The death of fear
Category Archives: Issues
International alliance forming to stop Gaddafi
Libya’s Deputy Permanent UN Representative warns that a convoy of 400 military vehicles are headed to destroy Ajdabiya and that the UN must intervene in the coming hours.
The New York Times reports:
The prospect of a deadly siege of the rebel stronghold in Benghazi, Libya, has produced a striking shift in tone from the Obama administration, which is now pushing for the United Nations to authorize aerial bombing of Libyan tanks and heavy artillery to try to halt the advance of forces loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.
The administration, which remains deeply reluctant to be drawn into an armed conflict in yet another Muslim country, is nevertheless backing a resolution in the Security Council that would give countries a broad range of options for aiding the Libyan rebels, including military steps that go well beyond a no-flight zone.
Administration officials — who have been debating a no-flight zone for weeks — concluded that such a step now would be “too little, too late” for rebels who have been pushed back to Benghazi. That suggests more aggressive measures, which some military analysts have called a no-drive zone, to prevent Colonel Qaddafi from moving tanks and artillery into Benghazi.
The United States is insisting that any military action would have to be carried out by an international coalition, including Libya’s Arab neighbors.
The rapid advance of forces loyal to Colonel Qaddafi, combined with rising calls from the Arab world to prevent a rout of the opposition, has changed the calculations of the administration, which had clung to a belief that interfering in a Middle East uprising could provoke an anti-American backlash.
“The turning point was really the Arab League statement on Saturday,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Wednesday to reporters traveling with her in Cairo. “That was an extraordinary statement in which the Arab League asked for Security Council action against one of its own members.”
Mrs. Clinton said she was hopeful that the Security Council would vote no later than Thursday. The American ambassador to the United Nations, Susan E. Rice, is in intensive negotiations over the language of a resolution, sponsored by Lebanon, another Arab state, and backed by France and Britain.
This about-turn in the Obama administration’s position is being viewed with a measure of skepticism in some quarters. “Privately, some European officials expressed frustration with the Obama administration, with one saying he believed it was supporting strong measures in an attempt to draw a veto.”
What is particularly noteworthy is that the resolution is sponsored by Lebanon. Even while the country is still in the process of forming a new government, this UN initiative can most likely be attributed to Hezbollah, now the dominant political force in Lebanon.
Soon after the Feb 17 Revolution began, Hezbollah issued a strong condemnation of Gaddafi. On Feb 22, the Ahlul Bayt News Agency reported:
Hezbollah lashed out Monday at the “crimes committed by the Gaddafi regime” in Libya:
“Anyone with honor and consciousness in this world cannot, and should not, keep silent on the massacres that the Gaddafi regime is committing across the country on a daily basis, namely in Benghazi.Terror and violence do not protect a regime that was founded on corruption and crime, from the will and determination of a people that has taken its decisive decision,” a Hezbollah statement read.
“Hezbollah firmly condemns crimes committed by the Gaddafi regime against the oppressed Libyan people. We also offer our sincere condolences to the families of those who were unjustly killed, just for demanding their rights. Hezbollah expresses support to the revolutionists in Libya and we pray that they will triumph over this arrogant tyrant,” the statement added.
“The criminality of this tyrant had first struck us deeply as Lebanese, when he kidnapped the Imam of the resistance Sayyed Moussa Sadr with his two dear companions. We ask Almighty Allah that the honorable revolutionists in Libya would be able to liberate Imam Sadr and his companions, just as they would be able to free Libya from all of its chains,” the statement concluded.
We in the Middle East have replaced humiliation with dignity
Turkey’s foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, writes:
The wave of revolutions in the Arab world was spontaneous. But it also had to happen. They were necessary in order to restore the natural flow of history. In our region – west Asia and the south Mediterranean – there were two abnormalities in the last century: first, colonialism in the 1930s, 40s and 50s that divided the region into colonial entities, and severed the natural links between peoples and communities. For example, Syria was a French colony and Iraq a British one, so the historical and economic links between Damascus and Baghdad were cut.
The second abnormality was the cold war, which added a further division: countries that had lived together for centuries became enemies, like Turkey and Syria. We were in Nato; Syria was pro-Soviet. Our border became not a border between two nation states, but the border between two blocs. Yemen was likewise divided.
Now it is time to naturalise the flow of history. I see all these revolutions as a delayed process that should have happened in the late 80s and 90s as in eastern Europe. It did not because some argued that Arab societies didn’t deserve democracy, and needed authoritarian regimes to preserve the status quo and prevent Islamist radicalism. Some countries and leaders who were proud of their own democracy, insisted that democracy in the Middle East would threaten security in our region.
Now we are saying all together: no. An ordinary Turk, an ordinary Arab, an ordinary Tunisian can change history. We believe that democracy is good, and that our people deserve it. This is a natural flow of history. Everybody must respect this will of the people.
If we fail to understand that there is a need to reconnect societies, communities, tribes and ethnicities in our region, we will lose the momentum of history. Our future is our sense of common destiny. All of us in the region have a common destiny. [Continue reading…]
Bahrain regime promoting sectarian division
Marc Lynch writes:
While the American and international debate over Libya continues, the situation in Bahrain has just taken a sharp turn for the worse. A brutal crackdown on the protestors followed the controversial entry of security forces from Saudi Arabia and three other GCC states. Media access has been curtailed, with journalists finding it difficult to gain entry to the Kingdom (I was supposed to be in Bahrain right now myself, but elected not to try after several journalists let me know that they were being denied entry and several Embassies in Doha warned me off). The road to political compromise and meaningful reform now appears to be blocked, which places the long-term viability of the Bahraini regime in serious question.
The response of the Bahraini regime has implications far beyond the borders of the tiny island Kingdom — not only because along with Libya it has turned the hopeful Arab uprisings into something uglier, but because it is unleashing a regionwide resurgence of sectarian Sunni-Shi’a animosity. Regional actors have enthusiastically bought in to the sectarian framing, with Saudi Arabia fanning the flames of sectarian hostility in defense of the Bahraini regime and leading Shia figures rising to the defense of the protestors. The tenor of Sunni-Shi’a relations across the region is suddenly worse than at any time since the frightening days following the spread of the viral video of Sadrists celebrating the execution of Saddam Hussein.
The sectarian framing in Bahrain is a deliberate regime strategy, not an obvious “reality.” The Bahraini protest movement, which emerged out of years of online and offline activism and campaigns, explicitly rejected sectarianism and sought to emphasize instead calls for democratic reform and national unity. While a majority of the protestors were Shi’a, like the population of the Kingdom itself, they insisted firmly that they represented the discontent of both Sunnis and Shi’ites, and framed the events as part of the Arab uprisings seen from Tunisia to Libya. Their slogans were about democracy and human rights, not Shi’a particularism, and there is virtually no evidence to support the oft-repeated claim that their efforts were inspired or led by Iran.
Mohammed Ayoob writes:
The real reason for the establishment of the GCC in 1981 was not defense against external enemies threatening the security of GCC states but cooperation against domestic challenges to authoritarian regimes. Its main task was and continues to be coordination of internal security measures, including sharing of intelligence, aimed at controlling and suppressing the populations of member states in order to provide security to the autocratic monarchies of the Persian Gulf. The establishment of the GCC was in large measure a reaction on the part of the Gulf monarchies to the Iranian revolution of 1979 in which people’s power toppled the strongest autocracy in the neighborhood. The Arab autocracies of the Gulf did not want to share the Shah’s fate.
That ensuring the security of autocratic regimes was the principal reason for the existence of GCC has become crystal clear with the military intervention by Saudi-led forces in Bahrain to put down the democracy movement and prevent the freedom contagion from spreading to other parts of the Gulf. It is true that the Saudis are apprehensive of the Shia majority coming to power in Bahrain because of the impact it could have on its own restive Shia minority in the oil-rich east of the country. Riyadh is also worried about the impact of a change in regime in Bahrain on the balance of power between Saudi Arabia and Iran in the region. (One can, however, argue that Saudi military intervention in Bahrain’s affairs will in fact redound to Iran’s benefit in the long run by further de-legitimizing the al-Khalifa rule in Bahrain).
But these are secondary explanations. The primary concern of the Arab autocracies in the Gulf is the suppression of democratic movements regardless of the sectarian character of the populations engaging in democratic struggles. They are worried that if any of the autocracies fall or even reach a substantial compromise with democratic movements it will have a domino effect in the entire Gulf region consigning all of them to the dustbin of history. The GCC was established as an instrument to protect and prolong autocratic rule on the Arabian littoral of the Gulf. Its military operation in Bahrain has clearly shown this true colors.
Egypt’s army cracks down
Rania Abouzeid reports:
The bare-chested 20-year-old Egyptian turns slowly to reveal a broad back that resembles a work of sadistic abstract art — a bloody, bruised composition of pink, red and purple. Long, deep gashes had been sliced through his skin; welts, pinker and more superficial, crisscross his body. His upper left arm is a mix of purples, a cufflike bruise that wraps all the way around his bicep. His right hand is bandaged, one of his fingers sprained. He runs his good hand over his closely shorn hair. His wavy locks, he says, were shaved off with glass shards by the same people who beat him.
On Wednesday, March 9, Khalid, who does not want his last name published, went down to Cairo’s Tahrir Square, concerned about reports that thugs were attacking protesters in the iconic site where he had previously joined hundreds of thousands of his compatriots in the protests that brought down President Hosni Mubarak. He wanted to check on several friends among the hundreds of activists still camped out in the square to press the military government to meet the revolution’s demands.
That afternoon, without warning, soldiers surged into the square behind what several witnesses said were lines of plainclothes thugs armed with metal pipes, electric cables and long, thick wooden rods. The uniformed and nonuniformed men reportedly worked in tandem, just like in Mubarak’s days, rounding up hundreds of young men and women in an attack that lasted several hours, according to multiple accounts.
ABC News reports:
A coalition of six youth groups that emerged from Egypt’s revolution last month has refused to meet with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who arrived in Cairo earlier today, in protest of the United States’ strong support for former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak who was ousted by the uprising.
“There was an invitation for members of the coalition to meet Secretary of State Hillary Clinton but based on her negative position from the beginning of the revolution and the position of the US administration in the Middle East, we reject this invitation,” the January 25 Revolution Youth Coalition said in a statement posted on its Facebook page.
A spokesman for Clinton had no immediate response to the snub. Another State Department official, who would not speak for attribution, confirmed such a meeting had been slated for Tuesday and noted that she still plans to meet with members of civil society and transitional government officials during her visit, during which she will urge Egyptians to continue on the path towards democracy.
How the West empowered Gaddafi and undermined the Arab democratic revolution
“I am very worried about #Libya. I do not want #Gaddafi to win this, and the complicity of the international community is allowing him to.” @Sandmonkey (Mahmoud Salem), Cairo, March 16.
“The fierce urgency of now” is a concept that Obama abandoned the day he got elected. The Decider got replaced with The Deliberator.
For this president, no decision has ever been so urgent that it couldn’t be mulled over for weeks or months. Meanwhile, what for Obama was empty campaign rhetoric, has for Muammer Gaddafi become his means of survival. As the US and Europe have dawdled and deliberated, the Libyan uprising has effectively been crushed.
The New York Times now reports:
With the advances made by loyalists, there is growing consensus in the Obama administration that imposing a no-flight zone over Libya would no longer make much of a difference, a senior official said. Just moving the ships and planes into place to impose an effective no-flight zone, the official said, would take until April, too late to help rebels hunkered down in Benghazi. While administration officials said the United States would not obstruct efforts by other countries to build support for a no-flight zone in the United Nations, President Obama met with his National Security Council on Tuesday to consider a variety of other options to respond to the deteriorating situation. Among those options are jamming Libyan government radio signals and financing the rebel forces with $32 billion in Libyan government and Qaddafi family funds frozen by the United States. That money could be used either for weapons or relief. The meeting broke without a decision, the official said.
“This is another indication of the constant exploration of different options that we have to increase the pressure on the Qaddafi regime as we go forward,” the White House press secretary, Jay Carney, said Tuesday.
But in fact, the administration’s options have narrowed with the dwindling viability of a no-flight zone. The White House is considering more aggressive airstrikes, which would make targets of Colonel Qaddafi’s tanks and heavy artillery — an option sometimes referred to as a “no-drive zone.” The United States or its allies could also send military personnel to advise and train the rebels, an official said.
But given the lack of consensus behind a no-flight zone, these options are viewed as even less likely.
Simon Tisdall writes:
Disagreement between European countries over Libya has moved from the merely embarrassing to the wholly humiliating, after Germany again blocked Anglo-French no-fly zone proposals at a G8 meeting in Paris. The EU’s Libya debacle is now the foreign policy equivalent of last year’s eurozone meltdown, and similarly damaging to its global credibility and influence. Once again, Europe is being forced to confront an unpalatable truth: unless the US takes the lead, nothing gets done. Europe has not been entirely passive in the face of Muammar Gaddafi’s accelerating counter-attack on rebel forces. The EU has imposed sanctions, frozen the assets of leading figures and backed an arms embargo. It has also loudly proclaimed that Gaddafi must go. But these measures have made no appreciable difference on the ground.
On the question of military intervention, there are almost as many opinions as there are EU members. Britain and France are the most outspoken advocates of a no-fly zone. Germany has been the most vocal opponent. Italy – Libya’s former colonial power – havers and trims like a Berlusconi defence lawyer. Last week’s EU summit refused to back a no-fly zone. So did Nato. Today’s G8 communique does not even mention it.
Alain Juppé, France’s foreign minister, suggested Europe had left it too late to stop Gaddafi winning. “If we had used military force last week to neutralise some airstrips and the several dozen planes that they have, perhaps the reversal taking place to the detriment of the opposition wouldn’t have happened,” Juppé told Europe-1 radio. “But that’s the past. What is happening today shows us that we may have let slip by a chance.”
With outright victory now close at hand, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, in an interview on Euronews, said that a UN decision on a no-fly zone would be of no consequence: “Military operations are over. Within 48 hours everything will be finished. Our forces are almost in Benghazi. Whatever the decision, it will be too late.”
Since France was the first country to recognize the Transitional National Council in Benghazi, he was asked his opinion of the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy:
Sarkozy must first give back the money he took from Libya to finance his electoral campaign. We funded it and we have all the details and are ready to reveal everything. The first thing we want this clown to do is to give the money back to the Libyan people. He was given assistance so that he could help them. But he’s disappointed us: give us back our money. We have all the bank details and documents for the transfer operations and we will make everything public soon.
Al Jazeera reports:
Members of the European Parliament have blasted the European Union for a weak response to the crisis.
Guy Verhofstadt, a former Belgian prime minister, said, to repeated rounds of applause: “This makes me sick!”
In Libya we can change the course of events. There are thousands of heroes. We know who they are but Gaddafi knows as well. He knows their names and their families. If he takes Benghazi it will be nothing more than a massacre, a new Srbrenica, a new Rwanda, a new Darfur.
This makes me sick of the EU. We have learnt nothing at all of history. When Gaddafi is back shall we say business as usual? Are we going to close our eyes again? Will we add one black page more to European history?
Rebecca Harms, a German MEP, said the EU was “refusing to line up on the right side, on the side of the just, and the Arab world will not forget or pardon this weakness from Europe”.
One piece of commentary effectively sums up the Obama administration’s role in what is becoming a disaster for the people of Libya:
New administrations anticipate foreign policy as if it will be baseball or football—a complicated team sport, bound by rules, at which they will succeed by dint of individual skill, clever plays and their all-knowing coach. They suit up, only to discover that their sport will be rafting on a uncharted river in full flood, filled with rocks and whirlpools, through which the frantic crew paddles in opposite directions.
Thus too the Obama administration. It came into office planning resets, nuclear zeroes and Israeli-Palestinian peace. It finds itself instead coping with a vast revolution of politics, society and thought in the Arab world—unforeseen and unforeseeable, fraught with opportunity and danger.
For the moment, the administration has survived several rapids—ditching Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak in some confusion and with embarrassing but not indecent haste; nudging the ruler of Bahrain into reform without quite pitching him overboard; and, thus far, avoiding a complete capsizing of the boat in Yemen.
But with regard to Libya it has made mistakes that could haunt this country for years to come. The administration prides itself on the president’s unhurried deliberation, his reluctance to act before considering all the angles, his strategic silences and extended consultations. But steer a raft on a wild river that way, and you end up in the water.
From the outset there were three possible outcomes in Libya: Moammar Gadhafi could go quickly, he could go slowly, or he could stay. The best chance of helping him go quickly would have been an unambiguous declaration of intent to see him off, and the willingness to lead a military effort—most likely a no-fly zone—to help Libyan rebels overthrow his regime.
There was momentum a few weeks ago as one town after another fell to enemies of the regime. A stream of defections, betrayals and surrenders seemed to spell Gadhafi’s doom. The time to intervene is when a small push can have the greatest psychological effect, even if military planners would prefer to do it only after orchestrating a three-week air-defense suppression campaign.
Instead of seizing the opportunity, the administration made cumulative mistakes. It was slow in insisting that Gadhafi had to go—but is now committed to that end, exposing itself to humiliation if he does not. It allowed the Pentagon to publicly disparage military measures, reassuring Gadhafi and dispiriting the rebels, when a discreet and menacing silence would have done far less harm. It called for an international effort when the lesson of decades is that NATO and the United Nations find it impossible to act without American leadership. And when the French government showed strategic initiative and pluck, it undercut a major ally.
The moment has passed. The only question now is whether Gadhafi goes slowly, over months, or not at all. Senior American intelligence officials inconveniently observed the other day in front of Congress that the latter seems the likely outcome. What will happen if they are right?
The administration will have put itself in the position of willing the ends, but not the means—a humiliating position for a great power. Gadhafi will need to recover access to European resources to rebuild his oil industry and regain access to his country’s plundered wealth. He can do that in any of a number of ways. He could threaten to open up the spigot of massive African emigration through Libya, to resume work on weapons of mass destruction, or to sponsor terror—all of which he has done in the past. A divided Europe, which includes a timorous Germany and an Italy preoccupied with the prime minister’s bunga bunga parties, will yield.
The administration is teaching dictators, and the populations they oppress, that you can get away with large-scale mayhem if you avoid YouTube. Instead, let the hard men do their work with assault rifles in alleys and soldering irons in lonely cellars. The thuggish leaders will be emboldened, the populations either despairing or desperate. If one hopes to aid the Arab awakening in the direction of more open and just societies, rather than to empower Islamist terror, this policy is perverse. And, finally, the U. S. has provided cover and reassurance for other unsavory actors—a deafening silence, for example, as Iran arrests leaders of the opposition.
This is a disaster for the people of Libya. It is a moral and political calamity for a generation of Western leaders whose reactions to Rwanda and Srebrenica consisted of ineffectual squeaks of dismay. It may deflect the Arab awakening into directions that will horrify us. And it says dangerous things about American foreign policy. Unless it is reversed, the administration’s Libya policy will convince the world that the U.S. is a feeble friend and an ineffectual foe, paralyzed by its own ambivalence.
That this analysis would come from, Elliot Cohen — a neoconservative proponent of military intervention — is hardly surprising. But to those who have warned about the dire implications of Western involvement in a no-fly zone, I would simply ask: who has been well-served by the West’s non-involvement in what will soon be declared a failed revolution?
Libyan uprising close to collapse as Gaddafi’s troops near Benghazi
The Guardian reports:
Muammar Gaddafi’s effort to defeat the rebels before international support can come seems to be paying off, with the uprising close to collapse as the US ended weeks of stalling to join Britain and France in supporting a United Nations resolution to impose a no-fly zone over Libya.
A vote is expected this week, but is likely to come too late to support the rebellion. Gaddafi’s troops, backed by air power, moved into the town of Ajdabiya, clearing the way to the rebel stronghold of Benghazi, 90 miles away. Residents of the city were fleeing towards the border with Egypt.
Washington is facing accusations, particularly from the rebels, that delay had given the Libyan leader the space he needed. “They have betrayed us,” Ahmed Malen, one of the revolutionary volunteers pasting anti-Gaddafi posters on walls in Benghazi. “If they kill us all, the west will have blood on its hands. They do not believe in freedom. They are cowards.”
President Barack Obama will face criticism from Democrats as well as Republicans if the rebellion collapses.
France’s foreign minister, Alain Juppé, admitted that a no-fly zone might now be too late. “If we had used military force last week to neutralise some airstrips and the several dozen planes that they have, perhaps the reversal taking place to the detriment of the opposition wouldn’t have happened,” Juppé told Europe-1 radio.
The Obama administration, already fighting two wars, was reluctant to join a third and challenged the value of a no-fly zone. But, after the Arab League countries met and agreed a request on Saturday for a no-fly zone, the US along with Britain, France and Lebanon supported a draft UN resolution to be presented to the UN security council.
Although victory by Gaddafi would make a no-fly zone redundant, the draft resolution also includes measures that would remain in some degree relevant, mainly expanding sanctions, such as stricter enforcement of the arms embargo, freezing the assets of more members of the Gaddafi regime and extending a travel ban, and ordering countries to stop mercenaries flying from their airports to Libya.
A security council source, noting Gaddafi’s advances, said: “Time is of the essence.” But he acknowledged that the security council was slow moving and that while a vote could be held this week, it could spill over into next week. “The negotiations will be tough,” he added.
France’s UN ambassador, Gerard Araud, told reporters: “We are deeply distressed by the fact that things are worsening on the ground, that the Gaddafi forces are moving forward and the council has not yet reacted.”
The US shift comes after securing a promise that Arab countries would contribute forces to policing the no-fly zone. Countries such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan would be asked to provide planes. Washington is worried that a purely western force would be counter-productive, alienating Arab opinion and damaging the changes elsewhere in the Arab world.
But the rate of advance by Gaddafi may make a no-fly zone academic. The street-by-street fighting promised by rebel’s military leader, Abdel Fattah Younis, failed to materialise. Younis was Gaddafi’s interior minister until recently and now has a $4m (£2.48m) bounty on his head.
In an interview with the Italian newspaper Il Giornale, he derided international discussionof a no-fly zone. The Libyan leader told the rebels: “There are only two possibilities: surrender or run away.”
Gaddafi’s seizure of the coastal road at Ajdabiya opens the way not only to Benghazi but to Tobruk and control of Libya’s border with Egypt. The coastal road divides at Ajdabiya, offering Gaddafi’s forces the opportunity to bypass Benghazi to seize towns to the east and then besiege the rebels’ de facto capital from both sides.
Akram Ramadan, a British-born Libyan broadcaster who returned to the UK from Bengazhi this week, said: “Everything is already too late. Whatever they decide, it is a month too late. Libyans are disappointed with the response of the west.”
The fight for Libya
The Guardian reports:
Libya’s revolutionary leadership is pressing western powers to assassinate Muammar Gaddafi and launch military strikes against his forces to protect rebel-held cities from the threat of bloody assault.
Mustafa Gheriani, spokesman for the revolutionary national council in its stronghold of Benghazi, said the appeal was to be made by a delegation meeting the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, and the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, in Paris on Monday, as G8 foreign ministers gathered there to consider whether to back French and British calls for a no-fly zone over Libya.
“We are telling the west we want a no-fly zone, we want tactical strikes against those tanks and rockets that are being used against us and we want a strike against Gaddafi’s compound,” said Gheriani. “This is the message from our delegation in Europe.”
Asked if that meant that the revolutionary council wanted the west to assassinate Gaddafi, Gheriani replied: “Why not? If he dies, nobody will shed a tear.”
But with diplomatic wrangling focused on the issue of the no-fly zone, there appeared to be little immediate prospect of a foreign military assault on Gaddafi’s forces, let alone an air strike against the Libyan dictator.
Christian Science Monitor reports:
On Libya’s eastern front, taking towns may be easy for Col. Muammar Qaddafi – but holding them is something else again.
After days of being pounded by rocket fire and bombing runs from forces loyal to Qaddafi, Libya’s rebel army piled into their pickup trucks yesterday afternoon and cut a ragged retreat from the oil town of Brega to Ajdabiya, 40 miles to the east. They left mounds of ammunition and supplies behind them as they fled, Qaddafi’s fighters surging behind.
That was all according to plan, says Mohammed el-Majbouli.
“We drew [Qaddafi’s forces] forward, and then we maneuvered behind them and trapped them,” says Mr. Majbouli, a former member of Qaddafi’s special forces who is now organizing rebel fighters.
He says a reserve force of rebels with military training had been hidden in homes in the eastern third of the sprawling petrochemical complex at Brega. After the Qaddafi men passed at about 8 p.m. last night, the rebels came out, retaking the town as well as about 20 prisoners from Qaddafi’s forces.
Majbouli’s claim of victory, which is also made by senior officers who have defected to the rebel cause, could not be independently confirmed. But if he is right, it would be the fourth time Brega has changed hands in less than two weeks, emphasizing the strange, shimmering nature of the conflict being fought in Libya’s coastal desert.
While it remains easy for Qaddafi to rain mortars and rockets on rebel checkpoints, he doesn’t appear to have more than a few thousand men, at most, committed to his eastward advance. Without indiscriminate fire on the cities of Ajdabiya or Benghazi – just the sort of act that might galvanize the international community into action, which Qaddafi is likely keen to avoid – it’s hard to see his forces advancing quickly much farther east.
On Saturday, The Guardian reported:
Muammar Gaddafi’s army won control of a strategic rebel-held Libyan town and laid siege to another as the revolutionary administration in Benghazi again appealed for foreign military help to prevent what it said would be the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people if the insurgents were to lose.
The rebels admitted retreating from the oil town of Ras Lanuf – captured a week ago – after two days of intense fighting and that the nearby town of Brega was now threatened.
The revolutionary army, in large part made up of inexperienced young volunteers, has been forced back by a sustained artillery, tank and air bombardment about 20 miles along the road to the rebel capital of Benghazi.
The head of Libya’s revolutionary council, Mustafa Abdel Jalil, claimed that if Gaddafi’s forces were to reach the country’s second-largest city it would result in “the death of half a million” people.
Robin Yassin-Kassab writes:
In 2003 America and Britain invaded Iraq without a United Nations mandate. Today NATO is emphasising that it won’t move without both a UN resolution and substantial political support from the Arabs. The Arab League has now called for a no-fly zone.
At the League meeting Omani foreign minister Yusuf bin Alawi warned that if the Arabs didn’t take a strong stance they would open the door to unwanted foreign interference. This may seem contradictory: at the same time he asked the UN to intervene. But his point is a good one. If NATO forces act under a UN resolution and responding to an Arab request, the Arabs will be well-placed to end the intervention at the right moment.
I understand the worries of those who fear Western intervention, after all the West’s crimes against the Arab world. I wish the Arabs were capable of moving by themselves (and I certainly hope that once the revolutions have run their course we will finally see an independent Arab world taking care of internal Arab problems). I like Asa’ad Abu Khalil’s idea of using Egypt and Tunisa as staging posts for volunteer Arab soldiers who wish to aid their brothers in Libya.
It’s a difficult, cloudy situation. The only clear thing is that the Libyans need immediate help. The Transitional National Council’s warning that half a million will be killed is not mere rhetoric, but an entirely logical and legitimate fear.
Ahram Online reports:
Thousands of Libyans march down the Corniche in Benghazi, chanting, “Free Libya,” “Revolutionaries,” “Beasts,” and other slogans. It is part of their military training. They are all volunteers, who chose to become fighters and join the rebel forces in areas like Ras Lanuf, Brega and Zawiyah , which are experiencing heavy air strikes by Gaddafi’s forces.
Among those is Ahmed, 25 years old, an Egyptian who has worked in construction in Libya for the past four years. In spite of his family’s pleas, he refuses to leave Libya. “I came to Libya and it was prosperous, I will leave it as prosperous as it was. I will stay here and fight with my friends until Libya is free, just like Egypt is free now,” said Ahmed who looked pale, but seemed very confident of victory and liberation.Ahmed is one of many Egyptians who decided to stay and join the Libyan revolution. The volunteers are from both genders and all ages. Nada, 18, is a student who was born to an Egyptian mother and a Libyan father. She was born in Alexandria, but moved to Benghazi at the age of eight and has been living there ever since. She still visits Egypt every year.
“I love Egypt, it’s my second home, but I love Libya too, and I am going to stay and fight where I am needed,” said Nada passionately. Nada wears her hair short and she looks very practical in her suit and yellow shirt, which signifies that she is one of the organizers of the anti-Gaddafi sit-in. She joined the sit-in on February 18, along with her mother, another supervisor.
The Independent reports:
Four men have been arrested for the murder of an Al Jazeera journalist and evidence has emerged that Muammar Gaddafi’s regime is sending undercover squads to carry out a campaign of assassinations, rebel officials claimed yesterday.
The Independent was told that four men were caught in the city of Ajdabiya with evidence linking them to the death of Ali Hassaon Al Jaber, who was killed near Benghazi on Saturday. Under questioning, the suspects allegedly confessed they had been ordered to silence opposition figures and drive out international presence from territories of the protest movement.
The Arab spring is brighter than ever
Brian Whitaker writes:
“The Arab world’s much-heralded collective push toward democracy is now in jeopardy,” an article for McClatchy newspapers in the US informed its readers at the weekend.
The fact that autocratic regimes in Libya, Bahrain and Yemen are fighting back with lethal force should surprise no one. The more surprising thing is that Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia and Hosni Mubarak in Egypt – two leaders previously regarded as firmly entrenched – were toppled after such a short struggle.
Nor does the fightback mean, as the article’s headline suggests, that the outlook for democracy is dimming across much of the Middle East. Looking at the region as a whole, the prospects have never been brighter.
But there is another – far bigger – problem with this revolution-in-jeopardy analysis. By focusing on “democracy” and the ousting of dictators, it ignores a large part of what the Arab revolt is about. It’s the same mistake that George Bush made with his calls for democracy and “regime change” in the Middle East – calls that were directed mainly against the regimes deemed hostile towards the US and paid little attention to the desires of ordinary Arabs.
Arabs don’t talk much about democracy as such, and they tend to be cynical about elections. They do talk increasingly about “freedom”, though what they mean by it is not quite what Bush meant. They want freedom from corruption and political cronyism, and the freedom to make their own choices – an end to repression and government attempts to control the minutiae of people’s lives.
Democracy may be one way of working towards that but it is rarely seen as a goal in itself, and while regime change is certainly an important part of the revolt, its younger activists (at least) have their eyes set on changing whole systems, not just the political leaders.
Why Palestinians will protest on March 15
Rawan Abu-Shahla writes:
We are a group of Palestinian youths who have come together for the sole purpose of leaving behind our political identities and affiliations, and deciding to put our best interests above all else, united under our Palestinian flag. We have called for peaceful demonstrations on Tuesday, 15 March across the Palestinian nation — in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, the territories of 1948 and the Palestinian diaspora, calling out together one slogan: “The people want to end the division!”
We call for peaceful actions in support of unity in the Palestinian political scene under one banner, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
Division in the Palestinian body politic has affected every aspect of our lives: socially, economically, educationally and intellectually. It is ordinary Palestinians who have paid the price of the four-year long division that serves no one but the Israeli occupier.
Our campaign to end the division started out as a thought which stirred discussion, and some youths decided to give it a try and did everything possible to make this initiative happen. Day after day, the idea grew and became a plan and then a public decision to not be silenced anymore, not to be terrorized or oppressed and most importantly, not to be ignored and forgotten anymore. That is how we came to our decision to demonstrate on 15 March, state the public’s refusal of the status quo and the practices of the political “leadership.”
Europeans are losing their illusions about Israel
Daud Abdullah writes:
In Europe, Israel has historically enjoyed a high level of support, not least because it was perceived as a progressive democracy in a sea of Arab backwardness. At the same time, most Europeans knew very little about the Israel-Palestine conflict: as recently as 2004, the Glasgow University Media Group found that only 9% of British students knew that the Israelis were the illegal occupiers of Palestinian land. Astonishingly, there were actually more people (11%) who believed that the Palestinians were occupying the territories.
However, according to a new poll by ICM for the Middle East Monitor, Europeans’ perception of Israel has changed decisively, and their understanding of the Israel-Palestine conflict, while still giving some cause for concern, has improved significantly. The survey of 7,000 people in Germany, France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands and Britain reveals only a small minority (10%) now believe their countries should support Israel rather than the Palestinians, while many more, 39%, think they should not.
The Saudi intervention in Bahrain is a slap in the face of the US
Jean-François Seznec writes:
On Saturday, March 12, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates visited Bahrain, where he called for real reforms to the country’s political system and criticized “baby steps,” which he said would be insufficient to defuse the crisis. The Saudis were called in within a few hours of Gates’s departure, however, showing their disdain for his efforts to reach a negotiated solution. By acting so soon after Gates’s visit, Saudi Arabia has made the United States look at best irrelevant to events in Bahrain, and from the Shiite opposition’s point of view, even complicit in the Saudi military intervention.
The number of foreign troop is so far very small and should not make one iota of difference in Bahrain’s balance of power. The Bahraini military already total 30,000 troops, all of whom are Sunnis. They are under control of Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa and supposedly fully faithful to King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa. Bahrain also has a similar number of police and general security forces, mainly mercenaries from Baluchistan, Yemen, and Syria, reputed to be controlled by the prime minister and his followers in the family.
At this time, therefore, the Saudi intervention is largely a symbolic maneuver. It is so far not an effort to quell the unrest, but intended to scare the more extreme Shiite groups into allowing negotiations to go forward. The crown prince recently laid out six main issues to be discussed in talks, including the establishment of an elected parliament empowered to affect government policy, fairly demarcated electoral constituencies, steps to combat financial and administrative corruption, and moves to limit sectarian polarization. He notably failed to mention one of the opposition’s primary demands — the prime minister’s resignation.
The Saudi move, however, risks backfiring. It is extremely unlikely that the Saudi troops’ presence will entice moderate Shiite and Sunni opposition figures to come to the table — the intervention will force them to harden their position for fear of being seen as Saudi stooges. The demands of the more extreme groups, such as the Shiite al-Haq party, are also likely to increase prior to negotiations. These elements, having seen job opportunities go to foreign workers and political power dominated by the ruling family for decades, have grown steadily disenchanted with prospects of talks.
The crown prince is well aware that the Saudi intervention only makes a negotiated solution to this crisis more challenging, so it is difficult to imagine that he invited the Saudis into Bahrain. The more liberal Khalifas, such as the crown prince, know very well that the only way out of the crisis is to obtain the resignation of the prime minister and some of the more extreme Sunni ministers.
However, the prime minister — with whom Gates did not meet with during his weekend visit — does not appear to have any intention of resigning and is the most likely figure behind the invitation to the Saudis to intervene. Although details are still sketchy, he is likely joining with the Saudi king to pass the message to the United States that he is in charge and no one can tell him what to do. Furthermore, it signals that the Saudis agree with Bahrain’s conservatives that the Shiite must be reined in rather than negotiated with, even at the cost of telling the United States to kiss off.
The Saudi intervention may also have been precipitated by the deepening rift between the extreme Sunni elements and the liberal Khalifas. If the Saudis are indeed heading to Riffa, it is possible they are tasked with defending the Khalifa stronghold not so much against the Shiite rabble but against the Bahraini military, which is under the command of the crown prince. The Saudi intervention would therefore be an effort by the prime minister and the Saudis to pressure the crown prince into not giving in to the protesters’ demands and to fall in line with their plans to secure Bahrain as the personal fiefdom of the Khalifas and their tribal allies.
Saudis move troops into Bahrain to crush pro-democracy movement
CNN opts for the anodyne and official phrasing “Gulf Cooperation Council security forces,” but the troops who just marched into Bahrain are Saudis.
When US Defense Secretary Gates visited Bahrain on Friday, I assume King Hamad bin Issa al-Khalifah gave the US advance warning that his Kingdom would shortly be under something resembling Saudi martial law — just to make sure Washington would voice no more than minimal objections to the latest effort to crush Bahrain’s strengthening democracy movement.
The New York Times reports:
The White House issued a statement on Sunday that said the United States strongly condemned violence that had occurred in Bahrain and Yemen, and added, “We urge the government of Bahrain to pursue a peaceful and meaningful dialogue with the opposition rather than resorting to the use of force.”
And as the Khalifa family and their Saudi overlords ignore this request, what will the White House do? Withdraw the US Fifth Fleet? Not likely!
The Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights describes the Saudi military presence as “an overt occupation of the kingdom of Bahrain and a conspiracy against the unarmed people of Bahrain.” Even while the White House urges the Bahrain government to engage the opposition in dialogue, no doubt Washington will dismiss the suggestion that Bahrain is now under occupation.
Given that Bahrainis already face brutality from security services — the majority of whom are foreign — I don’t know whether they will find the Saudi presence any more intimidating.
To have an idea of what protesters have been up against in recent days, just watch this video showing an unarmed man being hit by tear gas cannisters shot at point blank range:
GCC and now Arab League support for a no-fly zone over Libya (which they most likely expect will not be imposed), has I suspect, less to do with any concern about the fate of Libya’s revolutionaries than it does in fostering a permissive climate in which the Gulf states’ autocratic rulers can offer each other mutual support in their own efforts to counter the political demands coming from their own subjects. Support for a NFZ provides these monarchies with an opportunity to posture as defenders of Arab freedom at the same time that they suppress Arab freedom. Likewise, by opposing Gaddafi, the Gulf rulers want to cast their dictatorships as benign in contrast to Gaddafi’s brutal rule.
The fight for Libya
Samia Nakhoul reports:
By the time the outside world agrees on a response to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s bloody onslaught against a popular revolt, it could all be over.
The advance of Gaddafi’s better-armed forces, who seem to have shown little regard for civilians when storming in to retake rebel strongholds, has outrun the slow pace of hesitant initiatives being discussed by European, U.S. and Arab leaders.
An Arab League call for the United Nations to impose a no-fly zone to protect the revolt, was welcomed by France, which has taken a lead in backing the rebels and will host G8 foreign ministers in Paris Monday.
But others, notably the United States and other European Union states such as Germany, remain very cautious about military engagement. No U.N. Security Council meeting had yet been scheduled, despite events racing in Libya.
“The international community is dragging its feet,” said Saad Djebbar, a London lawyer and expert on Libyan affairs. “The diplomatic pace is very slow. There is an urgency to act quickly before those people are finished off by Gaddafi’s forces.”
“The international community has to act now — not only to protect Benghazi from an onslaught but because of what it means for the rest of the world if Gaddafi is allowed to remain the leader of Libya,” said Geoff Porter, a U.S.-based political risk consultant who specializes in North Africa.
After the relatively peaceful and speedy overthrow of Arab strongmen in Egypt and Tunisia, Western disarray on Libya may persuade other authoritarian rulers facing unrest, from Yemen to Bahrain, that the best antidote to revolt is violence.
“If they allow Gaddafi to win, that would encourage other Arab despotic regimes to use brutal force against their people to stamp out revolt,” Djebbar said. “This will erase the gains of the people power we have seen in Egypt and Tunis.
“It sends a very bad signal to other movements.”
Reuters reports:
Muammar Gaddafi’s troops seized the strategic Libyan oil town of Brega on Sunday, forcing rebels to retreat eastward and putting extra pressure on world powers still deliberating on a no-fly zone.
The government offensive had already driven the rebels out of Ras Lanuf, another oil terminal 100 km to the west on the coast road, and the seizure of Brega and its refinery deprived the rebels of more territory and yet another source of fuel.
The government, in a message on state television, said it was certain of victory and threatened to “bury” the rebels, who it linked to al Qaeda and “foreign security services.”
Riad Kahwaji writes:
Some Arab defense experts believe it is time for the Arab States to stand up and take responsibilities in their own hands and come to the aid of the Libyans. Retired Major General Khaled Al-Bu Ainnain, former commander of the United Arab Emirates Air Force and Air Defense, believes that some GCC states and Egypt can mount a joint operation and successfully enforce an NFZ over Libya. “The UAE Air Force can deploy couple of squadrons – one F-16 Block 60 and another Mirage 2000-9 – the Saudi Air Force can deploy a couple of F-15S squadrons and Egypt a couple of F-16 squadrons out of Mersi Matrouh Air Base in western Egypt,” Al-Bu Ainnain said. “This would provide 120 fighters and attack aircrafts that would be backed with airborne early warning planes like Egyptian E-2C Hawkeye or Saudi AWACS, some unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) for reconnaissance, and air-refueling tankers from Saudi Arabia and couple of Egyptian or UAE helicopter squadrons comp osed of Apache Longbow gunships, Blackhawks and Chinook helicopters, for search and rescue missions.” Crews and troops needed for the operation could be quickly airlifted to western Egypt, and even Algeria, within hours using a large fleet of UAE and Egyptian C-130 and Qatari C-17 transporters.
Observers believe the area of operations for any force executing an NFZ over Libya now would be confined to the area between the capital Tripoli and the City of Cert and down south to Sebha in the center. The rest of the country is under rebel control. The Libyan Air Force is comprised of aging Cold War-era Soviet supplied fighters like Su-22, MiG-21 and MiG-23 and one remaining operational Mirage F-1 and some 30 MiMi-24 Helicopter gunships. According to reports out of Libya, only few Su-22 and MiG-23 aircrafts were seen involved in the air raids in addition to MiMi-24 gunships. As for Air Defense, Gadhafi’s forces are believed to be in possession of a few batteries of Soviet-era SAM-2, SAM-3 and SAM-6 surface to air missiles. “All of the Libyan Air Defense SAM’s and radars can be taken out swiftly by the arsenal of smart weapons and cruise missiles in possession today by GCC and Egyptian Air Forces,” Al-Bu Ainnain said. “Runways can be destr oyed with bunker-busters to ground all the jets, and the gunships can be easily destroyed on the ground.” He pointed out that GCC and Egyptian Air Forces have considerably enhanced their joint-operations capabilities as a result of almost annual exercises they have done together along with the U.S. and some EU countries. “Issues related to command and control and interoperability would be resolved quickly which would ensure a smooth running of NFZ operations.”
The Washington Post reports:
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Saturday that the U.S. military, already fighting two wars in Muslim nations, would have no trouble enforcing a no-fly zone over Libya if President Obama orders one.
The comments appeared designed to counter the criticism surrounding his earlier remarks on the issue and came as the Arab League endorsed a no-fly zone to protect Libya’s civilians from forces loyal to Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi.
Gates indicated earlier this month that the creation of a no-fly zone would be a “big operation.” NATO would need to deploy an array of air power to target not only defense systems and fighter jets, but also the low-flying attack helicopters that Gaddafi has used against rebels and civilian protesters.
The assessment drew criticism, in particular, from those who favor a more aggressive American response to the Libyan conflict, now tilting back in favor of Gaddafi’s better-armed forces. Some accused Gates of inflating the dangers and scope of a no-fly zone mission over a large desert country with a small population.
The new Israeli Left
Joseph Dana and Noam Sheizaf write:
As the controversial 443 highway, which connects Tel Aviv with Jerusalem by passing through the West Bank, begins to curve toward Israel’s capital, the eye is inevitably drawn to an imposing gray structure with massive concrete walls, part of the Ofer Military Prison. Commuters are barely aware of what takes place behind those walls, and that’s no accident—the Ofer compound, comprising a military court, detention center and prison, is just one of many black holes that enable Israelis to go on with their daily lives, unaware of the everyday realities of the occupation.
Inside, a man in shackles enters the courtroom. He is wearing a brown prison suit, and his exhausted eyes exchange glances with his wife. The two haven’t met outside the courtroom in more than a year, and for some reason the prison guards are frantically moving the wife so she doesn’t sit too close to her husband, who is officially a “security risk.” Soon the military judge, outfitted in a light green Israel Defense Forces (IDF) uniform and an army beret, enters the room and begins the proceedings.
This trial could be any one of the thousands that have taken place at Ofer. Israeli military justice is swift and unflinching: according to the Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din, the conviction rate at Ofer is an astounding 99.7 percent. Hearings are short, and apart from relatives who use the opportunity to see their loved ones, nobody bothers to attend or report on the proceedings. But today is different. The small courtroom is full, with twenty European diplomats—including the British general consul, Sir Vincent Fean—as well as a handful of Israelis who have become close to the prisoner through years of joint action.
The prisoner, Abdallah Abu Rahmah, a 39-year-old schoolteacher and father of three, has already been convicted and has served a sentence for incitement and organizing illegal protests in the West Bank village of Bil’in. But after a prosecutor’s appeal, the judge ordered that he be kept in prison. Abu Rahmah would later receive an additional six months of prison time.
It wasn’t only friendship that brought the Israelis to Ofer. They see the case against Abu Rahmah as part of a new effort to crush unarmed resistance in the West Bank. For them, Abu Rahmah is not just another Palestinian activist. By leading the mostly nonviolent weekly protests in his village against Israel’s separation wall, he has become the face of a new uprising against the occupation and a key player in a kind of activism that has united Jews, Palestinians and people from around the world—one that carries a message of hope, something as unusual and unexpected in this part of the world as the recent uprisings that have toppled Arab tyrannies. It is a hope that can even penetrate the forbidding walls of the Ofer military compound.
Libya’s armed protest movement at the edge of an abyss
The coffin of Emad al-Giryani, a former petroleum engineer who fought for the opposition in Ras Lanuf. Some Obama administration officials have said privately that the level of violence in Libya would have to approach the scale of that in Rwanda or Bosnia in the 1990s before the United States would engage militarily. (New York Times)
As some commentators solemnly warn about the dangers of a backlash if the Arab democratic revolution was to become poisoned by American involvement in a no-fly zone over Libya, they fail to note a rising chorus inside Libya: anger towards the United States because of its reluctance to become involved.
There’s stunning paradox here. Three decades ago, America’s support of the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan sowed the seeds for a jihad against America. And now, America’s lack of support for a revolution in Libya may eventually have the same effect.
There are those who would on this basis jump to the conclusion that this demonstrates a visceral hatred of America across the Muslim world, but I would argue the exact opposite: that it demonstrates that attitudes towards America in a region in which it exerts so much influence are predominantly pragmatic and rooted in the present tense: they are a response to whatever the United States is doing or is not doing at any particular time.
Anthony Shadid in one of the finest pieces of reporting to come out of Libya since the fighting started, writes from Ras Lanuf:
Everyone here seems to have a gun these days, in a lawlessness tempered only by revolutionary ebullience. Young men at the front parade with the swagger that a rocket-propelled grenade launcher grants but hint privately that they will try to emigrate if they fail. Anti-American sentiments build, as rebels complain of Western inaction. And the hint of radicalization — religious or something more nihilist — gathers as the momentum in the three-week conflict clearly shifts to the forces of one of the world’s most bizarre leaders.
“This better not go on any longer,” said Dr. Salem Langhi, a surgeon who was working around the clock at a hospital that was abandoned as Colonel Qaddafi’s forces rushed in. “It will only bring misery and hard feelings among people. Losing lives and limbs doesn’t make anyone optimistic.”
No one seems to know what to call this conflict — a revolution, a civil war or, in a translation of what some call it in Arabic, “the events,” a shorthand for confusing violence. It certainly looks like a war — the thud of shelling in the distance offers a cadence to occasional airstrikes, their targets smoking like oil fires that turn afternoon to dusk. The dead and dismembered are ferried in ambulances driven by medical students.
But especially for the rebels, there is an amateurishness to the fighting that began as a protest and became an armed uprising.
“We’re here because we want to be,” said one of the fighters, Mohammed Fawzi.
His sense of a spontaneous gathering offers a prism through which to understand the war: the front at Ras Lanuf is the most militarized version of Tahrir Square in Cairo, where hundreds of thousands wrote a script of opposition and street theater that brought down a strongman everyone thought would die in office. The fighting here feels less like combat in the conventional sense and more like another form of frustrated protest.
Some vehicles bear the inscription Joint Security Committee, but nothing is all that coordinated across a landscape that seems anarchic and lacking in leadership. Fighters don leather jackets from Turkey, Desert Fox-style goggles, ski masks, cowboy hats and World War II-era British waistcoats.
Slogans are scrawled in the street just miles from the fighting. “Muammar is a dog,” one reads. A man who bicycled for three days from Darnah, far to the east, became a local celebrity at the front. Free food is offered, as it was in the canteens in Tahrir, and fighters rummaged through donated clothes. “These are American jeans!” one shouted.
Young men revel in the novelty of having no one to tell them not to play with guns. “God is great!” rings out whenever a volley of bullets is fired into the air.
“Some guys consider this a lot of fun, and they’re hoping the war lasts a lot longer,” said Marwan Buhidma, a 21-year-old computer student who credited video games with helping him figure out how to operate a 14.5-millimeter antiaircraft battery.
An hour or so before Friday’s headlong retreat, a gaggle of young men in aviator sunglasses and knit caps danced on military hardware, thrusting weapons into the air.
“Where is the house of the guy with really bad hair?” they chanted, referring to Colonel Qaddafi, jumping on spent cartridges and empty milk cartons. “Let’s go down the road and see it!”
The protests across the Arab world have disparate demands — from power-sharing in Bahrain to the dismantling of the regime in Egypt. But the demographic shift they represent as a generation comes of age is their constant. It is no different in Libya, where the young look at their parents’ lives in disgust and vow that they will not live without dignity, a say in their future and a constitution — a catchall term for the rule of law.
Nearly 70 percent of Libya’s population is under the age of 34, virtually identical to Egypt’s, and a refrain at the front or faraway in the mountain town of Bayda is that a country blessed with the largest oil reserves in Africa should have better schools, hospitals, roads and housing across a land dominated by Soviet-era monotony.
“People here didn’t revolt because they were hungry, because they wanted power or for religious reasons or something,” said Abdel-Rahman al-Dihami, a young man from Benghazi who had spent days at the front. “They revolted because they deserve better.”
The seeming justice of that revolt has prompted moments of naïveté — time and again, young people express amazement that Colonel Qaddafi’s forces would deploy tanks and warplanes against them — with an incipient and unpredictable frustration over demands unmet.
The revolt remains amorphous, but already, religion has emerged as an axis around which to focus opposition to Colonel Qaddafi’s government, especially across a terrain where little unites it otherwise. The sermon at the front on Friday framed the revolt as a crusade against an infidel leader. “This guy is not a Muslim,” said Jawdeh al-Fakri, the prayer leader. “He has no faith.”
Deserting officers have offered what leadership there is, along with some men who call themselves veterans of fighting in Afghanistan or an Islamist insurgency in eastern Libya in the 1990s. The shift remains tentative — and far short of the accusations made by Colonel Qaddafi that he faces an insurgency led by Al Qaeda — but even the opposition acknowledges the threat of radicalization in a drawn-out conflict.
Dr. Langhi, the surgeon, said he scolded rebels who called themselves mujahedeen — a religious term for pious fighters. “This isn’t our situation,” he pleaded. “This is a revolution.”
Sitting on ammunition boxes, four young men from Benghazi debated the war, as they watched occasional volleys of antiaircraft guns fired at nothing. They promised victory but echoed the anger heard often these days at the United States and the West for failing to impose a no-flight zone, swelling a sense of abandonment.
Benghazi’s rebels know it is now them or Gaddafi
Chris McGreal reports:
Ask people in Benghazi what awaits them if Muammar Gaddafi’s army fights its way back into the rebel capital and the chances are they will talk about Huda Ben Amer.
Today she is one of the Libyan dictator’s most closely trusted lieutenants, but nearly three decades ago Ben Amer was a young woman in Benghazi keen to earn a name with the regime. Her moment came at the public hanging of one of Gaddafi’s opponents in 1984. Ben Amer rushed forward as the unfortunate man dangled from the rope, wrapped her arms around his body and used her weight to pull down until he was dead.
That stomach-churning performance won her Gaddafi’s attention, and Ben Amer rose to become powerful, rich and twice mayor of Benghazi. It also earned her the enduring hatred of many in a city long viewed by the regime as riddled with subversion, where she is spoken of with the same depth of loathing and fear as the dictator.
When the revolution erupted in Benghazi last month, a crowd descended on Ben Amer’s sprawling white mansion and, on discovering that she was out of the city, burned it to the ground.
“If we lose, Huda Ben Amer will hang all of us,” said Walid Malak, an engineer turned revolutionary who has armed himself with a Kalashnikov plundered from a military base abandoned by Gaddafi’s forces. “Everyone in Benghazi knows it’s them or us.”
Arab League calls on UN to enforce no-fly zone over Libya
The Wall Street Journal reports:
The Arab League on Saturday called on the United Nations Security Council to enforce a “no-fly zone” over Libyan airspace, marking a decisive diplomatic victory for rebel forces opposed to Moammar Gadhafi, the Libyan ruler.
The announcement will bolster calls by some European leaders to intervene in the violent confrontation between rebels and Col. Gadhafi’s military.
The U.S. and the European Union had deferred to the 22-member league of Arab nations to determine whether outside military forces should intervene.
The air superiority of forces loyal to Col. Gadhafi has helped tip the balance of power against the antigovernment uprising based in the eastern part of the country. On Saturday, government forces tightened their grip on the coastal road linking government-held territory to the rebel-controlled east, the Associated Press reported.
Col. Gadhafi’s forces all but routed rebels in the coastal oil-refining city of Ras Lanuf earlier this week and completed their assault on Zawiya, a rebel stronghold west of Tripoli, Libya’s capital.
Deliberations will now go to the U.N. Security Council, where permanent members China and Russia are thought to oppose the proposed no-fly zone.
Abdel Hafeez Goga, the deputy head of the Benghazi-based provisional rebel government, the Transitional National Council, praised the Arab League decision.
“We welcome and salute their decision and look at it as a step forward to the imposition of no-fly-zone imposition,” he told a news conference in Benghazi.