escalator over the hill

“Libyan Rebel commander admits his fighters have al Qaeda Connections”

 

“Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi, aka Abdelhakim Belhadj  the Libyan rebel leader, has said Jihadists who fought against allied troops in Iraq are on the front lines of the battle against Muammar Gaddafi’s regime.”

In an interview with an Italian newspaper “Il Sole 24 Ore”, Mr al-Hasidi admitted that he had recruited men from the Derna area in eastern Libya to fight against US UK and  coalition troops in Iraq.

Some of them, he said, are “today are on the front lines in Adjabiya”.

He stated his fighters “are patriots and good Muslims, not terrorists,” but added that the “members of Al-Qaeda are also good Muslims and are fighting against the invader”.

FOUGHT AGAINST US IN AFGHANISTAN

Mr al-Hasidi admitted he had earlier fought against “the foreign invasion” in Afghanistan, before being “captured in 2002 in Peshwar, in Pakistan”. He was later handed over to the US, and then held in Libya before being released in 2008.

US and British government agree Mr al-Hasidi was a member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group  (LIFG) which killed dozens of Libyan troops in guerrilla attacks around Derna and Benghazi in 1995 and 1996.

All of the above explains all there is to explain:

This is the leader of the rebels whom 50% are “anonymous”. No matter what anyone says the “rebels” are in the open in their animosity to the rest of the “tribes and people of Libya” that have prospered during the last 40 years.

Mr al-Hasidi isn’t opposed to words like genocide or ethnic cleansing, but for the sensitivities of the Western such terms are renamed like conflict and revolution.

The following Video ink could not be described as pro Gaddafi especially with the descriptive of it but it shows the links of the Libya Rebels with Al-Qaeda

A FEW MILITARY ADVISERS = MISSION CREEP

So it is to these people who the UK Ministry of Defence the French and the Italians are now sending military advisers to Libya. This is seen by those of us who recall the creeping of US involvement with advisers in Vietnam as the most significant step so far towards deploying NATO ground troops. Though there is plenty of evidence to suggest this has been going on for some time with Black Opps men and arms being supplied through Benghazi and Mistrata.

If this continues Libya will likely become another failed state like Afghanistan or Somalia

Who is  arming the Rebels.

A NATO INVASION:

The French US British and Italians forces have been engaged in the Libya’s civil conflict for more than 6 weeks and since when were US armed predator drones ever been used or could be used to enforce a no fly zone Now the task is to seek and destroy the Libyan leader’s arsenal and with the attack on his compound obviously assassinate Gaddafi.

All this has been done against a backdrop of continued accusation against the Libyan of attacking civilians but the problem is the Rebels are “civilians” and have chosen to fight in the streets of Mistrata.

Anybody who has studied the tactics of street fighting will know that the number of civilian casualties is incredibly small given the intensity of the fighting today and the alleged indiscriminate attacks by Government troops on civilians.

Tripoli has renewed calls for international experts to visit the country to assess the scale of violence against civilians while insisting claims that over 10,000 have died since the beginning of the clashes are exaggerated.

NO EVIDENCE  GADDAFI BOMBED “HIS PEOPLE”

A freelance journalist and member of British Civilians for Peace in Libya, Sukant Chandan, was part of the first international group to be invited to examine the civilian losses in the conflict and has just returned from Libya. He reports that the places they had visited showed no indication whatsoever that they had been bombed by Gaddafi’s forces.

What is clear is “There have been no UN international investigative teams that have been organised to  investigate the NATO bombings.”

British Civilians for Peace in Libya easily got information about civilian casualties in Tripoli by visiting mortuary’s and families of those who had been killed in bombings by NATO. Of course all the western media are unable to report such things as they have chosen to remain with the Rebel Forces.

As tweeted by me several days ago with graphic video there have been lynching’s of black-skinned people in Benghazi and public be-headings of captured Libyan soldiers in Benghazi and any parts of eastern Libya controlled by rebels.

This is a video  from a British Television Program “The World Today”

CALLS FOR PEACE:

Recently a delegation of Women for Peace from Tripoli went to Benghazi to plead for a ceasefire; they were met with a hail of gunfire from the Rebel Forces. The sound track from the a phone video of this incident was recently used by the ABC Radio as a sound bite for a report of an attack by Syrian Forces  against civilians in Syria; such are the lies and  distortions made by Western main stream media.

In an earlier ABC Radio reported on the reporter being shown phone images of Gaddafi soldiers who had been apparently executed by the Government for refusing to fire on protestors.It turned out that these images of these executed men were also posted to you tube.

They were in fact Libyan Soldiers captured by the Rebels who were then (shown on you tube )  bashed tortured and executed by the rebels.

Warning This is a lengthy and very Graphic video

You will see the captured Libyan soldiers interrogated and then brutally executed.

For 5 weeks Libyans have endured air strike after air strike by NATO forces in the middle of an increasingly violent civil war. And with little to show for it, the deadlocked war is causing widespread concern about its cost.

In the UK Jeremy Corbyn, Labour Member of Parliament said along with a growing number of British MPs.

“I think the situation just deepened and probably got rather worse,…..

Britain is putting troops in on the ground as advisers.

I think it’s very dangerous, we are involved in a civil war for which there’s no parliamentary authority.”

MONEY FOR WAR NONE FOR HEALTH:

So how much is the intervention in Libya is costing the British taxpayer? Early estimates suggested the bill could run to US$5 million a day.

That means a month’s offensive may have cost the UK as much as $225 million. This is at a time when the UK is slashing spending on public services, leading to widespread, often violent, and demonstrations.

Lindsey German from the ‘Stop the War Coalition’.

“This is an incredible amount of money when they say there’s no money available….. “We could every week be building a new hospital, several new schools and we could be paying the student tuition fees which are going up to GBP 9,000 [pounds] a year next year.”

The cuts in the Defence budget had already begun but ironically, experts say that has made the Libyan war more expensive. Now that the UK no longer has an aircraft carrier, every mission is longer and logistically harder.

MISSION CREEP:

The situation today is a stalemate. Gaddafi is still in control of most of Libya and therefore must obviously have the support of the majority of Libyans Peace seems no nearer, and NATO appears to be settling in for the long haul, until the Libyans themselves can negotiate a deal. Though the Rebels at every turn refuse talks.

After 5 weeks of air strikes, UK forces look more inextricably involved perhaps more so than the French and Italians, in the conflict than ever.

A week ago Foreign Secretary William Hague announced the deployment of experienced military officers to Libya to help the rebels improve military organizational structures and logistics. He stressed that advisers would not be involved in supplying weapons to the rebels.

However on this last point it is clear that the supply of weapons to the Rebels had been occurring long before the airstrikes. The airstrikes of course now appear to be conducted by the Unofficial Rebel Air force

With France and Italy have both announced that they will send similar contingents to the Civil War-torn North-African country.

DRONES:

­

The USA is now using drones in Libya – an escalation of the operation – but with civilians killed almost daily by drones in Afghanistan and Pakistan ir is clear that contrary to protecting civilians we will see even more collateral deaths

Eric Stoner, editor of WagingNonViolence.org. …..

“The use of drones is pretty much cheaper than fighter jets, but since the war in Libya has no end in sight, the situation starts to resemble the war in Iraq,” “It really reminds me of [Donald] Rumsfeld who said before the invasion of Iraq ‘five days, five weeks, five months – but no longer than that’,”

The stalemate continues. NATO remains without triumph. This is going to be a long hall as the Libyans fight for the sovereignty of their land.

The World looks on hapless at the misleading evidence put forward and the resolution 1973.

WORLD LEADERS:

The leaders of Brazil, China, India, Russia and South Africa met in China on April 14. For discussions on their mutual trade relations, These five countries are all current members of the UN Security Council, and all took part in the debate and vote over Resolution 1973 (to authorize the no-fly zone over Libya). While Brazil, China, India and Russia abstained from the vote, South Africa went along with it after Jacob Zuma received a phone call from Barack Obama.

At that meeting in China the five states agreed that the military option had got nowhere and that “all parties should resolve their differences through peaceful means and dialogue in which the UN and regional organizations should as appropriate play their role.”

Jacob Zuma went to China after a visit to see Col Gaddafi and an African Union Peace Delegation on Libya was formed. The Delegation included heads of government from Mali and Uganda and Foreign Ministers from Uganda and Mauritania.

Members of the delegation were

President Touré from Mali. In 1991, as head of the parachute commandos he overthrew the dictatorship of Moussa Traoré (who governed Mali from 1968), returning over the Country to civilian rule. He is known as “The Soldier of Democracy.”

Ten years later, Touré returned to politics,  and has since won two elections  country.

From Uganda there was Foreign Minister Okello his father was president of Uganda in the 1980s. He studied in Britain before he returned to Uganda, He was an active member in the Juba peace talks with the Lord’s Resistance Army.

President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz who conducted a coup in Mauritania, he resigned his Military position to campaign for and won the election to the presidency in 2009.

Denis Sassou Nguesso; president of Congo Brazzaville since the 1997 Civil War.  Though he first came to power in 1979.  Sassou Nguesso shares much in common with Gaddafi holding radical socialist views. He is the leader of The Congolese Party of Labour)

In 1991 after the fall of the Soviet Union he, was ousted from power but after a civil war returned to being head of government. In 2002 Sassou Nguesso was re-elected in open and democratic elections.

The credibility of these 4 on the peace mission to Tripoli and Benghazi is as good as anyone’s

US AND UN STAND IN THE WAY OF PEACE:

On March 10, this delegation had organised to travel to Tripoli and engage Gaddafi to draw back his troops from Benghazi. However French attacks on Libya (March 19) on the heels of the UN resolution 1973 (March 17) stopped the delegation and the UN refused to allow them to proceed, despite assurances from both Tripoli and Benghazi that they would entertain the mediation.

BAN KI MOON

It is notable that Ban Ki- Moon and  the UN stopped the peace envoys preferring bombardment. Though it is telling that in the UN’s Security Council “emergency room” there is a mural It showcases everyday life in Northern Europe.  At its bottom and at the center there is a phoenix, emergent from the flames, around which stand people who might just be “Eastern” (the women here have their faces covered, and the men wear turbans). A field artillery gun points at these people. It is their fate. Under such AN illusion, the UN Security Council deliberated its action in Libya.

In April the African Union team with European Union approval was finally allowed to visit the two centers of the Libyan conflict.

NATO:

On April 10, this African Union team met with Gaddafi. It’s mission was also welcomed by an increasingly desperate NATO command, whose inability to enforce a military breakthrough has called into question its power.

NATO spokeswoman Romanian Oana Lungescu said of the African Union trip, that

“the alliance has always made it clear that there could be no purely military solution to this crisis.”

Gaddafi agreed with a African Union proposals for:

• An immediate ceasefire,

• Unhindered delivery of humanitarian aid to all of Libya,

• Protection of foreign nation’s delegations and agreeing to enter into a dialogue with Benghazi for a political settlement.

Oana Lungescu said If this were to begin, then NATO airstrikes would be suspended.

The African Union Team minus Zuma went to Benghazi but The rebels’ leaders were not interested in a ceasefire or  a peaceful solution and rejected all proposals.

The lack of political movement is a direct consequence of the US and NATO “humanitarian intervention.” It has hardened the Rebels and made dialogue unnecessary for the Rebels.

Western journalists from The BBC and ABC Fox news etc continue to fan the conflict with misreporting and mindless or blindness reaction the consequences of the fighting and particularly the street fighting in Mistrata

THOSE WHO CALLED FOR INTERVENTION IN LIBYA stated…

Gadaffi would massacre the populations of Benghazi, as they now tell the journalists that there will be a massacre in Mistrata. But nothing like this has occurred in any of the towns being fought over or that have been re taken by Libyan troops. On contrary there is much evidence emerging that shows that it is the rebels are guilty of such War Crimes

Air strikes over 5 weeks have not dampened Gaddafi’S resolve. It is unlikely that an escalated military intervention will do any more other than galvanise further the Libyan people and other North Africans not in defence of Gaddafi  but against European occupation previously experienced at the hands of the British French Spanish and Italians.

I wonder if the NATO and Qaddafi’s survival is premised on the destruction of those who oppose him. Similarly, the rebels say that Gaddafi’s eviction, not to say, termination, is a sine qua non which means translated from the Latin “without which not” (something that is indispensable and necessary)

This is a recipe for protracted civil war and a failed state.

HILLARY CLINTON:

Hillary Clinton stated that the military intervention in *Ivory Coast “sends a strong signal to dictators and tyrants throughout the region and the world” that they “may not disregard the voice of their own people.”

Obviously Clinton wasn’t thinking of the Despotic and un democratic regimes that make up the Arab League (who also sanctioned action against Libya) when she made this statement was she?.

This is the list of the Arab League with population’s sizes in millions. See if you can  pick which ones have a democratically elected Government and the ones Hillary Clinton was referring too?

Egypt 80 Sudan 44  Algeria 36  Morocco 32 Iraq 31 Saudi Arabia 27 Yemen 24 Syria 23 Tunisia 11 Somalia 10 Libya 6.5 Jordan 6,5 United Arab Emirates 5

Lebanon 4 Palestinian territories 4,2 Kuwait 3,5 Mauritania 3,2 Oman 3  Qatar 2 Bahrain 1,2 Djibouti 864k  22 Comoros 691k

*Ivory Coast aka Cote D’ivoir

With an agreed 44% of the vote, President GBagbo was certainly a more legitimate candidate for democracy than the Rebels of Benghazi are today!

A UN official said of these events in Cote D’ivoir stated,

“The action in the Ivory Coast was given a psychological lift by the fact that it [happened] against the backdrop of Libya, and supports Mr. Obama’s narrative that intervention is justified despite political deadlock and a divided policy”

LIBYA REBELS; NO NEED FOR PEACE

The Benghazi rebels are now convinced according to Colonel Ahmed Bani the rebel spokesman resplendent in his new American Army supplied “Dress Uniform” that NATO’s no-fly zone will soon morph into full on arms supplies and “boots on the ground”

The Rebels have no need to seek a peaceful solution.

Nothing short of riding an M1 Abrams tank into Tripoli, greeted with flowers and sweets, is now acceptable. This is the reason why they did not see eye-to-eye with the African Union delegation or will accept any idea of a peaceful solution

The Rebels think that the regime in Tripoli is like the Qing dynasty during the Taiping Rebellion 1850 , and that Qaddafi’s “dissolution must follow as surely as that of any mummy carefully preserved in a hermetically sealed coffin, whenever it is brought into contact with the open air” (Marx on the Qing).

Such a state has not occurred, and it did not occur in China. The Qing defeated the Taiping but becoming further drawn into European orbit control. The rebels, like the contras I Nicaragua and Mujahedin in Afghanistan are ultimately dispensable to the NATO.

The result of the Qing victory was later to lead to the Boxer uprising in 1901

NATO SUPPORT IS NOT PERMANENT:

From such hardened positions, the way forward is difficult to surmise. The easy answer from London to Washington from Paris to QATAR is for greater military force against Tripoli.

Libya with a population of just 6.5 million people is poised to being destroyed for the purposes of “higher” commercial gain; not humanitarian aims.

The control of Oil, Natural Gas and the creation of a US controlled NATO Mediterranean to secure the passage of oil and isolate Russia further is paramount.

This idea of control of the Mediterranean dates back as far as the Romans, The Royal Navy with the Battle of Trafalgar and the Nile The Germans and Italians in the 2nd World War.  Democracy matters not so long as the regimes are friendly to US aim un democratic regimes.

There are Risks

On March 2, before the conflict heated up, Hillary Clinton warned

if the rebels did not prevail Libya might become “a giant Somalia.”

On March 30, Qaddafi’s former confidant, Moussa Koussa said,

“I ask everybody to avoid taking Libya into civil war. This would lead to so much blood and Libya would be a new Somalia.”

After saying that he was spirited of the stage quick smart. There again he has been compared to Rudolf Hess as being  mentally unstable

US FAIL TO JUSTIFY GOING TO WAR:

US President Barack Obama exaggerated the humanitarian claims used to justify military action in Libya he UN the US and NATO have made their case for going to war and they have failed:

“Civilians were being targeted and that Gaddafi would kill them all if intervention did not take place.   This was frankly a lie

Obama also said…

“We knew if we waited one more day, Benghazi, a city nearly the size of Charlotte, could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world,”

HRW

A report by Human Rights Watch shows that Gaddafi was not deliberately killing civilians but rather targeting armed rebels fighters who were targeting his government troops and Gaddafi civilian supporters in Benghazi.

The NATO intervention has not stopped the killing and may have in fact put civilians at greater risk by emboldening rebel fighters. It has placed civilians at risk in between the government and rebels creating a civil war and causing greater casualties.

Alan J. Kuperman,who  is Associate Professor of Public Affairs at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin, says…..

there is simply no evidence Gaddafi was targeting civilians, therefore there is no possibility Obama could have had evidence or reason to enter Libya and begin a military intervention……..Gaddafi is targeting rebel fighters. There was never a bloodbath of civilians at the hands of Gaddafi.

“If Gaddafi were trying to massacre civilians there would be thousands killed, not a couple hundred killed,” “My rough guess at this point is we have actually increased the net suffering to civilians in Libya,”

Kuperman has published articles and book chapters on ethnic conflict, U.S. military intervention and nuclear proliferation.

He is also Coordinator of the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Program, and leads a Pentagon-funded project on Constitutional Design and Conflict Management in Africa.

Kupermanis the author of The Limits of Humanitarian Intervention: Genocide in Rwanda (Brookings, 2001) and co-editor of Gambling on Humanitarian Intervention: Moral Hazard, Rebellion, and Civil War (Routledge, 2006).

As I wrote in an earlier post on Libya:  Gaddafi said he would show no mercy to rebels who continued to fight, he did not speak about civilians. He said rebel fighters who laid down their arms and surrendered would receive mercy.

“Civilians are now caught in the middle of this war

The UN and NATO haven’t stopped a bloodbath but are prolonging and perpetuating the suffering of civilians in Libya.”

Clearly Obama exaggerated the threat.

The international community should stay out of the internal issues of a sovereign state contended and intervention should be used as a [threat], a last result only if civilians are truly targeted by either side.

Footnotes:

1)      Gaddafi son Killed

The Bombing of the compound was clearly done in a residential area

Saif al Arab was considered the least problematic of Gaddafi immediate family; he had no ties to the Libyan government or military. U.S. diplomats described Saif al Arab as a “ne’er-do-well” and “the least publicly known of Gaddafi children” in a confidential March 2009 cable from the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, released by WikiLeaks.

2)     Warning this video is very graphic and disturbing !!!  New World Order Funded Al Qaeda Rebels Saw off  Surrendered Libyan Soldiers Head.

3) 101 years ago…… Boxer Rebellion …. what has changed?

Boxer Beheading 1901

PERSONAL STUFF

It has been a little while since my last post and even more since my last article on Libya. This has been frustrating and most recently my time was taken up over the past week-end attending Progressive Australia Conference 

Prior to that as you might imagine researching the content for posts such as this take a huge amount of time and I am a “one man band” As the events unfold what I am about to post has the be revised to keep some currency of the news.

My time has also been taken up almost fully over the past 7 days with my legal matters collating material preparing documents for court and attending lengthy legal conferences and the like. But it is time well spent and all is going very well.

I am still sorting out my new abode and building my workshop which is where I do a lot of my thinking and tinkering. I have also been supervising building works  in my little house.

A new deck and new paved back yard and having the outside painted. So these have been busy days but I am a very happy chap with Libya excepted.

I have had some critical health issues that those of you who know me in real-time know about and I am pleased to-say  that is all coming good though I am not able to sack my medicos just yet…but it won’t be long.

At the conference for a Progressive Australia  I attended I managed to discard my walking sticks for the entire 2 days.