Libya - civil unrest & now NATO involvement

[dylans]

Where, in this imaginative scenario, today's communication technologies are also available and there's a 1942 version of wiki leaks, with young German whistle-blowers exposing the atrocities by uploadeding the anally compiled doc

Pocket science. Your analogy with Hitlers Germany doesn't work for the simple reason that Germany was itself a major imperialist power. Thus WW11 was a war between 2 imperialist powers. Libya is not. Libya is an ex colonial country, that is a country whose independence was won (by Gaddafi) from imperialist exploitation. Therefore calling for those same ex colonial powers to liberate the country from its dictator is merely invitiing those colonial powers back to the country to continue their exploitation.

A better analagy would be the first world war, where Arabs of the Levant and mesopotamia allied themselves with Britain against the Turks of the Ottoman Empire, on the basis that liberation would mean Arab independance (the Laurence of Arabia story). They accepted Western support against their enemies on the basis that they would be granted independence and, of course the deal was reneged on by the British with the Balfour declaration and the Sykes Picot agreement. A sign of the dangers of relying on Western assistance. However there is one crucial difference between the Arab nations of that time and Libya today, that is that Arabs were fighting an external enemy and occupation, Libya is not. Gaddafi, foul as he is, is Libyan. Therefore relying on Western support in Libya is not attempting to play one external enemy against another but inviting Western involvement in an internal struggle. The lesson of history, time and time again, is that such involvement will strip Libya of its independance.

 

[Divisive Cotton]

What is interesting about this account from the dying days of the regime is how in denial they were right but until the day before Tripoli fell:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...tells-of-the-final-days-of-Libyan-regime.html

She only met him once, for a drink a week ago last Friday - the night before rebels attacked Tripoli. Mutassim seemed relaxed, comparing the Libyan uprising to the riots in London, and arguing that the police had to be tough. "He said the rebels were a bit crazy in the head," she recalled. "He said that in countries like Libya you have to do it a bit harder, otherwise they don't listen.

"There was no fear that the regime was going to lose. I think he was a little bit in denial."

 

[Idris2002]

I'm opposed to 'humanitarian intervention' because of things like this:

The Belgian troops stationed in Kismayo were a case in point. Without provocation, they harassed, beat and killed many Somalis, many of whom were unarmed.10 Speaking anonymously, Belgian soldiers were frank. ‘You know, if someone had been killed, you just left him there. In the end, all you thought about was the red tape it would cause [to report it]. . .At the very end, we would shoot at them, straight away.’11 Another soldier described how inflicting pain had become part of their everyday life:

There were some really funny things. I saw a guy putting a metal ‘necklace’ around the neck of a kid. It wasn’t hurting him but he couldn’t get out of it. And then six of them, six Somalis, tried to pull him out of it, and they couldn’t. They simply couldn’t pull him out. So yes, then, we did laugh. This kid wasn’t really in pain, because of that piece of metal, but he wasn’t thrilled at the idea that he would have to run around for the rest of his life with this piece of metal around his neck. ​

Other cases included locking children in metal containers—one boy died from heat exhaustion and suffocation—or dragging people behind tanks, throwing children into the Jubba River, and other incidents too disgusting to recount. The sexual aggression of the paratroopers also caused concern in Kismayo.
When the abuses were first publicized by African Rights, the Belgian army and government denied them outright: Commander Van de Weghe said ‘The [African Rights] report is scandalous. The facts have been exaggerated, taken out of context or simply invented.’ Medecins Sans Frontières–Belgium, which was running the hospital in Kismayo, also went out of its way to deny the allegations.
But when Belgian soldiers began admitting to torture and killing, and photographs of blindfolded Somalis being tied to radio antennae and beaten were published, the truth had to be recognized. In fact, the troops’ activities were more scandalous than African Rights’ report had intimated, and an inquiry was belatedly set up. The first report was superficial, with a few remarks on just seven incidents.12 But the allegations would not go away. A further 268 incidents were then submitted for investigation, including 58 cases of killing or serious injury. On the numbers killed, one of the paratroopers interviewed on Belgian radio commented, ‘You can multiply the official figure by four or five. At the minimum.’ One case came to court in which three paratroopers were acquitted of manslaughter. A second case of aggravated assault was also brought but thrown out. Later, in 1997, another case obtained publicity because part of the evidence was a photograph of two Belgian paratroopers holding a Somali boy over a burning brazier. These two were also acquitted, on the technicality that the Somali boy had not come forward with a complaint.

http://hornofafrica.ssrc.org/de_Waal3/printable.html

 

[elbows]

I don't feel much better informed about Tripoli yet, nor other places where fighting continues, as we continue to hear of rebels 'advancing' through towns that they already claimed to control multiple times in the past.

Situation with water, food & power in Tripoli is clearly a big worry, they are making it sound like they will get some supplies in pretty soon, but we shall see. Hard to overstate how important the next week will be.

Human rights watch have been taking a look at a variety of deaths, with a focus on Gaddafi regime executions in the buildup to the fall of Tripoli. I can't say I feel much more confident about discovering the truth but this stuff is at lest slightly more detailed than what we've been getting in the media.

http://www.hrw.org/news/2011/08/28/libya-gaddafi-forces-suspected-executing-detainees

 

[Idris2002]

An interesting piece written by someone I used to know back in Belfast, and who is not some looney-tunes believer in the "Eurabia" myth:

http://marranci.wordpress.com/2011/08/28/the-libyan-revolution-tribes-andafghanistization/

Today, however, prominent members of FIG and other Islamic groups are not only part of the NTC but among the best trained fighters that NATO could support in order to overthrow the Libyan leader. Indeed, Egyptian newspapers have reported that the high commander under which the rebels entered Tripoli, with the help of British special forces, was none other than Belhadj, known within Islamist circles as “Abu Abdullah Assadaq”.
Abu Abdullah Assadaq, together with some of the so called Libyan Afghans–for being involved in the Afghan resistance against the Red Army–immediately went from being potential candidates for Guantanamo to heroes and trusted allies of Britain and the US. Unsurprisingly, some in the White House were very embarrassed to see former Guantanamo detainees metamorphose from enemy combatants and terrorists to freedom fighters and democracy supporters.
If we think that the Islamic militant actions and activities of these Libyan groups are something entirely of the past–even Gaddafi showed clemency with some of those whom are now hunting for his head–we would be really wrong. Although it would be interesting to discuss further these groups and their ideology, I have no such space here. Yet I wish to provide you with some brief facts.
Even a with a superficial search of the US Wikileaks cables, we can find that only a few years before this Nato supported revolution, radical imams were “urging worshippers to support jihad in Iraq and elsewhere”. We can read that Derna, a Libyan city of no more than 100,000 people but which has contributed a considerable number of fighters, contributed more suicide bombers than major Arab metropolises with populations running into the millions after the US invasion of Iraq. Yet this is not an isolated case of a single unfortunate city if, indeed, a statistical study of foreign insurgents in Iraq has revealed that 20% of them were Libyan Islamic militants (more than those coming from Saudi Arabia and Yemen or other parts of North Africa).
Do people change opinions, ideas and ideologies so quickly? How is it that the same Islamic militants who would have celebrated each American or British military death are now shoulder to shoulder with them in hunting the dictator and his family? What may happen after the civil war stabilizes and the time of sharing power and deciding the social political structure arrives? What impact will the tribal fragmentations and the different interests involved have?

This guy has said on Facebook that he thinks the popular revolution was crushed months ago, and that the NTC represents something else. . .

 

[Pickman's model]

could be that in five years time hmg and potus are longing for the good old days of gadaffi

 

[elbows]

I found the rest of the article to be more interesting than the bit quoted. All the same I can't place to much faith in this analysis, for there are clear mistakes. For a start he tries to paint a picture of the UK as not having much access to Libya under Gaddafi, and we know that is not true. Qatar and others are also completely missing from his picture.

 

[Idris2002]

I found the rest of the article to be more interesting than the bit quoted. All the same I can't place to much faith in this analysis, for there are clear mistakes. For a start he tries to paint a picture of the UK as not having much access to Libya under Gaddafi, and we know that is not true. Qatar and others are also completely missing from his picture.

Good points. As far as British access to Libya goes, they certainly did have access to the country under MG (I've not forgotten Jack Straw referring to him as a 'statesman'). The emergence of a genuinely revolutionary and democratic regime would have threatened the continuity of that access in the post-revolutionary order. A victory by an NTC that owes its victory (at least partly) to London would preserve that continuity.

Another point is his citation of the Somali experience. Like Libya under Gadaffi, Somalia under Siad Barre was a putatively modern state where the veneer of modernity covered a mass of various tribal networks. The inability of leaders in these networks to reach a modus vivendi meant no national, trans-tribal leadership could emerge after the fall of Siad Barre - hence, civil war in Somalia. The Islamic militia in southern Somalia did not emerge, however, until more than a decade of confused fighting in the country, a disastrous western intervention, and the recruitment of proxy forces by both Eritrea and Ethiopia. The same factors (particularly the last) do not apply in the Libyan case.

Anyway, here's another quote from Gabriele:

The issue is: 1) why are we supporting the same guys that in 1990 where linked for example to the Algerian GIA and you know better than me their actions? 2) why are supporting one of the main commander whom was involved in recruiting suicide bombing for Iraq that have target mainly civilians?

The is not the revolt of Egypt or Tunisia. These is something more complex and dark.

The real popular revolt was dead many months ago. Then these guys started the civil war and NATO, like in Afghanistan, took the opportunity thinking that later they could manage the process, marginalize the 'fanatic' and start a semi-secular protected democracy fully ready to sell the its resources to a lower and more stable price then before.

I leave aside the actual 'cold' war between the UK and France to remove Italy as the main business pattern of Libya. Nato and the EU cannot, as we have seen this in other interventions, control the situation. Their plan will fail and then they will scream 'terrorists!' and take other actions (e.g.. Somalia for instance).
You know my opinion about Gaddafi, but I have the impression that the Libyan people (and this time much of the Mediterranean ones) have ended, as we say in Italian, "dalla padella alla brace" (i.e. from the frypan to the fire).

The best outcome is a revival of the real popular revolt - the worst, clan/Islamist warfare on the Somali pattern. I suspect that what Libya gets will be something no one can predict at this time.

 

[elbows]

I don't think its very clear what flavour the 'real popular revolt' was back at the start, I've remained sure of little other than that they wanted to get rid of Gaddafi, and were inspired by events happening elsewhere.So I'm not entirely sure what exactly people hope to see revived, there is unlikely to be anything pure and untainted for people to celebrate in ideological terms. Maybe later, we will just have to wait and see how far the main uniting theme of ending the Gaddafi regime can be stretched, and whether a desire for relative normalcy keeps violence at bay.

Tripoli certainly doesn't seem to be as soaked in violence as the worst-case predictions would have suggested. Assume it fell quickly because deals with certain elements of the Tripoli machine were done. I spoke near the end of July about tentative signs of deals being done, and this is a primary reason why I was not too shocked at how quickly things evolved in August (although it was quicker than I would have bet on), and why I started paying attention to twitter rumours even though the details they contained could not be relied upon. Anyway these sorts of deals, which we know very little of, are one of the reasons I was not keen on the confident predictions of how much of a mess Tripoli would become, its easy to come up with all the worst-case extreme examples, but to rule out the presence of pragmatism and a desire for peace may be a mistake.

 

[elbows]

What do people make of the current focus on the fate of tens of thousands of people who a rebel military spokesman says remain unaccounted for?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-14702853

I'm not sure what to think, I would hope the numbers are significantly inflated and that not all of these people are imprisoned or killed.

The suggestion that they are stuck underground somewhere should not be given too much weight, since its an inevitable rumour given the very long-standing rumours of tunnel networks and 'a city beneath a city'. Impossible to dismiss the possibility, but evidence so far doesn't point to such a scale of underground facilities.

 

[Lock&Light]

I'm not sure what to think, I would hope the numbers are significantly inflated and that not all of these people are imprisoned or killed.

I think we all share that hope.

 

[elbows]

I'm still trying to slowly flesh out the picture of the TNC. Its not that easy because searching for these people as their names come up in news stories usually gets me dozens of pages of the same recent news about them, usually involving a quote of a couple of sentences they have said and little else.

But when searching for the TNC justice minister who is in the news due to the sideshow of extradition possibilities, I found this story from April which helped broaden my understanding about the TNC elements who are described as ex-regime.

http://arabnews.com/middleeast/article355644.ece

The article may be trying a bit too hard to paint a particular picture of the TNC, but even so I found this stuff informative. I had tended to see much of the TNC as being people who had left Libya a long time ago, but it seems a good number of them are technocrats who were working on the Saif Gaddafi reform agenda, and got frustrated and bailed out a couple of years ago, fleeing to varying extents. Younis and Jalil are the exceptions, both having been part of Gaddafi's team until they went to Benghazi early in the uprising, and defecting within a day of each other. But the article paints these two very differently, raising my suspicions somewhat, I wouldn't trust this article in isolation but as part of a balanced diet its interesting.

I would love to know more about the stories of these two and what happened in detail as they went to Benghazi, it remains pretty unclear as to who was pulling whose strings, whether there was any plot ahead of time or whether people just scrambled to make the most of the opportunity once some protests started. All sorts of minds inside and outside Libya would have had quite a number of weeks to consider the possibilities. Once they had seen dictators elsewhere start to fall, and Gaddafi started to rant about such things in some of his speeches, it would have been hard not to start scheming.

Arab spring media coverage makes much of the masses being sick of these dictators or regimes that have been around decades past their sell-by date, but in many cases the mood of important elements within the regimes themselves seems to be quite a factor. These regimes don't seem to have staggering quantities of true believers anymore, still quite a lot but they cannot be sure they have enough to fully crush the threats in a timely manner these days. Throw in the ill-will that comes from these dictators preparing their kids to takeover, and ugly global economic picture, along with a potent mix of desperation and hope in a new generation coming of age, and who have the ability to network, and its no wonder we've seen a lot happening, at least in the countries where most of the above fully applies. Mind you, the full potential of this stuff is clearly being severely hampered in all manner of different ways by the suffocating international conditions under which we are used to existing for decades now. So much overwhelming power in such concentrated forms out there, squashing the arab spring down to a fraction of what it would otherwise have been. I've almost had to stop watching tv news at the moment due to the nausea they cause me by shining their oh-so-bright lights away from this area. Its quite the trick, especially in Libya where this dimension is so hard to avoid, yet somehow they have methods for acknowledging it. And more, even parading it around to promote certain feelings of national pride and international potency, and then moments later being able to talk of the rebels and their cause as something entirely separate and pure.

 

[elbows]

Aha:

http://twitter.com/#!/simmjazeera

Protest in Misrata "New Libya New Faces" attacking NTC nominating former GF people for gov't posts

@ArmchairArab yes people angry about Shakaal. Suspicious of deal for him not to defect but to feed back intel.

Last night's Misrata protest New Faces New Libya peaceful. No celebratory gunfire. Mainly civilians.

 

[elbows]

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2011/08/201182973341535453.html

Al Jazeera's Andrew Simmons, reporting from a protest in Misrata, said: "They [the protesters] say the old guard of the Gaddafi regime are far too prominent in the list of people issued so far.
"They are also insisting there should be new faces for a new Libya.
"A lot of this is due to communications and the way the National Transitional Council has been concentrating so much on diplomacy and the economy, and maybe not looking inwards enough."

Well thats one way to put it I suppose!

Check out the small video embedded to the right of the article for more words and a glimpse of the protest.

 

[elbows]

It seems that a UN post-conflict planning document has been leaked:

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2011/08/20118291127750603.html

Its what you might expect, leaving open all sorts of options for UN and non-UN boots on the ground should the security situation suck, and it contains the words World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

http://www.innercitypress.com/martin1unlibya1icp.pdf

 

[binka]

on the news now they have a reporter going through a ransacked internal security services building in tripoli, all the signs and charts on the walls and documents strewn about the desks and floors are written in english. anyone else think thats a bit odd?

 

[Divisive Cotton]

the Algerian government has admitted that Gadaffi family members are now in Algeria

 

[elbows]

Yes, looks like most of the ones who don't have war-crime legal woes are there.

Khamis Gaddafi and Abdullah al-Senusi are reported dead, again. Maybe its actually true this time, or maybe its to take attention away from the Algeria stuff, or maybe its part of a psyops campaign to get Sirte to give up.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/08/29/uk-libya-khamis-idUKTRE77S4W920110829

There are a number of brief reports that tend to suggest Tripoli is slowly starting to come back to life, though details are pretty sketchy and lots of serious challenges remain, so I won't get carried away just yet.

 

[Divisive Cotton]

it's best not to watch this video if you are having breakfast:

http://edition.cnn.com/video/?/video/world/2011/08/28/rivers.scarred.after.gadhafi.cnn

 

[goldenecitrone]

it's best not to watch this video if you are having breakfast:

http://edition.cnn.com/video/?/video/world/2011/08/28/rivers.scarred.after.gadhafi.cnn

Why not? I am having breakfast now. What am I missing?

 

[claphamboy]

it's best not to watch this video if you are having breakfast:

http://edition.cnn.com/video/?/video/world/2011/08/28/rivers.scarred.after.gadhafi.cnn

That is shocking.

 

[likesfish]

if Libya doesn't implode which is less likely than Iraq and they get a sane and barely competent leader.
lots of money small population could rival Dubai in a couple of years plus they have oil and appear to be relaxed about having a drink.
foxtons in tripoli anyone

 

[elbows]

it's best not to watch this video if you are having breakfast:

http://edition.cnn.com/video/?/video/world/2011/08/28/rivers.scarred.after.gadhafi.cnn

Nasty.

Media are laying it on rather thick when it comes to his extravagance. Luxurious, but a lot smaller than many people we are supposed to admire enjoy. I would like to see this form of reporting applied to millionaires mansions everywhere.

Not enough news from Tripoli to quench my thirst for knowledge at this delicate time, but in some senses no news is good news I suppose.

 

[dylans]

elbows,

Media are laying it on rather thick when it comes to his extravagance. Luxurious, but a lot smaller than many people we are supposed to admire enjoy. I would like to see this form of reporting applied to millionaires mansions everywhere.

Yeah two things came to mind when hearing the media reporting on Gaddafi's extravagance. The first was about the supposed tackiness or kitch-ness of his and his families possessions. The second concerns his luxurious lifestyle.

On the tackiness of his stuff, it occurred to me that a lot of the stuff that is reported as tacky is actually Arab taste. Arab tastes are not sophisticated, its true. I used to live in Egypt and a whole wall of my living room was made up of a huge mural of the Swiss Alps surrounded by fairy lights. It was so loud we used to joke that we needed sunglasses indoors. It also had a (fake) gold coffee table, fake gold doorknobs and light fittings etc and that kind of bling (albeit a lot cheaper of course) could be found in many a middle class Arab home. They like that kind of stuff.. There is then an element of patronising of Arabs as a whole in some of the sniggering at the golden mermaid sofa and other bling that is found in his houses. I bet the rebels didn't find that stuff tacky even if they found it extravagant.

The second thing that struck me is that actually, by Arab dictator standards, most of the stuff is not that extravagant, nowhere near as luxurious as the rulers of Saudi Arabia or Qatar or UAE, all of whom are involved in overthrowing Gaddafi. Take a look at the palaces of the house of Saud if you want to see really outrageous luxury. By those standards, Gaddafi's extravagance is relatively unimpressive.

What is impressive is the security arrangements that surrounded his family.Nuclear bunkers under houses, underground operating theatres, miles of tunnels etc, that stuff is pretty jaw dropping, even if, in the end they didn't do him much good.

 

[elbows]

Yeah, I have seen gold tissue-holders on car dashboards round here, so I learnt to opt out from commenting on these tastes, I can't even say they are not sophisticated, they are just too different to what I am used to for me to judge. But since I have some kind of passion for regime symbols being desecrated, and there was a bit of a James Bond villain theme going on a long time ago in this thread, I haven't been able to resist certain photos.

Personally I was looking forward to seeing Gaddafi fall because of the oppressive nature of his regime, and because its something special to witness people losing fear and bringing about giddy change. I didn't have many expectations as to what other monstrous excesses may be exposed, and I don't need any extra reasons to hate Gaddafi, so I can live without the media hype although I still find images of rebels chilling out in these buildings to be quite an emotional thing. And all this despite the potential downsides to this overthrowing of the regime. If people can win & keep freedom of thought and expression then thats something worth cheering, even though questions such as 'at what price?' loom large on the horizon. Mind you the timing is quite interesting, if the Libyans are really lucky then current global capitalism as we know it might break its own neck before its had a chance to totally mangle Libya.

To be honest I've not been impressed with the tunnels that much either, its been as much about longstanding rumours of their sophistication, and the media laying it on thick. I'd probably need to see at least a partial map of some tunnels before I could be impressed with the scale of things, since the videos I've seen haven't lived up to my expectations. When Gaddafi lost control of Benghazi there was some report on the telly, AlJazeera or the BBC, where the reporter was in his Benghazi Bunker and was talking about it being evidence of how paranoid he was. Well for a start I bet we have better bunkers but they are associated with state institutions rather than one man, and at the time he was about to start getting bombed by NATO so it wasn't really paranoia to have bunkers. If you've seen something that actually indicates miles of tunnels then please share as I'd be quite fascinated by this stuff if the impressive alleged scale of this stuff actually turned out to be true.

 

[elbows]

Got bored, went back over old ground and found a wikileaks cable that was released back in January, and was talking about inflation woes in Libya back in 2009, and the following which has a new significance given what has happened to Gaddafi, and what the future may yet hold.

'A radical program of privatization and government restructuring proposed by Muammar al-Qadhafi in his March address to the General People's Congress (reftel) has further stoked ordinary Libyans' fears that the regime is abandoning them to market forces after years of cradle-to-grave subsidies.'

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wik...s/8294902/INFLATION-ON-THE-RISE-IN-LIBYA.html

 

[goldenecitrone]

I wonder if they are going to catch him and what will happen to him when they do. Will they want to humiliate him or just kill him?

 

[TomUS]

Got bored, went back over old ground and found a wikileaks cable that was released back in January, and was talking about inflation woes in Libya back in 2009, and the following which has a new significance given what has happened to Gaddafi, and what the future may yet hold.

'A radical program of privatization and government restructuring proposed by Muammar al-Qadhafi in his March address to the General People's Congress (reftel) has further stoked ordinary Libyans' fears that the regime is abandoning them to market forces after years of cradle-to-grave subsidies.'

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wik...s/8294902/INFLATION-ON-THE-RISE-IN-LIBYA.html

This seems to shoot holes in the 'NATO intervened to impose capitalist/neoliberalism' idea.

 

[Pickman's model]

This seems to shoot holes in the 'NATO intervened to impose capitalist/neoliberalism' idea.

i told you above it's about energy

fucking read the thread you daft twat.

 

[TomUS]

i told you above it's about energy

fucking read the thread you daft twat.

I doubt your renewable energy theory.