Libya : A no lie zone

[Peter Lemkin]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]5604[/ATTACH]

Well, blow mw down, nice almost military haircuts there, eh.

Dept. of State cover....hmmm......what were they cookin' up?!

[Peter Lemkin]

New York Times Report: CIA-Backed Militias Linked to Benghazi, Libya Attack

By Patrick Martin
Global Research, December 30, 2013






A lengthy front-page report in Sunday's New York Times provides additional confirmation that the attack on a US facility in Benghazi, Libya in September 2012 was the outcome of the Obama administration's use of Islamic fundamentalist terrorists in its war against the Libyan regime of Muammar Gaddafi.
The Times article, based on dozens of interviews in Benghazi, asserts that the attack that killed four Americans, including US Ambassador Christopher Stevens, was carried out by Libyans who had previously been allied with the US government in the 2011 war that overthrew and murdered Gaddafi. Times correspondent David D. Kirkpatrick writes that the attack was not organized by Al Qaeda or any other group from outside Libya, but "by fighters who had benefited directly from NATO's extensive air power and logistics support during the uprising against Colonel Qaddafi."
The main US facility in Benghazi was not the small mission building in which Stevens and an aide died, but a larger unmarked compound described as "the Annex" that housed at least 20 people from the CIA. Two security guards at this building were killed by a mortar barrage eight hours after the attack that killed Stevens.
The disparity in staffing between the CIA compound and the diplomatic outpost is telling: the main mission of the US government in Benghazi was the CIA operation, which had spearheaded by the campaign against Gaddafi in 2011, but by 2012 was devoted to a different and even bloodier operation: recruiting manpower and supplying weapons to the Islamic fundamentalist insurgency against the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad.
As the World Socialist Web Site reported, within days of the Benghazi killings:
"There is every reason to believe that the robust CIA presence in Benghazi after Gaddafi's fall also involved more than just surveillance. Libyan Islamists make up the largest single component of the foreign fighters' who are playing an ever more dominant role in the US-backed sectarian civil war being waged in Syria with the aim of toppling the government of President Bashar al-Assad. According to some estimates, they comprise anywhere from 1,200 to 1,500 of approximately 3,500 fighters who have been infiltrated into Syria from as far away as Chechnya and Pakistan."
The Times article identifies one militia leader, Ahmed Abu Khattala, as a principal figure in the Benghazi attack, although Khattala has admitted only being present outside the building at the time. He also names another militia leader, Abdul Salam Bargathi, head of the Preventive Security Brigade, as the man who told the Libyan guards at the US facility to flee when attacked.
Both these individuals, and many others named in the Times account, worked in close collaboration with the CIA and Stevens personally during the six months of NATO bombing and seesaw fighting that culminated in the overthrow of the Libyan government and the lynch-mob murder of Gaddafi.
These Islamist militants were in many cases veterans of guerrilla fighting in Afghanistan, either as part of the US-backed war against the Soviet army in the 1980s, or in the ongoing war against the US-NATO occupation regime established in 2001. They had fought both for and against the US government, and they were about to change sides again.
A major purpose of the Times article is to bolster the Obama administration in its ongoing conflict with congressional Republicans, who have sought to exploit the Benghazi fiasco by claiming that administration officials lied about the events to prevent damage to Obama's reelection campaign.
The last section of the article is a virtual point-for-point rebuttal of the claims made by House Republican leaders like Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers and Government Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa that Benghazi was a major Al Qaeda operation planned well in advance.
This dispute between the Democrats and Republicans is a political sideshow concocted to conceal the more fundamental issues at stake in the Benghazi events, and particularly the connection to ongoing US subversion in Syria.
The attack on the US mission was a classic case of "blowback." The CIA had mobilized Islamic fundamentalists, including veterans of the Al Qaeda and Taliban war in Afghanistan, to fight Gaddafi, and was recruiting them for a new war against Assad.
At a certain point, some of these Islamists had a falling out with their imperialist paymasters. It may well have been exactly thata dispute over money in which the Islamists felt themselves slighted and short-changed in the year that followed the overthrow of Gaddafi.
The Times article begins with a suggestive anecdote, describing a meeting on September 9, 2012 between a US official and militia leaders in Benghazi.
The militia leaders evinced hostility and told the American that Benghazi was not safe and they should leave as soon as possible, Kirkpatrick writes. "Yet as the militiamen snacked on Twinkie-style cakes with their American guests, they also gushed about their gratitude for President Obama's support in their uprising against Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi. They emphasized that they wanted to build a partnership with the United States, especially in the form of more investment. They specifically asked for Benghazi outlets of McDonald's and KFC."
The US official summarized their views as wanting the Obama administration to become more engaged "by pressuring' American businesses to invest in Benghazi."
The Times account also touches on another dubious and murky incident in the US intervention in Libya: the July 2011 murder of Gen. Abdul Fattah Younes, at the time the main commander of the US-backed rebel forces in Benghazi. Younes, a former interior minister under Gaddafi who defected to join the rebels, was hated by the Islamic fundamentalists.
According to the Times, Younes was seized by the Islamists and held overnight in the headquarters of the militia unit commanded by Abu Khattala. The next day, the bullet-riddled bodies of Younes and two of his aides were found on a roadside near the city. There was no serious investigation into the circumstances and motivation of this assassination, either by the Libyan "rebels" or their US-NATO sponsors.

[Magda Hassan]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]5604[/ATTACH]

Well, blow mw down, nice almost military haircuts there, eh.

Dept. of State cover....hmmm......what were they cookin' up?!

I notice these guys were released with out further comment from either government...

[Peter Lemkin]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]5604[/ATTACH]

Well, blow mw down, nice almost military haircuts there, eh.

Dept. of State cover....hmmm......what were they cookin' up?!

I notice these guys were released with out further comment from either government...

Spooky, huh?! The Libyan Government is hardly in control or supported my many or most in Libya now....we [US and NATO] helped to destroy the country, and it remains a loosely disunited band of gangs - the 'government' being just yet another one. Another successful democracy export!:hock::

[Magda Hassan]

Mandela and Gaddafi: The Myth of the Saint and the Mad Dog

By Linda Housman

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January 05, 2014 "Information Clearing House - "Question. Why was Mandela's life celebrated by the world while Gaddafi after everything he did for Africa was gunned down like a dog?", a Twitter user wondered days after Nelson Mandela's passing.

This question becomes even more valid in light of what the mainstream media, in the wake of the former South African president's death, have been anxiously hiding from the public: the actual close and crucial alliance between Mandela and Gaddafi. Back in the 70s and 80s, when the West refused to allow sanctions against Apartheid in South Africa and used to call Mandela a terrorist, it was none other than Libya's Muammar Gaddafi who kept supporting him. Gaddafi funded Mandela's fight against Apartheid by training ANC fighters and by paying for their education abroad, and their bond only became stronger after Mandela's release from prison on February 11, 1990.

Nevertheless, one of them ended up being "gunned down like a dog" and his death was celebrated by the entire elite of the imperialist world, which celebrations were significantly summarized by Hillary "Warzone" Clinton in a now infamous interview in which she exults: "We came, we saw, he died!"

As for the other one, the same entire elite of the imperialist world crowded into the FNB stadium in Soweto, South Africa, to attend the funeral of their hero, and to verbosely praise Mandela and his achievements with all possible superlatives.

Mandela on Gaddafi

So how did the branded Saint Mandela really feel about the branded Mad Dog Gaddafi? Let's hear straight from the horse's mouth what the mainstream media have left out of their laudatory picture of the former ANC leader.

Right upon his release from prison, after more than 27 years behind bars, Mandela broke the UN embargo and paid a visit to the Libyan capital of Tripoli, where he declared: "My delegation and I are overjoyed with the invitation from the Brother Guide [Muammar Gaddafi], to visit the Great Popular and Socialist Arab Libyan Jamahiriya. I have been waiting impatiently ever since we received the invitation. I would like to remind you that the first time I came here, in 1962, the country was in a very different state of affairs. One could not but be struck by the sights of poverty from the moment of arrival, with all of its usual corollaries: hunger, illness, lack of housing and of health-care facilities, etc. Anger and revolt could be read in those days on the faces of everyone.

Since then, things have changed considerably. During our stay in prison, we read and heard a great deal about the changes which have come about in this country and about blossoming of the economy which has been experienced here. There is prosperity and progress everywhere here today which we were able to see even before the airplane touched ground. It is thus with great pleasure that we have come on a visit in the Jamahiriya, impatient to meet our brother, the Guide Gaddafi."

When Mandela was taken to the ruins of Gaddafi's compound in Tripoli, which was bombed by the Reagan administration in 1986 in an attempt to murder the entire Gaddafi family, he said:

"No country can claim to be the policeman of the world and no state can dictate to another what it should do. Those that yesterday were friends of our enemies have the gall today to tell me not to visit my brother Gaddafi. They are advising us to be ungrateful and forget our friends of the past."

In response, Gaddafi thanked Mandela for his friendship, saying: "Who would ever have said that one day the opportunity for us to meet would become reality. We would like you to know that we are constantly celebrating your fight and that of the South African people, and that we salute your courage during all of those long years you spent in detention in the prison of Apartheid. Not a single day has passed without us having thought of you and your sufferings."

Eight years later, when then U.S. president Bill Clinton visited Mandela in March 1998, Clinton criticized the South African president's meeting with Muammar Gaddafi. In reaction to that criticism, Mandela straightforwardly replied:

"I have also invited Brother Leader Gaddafi to this country. And I do that because our moral authority dictates that we should not abandon those who helped us in the darkest hour in the history of this country. Not only did the Libyans support us in return, they gave us the resources for us to conduct our struggle, and to win. And those South Africans who have berated me for being loyal to our friends, can literally go and jump into a pool."

Mandela on the West

Subsequently, let's hear the ANC leader's real thoughts on the West that has put him on a posthumous pedestal, and on topics that, to say the least, are not exactly popular among Western leaders.

On the U.S. preparing its war against Iraq in 2002: "If you look at those matters, you will come to the conclusion that the attitude of the United States of America is a threat to world peace. If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the USA. They don't care for human beings."

In a 1999 speech: "Israel should withdraw from all the areas which it won from the Arabs in 1967, and in particular Israel should withdraw completely from the Golan Heights, from south Lebanon and from the West Bank."

"The UN took a strong stand against apartheid; and over the years, an international consensus was built, which helped to bring an end to this iniquitous system. But we know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians." (RT)

The revolutionary Mad Dog

On the day of Mandela's funeral, December 15, 2013, a citizen from Accra, Ghana, expressed:

"All day long here in Ghana they have been broadcasting live the Memorial Service of Nelson Mandela in South Africa. Courtesy, of course, of the BBC and Deutsche Welle? Why on earth doesn't Africa have its own Broadcasting Network in this day and age? The news coverage on the BBC is always distorting according to their own interest, and that on Deutsche Welle a bit less, but still not African! And in all of Ghana a nations with so many media resources there is not a single foreign correspondent in the lot! Why must Africans always depend on others to tell their own stories to them?! Shame! Shame! Shame!"

In fact, there actually was someone working on an African broadcasting network. Someone who already connected the entire African continent by radio, television and telephone. In the early 90s, this person funded the establishment of the Regional African Satellite Communication Organization, which eventually provided Africa with its first own communications satellite on December 26, 2007. A second African satellite was launched in July 2010 and advanced plans for a continental broadcasting network were made. The person who funded at least 70% of this revolutionary project was the revolutionary leader of the Libyan Jamahiriya, Muammar Gaddafi.

Gaddafi thus angered the Western bankers, since Africa no longer would pay the annual $500 million fee to Europe for the use of its satellites, and of course no "self-respecting" banker was willing to fund a project that frees people from their claws. And this was not the only way in which Gaddafi angered the West to the point that he had to be eliminated from their agenda. The leader of the Libyan Al-Fateh Revolution worked hard and came close to embody the famous 1865 quote by American economist Adam Smith, saying: "The economy of any country which relies on the slavery of blacks is destined to descend into hell the day those countries awaken."

On the eve of the NATO-led war against Libya, Gaddafi's booming country largely co-funded three projects that would rid Africa from its financial dependence on the West once and for all: the African Investment Bank in the Libyan city of Sirte, the African Monetary Fund (AFM), to be based in the capital of Cameroon, Yaounde, in 2011, and the African Central Bank to be based in the capital of Nigeria, Abuja. Especially the latter angered France not coincidentally also the main orchestrator of the war on Libya because it would mean the end of the West African CFA franc and the Central African CFA franc, through which France kept a hold on as much as thirteen African countries. Only two months after Africa said no to Western attempts to join the AFM, Western organized "protests" against the AFM's benefactor, Muammar Gaddafi, started to erupt in Libya… ultimately resulting in the freezing of $30 billion by the West, which money mostly was intended for the above mentioned financial projects.

But Gaddafi helped the African continent in more than just material ways. More than any other African leader, he supported Mandela's ANC's struggle against the racist regime in South Africa. Above that, many Black Africans, especially sub-Saharan African migrants and refugees, found a new home in Gaddafi's prosperous Libya.

Gaddafi understood that in order to develop a strong Africa that would be able to finally throw off the shackles of imperialism, unity was the first requirement. The 2009 Chairperson of the African Union also understood the African culture and recognized that African problems need African solutions. During a 2010 meeting in Tripoli, in which he addressed dozens of leaders from across Africa, he told: "African traditions are being replaced with Western culture and multiparty politics is destroying Africa." Instead, Gaddafi promoted the establishment of a People's Government (Jamahiriya) in which the power would not belong to (puppet) governments, but to the African people. And nothing scared the Western capitalists more than a united Africa Muammar Gaddafi's dream that was about to come true by the end of 2010.

The lukewarm Saint

When Nelson Mandela endured 27 years of isolation in prison, he paid the price of being the socialist revolutionary and the racial equality fighter that he was. His freedom was taken away by the South African Apartheid regime, a regime that was the result of the infiltration of South Africa by European colonial powers. How come the same colonial powers now consider him to be a hero and a saint? Did the Western elite have a massive change of mind, and thus all of the sudden embraced the exact same ideology that made them put Mandela behind bars a few decades ago?

We only have to take a look at the current situation of the Blacks in NATO-led Libya to understand that this was not quite the case. Libya, in 1951 officially the poorest country in the world, under Gaddafi attained the highest standard of living in Africa. The country's prosperity attracted many Black African immigrants, during the 2011 war on Libya by the mainstream media purposely misnamed as being "black sub-Saharan African mercenaries". Gaddafi provided them with work and education. Those immigrant workers, to whom Gaddafi was a hero, a father and a friend, now face the cruelest forms of racism by the Western-installed Libyan puppet regime. Just one telling example is a video in which Libyan "rebels" force Black immigrants to eat the green flag of the Libyan Jamahiriya.

Then why the 180 degrees change of attitude of the West towards Mandela after his release from prison?

Statistics show that still 65% of the Blacks in South Africa remain unemployed, while 90% of the Whites own 90% of South Africa's wealth. Over the last decades, Apartheid may have disappeared for the visual scene, fact is that Blacks remain poor while Whites remain rich.

Yet the West regards Mandela as the protector of the South African economy. According to a Financial Times journalist, Mandela's ANC "proved a reliable steward of sub-Sahara Africa's largest economy, embracing orthodox fiscal and monetary policies." Canadian The Globe and Mail recently added that Mandela did this "without alienating his radical followers or creating a dangerous factional struggle within his movement".

In other words, Mandela ran with the hare and hunted with the hounds… mainly economically and nothing interested, interests and will interest the Western capitalist countries more than economics.

As aptly stated by independent writer Stephen Gowans,

"Thus, in [The Globe and Mail journalist Doug] Saunder's view, Mandela was a special kind of leader: one who could use his enormous prestige and charisma to induce his followers to sacrifice their own interests for the greater good of the elite that had grown rich off their sweat, going so far as to acquiesce in the repudiation of their own economic program."

""Here is the crucial lesson of Mr. Mandela for modern politicians," writes Saunders. "The principled successful leader is the one who betrays his party members for the larger interests of the nation. When one has to decide between the rank-and-file and the greater good, the party should never come first."

"For Saunders and most other mainstream journalists, "the larger interests of the nation" are the larger interests of banks, land owners, bond holders and share holders. This is the idea expressed in the old adage "What's good for GM [General Motors], is good for America." Since mainstream media are large corporations, interlocked with other large corporations, and are dependent on still other large corporations for advertising revenue, the placing of an equal sign between corporate interests and the national interest comes quite naturally."

I believe the dictionary has a word for that: lukewarm.

What if Mandela had not danced to the tune of the imperialists?What if he did have said words and did have made plans that were too threatening to the interests of the corporate financiers who run the planet the reason why Gaddafi had to be killed? Then South Africa under his leadership quite likely would have become what Iraq and Libya currently are: a country in turmoil, torn apart by imperialist powers that Mandela, not inconceivable even out of fear for what they are capable of, preferred to side with.

Also the inevitable question arises: where was Mandela when his brother Gaddafi's country was bombed for nine months by the most powerful military alliance in modern history? Sources have declared by that time his health was too fragile and he was in a too vulnerable state of mind, for which reason his family deliberately kept him away from news that would severely upset him. Whatever the case may be, the significant fact remains that no ANC member stood up for Gaddafi during the war on Libya the way Gaddafi stood up for his friend Mandela during his imprisonment and afterwards.

The lesson for us

At the beginning of a new year, let us allow ourselves to take a few moments to reflect on our destiny and on that of the post-Mandela and post-Gaddafi world we live in. We live in a time of transition on all fronts. More than ever we are faced with the choice of being guided by fear especially by the fear of losing credibility with the public and being punished by "authorities" when we challenge the powers-that-be or being guided by the freedom of thought. The latter will result in a higher level of understanding of both ourselves and the world around us, which is the main condition for a much needed ®evolution and for the establishment of true democracy.

What the world needs now, are "Mad Dogs". Revolutionaries with a vision who dare to be unconventional and dare to be so all the way. It is time for us to become a Gaddafi rather than a Mandela. It is time to let the walls of fear around our thinking fall away. It is time to break free from the fear of not being liked, of no longer being accepted, of being looked upon differently, of being branded an outcast, a lunatic, a conspiracy theorist or anything bad when we raise our voices.

We need to dare to totally tear aside the veil of Apartheid that mights and media use to cover up what is really going on in the world. Only then real progress can be achieved.

"Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery;
None but ourselves can free our mind." Bob Marley

[Magda Hassan]

Balkanisation of Libya coming along nicely. Dickens & Madson, Ari Ben-Menashe, oh dear...

INTERVIEW-Cyrenaica lobbyist says too early to talk about Libya oil sales

Source: Reuters - Wed, 8 Jan 2014 08:27 PM

By David Ljunggren
OTTAWA, Jan 8 (Reuters) - A lobbyist for Libya's self-declared eastern government of Cyrenaica said on Wednesday that any talk of the region selling oil would have to wait until the country's political turmoil had ended.
Armed protesters who want Tripoli to share oil revenues seized three eastern crude export ports last year. They are now inviting foreign firms to buy crude from the ports, but Prime Minister Ali Zeidan said on Wednesday that Libya might sink tankers trying to load oil.
Documents filed in the United States show the pro-autonomy movement in Cyrenaica signed a deal last month with Montreal lobbying firm Dickens & Madson, which promised to help "by soliciting buyers for your oil when the need arises".

Ari Ben-Menashe, who runs the firm, said his priority was to seek U.S. and Russian support to help the Libyans set up a federal structure where Cyrenaica would have the status of an autonomous region.

"The whole idea is to see where we can take (this) and then we will deal with everything else because there has to be international legitimacy," he told Reuters in a phone interview from Montreal.
"What we are talking about is when the time comes - not now - when the time comes, we'll help them get oil sales going with revenue sharing," he said.
Libya's navy fired shots over the weekend to head off a tanker that officials said had planned to load at the eastern port of Es Sider, which the rebels control. Ben-Menashe said he did not approve of the bid to load oil.
"My reaction was 'What the hell are you doing?'" he said. "Sneaking in a tanker ... isn't something that's going to work."
Libya is in turmoil as the government struggles to rein in militias that helped topple leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.
Disputes such as the one between Tripoli and the pro-autonomy movement in Cyrenaica have slashed Libyan exports and helped pushed up the price of Brent crude.
Ben-Menashe said he thought there was a very good chance of the Libyan government and the pro-autonomy movement reaching a deal on revenue sharing and how to run the country.
"One side has 'international legitimacy' and the paperwork for the oil, the other guys have the oil. Now it's in the interests of both sides to sit down and talk," he said.
Pressed as to which oil firms he might be talking to, Ben-Menashe said he had had contacts with some companies that had a history of operating in Libya.
"We are talking about the same companies that may have had contracts with Gaddafi ... we're not talking about inventing the wheel all over again," he said, but gave no details.
"They would be interested to continue if things stabilize. ... They are actually helping us." (Reporting by David Ljunggren; Editing by Jeffrey Hodgson and Jonathan Oatis)

[Magda Hassan]

Still trying to assess how serious this is. Did he just announce the coup and no one come or is there still things in the works? Still unclear at this time.

Libyan army commander calls for parliament to be suspended

TRIPOLI Fri Feb 14, 2014 11:39am GMT


People wave Libyan flags during a demonstration in Benghazi February 7, 2014.
Credit: Reuters/Esam Omran Al-Fetori

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(Reuters) - A Libyan military commander on Friday called for the interim parliament to be suspended and a presidential committee to be formed to govern until new elections in what he described as a road map to "rescue" the country.
Major General Khalifa Haftar was a leading figure in the 2011 revolution against Muammar Gaddafi, but it was not clear how much influence he has even within the small, nascent army in a country where other militia groups are more powerful.
Since the fall of Gaddafi, Libya has had a fragile government and armed forces unable to impose their authority on competing political factions and the brigades of former rebels who refuse to disarm.
Tripoli was calm, with telecommunications normal, and Reuters witnesses said there were no immediate signs of any extraordinary troop movements or activity outside the parliament, the prime minister's office or any ministries.
"The national command of the Libyan army is declaring a movement for the new road map," Haftar said in a statement in which he said the armed forces were calling for Libya to be "rescued" from its upheaval.
"We will hold meetings with different parties and groups regarding implementing this road map," he said.
A spokesman for the General National Congress (GNC) parliament dismissed the statement.
"He doesn't represent the army," Omar Humaidan said. "He is not even in Tripoli, the capital is secure."
Libya's army barely exists with most of its soldiers still in training or drawn from the ranks of former rebels who are often more loyal to their own regions, their commanders or their tribes than a national force.
Haftar was once a Gaddafi ally, but broke with the autocratic leader over the war with Chad in the 1980s. He later sought exile in the United States, but returned to become a commander of forces in the 2011 revolution.
The General National Congress is deeply split by infighting between the nationalist National Forces Alliance party and Islamists in the Justice and Construction Party, which is tied to the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Al Wafaa movement.
Since its election in 2012, the GNC has become increasingly unpopular with Libyans who see it has made little progress in the transition to democracy. Libya still has no new constitution.
But tensions have increased over its future, after its initial mandate ran out on February 7. Its members agreed to extend their term in office to allow a special committee the stability to draft the constitution.
Rival political factions and militia groups have competing views on how the country should continue, with some calling for early elections and others supporting the extension of the parliament's mandate.
(Reporting by Ghaith Shennib; Writing by Patrick Markey; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/africa...el.leader/

[Magda Hassan]

Major General Kalifah Hafta called a press conference and laughed that he hadn't been arrested yet.

Meanwhile....
Abu Abdulghaffar - ex Emir of the the Libyan Fighting Group and former Deputy Minister for Martyrs' Affairs and the Deputy Minister of Defense Khalid Sharif and Sami Saadi http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/12/...92595.html all died in a plane crash the other day. Not much at all in the anglophone press.

Miftah Duwadi (died 2day in air crash) w/ fellow ex-LIFG Sami Saadi (left) & Khalid Sharif now dep defence min #Libya pic.twitter.com/qW7MbOx1U9

What ever that might mean.

Also more people arrested at the Bengazi airport using fake Libyan passports. This time supposedly from Qatar which has been denied by the government of Qatar. Seems to be several militant groups vying for control of airport (and country for that matter) and also a route to traffick fighters into Syria.

[Magda Hassan]

Still trying to assess how serious this is. Did he just announce the coup and no one come or is there still things in the works? Still unclear at this time.

Libyan army commander calls for parliament to be suspended

TRIPOLI Fri Feb 14, 2014 11:39am GMT

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/africa...el.leader/

One of the few articles on this in English.

The Coup That Wasn't

Posted: 02/21/2014 7:46 pm EST Updated: 02/22/2014 6:59 am EST
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The last seven days have been eventful ones in Libya. A senior army officer with three decades of links to the CIA announced a military coup and the suspension of parliament. Two heavily armed militias from Zintan, gave parliament five hours to surrender its powers, but then extended the deadline to Friday night. The threat receded but not before a column of pick-up trucks with anti-aircraft guns was left as a calling card at a roundabout near the General National Congress. Nothing happened. You could be forgiven for thinking that it all amounted to business as usual in Tripoli.
But it was not. At least not for those who attempted to micromanage these events. To understand who needed a military takeover in Libya, you have to go back to July 23 last year. A few weeks after the coup in Egypt that toppled former president Mohamed Morsi, Tawfiq Okasha, a TV presenter regarded as the mouthpiece of the intelligence service forecast two urgent military requirements -- Gaza, and the East of Libya to eliminate "terrorists". Few at the time took him seriously.
A few weeks ago, the ground was prepared by interviews on Egyptian television with the senior army officer Maj. Gen. Khalifa Hifter, and Mahmoud Jibril, who served as interim prime minister for seven and a half months and who was once Colonel Gadafy's planning minister. He was bitterly critical of the parliament's political isolation law which ruled former regime insiders like him out of standing for further office.
Last week Hifter announced in a video post that the national command of the Libyan army was declaring a new movement for a road map. It proved to be wish fulfillment but discontent with the Libyan parliament which has announced elections in the spring is real enough. The coup plotters thought that they could turn the third anniversary of the overthrow of Colonel Gadafy to their advantage. It worked in Egypt, why not Libya?
But who are they? A statement put out on Facebook on behalf of "The Revolutionaries Operations Room," which represents a range of Islamist militias, pointed the finger at the United Arab Emirates. They claimed the UAE had established two "security cells," one to overthrow the Libyan parliament and the second, in Amman, to co-ordinate media coverage. A Libya which has become little more than a collection of city states is rife with conspiracy theories. The daily chaos is such that members of the armed unit charged with protecting Benghazi airport decided on Monday to block the runway, because they had not been paid for several months. But that does not mean that the conspiracies themselves don't exist.
Both Egypt and their bankers in the UAE and Saudi Arabia had every reason to establish a friendly regime in oil-rich Libya. Egypt is hemorrhaging the money that the Gulf states are pouring into it. It has a looming fuel problem, as consumption of natural gas is forecast by experts to outstrip supply in July. Economic aid from the Gulf included $4 billion of oil products, but their diesel is not compatible with Egypt's gas-powered factories. Libya's near-idle fields thus make a tempting alternative source of oil.
The big shock of the week was not that a military coup was attempted. It was that the coup plotters pulled all the right levers -- widespread popular discontent on the third anniversary of the Revolution, a dysfunctional and divided parliament, and militias refusing to disband -- and nothing happened.
The events in Libya this week are just the latest of a series of failures for the UAE Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Zayed, accused in the ROR statement, of masterminding the "security cell," and his righthand-man Mohammed Dahlan, the former Fatah leader in Gaza. Bin Zayed has made powerful enemies in the Gulf. The cracks between the UAE and Saudi Arabia started to appear over the deal which the U.S. made with the Iranians over the nuclear program. The Saudi kingdom campaigned vigorously against it, whereas the UAE welcomed it. A casual remark which Bin Zayed made to a U.S. diplomat over 11 years ago, has also come back to haunt him.
According to a Wikileaks cable, Bin Zayed alluded to the bumbling manner of the Saudi crown Prince Nayef bin abdulaziz. Bin Zayed told the U.S. diplomat Richard Haas that "Darwin was right" about the species starting with lower orders, suggesting that Prince Nayef was like a monkey.
His son, Mohamed bin Nayef, has not forgotten or forgiven that insult to his late father. Mohamed bin Nayef, the current interior minister, has taken over the security brief from Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi intelligence chief, who was part of the Bin Zayed axis. When western and arab intelligence services gathered for a two-day strategy meeting in Washington recently, it was Prince Nayef who turned up to represent the kingdom, not Bandar. Increasingly Bandar's handling of the rebels in Syria was seen as shaky, and that file has now also been taken from him. Bandar's political briefs have now been handed to the foreign minister, and Bandar has become a prince without portfolio.
Bandar's falling star leaves Bin Zayed vulnerable to criticism from other emirs in the UAE, like Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the emir of Dubai. Unlike Abu Dhabi, the biggest emirate, Dubai's wealth is built on commerce and its international image -- not on oil. Dubai stands to lose if Bin Zayed's foreign adventures in Egypt, Libya and also Yemen go sour. Bin Zayed's funding of the French intervention in Mali has also attracted criticism. The rivalries not only between Gulf states, but within them too, mean that the current status quo in the Middle East is destined to be short-lived.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-hear...34758.html

[Carsten Wiethoff]

A podcast about the current situation in Libya, which in my opinion is well worth listening to, can be found here:
http://porkinspolicyreview.wordpress.com...-draitser/

On this weeks episode we talk with Eric Draitser of Stopimperialism.com. We discuss the current reality of Libya as it stands three years since the NATO led war which destroyed what was one the richest and most prosperous nation in Africa. Me and Eric break apart his recent article entitled "The Secret War in Libya", which delves into the various developments beginning to take form in the south of the country between the Green Resistance and black Libyan tribes. Rounding out the conversation is a discussion on the role of AFRICOM and its role in helping to destabilize and colonize Africa. This is a jam packed podcast with a lot of very important information for anyone concerned about the West's imperial agenda.