Libya: tribe pledges to arrest rebels it believes were behind murder of opposition military commander

Abdel Fatah Younis meets his troops during fighting outside Brega Photo: HEATHCLIFF O'MALLEY

Πηγή: The Telegraph
By Rob Crilly

26 Aug 2011

One of eastern Libya’s most powerful tribes has said it is prepared to detain and try senior rebel leaders it believes were behind the murder of the opposition’s top military commander.

The move is in a sign of the tribal tensions that could undermine attempts to form a new government.

Abdel Fatah Younis was assassinated on July 28 after being summoned to the rebel stronghold of Benghazi for questioning.

Members of his Obeidi tribe are unhappy at the way the rebel’s National Transitional Council (NTC) has investigated his murder, amid allegations that senior opposition figures ordered the killing.

The spectre of splits and tribal tension has haunted the six-month old rebellion and could now damage attempts to unite the country.

Diplomats in Benghazi say the issue – centred on the death of one of the revolution’s most charismatic and controversial figures – will spark a crisis as the NTC tries to maintain unity and build a new government based on the rule of law.

Yesterday (FRI), Mohammed Hamad Younis, a nephew of the former interior minister and a spokesman for the Obeidi tribe, said elders has decided to name the men they believed responsible.

“If the NTC does not show it can administer justice then we will take charge,” he told The Daily Telegraph. “It will be done carefully and by tribal law, but we will capture them and take care of them ourselves.”

Younis was not short of enemies. He served as Colonel Gaddafi’s interior minister and had been responsible for brutal suppression of Islamist militias during the 1980s.

He defected to the opposition early in the uprising becoming its military leader.

He was murdered after being called for questioning by rebel fighters armed witt a detention order, signed by a judge and by Ali al-Essawi, the vice chairman of the rebels’ cabinet-in-waiting, according to his relatives

Initially, NTC figures blamed Gaddafi sympathisers for his murder in rebel custody.

However, their story has changed several times and suspicion now centres on Islamist militias among the opposition army unhappy at General Younis’s attempts to reduce their influence.

“We did not want to act before the fall of Tripoli,” said his nephew. “But we are not the ones harming the revolution. It is corrupt figures in the NTC who have betrayed the values of the revolution.”

On Thursday, Mustafa Abdel Jalil, head of the NTC, insisted the investigation was on course.

“They have reached a final conclusion and the identities of those who assassinated Younis have started appearing,” he said.

“They will be arrested at a time when the higher interests of this revolution will not be damaged.”

However, his words have only increased speculation that the murder was orchestrated by senior rebel figures.

The issue highlights the power still wielded by tribal elders in Libya and the way in which the opposition will have to balance clan interests as they build a new government.

During his reign, Colonel Gaddafi weakened state institutions which he believed might undermine his power.

As a result, analysts say Libya’s 140 or so tribes were able to maintain influence by filling the political and social vacuum left behind.

“The prospect of increased friction or violent conflict between the country’s tribes, clans and ethnic groups – specifically between the Arabs and Berbers – remains a serious source of concern,” said Anthony

Skinner, Middle East analyst at political risk consultancy Maplecroft.

“The general absence of formal structures through which to govern poses another challenge.”

End Game for Benghazi Rebels as Libyan Tribes Prepare to Weigh In?

Πηγή: Foreign Policy Journal

By Franklin Lamb
August 3, 2011

TRIPOLI — On July 30, the day before this 97.5 percent Muslim country began the holy month of Ramadan, NATO spokesperson Roland Lavoie lamely attemptedational  to explain to the press at the Rixos Hotel and internationally why NATO was forced to bomb three Tripoli TV towers at the Libyan Broadcasting Authority, killing three journalists/technicians and wounding 15 others. Like most people currently in central Tripoli, this observer was awakened at 1:50 a.m. by the first of a series of nine blasts, three of which I watched from my balcony as they happened, and which seemed to be about 800 yards away as I saw one TV tower being blown apart. On the four-lane divided highway adjacent to my hotel and below my balcony, which runs along the sea front, I could see two cars frantically swerving left and right as they sped along, presumably trying to avoid a NATO rocket, fearing they themselves might be targeted.

According to NATO spokesperson Lavoie, allowing Libya’s population to watch government TV, and by implication, to hear terrorist public service announcements concerning subjects such as gasoline availability, food distribution for Ramadan, updates on areas to be avoided due to recent NATO bombing, prayers and lectures by Sheiks on moral and religious subjects during Ramadan, or to see the Prayer Times chart posted on government TV, during this month of fasting, plus children’s programs and normal programming, had to stop immediately.

The reason to bomb Libyan government TV, according to NATO, is that Libyan leader Gaddafi has been giving interviews and speeches following repeated NATO bombings that recently have included hospitals, Ramadan food storage warehouses, the nation’s main water distribution infrastructure, private homes, and more than 1,600 other civilian sites. NATO believes that preventing Gaddafi’s use of Libya’s public airwaves by bombing transmission towers is within UN resolutions 1970 and 1973, the scope of which are being expanded beyond all recognition from their original intent. NATO spokesperson Lavoie claims that Libya’s leadership is using TV broadcast facilities to thwart NATO’s “humanitarian mission” and, yet again are, “putting civilian lives at risk.”

Government officials admit using the media for communication with the population, including to urge tribal unity, to dialogue with those based in Benghazi referred to here as “NATO rebels”, to argue for an immediate ceasefire and, yes, even to call for all Libyans to resist what many here, including Colonel Gaddafi, call “the NATO crusader aggressors.”

In western Libya, and even among many in the east, according to recent rebel defectors who daily arrive on the western side, NATO has lost the respect of this country, Africa, the Middle East, and increasingly the international community. The reasons are well known here and include the serial false premises and descriptions of what happened in February in Benghazi and Misrata areas.

In addition, NATO daily bombing strikes have increased approximately 20 percent since July 25, and will continue to increase according to French Defense Minister Gerard Longuet, who, along with UK Defense Minister Liam Fox, while publicly saying NATO must continue the bombing, is privately expressing his frustration with the killing of rebel military commander Abdul Fatah Younnis. This assassination, according to Libyan officials, was very likely carried out by Younnis’ rebel leaders or Al Qaeda. Both are said to feel that the rebel leadership in Benghazi is collapsing. So do many NATO leaders and the Obama Administration.

A former senior member of Britain’s Liberal Democratic Party, Sir Menzies Campbell, has just urged the UK government to rethink its involvement in the war on Libya. Campbell said Britain must undertake a “wholesale re-examination and review” of its involvement in the NATO conflict in Libya after the murder of the opposition figure and Britain “must think about the end-game of the conflict in Libya.”

One Libyan government supporter, who just arrived here in Tripoli, claims he spent the past two months on the ground in Benghazi “undercover” as a liaison between the rebels and NATO. He told his rapt audience at a Tripoli hotel this week many details of what he claims is NATO’s frustration with the deterioration, corruption, and incompetence of their “team” in the east and the CIA view that “Al Qaeda will eat Mahmoud Jibril and the entire rebel leadership for Iftar during one of the Ramadan feasts during August. They are just waiting for the right opportunity to make a dramatic move and take control.”

Only the zealots of “humanitarian intervention” could seriously have contemplated the kind of protracted, bloody land war in Libya that would have been necessary to win. So, the bet on an alliance with NATO now appears to have been doomed from the start, even on its own terms.

The force that is rapidly entering into this conflict is the leadership of Libya’s more than 2000 tribes. In a series of meetings in Libya, Tunisia and elsewhere, the Tribal Council is speaking out forcefully and forging a political block that is demanding an end to Libyans killing Libyans.

Generally considered Libya’s largest tribe are the Obeidis, to which the Younnis family belongs. Some of the tribal leaders and members have vowed revenge against rebel leaders, and as they carried the coffins of Abdul Fatah and his two companions, they chanted, under the gaze of security forces, “the blood of martyrs will not go in vain.”

Libya’s Tribal Council has issued a manifesto which makes clear that it intends to end this conflict, help expel “the NATO crusaders”, and achieve reforms while supporting the Gaddafi, Tripoli based government. Before Ramadan is over, it intends to end Libya’s crisis even if it needs to rally its hundreds of thousands of active members to march on Benghazi.

NATO, according to various academics at Al Nasser and Al Fatah University, and Libya’s Tribal leadership, appear surprisingly ignorant and even contemptuous of this country’s tribes and their historic roles during times of crises and foreign aggression and occupation. One tribal leader well known to Italy was Omar Muktar.

As NATO and its backers contemplate their endgame, they may want to consider some excerpts from the Libyan Tribal Council’s manifesto issued on July 26. Speaking for Libya’s 2000 tribes, the Council issued a Proclamation signed by scores of tribal leaders from eastern Libya:

By this letter to the extraordinary African Summit, convening in Addis Ababa, the notables of the Eastern tribes of the Great Jamahiriya confirm their complete rejection of what is called the Transitional Council in Benghazi which hasn’t been nominated nor elected by Tribal representatives but rather imposed by NATO.

What is called the Transitional Council in Benghazi was imposed by NATO on us and we completely reject it. Is it democracy to impose people with armed power on the people of Benghazi, many of whose leaders are not even Libyan or from Libyan tribes but come from Tunisia and other countries?

… The Trial Council assures its continuing cooperation with the African Union in its suggestions aimed at helping to prevent the aggression on the Libyan people.…

The Tribal Council condemns the crusader aggression on the Great Jamahiriya executed by the NATO and the Arabic regressive forces which is a grave threat to Libyan civilians as it continues to kill them as NATO bombs civilian targets.…

We do not and will not accept any authority other than the authority that we chose with our free will which is the People’s Congress and Peoples Committees, and the popular social leadership, and will oppose with all available means, the NATO rebels and their slaughter, violence and maiming of cadavers. We intend to oppose with all the means available to us the NATO crusader aggressors and their appointed lackeys.

According to one representative of the Libyan Supreme Tribal Council, “The tribes of Libya have until today not fully joined in repelling the NATO aggressors. As we do, we serve notice to NATO that we shall not desist until they have left our country and we will ensure that they never return.”