Tripoli on the Cusp

[Roger]

Tripoli on the Cusp
Franklin Lamb, Foreign Policy Journal
August 19, 2011


 TRIPOLI — Truth be told, some foreign observers, and certainly this one, having been based in Tripoli the past nearly eight weeks, have not taken very seriously occasional media predictions that Tripoli might soon be invaded by “NATO rebels,” and certainly not by NATO country forces putting their boots on the ground.

The reasons include observations that the Libyan population is increasingly expressing anger over members of their families and tribes being killed by NATO sorties claiming to be “protecting civilians.” Tripoli (Photo by Patrick André Perron)

Tripoli (Photo: Patrick André Perron)

It is said by many here that tens of thousands are ready to repulse invaders who try to enter Tripoli. Support for Colonel Gaddafi appears to reflect even Western polls such as the one referred to by the UK Guardian recently that Libya leader Colonel Gadaffi’s popularity had perhaps doubled during the current conflict. This morning’s Rasmussen poll claims that support for NATO-US involvement has plummeted to just 20% among the American public due to among other reasons, NATO killing of civilians. It is even lower in several other NATO countries.

Until quite recently, life appeared fairly normal, except for the scarcity of benzene for vehicles and some luxury food items, and also some necessities such as baby formula, some medicines, and reliable phone service. Earlier piles of household trash that began accumulating at some street corners around Tripoli in early March, when up to 400,000 foreign workers fled West to Tunisia and East to Egypt, began being cleared a couple of weeks ago as the municipality of Tripoli reorganized its severely and instantly depleted work force.

Except for the recent increase in NATO bombing sorties, Tripoli has been a fairly pleasant place to be.

On August 17, things abruptly changed, and no one knows for sure in which direction daily life is now headed. Starting just before noon, much if not most of Tripoli was without power. At my hotel, one of only two in Tripoli with even sporadic Internet these days (even though parts of Tripoli regularly experiences South Beirut Lebanon-type sudden cuts that can last for hours or days), the services abruptly stopped for all staff and guests. Initially, some guests were stuck in the elevator and a few appeared to panic. Our hotel rooms, which for security reasons have windows which don’t open, began to heat up fast, laptop batteries quickly died, the weak Internet vanished, and this observer, like others, was faced with the prospect of walking down and up eighteen floors to keep appointments in the street level reception area. Two of my Libyan friends who work in one of the hotel restaurants called my room to ask me if I wanted them to walk up some lunch. Profoundly touched by their thoughtfulness, which seems typical of Libyans, I reminded them that I was fasting for Ramadan and in any case would not think of accepting their kind offer. Not long after the hotel emergency generator kicked in and the elevator began working, but there was no power anywhere else inside the hotel.

At nearby Green Square, crowds began to gather by 2 p.m. and rally against “NATO rebels” and I was told thousands of Libyan citizens were ready to move to the edges of town, man check points, and support army units to repulse any advances from Al Zawieh to the West, Gheryan and several villages from the South, or Brega and closer villages from the East.

Prices at the local “Medina” (a street market covering several blocks that sells a large variety of goods and vegetables) adjacent to my hotel jumped up again, according to two sisters who have become my friends and who shop with their mother every morning in preparation for cooking the daily “Iftar” meal that breaks the Ramadan fast at sunset. Over the past six months, basic food prices have largely leveled off under government warnings to merchants not to even dream about trying to price gouge.

Some people are leaving Tripoli, but it’s hard to estimate how many. Most people I have asked say they will stay and they do not think “NATO rebels” can enter this well-armed and apparently well-organized city of still around 1.5 million people.

A delayed UN fact-finding delegation, led by a spectacular Palestinian woman from Nazareth in occupied Palestine named “Juliette”, finally arrived by plane after the UN demanded that NATO allow their plane to land at Tripoli airport. The UN group, staying at our hotel, had been blocked from the main road between Tripoli and Tunisia. As of the morning of August 18, people are trapped in Tripoli from departing to Tunisia and no one is entering from Tunisia.

Libyan students at Tripoli’s Al Fatah University, and even some government officials, have told this observer that they have vowed to dig in and wage a “Stalingrad Defense” of Tripoli against the advancing “NATO rebels.” Certainly the neighborhoods are very heavily armed.

Some, including this observer, lack the heart to remind these dear students that at Stalingrad, the Russian citizens were holding out for the arrival of the Red Army that did indeed save many of them in the end. One does not sense that a Red Army is en route to lift the threatened siege of Tripoli. But maybe Tripoli’s defenders will not need a Red Army to lift a siege of Tripoli.

This week, a Libyan law student who for weeks has been helping man a neighborhood defense committee checkpoint near Airport Road left me the following note:

Franklin, you asked me how we will defend our capitol Tripoli if NATO bombs a path so rebel forces can arrive here and try to enter our neighborhoods. We discuss this often among ourselves during the night. This is what we have to say to answer your question:

It is not private information that our defense will be from every buildings on every main street, square or roundabout. We can and will keep for as long as possible every meter that NATO forces try to take. Every apartment building, factory, warehouse, street corner, intersection, home or office building is waiting and supplied with guns of different types, RPGs and mortars. Snipers and specially trained small 5-6 man units are ready. Our defense will be a house to house battle. From every floor and from hole in the floor we will fight NATO rebels. Also from the sewers we will fight and every basement. If NATO enters a front door we will fight them for every room in the house and from the piles of debris created from them bombing us.

Dear friend Lamb. Libyans are a good and a proud people. You and I have spoken about Omar Muktar and our defeat of the Italians that cost us more than one-third of our relatives who fell in battle. Do you know my friend that during the Ottoman Empire centuries of colonization which was the only Arab or Muslim country to rebel again them? It was Libya. Only Libya, led by her tribes. We stood up against the Turks and fought two 20 year wars against them. Do NATO and Obama believe they can defeat us?

Your friend, Mohammad. Franklin Lamb is doing research in Lebanon and can be reached at fplamb@gmail.com. Read more articles by Franklin Lamb.

 

[Roger]

A Political Court: The ICC and Libyan War Crimes
John Rosenthal, The Hudson New York
August 8, 2011 at 4:00 am

 Last month, and to much fanfare, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Muammar al-Gaddafi, his son Saif al-Islam al-Gaddafi, and Libyan military intelligence chief Abdullah Al-Senussi. ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo had filed an application for the warrants in May. Among those celebrating the court's decision was, of course, the Libyan opposition's National Transitional Council (NTC), which promised to assemble a special commando unit to arrest Gaddafi. The head of the NTC Executive Council, Mahmud Jibril, even flew to The Hague to mark the occasion. The ICC website features a photograph of Moreno-Ocampo shaking hands with Jibril on the steps of the court.

Libyan government forces and alleged mercenaries in the pay of the Libyan government have been accused in media reports of deliberately killing civilians and committing other atrocities. These charges are well known and they have served as the justification for Western military intervention in Libya under the mantle of UN Security Council Resolution 1973. Less well-known is the extensive and virtually incontrovertible evidence of horrific atrocities committed by rebel forces in territories under their control.

The evidence for the rebels' contempt for the traditional laws and customs of war largely consists of videos that appear to have been filmed by rebels or rebel sympathizers themselves, either as "trophies" or for purposes of intimidation. One did not need to wait for Human Rights Watch tentatively to acknowledge abuses committed by rebel forces in four western Libyan towns, as it recently did. The video evidence of rebel atrocities has been readily available for months, almost from the very start of the rebellion, for example see here. Since that time, more such videos have emerged.

The evidence provided by these videos makes clear that the rebels' conception of warfare has more in common with that of Al-Qaeda than that of the Geneva Conventions. The abuses documented in the videos could serve as textbook examples of precisely the sort of savagery that the Geneva Conventions were supposed to prevent.

The atrocities depicted in the videos include at least two beheadings, two public hangings, one lynching, several beatings, a summary execution of a group of up to 22 captured soldiers in the so-called Al-Baida Massacre, grotesquely inhumane and demeaning treatment of prisoners, and countless more minor violations of humanitarian law.

Although this evidence has long been available, it remains unknown to a larger public: the media, in both the United States and Europe, has as a rule simply ignored it.

Some of these videos should be regarded with caution -- for example, a particularly grisly video that shows the beheading of what is alleged to be a pro-Gaddafi partisan, or, according to other accounts, a captured Libyan soldier. In the style of Al-Qaeda beheading videos, the clip is filmed as a close-up, rendering it impossible to identify location. According to the pro-Gaddafi Libyan website S.O.S. Libya, the victim is Hamza al-Gheit Fughi, but there is no way at the moment of verifying the identity of the victim, or that his murderer was a member of the rebellion or any of the other circumstances of the execution.

What is so striking about many of the other videos, however, is that they contain countless details that do allow places and contexts to be identified -- for instance, in what might be considered the iconic clip from the first batch of rebel atrocity videos: a beheading video that is made especially chilling by the fact that the beheading occurs in a public square in front of a large crowd of cheering spectators. Dozens of spectators can be seen filming the proceedings on their cell-phones. The clip can be viewed here or here. The Dutch public broadcaster NOS has identified the location as the main square of the rebel capital Benghazi. At one point, a member of the crowd can be heard chanting "Libya Hurra!": "Free Libya!", the motto of the rebellion. As a man with a long knife begins to saw at the victim's neck, cries of "Allahu Akbar!" ring out.

Another video that has surfaced contains many strikingly similar elements. There have been several reports of Libyan policemen being hanged from lampposts or bridges in the early days of the rebellion. The video in question appears to show one such episode. As in the Benghazi beheading video, a large crowd is on hand to watch the proceedings. As in the Benghazi beheading video, many members of the crowd can be seen filming the event on their cell-phones. As in the Benghazi beheading video, at the crucial moment – here, the hoisting of the body – there are cries of "Allahu Akbar!"

In the first twenty or so seconds of the clip, a large building with distinctive white cupolas and pointed golden arches can be seen in the background. What appears to be the same building can be seen in McClatchy and AP photos from the early days of the rebellion here and here. The location is Darnah.

About 150 miles to the east of Benghazi, Darnah is one of the strongholds of the rebellion – and a hotbed of Islamic radicalism. As discussed here, captured Al-Qaeda personnel records show that Darnah sent more recruits to fight with Al-Qaeda in Iraq than any other city or town and far more in per capita terms. Darnah is also the hometown of rebel commander Abdul-Hakim al-Hasadi. Al-Hasadi has admitted both to fighting against coalition forces in Afghanistan and serving as a recruiter for Al-Qaeda in Iraq. He told a French reporter that his goal is to "cut Gaddafi's throat and establish an Islamic state."

Another of the rebel atrocity videos shows various groups of men parading around the charred torso of what appears to have been a Libyan government soldier. As usual, a large crowd has gathered and members of the crowd are filming or photographing the proceedings with their cell-phones. The men exhibiting the charred remains wave the red, black and green flag of the Libyan rebellion and the flag can also be seen amidst the crowd. At one point, a man in a long black coat holds up a smaller clump of charred matter in one hand and flashes the victory sign with the other, again to cries of cries of "Allahu Akbar!" The clump of matter is said to be the dead man's heart.

The original footage has since disappeared from YouTube. A version of it is still available here and a self-hosted version – without, however, the original sound – is available on the website S.O.S. Libya here. Different postings have identified the location as Benghazi or Misrata. But, as with the Benghazi beheading video and the Darnah hanging video, the documented proceedings take place in a public square and distinctive architectural features are clearly visible. The definitive identification of the location should pose no problem for a motivated war crimes prosecutor.

A video clip that emerged more recently appears to show a suspected "mercenary" being interrogated and harangued by a crowd that has gathered around him. A pistol is pressed to the man's forehead and he is immobilized by a rope tied around his neck. A bearded man in the crowd waves a machete menacingly over his head. Although obviously of little use for the purposes of modern warfare, machetes appear frequently in the rebel atrocity videos. As in many of the earlier videos, the victim of this ill treatment is a black African. Accused indiscriminately, as a group, of serving as "mercenaries," black Africans have been singled out for particular abuse in rebel-held territories.

Perhaps the chief prosecutor of the ICC has at his disposal equally hard evidence of war crimes committed by Libyan government forces. For the moment, it is impossible to say. According to the table of contents, Moreno-Ocampo's application for the arrest warrants against Gaddafi and the other suspects includes a "summary of evidence" extending over an impressive 54 pages. The entirety of that evidence has, however, been "redacted:" the corresponding section of the published application contains nothing more than the word "redacted" repeated six times.

But what Moreno-Ocampo's handshake with Jibril already makes clear is that the ICC is not an impartial judicial authority, but rather the partisan activist court that it was always designed to be by its most influential sponsors. On that last issue, see here.
 

[Roger]

NATO’S Massacre at Majer, Libya; Residents Say NATO's Air Strikes Killed 85 People, Including 33 Children, 32 Women and 20 Men
Franklin Lamb, Foreign Policy Journal
August 13, 2011


 TRIPOLI — Located about 20 miles east of the ancient Roman city of Leptis Magna, six miles south of Zliten, and off Libya’s southern coast across the Mediterranean from Rome, Majer was a picturesque village known for the fine quality of its dates and is claimed by locals to produce the best tarbuni (date juice) in Libya.

Family members, eyewitnesses and Libyan government officials claim that NATO’s airstrikes at Majer killed 85 people, including 33 children, 32 women, and 20 men. Reporters and visitors were shown 30 of the bodies in a local morgue, including a mother and two children. Officials and residents explained that approximately 50 bodies were taken to other locations for family burial and most of the injured were rushed to hospitals at Tripoli.

Destruction in Majer, Libya, on August 8, 2011 (AFP/Getty Images)

At Majer, NATO chose to bomb three neighboring compounds and visitors examined a total of five bombed-out houses. There was no evidence of weapons at the farmhouses, but rather mattresses, clothes and books littered the area. One badly injured 15-year old young lady, Salwa Ageil Al Jaoud, had earlier written her name inside one notebook found amidst the rubble. She was later visited in hospital and attested, like the witnesses at Qana had, that there was no military presence in the homes that were bombed.

NATO used the same tactic that Israel used during the two Qana massacres. After the first three bombs dropped at around 11:00 pm (2100 GMT) on Monday, August 8, many residents of the area ran to the bombed houses to try to save their loved ones. NATO then instantly struck with more bombs, slaughtering 85 Libyans.

The badly burned and mangled bodies of two boys named Adil Moayed Gafes and Aynan Gafees were pulled from the rubble by family members deeply in shock. One anguished gentleman repeated the words, “There is no God but Allah, and a martyr is loved by Allah,” and soon others joined in.

Standing on a pile of rubble, Libyan government spokesman, Moussa Ibrahim, declared, “This is a crime beyond imagination. Everything about this place is civilian!”

According to Libyan officials interviewed at the Rixos Hotel here in Tripoli last night, NATO attacked Majer “to try to help rebel fighters enter the government-held city from the south as it deepens its involvement and military command and control of one side in what has become a civil war hoping for billions of dollars in reconstruction contracts and special oil deals from its chosen team set up in eastern Libya.”

Seemingly borrowing a page from the Israeli army media office, NATO’s Carmen Romero, the NATO Deputy Spokesperson and Colonel Roland Lavoie, Operation ”Unified Protector” military spokesperson on August 9 told a joint Brussels-Naples news conference that “the village bombed contained a military assembly area and that NATO to date had no evidence of any civilian casualties but that NATO always takes extraordinary measures to assure the safety of civilians.”

It is predictable that as the evidence of the massacre at Majer becomes public and NATO is pressed to explain the killing of yet more Libya civilians, NATO, probably within the next 48 hours, will announce “an internal investigation” into the events at Majer while asserting in advance, as the Israelis regularly do, that their bombing was only directed at “legitimate military targets.”

Every Muslim and Christian Palestinian refugee in Lebanon, and every Lebanese citizen whose family members or loved ones were slaughtered during Israel’s two massacres at Qana, Lebanon, is reminded today of the indescribable loss suffered yesterday by their Libyan sisters and brothers at Majer, Libya.

The Majer massacre was perpetrated yet again with American weapons once more gifted by American taxpayers without their knowledge or consent and against every American humanitarian value shared by all people of good will.

As at Qana, the inventory of American weapons that has been provided to NATO and available for use here in Libya since March 29, sometimes indiscriminately, in order “to protect civilians” includes, but if not limited to, the following:

• B-2 stealth bombers from the 509th Bomb Wing at Whiteman Air Force Base

• F-15Es currently based at the 492nd Fighter Squadron and 494th Fighter Squadron at RAF Lakenheath, Britain

• F-16CJ “defense-suppression” aircraft based at the 480th Fighter Squadron at Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany

• EC-130 Commando Solo psychological operations aircraft from the 193rd Special Operations Wing, Pennsylvania Air National Guard, Middletown, PA

• KC-135s from the 100th Air Refueling Wing currently based at Mildenhall, Britain and the 92nd, Air Refueling Wing, Fairchild AFB, WA

• C-130Js recently based at the 37th Airlift Squadron at Ramstein Air Base, Germany

• A-10 attack fighters

• AC-130 gunships.

• The NATO attacks on Libya began with the bombing of claimed Libyan air-defense equipment using 110 American Tomahawk and Tactical Tomahawk cruise missiles. Tomahawks were also fired from British ships in the area.

• Also launched were bombing attacks using three American B-2 Spirit Bombers delivering 45 Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs) against Libyan air bases.

U.S. Navy ships being used by NATO “to protect Libyan civilians” include:

• The Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers USS Stout (DDG 55) and USS Barry (DDG 52)

• Submarines USS Providence (SSN 719), USS Scranton (SSN 756) and USS Florida (SSGN 728)

• Marine amphibious ships USS Kearsarge (LHD 3) and USS Ponce (LPD 15)

• Command ship USS Mount Whitney (LCC/JCC 20)

• Support ships Lewis and Clark, Robert E. Peary and Kanawha

• AV-8B Harrier fighters, CH-53 Super Stallion helicopters and MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft aboard the Kearsarge and Ponce

• KC-130J tanker aircraft flying from Sigonella Air Base, Italy

• EA-18G Growler electronic attack aircraft of VAQ-132, based at Whidbey Island, WA and flying from Aviano Air Base, Italy (the above listed aircraft were diverted from Iraq at NATO’s request “to help protect Libyan civilians”)

• P-3 Orion sub-hunters

• EP-3 Aries electronic attack aircraft.

In addition to the above listed weapons, more than 50 types of American bombs and missiles are stockpiled for NATO use “to protect civilians in Libya” and their use to date is illegal under both American and International law because it has resulted in the killing, maiming, or wounding of approximately 7,800 Libyan civilians between March 29 and August 9, 2011.

A survey of NATO bombing sites, ground inspections, cataloged serial numbers from unexploded ordnance, examination of bomb and missile fragments at civilian sites in Western Libya, and consultation with Libyan military sources confirm what two US Senate Armed Services Committee staffers and international lawyers have postulated. NATO, like their Israeli allies at Qana, Lebanon, committed war crimes and crimes against humanity at Majer, Libya on August 8, 2011.

Specifically, NATO stands accused of committing the following crimes against the people of Libya according to a consensus from meetings with an increasing number of visiting international lawyers and human rights advocates who have come here from Europe, Asia and South and North America.

Applicable international law includes but is not limited to Article 3 of the Statute of The Hague International Penal Court, which clearly states that one criterion for indictment for war crimes is: “Attack or bombardment, by whatever means, against undefended cities, towns, villages, buildings or houses”. NATO’s continuous use of civilian targets for military purposes, a scenario which NATO wantonly and callously calls “collateral damage” fits this clause exactly and would be a cornerstone of a case accusing this organization of being guilty of war crimes.

Violation of the Geneva Convention IV, Article 3 (a): “To this end the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons: violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds.”

These are similar causes of action that were filed against Israeli officials by American lawyers at the New York based Center for Constitutional Rights in Ali Saadallah BELHAS, et al., Plaintiffs, v. Moshe YA`ALON, Defendant (466 F.Supp.2d 127 (2006)), a case that educated the international legal community and the public about the necessity to strip sovereign immunity from international outlaws and allow lawsuits in domestic as well as international courts.

The NATO massacre at Majer requires international law suits that achieve nothing less. Franklin Lamb is doing research in Lebanon and can be reached at fplamb@gmail.com. Read more articles by Franklin Lamb.

 

[nestopwar]

Eyewitnesses dismiss rebel advances on Tripoli as misinformation
Posted: 2011/08/21
From: Mathaba     
 
 
 Further reports coming in from other media sources confirm Mathaba reports earlier about Tripoli being under full control and small tebel gangs putting on sporadic shows for the cameras

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Reports of tracer bullets and explosions over the Libyan capital have sparked rumours of the imminent defeat of Colonel Gaddafi and his regime. However, it turns out the shots were fired in celebration at a victory for Gaddafi loyalists.

On Saturday evening, rounds were fired close to a hotel hosting foreign journalists. Explosions were also heard in the area as NATO aircraft carried out heavy bombing runs after nightfall, the Associated Press reported.

Rebels were reported to be fighting in the city's Tajoura neighbourhood, as well as near Tripoli’s international airport.
 
There have been reports that fighting also broke out in the neighborhoods of Soug Jomaa and Arada in the east. The NATO-backed rebels in Libya claimed that a battle for the capital Tripoli could unfold by the end of the month, as they have now taken control of key cities around the Gaddafi stronghold.
However, all these reports have proven false.

In an audio tape aired on state TV, Colonel Gaddafi congratulated his supporters.

Independent journalist Lizzie Phelan says the reports are an effort by NATO to create panic. Click on above video for her report.

“The only gunfire that we are hearing is celebratory gunfire,” she said. “And the only explosions that we are hearing are NATO air strikes or NATO sound bombs, which are clearly designed to create a sense of panic in the capital city of Tripoli.”

Phelan said that the Libyan rebels created fake footage of themselves in Zawiya and Tripoli, and were aided in disseminating the footage by, among other media outlets, Al Jazeera. The Qatar-based satellite television station, she argued, has been at the center of the media conspiracy against Libya. The Western mainstream media, she continued, in turn picked up these reports and repeated them, creating a sense of panic among the Libyan people.

“Later on in the areas like Soug Jomaa, after the prayers, a number of armed gangs emerged, which are essentially sleeper cells of rebels inside the city, and began firing randomly and threatening ordinary people, that if they did not join them they would be assassinated,” she said. “They then took footage of the empty streets, which created the sense that they were in the process of capturing the city.”

Many people in Tripoli have been armed by the government and these people came out to defend their capital, she added.

“The government spokesman came out and insisted that the situation had been brought under control,” Phelan claimed. “As a result, now in Green Square the masses have come out because they feel safe again and they are letting off celebratory gunfire and fireworks. Muammar Gaddafi spoke to the masses live via phone, because there have been reports that he fled the country.”


 
Political analyst Mahdi Nazemroaya says that the gunfire in the Libyan capital is sporadic and disorganized, and that its main purpose is to break down the morale of the population. Click on the video to the left for his report.

“The main point of the attacks in Tripoli is to break down the morale here and cause panic,” he said. “The media here at the hotel where I am staying has been part of this disinformation campaign. They just want to feed the panic here and want the regime to collapse. They are fueling and feeding this psychological war against this country.”