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Turmoil in Libya (2011) and post-Gaddafi blowback

Sweden has frozen assets hidden by Muammar Qaddafi and his associates worth over 10 billion kronor ($1.6 billion), according to a report in the Dagens Nyheter (DN) daily on Wednesday.

http://www.dn.se/nyheter/sverige/frusna-konton-for-regeringens-man
Link has a listing of assets frozen. (in Swedish)



By Borzou Daragahi and David Zucchino, Los Angeles Times
March 24, 2011
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-libya-fighting-20110325,0,1620120.story?track=rss

Reporting from Tripoli and Benghazi, Libya—
After losing ground to government forces for weeks, Libyan rebels based in the eastern city of Benghazi showed signs Thursday of regaining the momentum against Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi, whose brutal crackdown on protesters opposed to his four-decade rule has sparked civil warfare.

Rebel spokesman Col. Ahmed Omar Bani said some government fighters in the front-line city of Ajdabiya had lost contact with their commanders and were negotiating to withdraw and head west toward government-controlled territory.

The talks hinge on rebel demands that the government forces surrender their heavy weaponry, according to an opposition political spokesman in Benghazi. Bani appealed to other nations for antitank weapons and other heavy artillery to help the lightly armed volunteer army battle Kadafi's troops.

Meanwhile, Western-led airstrikes pounded the Libyan capital of Tripoli and other targets Thursday morning and evening. Claims of civilian casualties followed, accusations that could weaken support for the U.N.-sanctioned mission aimed at protecting Libyans from the military might of Kadafi.

Explosions and barrages of artillery fire shook Tripoli and its suburbs. Kadafi loyalists said a large number of civilian casualties occurred, and they showed the Reuters news agency bodies they said were those of civilian and military victims in the Tajoura district.

But a group of journalists traveling to a hospital in Tajoura to independently verify casualty claims was stopped and detained for 90 minutes.

A Thursday evening burial for alleged victims of the airstrikes included a dozen bodies and protesters chanting slogans in support of Kadafi. But no grieving relatives attended, nor were there portraits of the deceased or information about who they were or where and how they died.................

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/africa/03/25/libya.war/index.html?hpt=T1

Tripoli, Libya (CNN) -- Boosted by support from two significant nations -- one Arab and the other the sole Muslim alliance member -- NATO prepared to assume command over the Libya mission Friday as coalition airstrikes pounded targets for a sixth consecutive night.

The United Arab Emirates announced it will send 12 aircraft in the coming days to help patrol and enforce the United Nations-mandated no-fly zone. And Turkey, once reluctant of military operations, agreed to the use of an eastern air base in Izmir as a sub-command station.

Other Muslim nations participating in the Libya mission include Qatar, which will begin flying planes this weekend, and Kuwait and Jordan, which have agreed to provide humanitarian or logistical support.

But the military role of the UAE and Turkey's participation lend credibility to NATO as the alliance considers whether to broaden its role beyond enforcement of a no-fly zone to protection of civilians on the ground.

The situation for Libyans caught in battle zones grows more dire by the day, humanitarian agencies reported. The United Nations refugee agency said Friday that increasing numbers of Libyans are displaced from their homes.

Refugees streaming out of the strife-torn city of Ajdabiya described chilling scenes.

"I couldn't even begin to describe to you the horror that I have seen," one man told CNN. "Leaving Ajdabiya we saw dead bodies in the street. No one would ever dare go to recover them."

CNN is not identifying Libyans it has interviewed for their own safety.

Another man said Moammar Gadhafi's troops were going house to house in Ajdabiya, hunting for opposition members. He said the troops took away five men from his neighbor's house. He didn't know what happened to them...........
 
dapaterson said:
The Star is reporting that a Canadian LGen will be put in charge of the NATO efforts:

Another Griffon guy!  First COS of the Army, now NATO lead.  I swear there is a Tac Hel mafia moving in on things!!!  :blotto:
 
Infanteer said:
I swear there is a Tac Hel mafia moving in on things!!!
It's all part of the plan to return Tactical Aviation home to the Army.


And we'll give the Navy a new flag.... or something.....just so there's no complaining    ;)
 
Jim Seggie said:
Just how did that happen? I'm perplexed.....
His bio says he's already in Naples, so that makes him handy.  Politically speaking?  I'll leave that to others to guess....
 
Being in Naples as, I believe, the DComd of the NATO Joint Force Command, or words to that effect, is a start. His wide experience with the US Forces also could not hurt, but probably his nationality helped as we don't have a colonial past in Africa. Against that, we also don't have too many friends in the Arab world.

 
Jim Seggie said:
Just how did that happen? I'm perplexed.....


Maybe because if (when?) things go horribly wrong no Americans, Brits or French senior officers will have to be pilloried ...  :-\
 
Old Sweat said:
Being in Naples as, I believe, the DComd of the NATO Joint Force Command, or words to that effect, is a start. His wide experience with the US Forces also could not hurt, but probably his nationality helped as we don't have a colonial past in Africa. Against that, we also don't have too many friends in the Arab world.

well OK.....just as long as I get to go somewhere other than Moose Jaw....lol or Thunder Bay!
 
A blogger is reporting on the situation, and includes an interesting graphic:

petro01_2.png


Fortunately, the Polaris flight crew have decided to turn off their transponder on subsequent flights.
 
E.R. Campbell said:
Maybe because if (when?) things go horribly wrong no Americans, Brits or French senior officers will have to be pilloried ...  :-\
Kinda like walking outof the house and finding a burning paper bag on the porch.

OTOH; it seems as if the African Union may be cooking up a made in Africa solution to this mess. Col Spell-check may be on his way out soon.

We can only hope.

The promotion refects well on him and the CF.

Best of luck to all concerned.
 
Libyan rebel commander admits his fighters have al-Qaeda links
Article Link

Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi, 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.

By Praveen Swami, Nick Squires and Duncan Gardham 5:00PM GMT 25 Mar 2011

In an interview with the Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore, Mr al-Hasidi admitted that he had recruited "around 25" men from the Derna area in eastern Libya to fight against coalition troops in Iraq. Some of them, he said, are "today are on the front lines in Adjabiya".

Mr al-Hasidi insisted 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".

His revelations came even as Idriss Deby Itno, Chad's president, said al-Qaeda had managed to pillage military arsenals in the Libyan rebel zone and acquired arms, "including surface-to-air missiles, which were then smuggled into their sanctuaries".

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 sources said Mr al-Hasidi was a member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, or LIFG, which killed dozens of Libyan troops in guerrilla attacks around Derna and Benghazi in 1995 and 1996
More on link
 
Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail is an unusually insightful column:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/blame-r2p-the-intellectuals-go-to-war/article1957296/
Blame R2P: The intellectuals go to war

MARGARET WENTE
From Saturday's Globe and Mail

Published Saturday, Mar. 26, 2011

Why is Canada at war in Libya? You won’t get the answer from our elected leaders. They’re too busy fighting an election to explain it to us. You can’t count on the opposition parties to raise awkward questions, either. They have better things to do at a crucial time like this. Besides, it’s just a little war. It will be over soon, unless it isn’t. If all goes well, perhaps Canadians won’t notice that our political class has committed us to an open-ended military action in North Africa without a clue about what the mission is, who’s in charge, or how deep the quagmire might get.

The short answer is that Canada is in Libya because our allies are. But, ideologically, this is very much a made-in-Canada war – rooted in a doctrine that has been tirelessly promoted by foreign policy liberals such as Lloyd Axworthy and Bob Rae, and vigorously endorsed by some of Barack Obama’s closest advisers, especially Samantha Power at the National Security Council.

This doctrine is known as the “responsibility to protect” (R2P for short) and was endorsed by the United Nations in 2005. It mandates that the “international community” is morally obliged to defend people who are in danger of massive human-rights violations. It’s rooted in Western guilt over the failure to prevent genocide in Rwanda. R2P is the moral underpinning of the war in Libya, and it’s the reason why people such as Paul Martin, Roméo Dallaire, Mr. Rae and Mr. Axworthy have been so amazingly eager for us to rush into battle.

So have Ms. Power and her sister warriors Hillary Clinton, the U.S. Secretary of State, and Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the UN. Together, these three convinced Mr. Obama of the urgent moral case for war in Libya. Ms. Power is the author of the enormously influential bookA Problem from Hell, about Washington’s failure to prevent genocide in the 20th century. Her counterpart in France is the glamorous philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy, who flew to Benghazi, met the rebels, and persuaded French President Nicolas Sarkozy (who badly needs a boost in the polls) to back them.

In other words, the war in Libya is a creation of the liberal intellectuals – just as the war in Iraq was a creation of the neo-conservatives. Many of the liberal intellectuals who vigorously opposed the Iraq war have just as vigorously been advocating intervention in Libya. Both groups are serenely convinced of their own moral rightness. Yet, the delusions of the R2P crowd aren’t all that different from the delusions of the neo-cons, who thought they could march into Iraq, decapitate the dictator, and help the cheering throngs embrace democracy. Has the past decade taught these people nothing?

Evidently not. The other day, I heard Mr. Rae explain that the purpose of the war in Libya is to “create space” so the rebels can get their act together (to do what, he didn’t say). This notion of “creating space” is swiped directly from Afghanistan, where we were assured that a more democratic (or at least more Western-friendly) society would emerge once Western forces were able to win over the locals and protect them from the bad guys. How’s that working out?

R2Pers aren’t just guilty of amnesia. They’re also ignorant. They know less about the tribal politics of Libya than they do about the dark side of the moon. To them, all Arab nations look alike. They got so excited about the Arab Awakening that they assumed the rebels in Libya were not much different from the protesters in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. This hopeful story line has been reinforced by sympathetic Western reporters on the ground, even though they have no idea who the rebels are, either. On closer inspection, it turns out that at least some of them are not too nice. They’re happy to round up suspects and use Moammar Gadhafi’s former prisons in much the same way he did.

A short, sharp war that ends next week sure would be nice. But it’s a lot harder to get off the bus than it is to get on. Last week, the coalition forces swung into action when Col. Gadhafi’s forces were at the gates of Benghazi. They beat them off and, no doubt, saved many lives. Good. Yet, instead of going home, the coalition has decided to explicitly support the rebels on other fronts. When does a limited protective action morph into a war of liberation? As British MP Rory Stewart said, “The lesson of Afghanistan is if you dip your toes in, you are soon in up to your neck.”

Right now, it’s not clear who’s in charge in Libya. The U.S., without which there would be no war, has vowed to eject itself from the driver’s seat as soon as possible. After days of bickering, NATO has agreed to take command of the no-fly zone, with a Canadian in charge. Who’s in charge of the rest of the operation is TBA. But one thing is clear – this is the West’s war now.

We have entered a new age – the age of humanitarian imperialism. Humanitarian imperialists are besotted with fantasies of the West’s inherent goodness. As American writer David Rieff puts it, they have promised that, from now on, all wars will “noble wars of altruism.” To them, the facts on the ground don’t matter much. What really matters is their good intentions.


I agree with Wente’s answer (2nd paragraph) to the big question (1st paragraph). We are, indeed, at war because our allies are and we want, need to be seen to be doing a full and fair share of the heavy lifting, even “punching above our weight" again.

I also agree with Wente’s assessment of R2P and its proponents: it’s a guilt trip for the terminally ignorant.

 
dapaterson said:
A blogger is reporting on the situation, and includes an interesting graphic:

petro01_2.png


Fortunately, the Polaris flight crew have decided to turn off their transponder on subsequent flights.

That could be my wife looking for a parking spot at the mall 8)
 
:rofl: many a wife at that.........actually that race track thingy is a refuelling route.

shared in accordance with provisions of the copyright act
from the Arab Times
http://www.arabtimesonline.com/NewsDetails/tabid/96/smid/414/ArticleID/167187/t/Saleh-offers-safe-hands-handover/Default.aspx
Qatar
Tiny Qatar became the first Arab country to fly combat missions over Libya on Friday after NATO agreed to take command of the no-fly zone part of air operations against Muammar Gaddafi’s regime.
The Qatari fighter jet flew its first sortie alongside a French jet on Friday and the United Arab Emirates pledged 12 warplanes to the effort to thwart Muammar Gaddafi. The international effort has no other countries from the Arab League, a 22-member group that was among the driving forces behind the UN Security Council decision to impose a no-fly zone over Libya.
“Qatar has been a great ally from Day One,” said Mustafa Gheriani, spokesman for opposition Benghazi city council. “It’s an Arab country to be proud of.”
The United States has provided millions of dollars in equipment to many of the league’s countries, including Saudi Arabia and Jordan.
“Having our first Arab nation join and start flying with us emphasizes that the world wants the innocent Libyan people protected from the atrocities perpetrated by pro-regime forces,” US Air Forces Africa Commander Maj. Gen. Margaret Woodward said.
The international coalition confronting Gaddafi agreed to put NATO in charge of enforcing the no-fly zone, with Canadian Lt. Gen. Charles Bouchard at the helm, and hammered out a unified command structure.
Despite the leadership confusion, Britain’s senior military spokesman, said the mission was succeeding.

more on Qatar Armed Forces:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qatar_Armed_Forces
 
Libyan rebel forces score another victory against Qaddafi Loyalist forces:

link

Libyan rebels rout Gaddafi forces in strategic town
By Angus MacSwan | Reuters – 25 minutes ago

AJDABIYAH, Libya (Reuters) - Libyan rebels backed by allied air strikes retook the strategic town of Ajdabiyah on Saturday after an all-night battle that suggested the tide is turning against Muammar Gaddafi's forces in the east.

To the west, Gaddafi's forces attacked insurgent-held Misrata, shelling the port with mortars and artillery, a rebel told Reuters.

One inhabitant said 115 people had been killed in Misrata in a week and snipers were still shooting people from rooftops.


In Ajdabiyah, rebel fighters danced on tanks, waved flags and fired in the air near buildings riddled with bullet holes. Half a dozen wrecked tanks lay near the eastern entrance to the town and the ground was strewn with empty shell casings.

Rebels said fighting had lasted through the night. By the town's western gate there were bodies of more than a dozen Gaddafi fighters, and an abandoned truckload of ammunition suggested Gaddafi forces had beaten a hasty retreat.

"Thank you Britain, thank you France, thank you America," said one rebel, praising the Western air strikes against Gaddafi targets.

Capturing Ajdabiyah, a gateway from western Libya to the rebel stronghold of Benghazi and the oil town of Tobruk, was a big morale boost for the rebels a week after coalition air strikes began to enforce a U.N.-mandated no-fly zone.

Western governments hope the raids, launched with the aim of protecting civilians, will also shift the balance of power in favor of the Arab world's most violent popular revolt.

But in Misrata, the only big insurgent stronghold left in Libya's west and cut off from the main rebel force to the east, Gaddafi forces on Saturday attacked the city from the west and the east, shelling the port with mortars and artillery, a rebel told Reuters.

"Gaddafi forces are attacking Misrata from the west and east side. (There is) heavy shelling," the rebel, called Saadoun, told Reuters by phone. From the west, he said tanks were advancing from the coastal road toward the city, which has been encircled and under bombardment for weeks.

"They are also trying to bring in soldiers," he said.

"From the east, they are shelling with mortars and artillery the port and areas around it. There is the main fuel tank in the port which feeds the central part of the city."

He said there were thousands of workers, mainly Egyptians, at the port who had fled and stayed there hoping for rescue.

The reports from Misrata could not be independently verified because Libyan authorities have barred reporters from the area.

Pro-Gaddafi forces had eased their bombardment of Misrata after Western strikes hit their positions, rebels said earlier.

REBELS SAY FORCES REACH BREGA

A rebel spokesman in Benghazi said insurgents on Saturday had reached the outskirts of the oil terminal town of Brega, 70 km (45 miles) west along the Mediterranean coast from Ajdabiyah. This report could not be independently confirmed.


"We are now preparing ourselves to liberate the rest of the cities and towns in the country," Colonel Ahmed Bani said. "Soon we will be in a position to hold another news conference, such as this one, in Tripoli, the capital of free Libya."

U.S. President Barack Obama, criticized by U.S. politicians across the spectrum for failing to communicate the goals of the air campaign, told Americans that the military mission in Libya was clear, focused and limited.

He said it had already saved countless civilian lives.

Obama said Libya's air defenses had been disabled, Gaddafi's forces were no longer advancing and in places like Benghazi, his forces had been pushed back.

"So make no mistake, because we acted quickly, a humanitarian catastrophe has been avoided and the lives of countless civilians -- innocent men, women and children -- have been saved," Obama said in a weekly radio address.

Obama, due to speak to Americans about Libya again on Monday evening, had also been faulted by fellow politicians for taking on another military mission in a Muslim country with the United States embroiled in the Iraq and Afghan wars.

NATO has agreed to take over that role in enforcing the no-fly zone and arms embargo against Libya, but final details have not yet been worked out for the military alliance to take over the air strikes on Gaddafi's military and its equipment.

In Tripoli, explosions were heard early on Saturday, signaling possible strikes by warplanes or missiles.

Libyan state television was broadcasting occasional, brief news reports of the air strikes. Mostly it showed footage -- some of it grainy images years old -- of cheering crowds waving green flags and carrying portraits of Gaddafi.

Neither Gaddafi nor his sons have been shown on state television since the Libyan leader made a speech from his Tripoli compound on Wednesday.

State TV said the "brother leader" had promoted all members of his armed forces and police "for their heroic and courageous fight against the crusader, colonialist assault."

(Additional reporting by Alexander Dziadosz, Maria Golovnina, Michael Georgy, Ibon Villelabeitia, Lamine Chikhi, Mariam Karouny and Patricia Zengerle; Writing by Tom Pfeiffer and Ibon Villelabeitia; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
 
This article from National Review online is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act. The author asks a number of inconvenient questions.

The Corner

Hard Truths on Libya

March 25, 2011 10:02 A.M. By Victor Davis Hanson 

One can argue about the need for consultation with Congress before using major military force. Most of us think the requirement is essential, with ample constitutional support. But the question takes on new dimensions if the commander-in-chief is a progressive, antiwar, Nobel Peace Prize–winning politician whose political career was predicated on demanding just such congressional oversight of presidential war powers — and his vice president has strutted and boasted that he would impeach a president for doing just this sort of preemptive bombing against a Middle East country that poses no immediate threat to U.S. security.

For a president like Bush (who obtained congressional authorization for Afghanistan and Iraq) or Clinton (who did not originally in the Balkans), the non-authorization would be serious; for an Obama, it reflects a level of hypocrisy that makes a mockery of his entire worldview, past and present. Fairly or not, Obama almost single-handedly is rewriting the history of dissent between 2003 and 2008 — from Guantanamo, renditions, tribunals, Predators, Iraq, and preventative detention to now-optional war-making in the Middle East — and proving that prior loud protests were more partisan attacks than matters of principle. More than any other individual in recent history, the career of Obama (2002–2011) will be a historical touchstone for understanding the nature of protest in the war-on-terror years.

Second, much of this mess hinges on a number of puerile assumptions: that a bunch of televised rebels swarming a Libyan city equals the birth of democracy, as if an unknown group of dissidents could be assumed to be competent and well-intentioned; and that a monster like Qaddafi — with a four-decade pedigree of near-constant violence — could be expected to simply step down. Apparently, we were to believe that he would follow the example of Mubarak’s tail-between-the-legs flight; or that he would depart because Barack Hussein Obama ordered him to, or because there was some chance of serious violence if he did not; or that he would find exile a preferable alternative to a stormy continuance of his rule. I think most adolescents in the real world would know that the above assumptions were all fantasies.

A ruler like Qaddafi is part Milosevic, part Saddam, part Noriega, and part Kim Jong Il. They stay in power for years through killing and more killing (to paraphrase Dirty Harry, “They like it”), and they do not leave, ever, unless the U.S. military either bombs them to smithereens or physically goes into their countries and yanks them out of their palaces. Period. They most certainly do not care much for the concern of the Arab League, the U.N., or a contingent from Europe, or a grand verbal televised threat from a U.S. president — again, even if his name is Barack Hussein Obama and he is not George Bush.

Sorry, but that is where we are and where we’ve always been, so we can either quit, as in Lebanon and Somalia; send in the Marines to take charge of postwar stabilization, as in Afghanistan and Iraq; target Qaddafi and bomb him incessantly until he is broken, as in Clinton’s Balkan air campaign; or schedule a multiyear, Iraq-style no-fly zone, with ample latitude to bomb now and then to carve out sanctuaries within Libya. Those are the options, and one will be chosen one way or another, even if the president thinks he can once again vote present on all of them.

 
Rafale-Ms from the carrier Charles De Gaulle?

link

French forces destroy seven Libyan aircraft on ground

By Elizabeth Pineau, Gerard Bon and Catherine Bremer | Reuters – 9 minutes ago
PARIS (Reuters) - French warplanes have destroyed five Libyan military planes and two helicopters at Misrata air base in the past 24 hours, France's armed forces said.

Armed forces spokesman Thierry Burkhard said all seven Libyan aircraft were destroyed while on the ground at the base
, near the insurgent-held town of Misrata, as they were preparing to carry out attacks in the area.

A patrol of French Rafale fighters, backed by an E2-C Hawkeye AWACS, carried out air strikes overnight and around 20 French planes supported by four tankers and an E3F AWACS struck targets during the day, the armed forces said in a statement.The strikes, part of the U.N.-mandated campaign by a Western coalition to halt Muammar Gaddafi's offensive on rebels trying to end his 41-year rule, were in the Misrata and Zintan area.

Backed by the coalition air strikes, rebels retook the strategic town of Ajdabiyah on Saturday after an all-night battle that suggested the tide was turning against Gaddafi's forces in the east.

Pro-Gaddafi forces had earlier pounded the town with tank, mortar and artillery fire that halted only as coalition aircraft appeared overhead, a rebel told Reuters.

The five planes destroyed at Misrata were Galeb fighter jets and the helicopters were MI-35's, the French armed forces said.

Two French and two Qatari Mirage 2000-5 jets carried out a joint surveillance mission of Libyan airspace from an air base on Crete, the statement also said.

Earlier in the week, French planes destroyed another Libyan plane just after it landed at Misrata.


(Reporting by Elizabeth Pineau, Gerard Bon and Catherine Bremer)

 
 
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