Dec07.pdf
34 http://www.ctc.usma.edu/harmony/Foreign_Fighter_Bios-Orig.pdf
35 http://www.ctc.usma.edu/harmony/FF-Bios-Trans.pdf
But Webster Tarpley has now investigated who the Libyan rebels actually are, and has concluded that the rebs, that we are now protecting, are in fact al-Qaeda.
[1] Gaddafi regime fed names of jihadists to the CIA and to Britain, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/gaddafi-regime-fed-names-of-jihadists-to-uk-cia/story-fn7ycml4-1226025836662
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From http://tarpley.net/2011/03/24/the-cia%E2%80%99s-libya-rebels-the-same-terrorists-who-killed-us-nato-troops-in-iraq/
The CIA’s Libya Rebels: The Same Terrorists who Killed US, NATO Troops in Iraq
[Translate]
2007 West Point Study Shows Benghazi-Darnah-Tobruk Area was a World Leader in Al Qaeda Suicide Bomber Recruitment
“Serpents, thirst, heat, and sand … Libya alone can present a multitude of woes that it would beseem men to fly from.”
Lucan, Pharsalia
Webster G. Tarpley, Ph.D.
TARPLEY.net
March 24, 2011
Washington DC, March 24, 2011 — The current military attack on Libya has been motivated by UN Security Council resolution 1973 with the need to protect civilians. Statements by President Obama, British Prime Minister Cameron, French President Sarkozy, and other leaders have stressed the humanitarian nature of the intervention, which is said to aim at preventing a massacre of pro-democracy forces and human rights advocates by the Qaddafi regime.
But at the same time, many commentators have voiced anxiety because of the mystery which surrounds the anti-Qaddafi transitional government which emerged at the beginning of March in the city of Benghazi, located in the Cyrenaica district of north-eastern Libya. This government has already been recognized by France and Portugal as the sole legitimate representative of the Libyan people. The rebel council seems to be composed of just over 30 delegates, many of whom are enveloped in obscurity. In addition, the names of more than a dozen members of the rebel council are being kept secret, allegedly to protect them from the vengeance of Qaddafi. But there may be other reasons for the anonymity of these figures. Despite much uncertainty, the United Nations and its several key NATO countries, including the United States, have rushed forward to assist the armed forces of this rebel regime with air strikes, leading to the loss of one or two coalition aircraft and the prospect of heavier losses to come, especially if there should be an invasion. It is high time that American and European publics learned something more about this rebel regime which is supposed to represent a democratic and humanitarian alternative to Gaddafi.
The rebels are clearly not civilians, but an armed force. What kind of an armed force?
Since many of the rebel leaders are so difficult to research from afar, and since a sociological profile of the rebels cannot be done on the ground in the midst of warfare, perhaps the typical methods of social history can be called on for help. Is there a way for us to gain deeper insight into the climate of opinion which prevails in such northeastern Libyan cities as Benghazi, Tobruk, and Darnah, the main population centers of the rebellion?
West Point Study - cover
Download West Point Study (pdf)
It turns out that there is, in the form of a December 2007 West Point study examining the background of foreign guerrilla fighters — jihadis or mujahedin, including suicide bombers — crossing the Syrian border into Iraq during the 2006-2007 timeframe, under the auspices of the international terrorist organization Al Qaeda. This study is based on a mass of about 600 Al Qaeda personnel files which were captured by US forces in the fall of 2007, and analyzed at West Point using a methodology which we will discuss after having presented the main findings. The resulting study1 permits us to make important findings about the mentality and belief structures of the northeastern Libyan population that is furnishing the basis for the rebellion, permitting important conclusions about the political nature of the anti-Qaddafi revolt in these areas.
Darnah, northeast Libya: World Capital of Jihadis
The most striking finding which emerges from the West Point study is that the corridor which goes from Benghazi to Tobruk, passing through the city of Darnah (also transliterated as Derna) them represents one of the greatest concentrations of jihadi terrorists to be found anywhere in the world, and by some measures can be regarded as the leading source of suicide bombers anywhere on the planet. Darnah, with one terrorist fighter sent into Iraq to kill Americans for every 1,000 to 1,500 persons of population, emerges as suicide bomber heaven, easily surpassing the closest competitor, which was Riyad, Saudi Arabia.
Libya map
According to West Point authors Joseph Felter and Brian Fishman, Saudi Arabia took first place as regards absolute numbers of jihadis sent to combat the United States and other coalition members in Iraq during the time frame in question. Libya, a country less than one fourth as populous, took second place. Saudi Arabia sent 41% of the fighters. According to Felter and Fishman, “Libya was the next most common country of origin, with 18.8% (112) of the fighters listing their nationality stating they hailed from Libya.” Other much larger countries were far behind: “Syria, Yemen, and Algeria were the next most common origin countries with 8.2% (49), 8.1% (48), and 7.2% (43), respectively. Moroccans accounted for 6.1% (36) of the records and Jordanians 1.9% (11).”2
This means that almost one fifth of the foreign fighters entering Iraq across the Syrian border came from Libya, a country of just over 6 million people. A higher proportion of Libyans were interested in fighting in Iraq than any other country contributing mujahedin. Felter and Fishman point out: “Almost 19 percent of the fighters in the Sinjar Records came from Libya alone. Furthermore, Libya contributed far more fighters per capita than any other nationality in the Sinjar Records, including Saudi Arabia.” (See the chart from the West Point report, page 9)3
West Point Study - page 9
But since the Al Qaeda personnel files contain the residence or hometown of the foreign fighters in question, we can determine that the desire to travel to Iraq to kill Americans was not evenly distributed across Libya, but was highly concentrated precisely in those areas around Benghazi which are today the epicenters of the revolt against Colonel Gaddafi which the US, Britain, France, and others are so eagerly supporting.
As Daya Gamage of the Asia Tribune comments in a recent article on the West Point study, “…alarmingly for Western policymakers, most of the fighters came from eastern Libya, the center of the current uprising against Muammar el-Qaddafi. The eastern Libyan city of Darnah sent more fighters to Iraq than any other single city or town, according to the West Point report. It noted that 52 militants came to Iraq from Darnah, a city of just 80,000 people (the second-largest source of fighters was Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, which has a population of more than 4 million). Benghazi, the capital of Libya’s provisional government declared by the anti-Qaddafi rebels, sent in 21 fighters, again a disproportionate number of the whole.”4 Obscure Darnah edged out metropolitan Riyadh by 52 fighters to 51. Qaddafi’s stronghold of Tripoli, by contrast, barely shows up in the statistics at all. (See chart from West Point report, page 12)
What explains this extraordinary concentration of anti-American fighters in Benghazi and Darnah? The answer seems related to extremist schools of theology and politics which flourished in these areas. As the West Point report notes: “Both Darnah and Benghazi have long been associated with Islamic militancy in Libya.” These areas are in theological and tribal conflict with the central government of Colonel Gaddafi, in addition to being politically opposed to him. Whether such a theological conflict is worth the deaths of still more American and European soldiers is a question which needs urgently to be answered.
West Point Study - page 12
Felter and Fishman remark that “The vast majority of Libyan fighters that included their hometown in the Sinjar Records resided in the country’s northeast, particularly the coastal cities of Darnah 60.2% (52) and Benghazi 23.9% (21). Both Darnah and Benghazi have long been associated with Islamic militancy in Libya, in particular for an uprising by Islamist organizations in the mid-1990s. The Libyan government blamed the uprising on ‘infiltrators from the Sudan and Egypt’ and one group—the Libyan Fighting Group (jama-ah al-libiyah al-muqatilah)—claimed to have Afghan veterans in its ranks. The Libyan uprisings became extraordinarily violent.”5
Northeastern Libya: Highest Density of Suicide Bombers
Another remarkable feature of the Libyan contribution to the war against US forces inside Iraq is the marked propensity of the northeastern Libyans to choose the role of suicide bomber as their preferred method of struggle. As the West Point study states, “Of the 112 Libyans in the Records, 54.4% (61) listed their ‘work.’ Fully 85.2% (51) of these Libyan fighters listed “suicide bomber” as their work in Iraq.”6 This means that the northeastern Libyans were far more apt to choose the role of suicide bomber than those from any other country: “Libyan fighters were much more likely than other nationalities to be listed as suicide bombers (85% for Libyans, 56% for all others).”7
The anti-Qaddafi Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) Merges with al Qaeda, 2007
The specific institutional basis for the recruitment of guerrilla fighters in northeastern Libya is associated with an organization which previously called itself the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG). During the course of 2007, the LIFG declared itself an official subsidiary of al Qaeda, later assuming the name of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). As a result of this 2007 merger, an increased number of guerrilla fighters arrived in Iraq from Libya. According to Felter and Fishman, “The apparent surge in Libyan recruits traveling to Iraq may be linked the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group’s (LIFG) increasingly cooperative relationship with al-Qaeda, which culminated in the LIFG officially joining al-Qaeda on November 3, 2007.”8 This merger is confirmed by other sources: A 2008 statement attributed to Ayman al-Zawahiri claimed that the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group has joined al-Qaeda.9
Terrorist “Emir” Touts Key Role of Benghazi, Darnah in al Qaeda
The West Point study makes clear that the main bulwarks of the LIFG and of the later AQIM were the twin cities of Benghazi and Darnah. This is documented in a statement by Abu Layth al-Libi, the self-styled “Emir” of the LIFG, who later became a top official of al Qaeda. At the time of the 2007 merger, “Abu Layth al-Libi, LIFG’s Emir, reinforced Benghazi and Darnah’s importance to Libyan jihadis in his announcement that LIFG had joined al-Qa’ida, saying: ‘It is with the grace of God that we were hoisting the banner of jihad against this apostate regime under the leadership of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which sacrificed the elite of its sons and commanders in combating this regime whose blood was spilled on the mountains of Darnah, the streets of Benghazi, the outskirts of Tripoli, the desert of Sabha, and the sands of the beach.’”10
This 2007 merger meant that the Libyan recruits for Al Qaeda became an increasingly important part of the activity of this organization as a whole, shifting the center of gravity to some degree away from the Saudis and Egyptians who had previously been most conspicuous. As Felter and Fishman comment, “Libyan factions (primarily the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group) are increasingly important in al-Qa’ida. The Sinjar Records offer some evidence that Libyans began surging into Iraq in larger numbers beginning in May 2007. Most of the Libyan recruits came from cities in northeast Libya, an area long known for jihadi-linked militancy.”11
The December 2007 West Point study concludes by formulating some policy options for the United States government. One approach, the authors suggest, would be for the United States to cooperate with existing Arab governments against the terrorists. As Felter and Fishman write, “The Syrian and Libyan governments share the United States’ concerns about violent salafi-jihadi ideology and the violence perpetrated by its adherents. These governments, like others in the Middle East, fear violence inside their borders and would much rather radical elements go to Iraq rather than cause unrest at home. U.S. and Coalition efforts to stem the flow of fighters into Iraq will be enhanced if they address the entire logistical chain that supports the movement of these individuals—beginning in their home countries — rather than just their Syrian entry points. The U.S. may be able to increase cooperation from governments to stem the flow of fighters into Iraq by addressing their concerns about domestic jihadi violence.”12 Given the course of subsequent events, we are on firm ground in concluding that this option was not the one selected, neither in the closing years of the Bush administration nor during the first half of the Obama administration.
The West Point study also offers another, more sinister perspective. Felter and Fishman hint that it might be possible to use the former LIFG components of Al Qaeda against the government of Colonel Qaddafi in Libya, in essence creating a de facto alliance between the United States and a segment of the terrorist organization. The West Point report notes: “The Libyan Islamic Fighting Group’s unification with al-Qa’ida and its apparent decision to prioritize providing logistical support to the Islamic State of Iraq is likely controversial within the organization. It is likely that some LIFG factions still want to prioritize the fight against the Libyan regime, rather than the fight in Iraq. It may be possible to exacerbate schisms within LIFG, and between LIFG’s leaders and al-Qa’ida’s traditional Egyptian and Saudi power-base.”13 This suggests the US policy we see today, that of allying with the obscurantist and reactionary al Qaeda fanatics in Libya against the Nasserist modernizer Qaddafi.
Arming the Rebels: The Experience of Afghanistan
Looking back at the tragic experience of US efforts to incite the population of Afghanistan against the Soviet occupation in the years after 1979, it should be clear that the policy of the Reagan White House to arm the Afghan mujahedin with Stinger missiles and other modern weapons turned out to be highly destructive for the United States. As current Defense Secretary Robert Gates comes close to admitting in his memoirs, Al Qaeda was created during those years by the United States as a form of Arab Legion against the Soviet presence, with long-term results which have been highly lamented.
Today, it is clear that the United States is providing modern weapons for the Libyan rebels through Saudi Arabia and across the Egyptian border with the active assistance of the Egyptian army and of the newly installed pro-US Egyptian military junta.14 This is a direct violation of UN Security Council resolution 1973, which calls for a complete arms embargo on Libya. The assumption is that these weapons will be used against Gaddafi in the coming weeks. But, given the violently anti-American nature of the population of northeast Libya that is now being armed, there is no certainty that these weapons will not be soon turned against those who have provided them.
A broader problem is represented by the conduct of the future Libyan government dominated by the current rebel council with its large current majority of northeastern Islamists, or of a similar government of a future Cyrenaica rump state. To the extent that such regimes will have access to oil revenues, obvious problems of international security are posed. Gamage wonders: “If the rebellion succeeds in toppling the Qaddafi regime it will have direct access to the tens of billions of dollars that Qaddafi is believed to have squirreled away in overseas accounts during his four-decade rule.”15 Given the northeast Libyan mentality, we can imagine what such revenues might be used for.
What is al Qaeda and Why the CIA Has Used It
Al Qaeda is not a centralized organization, but rather a gaggle or congeries of fanatics, dupes, psychotics, misfits, double agents, provocateurs, mercenaries, and other elements. As noted, Al Qaeda was founded by the United States and the British during the struggle against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Many of its leaders, such as the reputed second-in-command Ayman Zawahiri and the current rising star Anwar Awlaki, are evidently double agents of MI-6 and/or the CIA. The basic belief structure of Al Qaeda is that all existing Arab and Moslem governments are illegitimate and should be destroyed, because they do not represent the caliphate which Al Qaeda asserts is described by the Koran. This means that the Al Qaeda ideology offers a ready and easy way for the Anglo-American secret intelligence agencies to attack and destabilize existing Arab and Muslim governments as part of the ceaseless need of imperialism and colonialism to loot and attack the developing nations. This is precisely what is happening in Libya today.
Al Qaeda emerged from the cultural and political milieu of the Moslem Brotherhood or Ikhwan, itself a creation of British intelligence in Egypt in the late 1920s. The US and the British used the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood to oppose the successful anti-imperialist policies of Egyptian President Nasser, who scored immense victories for his country by nationalizing the Suez Canal and building the Aswan High Dam, without which modern Egypt would be simply unthinkable. The Muslim brotherhood provided an active and capable fifth column of foreign agents against Nasser, in the same way that the official website of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb is trumpeting its support for the rebellion against Colonel Qaddafi.
I have discussed the nature of Al Qaeda at some length in my recent book entitled 9/11 Synthetic Terrorism: Made in USA, and that analysis cannot be repeated here. It is enough to say that we do not need to believe in all the fantastic mythology which the United States government has spun around the name of Al Qaeda in order to recognize the basic fact that militants or patsies who spontaneously join al Qaeda are often sincerely motivated by a deep hatred of the United States and a burning desire to kill Americans, as well as Europeans. The Bush administration policy used the alleged presence of Al Qaeda as a pretext for direct military attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq. The Obama administration is now doing something different, intervening on the side of a rebellion in which Al Qaeda and its co-thinkers are heavily represented while attacking the secular authoritarian government of Colonel Gaddafi. Both of these policies are bankrupt and must be abandoned.
Rebel Leaders Jalil and Younis, Plus Most of Rebel Council are Members of the al Qaeda-linked Harabi Tribe
The result of the present inquiry is that the Libyan branch of Al Qaeda represents a continuum with the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group centered in Darnah and Benghazi. The ethnic base of the Libyan Islamic fighting group is apparently to be found in the anti-Qaddafi Harabi tribe, the tribe which makes up the vast majority of the rebel council including the two dominant rebel leaders, Abdul Fatah Younis and Mustafa Abdul Jalil. The evidence thus suggests that the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, the elite of the Harabi tribe, and the rebel council supported by Obama all overlap for all practical purposes. As the late Foreign Minister of Guyana Fred Wills, a real fighter against imperialism and neo-colonialism, taught me many years ago, political formations in developing countries (and not just there) are often a mask for ethnic and religious rivalries; so it is in Libya. The rebellion against Qaddafi is a toxic brew compounded of fanatical hatred of Qaddafi, Islamism, tribalism, and localism. From this point of view, Obama has foolishly chosen to take sides in a tribal war.
When Hillary Clinton went to Paris to be introduced to the Libyan rebels by French President Sarkozy, she met the US-educated Libyan opposition leader Mahmoud Jibril, already known to readers of Wikileaks document dumps as a favorite of the US.16
While Jibril might be considered presentable in Paris, the real leaders of the Libyan insurrection would appear to be Jalil and Younis, both former ministers under Qaddafi. Jalil seems to be the primus inter pares, at least for the moment: “Mustafa Abdul Jalil or Abdul-Jalil (Arabic: مصطفى عبد الجليل, also transcribed Abdul-Jelil, Abd-al-Jalil, Abdel-Jalil or Abdeljalil; and frequently but erroneously as Abud Al Jeleil) (born 1952) is a Libyan politician. He was the Minister of Justice (unofficially, the Secretary of the General People’s Committee) under Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi…. Abdul Jalil has been identified as the Chairman of the National Transitional Council based in Benghazi… although this position is contested by others in the uprising due to his past connections to Gaddafi’s regime.”17
As for Younis, he has been closely associated with Qaddafi since the 1968-9 seizure of power: “Abdul Fatah Younis (Arabic: عبد الفتاح يونس) is a senior military officer in Libya. He held the rank of General and the post of Minister of Interior, but resigned on 22 February 2011….”18
What should concern us most is that both Jalil and Younis come from the Haribi tribe, the dominant one in northeast Libya, and the one that overlaps with al Qaeda. According to Stratfor, the “…Harabi tribe is a historically powerful umbrella tribe in eastern Libya that saw their influence wane under Col. Gadhafi. The Libyan leader confiscated swaths of tribal members’ land and redistributed it to weaker and more loyal tribes…. Many of the leaders now emerging in eastern Libya hail from the Harabi tribe, including the head of the provisional government set up in Benghazi, Abdel Mustafa Jalil, and Abdel Fatah Younis, who assumed a key leadership role over the defected military ranks early in the uprising.”19 This is like a presidential ticket where both candidates are from the same state, except that Libya’s ferocious tribal rivalries make the problem infinitely worse.
The Rebel Council: Half the Names Are Kept Secret; Why?
This picture of a narrow, sectarian tribal and regional base does not improve when we look at the rebel council as a whole. According to one recent version, the rebel council is “chaired by the well-spoken former justice minister for Libya, Mustafa Abdul Jalil, [and] consists of 31 members, ostensibly representatives from across Libya, of whom many cannot be named for “security reasons”…. “The key players on the council, at least those who we know about, all hail from the north-eastern Harabi confederation of tribes. These tribes have strong affiliations with Benghazi that date back to before the 1969 revolution which brought Gaddafi to power.”20 Other accounts agree about the number of representatives: “The council has 31 members; the identities of several members has not been made public to protect their own safety.”21 Given what we know about the extraordinary density of LIFG and all Qaeda fanatics in northeast Libya, we are authorized to wonder as to whether so many members of the council are being kept secret in order to protect them from Qaddafi, or whether the goal is to prevent them from being recognized in the west as al Qaeda terrorists or sympathizers. The latter seems to be a more accurate summary of the real state of affairs.
Names released so far include: Mustafa Abduljaleel; Ashour Hamed Bourashed of Darna city; Othman Suleiman El-Megyrahi of the Batnan area; Al Butnan of the Egypt border and Tobruk; Ahmed Abduraba Al-Abaar of Benghazi city; Fathi Mohamed Baja of Benghazi city; Abdelhafed Abdelkader Ghoga of Benghazi city; Mr. Omar El-Hariri for Military Affairs; and Dr. Mahmoud Jibril, Ibrahim El-Werfali and Dr. Ali Aziz Al-Eisawi for foreign affairs.22
The State Department needs to interrogate these figures, starting perhaps with Ashour Hamed Bourashed, the delegate from the terrorist and suicide bomber stronghold of Darnah.
How Many al Qaeda Members, Veterans, or Sympathizers are on the Rebel Council?
Seeing as clearly as we can in the fog of war, it looks like slightly more than a dozen of the members of the rebel council have had their names officially published — in any case, not more than half of the reported 31 members. The US and European media have not taken the lead in identifying for us the names that are now known, and they above all have not called attention to the majority of the rebel council who are still lurking in the shadows of total secrecy. We must therefore demand to know how many LIFG and/or al Qaeda members, veterans, or sympathizers currently hold seats on the rebel council.
We are thus witnessing an attempt by the Harabi tribe to seize dominance over the 140 tribes of Libya. The Harabi are already practically hegemonic among the tribes of Cyrenaica. At the center of the Harabi Confederation is the Obeidat tribe, which is divided into 15 sub-tribes.23 All of this might be of purely academic ethnographic interest, were it not for the fact of the striking overlap between the Harabi tribe and the LIFG and al Qaeda.
The Senussi Movement of Libya — Monarchist Democracy?
The political-religious tradition of northeast Libya makes this area such fertile ground for the more extreme Muslim sects and also predisposes it to monarchism rather than to the more modern forms of government favored by Qaddafi. The relevant regional tradition is that of the Senussi or Sanussi order, an anti-western Moslem sect. In Libya the Senussi order is closely associated with monarchism, since King Idris I, the ruler installed by the British in 1951 who was overthrown by Gaddafi in 1969, was also the leader of the Senussi order. The Senussi directed the rebellion against Italian colonialism in the person of Marshal Rodolfo Graziani and his army in the 1930s. Today, the rebels use the monarchist flag, and may advocate the return to the throne of one of the two pretenders to the Idris line. They are far closer to monarchism than to democracy
King Idris, Revered by the Libyan Rebels of Today
Here is the Stratfor view of King Idris and the Senussi: “King Idris came from a line of rulers of the Sanussi order, a Sufi religious order founded in 1842 in Al Bayda, that practices a conservative and austere form of Islam. The Sanussiyah represented a political force in Cyrenaica that preceded the creation of the modern state of Libya, and whose reverberations continue to be felt to this day. It is no coincidence that this region is the home of Libyan jihadism, with groups like the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG). The Gadhafi family has thus been calling the current uprising an elaborate Islamist plot….”24 Under the monarchy, Libya was by some estimates absolutely the poorest country in the world. Today, Libya ranks 53 on the UN Human Development Index and qualifies as the most developed country in Africa, ahead of Russia, Brazil, Ukraine, and Venezuela. Qaddafi’s stewardship has objective merits which cannot be seriously denied.
Glen Ford’s Black Agenda Report has correctly sought to show the racist and reactionary character of the Libyan insurrection. The tribes of southern Libya, known as the Fezzan, are dark skinned. The tribal underpinning of the Gaddafi regime has been an alliance of the tribes of the West, the center, and the southern Fezzan, against the Harabi and the Obeidat, who identify with the former monarchist ruling class. The Harabi and Obeidat are known to nurture a deep racist hatred against the Fezzan. This was expressed in frequent news reports from the pro-imperialist media at the beginning of the rebellion evidently inspired by Harabi accounts, according to which black people in Libya had to be treated as mercenaries working for Gaddafi — with the clear implication that they were to be exterminated. These racist inventions are still being repeated by quackademics like Dean Slaughter of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton. And in fact, large numbers of black Africans from Chad and other countries working in Libyan have been systematically lynched and massacred by the anti-Gaddafi forces. The Obama White House, for all its empty talk of not wanting to repeat the massacre in Rwanda, has conveniently ignored this shocking story of real genocide at the hands of its new racist friends in Cyrenaica.
Against the obscurantism of the Senussi, Qaddafi has advanced the Moslem equivalent of the priesthood of all believers, arguing that no caliphate is necessary in order to discover the meaning of the Koran. He has supplemented this with a pan African perspective. Gerald A. Perreira of the Black Agenda Report writes the following about the theological division between Gaddafi and the neo-Senussi of northeast Libya, as well as other obscuranitsts: “Al Qaeda is in the Sahara on his borders and the International Union of Muslim Scholars is calling for [Qaddafi] to be tried in a court…. [Qaddafi] has questioned the Islam of the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda from a Quranic/theological perspective and is one of the few political leaders equipped to do so…. Benghazi has always been at the heart of counter-revolution in Libya, fostering reactionary Islamic movements such as the Wahhabis and Salafists. It is these people who founded the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group based in Benghazi which allies itself with Al Qaeda and who have, over the years, been responsible for the assassination of leading members of the Libyan revolutionary committees.”25 And what would be for example the status of women under the neo-Senussi of the Benghazi rebel council?
Al Qaeda from Demon to US ally in Libya
For those who attempt to follow the ins and outs of the CIA’s management of its various patsy organizations inside the realm of presumed Islamic terrorism, it may be useful to trace the transformation of the LIFG-AQIM from deadly enemy to close ally. This phenomenon is closely linked to the general reversal of the ideological fronts of US imperialism that marks the divide between the Bush-Cheney-neocon administrations and the current Obama-Brzezinski-International Crisis Group regime. The Bush approach was to use the alleged presence of Al Qaeda as a reason for direct military attack. The Obama method is to use Al Qaeda to overthrow independent governments, and then either Balkanize and partition the countries in question, or else use them as kamikaze puppets against larger enemies like Russia, China, or Iran. This approach implies a more or less open fraternization with terrorist groups, which was signaled in a general way in Obamas famous Cairo speech of 2009. The links of the Obama campaign to the terrorist organizations deployed by the CIA against Russia were already a matter of public record three years ago.26
But such a reversal of field cannot be improvised overnight; it took several years of preparation. On July 10, 2009, The London Daily Telegraph reported that the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group had split with Al Qaeda. This was when the United States had decided to de-emphasize the Iraq war, and also to prepare to use the Sunni Moslem Brotherhood and its Sunni Al Qaeda offshoot for the destabilization of the leading Arab states preparatory to turning them against Shiite Iran. Paul Cruikshank wrote at that time in the New York Daily News about one top LIFG honcho who wanted to dial back the relation to al Qaeda and the infamous Osama Bin Laden; this was “Noman Benotman, a former leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group. While mainstream Muslim leaders have long criticized Al Qaeda, these critics have the jihadist credentials to make their criticisms bite.”27 But by this time some LIFG bosses had moved up into al Qaeda: the London Daily Telegraph reported that senior Al Qaeda members Abu Yahya al-Libi and Abu Laith al-Libi were LIFG members. Around this time, Qaddafi released some LIFG fighters in an ill-advsided humanitarian gesture.
Northeast Libyan Jihadis Killing US, NATO Forces in Afghanistan Right Now
One of the fatal contradictions in the current State Department and CIA policy is that it aims at a cordial alliance with Al Qaeda killers in northeast Libya, at the very moment when the United States and NATO are mercilessly bombing the civilian northwest Pakistan in the name of a total war against Al Qaeda, and US and NATO forces are being killed by Al Qaeda guerrillas in that same Afghanistan-Pakistan theater of war. The force of this glaring contradiction causes the entire edifice of US war propaganda to collapse. The US has long since lost any basis in morality for military force.
In fact, terrorist fighters from northeast Libya may be killing US and NATO troops in Afghanistan right now, even as the US and NATO protect their home base from the Qaddafi government. According to this account, a top Al Qaeda commander in northwest Pakistan was killed by US action as recently as October 2010: “A senior al Qaeda leader who serves as al Qaeda’s ambassador to Iran, and is wanted by the US, is reported to have been killed in a Predator air strike in Pakistan’s Taliban-controlled tribal agency of North Waziristan two days ago…. [This was] Atiyah Abd al Rahman, a Libyan national who has been based in Iran and served as Osama bin Laden’s ambassador to the mullahs. Unconfirmed press reports indicate that Rahman was killed in an airstrike….”28 The US State Department’s Rewards for Justice page for Atiyah Abd al Rahman notes that he was al Qaeda’s “emissary in Iran as appointed by Osama bin Ladin.” Atiyah “recruited and facilitated talks with other Islamic groups to operate under” al Qaeda and was “also a member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group and Ansar al Sunna.”29 Rahman was ranked high enough in al Qaeda to be able to give orders to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of al Qeada in Iraq, in 2005.
Also killed in Pakistan was another apparent northeast Libyan going by the name of Khalid al Harabi, whose choice of a nom de guerre may well link him to the jihadi farm among the Harabi tribe in Cyrenaica. According to one account, “Khalid al Harabi is an alias for Khalid Habib, al Qaeda’s former military commander who was killed in a US Predator strike in October 2008.”30
The Scenario Uncovered by the 1995 Shayler Affair is Operative Today
In 1995, David Shayler, an official of the British counterintelligence organization MI-5, became aware that his counterpart at the British foreign espionage organization MI-6 had paid the sum of £100,000 to an Al Qaeda affiliate in exchange for the attempt to assassinate Qaddafi. The assassination attempt did occur, and killed several innocent bystanders, but failed to eliminate the Libyan ruler. As Shayler understood the MI-6 scenario, it included the liquidation of Gaddafi, followed by the descent of Libya into chaos and tribal warfare, with a possible option for a direct seizure of power by al Qaeda itself. This situation would then provide a pretext for Britain, probably but not necessarily acting together with the United States or other countries, to invade Libya and seize control of the oil fields, probably establishing a permanent protectorate over the oil regions, the pipelines, and the coast.31 This remains the goal today.
Timed to coincide with the attempt to assassinate Qaddafi, MI-6 and other Western secret intelligence agencies fomented a considerable insurrection in northeast Libya, almost precisely in the same areas which are in rebellion today. Its insurrection was successfully crushed by Qaddafi’s forces by the end of 1996. The events of 2011 are simply a reprise of the imperialist attack on Libya 15 years ago, with the addition of outside intervention..
The War Against the Nation State
Today’s attack on Libya comes in the context of a broad attack on the institution of the sovereign nation state itself, as it has existed since the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. The United States and the British are deeply concerned by the large number of nations which are seeking to escape from Anglo-American hegemony by actively pursuing large-scale cooperation with Russia on security, with China on economic questions, and with Iran for geopolitical considerations. The CIA/MI-6 response has been a wild orgy of destabilizations, people power coups, color revolutions, and palace putsches, signaled by the document dumps by the CIA limited hangout operation known as Wikileaks, which has targeted names of the CIA hit mist from Ben Ali to Qaddafi. The Obama strategy would have preferred an exclusive reliance and the illusion that the Arab Spring was really a matter of youthful visionary idealists gathering in the public square to praise democracy, the rule of law, and human rights. This was never the reality: the actual decisions were being made by brutal cliques of generals and top officials bribed or blackmailed by the CIA who were moving behind the scenes to oust such figures as Ben Ali or Mubarak. Whatever else Qaddafi has done, he has undoubtedly forced the CIA and NATO to drop the pleasant mask of youthful idealism and human rights, revealing a hideous visage of Predator drones, terror bombing, widespread slaughter, and colonialist arrogance underneath. Qaddafi has also ripped the mask of “Yes We Can” off Obama, revealing a cynical warmonger intent on the continuation of Bush’s infamous “Dead or Alive” and “Bring it on” policies, although by other means.
A Distant Mirror for Imperialists in Libya: Lucan’s Pharsalia
Modern imperialists eager to rush into Libya should ponder Lucan’s Pharsalia, which treats of warfare in the Libyan desert during the contest between Julius Caesar and Pompey the Great at the end of the Roman Republic. A critical passage in this Latin epic is the speech by Cato of Utica, a follower of Pompey, who urges his soldiers to undertake a suicide mission into Libya, saying: “Serpents, thirst, heat, and sand … Libya alone can present a multitude of woes that it would beseem men to fly from.” Cato goes forward, and finds “a little tomb to enclose [his] hallowed name, Libya secured the death of Cato….”32
Let us not imitate this folly.
Investigative leads from the West Point Study: An Appeal to Scholars
The West Point study, as noted, was conducted on the basis of almost 700 Al Qaeda personnel files captured by coalition forces in Iraq.33 The authors of the study have promised to keep available online the documentary basis of this investigation, both in the form of the raw Arabic language al Qaeda personnel files34, and also of the same file cards in English translation.35 Assuming that this material remains available, it might be possible for researchers and reporters, and especially those with capabilities in Arabic not possessed by the present writer, to investigate the Libyan fighters who went into Iraq with a view to determining whether any of them are family members, neighbors, or even political associates of the known members of the Benghazi rebel council or of other anti-Qaddafi forces. Such a procedure could contribute to allowing the European and American public as well as others around the world to better understand the nature of the military adventure currently unfolding in Libya by gaining a more specific knowledge of who the Libyan rebels actually are, as distinct from the hollow panegyrics purveyed by the controlled Western media.
References:
1 Joseph Felter and Brian Fishman, “Al Qa’ida’s Foreign Fighter in Iraq: A First Look at the Sinjar Records,” (West Point, NY: Harmony Project, Combating Terrorism Center, Department of Social Sciences, US Military Academy, December 2007). Cited as West Point Study.
2 Joseph Felter and Brian Fishman, “Al Qa’ida’s Foreign Fighter in Iraq: A First Look at the Sinjar Records,” (West Point, NY: Harmony Project, Combating Terrorism Center, Department of Social Sciences, US Military Academy, December 2007). Cited as West Point Study.
3 West Point Study, pp. 8-9.
4 Daya Gamage, “Libyan rebellion has radical Islamist fervor: Benghazi link to Islamic militancy, U.S. Military Document Reveals,” Asian Tribune, March 17, 2011, at http://www.asiantribune.com/news/2011/03/17/libyan-rebellion-has-radical-islamist-fervor-benghazi-link-islamic-militancyus-milit
5 West Point Study, p. 12.
6 West Point Study, p. 19.
7 West Point Study, p. 27.
8 West Point Study, p. 9.
9 http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2008/04/200861502740131239.html; http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Security/?id=1.0.2055009989;
10 West Point Study, p. 12.
11 West Point Study, p. 27.
12 West Point Study, p. 29.
13 West Point Study, p. 28.
14 See “Egypt Said to Arm Libya Rebels, Wall Street Journal, March 17, 2011, at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704360404576206992835270906.html; see also Robert Fisk, “America’s secret plan to arm Libya’s rebels,” Independent, Mach 7, 2011, at http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/americas-secret-plan-to-arm-libyas-rebels-2234227.html
15 Gamage.
16 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12741414
17 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustafa_Abdul_Jalil
18 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustafa_Abdul_Jalil
19 Stratfor, “Libya’s Tribal Dyanmics, February 25, 2011, available at http://redstomp.org/forums/showthread.php?1109-Libya-s-Tribal-Dyanmics
20 Venetia Rainey, “Who are the rebels we are fighting to protect,” The First Post, http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/76660,news-comment,news-politics,who-are-the-rebels-we-are-fighting-to-protect#ixzz1HMRIrUP9
21 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Transitional_Council
22 Statement by “Transition National Council,” Benghazi, March 5, 2011 at http://www.libyanmission-un.org/tnc.pdf; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Transitional_Council
23 Massimo Introvigne, “L’occidente alla guerra delle tribù,” La Bussola quotidiana, March 22, 2011, at http://www.cesnur.org/2011/mi-rivolte-05.html
24 Stratfor, “Libya’s Tribal Dyanmics, February 25, 2011, available at http://redstomp.org/forums/showthread.php?1109-Libya-s-Tribal-Dyanmics
25 Gerald A. Perreira, “Libya, Getting it Right: A Revolutionary Pan-African Perspective,” Black Agenda Report, March 2, 2011, at http://blackagendareport.com/content/libya-getting-it-right-revolutionary-pan-african-perspective
26 Webster G. Tarpley, “Obama Campaign Linked To Chechen Terrorism: Grant Of Taxpayer-Funded U.S. Asylum For Chechen Terror Envoy Gave Obama Foreign Policy Guru Zbigniew Brzezinski ‘One Of The Happiest Days Of My Life,’” February 2, 2008, Obama the Postmodern Coup: The Making of a Manchurian Candidate (Joshua Treet CA: Progressive Press, April 2008), pp. 97-115, online at http://tarpley.net/2008/02/03/obama-campaign-linked-to-chechen-terrorism/
27 Paul Cruikshank, “How Muslim extremists are turning on Osama Bin Laden,” New York Daily News, June 8, 2008, at http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nydailynews.com%2Fopinions%2F2008%2F06%2F08%2F2008-06-08_how_muslim_extremists_are_turning_on_osa.html&date=2009-08-05. Cruickshank is a fellow at the NYU Center on Law and Security and the co-author, with Peter Bergen, of the … cover story in the New Republic, “The Jihadist Revolt against Bin Laden.”
28 http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2010/10/al_qaeda_leader_link.php
29 http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2010/10/al_qaeda_leader_link.php#ixzz1HNoUTmn5
30 http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2010/10/al_qaeda_leader_link.php#ixzz1HNmzsjat
31 See Machon, Annie (2005). Spies, Lies & Whistleblowers. MI5, MI6 and the Shayler Affair. Lewes, East Sussex: The Book Guild Ltd. 185776952X; Hollingsworth, Mark; Nick Fielding (1999). Defending the Realm: MI5 and the Shayler Affair. Andre Deutsch Ltd. ISBN 0233996672; see also Guardian, April 10, 2000 http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2000/apr/10/davidshayler.richardnortontaylor
32 Lucan, Pharsalia, Book IX, trans Riley (London: Bell, 1903), p. 355.
33 http://www.ctc.usma.edu/harmony/pdf/CTCForeignFighter.19.Dec07.pdf
34 http://www.ctc.usma.edu/harmony/Foreign_Fighter_Bios-Orig.pdf
35 http://www.ctc.usma.edu/harmony/FF-Bios-Trans.pdf
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