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NATO's criminal attack on Libya is new strategic push to the South
by Andrew Rettman via gan - EU Observer Monday, Sep 5 2011, 9:08am international /
imperialism /
other press
After the West convinced Gaddafi to cease his WMD program -- they attacked him!
You can trust NATO and the US like you can trust a Cobra.
People are apt to forget that the West went to great pains to befriend Gaddafi after previous US attacks and attempts on his life. Western forces offered many incentives, mutual co-operation and 'friendship' in order to ensure that Gaddafi dismantled his WMD programs.
Paranoid Abdel Hakim Belhaj (left)
After confirming that Gaddafi had indeed complied with Western wishes the West attacked and blitzed Libya with the assistance of al-Qaeda jihadists. However, if leopards do not change their spots we can soon expect the West to turn on rebel forces; NATO is not too fussed regarding the consequences of its criminal actions. They will characteristically invent some feeble lie or excuse to MURDER whomsoever they wish.
A word of advice to the very naive al-Qaeda jihadist rebel forces: you are dealing with a KNOWN two headed Cobra, a double cross is CERTAIN, including the assassination of any rebel leaders that knows too much -- SUCKERS!
You deserve everything you get. Western forces have proven time and again they cannot be trusted, their word is equivalent to dog shit. Some people never learn.
Libyan Rebels have stupidly placed themselves in such a compromising position as to be totally dependent on the forces that will soon destroy them -- you dumb, fundamentalist, fanatical fucks!
Whatever western forces promised you it was simply a ploy to gain total control of the situation; now you're fucked if you do and fucked if you don't -- takes real fundamentalist morons to get into that situation.
However, all is not lost; you know the situation on the ground and changing tactics/sides may be your only hope of survival. Personally, I hope you continue on your present (suicidal) course, either way, YOU LOSE!
Report from EU Observer follows:
The Libya conflict signals the end of Nato's eastward expansion and the beginning of a new campaign to conquer the oil-rich Muslim south, Russia's envoy to the military alliance has said.
"To us the war in Libya led by the Western coalition was an entirely new event, a new element that has to be analysed," Russia's ambassador to Nato, Dmitry Rogozin, told EUobserver in an interview on Thursday (1 September), as the anti-Gaddafi coalition met in Paris to mark its victory.
"The war was the end-stage of Nato's eastern expansion. From now on, Nato will expand toward its southern borders, it will project its efforts toward the south, toward traditional Islamic societies," he explained.
"In my own opinion - this is not the official opinion of my country - it was an oil war," he added.
"The West has failed to put forward any economic response [to the financial crisis] and now they are trying to provide their economies with cheap hydrocarbons ... What makes all these ministries in Europe so keen to spend so much money on a new military campaign? Just to help the Libyan people? If you say so, you will make me laugh."
Rogozin predicted that Libya is only "the first" country in the region to face what he called a "new crusade".
He noted that Russia will not support an EU-drafted UN Security Council (UNSC) resolution on Syria in case Nato exploits it to start a war with President Bashar Assad as well.
"Now, we cannot trust Nato. We cannot be sure that after a similar resolution is taken on Syria, they will not exceed that also, that in such a case, [Nato] bombs will start dropping on Damascus."
He said Russia is "happy" that Nato has turned its attention away from former Soviet countries toward the south.
But he predicted the development will increase anti-Western Muslim radicalism in the Middle East and inside Europe. He also voiced worries about what he sees as Nato's attempt to take over from the United Nations in terms of world governance.
"In the first stage Nato will try to become equal to the United Nations in the decision-making process and in a later stage even superior to the UN ... Nato is a group of 28 countries and some of them will withdraw from this consolidation, the alliance itself will be left as a background to this process."
Rogozin defended Russia's own role in Libya, saying it tried to act as an honest broker between Gaddafi and rebel forces and recognised the rebel leaders, the Transitional National Council, on 1 September only when the civil war had ended.
But he accused the West of "nihilism" in its "violation" of UNSC 1973, which mandated the creation of a no-fly zone and protection of civilians, but which did not give Nato the right to wage war against Gaddafi or to supply arms to rebels.
On a personal note, he also accused Nato secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen of lying about civilian deaths.
Referring to a Nato air strike in the Libyan town of Majer on 8 August, he said there is clear evidence that dozens of civilians, including women and children, were killed.
The Russian ambassador wrote a letter to Rasmussen after the event to seek clarification.
"I received no response from the secretary general. Instead he issued a statement saying that Nato has flown such and such a number of sorties and he said in his statement that no civilians were killed in Libya ... We were shocked."
Abdel Hakim Belhaj is a rising star in Tripoli's rebel leadership, but his past ties to jihadi groups have sparked controversy - along with his claims of being tortured at the behest of US and British intelligence agencies under the programme known as rendition.
As leader of the newly-formed Tripoli Military Council, Abdel Hakim Belhaj is arguably the most powerful military man in Tripoli.
He stood victorious inside Col Muammar Gaddafi's Bab al-Aziziya compound last month, after fighters from his Tripoli Brigade broke through the defences of the ousted leader's fortress in the heart of the Libyan capital.
"The tyrant has fled and we will be after him," said Mr Belhaj, 45.
Islamist days
The defeat was a long-time coming for the staunch anti-Gaddafi opposition fighter, who was involved with an Islamist group's attempt to overthrow the Libyan leader in the late 1990s.
Mr Belhaj - known in the jihadi world as Abu Abdullah al-Sadiq - commanded the now defunct Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG).
The group was formed in 1990 by Mr Belhaj and other Islamist Libyans who had fought in Afghanistan against the Soviets in the 1980s. It went public in 1995, with the stated aim of overthrowing Col Gaddafi.
The LIFG waged a three-year low-level insurgency mainly based in eastern Libya, and staged three attempts to assassinate Col Gaddafi in 1995 and 1996, according to Middle East analyst Omar Ashour of Exeter University.
The group has historical links to al-Qaeda, the Taliban and Egypt's Islamic Jihad organisation, says Prof Ashour.
By 1998, the group was crushed. Most of its leaders fled to Afghanistan and joined forces with the Taliban.
After the 11 September attacks and the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, he and most of the LIFG leaders fled that country as well, only for Mr Belhaj to be arrested in 2004 in Thailand by the CIA and then handed over to Col Gaddafi's regime.
Mr Belhaj spent time in Tripoli's notorious Abu Selim Prison, before being freed in 2010 under a "de-radicalisation" drive championed by Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, son of the Libyan leader.
CIA rendition
His latest incarnation as the top Libyan rebel commander, widely credited with chasing the Gaddafi family out of Tripoli, has propelled him to international attention - along with his extraordinary account of being tortured under the controversial CIA interrogation programme known as rendition.
Files unearthed from Col Gaddafi's intelligence archives and seen by the BBC document Mr Belhaj's capture by the CIA in Bangkok in 2004, and his forcible repatriation to Libya.
Peter Bouckaert, a spokesman for Human Rights Watch - which originally obtained the documents - explained the circumstances of Mr Belhaj's transfer.
"He was rendered by the CIA, he was captured, abducted together with his pregnant wife and flown on the so-called black flight to Tripoli for his interrogation," he said.
Mr Bouckaert said Mr Belhaj was one of about eight or nine suspects who was abducted and handed over to the Libyan intelligence service.
"From the files it's very clear [CIA agents] were present in some of the interrogations themselves."
Mr Belhaj was held in Tripoli's notorious Abu Selim prison for seven years, where he says he was "regularly tortured".
"I was injected with something, hung from a wall by my arms and legs and put in a container surrounded by ice," he told the Guardian newspaper. "They did not let me sleep and there was noise all the time."
Mr Belhaj told the BBC that after the CIA and MI6 got him to Tripoli in March 2004, they did not witness his torture, but interrogated him afterwards.
"What happened to me was illegal and deserves an apology," he told the BBC's Jeremy Bowen in Tripoli.
The CIA says it should come as no surprise that the US works with foreign governments to help protect America from terrorists.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague said the accusations related to the previous government, and that Britain was now focused on the future of Libya.
Moderate tone
For his part, Mr Belhaj has said that the revelations would not stop Libya's new rebel leadership - the National Transitional Council - from having "orderly relations" with the US and Britain.
The NTC has dismissed any suggestions that Abdel Hakim Belhaj is a former al-Qaeda sympathiser, following reports in the international media as well as statements attributed to Saif al-Islam Gaddafi himself.
"NTC members have stated time and again that the revolution has no links to al-Qaeda," said NTC spokesman Al-Amin Belhaj told al-Jazeera Television.
"Everyone knows who Abdel Hakim Belhaj is. He is a Libyan rebel and a moderate person who commands wide respect. Unfortunately, some circles in the West repeat these claims," he added.
Asked about his Islamist links, Mr Belhaj told the BBC that he was always an anti-Gaddafi fighter, but insisted that he was never an al-Qaeda member.
According to Arabic press reports, Mr Belhaj was born in 1966 and holds a civil engineering degree. He is reported to have two wives, one Moroccan and one Sudanese.
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