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by 82_28 » Wed Feb 23, 2011 6:23 pm
by DevilYouKnow » Wed Feb 23, 2011 6:26 pm
by Nordic » Wed Feb 23, 2011 7:14 pm
by seemslikeadream » Wed Feb 23, 2011 8:34 pm
Tripoli: a city in the shadow of death
Robert Fisk, with the first dispatch from Libya's war-torn capital, reports
Thursday, 24 February 2011
Up to 15,000 men, women and children besieged Tripoli's international airport last night, shouting and screaming for seats on the few airliners still prepared to fly to Muammar Gaddafi's rump state, paying Libyan police bribe after bribe to reach the ticket desks in a rain-soaked mob of hungry, desperate families. Many were trampled as Libyan security men savagely beat those who pushed their way to the front.
Among them were Gaddafi's fellow Arabs, thousands of them Egyptians, some of whom had been living at the airport for two days without food or sanitation. The place stank of faeces and urine and fear. Yet a 45-minute visit into the city for a new airline ticket to another destination is the only chance to see Gaddafi's capital if you are a "dog" of the international press.
There was little sign of opposition to the Great Leader. Squads of young men with Kalashnikov rifles stood on the side roads next to barricades of upturned chairs and wooden doors. But these were pro-Gaddafi vigilantes – a faint echo of the armed Egyptian "neighbourhood guard" I saw in Cairo a month ago – and had pinned photographs of their leader's infamous Green Book to their checkpoint signs.
There is little food in Tripoli, and over the city there fell a blanket of drab, sullen rain. It guttered onto an empty Green Square and down the Italianate streets of the old capital of Tripolitania. But there were no tanks, no armoured personnel carriers, no soldiers, not a fighter plane in the air; just a few police and elderly men and women walking the pavements – a numbed populous. Sadly for the West and for the people of the free city of Benghazi, Libya's capital appeared as quiet as any dictator would wish.
But this is an illusion. Petrol and food prices have trebled; entire towns outside Tripoli have been torn apart by fighting between pro- and anti-Gaddafi forces. In the suburbs of the city, especially in the Noufreen district, militias fought for 24 hours on Sunday with machine guns and pistols, a battle the Gadaffi forces won. In the end, the exodus of expatriates will do far more than street warfare to bring down the regime.
I was told that at least 30,000 Turks, who make up the bulk of the Libyan construction and engineering industry, have now fled the capital, along with tens of thousands of other foreign workers. On my own aircraft out of Tripoli, an evacuation flight to Europe, there were Polish, German, Japanese and Italian businessmen, all of whom told me they had closed down major companies in the past week. Worse still for Gaddafi, the oil, chemical and uranium fields of Libya lie to the south of "liberated" Benghazi. Gaddafi's hungry capital controls only water resources, so a temporary division of Libya, which may have entered Gaddafi's mind, would not be sustainable. Libyans and expatriates I spoke to yesterday said they thought he was clinically insane, but they expressed more anger at his son, Saif al-Islam. "We thought Saif was the new light, the 'liberal'", a Libyan businessman sad to me. "Now we realise he is crazier and more cruel than his father."
The panic that has now taken hold in what is left of Gaddafi's Libya was all too evident at the airport. In the crush of people fighting for tickets, one man, witnessed by an evacuated Tokyo car-dealer, was beaten so viciously on the head that "his face fell apart".
Talking to Libyans in Tripoli and expatriates at the airport, it is clear that neither tanks nor armour were used in the streets of Tripoli. Air attacks targeted Benghazi and other towns, but not the capital. Yet all spoke of a wave of looting and arson by Libyans who believed that with the fall of Benghazi, Gaddafi was finished and the country open to anarchy.
The centre of the city was largely closed up. All foreign offices have been shut including overseas airlines, and every bakery I saw was shuttered. Rumours abound that members of Gaddafi's family are trying to flee abroad. Although William Hague's ramblings about Gaddafi's flight to Venezuela have been disproved, I spoke to a number of Libyans who believed that Burkina Faso might be his only viable retreat. Two nights ago, a Libyan private jet approached Beirut airport with a request to land but was refused permission when the crew declined to identify their eight passengers. And last night, a Libyan Arab Airlines flight reported by Al Jazeera to be carrying Gaddafi's daughter, Aisha, was refused permission to land in Malta.
Gaddafi is blamed by Shia Muslims in Lebanon, Iraq and Iran for the murder of Imam Moussa Sadr, a supposedly charismatic divine who unwisely accepted an invitation to visit Gaddafi in 1978 and, after an apparent argument about money, was never seen again. Nor was a Lebanese journalist accompanying him on the trip.
While dark humour has never been a strong quality in Libyans, there was one moment at Tripoli airport yesterday which proved it does exist. An incoming passenger from a Libyan Arab Airlines flight at the front of an immigration queue bellowed out: "And long life to our great leader Muammar Gaddafi." Then he burst into laughter – and the immigration officers did the same.[/quoteThe Gaddafi regime has now lost control of Libya's second and third largest cities, Benghazi and Misurata, respectively. The Guardian has journalists in Benghazi and reports that the country's armed forces stationed in Benghazi have defected to the side of the protesters there, checkpoints have been abandoned by the military and are now simply being operated by traffic police, monarchy-era flags are being flown from government buildings, and there has been no violence in the streets for the last two days.
The Financial Times reported early this afternoon on a similar situation in Misurata, Libya's third-largest city and the first city in the western part of the country to fall into the hands of protesters
by AhabsOtherLeg » Wed Feb 23, 2011 11:16 pm
by Nordic » Wed Feb 23, 2011 11:21 pm
by AhabsOtherLeg » Wed Feb 23, 2011 11:29 pm
Nordic wrote:I'm not Twitter-literate (twitterlate?) so is there a link you could give to those of us with strong stomachs who would like to see the truth of what's going on there?
by Nordic » Wed Feb 23, 2011 11:30 pm
AhabsOtherLeg wrote:Nordic wrote:I'm not Twitter-literate (twitterlate?) so is there a link you could give to those of us with strong stomachs who would like to see the truth of what's going on there?
Well, I would have to give a strong warning even to those who have strong stomachs, and I will not mind at all if a mod wants to remove the link.
http://www.yfrog.com/froggy.php?username=LibyanThinker
Each picture can be enlarged by clicking on it.
by Plutonia » Thu Feb 24, 2011 1:20 am
by Nordic » Thu Feb 24, 2011 3:11 am
As more Libyan towns and cities fell to anti-government forces Wednesday, U.S. President Barack Obama said Washington is preparing "the full range of options" to respond to the ongoing violence in the oil-rich North African state.
In a five-minute televised statement from the White House, Obama stressed that Washington preferred to act in concert with other nations and international institutions.
"This is not simply a concern of the United States," he said as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stood by his side. "The entire world is watching, and we will coordinate our assistance and accountability measures with the international community."
But he also hinted that Washington may consider taking unspecified unilateral action against the regime of Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi.
"I’ve …asked my administration to prepare the full range of options that we have to respond to this crisis," he said. "This includes those actions we may take and those we will coordinate with our allies and partners, or those that we’ll carry out through multilateral institutions."
Obama’s statement, which came amid reports that Gadhafi’s control over the country had receded to little more than the capital, Tripoli, was his first since the weekend when Libyan security forces and, according to a number of reports, foreign mercenaries unleashed a wave of violence, including strafing by Libyan warplanes and helicopters, against anti-government demonstrators in Benghazi and other cities.
Franco Frattini, the foreign minister of Italy, the European country with perhaps the closest ties to its former colony, said Wednesday that reports that "some 1,000" people have died as a result of the repression were "credible", while the Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights estimated that least 700 people had died since late last week.
And while Gadhafi’s son and heir apparent, Saif al-Islam Gadhafi, insisted in a televised broadcast late Wednesday that the situation had returned to "normal", Tripoli residents told foreign media by telephone that the capital’s population was staying in their homes for fear of being attacked in the streets by security forces and pro-Gadhafi militias.
Meanwhile, foreign reporters in Benghazi, Libya’s second largest city, reported that residents there had established a provisional governing authority, while Misurata, the third largest city located just east of Tripoli, fell to anti- Gadhafi forces Wednesday. The government has also abandoned positions along the country’s western border with Tunisia, and hundreds of people have fled across the frontier, according to eyewitness accounts.
Despite a number of statements by lesser officials condemning the violence, Obama has faced a rising tide of criticism – mainly from neo-conservatives and other hawks, but also from human rights activists – this week over what they have called his "silence" on the situation and his failure to date to impose sanctions against the regime.
His remarks late in the afternoon appeared intended in part to answer that criticism.
By way of introduction, he stressed that his "highest priority" was to do "everything we can to protect American citizens", of whom there are believed to be about 6,000 residing in Libya.
U.S. officials told reporters on background this week that one reason Obama has been reluctant to personally denounce Gadhafi during the crisis was fear that U.S. nationals could be taken hostage by the regime. Analysts noted Wednesday that Obama did not mention Gadhafi by name in his remarks. At the same time, Obama’s statement was the harshest by Washington to date. "The suffering and bloodshed is outrageous and it is unacceptable," Obama said.
"So are threats and orders to shoot peaceful protesters and further punish the people of Libya. These actions violate international norms and every standard of common decency. This violence must stop," he declared.
Obama also suggested for the first time that Washington is actively considering imposing sanctions against the regime. "Like all governments, the Libyan government has a responsibility to refrain from violence, to allow humanitarian assistance to reach those in need, and to respect the rights of its people," he said.
"It must be held accountable for its failure to meet those responsibilities, and face the cost of continued violations of human rights," he added.
On Tuesday, John Kerry, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who often acts as a stalking horse for the administration, called for the imposition of targeted sanctions against the regime.
Both German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy have also urged the European Union (EU) to immediately take similar action.
Obama made clear that he preferred to coordinate U.S. action with other countries and specifically praised the U.N. Security Council statement issued Tuesday that condemned the violence and called for accountability for its perpetrators.
"This same message, by the way, has been delivered by the European Union, the Arab League, the African Union, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, and many individual nations," he emphasised. "North and south, east and west, voices are being raised together to oppose suppression and support the rights of the Libyan people."
He also implicitly rejected charges by Gadhafi and other autocratic regimes in the region that the United States was behind the uprising.
"The change that is taking place across the region is being driven by the people of the region," he said in a reference as well to the ouster over the last six weeks of the presidents of Tunisia and Egypt and the continued popular unrest in Bahrain and Yemen.
"This change doesn’t represent the work of the United States or any foreign power," he insisted. "It represents the aspirations of people who are seeking a better life."
He announced that he is sending Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs William Burns, who has been in Cairo this week, to Europe and elsewhere in the middle East to "intensify our consultations" about possible measures regarding Libya. He also announced that Clinton herself will travel to Geneva Monday for a foreign ministers’ meeting of the U.N.’s Human Rights Council, of which Libya is a member.
A number of critics here have called on the administration to include among any sanctions it takes against Libya the country’s expulsion from the Council.
They have also called for Washington and NATO to impose a "no-fly" zone over parts of Libya to prevent the regime’s aircraft from attacking anti-government forces. Some critics, mainly from the right, have urged the administration to provide arms to the rebels, as well.
Whether Obama’s latest remarks will quiet the criticism remains to be seen.
by Jeff » Thu Feb 24, 2011 10:27 am
by Jeff » Thu Feb 24, 2011 11:00 am
Naomi Klein wrote:The tile of Gaddafi's son LSE PHD says something profound about the corruption of the liberal ruling class.
"The Role Of Civil Society in the Democratisation of Global Governance Institutions: From ‘Soft Power’ to Collective Decision-Making?”
by DevilYouKnow » Thu Feb 24, 2011 11:53 am
4:15pm Gaddafi's speech, broadcast on state television, was a phone-in affair, in which he said that like Queen Elizabeth II, he was only a symbolic leader of Libya. Gaddafi also blamed the unrest on al-Qaeda arming drugged teenagers.
He said that married people with families and good jobs weren't participating in the protests, saying that no one over the age of 20 was involved and that "people with any brains won't take part in these protests".
He also said that "It's obvious now that this issue has been lead by al-Qaeda ...get control of your children, keep them at home".
3:24pm There are multiple reports of gun battles are taking place between securituy forces and protesters in the town of Az Zawiyah, 50 km west of Tripoli, on Thursday. Retuers reports that gun fire has broken out there, while sources tell Al Jazeera that the amry attacked the town this morning, firing shots at protesters for roughly four hours.
The death tolls vary greatly - from 16 to 100, and Reuters is unable to confirm any numbers. The agency reports that the army attacked the Souq Mosque where protesters had been camped out for several days:
The soldiers opened fire with automatic weapons and hit the mosque's minaret with fire from an anti-aircraft gun, he said. Some of the young men among the protesters, who were inside the mosque and in a nearby lot, had hunting rifles for protection.
The witness said that earlier in the day, a Gaddafi "envoy" had come to Az Zawiyah and told the protesters in the mosque to leave or "you will see a massacre". He also said, "Those who attacked us are not the mercenaries, they are the sons of our country".
2:11pm Another caller from Misurata tells Al Jazeera that up to 1,000 members of Gaddafi forces - the "Hamza Brigade" - mounted an attack on protesters near the city's airport and were repelled, but later launched an attack on the centre of the city, and fighting continues. He says anti-Gaddafi protesters are holding their ground.
2:07pm Chinese citizens fleeing across the border into Tunisia confirm to Al Jazeera's Nazanine Moshiri in Ras Ajdir that there was fighting in the nearby Libyan cities of Az Zawiyah and Zuwarah.
2:01pm Miftah Mohamed, a caller from Misurata, tells Al Jazeera "the revolutionary forces have driven Gaddafi's forces from Misurata".
1:15pm A cousin of Gaddafi, and one of his closest aides, has arrived in Cairo, says AP. Kaddaf el-Dem reportedly says the crackdown has seen "grave violations to human right and human and international laws".
12:55pm A friendly chant rings out round the meeting of tribal elders, held in Al Baida, home to the former justice minister:
Oh Al Jazeera, oh Al Jazeera: We swear by Allah, you are not vile!
12:48pm Turks arriving back in their home country tell Al Jazeera's Anita McNaught:
Gaddafi didn't give us a drop of water - but the Libyan people gave us everything. Three cheers for the people's revolution!
12:35pm Mobile phone messages are reportedly circulating in Tripoli, calling for mass protests against Gaddafi following Friday lunchtime prayers.
12:30pm Gaddafi's forces have reportedly kidnapped two daughters of the Libyan leader's former aide, Noura al-Masmari, after he spoke on Al Jazeera yesterday. They were allegedly forced to denouce their father on Libya's state TV. His lawyer told the AFP agency:
Two of Mr al-Masmari's daughters have just been abducted by men working for Mr Gaddafi - and forcibly taken to the television [station] to deny their father's statements. They are still in the hands of Muammar Gaddafi's men, which shows there's a will for reprisals.
12:24pm Chinese oil company CNPC says on its website its Libyan facilities have been attacked, and it is evacuating workers.
12:19pm Saif al-Islam Gaddafi appears on Libyan state TV. He speaks of a conspiracy perpetrated by "Arab brothers" and mentions that the media "spread lies" - though not mentioning any network by name.
He asks Egyptians, particularly, not to participate in the "conspiracy". Egypt's army has already been ordered to evacuate its citizens from Libya, after authorities there took Saif Gaddaffi's earlier speech as incitement to violence against Egyptians.
He also said that he would invite media and international organisations to tour Tripoli tomorrow - though he did not specify a time.
"Life in Tripoli is normal," he says.
12:10pm Gaddafi forces blast a mosque minaret with anti-aircraft weaponry in Az Zawiyah during ongoing attack on protesters, says the AP news agency.
12:04pm More on that initial reaction from Al Jazeera's James Bays, fresh back from Tripoli airport. He adds:
Signs of the decay and the end of regimes that I've seen elsewhere is happening now. People are asking for bribes. If you want to do anything in the airport, it will cost you. A $20 taxi ride to Tripoli airport now costs $200.
11:19am Egyptian workers fleeing Libya say anti-Gaddafi militia control the town of Zuwarah, 120km west of Tripoli, Reuters reports.
11:15am Libyan diplomats at the Libyan embassy in the Moroccan capital announced they are joining "the people's revolution" and the end of Gaddafi's rule. A video showed Libyan diplomats lowering a flag in the embassy's courtyard to half-mast, taking down a large picture of the Libyan leader, and then smashing it.
11:13am Reports are coming in that Gaddafi forces are attacking Az Zawiyah city in north-west Libya, where thousands are currently demonstrating. An eyewitness phoned Al Jazeera, saying 50 injured people were taken to hospital in the city after the "Gaddafi Brigade" used anti-aircraft weapons in the assault. Several protesters were reportedly killed.
10:03am More on international solidarity between struggles for autonomy in the Middle East and those in the West. After Egypt sends pizza to protesters in Madison, Wisconsin, rock star, guitar hero and all-round troublemaker Tom Morello reads a message from Egyptian protesters at a gig to support the rights of workers in the US.
To our friends in Madison, Wisconsin:
We wish you could see first hand the change we have made here. Justice is beautiful, but justice is never free.
The beauty in Tahrir Square you can have everywhere - on any corner, in your city, or in your heart.
So hold on tightly and don't let go, and breathe deep Wisconsin - for our good fortune in on the breeze, in the midwest and in the Middle East. So, breathe deep Wisconsin, because justice is in the air - and the spirit of Tahrir Square be in every beating heart in Madison, Wisconsin.
8:40am Another Algerian tells Al Jazeera, having fled Libya:
I feel like crying, I am so happy to be back in Algeria. Thank God I escaped the carnage.
Did you see Baghdad? It was like being in Baghdad. They used planes, helicopters. People, women, were screaming, as they were slaughtering people. There were about 60 dead people in Green Square in the centre of Tripoli, these 60 people were slaughtered.
High buildings, the ministry of justice, were burned down. We were just working there, trying to make a living. Thank God, our president - bless him - has helped us. It took us four days to get to the airprort. You need too many papers to get in and leave the country.
8:30am Algerians returning home from Libya speak to Al Jazeera. One man who was in Tripoli tells us, as foreigners, they were targeted: "It was just crazy. It did not make sense. There were so many mercenaries shooting at people." Our reporter asked if he saw the mercenaries with his own eyes.
Yes, I did. Of course I did. They entered houses - but even the Libyans used violence against the foreigners - Moroccan, Tunisian, all Arabs - under the pretext they were against the regime.
by DevilYouKnow » Thu Feb 24, 2011 12:30 pm
by Jeff » Thu Feb 24, 2011 12:57 pm
DevilYouKnow wrote:Martin Chulov is tweeting from Benghazi:
@martinchulov Martin Chulov
Surreal being in a sacked city. People say they can breathe for the first time in their lives. Exiled Libyans pouring in. #libya #feb17
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