Category Archives: War in Libya

Libya’s challenge: democracy under the gun

At Open Democracy, Mark Taylor writes:

The demonstrators at the heart of the Arab spring have redefined the political space in their countries and as a result laid down a new dividing-line in the region. No longer is the political contest between east and west, Muslim against the rest, or pro- or anti-imperialist, humanitarian intervention versus regime change. The dividing-line in the region today is between democratic revolution or counter-revolution.

The new reality means that, for most in the region, the United States and its allies will be judged by their actions and whether these support or forestall democratic change. This change has forced outside powers to adapt and the Libyan intervention is the most dramatic example of this. In stark contrast to only a few weeks ago, not to intervene in Libya would have transformed the struggle in the region into one that defined the fight for democracy as a fight against the US. The US would have been blamed squarely for the defeat of democracy and, because of the changed political landscape, that would have been devastating for US interests in the region.

Doing nothing and allowing the Libyan opposition to be slaughtered held the potential for a backlash that would undermine all US-backed regimes, including Saudi Arabia (in Hillary Clinton’s mind, the violence of Gaddafi probably also raised the spectre of repeating Bill Clinton’s mistake on Rwanda).

The US, long a supporter of dictators in the region, had no good option in Libya. Instead, it chose the less bad one, one which held the possibility of staying on the right side of this story for now – and provided cover in advance for the fact that it will almost certainly be on the wrong side in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and even Syria.

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Why the Libyan revolution deserves support from everyone who believes in democracy

By Anjali Kamat and Ahmad Shokr, Economic and Political Weekly, March 19, 2011

A month into the Libyan revolution, it is easy to forget that what is now an armed rebellion led by a council seeking international recognition began – much like the protests in Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen – as a peaceful and leaderless popular uprising. Its primary demands were – and to a large extent remain – almost identical to those articulated by demonstrators in other parts of north Africa and west Asia: freedom of expression, democracy, and the ousting of a dictator and his repressive security apparatus. These are fundamentally liberal demands, but when made in a quasi-fascist police state like that ruled by colonel Muammar Gaddafi for nearly 42 years, they acquire a much more radical hue.

The transformation from street protests to armed revolt happened quickly, certainly faster than anyone in Libya could have imagined. After just four days of demonstrations and violent clashes, the long neglected cities of eastern Libya shook off four decades of Gaddafi’s iron-fisted rule. One by one, Benghazi, Al-Bayda, Derna, and Tubruk, all declared their liberation. Almost immediately, protestors established city councils made up of prominent residents and organised popular committees of young men to direct traffic and guard against looting. Even as state-controlled media continued to describe them as treacherous elements implementing a wide range of foreign agendas (western, Egyptian, Tunisian, and Al Qaida), groups of people in Benghazi set up independent newspapers and a handful of former state radio employees took over the local airwaves, broadcasting news about the overnight rebellion and urging everyone to join what came to be known as the “17 February revolution”.

Libya’s revolutionaries are largely middleclass professionals who were suddenly thrust into the leadership of a popular rebellion. They do not represent any single ideological position, but what they do share is a lack of experience with governance or popular mobilisation. This is not surprising given that one of the key achievements of Gaddafi’s four decades in power has been the systematic annihilation of civil society. Any effort towards community or labour organisation or building political associations was swiftly and brutally stamped out as an unacceptable form of dissent, punishable, in some cases, by death. Professional associations that existed were tightly controlled by the state. Notwithstanding his son Saif alIslam’s much-touted PhD dissertation at the London School of Economics on the role of civil society in democratisation, Gaddafi famously said in a televised address last year that civil society is a bourgeois invention of the west with no place in Libya. Labour unions, he added, are for the weak.

A rare exception in this otherwise bleak scenario was the Benghazi Bar Association whose members had been agitating in recent years for relatively minor legal reforms. Their main goal was to oust the former association head, a Gaddafi loyalist who stayed on well past his legally-mandated term. In early February, nervous about the wave of popular uprisings sweeping the Arab world, Gaddafi himself met with the Benghazi lawyers to discuss the standoff. He tried to placate them with promises of reform, and the head of the bar association was dismissed one week before the uprising. But coming on the heels of the dramatic events in Tunisia and Egypt, it was too little, too late.

A Variegated Group

Lawyers, more than any other group, were instrumental in paving the way for the Libyan uprising and several prominent members of the Benghazi Bar Association are now part of Libya’s rebel organisation, the National Transitional Council. Among them are outspoken human rights advocates like Fathy Terbil and Abdel Hafiz Ghogha, who is now the spokesperson of the National Transitional Council. Terbil represented the victims of one of the Gaddafi regime’s most notorious crimes, the mass killing of at least 1,200 inmates of the Abu Salim prison in 1996. When Libyan youth issued a call over Facebook for a “Day of Rage” against the regime on 17 February, the Abu Salim families were among the first to join.

Most of the other figures on the 31-member council have, in the past, publicly questioned Gaddafi’s policies and the terror of his revolutionary committees – and, in some cases, paid for their dissent with long prison terms. Ahmed Zubeir Sanusi, a descendant of Idriss Sanusi, the monarch Gaddafi deposed in 1969, spent 31 years in prison. He is now the council member in charge of political prisoners. Also on the council, in charge of military affairs, is Omar Hariri, who was a young officer who took part in Gaddafi’s coup against Idriss. But since his foiled attempt to overthrow Gaddafi in 1975, Hariri has either been in prison or under house arrest.

A handful of council members held posts in the Gaddafi regime before publicly quitting over the excessive use of force against peaceful demonstrators. The head of the council is the former justice minister, Mustafa Abdel Jalil. During his tenure as a judge and then justice minister since 2007, human rights observers noted that Jalil was unusual in his consistent criticism of the regime’s security forces. The two men on the council responsible for foreign affairs come from pro-business backgrounds. Ali Issawi, who was most recently Libya’s ambassador to India, was minister for economy, trade and investment before that, and holds a doctorate in privatisation. Mahmood Jibril, widely regarded as a reformist, was recently appointed to head the country’s National Planning Council and National Economic Development. He is described in a leaked US diplomatic cable as “a serious interlocutor who gets the US perspective”.

The newly formed council is still grappling with the reality that what began as a hopeful pro-democracy uprising has transformed into a war that they might very well lose. Few among the rebel leadership have military experience. While the rebel army has some defectors from Gaddafi’s forces, it is largely composed of untrained young volunteers who remain bitterly aware that they are in for a long and bloody fight against a far better equipped opponent. As the casualties rise in the besieged towns of the west as well as the frontline towns in the east, some estimates place the numbers of the dead in the thousands.

When asked about the kind of Libyan society they seek to build, members of the National Transitional Council espouse ideals of freedom, human rights, and democracy that some of them have spent years defending. But they have no illusions that translating these ideals into practice will be an easy task. In the current moment, the council does not seem poised – nor does it have a mandate – to formulate a long-term political vision for the country. Its priority, at present, is to gain official recognition from the international community as the legitimate representative of the Libyan people and to bring Gaddafi’s intransigent regime to an end.

No-Fly Zone

One of the council’s immediate, although more controversial, demands is for a no-fly zone over Libya. Council members know full well that a no-fly zone would not necessarily clinch the battle in their favour and could well backfire. Like the courageous protestors in other parts of the region, Libyans want their victory to be their own, achieved without outside help. Everywhere in the east, large banners oppose foreign military intervention. But as the death toll rises, the Libyan’s call for a no-fly zone is a desperate attempt to buy some time.

The anti-imperialist arguments against imposing a no-fly zone are many and convincing. Neutralising Gaddafi’s air power may not give the rebels a much-desired strategic advantage over his ground forces, which are better trained and equipped. Moreover, the decision by foreign powers to impose a no-fly zone is likely to be motivated by their own regional interests rather than a genuine concern for the well-being of Libya’s people.

However, at this crucial time, debates about a no-fly zone should not replace conversations about solidarity. The struggle of the Libyan people for freedom deserves the strongest support. The imperative for solidarity with the Libyan rebels is being lost in anti-imperialist polemics, some of which has casually dismissed those Libyans who call for a no-fly zone as naïve or, even worse, as imperial stooges. This is disrespectful to the many Libyans who have paid a heavy price for challenging Gaddafi’s regime on the streets. A more sensible antiimperialist position would focus less on what a no-fly zone means for western powers and more on listening to Libyan voices on the ground and finding ways to meaningfully support their struggle.

The authors were in eastern Libya when the rebels declared that the area had been liberated. Anjali Kamat (akam47@yahoo.com) reports for the US-based news channel Democracy Now!. Ahmad Shokr (shokr.ahmad@gmail.com) is a doctoral candidate in the History and Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies Departments at New York University and an editor at the independent Egyptian online daily Al-Masry Al-Youm (http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en).

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Getting Libya’s rebels wrong

When Tunisians rose up calling for the end of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s rule, beyond the fact that the revolution caught the rest of the world by surprise, no one seemed in much doubt about what the Tunisian people wanted. And shortly after that when Egyptians rose up demanding that Hosni Mubarak must go, the sentiment of the people was not hard to decipher. But when it comes to Libya, many Western observers seem willing to accept the analysis provided by Saif al-Islam Gaddafi who in February warned that Libya is not Tunisia or Egypt and that those challenging his father’s rule would be inviting civil war.

On Wednesday, Libyan officials took Western journalists on a trek 70 miles south of Tripoli to witness the carnage wrought by NATO airstrikes. After 10 days of attacks, Siraj Najib Mohamed Suessi, an 18-month old baby, was described by a New York Times reporter as “the first specific and credible civilian death” from allied airstrikes.

Beyond the earshot of Gaddafi government officials, relatives of the child were clear about who they blamed for his death:

“No, no, no, this is not from NATO,” one relative said, speaking quietly and on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. The Western planes had struck an ammunition depot at a military base nearby, he said, and the explosion had sent a tank shell flying into the bedroom of the baby, a boy, in a civilian’s home. “What NATO is doing is good,” he said, referring to the Western military alliance that is enforcing a no-fly zone in Libya.

[A]s government minders directed journalists to the house and the grave, several residents approached foreign correspondents to tell them surreptitiously of their hatred of Colonel Qaddafi.

“He is not a man. He is Dracula,” one said. “For 42 years, it has been dark. Anyone who speaks, he kills. But everyone here wants Qaddafi to go.”

Denunciations of this type have been reported from all over Libya — even now some people in Tripoli are willing to cautiously speak out.

The objective of Libya’s rebel fighters is not hard to decipher — they aim to get rid of Gaddafi — unless, that is, you are skeptical about the intentions of the foreign powers.

Steve Coll says: “It is not clear what the rebels are fighting for, other than survival and the possible opportunity to take power in a country loaded with oil.”

David Bromwich sees the hand of the CIA at work and echoes of the Bay of Pigs.

While the Obama administration itself is raising the specter of al Qaeda:

President Obama’s top two national security officials signaled on Thursday that the United States was unlikely to arm the Libyan rebels, raising the possibility that the French alone among the Western allies would provide weapons and training for the poorly organized forces fighting Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s government.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates made his views known for the first time on Thursday in a marathon day of testimony to members of Congress. He said the United States should stick to offering communications, surveillance and other support, but suggested that the administration had no problem with other countries sending weapons to help the rebels, who in recent days have been retreating under attack from pro-Qaddafi forces.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who pushed the president to intervene in Libya, was described by an administration official on Thursday as supremely cautious about arming the rebels “because of the unknowns” about who they were and whether they might have links to Al Qaeda.

Najla Abdurrahman, a Libyan-American writer and activist, expresses her frustration about the confused image of the Libyan pro-democracy movement that is frequently being presented in the media.

The recent remarks by Adm. James Stavridis, NATO’s supreme allied commander for Europe, alleging “flickers in the intelligence of potential al Qaeda, Hezbollah” among Libyan rebels are indicative of a disturbing trend in much of the discussion — and reporting — on Libya over the past several weeks. Ambiguous statements linking Libya and al Qaeda have repeatedly been made in the media without clarifying or providing appropriate context to such remarks. In many instances, these claims have been distorted or exaggerated; at times they have simply been false.

The admiral’s comments — and the subsequent headlines they’ve engendered — represent a new level of irresponsibility, constructing false connections, through use of highly obscure and equivocal language, between al Qaeda and Libyan pro-democracy forces backed by the Transitional National Council. The latter is itself led by a group of well-known and respected Libyan professionals and technocrats. Even more far-fetched is the admiral’s mention of a Hezbollah connection, or “flicker” as he put it.

Statements of this type are troubling because of their tendency to create alarmist ripple effects. Such perceptions, once created, are nearly impossible to reverse and may do serious damage to the pro-democracy cause in Libya. The fact that Stavridis qualified his comments by stating that the opposition’s leadership appeared to be “responsible men and women” will almost certainly be overshadowed by the mention of al Qaeda in the same breath. One must wonder, then, what precisely was the purpose of the admiral’s vague and perplexing remarks.

There is a pressing need for officials and commentators to clarify connections drawn between Libya and al Qaeda and to provide more accurate and responsible analysis. And it’s not just Stavridis’s reference to al Qaeda that is problematic; two similar claims making the media rounds also demand careful scrutiny. One involves an anti-Qaddafi organization called the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) that confronted and was crushed by the regime in the 1990s. The second involves disturbing reports of the recruitment of Libyan youth by al Qaeda in Iraq, some of whom left their homes to take part in suicide missions in that country. Neither is connected to the current uprising, but both are frequently mentioned when discussing it.

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The fight for Libya

Colonel Gaddafi’s regime has sent one of its most trusted envoys to London for confidential talks with British officials, The Guardian can reveal.

Mohammed Ismail, a senior aide to Gaddafi’s son Saif al-Islam, visited London in recent days, British government sources familiar with the meeting have confirmed. The contacts with Ismail are believed to have been one of a number between Libyan officials and the west in the last fortnight, amid signs that the regime may be looking for an exit strategy.

Disclosure of Ismail’s visit comes in the immediate aftermath of the defection to Britain of Moussa Koussa, Libya’s foreign minister and its former external intelligence head, who has been Britain’s main conduit to the Gaddafi regime since the early 1990s.

A team led by the British ambassador to Libya, Richard Northern, and MI6 officers embarked on a lengthy debriefing of Koussa at a safe house after he flew into Farnborough airport on Wednesday night from Tunisia. Government sources said the questioning would take time because Koussa’s state of mind was “delicate” after he left his family in Libya.

The Foreign Office has declined “to provide a running commentary” on contacts with Ismail or other regime officials. But news of the meeting comes amid mounting speculation that Gaddafi’s sons, foremost among them Saif al-Islam, Saadi and Mutassim, are anxious to talk. “There has been increasing evidence recently that the sons want a way out,” said a western diplomatic source.

Al Jazeera reports:

There are unconfirmed reports that more people have left the inner circle of Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader, following the high level desertion of Moussa Koussa, Libya”s foreign minister, who arrived in the UK on Wednesday.

It is understood a group of top officials who had headed to Tunisia for talks have decided to stay there.

Some Arabic newspapers said Mohammad Abu Al Qassim Al Zawi, the head of Libya”s Popular Committee, the country’s equivalent of a parliament, is among the defectors.

Nazanine Moshiri, Al Jazeera”s correspondent in Tunis, said that Abu Zayed Dordah, Libya”s prime minister from 1990 to 1994, has also been mentioned.

On Thursday, a second top official confirmed that he would not serve in Gaddfai”s regime.

Ali Abdessalam Treki, a former foreign minister and UN general assembly president, had been named to represent Libya at the UN after a wave of defections early in the uprising.

Treki, who is currently in Cairo, said in a statement posted on several opposition websites that he was
not going to accept that job or any other.

“We should not let our country fall into an unknown fate,” he said. “It is our nation”s right to live in freedom, democracy and a good life.”

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Holy moly — here comes another 9/11. Fears of blowback from Libya

Reuters reports that the CIA is now on the ground in Libya and the Obama administration is considering arming Gaddafi’s opponents.

This is some of the reaction from Firedoglake‘s David Dayen:

I can just go back to the American track record of arming insurgencies and it’s not very good. Robert Gates knows well from his experience in the CIA that when he armed or helped to arm the Afghan rebels to try to get the Soviets out, that didn’t end well for us.

I just don’t think we know enough about this opposition which is, I think, substantly [sic] different than the opposition that was in peaceful protest throughout the Arab world, to make that assessment that we are going to provide armaments and then possibly trainers to deal with the situation.

Let’s unpack this statement because there’s an awful lot embedded in it that reveals widely held assumptions among those who view Libya as a special case and believe what is going on there can be viewed as intrinsically different from the wider Arab democratic revolution.

Dayen refers to Gaddafi’s opponents as “insurgents” — a term generally applied to armed opponents of a legitimate government. But anyone who doubts that the Gaddafi government has lost its legitimacy needs to explain why so many of Libya’s ambassadors have defected — now even Moussa Koussa, Libya’s foreign minister, has fled to the UK.

I doubt that Dayen’s purpose is to legitimize Gaddafi, but this kind of language certainly delegitimizes those who are fighting to free Libya from Gaddafi’s control. Moreover, to refer to the US’s track record in supporting insurgencies is another way of casting aspersions at the Libyans by invoking memories of the counter-revolutionary anti-Sandinista Contras in Nicaragua or the Mujahadeen out of whose ranks al Qaeda later emerged.

Dayen then makes the ambiguous assertion that on the one hand we don’t know enough about the Libyan opposition, yet apparently we do know enough about them to know that they are intrinsically different from the revolutionaries in Egypt and Tunisia.

Are we supposed to distrust any uprising in which Facebook doesn’t play a prominent role?

Or is the fundamental reason for mistrusting the Libyan rebels because they fairly swiftly armed themselves after hundreds of unarmed demonstrators had been killed?

What would have placated the fears of those in the West who now view with suspicion Libya’s rag-tag army of rebel fighters? That several thousand more would have been killed before the peaceful protest movement transitioned into an armed uprising?

The fact is that peaceful protest movements can be crushed. The partial successes in Tunisia and Egypt says less about the indomitable force of people power, than it says about the extent to which the autocratic leaders in each of those countries were constrained in how far they could go in violently suppressing their own people while still retaining Western support. The West’s support for tyrants is utterly cynical but it does have limits and thus the awkward maneuvering we have repeatedly witnessed as Washington sustains its ties to old autocratic allies while simultaneously coaxing them to institute enough reforms that they might guarantee their survival.

In spite of his relatively brief political rehabilitation, Gaddafi knew from the moment the uprising burst forth, that he wasn’t going to get any protection from the West and thus he did not fear condemnation for his brutality. That’s why he has shown no restraint in his fight for survival. It would be ironic if he now found he was being offered a lifeline by those who oppose Western intervention in Libya.

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CIA agents in Libya aid airstrikes and meet rebels

The New York Times reports:

The Central Intelligence Agency has inserted clandestine operatives into Libya to gather intelligence for military airstrikes and to contact and vet the beleaguered rebels battling Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s forces, according to American officials.

While President Obama has insisted that no American military ground troops participate in the Libyan campaign, small groups of C.I.A. operatives have been working in Libya for several weeks as part of a shadow force of Westerners that the Obama administration hopes can help bleed Colonel Qaddafi’s military, the officials said.

In addition to the C.I.A. presence, composed of an unknown number of Americans who had worked at the spy agency’s station in Tripoli and others who arrived more recently, current and former British officials said that dozens of British special forces and MI6 intelligence officers are working inside Libya. The British operatives have been directing airstrikes from British jets and gathering intelligence about the whereabouts of Libyan government tank columns, artillery pieces and missile installations, the officials said.

American officials hope that similar information gathered by American intelligence officers — including the location of Colonel Qaddafi’s munitions depots and the clusters of government troops inside towns — might help weaken Libya’s military enough to encourage defections within its ranks.

In addition, the American spies are meeting with rebels to try to fill in gaps in understanding who their leaders are and the allegiances of the groups opposed to Colonel Qaddafi, said United States government officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the classified nature of the activities. American officials cautioned, though, that the Western operatives were not directing the actions of rebel forces.

A C.I.A. spokesman declined to comment.

The United States and its allies have been scrambling to gather detailed information on the location and abilities of Libyan infantry and armored forces that normally takes months of painstaking analysis.

“We didn’t have great data,” Gen. Carter F. Ham, who handed over control of the Libya mission to NATO on Wednesday, said in an e-mail last week. “Libya hasn’t been a country we focused on a lot over past few years.”

Several weeks ago, President Obama signed a secret finding authorizing the C.I.A. to provide arms and other support to Libyan rebels, American officials said Wednesday. But weapons have not yet been shipped into Libya, as Obama administration officials debate the effects of giving them to the rebel groups. The presidential finding was first reported by Reuters.

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Civilian toll from Western airstrikes in Libya

Here’s a report from the New York Times that needs to be read by anyone who opposes intervention in Libya, primarily on the grounds that there are always innocent victims in war. Have no doubt, that ever since the Western air attacks on Libya began, the Gaddafi regime has been on the lookout for opportunities to take Western journalists to show the toll that has been taken on ordinary Libyan civilians.

Standing at the grave of an 18-month-old baby on Wednesday, officials of the Qaddafi government presented the first specific and credible case of a civilian death caused by Western airstrikes.

But relatives speaking a few yards away said they blamed Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi and welcomed the bombs.

“No, no, no, this is not from NATO,” one relative said, speaking quietly and on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. The Western planes had struck an ammunition depot at a military base nearby, he said, and the explosion had sent a tank shell flying into the bedroom of the baby, a boy, in a civilian’s home. “What NATO is doing is good,” he said, referring to the Western military alliance that is enforcing a no-fly zone in Libya.

The testimony of the boy’s parents, a hole in the wall, damage to the house, quietly grieving family members, and a baby-sized and freshly covered grave appeared to confirm the relative’s account of the death.

That made the baby, Siraj Najib Mohamed Suessi, the first specific and credible civilian death from the airstrikes that the Qaddafi government has presented in 10 days of official statements decrying what they say are widespread casualties.

The Qaddafi government’s press office drove journalists 70 miles to this mountain town south of Tripoli to get to it. But as government minders directed journalists to the house and the grave, several residents approached foreign correspondents to tell them surreptitiously of their hatred of Colonel Qaddafi.

“He is not a man. He is Dracula,” one said. “For 42 years, it has been dark. Anyone who speaks, he kills. But everyone here wants Qaddafi to go.”

The town presented none of the theatrical displays of support for Colonel Qaddafi that usually greet official tours. There were no green flags, Qaddafi posters or chanting crowds, and residents were notably cool to the official tour escorts.

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The myth of tribal Libya

The Interim Transitional National Council has presented its “vision of a democratic Libya.”

Simon Tisdall offers a cynical review:

The two-page declaration, published to coincide with the international conference on Libya’s future hosted in London by David Cameron, aspires to all that is correct, admirable, and fashionable in the booming nation-building and nation-shaping business.

Key words such as “transparent”, “green”, “empowerment”, “tolerance” and “rights” litter its elegantly turned paragraphs. Wholesome sentiments about the social contract, civil society, political obligation, and the true awfulness of discrimination (in any shape or form) inform its ineffably do-gooding intent.

There will be those who see here further evidence that Libya’s rebels — or at least their self-appointed leaders — are politically suspect.

Libya, we have often been told, is different. It is not Tunisia or Egypt. It’s poster boys haven’t been Google executives, but youth brandishing AK-47s. If we know the name Shabaab — which just means youth — it’s most likely been in reference to Somalia.

If Egypt came to symbolize the good revolution, the Libya for those most disturbed by Western involvement has in many ways become the bad revolution — or no revolution at all, but a civil conflict whose roots are tribal.

Like warnings issued to nineteenth century European missionaries about the perils of advancing into darkest Africa, the word “tribal” is used to signal no-go territory and a cause that will inevitably turn sour.

“Alaa al-Ameri,” a British-Libyan economist and writer, explains why this tribal analysis is an insult to the Libyan people.

In the last few weeks, the word “tribalism” has been used extensively in the context of the Libyan democratic uprising – a spectre looming over the country, embodying the devil we don’t know. This was first introduced into the public mind by Saif al-Islam Gaddafi during his address last month in which he threatened the bloodshed and destruction that his father’s regime has let loose on the Libyan people.

Disappointingly, this image of Libya as a backward tribal society with no real national identity has been picked up and amplified by many western pundits and politicians – often as part of their reasoning why military and material support for the Libyan revolution is a bad idea.

The regime has two main aims for this repeated yet baseless claim. First, people in western Libya are largely cut off from outside media and so the assertion that the Gaddafi regime has the allegiance of regional leaders is intended to crush the confidence of those wishing to rise up in their own cities. Second, it aims to confuse outsiders into believing that the Gaddafi regime is all that’s holding together a fractured and disunited people. Images of Iraq are the desired effect. Among some in the international press and anti-interventionist movements, Gaddafi’s aims seem to have been met without much resistance.

So what is the reality and importance of tribes in modern Libya? For much of Libyan history, tribal groupings were indeed a prevalent social phenomenon. However, when we refer to tribes in today’s Libya we are simply talking about a historical structuring of regional communities in a massive country. These are not the same as distinct sub-national groupings that supersede people’s national identity as Libyans – an identity defended at great cost against fascist Italy and postwar attempts by the British to divide the country.

Tribal leaders traditionally served more or less as local magistrates, arbitrating disputes over land and commerce and presiding over family law. Once Gaddafi came to power, he introduced the revolutionary councils, which he used as a means of incentivising splits between regions and even families. Whereas previously your tribal identity was unlikely to make you rich or powerful, it could now be used as a stepping stone to a position of national authority, wealth and power through election to a revolutionary council.

The big picture, therefore, is not one of long-established tribal conflict. Most recent instances of disputes based on tribal loyalty have been fomented and engineered by Gaddafi’s national policy of divide and conquer. As long as people squabbled among themselves, they were far less likely to unite against him. Well, now they have, and in a desperate attempt to survive, Gaddafi, his son and his close circle are repeatedly attempting to raise the ghost of a rejected system of patronage which they used to maintain power for decades.

Some of those opposed to the international military intervention seem to have unwittingly taken up this call as the defining characteristic of modern Libya. This handy bit of received wisdom, however, needs to be tested against actual events. If there is any genuine tribal separatism among the democratic movement, why are they still fighting to liberate the west of the country? They now have air cover, they control oil-producing areas and have an interim government with international recognition and support.

If tribalism were at the heart of this effort, why risk it all to liberate towns in the west? Why have towns such as Misrata, Zawiya and Zintan, all a short drive from Tripoli, chosen to join the National Transitional Council – a fledgling government on the other side of the country that has so far been powerless to support them or come to their aid?

Is this a tribal act or the brave statement of people taking a stand against a tyrant in solidarity with their fellow Libyans?

One must also remember who sparked this revolution – it was young people, mostly under 30 years of age, who’ve lived their entire lives in urban centres. How many Glaswegians under 30 know or care from which clan they originated? On what basis, other than cultural stereotyping, do commentators presume that the young people of Benghazi, Misrata and Tripoli are any different? Which tribal allegiance was Mohammad Nabbous – a citizen journalist who established the independent internet television station Libya Alhurra in the early days of the revolution – serving when he was shot dead by a sniper at the age of 28 while reporting on the bogus ceasefire cynically announced by the Gaddafi regime on 19 March?

I’d like to ask those who are regurgitating and magnifying the “tribal” propaganda of the Gaddafi regime through the international press – how many Libyans have you consulted about this? How many Libyans who are not members of the Gaddafi regime, not in the middle of a pro-Gaddafi rally in Green Square or some fortified suburb of Tripoli, not under the watchful eye of a pro-Gaddafi minder, have expressed the views you’re repeating in your articles and interviews? As we struggle to liberate ourselves from this horrific regime, you brand us with names hastily acquired from last-minute reading. Tripolitania and Cyrenaica – find me a Libyan who’s ever used those terms to describe their country.

By labelling us as “tribal” you effectively dismiss the notion that our uprising has anything to do with freedom, democracy or human dignity. Do you place narrow regional loyalties above these values? I’m sure you would reject any such characterisation, and naturally so. Please do us, as Libyans, the courtesy of allowing us the same human characteristics you attribute to yourselves.

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Does the US have a strategic interest in the success of the Arab democratic revolution?

One of the most pernicious effects of the Bush era was that the neocons succeeded in turning so many progressives into realists.

Before Bush, “the national interest” was correctly viewed as the abiding concern of insular conservatives. It meant that Americans should be concerned with the rest of the world only in as much as anything going on out there could impact American interests — above all this meant American economic interests.

Now we have liberals and progressives who seem to have somehow discovered their William F Buckley Jr within — their preeminent concern has become the national interest. It’s all well and good to go and intervene in Libya, but does this serve United States’ national interests?

If realism was meant to be the antidote to neoconservatism, it’s definitely been overrated.

A neoconservative looks into a mirror and thinks he’s looking at the future. A realist looks into the future and can only see the past.

The neocon’s preeminent thinker, Robert Kagan, gave Obama this rave review after his speech on Libya last night:

With his speech tonight, President Obama placed himself in a great tradition of American presidents who have understood America’s special role in the world. He thoroughly rejected the so-called realist approach, extolled American exceptionalism, spoke of universal values and insisted that American power should be used, when appropriate, on behalf of those values. I was particularly pleased to see him place Libya in the context of the Arab Spring. This is the part of the equation that the self-described realists have missed. While in isolation acting to defend the people of Libya against Moammar Gaddafi might not seem imperative, it is in the broader context of the revolutionary moment in the Middle East that U.S. actions take on greater significance. Tonight the president began to place the United States on the right side of the unfolding history in the region.

The president also deserves credit for showing, once again, how bold and effective U.S. leadership can pave the way for multilateral efforts. He has been right to insist that others take their fair share of the burden, but he has also made clear that American leadership was essential, even indispensable.

This was a Kennedy-esque speech.

Meanwhile, Fred Kaplan at Slate was equally enthusiastic — but for different reasons:

President Barack Obama’s speech on Libya Monday night was about as shrewd and sensible as any such address could have been.

Some of his critics hoped he would outline a grand strategy on the use of force for humanitarian principles. Some demanded that he go so far as to declare what actions he would or would not take, and why, in Syria, Bahrain, and other nations where authoritarian rulers fire bullets at their own people. Still others urged him to spell out when the air war will stop, how we’ll exit, who will help the Libyan people rebuild their country after Qaddafi goes, and what we’ll do if he doesn’t go.

These are all interesting matters, but they evade the two main questions, which Obama confronted straight on. First, under the circumstances, did the United States really have any choice but to intervene militarily? Second, for all the initial hesitations and continuing misunderstandings, would the actions urged by his critics (on the left and right) have led to better results? For that matter, have any presidents of the last couple of decades dealt with similar crises more wisely?

The answers to all those questions: No.

Curiously, Obama left out any mention of the rebel fighters. They could be forgiven for now wondering whether this is mostly because Washington is reluctant to place itself alongside images of young (and not so young) men wearing keffiyehs, carrying AK-47s and RPGs.

The closest Obama came to clearly delineating the relationship between the US intervention and the Libyan revolution was here:

… America has an important strategic interest in preventing Gaddafi from overrunning those who oppose him. A massacre would have driven thousands of additional refugees across Libya’s borders, putting enormous strains on the peaceful – yet fragile – transitions in Egypt and Tunisia. The democratic impulses that are dawning across the region would be eclipsed by the darkest form of dictatorship, as repressive leaders concluded that violence is the best strategy to cling to power. The writ of the UN Security Council would have been shown to be little more than empty words, crippling its future credibility to uphold global peace and security. So while I will never minimize the costs involved in military action, I am convinced that a failure to act in Libya would have carried a far greater price for America.

Now, just as there are those who have argued against intervention in Libya, there are others who have suggested that we broaden our military mission beyond the task of protecting the Libyan people, and do whatever it takes to bring down Gaddafi and usher in a new government.

Of course, there is no question that Libya – and the world – will be better off with Gaddafi out of power. I, along with many other world leaders, have embraced that goal, and will actively pursue it through non-military means. But broadening our military mission to include regime change would be a mistake.

The US and its allies have taken sides in Libya, but holding back from making regime change the coalition’s military goal shouldn’t be seen as merely a PR gambit designed to protect the mission’s chosen branding: “humanitarian intervention”.

The rebels now have a fighting chance of winning, but the revolution itself cannot be completely outsourced to foreign powers.

As for the idea that the US has a strategic interest in the success of the wider revolution, I’m not about to claim that having previously displayed such a lack of interest in the rights of ordinary people across the region, the US has now been reborn as the indispensable champion of democracy that the neocons claim. But the emerging democracies across the Arab world will be keenly aware of the role that the US has had in advancing or obstructing this historic trend.

An effort to get on the right side of history has less to do with demonstrating America’s moral character than diminishing the depth of its untrustworthiness in the eyes of those it has long abused.

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The fight for Libya

Al Jazeera reports:

World powers meeting in London have agreed to set up a contact group to lead international efforts to map out Libya’s future, with the first meeting to take place in Qatar, Britain has said.

“Participants of the conference agreed to establish the Libya Contact Group,” said a statement issued by William Hague, the British foreign minister, who chaired the meeting of more than 40 countries plus the UN and NATO.

The group would provide “leadership and overall political direction to the international effort in close co-ordination with the UN, AU (African Union), Arab League, OIC (Organisation of the Islamic Conference) and EU (European Union) to support Libya”, the statement said.

Hague said that “Qatar has agreed to convene the first meeting of the group as soon as possible”.

After the first meeting in Doha, Qatar, the chairmanship will rotate between the countries of the region and beyond it, the statement said.

Following London talks, Hague held a news conference with Hamad Bin Jassim Al Thani, the Qatari prime minister.

Qatar’s prime minister urged Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader, to step down to halt bloodshed and said that he might only have a few days to negotiate an exit.

Al Jazeera reports:

Troops loyal to longtime Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi have shelled pro-democracy forces heading west on the main coastal highway, pushing them out of Bin Jawad, a small town around 150 kilometres east of Sirte, Gaddafi’s hometown.

The reversal on Tuesday for Libya’s nascent opposition came after their forces made a speedy, two-day advance from Ajdabiya.

Ajdabiya is a crossroads town that Gaddafi’s troops had held for two weeks before an international military intervention allowed pro-democracy fighters to take it back.

On Monday, the pro-democracy forces moved as far west as Nawfaliya, another small town around 20 kilometres past Bin Jawad, before making a hasty evening retreat in the face of artillery fire from Gaddafi’s troops.

A spokesman in the eastern opposition stronghold of Benghazi had announced earlier that day that Sirte itself had fallen, a rumour that turned out to be untrue.

The Guardian reports:

The US has been giving the impression that it has backed away from the bombing campaign in Libya. It has now emerged that while the initial intensity of the high-altitude air strikes and cruise missile attacks has diminished, the US has not let up. In a dramatic and significant escalation of the assault on Gaddafi’s forces, the US has deployed low-flying, heavily-armed aircraft against Libyan armour.

It is a deployment far removed from the initial concept of a “no-fly” zone.

The Pentagon has revealed that AC-130 gunships and A10 tankbusters, of the kind used in Iraq and Afghanistan, have been deployed in Libya. “We have employed A10s and AC-130s over the weekend,” Vice-Admiral Bill Gortney, said.

The aircraft are better suited than high-flying fighter bombers to attack targets in built-up areas without so much risk of civilian casualties, defence officials say.

However, their sheer firepower can lead to civilian deaths as their attacks on the Iraqi city of Falluja after the 2003 invasion of Iraq demonstrated.

On Sunday, The Guardian reported:

The Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has signalled that Turkey is ready to act as a mediator to broker an early ceasefire in Libya, as he warned that a drawn-out conflict risked turning the country into a “second Iraq” or “another Afghanistan” with devastating repercussions both for Libya and the Nato states leading the intervention.

In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, Erdogan said that talks were still under way with Muammar Gaddafi’s government and the Transitional National Council. He also revealed that Turkey is about to take over the running of the rebel-held Benghazi harbour and airport to facilitate humanitarian aid, in agreement with Nato.

Speaking in Istanbul at the weekend, Erdogan said Gaddafi had to “provide some confidence to Nato forces right now” on the ground if there was to be progress towards the ceasefire the Libyan leader wanted and an “end to the blood being spilled in Libya”.

Eman al-Obeidi, the woman who accused Gaddafi’s men of raping her, now faces criminal charges, according to the Libyan Government. A spokesman told Channel 4 News the “accuser was now the accused”.

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Gaddafi’s campaign of disappearances

“Libya: detainees, disappeared and missing,” a newly released report from Amnesty International, describes Colonel Gaddafi’s campaign to silence his critics which has targeted government critics, writers, journalists, pro-democracy activists — even children.

    He is in their (the forces of Colonel Mu’ammar al-Gaddafi) hands and we have no idea where he is being held and what kind of treatment he is being subjected to. We are very worried that he is being tortured and if we speak about his case they may further punish him, and that the safety of his wife and children in Tripoli may be endangered.
    — Relatives of a man arrested from his home in Tripoli, in the late afternoon of 22 February 2011, in front of his wife and children.

Many people have been subjected to enforced disappearance1 by forces loyal to Colonel Mu’ammar al-Gaddafi since the current unrest began in Libya in mid-February 2011, including dozens who were arrested and detained in eastern Libya and are believed to have been transferred to the Tripoli area that are controlled by al-Gaddafi forces. These detainees and disappeared persons are at grave risk of torture and other serious human rights abuses. The true number is impossible to calculate as the authorities in Tripoli generally do not divulge information about people they are detaining and because many areas of the country are not accessible for independent reporting; indeed, a number of Libyan and international journalists have been detained and ill-treated for seeking to report from areas in which al-Gaddafi forces have carried out arrests and attacks against civilians, and some are also still missing and unaccounted for having been detained by al-Gaddafi forces. Other journalists who have been released as a result of international pressure, including journalists from the BBC and The New York Times, have reported that they were tortured or otherwise ill-treated. Some were subjected to mock executions.

An Amnesty International fact-finding team has been in eastern Libya since 26 February 2011. The team has visited several towns and interviewed relatives and friends of disappeared and missing persons. Some have been unaccounted for since early January 2011, although most have been subjected to enforced disappearance since mid-February 2011, the beginning of peaceful protests against Colonel al-Gaddafi’s government.

Cases of recently disappeared or missing persons documented by Amnesty International fall into three broad categories:

  • government critics, pro-democracy activists, writers and others detained in the lead-up to the peaceful demonstrations held on 17 February 2011 in various cities throughout Libya. They appear to have been arrested by the authorities as a pre-emptive strike in an effort to nip the protests in the bud following the public protests that had caused the downfall of longstanding repressive governments in Tunisia and Egypt, two of Libya’s neighbours. Amnesty International has documented cases of people arrested in Tripoli, Benghazi, al-Bayda and Misratah whose fate and whereabouts currently remain unknown. They include some detainees who were initially allowed access to their families or lawyers until such contacts were cut by the authorities once the public protests began. Relatives believe that these and other detainees held when the protests got underway were then transferred to Tripoli by security forces loyal to Colonel al-Gaddafi.
  • anti-government protestors and youths who went missing on the evening of 20 February at a time when a special forces unit loyal to Colonel al-Gaddafi – the “Kateeba al-Fadheel” (hereafter, the Kateeba) – were forced to evacuate from a military compound in Benghazi after clashes with protestors opposed to Colonel al-Gaddafi, with some using petrol bombs and other improvised weapons. These violent clashes occurred after the Kateeba or other forces had opened fire on, killing and injuring peaceful protestors. Amnesty International has documented the cases of nine men and boys who have not been seen since they went to the Kateeba compound area on evening of 20 February 2011, including four teenagers under 18. They are believed to have been arrested or abducted by members of the Kateeba unit or other forces brought in from outside Benghazi as reinforcements to the Kateeba before they evacuated their military compound and withdrew from Benghazi.
  • individuals reported to have been captured in or near the town of Ben Jawad where there had been intermittent fighting between Colonel al-Gaddafi’s forces and those engaged in armed opposition to his government. Amnesty International has obtained information about a number of individuals who went missing in the area between Ajdebia and Ben Jawad, west of Benghazi. Some are believed to have been fighters, others to be civilians who went to the area in order to assist the wounded, and still others people who may have been onlookers. Currently, many are unaccounted for and it is not known where they are being held or in what conditions, prompting serious concern for their safety.

Reports from Tripoli, and other parts of the country that remain under the control of Colonel al-Gaddafi’s forces or have been subject to attack by those forces indicate that the number of those now subject to enforced disappearance is much greater than the number of cases that Amnesty International – which does not have direct access to Tripoli or other areas controlled by Colonel al-Gaddafi’s forces, and where the authorities maintain tight control over information – has so far been able to document.

All across Libya, families report that they live in daily fear of reprisals against their disappeared relatives and many are unwilling for their names to be disclosed publicly, believing that this will expose their detained relatives to even greater risk.

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Diplomats discuss Libya’s future as Italy plots Gaddafi’s escape route

The Guardian reports:

Efforts appear to be under way to offer Muammar Gaddafi a way of escape from Libya, with Italy saying it is trying to organise an African haven for him, and the US signalling it will not try to stop the dictator from fleeing.

The move came as diplomatic and military pressure on Gaddafi mounts as Britain tries to assemble a global consensus demanding he surrender power while intensifying air strikes against his forces.

Britain will be hosting an international conference including the UN, Arab states, the African Union, and more than 40 foreign ministers, focused on coordinating assistance in the face of a possible humanitarian disaster, and building a unified international front in condemnation of the Gaddafi regime and in support of a Nato-led military action in Libya.

On the eve of the London conference, Italy offered to broker a ceasefire deal in Libya, involving asylum for Gaddafi in an African country. “Gaddafi must understand that it would be an act of courage to say: ‘I understand that I have to go’,” said the Italian foreign minister, Franco Frattini. “We hope that the African Union can find a valid proposal.”

A senior American official signalled that a solution in which Gaddafi flee to a country beyond the reach of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which is investigating war crimes charges against him, would be acceptable to Washington, pointing out that Barack Obama had repeatedly called on Gaddafi to leave.

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Libya’s decisive battle looms as Gaddafi troops head east

The Guardian reports:

Libya’s army is pouring reinforcements into Muammar Gaddafi’s strategic hometown of Sirte against rebels advancing from the east under cover of UN-mandated air strikes.

Units of regular soldiers in jeeps mounted with heavy machine guns were driving towards the town on Monday as the frontline moved ominously closer to a key regime stronghold for what could turn out to be the decisive battle of the war.

On Sunday night at least 18 large explosions were heard in or near Sirte, apparently part of the coalition’s campaign of attacking air defences and other military targets. But reports that the city had fallen to the Benghazi-based rebels were evidently wrong – and fuelled Libyan fury at the satellite TV channels that claimed it had.

It was firmly in government hands and its people defiant. “I saw death with my own eyes,” said Fawzi Imish, whose house and every other in his seafront street had its windows shattered by a Tomahawk missile strike in the early hours of the morning. “It was just intended to terrify people. And if the rebels come here, we will receive them with bullets.”

Sirte, where the young Gaddafi was educated, is halfway between the rebel east and the area controlled by the regime along the Mediterranean coastal highway. In the 1980s the Libyan leader famously drew a “line of death” across the Gulf of Sirte in brazen challenge to the US.

If the rebels took the city it would be a severe blow, weakening Gaddafi’s position in the centre of Libya and the road would be open for an advance on Tripoli 280 miles away.

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The fight for Libya

The New York Times reports:

As rebel forces backed by allied warplanes pushed toward one of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s most crucial bastions of support, the American military warned on Monday that the insurgents’ rapid advances could quickly be reversed without continued coalition air support.

“The regime still vastly overmatches opposition forces militarily,” Gen. Carter F. Ham, the ranking American in the coalition operation, warned in an email message on Monday. “The regime possesses the capability to roll them back very quickly. Coalition air power is the major reason that has not happened.”

Why make this point now? Because those outside Libya who believe that Western powers have stepped outside the terms of UN Res 1973 are eager to call for a timeout, insisting that the only legal conclusion to this war will come from a negotiated settlement.

Tony Karon writes:

The rebels’ own military capabilities, by measure of weaponry, training, organization and command remain distinctly limited. So, as NATO powers and others involved in the campaign convene in London on Tuesday to plot their next steps, they face the question of whether to use their military leverage to assault the regime on its “home” turf and effectively bomb it out of existence. There are good reasons to believe they’re unlikely to go that far.

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Sunday that the alliance’s actions would be limited to implementing U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973, “nothing more, nothing less.”

And that resolution mandates foreign powers to protect Libya’s civilians through imposing no-fly zone and an arms embargo, and destroying armor and other heavy weaponry that menaces civilian population centers. But it says nothing about regime-change; on the contrary, it requires member states to work for an immediate cease-fire and a democratic political solution to Libya’s civil conflict.

If this is really a “civil conflict,” why hasn’t Gaddafi handed out weapons to all his loyal supporters? He said he’d arm a million civilians, but the fact that he hasn’t probably indicates that there are nowhere near that many Libyans he can trust.

If the Obama administration can be derided for using Orwellian language when calling this war a “time-limited, scope-limited military action,” the Gaddafi government’s own language should be viewed just as critically.

With good reason “civil conflict” is the exact term they have adopted in the hope that observers who find the intervention objectionable will help promote a narrative that legitimizes Gaddafi’s rule. The revolution is aimed at toppling a despotic regime, but if this is a civil war, who are we to take sides?

Brian Whitaker writes:

Amid repeated claims that Libya could turn into another Iraq or Afghanistan, there are growing calls for a negotiated solution. Such talk at the moment serves no purpose, apart from throwing a lifeline to the Gaddafi family and helping them maintain their grip on the country, or at least some of it.

Calls for negotiation are predicated on the idea that the situation in Libya will reach a political/military impasse. It might do, but it hasn’t yet – so there is no need to start behaving as if it had.

A more likely scenario, though, is that the Gaddafi regime will implode suddenly and fairly soon – in a matter of weeks rather than months or years. We should at least wait to see if that is what happens. Hardly anyone in Libya seriously believes in the leader’s eccentric Green Book ideology, and most of those who currently support him can be expected to abandon him once they perceive that he is on the way out.

So the effect of negotiations at this stage would be to help the Gaddafis salvage something. That certainly seems to be the aim of the leader’s son, Saif al-Islam, who has reportedly been trying to interest the US, Britain and Italy in a “transition plan”. Not surprisingly, Saif’s plan envisages Saif taking over from his father for a period of two to three years, while Libya is transformed from a revolutionary jamahiriyya into a liberal democracy. In the meantime, all the Gaddafis – despite their crimes over the years – would be granted immunity from prosecution.

The Guardian reports:

Rebel Libyan forces were halted about 50 miles from Sirte on Monday as reinforcements loyal to Muammar Gaddafi were seen moving towards the strategically vital city.

Revolutionary forces had advanced more than 150 miles in two days, helped by coalition air strikes, breaking the stalemate at Ajdabiya and paving the way for hundreds of men to stream forward along Libya’s coastal road.

But despite a Libyan rebel claim that Sirte had been captured, there was no sign on Monday that the opposition was in control of the city, which marks the boundary between the east and west of Libya and has great symbolic importance as Gaddafi’s home city.

Instead, pro-Gaddafi troops in Sirte were being rallied by forces travelling east from Tripoli and other strongholds in 4×4 vehicles with light weaponry mounted on the rear, a break from the heavier artillery used so far by Gaddafi’s forces, which has been picked off with relative ease by coalition air strikes.

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Juan Cole: An open letter to the Left on Libya

Juan Cole writes:

As I expected, now that Qaddafi’s advantage in armor and heavy weapons is being neutralized by the UN allies’ air campaign, the liberation movement is regaining lost territory. Liberators took back Ajdabiya and Brega (Marsa al-Burayqa), key oil towns, on Saturday into Sunday morning, and seemed set to head further West. This rapid advance is almost certainly made possible in part by the hatred of Qaddafi among the majority of the people of these cities. The Buraiqa Basin contains much of Libya’s oil wealth, and the Transitional Government in Benghazi will soon again control 80 percent of this resource, an advantage in their struggle with Qaddafi.

I am unabashedly cheering the liberation movement on, and glad that the UNSC-authorized intervention has saved them from being crushed. I can still remember when I was a teenager how disappointed I was that Soviet tanks were allowed to put down the Prague Spring and extirpate socialism with a human face. Our multilateral world has more spaces in it for successful change and defiance of totalitarianism than did the old bipolar world of the Cold War, where the US and the USSR often deferred to each other’s sphere of influence.

The United Nations-authorized intervention in Libya has pitched ethical issues of the highest importance, and has split progressives in unfortunate ways. I hope we can have a calm and civilized discussion of the rights and wrongs here.

On the surface, the situation in Libya a week and a half ago posed a contradiction between two key principles of Left politics: supporting the ordinary people and opposing foreign domination of them. Libya’s workers and townspeople had risen up to overthrow the dictator in city after city– Tobruk, Dirna, al-Bayda, Benghazi, Ajdabiya, Misrata, Zawiya, Zuara, Zintan. Even in the capital of Tripoli, working-class neighborhoods such as Suq al-Jumah and Tajoura had chased out the secret police. In the two weeks after February 17, there was little or no sign of the protesters being armed or engaging in violence.

The libel put out by the dictator, that the 570,000 people of Misrata or the 700,000 people of Benghazi were supporters of “al-Qaeda,” was without foundation. That a handful of young Libyan men from Dirna and the surrounding area had fought in Iraq is simply irrelevant. The Sunni Arab resistance in Iraq was for the most part not accurately called ‘al-Qaeda,’ which is a propaganda term in this case. All of the countries experiencing liberation movements had sympathizers with the Sunni Iraqi resistance; in fact opinion polling shows such sympathy almost universal throughout the Sunni Arab world. All of them had at least some fundamentalist movements. That was no reason to wish the Tunisians, Egyptians, Syrians and others ill. The question is what kind of leadership was emerging in places like Benghazi. The answer is that it was simply the notables of the city. If there were an uprising against Silvio Berlusconi in Milan, it would likely unite businessmen and factory workers, Catholics and secularists. It would just be the people of Milan. A few old time members of the Red Brigades might even come out, and perhaps some organized crime figures. But to defame all Milan with them would be mere propaganda.

Then Muammar Qaddafi’s sons rallied his armored brigades and air force to bomb the civilian crowds and shoot tank shells into them. Members of the Transitional Government Council in Benghazi estimate that 8000 were killed as Qaddafi’s forces attacked and subdued Zawiya, Zuara, Ra’s Lanuf, Brega, Ajdabiya, and the working class districts of Tripoli itself, using live ammunition fired into defenseless rallies. If 8000 was an exaggeration, simply “thousands” was not, as attested by Left media such as Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now! As Qaddafi’s tank brigades reached the southern districts of Benghazi, the prospect loomed of a massacre of committed rebels on a large scale.

The United Nations Security Council authorization for UN member states to intervene to forestall this massacre thus pitched the question. If the Left opposed intervention, it de facto acquiesced in Qaddafi’s destruction of a movement embodying the aspirations of most of Libya’s workers and poor, along with large numbers of white collar middle class people. Qaddafi would have reestablished himself, with the liberation movement squashed like a bug and the country put back under secret police rule. The implications of a resurgent, angry and wounded Mad Dog, his coffers filled with oil billions, for the democracy movements on either side of Libya, in Egypt and Tunisia, could well have been pernicious.

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Libyan rebels take back oil towns of Brega and Ras Lanuf in westward push

The Guardian reports:

Libyan rebels have entered the key oil town of Ras Lanuf after routing Muammar Gaddafi’s forces in Brega with help from UN-backed airstrikes that tipped the balance away from the military.

Brega, the main oil export terminal in eastern Libya, fell after a skirmish late on Saturday, with rebels continuing their push westwards to Ras Lanuf and its large oil refinery. “There is no Gaddafi army in Ras Lanuf,” said rebel fighter Walid al-Arabi, quoting rebels who had returned from the town, and that the frontline was now west of Ras Lanuf.

Earlier, rebel commander Ahmed Jibril, manning a checkpoint on the western edge of Brega, said: “There are no Gaddafi forces here now, the rebels have Brega under their full control, it is free.”

The two oil towns are responsible for a large chunk of Libya’s oil production, which has all but stopped since the uprising that began on 15 February and was inspired by the toppling of governments in Tunisia and Egypt.

The Gaddafi regime on Saturday acknowledged the airstrikes had forced its troops to retreat and accused international forces of choosing sides. “This is the objective of the coalition now, it is not to protect civilians because now they are directly fighting against the armed forces,” Khaled Kaim, the deputy foreign minister, said in the capital, Tripoli. “They are trying to push the country to the brink of a civil war.”

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Inside Gaddafi’s brutal prison: Ghaith Abdul-Ahad’s Libyan ordeal

Ghaith Abdul-Ahad writes:

We ran into Gaddafi’s troops on the outskirts of Zawiya, less than a mile beyond the last signs of rebel activity: a destroyed checkpoint, a bullet-ridden building and five burnt-out cars.

The soldiers were blocking the main highway to the coast with pickup trucks and armoured vehicles, so our driver took to the desert, skirting the roadblock in a wide arc before cutting back to the road. He was edgy after that, spooked even by the sight of a distant abandoned car parked in the middle of the road.

We – the Brazilian journalist Andrei Netto and I, travelling in the company of rebels from western Libya – would not be able reach Zawiya that night as planned. Instead we made for Sabratha, 12 miles to the west.

It was clear that Sabratha had been reclaimed by Gaddafi loyalists. The police and intelligence service buildings were charred, but they had new green flags of the regime flying above them.

We separated from our rebel escorts and took shelter in an empty half-built house, away from the militiamen roaming the streets. Later that night we saw four men approaching, dressed in dark tracksuits and carrying sticks except for one, who had a gun. When they surrounded the house there was no way to escape. They took our phones then frogmarched us, heads down, to an SUV, ranting as we went. “You sons of bitches! You Jews and Zionists! You Arab traitors! You want to topple Gaddafi? We will rape your mothers! Gaddafi will show you!”

I was put in the pickup first, then Netto. As he was getting in, a tall militiaman swung a metal pipe that struck him on the head. Inside the car the man sat behind us, jabbing at us with a stick as he continued his tirade.

We were taken a short distance to a compound guarded by armed men, where we were interrogated, then blindfolded and driven for two hours to a prison that I now know is in Tripoli. We were separated there; I have not seen Netto since.

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