Libyan War : Political and strategic aspects

[Aditya_V]

From Pranav link

A number of black Africans were lynched following the revolution following claims, often false, that they were hired guns for the Gaddafi regime. The city of Tawerga, mainly comprised of residents originally from sub-Saharan countries, was largely destroyed by rebel fighters from neighbouring Misrata. The port city had withstood a prolonged and brutal siege in the hands of the regime forces during which, it is claimed, fighters from Tawerga were particularly aggressive and brutal.

The report says that ”sub-Saharan Africans, in some cases accused or suspected of being mercenaries, constitute a large number of the detainees. Some detainees have reportedly been subjected to torture and ill treatment. Cases have been reported of individuals being targeted because of the colour of their skin.”

See non White, Non Arabs are not humans and their large scale Butchery is permitted.

[Aditya_V]

Gaddafi loyalists seize control of Libyan city Bani Walid

Waah! I thought this war is over.

[JE Menon]

The war is over. This, now, is civil war and it was clearly predicted on BRF. It is not over by a long shot, and it could well last for years and years. It is unlikely that Libya will be allowed to "settle" for the foreseeable future.

The Euros phucked up, and there will be blow-back.

[abhischekcc]

^The Euros just created Pakistan Ver 2.0 on their doorstep. They will rue the day the French shrimp decided to attack Gaddafi.

[brihaspati]

I dont think anyone worships NATO for having gone against Gaddafi. The reasons for supporting NATO action, I repeat, for me was for the following facts:

(1) Gaddafi was making noises about Kashmir for some years now. He had the means to bankroll the valley jihadists. When he is taken out, his money will be frozen by cash starved sharks and used for their own purposes or fill up their own black holes - and at least temporarily not available to the valley.

(2) By making noises about Kashmir, Gaddafi was putting himself out on the market for sale. Such a man could be easily bargained with by the very powers behind NATO whom we suspect of potentially seeing a "balance of power" vis a vis the Islamists and the non-muslims on the subcontinent.

(3) Gaddafi - for all his supposed suppression of MB types or Islamists - did not actually do anything that would undermine the fundamental islamic institutions, the mullahs, or the propagation mechanisms. If he had really suppressed the mullahs and liquidated them as was being claimed - we would not see such a quick resurgence - would we?

So the logic that preserving him in power would help contain or undermine Islamism is a false logic. It comes from a failure to understand the basic means of propagation of islamism where it is not threatened with military liquidations.

(4) If his non-muslim backers from across the pond decided to do away with their agent, and deal directly with the region - thats a good outcome for us. It means, that the standard islamic instincts will prompt resistance and civil war against the Europeans or anything connected to them, and both the patrons and their new clients as well as those ex-clients now displaced - would mean forces of Islamism/Islamophilia will be forced to treat each with characteristic Islamic brutality - meant to drive the wedge of hatred and trauma for generations.

Its an internal fight that is good for us.

My criteria would be straightforward - anything that helps destroy and weaken and eliminate the islamic institutional structure, from within factions or from outside, is desirable and supportable. No matter what the cost is in human terms on the associated Islamic society. Only through such experiences can they become finally disillusioned with the doctrine and theologians they have chosen to live by.

Keeping Gaddafi afloat - would just help perpetrate one of those great myths maintained by Islamophiles to fool non-muslims, that somehow an Islamic sourced regime and society that retains its mullahcracy can still maintain or develop a post-Islamist state - through liberal "Muslims".

[devesh]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/mid ... ml?hpid=z4


After Benghazi attacks, Islamist extremists akin to al-Qaeda stir fear in eastern Libya

DARNA, Libya — Operating from the shadows, armed Islamist extremists are terrorizing the eastern Libyan city of Darna, six weeks after the deadly attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi threw a spotlight on Libya’s growing religious extremism.

A campaign of bombings and death threats aimed at Libyan government targets is being blamed on armed Islamist extremists, including the city’s most powerful militia, the Abu Slim Martyrs Brigade, whose ideology residents say is akin to al-Qaeda’s.

What is unfolding here may be the most extreme example of the confrontation underway across Libya, underscoring just how deeply the fundamentalists have sown their seeds in the security vacuum that has defined Libya since the fall of Moammar Gaddafi last September.

The extremists have continued to operate here despite the popular backlash that followed last month’s attack in Benghazi, 156 miles to the west, and despite fears of possible retaliation by the United States, whose unmanned drone aircraft can now be heard humming overhead almost every day.

For now, the militants appear to have taken cover in urban homes and farms in the remote Green Mountains that surround the city. But officials say the local government remains powerless to stop them, even as the extremists push their ideology just as fervently as before. {So, Gaddafi was no "secularist". even under his regime, the activities of Jihadis was allowed to take place.}

“No one will stop anyone from doing anything,” said Fathalla al-Awam, the head of the largely toothless local council, and militants are free to come and go from the city and surrounding areas as they please. “There’s no police, no army and no militias. Nothing. It’s an open city from east and west.’’

Some Libyans say the extremist views are held much more broadly than just among the Islamist militias themselves, a fact they said the United States has failed to understand in the wake of the Benghazi attack. Not all of the extremists in Darna or elsewhere in Libya belong to a group, they said. But those who share al-Qaeda’s ideology are many, they said, and that creates ample opportunity for recruitment.

“It’s a way of thinking,” said Saad Belgassim, who used to work as a bureaucrat in Darna’s now defunct court system. “They kidnap people like they do in Afghanistan. They delude young people and send them off to bomb themselves.”

In some ways, the sway that Islamists hold here is not a surprise. Neglected, conservative and desperately poor under Gaddafi, Darna stood out for its fierce Islamist resistance to the old regime — and for sending more jihadists to Iraq during the U.S. occupation than any other place in Libya.

The latest bombing here came early Thursday morning, when an explosion ripped through a building on the city’s eastern outskirts that local authorities had hoped to use to support a new security force. Often, the locals say, the target is a car belonging to an official or journalist who has dared to defy the militias. A newly appointed police chief was slain in broad daylight last March with a quick round of bullets to the back as he filled up his tank at the gas station.

Those who adhere to the militias’ ideology said their goals are simple. They want the implementation of Islamic law, or sharia, and they want to see the United States pushed out of Muslim lands, said Tarik Sharqi, a fundamentalist imam in Darna, who residents said maintains a close relationship with Ansar al-Sharia, but who would only concede that “everyone in Darna is connected.”

Locals considered the drones they now hear buzzing overhead “a form of occupation,” he said, and Libyans would wage “jihad” to force them out.

Until a month ago, the Abu Slim Martyrs Brigade occupied buildings and ran checkpoints around the city, operating alongside like-minded groups, including the local branch of Ansar al-Sharia, the prime suspects in the Benghazi attack.

“They were the police and they were the criminals at the same time,” said Hussein al-Misary, a local journalist. They pushed aggressively for Islamic law and threatened those who favored Tripoli’s vision of a central government and constitution. They even posted kill lists on anonymous jihadist Facebook pages, he said.

The first sightings of U.S. drone aircraft here were reported in July, in what American officials have said was an effort that preceded the Benghazi attack to gather intelligence on Libya’s extemist groups. Misary said it was those sightings that appear to have prompted militants from Ansar al-Sharia, headed by former Guantanamo inmate Abu Sufian bin Qumu, to disappear from his Darna beach house into the mountains, while members of the Abu Slim Martyrs Brigade did not retreat until late September, after the Benghazi attack and in apparent response to U.S. warnings of retaliation.

At first the disappearances seemed hopeful, local authorities said. As the Abu Slim Martyrs Brigade retreated, the elected local council laid claim to their sprawling main base, an old sports complex, aiming to make it a police headquarters.

Days later, a late-night explosion ripped through the base’s headquarters. Other explosions targeted the cars of a journalist and two local officials who had advocated loudly for the militias’ disbandment in the wake of the Benghazi attack. The elected authorities retreated. {so we see the signs of future revolution already. the Islamists are already creating future enemies}

“It looks like the militias are dissolved, but the reality is still the same,” said Awam of the local council.

Awam said the council tried repeatedly — before and since the militias’ disappearance — to establish a local police force.

But every man appointed to the top security position has buckled to death threats or car bombings that victims have linked to the militias.

The result has been a security void that locals said makes Darna the most precarious locale in Libya. Awam said his council has no way to confiscate the hoards of heavy weapons, including antiaircraft guns, heat-seeking missiles and tons of explosives, that the groups amassed during Libya’s revolution. The only way he could imagine solving the extremist problem now would be to give them what they want.

“I think if the government agrees to work within Islamic law, that could lead to an agreement with those groups,” he said.

Maybe, he added, that would at least quell the violence.

In the lawless aftermath of Gaddafi’s fall, Darna was an inevitable hub for extremism, officials said. And on an afternoon shrouded by storm clouds, it’s easy to see why. Yellow, dilapidated buildings slumped over sandstone cliffs toward a dark blue sea that no one swims in. There are few restaurants and no parks.

The city’s population has dwindled in recent years as those who have found the opportunity to get out do so, officials said.

That includes some 200 young men who have traveled to Syria in recent months to join the fight there, according to the local council.

“It’s the emptiness here — there is a lot of time to waste,” said Ebtisam Stieta, a member of the General National Congress (GNC) from Darna. “Most people feel like their lives are restricted, so they think only in terms of the front lines, death, and jihad.”

Over the past year, Stieta said she has lobbied the national authorities in Tripoli relentlessly to bring development opportunities to Darna to preempt the area’s potential slide into a new Yemen or Afghanistan.

“I told the ministers in the meeting that Libya should deal with these extremists first. Why are we waiting for the world to react?” she said, recounting a speech that was televised. The only people who did react were the residents of her home town.

“I immediately got death threats,” she said.

Belgassim, the former Darna bureaucrat, and others said they believed that Darna could still be saved. But awareness of the U.S. election, and President Obama’s promise “to hunt down” the perpetrators of the Benghazi attack, loom large here.

Many said they feared that U.S. pressure to retaliate for the Benghazi attack could push an already precarious situation even further over the edge. Both Sharqi and local officials predicted that a drone strike would earn the militants more friends than foes, drawing the support of foreign jihadists to an easily accessible fight, and turning Libya’s Green Mountains into a new Pakistan.

“If there are drone strikes, people will see it as Libyan sovereignty that’s being threatened,” Stieta said. “It might compel people to join these groups rather than go against them.”

[Neshant]

Looks like NATO (European) countries are about to install a stooge in power.

A kind of General Musharaff who can be controlled remotely (and later gotten rid of).
__

Embattled Libyan government loses grip as general expands power

http://news.yahoo.com/embattled-libyan- ... 48127.html

[vijaykarthik]

The Tobruk alliance also gave up on UN talks either yday or today. So no hope remains. Haftar can speak / think what he likes but Libya is split. Its failed and it might likely splinter.

A Somalia in the Mediterranean.

Just a matter of time and the Libyan Dawn might split too if it hasn't already done so.

[Tuvaluan]

All of this splitting and splintering may also be deliberate strategy to create smaller groups that fight amongst each other -- but then, we can all see how awesomely this strategy has worked in FakAp/AfPak for the UN/NATO cabal. After a point it is just one big bowl of sludge of random terrorist group names that seamlessly merge into one another, kinda defeating the original "strategy".

[vijaykarthik]

Thata what I thought too till I looked into it closer. Its not a strategy. Its a failure. Misrata are a proud city clan and though they support Islamists, they like business more. Like any proud port city.

And the Libyan Dawn prefer Misrata support but they prefer Sharia a lot more. So its the fundamental fight between Islamist moderate vs fundamental. They are caught. Quagmire.

And on the other side we have Tobruk which is the intlly agreed upon govt. Which is also failing in more ways than one.

I see a nice Yemen status quo coming out of this region too.

Who's next? I think its Nigeria.

[Rony]

Haftar and Turkey Trade Threats as Libya’s War Risks Escalation

Libyan military commander Khalifa Haftar raised the prospect of a dangerous new escalation in the North African country’s war with a threat to target Turkish forces backing the internationally recognized government, prompting Ankara to warn it would retaliate.

The chief of Haftar’s airforce, Saqr Al-Jaroushi, vowed to unleash the “largest aerial campaign in Libyan history” with all Turkish positions now “legitimate targets for our airforce.” The comments, first made in a statement he later confirmed to Bloomberg, came as the head of security in the Tripoli administration said officials received information that several Soviet-era jets had arrived in Haftar’s eastern stronghold from a Russian base in Syria.

Haftar has been stung by defeats over the past week at the hands of the Tripoli government, effectively foiling his yearlong offensive to capture the capital. The strongman’s self-styled Libyan National Army, that’s backed by Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Russian mercenaries, was dislodged from a key airbase on Monday and is encircled in one of its few remaining bastions in the country’s west.

International concerns have grown as Libya’s conflict drew in regional powers, tipping the country ever deeper into a proxy battle that’s collapsed peace efforts to heal the country’s rifts and shuttered 90% of oil production in the OPEC member state. The possibility of an all-out military confrontation with Turkey will set alarm bells ringing.

Ibrahim Kalin, spokesman for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, warned Turkey would respond to any attack in the “strongest way.” A senior Turkish official said the country’s military was well prepared to defend its sites and areas under its protection using Turkish drones and warships deployed near Tripoli.

Turkey has also sent surface-to-air missile defense systems to Libya that have given it an edge over armed drones operated by the UAE, Western and Libyan officials have told Bloomberg. An aerial campaign by Haftar’s forces would first have to neutralize air defenses that had effectively ended strikes on the capital since January.

Haftar’s forces had made inroads into the capital’s suburbs and seemed poised to enter Tripoli before Turkey escalated its intervention at the start of the year, including sending in thousands of Syrian militiamen.

The setbacks for Haftar were accompanied by a Turkish armed drone campaign that targeted Russian-made Pantsir air-defense systems. One of the batteries was captured intact and paraded in Tripoli on Wednesday.

Haftar’s foreign backers aren’t going to accept defeat and would look to dig in, a senior Arab official with direct knowledge of the campaign said. Earlier this week, the United Nations acting Libya envoy Stephanie Williams warned of a possible escalation in the war for control of the country, which has seen a series of conflicts since a 2011 revolt ousted dictator Muammar al-Qaddafi.

Fathi Bashagha, the security chief in Tripoli, said at least six MiG 29s and two Sukhoi 24s had flown into the east from the Russian-controlled Hmeimim Air Base in Syria, escorted by two SU-35 Russian airforce jets. It wasn’t clear whether those were refurbished jets that had belonged to Haftar’s airforce or additions to his fleet.

“The Russians will need to show that they are willing to enter a direct confrontation with the Turks in Libya,” said Wolfram Lacher, a Libya expert with the German SWP research center. That didn’t necessarily mean a surge in fighting, he said.

“If the Turks believe they are serious about this and can take out air defenses, then I think we’re in a situation where the two can again launch a cease-fire.”

Turkey and Russia both pressed their local clients in January to sign a truce, but while the Tripoli-based government signed on, Haftar walked out of the meeting in Moscow. After this week’s losses, his forces pressed for a pause in fighting and said they’d withdraw from the frontlines in Tripoli, an offer rejected by the now-emboldened government.

“It’s hanging in the balance,” Lacher said.

[Rony]

War in Libya: how did it start, who is involved and what happens next?

Forces allied to Libya’s UN-backed prime minister, Fayez al-Sarraj, have seized a key airbase from the renegade general Khalifa Haftar, dealing a huge strategic blow to the warlord’s year-long campaign to capture the capital, Tripoli.

Haftar launched a new assault to unseat the UN-recognised government in April 2019, triggering some of the most significant fighting on Libyan soil since the battle to overthrow Col Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

Foreign powers – notably Turkey, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Russia – are increasingly active in this new chapter of the war, leading to fears of another drawn-out proxy conflict similar to Syria.

What are the origins of Libya’s war?

Oil-rich Libya has been in chaos since the Arab spring movement and Nato bombing campaign that toppled Gaddafi in 2011. Attempts to build a democratic state after Gaddafi fell disintegrated into a new civil war between rival governments in 2014.

Armed groups, including extremists such as Islamic State, have proliferated and the lawless country has also become a principal transit point for people from across Africa who want to reach Europe.

Who is currently fighting whom?

Since 2014 the fighting has mainly been between rival centres of political power in east and west Libya: the Tripoli administration, known as the Government of National Accord (GNA), led by Sarraj, and the Tobruk administration, which decamped to the eastern city after disputed elections. The Tobruk government appointed Haftar to lead the Libyan National Army (LNA) and restore its sovereignty.

While the GNA is officially recognised by the UN as Libya’s legitimate government, it holds little power on the ground, and some distrust its Islamist politics. Haftar’s supporters say he is a bulwark against extremism, while others see him as another would-be military dictator.

What is the international community doing?

Over the last few years foreign powers have increasingly intervened in Libya’s civil war to defend their own strategic and economic interests. The GNA is backed by the UN and western countries, but its main allies are Turkey, Qatar and Italy. The LNA enjoys the support of Russia, Egypt, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and, to a lesser extent, France and Jordan.

The foreign parties have flooded Libya with weapons and drones, ignoring a UN arms embargo. Russia has sent mercenaries and Sudanese men have been recruited to fight alongside the LNA; in January the Guardian reported that Turkey sent Syrian recruits along with its own soldiers, to defend the Tripoli government.

High-profile peace talks in Berlin this year did not result in any lasting truce.

What is the humanitarian impact?

Under Gaddafi’s brutal rule, Libya had one of the highest standards of living in Africa. Now, the war economy has sent costs skyrocketing, and there are widespread problems with medicine shortages and power cuts. Civilians are in danger of getting caught in the unpredictable fighting – and kidnappings for ransom by militias are common.

More than 200,000 people are internally displaced and 1.3 million are in need of humanitarian assistance, according to the UN. Casualty numbers are highly politicised and hard to verify, with estimates ranging from 2,500 to 25,000 during the 2011 uprising alone.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimates there are also about 636,000 migrants and refugees in the country, mostly from sub-Saharan Africa. Some are held in government-run detention centres and unofficial prisons run by armed groups, where conditions are horrific: detainees report unhygienic and overcrowded conditions without adequate food and water. Human rights watchdogs also say forced labour and abuse are rife.

What will happen next?

The loss of al-Watiya airbase is a heavy setback for Haftar and will help Turkey expand its air operations in the conflict on behalf of the Tripoli government. The LNA’s foreign backers are likely to step up their support in order to counter a string of Turkish successes since Ankara intervened in January.

The recent escalation in fighting comes despite increased international pressure on both sides to return to negotiating a political settlement and to halt the violence over concerns about the spread of coronavirus. Libya has reported at least 65 cases of the virus, including three deaths.