Libya - civil unrest & now NATO involvement

[teqniq]

Wish we had more detail about this:

that guy is said to be reliable according to the Graun so maybe some good news

 

[OneStrike]

ShabadLibya (again!) has posted that the Deputy FM has claimed that the planes landing in Malta weren't Libyan! (remember the FM quit)

 

[TheHoodedClaw]

Who works at the oil places? Are they trained locals? Outsiders? How recruited if the latter?

Oil extraction workers are an international bunch, I'm sure the engineers in Libya are no different.

 

[butchersapron]

Oil extraction workers are an international bunch, I'm sure the engineers in Libya are no different.

What are the recruitment chains like? If you know?

 

[Maurice Picarda]

Slightly off-topic, but the BBC live coverage of this is spectacularly bad. They have a VT of William Hague musing aloud whether Qadafi is on a plane to Venezuala or not, and so they're playing it on a continuous loop because they don't trust any other sources.

 

[Tankus]

Don't wish for a US intervention. They are NOT the owners of the world. They don't care about Libians. They just need their fix of oil. Hopefully the revolution will win before the US gets their act together.

yep ... Muslims killing Muslims ?...= arms sale opportunity
...to be paid in oil

so the one with the hand on the pump wins ...from US eyes

 

[elbows]

What are the recruitment chains like? If you know?

Equally important is what tribes are dominant in the oil-producing regions. I recall that such a tribe threatened to turn off the oil taps if Gaddafi wasnt gone within 24 hours, but I've forgotten how long ago this was.

I keep meaning to do lots of Libyan oil research but so much news comes in that I dont get the chance.

Other oil-related rumours in recent days involved the possibility that Gaddafi could torch the oilfields out of spite, or hold them to random, or blame others for destroying them. There was an utterly unconfirmed rumours some hours ago that an oilrig somewhere had been seen on fire.

 

[butchersapron]

London Downing Street - 3pm

 

[Pickman's model]

Anyone wondering about military intervention, no fly zones and the like.

Don't look to the EU. Remember when the Muslims were being slaughtered in the former Yugoslavia and what did the EU do? Sweet nothing.

The only hope for a no fly zone is the US military.

Of course I could be wrong, but I doubt it.

yes. because the us military are underworked, aren't they.

do you pay the fucking slightest attention to world politics? have you heard of afghanistan and iraq - not to mention bahrain, where one of the us fleets is based? don't you think they have other things on their minds?

if they were going to intervene in any country which has risen recently it would have been egypt.

why do you post guff like that? you know it only makes you look a numpty.

 

[butchersapron]

Equally important is what tribes are dominant in the oil-producing regions. I recall that such a tribe threatened to turn off the oil taps if Gaddafi wasnt gone within 24 hours, but I've forgotten how long ago this was.

I keep meaning to do lots of Libyan oil research but so much news comes in that I dont get the chance.

Other oil-related rumours in recent days involved the possibility that Gaddafi could torch the oilfields out of spite, or hold them to random, or blame others for destroying them. There was an utterly unconfirmed rumours some hours ago that an oilrig somewhere had been seen on fire.

I saw something on those lines ( the pipes burning one). Didn't pay it a seconds regard. I'm thinking more in terms of strike action than outright violent opposition.

 

[elbows]

The often large gap/lag between Al Jazeera English and Arabic is somewhat annoying, especially this evening. Would like more info on this:

AJ: Saif Al Islam Gaddafi admits to bombing #Benghazi and #Tripoli. He says they targeted ammunition stores #Libya #feb17

 

[Anudder Oik]

Slightly off-topic, but the BBC live coverage of this is spectacularly bad. They have a VT of William Hague musing aloud whether Qadafi is on a plane to Venezuala or not, and so they're playing it on a continuous loop because they don't trust any other sources.

Agreed. The needle is stuck and it sounds like propaganda churned out with the same old emptyness. The same key words keep getting repeated again and again, ie: "intervention", and the rest is emotional rather than reporting on events. How the revolution is going just isn't in the equation

Video of what is identified as a dead african mercenary...

 

[butchersapron]

Agreed. The needle is stuck and it sounds like propaganda churned out with the same old emptyness. The same key words keep getting repeated again and again, ie: "intervention", and the rest is emotional rather than reporting on events. How the revolution is going just isn't in the equation

Video of what is identified as a dead african mercenary...

No one at all is saying intervention mate. You're misreading this one.

 

[elbows]

I saw something on those lines ( the pipes burning one). Didn't pay it a seconds regard. I'm thinking more in terms of strike action than outright violent opposition.

Found the story I mentioned.

The leader of the Al-Zuwayya tribe in eastern Libya threatened on Sunday to cut oil exports to Western countries within 24 hours unless authorities stop what he called the "oppression of protesters".

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Shaikh Faraj al Zuway said: "We will stop oil exports to Western countries within 24 hours" if the violence did not stop.

 

[Pickman's model]

Video of what is identified as a dead african mercenary...

yeh cos no libyans are africans are they. i think by 'african' you mean 'black' and not 'arab'.

 

[Spion]

It's one of the most interesting things about this: hadn't really thought before about what you do when you still have access to the treasury while the army can't be trusted and protests need to be crushed, but mercenaries are a better solution than asking the secret police to step in, Cairo-style. I'm sure a historian would tell me that it's been done a thousand times before though.

Yep, it's almost medieval, there was a tradition of rulers relying on slave warriors that lasted hundreds of years. At one point in Egypt they took over and formed an idenitfiable dynasty lasting a couple of hundred years

 

[butchersapron]

Found the story I mentioned.

Ta.

24 hours later, here we are.

 

[OneStrike]

I had to look it up to see the details, but it wasFaraj Al Zulwaieh, chief of the Aulwaiieh tribe that made the threat. I thought it was originally a threat that Gaddafi must leave or else he would order his men to cease pumping for the oil (SW of Benhazi). Gulf news that came up offered a diferent threat to what i remembered, according to their article he was demanding assistancefrom the US and EU to stop massacres. Either way i suppose he had drawn a line in opposition to the regime and their brutality. It is the largest oil field in the country, his people operate it and appear to have the power to cease production amongst themselves.

 

[Anudder Oik]

yeh cos no libyans are africans are they. i think by 'african' you mean 'black' and not 'arab'.

African as in Sub Saharan african, ie black skinned as opposed to arab, lighter skinned who are the people who populate the northern coast of africa above the sahara desert. basically they are easily differentiated buy skin colour. The mnan in the footage is black. The mercenaries are said to be from outside...Check out the video, the footage is in the middle.

 

[butchersapron]

I had to look it up to see the details, but it wasFaraj Al Zulwaieh, chief of the Aulwaiieh tribe that made the threat. I thought it was originally a threat that Gaddafi must leave or else he would order his men to cease pumping for the oil (SW of Benhazi). Gulf news that came up offered a diferent threat to what i remembered, according to their article he was demanding assistancefrom the US and EU to stop massacres. Either way i suppose he had drawn a line in opposition to the regime and their brutality. It is the largest oil field in the country, his people operate it and appear to have the power to cease production amongst themselves.

They also know how to play a crowd. Is the oil going?

 

[Lock&Light]

Beat me to it. I'd be very dissapointed if Chavez gave the cunt house room.

My dissapointment is affected by my not being surprised at these rumours.

 

[Pickman's model]

African as in Sub Saharan african, ie black skinned as opposed to arab, lighter skinned who are the people who populate the northern coast of africa above the sahara desert. basically they are easily differentiated buy skin colour. The mnan in the footage is black. The mercenaries are said to be from outside...Check out the video, the footage is in the middle.

i've seen the footage. you wouldn't say 'by european i mean someone from norway who's blonde and blue-eyed as opposed to a swart slav or swarthy italian'. in the same way african covers people from cairo to the cape: using it, as you do, as a synonym for 'black' strikes me as odd, to say the least. anyway, i just remark on your - to my mind - perverse use of the term.

 

[teqniq]

No one at all is saying intervention mate. You're misreading this one.

this guy is:

http://lynch.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/02/21/the_libyan_horror

and there's people advocating it on twitter (which is where the link came from)

Just saying. I do not necessarily agree, but the sooner the butchering of civilians stops the better.

 

[butchersapron]

But means that you do?

Intervene from where and with what?

 

[Pickman's model]

this guy is:

http://lynch.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/02/21/the_libyan_horror

and there's people advocating it on twitter (which is where the link came from)

Just saying. I do not necessarily agree, but the sooner the butchering of civilians stops the better.

and you think that the libyans can wait until an intervention is agreed? i would have thought that the libyans have the best chance to end the killing themselves, by getting rid of the ghaddafi regime.

can you name any western 'interventions' which have ended up saving lives? i don't think i can.

 

[Anudder Oik]

i've seen the footage. you wouldn't say 'by european i mean someone from norway who's blonde and blue-eyed as opposed to a swart slav or swarthy italian'. in the same way african covers people from cairo to the cape: using it, as you do, as a synonym for 'black' strikes me as odd, to say the least. anyway, i just remark on your - to my mind - perverse use of the term.

There are africans and there are arabs ffs. They are different or isn't that PC enough?. A black skinned guy in Libia is an exception and he's in military uniform, therefore chances are he's a mercenary from further south.

 

[quimcunx]

i've seen the footage. you wouldn't say 'by european i mean someone from norway who's blonde and blue-eyed as opposed to a swart slav or swarthy italian'. in the same way african covers people from cairo to the cape: using it, as you do, as a synonym for 'black' strikes me as odd, to say the least. anyway, i just remark on your - to my mind - perverse use of the term.

It's how the Libyans have been describing the mercenaries throughout in tweets and in phone calls to media. So it is their, to your mind, perverse use of the term.

 

[Pickman's model]

There are africans and there are arabs ffs. they are different.

do you mean the arabs are only there temporarily? or do you have something more, er, racial in mind?

 

[Lock&Light]

How MG will die:


Gratuitous in the extreme.

 

[dylans]

hard to say, as you say, quimcunx. In a large group of men with brown faces, one or two white or black faces will be noticed and their numbers could quite easily be exaggerated. It seems that they are there, and it's easy to see why they have been brought in, but we can't know their real significance.

Interesting article here on longstanding anti black African racism in Libya, including racism against black Libyans, and how a lot of the reports of "mercenaries" fit into a discourse of "they must be foreign because no Libyan would do this" argument (which is clearly nonesense as Gadaffi has shown he is quite willing to kill his own people) The article makes the point that the internal security forces are enormous in Libya (regular and reserves add up to 100.000 troops)and chosen for their loyalty and that the addition of a few thousand African mercs would make little difference.

More reports, including those showing troops attacking civilians, point to the Army and the internal security forces. The Security Battalions (‘Kataeb al Amn’) include forces directly under the command of Colonel Massud Abdul Hafiz al-Gaddafi. Not only are these groups well armed and trained, they are carefully chosen for loyalty and ideologically motivated. If there is any truth in the “African Mercenaries” rumors, Tchadians or other former foreign guerrillas, long ago integrated into these internal security forces, would be cause. But the Libyan military and security establishment is gigantic: 50,000 regular troops and almost as many reserves, bolstered by recent spending sprees on Russian and other western equipment. It strains credulity that a few hundred, even a few thousand, “black African” mercenaries would be able to enforce submission upon the Libyan people without the participation of these forces.

He also makes the point that such claims are not new or confined to Libya but were also heard in Bahrain
And this is not the first time recently we have heard such stories.

In Bahrain, where the military opened fire on unarmed protesters with assault riffles, anti-aircraft weapons, and helicopter fire, some locals have accused “Iraqi”, Pakistani” or other mercenaries of having infiltrated the army. In the recent massacres on Guinea Conakry and Abidjan, victims have blamed Liberian mercenaries for having murdered and raped protesters.

Again and again, as here in Libya, we hear the cry that “no fellow countryman would do this!” “Gaddafi couldn’t get Libyans to kill Libyans, so he brought Mercenaries”, not Arab mercenaries, not western mercenaries, but those people who resemble the “lowest”, most “foreign” of our fellow citizens. There have, just today, been a couple of isolated reports that North Koreans were shooting protesters in Libya, but such reports have not gotten the traction that the “African Mercenaries” have. I must ask why this is?

Likewise, pictures of dead dark looking soldiers or, more worrying, ID cards of Africans (given that many innocent African workers live in Libya) should be treated suspiciously when presented as evidence

Everything alleged by the photographer above may be true. But I hesitate as these stories play into a natural combination of nationalism, existing social prejudices (of low class “slave” “Blacks”) and fears (of foreign looking immigrants, familiar to xenophobic discourse in Europe and America). They are understandable, but should they go unchallenged in the lore of this revolution, the new Libya being build risks becoming a no less cruel and unjust place, if for a smaller part of its citizens, adjudged outsiders and traitors by their skin color.

I think his argument rings true. Finally he makes the point that by blaming "the other" , Libyans do a disservice to the reality of their own oppression and make the fight for a just and democratic future all the harder.

These phobias of the “other” neglect the horrible reality that Libyans have lived for the last four decades. They have been oppressed, murdered, tortured and exploited by their fellow Libyans
Libyans: your fellow citizens have enabled this regime to oppress you for so many years. You must come to terms with this in the aftermath of this revolution, or it will be no revolution at all.

But you have already learned the converse: you have the power to stop this oppression. You are doing it now, and the world, awed by the bravery and audacity in the Arab world this year, stand now amazed by your fearlessness.

But Libyans, you do yourself an injustice with these fears directed at “Africans”. You, in more than one sense, are these Africans. You cannot build a society of justice by until you learn this.

http://tomathon.com/mphp/2011/02/libyas-african-mercenary-problem/