NATO's Interference in Libya Led to more Civilian Casualties

by Israeligirl

Six  months ago civilian struggle erupted in Syria and Libya. While so far, western countries were not able to pass any serious resolution about Syria's civil oppression, Libya is a different story.

Concern for Libya's oil reserves led NATO to launch military mission against Libya. Of course it was never described this way, formally the aim of NATO's mission was to save civilians in Libya.

But sadly it seems the opposite has occurred. Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov claimed that NATO’s interference in the conflict between the Muammar Gaddafi regime supporters and the Libyan opposition has increased the number of casualties among civilians.

He highlighted the problem of interfering in civil wars saying, "Members of the international community, first of all our Western partners, have chosen the path of supporting one of the sides in the civil war – probably the party that represented the Libyan people's legitimate aspirations, but this still increased the number of casualties among the civilian population".

People everywhere deserve freedom. The people of Libya, the people of Syria, the people of Egypt and anywhere else in the world – they all deserve freedom and democracy. But as a result of drastic revolution and change these countries are now in anarchy. In Egypt, 24 people died yesterday in religion clashes, the worst sectarian violence since the uprising that ousted Hosni Mubarak in February. Libya fighting still rages on despite the disappearance of Gaddafi.


Photograph: Mohamed Abd El Ghany/Reuters

By supporting the Libyan rebels against Gaddafi, Nato is supporting Al Qaeda influenced elements. Missing anti aircraft missiles have probably been smuggled out of the country already as the United States races to help account for thousands of the weapons stockpiled by the regime of Moammar Gadhafi.

As tempting as it is to make it all right, western interference may lead to catastrophic results. While the Arab spring grabbed news headlines across the world, Iran quietly advanced its nuclear weapon program. If there is one lesson that Arab leaders have learned from Gaddafi's tale it's that without nuclear weapons, NATO can take them down as well. That's a frightening future to consider.

30 years ago this week, Egyptian president Anouar Sadat was assassinated for being brave enough to make peace with Israel. He was able to take that leap of faith in peace because he was a strong leader with full control of his army and the people. Let's hope that such leaders will emerge and bring Egypt and Libya out of anarchy and into the road to freedom and democracy.

An Islamist Terrorist Takes Command of Libyan Rebel Forces (and that's OK with the U.S.?)

Finally, we have evidence that Islamists and even al-Qaeda supporters will play a central role in Libya’s new regime. Up to now there has been reasonable speculation that the U.S. government and NATO might be installing an anti-Western, Islamist government in Libya. Now there’s proof that this is so.

The actual government remains in the hands of non-Islamists, technocrats, ex-regime officials, and moderates. But the armed rebels who actually made the revolution have voted and their idol is…an al-Qaeda guy. Political power, said Mao Zedong, grows out of the barrel of a gun and in Libya’s case this seems a very reasonable expectation.

According to Al Jazeera, the network recommended by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as fair and balanced, Abdul al-Hakim al-Hasadi, also known as Abdelhakim Belhaj, has been named commander of the Tripoli Military Council. He was formerly head of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, an al-Qaeda affiliate. Moderates are understandably nervous.

In 1999, the group’s spokesman praised Osama bin Laden (remember him?) and said: “The United States no longer relies on its agents to constrict the Islamic tide; it has taken this role upon itself.” One of its former leaders worked to plan the attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, resulting in massive loss of life. In 2003, members were involved in an al-Qaeda terror attack in Morocco.

In November 2007, al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri announced that the two groups were merging. True, a number of the group’s activists in prison denounced terrorism and made a deal with the Gaddafi regime in order to be set free. But since the organization broke its pledge to Gaddafi in order to overthrow him, presumably that deal no longer stands.

At any rate, the group was still designated as terrorist by the U.S. government. Here it is on the terrorism list (number 26, in alphabetical order) released by the State Department last May.

Of course, the appointment of one leader in an al-Qaeda affiliated group does not an Islamist regime make. But it is an omen and, again, the people who control the guns are more important than those who control the desks. We will have to see how things develop.

But another indication is that there’s more. Who put him in this post? The armed rebels chose al-Hasadi as their commander, not leaving that selection to the NATO-backed Transitional National Council government. Remember, I pointed out that the guys with guns don’t care what the guys in suits say. Some council members complained that al-Hasadi is sponsored by Qatar, which gave a lot of the money and whose rulers like to play radical sheikhs who often align themselves with Iran.

In fact, we can quote on this point Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, who told a U.S. official in 2007 — as we now know thanks to Wikileaks– “He was extremely worried about Qatar and its continued support for Hamas and other Islamist organizations in the West Bank and Gaza…claiming that they provide ‘more support to fundamentalists than Kuwait or Saudi Arabia.’”

U.S. policy has given no sense that it is aware of this problem.

Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, chairman of the council, said he introduced al-Hasadi to his group’s NATO allies to show that he poses “no danger to international peace and stability.” Well, that’s reassuring.

We can assume that al-Hasadi said that he was merely young and impulsive, was driven to extremes by Gaddafi’s undeniably horrible dictatorship, and is now mature. But that argument would miss the point. Even if he has outgrown al-Qaeda, does he favor the transformation of Libya into an anti-Western Islamist state? Or perhaps he’s been “bought off” by the Western aid money. What do you think?

But let me explain to President Barack Obama, the U.S. government, and NATO how this thing is supposed to work. Your key liaison, be it the CIA or State Department, goes to see Jalil and says:

“As you know our soldiers, supplies, advisors, and warplanes have put you into power. Therefore, you either get rid of all of the al-Qaeda types—at least in positions of any authority—or we stop all of our support and find someone else to head the Transitional National Council. No, TLC [Tender Loving Care] for our interests; no TNC.”

Now, you could call that bullying or imperialistic if you want, but the TNC doesn’t have a right to being supported. NATO backing is not an entitlement. The purpose of U.S. and European policy is supposed to be to protect those countries’ legitimate interests. When you give the money, diplomatic support, and air strikes, that entitles you to some say in the outcome. For example, on the eve of the tenth anniversary of the killing of 3000 Americans by al-Qaeda, you don’t accept the appointment of an al-Qaeda supporter to run the new Libyan military.

True, in Turkey the Obama administration has supported an elected anti-American Islamist regime; in the Gaza Strip it saved an anti-American Islamist regime; in Syria, it did everything possible to avoid condemning an anti-American pro-Islamist regime; in Lebanon, it stood by and didn’t help the real moderates as an anti-American Islamist-dominated regime came to power; in Iran, it engaged an anti-American Islamist regime; and in Egypt, it said that it had no problem with an anti-American Islamist regime coming to power.

But actually installing an Islamist regime with Western weapons? That’s crossing the line.


Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, and Middle East editor and featured columnist at PajamasMedia http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). GLORIA Center site is http://www.gloria-center.org.His articles published originally outside of PajamasMedia are at <http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com> 

New Libya. An Islamic Caliphate Supporting Terror?

Now that it appears that the rebels have pushed out Qaddafi we may be on the verge of a new Libya.  The big question is what shape will this new Libya take. There is much evidence pointing toward a new government supporting terrorism and imposing Shariah law.

Remember the United States committed to helping these rebels before even knowing who they were.  Back in March, Admiral James Stavridis, NATO’s supreme allied commander, said in testimony before Congress that U.S. intelligence suggested there may be “flickers” of al-Qaeda and Hezbollah in the rebels.

We have seen flickers in the intelligence of potential al-Qaeda, Hezbollah — we’ve seen different things. But at this point, I don’t have detail sufficient to say that there’s a significant al-Qaeda presence or any other terrorist presence in and among these folks.

 Flicker's? What the heck does that mean? Did we help a group of rebels take over Libya who will use it as a terrorist staging ground? Did we trade in an anti-American Libyan government that could be controlled for an anti-American Libyan government that could not be controlled.

It certainly looks that way, many of the leaders of the Libyan rebel fighters have admitted past allegiances to al-Qaeda. One of the rebel leaders Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi, even fought for al-Qaeda against US troops in Afghanistan till he was arrested in 2002.

In an interview with the Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore, Mr al-Hasidi admitted that he had recruited "around 25" men from the Derna area in eastern Libya to fight against coalition troops in Iraq. Some of them, he said, are "today are on the front lines in Adjabiya".

Mr al-Hasidi insisted his fighters "are patriots and good Muslims, not terrorists," but added that the "members of al-Qaeda are also good Muslims and are fighting against the invader".

His revelations came even as Idriss Deby Itno, Chad's president, said al-Qaeda had managed to pillage military arsenals in the Libyan rebel zone and acquired arms, "including surface-to-air missiles, which were then smuggled into their sanctuaries".

Mr al-Hasidi admitted he had earlier fought against "the foreign invasion" in Afghanistan, before being "captured in 2002 in Peshwar, in Pakistan". He was later handed over to the US, and then held in Libya before being released in 2008.

US and British government sources said Mr al-Hasidi was a member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, or LIFG, which killed dozens of Libyan troops in guerrilla attacks around Derna and Benghazi in 1995 and 1996.

Even though the LIFG is not part of the al-Qaeda organisation, the United States military's West Point academy has said the two share an "increasingly co-operative relationship". In 2007, documents captured by allied forces from the town of Sinjar, showed LIFG emmbers made up the second-largest cohort of foreign fighters in Iraq, after Saudi Arabia.

The WSJ reported that two former Mujahedeen in Afghanistan and a terrorist who spent 6-years in  Guantanamo Bay  were training and recruiting rebel forces.

The presence of Islamists like these amid the opposition has raised concerns, among some fellow rebels as well as their Western allies, that the goal of some Libyan fighters in battling Col. Gadhafi is to propagate Islamist extremism.

Think about this for a second, on one hand our heroes overseas are fighting against al-Qaeda in the war against terrorism, on the the other hand we are backing an al-Qaeda related group of Islamist terrorists in Libya.  Am I missing something here?

But for some reason the US is turning a blind eye to Al Qaeda’s involvement with the rebels. In addition to supporting the rebels at war through NATO the US has allowed the Libyans rebels to take over Libya’s embassy in the US. Holy Cow! We now have a al-Qaeda ambassador to the United States.

As you look at the videos of the cheering rebels entering Tripoli proclaiming freedom from Qaddafi understand that the Libyan people may have traded one despot for another.  The Heritage Foundation got a hold of the draft constitution created by the rebels (embedded below).  While it contains nice sounding elements like rule of law, freedom of speech and religious practice, and a multi-party electoral system it begins with a very ominous clause.



The highlighted area reads: 

“Islam is the Religion of the State, and the principal source of legislation is Islamic Jurisprudence (Sharia).” Under this constitution, in other words, Islam is law.

Putting it all together we have a rebellion connected to  al-Qaeda, aiming to install Sharia Law on its people.  Something tells me that long-term both the United States and the citizens of Libya are going to regret supporting this rebel movement.

 62823350 Libya Draft Constitutional Charter for the Transitional Stage

New Obama Administration Achievement: Messing Up Turkey, Syria, and Libya Within 24 Hours

It’s truly amazing that literally every day the Obama administration finds a new way to mess up the Middle East. July 14-15, 2011, is a new record since it damaged Western interests and any hope for a stable future in three countries almost simultaneously!

I noted a few days ago that the Obama government finally seemed to call for the end to Syria’s current regime, but within hours it backtracked. Now the administration favors conciliation talks between the opposition and the Assad dictatorship. They’re still urging the regime to make reforms, they’re just urging it more loudly.

And with whom is the U.S. government coordinating this effort? With the Turkish regime, an ally of Iran and Syria, and specifically with its foreign minister who wrote a book in Turkish calling for all the Muslim-majority states to ally against the West (and now has written a book in English saying that all countries should be good buddies). True, Clinton did urge the Turkish government to allow more free speech.

Generally, though, she praised the regime and its growing role in the region. (Does that include its unbending hostility toward Israel and support for Hamas and Hizballah?) She also said:

“Stability inside Syria is important for Turkey. But the right kind of stability — a transition to democracy — is what would be best for Turkey and even more importantly what would be best for the Syrian people.”

Now let me ask you a question: What kind of stable regime in Syria would a Turkey governed by a stealth Islamist regime allied with Iran like to see? How about either a radical anti-Western regime or, even better, an Islamist regime?

On the same day that Clinton was urging the opposition to conciliate with the Syrian government, reliable opposition sources (though that doesn’t mean their numbers are accurate) reported 41 protesters killed by government forces, many of them in Damascus.

Regarding Libya, the Obama administration recognized the opposition Transitional National Council “as the legitimate governing authority.” Funny, it’s never thought of doing that in Syria!

This is a big step and the next step is to hand over huge amounts of Libyan financial assets frozen in the United States to this opposition group, whose control of the revolution is totally insecure, whose own political composition is unclear, and whose behavior in the field is not so great.

Let’s be clear: Muammar Gaddafi was and is a terrible tyrant. But now that NATO is supporting the “good guys,” we should keep posted on their doings. Remember that Obama era foreign policy is run by people who villify the United States for supporting “bad guys” in the past. But I wonder how the behavior of the Libyan rebels would stack up compared to the Nicaraguan “Contras.” At best the same, or possibly worse?

Here’s what New York Times reporter Brian Denton, on the scene when the rebels took the town of Qawalish, wrote:

“A short while later rebels were shooting padlocks off the metal doors to shops…and shops were being aggressively looted by armed men in rebel attire. Every few minutes, a truck would pass by on the road, headed back toward Zintan loaded with what seemed to be stolen goods. …

“By Sunday evening … all of the shops in the town had been ransacked. … In building after building, furniture was flipped over, dishes and mirrors shattered, and everything torn apart. … The town was … a shattered, emptied ghost town decorated with broken glass.

“No one could reasonably dispute that when the Qaddafi forces … crushed the demonstrations in Tripoli, besieged Misurata, stormed Ajdabiya, shelled Benghazi—that all of these resulted in more damage to civilian property and loss of civilian life than what happened when the rebels captured tiny Qawalish. But … if [the rebels] think that the smaller scale of their crimes excuses or justifies them, then they risk embarrassing their backers, losing international support and fueling exactly the kind of war they have insisted they and NATO would prevent.”

So much for protecting civilians. Remember, the Obama administration has turned over the fate of U.S. policy in Libya and handed over the services of the U.S. (and NATO, along with European governments) armed forces to an unknown group of rebels who, if they succeed, will probably massacre those from tribes and regions they don’t like. Ironically, in an age obsessed with racism, the opposition has been killing blacks because Gaddafi imported sub-Saharan Africans to work and fight for the regime.

Oh, but the opposition has hired an American public relations firm, one that has experience in making dictatorial regimes look good in Washington.

If Libya is Obama’s Iraq, he is going to have to compare the rationales for intervention and the results some day.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, and a featured columnist at PajamasMedia http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is http://www.gloria-center.org. His articles published originally in places other than PajamasMedia can be found at http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com     

Is A Deal With the Taliban The Basis for U.S. Withdrawal From Afghanistan?

By Barry Rubin

Ahmad Rashid is widely considered to be the best journalist on Afghan and related Pakistani issues. And he has a scoop over the secret U.S. negotiations with the Taliban. I respect him though I don’t necessarily agree with him. And Rashid’s points must be integrated into the U.S. and Western debate over Afghanistan.

Here’s the key section:

“The talks are premised on the essential realisation that neither a successful western withdrawal from Afghanistan nor a transition to Afghan forces can take place, without an end to the civil war and a political settlement that involves the Afghan government and the Taliban, but also Pakistan, the US and the region.”

Think about that, whether or not it is accurate. What Rashid is saying is that the U.S. government “knows” that it has to make a deal with the Taliban to withdraw from Afghanistan. And since the Obama Administration is eager to get out (for political reasons more than strategic ones), it has a strong need to reach agreement with the Taliban, which means that unilateral concessions are likely.

Rashid provides a detailed history of the talks and concludes:

“A former Taliban leader told me recently that `’the fundamental problem is between the US and the Taliban and we consider the Afghan government as the secondary problem.’…If that is the case and the Taliban would like to see an orderly western exit from Afghanistan, the media and governments must allow these talks to succeed.”

This reminds me of Vietnam and other places where a revolutionary group maintained that the government stands only because of foreign support. Eliminate the foreign support and the radicals will win. The local government is treated as a puppet that is of no significance.

The bottom line, though, is that the U.S. government is seeking a deal with the group that facilitated and aided the September 11 attacks. Of course, once Western forces are out of Afghanistan, the Taliban will restart its effort to seize state power and a demoralized Afghan government is more likely to collapse.

None of this is known to most Americans. If they were aware that their government’s hidden strategy in withdrawing is to make a deal with the Taliban, with September 11 blood on its hands, one wonders what their attitude would be.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(From the Lid)

According to latest reports ..

...such talks may be gaining momentum after the U.N. Security Council voted unanimously Friday to treat al-Qaida and the Taliban separately when it comes to U.N. sanctions, a move aimed at supporting the Afghan government's reconciliation efforts.

Meanwhile, violence persists. Insurgents attacks targeted three convoys ferrying fuel and supplies to NATO troops in western and eastern Afghanistan over the weekend, killing nine Afghan security guards and torching at least 15 fuel tankers, officials said.

Ahmad Rashid's Comparison to Vietnam is particularly interesting. But not in the same way that Rashid describes. It seems as though dispited the gains made by our American Heroes in recent months, our President is looking for away to take away a possible victory and replace it with a "cut and run."

Farrakhan: Your Record America Stinks In The Eyes of God

How did he get out again? He should have been sitting in a padded room wearing one of those nice trench coats with the long sleeves that tie into a knot around the back. But somehow the slug from the Nation of Islam, one of the biggest purveyors of hateful venom in the world Louis Farrakhan, must have escaped again.

The Muslim leader who was recently quoted as saying America will be bathed in blood, and told Al-Jazeera that 9/11 was planned by the US because “America was looking for a New Pearl Harbor.”

On June 15th Farrakhan joined such “luminaries” as Ramsey Clark and the always-crazy former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney in a press conference near the UN to speak out against the US action in Libya. No, Farrakhan is not suddenly concerned with the constitution and/or the war powers act, his concern was that no one knows Moammar Gadhafi like he does and the Libyan tyrant is a real nice guy (he didn’t mention it but I bet Gadhafi calls him mom every day).

Farrakhan gave a speech that lasted more than an hour, praising Libya and bashing the West.

He began by saying that NATO is using the Security Council as a pretext to assassinate his good buddy “Brother” Moammar Gadhafi and promote regime change in Libya. He says the UN fostered the revolt and created a Civil War in Libya as if Gadhafi’s tyrannical rule had nothing to do with it, nor did the fact that he was shooting his own people have anything to do with why NATO went into Libya.

The loony leader predicts that this action will destroy both the UN and the Nations involved.

United Nations and its 15-member Security Council, who he referred to as “the terror council,” have no legitimate right to exist for passing the resolution that has allowed NATO to take military action in Libya. He claims  the reason why the action was taken was to Punish “Brother Leader Gadhafi” for nationalizing Libyan Oil forty years ago.

“What has Moammar Gadhafi done to deserve what this united coalition of demons is putting on him?” Farrakhan said to murmurs of approval from his supporters. “They say he has lost the moral right (to rule) because he has killed his own people. But you have never proved that charge. Check the record.”

Hey Crazy Louie…we saw it on TV, we saw it on the internet, maybe the asylum didn’t give you video privileges those days.

Farrakhan went to spew a list of everything done by the US, England, France and Italy that Crazy Louie considered bad, including trying to oust those other “nice guy” tyrants Castro in Cuba and Papa Doc in Haiti.

Farakhan went on to compare life in Libya today to the West saving the harshest criticism for his home country, the United States. Apparently according to Farrakhan, Libya has no poverty,or homelessness. But as for America, “Your Record America Stinks In The Eyes of God”

What is hard to understand is that if Libya is perfect and the US is so awful, why doesn’t crazy Louie move to Libya and help out “Brother” Moammar Gadhafi.
Outside of the progressive community,  Farrakhan’s attempt to prove the US is worse than Gadhafi falls on deaf ears. The reason for the progressive support of Gadhafi is he is an ideal for”successful” progressive leadership.

The Libyan government eliminated all private property rights and most private businesses in 1978. The renting of property was declared illegal, and ownership of property was limited to a single dwelling per family, with all other properties being redistributed. The judiciary is not independent, the private practice of law is illegal, and all lawyers must be members of the Secretariat of Justice. There is little land ownership, and the government has the power to renationalize any property that has been privatized.

Corruption is perceived as widespread. Libya ranks 130th out of 180 countries in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index for 2009. Government integrity is undermined by favoritism based on personal and family connections. The Gadhafi clan exercises near-total control of major government decisions.

Unemployment and underemployment are chronically high. The labor market is tightly regulated and subject to government directives. Labor law specifies minimum wage rates, the number of work hours, night shift rules, and dismissal regulations.

It looks as if Crazy Louie needs to do a bit more investigation of life in Libya and a lot less hatred of his own country.  He continues to forget is that if he made the same speech in Tripoli, but condemned Libya instead of the US and the West, it would be the last speech he would ever make.

If you have the stomach for the entire hour and a half presentation it is embedded below: