Sources: Benghazi suspect detained in Libya

Πηγή: CNN
By Paul Cruickshank. Susan Candiotti and Tim Lister
March 14 2013

A man suspected of involvement in the September attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi is being held in Libya, according to two sources who have spoken with CNN.

Both sources confirmed the man's name as Faraj al-Shibli (also spelled Chalabi). One of the sources, who has been briefed on the arrest by Western intelligence officials, said al-Shibli was detained within the past two days and had recently returned from a trip to Pakistan.

It is not known whether he has been charged with any offense related to the attack in Benghazi on September 11, which resulted in the deaths of four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens.

Al-Shibli comes from a town called Sidi Armouma al-Marj, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) from Benghazi. He was a member of the Libyan Islamist Fighting Group, a militant organization that tried to overthrow the Gadhafi regime in the mid-1990s.

In 2004, the Libyan government reported al-Shibli to the United Nations as on its "wanted" list and issued an Interpol "Red Notice" seeking his arrest.

It was the second warrant issued by the Gadhafi regime for al-Shibli's arrest. In 1998, he was named with two other Libyans as allegedly involved in the murder of a German counterintelligence official, Silvan Becker, and his wife, Vera, who were killed in the Libyan town of Sirte in 1994. The Libyan authorities also issued an arrest warrant for Osama bin Laden in connection with the crime.

However, some analysts have cast doubt on the Gadhafi regime's assertion that Libyan Islamist Fighting Group members carried out the attack on the German couple.

Jihadist groups are strong to this day between Benghazi and the town of Derna to the east, an area that includes al-Marj. Several groups are thought to have camps in the Green Mountains between al-Marj and towns along the coast.

America's Conquest of Africa: The Roles of France and Israel

Πηγή: Global Research
Introduction by Cynthia McKinney
by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya and Julien Teil

Oct 6 2011

Introduction: “Operation Gladio” Then and Now...

I will begin with the scandal of Operation Gladio that climaxed in the murder of former Italian Prime Minister, Aldo Moro, who on the day of his kidnapping, was to announce an Italian coalition government that would include the Italian Communist Party.

Leader of the Christian Democratic Party at that time, Francesco Cossiga, admits in the 1992 BBC Timewatch documentary about Operation Gladio, that he chose to “sacrifice” Moro “for the good of the Republic.” Not unlike the targeted assassinations that the U.S. government engages in around the world, where someone extrajudicially makes decisions on who lives and who dies. In the three-part documentary, Cossiga states that the decision caused his hair to turn white.

Operation Gladio is the ugly real-life tale of the U.S. government’s decision to hire members of the state security apparatus of various European countries, and in collaboration with recruited community allies, wreak terror on innocent citizens by blowing up train stations, shooting customers in grocery stores, and even killing police officers in order to convince populations in Europe to give up their rights in exchange for certain security measures and enhanced state power.

Yes, Operation Gladio, along with Operation Northwoods and U.S. policy toward Libya, shows us that the United States is willing to create terror groups in order to justify a fight against terrorists! Sadly, this has become the modus operandi of our government in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Europe and Africa. And the U.S. government after 9/11/01 has become like a “Gladio laboratory” of state policies that rip the U.S. Bill of Rights to shreds and lie to the public.

The beginning of the end of Operation Gladio occurred when the existence of the U.S. program was revealed. Characteristically, instead of stopping such insanity, the Europeans joined in creating multiple other “Operation Gladios.” Placed in this context, Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya’s second installment in a four-part series reveals how U.S. policy in Libya falls right in line with U.S. actions in the past. In my opinion, Libya will not be the last location for such illegal activities unless we stop our government.

Along with French videographer Julien Teil, Nazemroaya weaves the incredible-but-true scenario of U.S. finance of alleged terrorists, wanted by Interpol, who became the chief protagonists in the NATO genocide currently unfolding in Libya.

Cynthia McKinney, 1 October 2011.

Cynthia McKinney is a former U.S. Congresswoman who served in two different Georgia federal dictricts in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1993 to 2003 and from 2005 to 2007 as a member of the U.S. Democratic Party. She was also the U.S. Green Party presidential candidate in 2008. While in the U.S. Congress she served in the U.S. Banking and Finance Committee, the U.S. National Security Committee (later renamed the U.S. Armed Services Committee), and the U.S. Foreign Affairs Committee (later renamed the U.S. International Relations Committee). She also served in the U.S. International Relations subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights. McKinney has conducted two fact-finding missions in Libya and also recently finished a nationwide speaking tour in the United States sponsored by the ANSWER Coalition about the NATO bombing campaign in Libya.

The war against Libya is built on fraud. The UN Security Council passed two resolutions against Libya on the basis of unproven claims that Qaddafi was killing his own people in Benghazi...

Order from Chaos?

A repeat of the disorder and pandemonium generated inside Afghanistan is in the works for the continent of Africa.

The United States, with the help of Britain, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia, created the brutal Taliban and then eventually waged war on its Taliban allies. Similarly, across Africa, the United States and its allies are creating a new series of future enemies to fight, but after initially working with them or using them to sow the seeds of chaos in Africa.

Washington has literally been helping fund insurgencies and regime change projects in Africa. “Human rights” and “democratization” are also being used as a smokescreen for colonialism and war.

So-called human rights and humanitarian organizations are now partners in this imperialist project directed against Africa.

Canada - Intelligence Service Accused of Libya Interrogations

Mustafa Krer was detained in Libya from 2002 to 2010 for alleged ties to the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group

Πηγή: allAfrica
Sep 28 2011


New York — A Libyan-Canadian citizen who was imprisoned for eight years by the Muammar Gaddafi government says that agents from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) were among foreign agents who interrogated him while he was in Libyan custody for suspected terrorist ties, Human Rights Watch said today.

The former prisoner, Mustafa Krer, 46, was detained in Libya from 2002 to 2010 for alleged ties to the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group. He told Human Rights Watch that Canadian interrogators visited him about three times between 2003 and 2005, although he could not recall the exact number of Canadian interrogations or the dates. Once, he said, CSIS agents interrogated him jointly with a team of Libyans in the room. Krer did not allege mistreatment during any of the CSIS interrogations. But he said that his Libyan captors beat him repeatedly between the time of his arrest in May 2002 and mid-2004.

"Canada's apparent decision to interrogate a suspect in the custody of Gaddafi's forces is deeply troubling," said Andrea Prasow, senior counterterrorism counsel at Human Rights Watch. "CSIS did not torture Krer, but they must have known that the Libyans probably did."

Human Rights Watch called on CSIS to clarify whether it had interrogated Krer in Libya, and if so, under what circumstances. CSIS did not respond to a request from Human Rights Watch for comment about the case.

In addition to alleged interrogations by CSIS, Krer said that agents of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) interrogated him in Libya about seven times starting in 2005, and that the United Kingdom's MI6 intelligence agency interrogated him once in 2007. He said he was not mistreated during these interrogations.

Krer alleged that Libyan interrogators beat him repeatedly with sticks, cables, and kicks to the face, sometimes while he was blindfolded. One beating required him to get stitches on the face. On one occasion Krer said he was forced to stay in what he called a "steel box" for five days with limited food and water.

Krer told Human Rights Watch that agents who identified themselves as being from CSIS interrogated him about three times. After interrogations by four governments over eight years he could not remember exactly how many times CSIS agents had questioned him.

During one interrogation, he said, a team of Canadians and Libyans questioned him together for more than seven hours. "I was at the head of the table," he said. "Left and right there was a line - seven Canadians and seven Libyans. I was there, and they did it together. It was an interrogation, many, many questions."

Krer said the Canadians had knowledge about specific phone calls he had made while living in Canada and they showed him surveillance photos of him in public places in Canada.

After the fall of Tripoli to rebel forces in late August 2011, Human Rights Watch discovered a cache of documents in a Libyan External Security building revealing details of close cooperation between the US, the UK, and other governments with the Libyan intelligence agency. One of those documents, which appears to be from the CIA, requests that the Libyans ask Krer a set of 89 questions. In an interview with Human Rights Watch following the fall of Gaddafi, Krer confirmed that he was asked those questions by the Libyans and the CIA. He said he was also asked some of those questions by CSIS. Prior to this interview with Human Rights Watch, the role of CSIS in Krer's interrogation was not known.

Human Rights Watch also interviewed Krer in 2005 while he was still in Libyan custody, meeting him privately in an office at Abu Salim prison. He did not mention torture or interrogations by foreign agents at that time, but he was clearly uncomfortable talking about matters that might put him in danger. At one point he asked to write a note in the interviewer's notebook, apparently afraid to speak out loud. "I'm not happy with what's happening with me," he wrote.

In both interviews Krer said that he had returned to Libya from Canada, via Malta, in May 2002, after getting guarantees from Libyan authorities that he would not face prosecution for past opposition activity, including involvement in the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), which had been fighting since the late 1990s to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi. Libyan security forces arrested him at the Tripoli airport upon his return, he said. Krer was eventually sentenced to life in prison after a trial where, he said, his lawyers were not allowed to speak. He was released in January 2010 after the intervention of Gaddafi's son Saif al-Islam, who mediated the release of a few hundred prisoners, including members of the LIFG.

Krer said that he was held in various facilities during his eight years in custody and that he endured repeated torture during the first two-and-a-half years. At the Internal Security Agency office on al-Sikka Street in Tripoli, he said, he was held for five days in August heat in what he called a "steel box" with limited food and water. The box was 1.5 by 2 meters, and too small for a person to stand, he said.

Krer said interrogators at the internal security facility on al-Sikka Street subjected him and fellow prisoners to beatings on the soles of their feet with a thick cable. "[There's a] stick that they wind your legs around, two guys hold you, and another hits your feet with an electric cable," he said. "But they don't care where they hit."

Krer also said that he did not receive a consular visit from Canada until 2005. Starting that year, he received a total of five visits until his release in 2010, from Canadian diplomats who were helpful, he said.

In May 2005, Human Rights Watch interviewed the head of Libya's Internal Security Agency, Col. Tohamy Khaled, and asked him about Krer's case. Krer is "one of the terrorists," Khaled said - something that, he said, is "also known to the Canadians."

Libya's record of torture under Gaddafi is well documented. The US State Department Report on Human Rights Practices, a reference consulted by many governments, stated in its 2004 edition on Libya, "Security personnel reportedly routinely tortured prisoners during interrogations or as punishment." Some of the reported methods of torture, according to the State Department, included chaining prisoners to a wall for hours; clubbing; applying electric shock; applying corkscrews to the back; pouring lemon juice in open wounds; breaking fingers and allowing the joints to heal without medical care; suffocating with plastic bags; deprivation of food and water; hanging by the wrists; suspension from a pole inserted between the knees and elbows; cigarette burns; threats of being attacked by dogs; and beating on the soles of the feet.

In December 2004, just prior to the visit to Libya by Paul Martin, Prime Minister of Canada from 2003 to 2006, Human Rights Watch sent Martin a list of human rights concerns. "Prolonged incommunicado detention is common, as are confessions extracted by means of torture," the Human Rights Watch memo to Martin said.

"There is no justification for CSIS agents joining in the interrogation of a prisoner by agents of a government well-known for torturing prisoners," Prasow said. "CSIS should explain what it knows about Krer's case."

Islamists hit at Libya’s liberal leadership

Πηγή: FT
By Borzou Daragahi and Roula Khalaf 

September 16, 2011

A rift has emerged within Libya’s nascent political leadership as Islamists seek to assert themselves by lashing out against nominally secular liberals perceived as too power hungry and tainted by ties with the former regime of Muammer Gaddafi.

The tensions are raising questions about the role of Islamists in the post-Gaddafi era and threaten to destabilise a fragile transitional national council at a time when rebels are still fighting on several fronts.

The Arab spring has proved a boon for Islamist movements, which had formed the most organised opposition against autocratic regimes. Libya’s Islamists, however, are an unknown quantity and their influence on the political transition remains difficult to gauge.

Criticism of liberal members of the NTC, particularly the prime minister, Mahmoud Jibril, has been led by Sheikh Ali Salabi, a Qatar-based Islamist preacher who is thought to be popular among Islamist-leaning Libyans.

Mr Jibril must resign, the sheikh told al-Jazeera news channel this week, because he lacks wide support in Libya and is too weak a prime minister.

Others were more explicit in their criticism of Mr Jibril, who completed his doctorate in political science at the University of Pittsburgh and spent much of his adult life abroad.

“He studied in the west, and his thinking is that way,” said Mohammed Darrat, a political leader in the city of Misurata. “We want Libyan democracy, but we don’t want something from outside.”

The infighting has caught the attention of Libya’s transitional authorities. Mustafa Abdul Jalil, the head of the interim government, on Monday called for unity in his first speech since arriving in Tripoli, the Libyan capital. He told cheering crowds that Islamic law would be the main source of legislation, but also tried to assuage western fears by underlining that the state would be based on “moderate” Islam.

“We will not accept any extremist ideology, on the right or the left. We are a Muslim people, for a moderate Islam, and will stay on this road,” he said.

In reality, the ideological divide between Islamists and avowed liberals may be less significant than it appears. It is also narrower than in Egypt and Tunisia, where political transitions have provoked fierce tensions between the two camps.

Libya is a deeply conservative society, where alcohol is banned and most women wear the headscarf. Few argue over the imposition of sharia, or Islamic law, because many of its tenets would appear to be in practice already.

But the leadership of the TNC, dominated by former officials of Colonel Gaddafi’s regime and exiles from abroad, has begun to rankle with Islamists, many of whom bore the brunt of repression for decades.

Analysts say Mr Jibril has become a convenient lightning rod for Islamists clamouring for greater power. They complain about his hard-hitting style, and contrast it unfavourably with the consensus-building of Mr Abdul Jalil.

Political insiders have been working to heal a rift between Mr Jebril and Abdul-Hakim Belhadj, the former leader of the Libya Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), which has been accused of having ties with al-Qaeda. Mr Belhadj’s brigade was instrumental in capturing Tripoli and he now heads the military council in the capital.

The concern, within Libya and abroad, also stems from lack of clarity over the nature and appeal of Islamist movements. Unlike the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt or the Nahda party in Tunisia, there is no single political Islamist organisation that dominates.

Much of the attention has focused on the LIFG. But this was a small organisation that numbered only a few hundred hardened fighters. Its main leaders denounced violence after spending years in jail and the group itself was riddled with rivalries and divisions.

Sheikh Salabi is seen as a voice for the more mainstream political Islam espoused by the Muslim Brotherhood, which once had a strong following among Libya’s middle class but was forced underground by Col Gaddafi’s repression. The sheikh is said to have been involved in negotiations over the formation of the NTC, which includes people close to the Brotherhood.

When the uprising erupted in eastern Libya in February, other local Islamist rebel groups emerged and the austere Salafi Islam has been gaining momentum, according to observers.

However, many Libyans follow Sufi orders, a form of mysticism very different to the literalism of the Salafis.

In the short term, the main challenge for the transitional government once the fighting subsides will be to integrate the disparate Islamist rebel groups into the security or political apparatus.

Even former defenders of the Gaddafi regime acknowledge that the democratic spirit of the Arab uprisings have changed Islamists.

“The dynamic of this revolution, the follow-up over the last six months, made these people grow up intellectually and to deal with these doubts [about them],” said Khaled Kaim, a former deputy foreign minister under Col Gaddafi now being held by rebels.

Islamists emerge in force in new Libya

Πηγή: Washington Post
By Leila Fadel

Wednesday, September 14

Abdel Hakim Belhaj, commander of the Tripoli Military Council, is now responsible for keeping order in Tripoli. He was formerly the emir of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which was considered a terrorist organization by the United States.

TRIPOLI, Libya — For decades, bearded men in Libya were afraid to walk in the streets or go to the mosque, worried that to be seen as an Islamist would land them in prison, or worse.

As Libya’s leader, Moammar Gaddafi regarded Islamists as the greatest threat to his authority, and he ordered thousands of them detained, tortured and, in some cases, killed. The lucky ones fled the country in droves. But with Gaddafi now in hiding, Islamists are vying to have a say in a new Libya, one they say should be based on Islamic law.

Although it went largely unnoticed during the tumultuous civil war the regime lost last month, Islamists were at the heart of the fight, many as rebel commanders. Now some are clashing with secularists within the rebels’ Transitional National Council, prompting worries among some liberals that the Islamists — who still command the bulk of fighters and weapons — could use their strength to assert an even more dominant role.

“We don’t want any vacuums or for those Islamists to steal the revolution,” said a senior rebel leader, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the internal rifts.

Among the Islamists in the rebel ranks, a small fraction were militants who had previously waged war abroad. Some had fought Islamic wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Chechnya and Kosovo under a militant banner; some ended up in the arms of more extreme groups such as al-Qaeda. The city of Derna, a key bastion of resistance against Gaddafi in eastern Libya, was home to dozens of Libyan fighters who fought in Iraq after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

In the fight against Gaddafi’s forces, the Islamist militants played an important role among the rebels’ rag-tag forces because of their experience in battles abroad. With a place in the new Libya, most have said that their days as militants are over. The largest of the organizations, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, has re-branded itself as the Libyan Islamic Movement for Change.

Some Islamists are blunt in expressing resentment about fellow rebels.

“Secularists don’t like Islamists,” said Ismail Sallabi, an influential cleric who is among nine leaders commanding rebel forces in eastern Libya. Before the revolution, he said, he had never held a weapon. “They want to use Islamists in the fighting stage and then take control.”

“I’m proud to be an Islamist, and this is a historic chance for the West to understand Islamists up close,” Sallabi said.

Libya is a conservative Muslim nation, and its future government will probably reflect that; the governments of Egypt and Iraq are among Arab states that base their governance on Islamic law. While Gaddafi’s government tolerated little in the way of activism, Libya’s Islamist groups appear to have emerged from his reign as the best-organized among political groups, and secularists among Libya’s new leaders appear determined not to alienate them.

One early step intended to rein in Islamists is the creation of a Supreme Security Committee, which has put the most powerful rebel commander, former militant Abdelhakim Belhadj, under civilian control. But in an interview, Ali Tarhouni, a liberal who heads the committee, also sounded a conciliatory note.

Islamist Neocons? The West's latest tactic in the war on terrorism

Πηγή: Antiwar

By Justin Raimondo

September 07, 2011

The effort to paint the Libyan rebels as freedom-loving democrats is visibly faltering, especially in view of the rise of Abdelhakim Belhaj, alias Abu Abdullah al-Sadiq, as the top military commander in Tripoli.

Belhaj’s biography is interesting, to say the least: the founder of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), he traveled to Afghanistan in the 1980s, where he met Osama bin Laden and fought against the Soviet-backed regime. After the war, he eventually returned to Libya, where he founded the LIFG and took the nom-de-guerre Abu Abdullah al-Sadiq. An Islamist revolt in Eastern Libya, led by the LIFG, was defeated by Gadhafi in 1996, and Belhaj fled the country for his old stomping grounds in Afghanistan.

He was welcomed by the Taliban and al Qaeda, where he was especially close to Mullah Omar. LIFG set up two training camps in Afghanistan, one of which was headed up by Abu Yahya, now Al Qaeda’s top ideologue, also a Libyan national. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the LIFG was listed as an Official Terrorist Group and Belhaj was targeted by the US.

The CIA traced him to Malaysia, in 2004, and he was arrested at Kuala Lumpur airport. They shipped him to Bangkok, where he was held in a secret CIA prison, “renditioned” back to Libya, and jailed by the Gadhafi regime, where he says he was tortured. Freed after a seven-year stint in the hoosegow – due to the efforts of Gadhafi’s son, Saif – Belhaj underwent a “deradicalization” conversion – I’m sure the torture helped – and renounced “extremism.” As the Guardian reports:

“The British government encouraged and helped publicize the Libyan ‘deradicalisation’ effort, modelled on what was being done with former jihadis in Egypt. In a program overseen by Gaddafi’s son Saif al-Islam, the LIFG produced a 400-page theological document entitled Corrective Studies explaining its renunciation of violence. Ironically, in an al-Jazeera film in March, Belhaj praised the mediation of Saif al-Islam for his release. Gaddafi’s son said that the men who had been freed ‘were no longer a danger to society.’”

The British investment in “deradicalization” paid off when Belhaj and his associates in the ex-LIFG formed their “Islamic Movement for Change” and called for NATO to intervene on the rebels’ behalf. Soon after the assassination by Islamists of the rebels’ top military commander, Abdul Fatah Younes – a former Interior Minister in Gadhafi’s government who defected to the rebel camp amidst much ballyhoo – Belhaj was made chief of the Tripoli Military Council, the Libyan rebels’ equivalent of the Pentagon, and given the official imprimatur of Western elites. As the Guardian notes, citing jihadi “expert” Noman Benotman:

“The experiences of the LIFG leaders in armed conflicts in Afghanistan, Libya and Algeria have forced them to mature politically, recalculate strategically, moderate behaviorally, modify their ideological beliefs.”

Modified them to allow for NATO intervention on behalf of an emerging Islamist emirate, lorded over by “Emir” Belhaj?

Benotman, himself a former LIFG fighter, now works for the Quilliam Foundation, which is described by the Guardian as “a UK government-funded counter-radicalization think tank in London.” The Quilliamites are the institutional expression of the West’s latest grand strategy in the endless “war on terrorism,” a campaign of ideological warfare aiming to split the Islamist movement into pro- and-anti Western factions. The Libyan intervention is the culmination of this co-optation strategy.

The Foundation is named after William “Abdullah” Quilliam, a British solicitor of radical political opinions who converted to Islam, in 1882, on a trip to North Africa, and returned to London to found a uniquely British variant of his adopted religion. With a small group of British converts around him, he founded a mosque, a Muslim college, and wrote several books, claiming Queen Victoria (who ordered five copies ofThe Faith of Islam) among his readers. The Victorian equivalent of the EDL, however, apparently made life difficult for Quilliam and his group, and “Abdullah,” as he was now known, made off for Turkey, where he was designated the “Sheikh of Britain.”

This is where the trail gets murky, but it seems Quilliam returned to Britain in 1914, under an assumed name, “Prof. Henri Marcel Leon,” where he continued his activities on behalf of Islam. An alternate story is that he stayed abroad until just before his death in 1932.

The same murky dodginess permeates the activities of the Foundation that bears his name. Funded by the British government, and now simply called “Quilliam,” the organization deploys its “experts” – ex-jihadis of one sort or another – whenever some event requires a pro-government “spin.” It is a replication of the CIA’s orientation during the cold war, when a cadre of ex-radicals was recruited to do Washington’s bidding in the fight against Communism. By aligning with anti-Communist socialists, particularly ex-Trotskyists whose “Stalinophobia” had become an obsession, the CIA funded and helped organize the Congress for Cultural Freedom, which included such luminaries as Irving Kristol, Stephen Spender, and James Burnham. By mobilizing socialists in their anti-Communist crusade, the geniuses over at the CIA hoped to split the left-wing movement internationally and undermine Soviet support. This tactic was deemed especially crucial in Europe, where pro-Moscow Communist parties controlled the labor movement and had gained new prestige as leaders of the anti-Nazi Resistance. There the CIA deployed followers of Jay Lovestone, the former American Communist party leader, who had formed his own ostensibly communist party in the US and later developed extensive ties with US government agencies on the trail of the Reds.

The Quilliamites are, in short, the Islamist equivalent of neoconservatives – those migrants into the conservative movement from the left who later went on to become the loudest and most bloodthirsty advocates of an all-out war against the Soviet Union.

That the Quilliamite strategy has its uses as an instrument of Western foreign policy is underscored by the “success” of the Libyan operation, which funneled money, arms, and most importantly militarily experienced Islamist cadre into Libya to commandeer the rebel movement. The assassination of the former rebel commander-in-chief, and, in effect, an Islamist coup d’etat inside the rebel camp, was the logical outcome of this policy.

If you’ve been baffled by the installation of an Islamist regime in Libya by force of NATO arms – well, now you know. We’re aiding one wing of the Islamist movement in order to fight the “extremist’ wing, on the theory that we can domesticate these tigers and turn them into tabby cats.

If ever a policy was destined to provoke blowback of the worst and deadliest sort, then this is certainly it. The unintended consequences of building up an Islamist movement, not only in Libya but throughout the Middle East, are too obvious to require much explanation. Suffice to say here that the citizens of the newly-minted Libyan “emirate” – forced to live and suffer under a regime of imposed Sharia law – will pay the price of our “strategic” cleverness. So much for the myth that the West is “exporting democracy” throughout the world. What is being exported here is a cadre of Western proxies, whose role as servitors of Washington, London, and Paris is clothed in the religious robes of Quilliamite Islam.

One fully expects a repetition of this ploy in Egypt, and throughout the Muslim world. As the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks approaches, one thing is clear: we in the West have learned nothing about how to avoid the unintended consequences of our interventionist policies.

NOTES IN THE MARGIN

I want to thank everyone who contributed to the success of our summer fundraising drive – including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, whose ridiculous “investigation”of Antiwar.com, myself, and webmaster Eric Garris was exposed during the drive and contributed greatly to its success.

Every fundraiser provokes waves of anxiety in me, which only get stronger as the days and weeks progress: but this time, with the economy tanking so dramatically, I was especially petrified at the prospect of having to ask my already impoverished readers for money. Miraculously, however, I was rescued from the Vale of Depression when a blogger published a secret internal FBI memo online, released through the Freedom of Information Act, that deemed us “a threat to National Security” and in all likelihood “agents of a foreign power” The outcry was immediate and our readers and supporters rallied ‘round Antiwar.com: a trickle of donations became a torrent.

As one wag put it: “Who says government intervention is always a bad thing?” Well, I’d rather not be the subject of an FBI witch-hunt investigation, but then again sometimes good things come out of the worst travails.

We are pursuing this matter further, and I’ll let you know when there are new developments. Although the FOIA documents are highly redacted, the rationale for and extent of the FBI’s inquiry is highly ominous, and I look forward to learning more about the criminal activities of professional sneaks and provocateurs as they tried (and, no doubt, continue to try) to bring down the best foreign-policy oriented web site on the Internet.

Jihadists plot to take over Libya

ASSOCIATED PRESS Rebel fighters celebrate in the desert outside a military base near Bani Walid, Libya, on Saturday. The U.S. has stepped up surveillance of elements of the rebel forces interested in setting up an Islamist state

Πηγή: Washington Times
By Bill Gertz

Sunday, September 4, 2011

U.S. steps up surveillance of suspects among rebels.

Jihadists among the Libyan rebels revealed plans last week on the Internet to subvert the post-Moammar Gadhafi government and create an Islamist state, according to U.S. intelligence agencies.

U.S. officials said spy agencies are stepping up surveillance of Islamist-oriented elements among Libyan rebels. A government report circulated Tuesday said extremists were observed “strategizing” on Internet forums about how to set up an Islamist state in Libya after the regime of Col. Gadhafi is defeated.

“Several forum participants have suggested that, following a transitional stage, the battle should turn against secularist rebels and members of the [rebels’] Transitional National Council,” the unclassified report stated.

Some U.S. officials sought to play down the remarks by noting that such Internet postings are not always accurate measures of jihadist plans.

The report said the jihadists’ strength and influence on the ground “are uncertain at this time.”

However, the report said the jihadist plotting coincided with the high-profile emergence of Abu Abdallah al-Sadiq, a former leader of the al Qaeda-linked Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) and now a leading rebel. He is currently known as Abdel Hakim al-Khulidi Belhaj and led rebels in overrunning Col. Gadhafi’s Tripoli compound.

A U.S. official familiar with intelligence reports on the region said there are concerns that some LIFG members remain committed to al Qaeda and others may be temporarily renouncing their ties to the terrorist group for “show.”

“Some members of LIFG in the past had connections with al Qaeda in Sudan, Afghanistan or Pakistan, and others dropped their relationship with al Qaeda entirely,” the official said.

“It seems - from their statements and support for establishing a democracy in Libya - that this faction of LIFG does not support al Qaeda. We’ll definitely be watching to see whether this is for real or just for show.”

A defense official familiar with jihadist strategy said Islamists likely will emerge in power from the turmoil expected after the demise of the Gadhafi regime and the West will be partly to blame.

“We’re helping pave the way for them” through NATO airstrikes and other support, he said.

About 1,000 jihadists are operating covertly in Libya, Noman Benotman, a former Libyan al Qaeda member, told The Washington Times in March.

According to a translation of the forum exchanges, Libyan Islamists view the fall of Tripoli to rebels as the initial phase of a battle to take over the country.

Jihadists were urged to prepare for the next stage in the battle: taking on secular rebels and the interim National Transitional Council, sometimes called the Transitional National Council, the secular political organization that is mainly pro-democratic.

The jihadists want to set up an Islamist state ruled by Shariah law.

A jihadist writing as Asuli Mutatari, stated on the Shumukh al-Islam Network forum that “the real war will be fought after the fall of the tyrant [Col. Gadhafi] and after the establishment of a transitional democratic system.”

“After the awakening, we will fight those outside the [Islamic] law,” he stated.

Another forum posting urged Islamists to “quickly take control of cities with economic resources and strategic locations and establish Islamic courts there.”

A jihadist identified as Abu Abra’ al-Muqadas said the National Transitional Council must be neutralized because it will never allow anyone calling for an Islamic state to be part of the new government.

“They know that merely suggesting the application of Islamic law will cause Western countries to stop their support,” he said.

A posting by a forum member named Gullam Ashab al-Akhud said the National Transitional Council should be liquidated and replaced by a transitional council of Islamic Salafi jihadi scholars in Libya.

A second Internet forum, Ana al-Muslim, quoted Ayoub al-Jaza’iry as saying that thousands of Islamists in Libya have been trained by al Qaeda and are “working silently in sleeper cells.” He warned jihadists to keep a low profile to avoid alerting the United States to its power.

Some of the jihadists criticized NATO military support to the rebels and said post-Gadhafi Libya should not allow outside assistance. Some also urged the assassinations of secular National Transitional Council leaders.

Mohamed al-Jaza’iry stated on the Ana al Muslim Network that the next phase of the revolution should be the expulsion of foreign bases and reduction of foreign influence.

“The Libyan people must … turn their guns on the Crusader occupiers, along with collaborators and traitors,” he added.

The comments reflect an increase in Islamist rhetoric since the fall of Tripoli, but the number of hard-line Islamist and the extent of their influence or control is not known, the report said.

A Dec. 9, 2009, cable made public by the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks revealed that the Gadhafi regime released more than 200 jihadists, including half of the imprisoned LIFG members, after they publicly renounced violence and claimed to have adopted a new code for jihad. The move was an initiative by Col. Gadhafi’s son Seif al-Islam and the Gadhafi International Charity and Development Foundation.

Skeptics dismissed the effort as a temporary shift in tactics for the jihadists in exchange for winning their release from detention.

Moussa Koussa's secret letters betray Britain's Libyan connection

Moussa Koussa, the former Foreign Minister

Πηγή: The Independent

By Portia Walker and Kim Sengupta
Saturday, 3 September 2011

Messages found in his office show how MI6 gave details of dissident exiles to Gaddafi – and how the CIA used regime for rendition.

Secret files have been unearthed by The Independent in Tripoli that reveal the astonishingly close links that existed between British and American governments and Muammar Gaddafi.

The documents chart how prisoners were offered to the Libyans for brutal interrogation by the Tripoli regime under the highly controversial "rendition" programme, and also how details of exiled opponents of the Libyan dictator in the UK were passed on to the regime by MI6.

The papers show that British officials actually helped write a draft speech for Colonel Gaddafi while he was trying to rehabilitate his regime from the pariah status to which it had sunk following its support for terrorist movements. Further documents disclose how, at the same time, the US and UK acted on behalf of Libya in conducting negotiations with the International Atomic Energy Agency.

With the efforts they had expended in cultivating their contacts with the regime, the British were unwilling, at times, to share their "Libya connection" with the closet ally, the US. In a letter to his Libyan intelligence counterpart, an MI6 officer described how he refused to pass on the identity of an agent to Washington.

The documents, many of them incendiary in their implications, were found at the private offices of Moussa Koussa, Col Gaddafi's right hand man, and regime security chief, who defected to Britain in the days following the February revolution.

The papers give details about Tony Blair's visit to the Libyan dictator in Tripoli - with the vignette that it was the British prime minister's office that requested that the meeting take place in a tent. A letter from an MI6 official to Mr Koussa stated "No 10 are keen that the Prime Minister meet the Leader in the tent. I don't know why the English are fascinated by tents. The plain fact is that the journalists would love it."

The material raises questions about the relationship between Moussa Koussa and the British government and the turn of events following his defection. Mr Koussa's surprising arrival in Britain led to calls for him to be questioned by the police about his alleged involvement in murders abroad by the Libyan regime, including that of policewoman Yvonne Fletcher and opponents of Gaddafi. He was also said to be involved in the sending of arms to the IRA. At the time David Cameron's government assured the public that Mr Koussa may, indeed, face possible charges. Instead, he was allowed to leave the country and is now believed to be staying in a Gulf state.

The revelations by The Independent will lead to questions about whether Mr Koussa, who has long been accused of human rights abuses, was allowed to escape because he held a 'smoking gun'. The official is known to have copied and taken away dozens of files with him when he left Libya.

The papers illustrate the intimate relations Mr Koussa and some of his colleagues seemingly enjoyed with British intelligence. Letters and faxes flowed to him headed 'Greetings from MI6' 'Greetings from SIS', handwritten Christmas greetings, on one occasion, from ' Your friend', followed by the name of a senior British intelligence official, and regrets over missed lunches. There were also regular exchanges of gifts: on one occasion a Libyan agent arrived in London laden with figs and oranges.

The documents repeatedly touched on the blossoming relationship between Western intelligence agencies and Libya. But there was a human cost. The Tripoli regime was a highly useful partner in the 'rendition' process under which prisoners were sent by the US for 'enhanced interrogation', a euphemism, say human rights groups, for torture.

One US administration document, marked secret, says "Our service is in a position to deliver Shaykh Musa to your physical custody similar to what we have done with other senior LIFG (Libyan Islamic Fighting Group) members in the past. We respectfully request an expression of interest from your service regarding taking custody of Musa".

The British too were dealing with the Libyans about opposition activists, passing on information to the regime. This was taking place despite the fact that Colonel Gaddafi's agents had assassinated opponents in the campaign to eliminate so-called "stray dogs" abroad, including the streets of London. The murders had, at the time, led to protests and condemnation by the UK government.

One letter dated 16th April 2004 from UK intelligence to an official at the International Affairs Department of Libyan security, says: "We wish to inform you that Ismail KAMOKA @ SUHAIB [possibly referring to an alias being used] was released from detention on 18th March 2004. A panel of British judges ruled that KAMOKA was not a threat to national security in the UK and subsequently released him. We are content for you to inform [a Libyan intelligence official] of KAMOKA's release."

Ironically, the Libyan rebels who have come in to power after overthrowing Colonel Gaddafi with the help of the UK and NATO have just appointed Abdullah Hakim Belhaj (please check spelling), a former member of the LIFG, as their commander in Tripoli.

Other material highlights the two-way nature of the information exchange. One document headed "For the attention of the Libyan Intelligence Service. Greetings from MI6 asks for information about a suspect with the initials ABS [full name withheld from publication for security reasons] travelling on Libyan passport number 164432.

"This remains a sensitive operation and we do not want anything done that might draw S's attention to our interest in him. We would be grateful for any information you might have regarding S."

One of the most remarkable finds in the cache of documents is a statement by Colonel Gaddafi during his rapprochment with the West during which he gave up his nuclear programme and promised to destroy his stock of chemical and biological weapons.

The Libyan leader said "we will take these steps in a manner that is transparent and verifiable. Libya affirms and will abide by commitments... when the world is celebrating the birth of Jesus, and as a token of contribution to a world full of peace, security, stability and compassion the greater Jamhiriya renews its honest call for a WMD free zone in the Middle East and Africa."

The statement was, in fact, put together with the help of British officials. A covering letter, addressed to Khalid Najjar, of the Department of International Relations and Safety in Tripoli, said "for the sake of clarity, please find attached a tidied up version of the language we agreed on Tuesday. I wanted to ensure that you had the same script."

When Libya's high command expressed worries about how abandoning their WMD arsenal would leave them vulnerable, the UK proposed helping to bolster conventional defences using Field Marshall Lord Inge, a former head of the UK military as a consultant. In a letter from London dated 24th December 2003, a British official wrote: "I propose that Field Marshal Lord Inge, whom you will remember well from September, should visit two or three senior officers to start these talks."

"No. 10 are keen that the Prime Minister meet the leader in his tent"

*A sizeable amount of correspondence in the cache was devoted to the visit of Tony Blair to meet Muammar Gaddafi in March 2004 at a time when Britain was playing a key role in bringing Libya in from the cold.

The documents show how involved MI6 was with organizing the trip and the role of conduit played by Moussa Koussa. Unsurprisingly for the Blair administration, presentation was seen as of paramount importance.

An MI6 officer wrote to Mr Koussa, saying: "No.10 are keen that the Prime Minister meet the leader in his tent. I don't know why the English are fascinated by tents. The plain fact is the journalists would love it. My own view is that it would give a good impression of the Leader's preference for simplicity which I know is important to him. You may have seen very different press conference in Riyadh. Anyway, if this is possible, No.10 would be very grateful."

Colonel Gaddafi, apparently, had wanted to meet the British Prime Minister at Sirte, his birth place. At present the town is under siege from opposition fighters. The MI6 officer states: "No.10 are expecting that the visit will take place in Tripoli and not Sirte. Apparently it is important that the journalists have access to hotels and so on where there may be facilities for them to file their stories to their newspapers."

However, the spies were there to make sure that their and the national interests was being protected. The officer continued, "No.10 have asked me to accompany the Prime Minister so I am very much looking forward to seeing you next Thursday. No.10 have asked me whether I could put an officer into Tripoli a few days before the visit... I think this would give them comfort and everything would work out well."

Colonel Gaddafi had earned his approval from the West partly because of his stand against Islamist terrorism, the shadow of which, after the Madrid bombings, hung over the visit. The letter, dated 18 March 2004, said "No.10 have asked me to put to you their request that there be no publicity for the visit now or over the next few days - that is well in advance of the visit since Madrid, everyone is extra security conscious.

Former jihadist at the heart of Libya's revolution

Abdul Hakeem Belhaj, is commander of the anti-Gadhafi forces in Tripoli.

Πηγή: CNN
By Nic Robertson

September 2, 2011

Tripoli, Libya (CNN) -- Abdul Hakeem Belhaj, one of the most effective commanders among anti-Gadhafi forces in Libya, has seen plenty of combat in his 45 years. A well-built, bearded man with dark, serious eyes, he fought against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan -- and alongside al Qaeda in the dying days of the Taliban regime.

Now he is commander of the anti-Gadhafi forces in Tripoli, and swears loyalty to the National Transitional Council, describing himself as an "ordinary Libyan" fighting for a common cause.

But there's not much ordinary about Belhaj. As a young man in the late 1980s, he was one of scores of jihadists in the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group that went to fight in Afghanistan. His military prowess soon made him a commander among his fellow fighters. After the fall of the Taliban, Belhaj left Afghanistan and was arrested in Malaysia in 2004. After some questioning by the CIA, he was sent back to Libya and jailed.

Belhaj was released from Moammar Gadhafi's notorious Abu Salim jail last year. He and dozens of others of LIFG fighters negotiated with the Gadhafi regime for their freedom -- in return for denouncing al Qaeda and its philosophy of jihad.

The negotiations were led by a former LIFG member in exile, Noman Benotman, and Saif al Islam Gadhafi, one of the sons of the Libyan leader and a man that Belhaj is now hunting.

The Gadhafi regime had jailed hundreds of Islamists, among them fighters of the LIFG who had launched a short-lived insurgency in the 1990s. Many were massacred during a prison revolt in 1996.
Cracks developing in Gadhafi family?
Gadhafi: Libyan capital moved
Gadhafi's secret state apparatus
Libya's battle for the airwaves

Western counterterrorism experts are now at best concerned -- and at worst alarmed -- by the prominent role Belhaj and the LIFG cadres have played in Libya's revolt. But sitting in an air-conditioned room in one of Tripoli's most exclusive hotels, Belhaj was keen to dispel the notion that he is part of an Islamist fifth column preparing to make a power grab in the new Libya.

"I am an ordinary citizen of Libya. I am a part of the fabric of this nation, a normal Muslim," he said in long-winded and carefully worded classical Arabic.

The LIFG "was not a terrorist organization," he said. " All our activities were inside our country with the aim of liberating our people from Gadhafi. That's why we met and that's why we worked. We did not give any blessing to any act that would hurt civilians or destroy public sector establishments, and anyone who has kept up with our activities knows that."

Belhaj has played a crucial role in liberating Tripoli. Units under his control seized Gadhafi's sprawling Bab al Aziziya compound days after the rebels entered Tripoli. He insists his goals are at one with those of the NTC.

"We are part of the Libyan people. We did not carry out any military acts with a particular ideology or under any flag," he said.

Flanked by his press assistant, a former LIFG member who became an accountant in London, Belhaj continued: "We treated everybody equally with one purpose, and that is to achieve the goals of the February 17 revolution."

"I have not seen anything that would potentially damage the relationship between everybody who worked on the liberation of the cities that they were in," he added.

But there have been signs of tensions between former LIFG members and rank-and-file fighters who joined the revolt and are perturbed to see such a prominent Islamist figure gain so much power.

For his part, Belhaj is now focused on finding Gadhafi.

"A lot of the information that we receive points to more than one area because we are focusing on more than one area," Belhaj said. "He might be between Bani Walid (a pro-Gadhafi town in the desert) and Sirte, trying to find a route to the south of the country as the pressure increases on him."

Gadhafi "is trying to secure a location for himself and is releasing ridiculous statements to incite some naïve people, to motivate some people he describes as his loyalists to alter the current security situation."

Belhaj expressed hope that the violence in Libya would soon be over.

"We hope that will happen without any more bloodshed or destruction of public property," he said. "We call for the surrender of those who continue to support the regime."

That was why, he said, the NTC had extended the deadline for Gadhafi forces in Sirte to lay down their weapons.

Belhaj also said he had spoken to one of Gadhafi's sons, Saadi, who has called for an end to the fighting.

"I told him that we would assure his safety and that no one would harm him," Belhaj said, but added: "The legal matters we do not control. We are striving to establish a nation of laws. We want justice to prevail -- that we have lacked for 40 years."

Belhaj also reflected on his time in Afghanistan, stressing that he and others in the LIFG were not affiliated with al Qaeda.

"Our presence in Afghanistan with or without al Qaeda does not mean that we agree with them. Our presence in Afghanistan was to support the just cause of the Afghan fight against the Soviets," he said.

"We went to support the people, and we extended a hand to them in education and aid. ... We also helped to defend and fight, as did many other nations that joined, including the United States," Belhaj said in what seemed like an effort to reassure Washington.

"As for our presence in Afghanistan, (just because it) coincided with the presence of al Qaeda does not mean that we agree or believe in the same ideology."

Whether Belhaj and others who belonged to the LIFG will continue to sing in tune with the National Transitional Council is the great unknown. I have followed the group's evolution for years, and it seems they truly came to perceive Osama bin Laden's nihilistic campaign against the west as counter-productive, and al Qaeda's indiscriminate attacks on "non-believers" as unjustifiable.

While in jail at Abu Salim, a prison less than a mile from the Gadhafi compound that Belhaj helped seize, the LIFG fighters wrote a long theological treatise that attacked al Qaeda's core principles.

At the end of our interview, Belhaj again took pains to reassure the wider world of Islamists' role in the Libyan uprising.

"I want to take this opportunity to assure to all that the revolutionaries in Libya are united, and there is nothing frightening," he said. "They all joined hands against this tyrant and now the revolution is achieving its goals. ... There is nothing more important than securing our nation."

There are plenty of political models for Libya's Islamists to adopt and adapt -- in Egypt and Tunisia for example, where newly resurgent Islamist parties and groups profess to be committed to democracy and constitutional government.

The question is: will they?

How al-Qaeda got to rule in Tripoli

Πηγή: The Asia Times
By Pepe Escobar
Aug 30, 2011

His name is Abdelhakim Belhaj. Some in the Middle East might have, but few in the West and across the world would have heard of him.

Time to catch up. Because the story of how an al-Qaeda asset turned out to be the top Libyan military commander in still war-torn Tripoli is bound to shatter - once again - that wilderness of mirrors that is the "war on terror", as well as deeply compromising the carefully constructed propaganda of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO's) "humanitarian" intervention in Libya.

Muammar Gaddafi's fortress of Bab-al-Aziziyah was essentially invaded and conquered last week by Belhaj's men - who were at the forefront of a militia of Berbers from the mountains southwest of Tripoli. The militia is the so-called Tripoli Brigade, trained in secret for two months by US Special Forces. This turned out to be the rebels' most effective militia in six months of tribal/civil war.
Already last Tuesday, Belhaj was gloating on how the battle was won, with Gaddafi forces escaping "like rats" (note that's the same metaphor used by Gaddafi himself to designate the rebels).

Abdelhakim Belhaj, aka Abu Abdallah al-Sadek, is a Libyan jihadi. Born in May 1966, he honed his skills with the mujahideen in the 1980s anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan.

He's the founder of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) and its de facto emir - with Khaled Chrif and Sami Saadi as his deputies. After the Taliban took power in Kabul in 1996, the LIFG kept two training camps in Afghanistan; one of them, 30 kilometers north of Kabul - run by Abu Yahya - was strictly for al-Qaeda-linked jihadis.

After 9/11, Belhaj moved to Pakistan and also to Iraq, where he befriended none other than ultra-nasty Abu Musab al-Zarqawi - all this before al-Qaeda in Iraq pledged its allegiance to Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri and turbo-charged its gruesome practices.

In Iraq, Libyans happened to be the largest foreign Sunni jihadi contingent, only losing to the Saudis. Moreover, Libyan jihadis have always been superstars in the top echelons of "historic" al-Qaeda - from Abu Faraj al-Libi (military commander until his arrest in 2005, now lingering as one of 16 high-value detainees in the US detention center at Guantanamo) to Abu al-Laith al-Libi (another military commander, killed in Pakistan in early 2008).

Time for an extraordinary rendition 

The LIFG had been on the US Central Intelligence Agency's radars since 9/11. In 2003, Belhaj was finally arrested in Malaysia - and then transferred, extraordinary rendition-style, to a secret Bangkok prison, and duly tortured.

In 2004, the Americans decided to send him as a gift to Libyan intelligence - until he was freed by the Gaddafi regime in March 2010, along with other 211 "terrorists", in a public relations coup advertised with great fanfare.

The orchestrator was no less than Saif Islam al-Gaddafi - the modernizing/London School of Economics face of the regime. LIFG's leaders - Belhaj and his deputies Chrif and Saadi - issued a 417-page confession dubbed "corrective studies" in which they declared the jihad against Gaddafi over (and illegal), before they were finally set free.

A fascinating account of the whole process can be seen in a report called "Combating Terrorism in Libya through Dialogue and Reintegration". [1] Note that the authors, Singapore-based terrorism "experts" who were wined and dined by the regime, express the "deepest appreciation to Saif al-Islam Gaddafi and the Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation for making this visit possible".

Crucially, still in 2007, then al-Qaeda's number two, Zawahiri, officially announced the merger between the LIFG and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Mahgreb (AQIM). So, for all practical purposes, since then, LIFG/AQIM have been one and the same - and Belhaj was/is its emir.

In 2007, LIFG was calling for a jihad against Gaddafi but also against the US and assorted Western "infidels".

Fast forward to last February when, a free man, Belhaj decided to go back into jihad mode and align his forces with the engineered uprising in Cyrenaica.

Every intelligence agency in the US, Europe and the Arab world knows where he's coming from. He's already made sure in Libya that himself and his militia will only settle for sharia law.

There's nothing "pro-democracy" about it - by any stretch of the imagination. And yet such an asset could not be dropped from NATO's war just because he was not very fond of "infidels".

The late July killing of rebel military commander General Abdel Fattah Younis - by the rebels themselves - seems to point to Belhaj or at least people very close to him.

It's essential to know that Younis - before he defected from the regime - had been in charge of Libya's special forces fiercely fighting the LIFG in Cyrenaica from 1990 to 1995.

The Transitional National Council (TNC), according to one of its members, Ali Tarhouni, has been spinning Younis was killed by a shady brigade known as Obaida ibn Jarrah (one of the Prophet Mohammed's companions). Yet the brigade now seems to have dissolved into thin air.

Shut up or I'll cut your head off 

Hardly by accident, all the top military rebel commanders are LIFG, from Belhaj in Tripoli to one Ismael as-Salabi in Benghazi and one Abdelhakim al-Assadi in Derna, not to mention a key asset, Ali Salabi, sitting at the core of the TNC. It was Salabi who negotiated with Saif al-Islam Gaddafi the "end" of LIFG's jihad, thus assuring the bright future of these born-again "freedom fighters".

It doesn't require a crystal ball to picture the consequences of LIFG/AQIM - having conquered military power and being among the war "winners" - not remotely interested in relinquishing control just to please NATO's whims.

Meanwhile, amid the fog of war, it's unclear whether Gaddafi is planning to trap the Tripoli brigade in urban warfare; or to force the bulk of rebel militias to enter the huge Warfallah tribal areas.

Gaddafi's wife belongs to the Warfallah, Libya's largest tribe, with up to 1 million people and 54 sub-tribes. The inside word in Brussels is that NATO expects Gaddafi to fight for months if not years; thus the Texas George W Bush-style bounty on his head and the desperate return to NATO's plan A, which was always to take him out.

Libya may now be facing the specter of a twin-headed guerrilla Hydra; Gaddafi forces against a weak TNC central government and NATO boots on the ground; and the LIFG/AQIM nebula in a jihad against NATO (if they are sidelined from power).

Gaddafi may be a dictatorial relic of the past, but you don't monopolize power for four decades for nothing, and without your intelligence services learning a thing or two.

From the beginning, Gaddafi said this was a foreign-backed/al-Qaeda operation; he was right (although he forgot to say this was above all neo-Napoleonic French President Nicolas Sarkozy's war, but that's another story).

He also said this was a prelude for a foreign occupation whose target was to privatize and take over Libya's natural resources. He may - again – turn out to be right.

The Singapore "experts" who praised the Gaddafi regime's decision to free the LIFG's jihadis qualified it as "a necessary strategy to mitigate the threat posed to Libya".

Now, LIFG/AQIM is finally poised to exercise its options as an "indigenous political force".

Ten years after 9/11, it's hard not to imagine a certain decomposed skull in the bottom of the Arabian Sea boldly grinning to kingdom come.

Note
1. Click here

Libya After Gadhafi: Transitioning from Rebellion to Rule

Πηγή: Stratfor
By Scott Stewart
August 24, 2011



With the end of the Gadhafi regime seemingly in sight, it is an opportune time to step back and revisit one of the themes we discussed at the beginning of the crisis: What comes after the Gadhafi regime?

As the experiences of recent years in Iraq and Afghanistan have vividly illustrated, it is far easier to depose a regime than it is to govern a country. It has also proved to be very difficult to build a stable government from the remnants of a long-established dictatorial regime. History is replete with examples of coalition fronts that united to overthrow an oppressive regime but then splintered and fell into internal fighting once the regime they fought against was toppled. In some cases, the power struggle resulted in a civil war more brutal than the one that brought down the regime. In other cases, this factional strife resulted in anarchy that lasted for years as the iron fist that kept ethnic and sectarian tensions in check was suddenly removed, allowing those issues to re-emerge.

As Libya enters this critical juncture and the National Transitional Council (NTC) transitions from breaking things to building things and running a country, there will be important fault lines to watch in order to envision what Libya will become.


Divisions


One of the biggest problems that will confront the Libyan rebels as they make the transition from rebels to rulers are the country’s historic ethnic, tribal and regional splits. While the Libyan people are almost entirely Muslim and predominately Arab, there are several divisions among them. These include ethnic differences in the form of Berbers in the Nafusa Mountains, Tuaregs in the southwestern desert region of Fezzan and Toubou in the Cyrenaican portion of the Sahara Desert. Among the Arabs who form the bulk of the Libyan population, there are also hundreds of different tribes and multiple dialects of spoken Arabic.

Perhaps most prominent of these fault lines is the one that exists between the ancient regions of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica. The Cyrenaica region has a long and rich history, dating back to the 7th century B.C. The region has seen many rulers, including Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Ottomans, Italians and the British. Cyrenaica has long been at odds with the rival province of Tripolitania, which was founded by the Phoenicians but later conquered by Greeks from Cyrenaica. This duality was highlighted by the fact that from the time of Libya’s independence through the reign of King Idris I (1951-1969), Libya effectively had two capitals. While Tripoli was the official capital in the west, Benghazi, King Idris’ power base, was the de facto capital in the east. It was only after the 1969 military coup that brought Col. Moammar Gadhafi to power that Tripoli was firmly established as the seat of power over all of Libya. Interestingly, the fighting on the eastern front in the Libyan civil war had been stalled for several months in the approximate area of the divide between Cyrenaica and Tripolitania.



(click here to enlarge image)


After the 1969 coup, Gadhafi not only established Tripoli as the capital of Libya and subjugated Benghazi, he also used his authoritarian regime and the country’s oil revenues to control or co-opt Libya’s estimated 140 tribes, many members of which are also members of Libya’s minority Berber, Tuareg and Toubou ethnic groups.

It is no mistake that the Libyan revolution began in Cyrenaica, which has long bridled under Gadhafi’s control and has been the scene of several smaller and unsuccessful uprisings. The jihadist Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) has also traditionally been based in eastern Cyrenaican cities such as Darnah and Benghazi, where anti-Gadhafi sentiment and economic hardship marked by high levels of unemployment provided a fertile recruiting ground. Many of these jihadists have joined the anti-Gadhafi rebels fighting on the eastern front.

But the rebels were by no means confined to Cyrenaica. Anti-Gadhafi rebels in Misurata waged a long and bloody fight against government forces to gain control of the city, and while the Cyrenaican rebels were bogged down in the Ajdabiya/Marsa el Brega area, Berber guerrillas based in the Nafusa Mountains applied steady pressure to the Libyan forces in the west and eventually marched on Tripoli with Arab rebels from coastal towns such as Zawiya, where earlier uprisings in February were brutally defeated by the regime prior to the NATO intervention.

These groups of armed rebels have fought independently on different fronts during the civil war and have had varying degrees of success. The different roles these groups have played and, more important, their perceptions of those roles will likely create friction when it comes time to allocate the spoils of the Libyan war and delineate the power structure that will control Libya going forward.


Fractured Alliances


While the NTC is an umbrella group comprising most of the groups that oppose Gadhafi, the bulk of the NTC leadership hails from Cyrenaica. In its present state, the NTC faces a difficult task in balancing all the demands and interests of the various factions that have combined their efforts to oust the Gadhafi regime. Many past revolutions have reached a precarious situation once the main unifying goal has been achieved: With the regime overthrown, the various factions involved in the revolution begin to pursue their own interests and objectives, which often run contrary to those of other factions.

A prime example of the fracturing of a rebel coalition occurred after the fall of the Najibullah regime in Afghanistan in 1992, when the various warlords involved in overthrowing the regime became locked in a struggle for power that plunged the country into a period of destructive anarchy. While much of Afghanistan was eventually conquered by the Taliban movement — seen by many terrorized civilians as the country’s salvation — the Taliban were still at war with the Northern Alliance when the United States invaded the country in October 2001.

A similar descent into anarchy followed the 1991 overthrow of Somali dictator Mohamed Said Barre. The fractious nature of Somali regional and clan interests combined with international meddling has made it impossible for any power to assert control over the country. Even the jihadist group al Shabaab has been wracked by Somali divisiveness.

But this dynamic does not happen only in countries with strong clan or tribal structures. It was also clearly demonstrated following the 1979 broad-based revolution in Nicaragua, when the Sandinista National Liberation Front turned on its former partners and seized power. Some of those former partners, such as revolutionary hero Eden Pastora, would go on to join the “contras” and fight a civil war against the Sandinistas that wracked Nicaragua until a 1988 cease-fire.

In most of these past cases, including Afghanistan, Somalia and Nicaragua, the internal fault lines were seized upon by outside powers, which then attempted to manipulate one of the factions in order to gain influence in the country. In Afghanistan, for example, warlords backed by Pakistan, Iran, Russia and India were all vying for control of the country. In Somalia, the Ethiopians, Eritreans and Kenyans have been heavily involved, and in Nicaragua, contra groups backed by the United States opposed the Cuban- and Soviet-backed Sandinistas.

Outside influence exploiting regional and tribal fault lines is also a potential danger in Libya. Egypt is a relatively powerful neighbor that has long tried to meddle in Libya and has long coveted its energy wealth. While Egypt is currently focused on its own internal issues as well as the Israel/Palestinian issue, its attention could very well return to Libya in the future. Italy, the United Kingdom and France also have a history of involvement in Libya. Its provinces were Italian colonies from 1911 until they were conquered by allied troops in the North African campaign in 1943. The British then controlled Tripolitania and Cyrenaica and the French controlled Fezzan province until Libyan independence in 1951. It is no accident that France and the United Kingdom led the calls for NATO intervention in Libya following the February uprising, and the Italians became very involved once they jumped on the bandwagon. It is believed that oil companies from these countries as well as the United States and Canada will be in a prime position to continue to work Libya’s oil fields. Qatar, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates also played important roles in supporting the rebels, and it is believed they will continue to have influence with the rebel leadership.

Following the discovery of oil in Libya in 1959, British, American and Italian oil companies were very involved in developing the Libyan oil industry. In response to this involvement, anti-Western sentiment emerged as a significant part of Gadhafi’s Nasserite ideology and rhetoric, and there has been near-constant friction between Gadhafi and the West. Due to this friction, Gadhafi has long enjoyed a close relationship with the Soviet Union and later Russia, which has supplied him with the bulk of his weaponry. It is believed that Russia, which seemed to place its bet on Gadhafi’s survival and has not recognized the NTC, will be among the big losers of influence in Libya once the rebels assume power. However, it must be remembered that the Russians are quite adept at human intelligence and they maintain varying degrees of contact with some of the former Gadhafi officials who have defected to the rebel side. Hence, the Russians cannot be completely dismissed.

China also has long been interested in the resources of Africa and North Africa, and Gadhafi has resisted what he considers Chinese economic imperialism in the region. That said, China has a lot of cash to throw around, and while it has no substantial stake in Libya’s oil fields, it reportedly has invested some $20 billion in Libya’s energy sector, and large Chinese engineering firms have been involved in construction and oil infrastructure projects in the country. China remains heavily dependent on foreign oil, most of which comes from the Middle East, so it has an interest in seeing the political stability in Libya that will allow the oil to flow. Chinese cash could also look very appealing to a rebel government seeking to rebuild — especially during a period of economic austerity in Europe and the United States, and the Chinese have already made inroads with the NTC by providing monetary aid to Benghazi.

The outside actors seeking to take advantage of Libya’s fault lines do not necessarily need to be nation-states. It is clear that jihadist groups such as the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group and al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb see the tumult in Libya as a huge opportunity. The iron fist that crushed Libyan jihadists for so long has been destroyed and the government that replaces the Gadhafi regime is likely to be weaker and less capable of stamping down the flames of jihadist ideology.

There are some who have posited that the Arab Spring has destroyed the ideology of jihadism, but that is far from the case. Even had the Arab Spring ushered in substantial change in the Arab World — and we believe it has resulted in far less change than many have ascribed to it — it is difficult to destroy an ideology overnight. Jihadism will continue to affect the world for years to come, even if it does begin to decline in popularity. Also, it is important to remember that the Arab Spring movement may limit the spread of jihadist ideology in situations where people believe they have more freedom and economic opportunity after the Arab Spring uprisings. But in places where people perceive their conditions have worsened, or where the Arab Spring brought little or no change to their conditions, their disillusionment could create a ripe recruitment opportunity for jihadists.

The jihadist ideology has indeed fallen on hard times in recent years, but there remain many hardcore, committed jihadists who will not easily abandon their beliefs. And it is interesting to note that a surprisingly large number of Libyans have long been in senior al Qaeda positions, and in places like Iraq, Libyans provided a disproportionate number of foreign fighters to jihadist groups.

It is unlikely that such individuals will abandon their beliefs, and these beliefs dictate that they will become disenchanted with the NTC leadership if it opts for anything short of a government based on a strict interpretation of Shariah. This jihadist element of the rebel coalition appears to have reared its head recently with the assassination of former NTC military head Abdel Fattah Younis in late July (though we have yet to see solid, confirmed reporting of the circumstances surrounding his death).

Between the seizure of former Gadhafi arms depots and the arms provided to the rebels by outside powers, Libya is awash with weapons. If the NTC fractures like past rebel coalitions, it could set the stage for a long and bloody civil war — and provide an excellent opportunity to jihadist elements. At present, however, it is too soon to forecast exactly what will happen once the rebels assume power. The key thing to watch for now is pressure along the fault lines where Libya’s future will likely be decided.