Thousands of Libyan rebel fighters have encircled the pro-Gadhafi stronghold of Bani Walid waiting for orders to attack as negotiations to resolve the standoff peacefully appeared to founder on Sunday.
Bani Walid, a city of 100,000 residents 90 miles southwest of Tripoli, stands as a first test of rebels’ ability to assert control over a large swath of central Libya still controlled by Col. Moamar Gadhafi’s loyalists and dominated by the three tribes that formed the backbone of his regime….
Libya’s interim government plans to begin bringing irregular rebel militias under government control, either disbanding them or incorporating them into regular police and military forces, said Ali Tarhouni, the deputy chairman of the rebels’ executive board, speaking at a news conference here on Saturday.
Mr. Tarhouni, the highest-ranking rebel official in Tripoli, the capital, so far, announced the formation of a Supreme Security Committee of civilian officials and militia leaders, which would take control of all security matters in Tripoli. He said he had been appointed its chairman.
The problem now is that the NTC needs the money if it is to begin to put some order into the new Libya, if it is to begin to rule Libya. To establish its authority, it must provide law and order and restore public services, including basic items like water and electricity, to show the Libyan people the fruits of the rebellion. At least part of the NTC is in the process of moving from Benghazi to Tripoli, establishing control of the capital and mitigating the perception of Libyans that the rebellion is an eastern affair, as opposed to a national one.
The difficult part is that the NTC is still disorganized. Its structure is unclear and its chain of command and, thus, ability to accept responsibility including for money, is unclear to the point of concern that it doesn’t exist.
Leaders of rebel forces that deposed Col Muammar Gaddafi in Libya have said they do not intend to allow the extradition of the Lockerbie bomber.
Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi is the only person to have been convicted in connection with the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Scotland in 1988.
Megrahi was released from a Scottish prison two years ago on health grounds.
… let me say that in English: the European Union is cracking up. The Arab world is cracking up. China’s growth model is under pressure and America’s credit-driven capitalist model has suffered a warning heart attack and needs a total rethink. Recasting any one of these alone would be huge. Doing all four at once ”” when the world has never been more interconnected ”” is mind-boggling. We are again “present at the creation” ”” but of what?….
As for America, we’ve thrived in recent decades with a credit-consumption-led economy, whereby we maintained a middle class by using more steroids (easy credit, subprime mortgages and construction work) and less muscle-building (education, skill-building and innovation). It’s put us in a deep hole, and the only way to dig out now is a new, hybrid politics that mixes spending cuts, tax increases, tax reform and investments in infrastructure, education, research and production. But that mix is not the agenda of either party. Either our two parties find a way to collaborate in the center around this new hybrid politics, or a third party is going to emerge ”” or we’re stuck and the pain will just get worse.
The NATO air campaign that was instrumental in helping the rebels advance into Tripoli is hamstrung in many ways now that the fighting has turned into complex house-to-house urban warfare, American military and allied officials said Tuesday.
For legal and practical reasons, as well as to avoid the perception of bombing indiscriminately inside Tripoli, the Libyan capital, allied warplanes will continue to prowl for targets, but mostly on the outskirts of the city where government troops might be trying to escape or reinforce Tripoli ”” and where the risk of civilian casualties is much lower, allied officials said.
It will be a relief when the war and the killing are actually over. At the same time, many questions remain. One, on the U.S. side, is whether it was worth it. There is little to regret in the departure from the Libyan and world scene of Mr. Gadhafi. He may have started well with a popular revolution in 1969 that overthrew a corrupt monarchical regime, aligned Libya’s role in the Middle East and Africa more closely with that of its neighbors, and put the country’s oil wealth in Libyan hands.
But Mr. Gadhafi became the perfect illustration of the adage that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely as his views and behavior, backed by his country’s considerable wealth, became increasingly bizarre, culminating in his agents’ attack on Pan Am 103 over Scotland in 1988, killing 270.
Large numbers of rebel fighters are retreating into Libya’s western towns and cities to regroup with weapons looted from Moammar Gadhafi’s armory while others continue to clash with the Libyan leader’s regime as the battle for Tripoli enters its third day.
Rebels broke into Bab al-Azizya, the main military compound in Tripoli, and reportedly filled several pick-up trucks to the brim with munitions and supplies. Rebel soldiers told ABC News that they plan to return to their bases then go back to Tripoli to attack Gadhafi’s loyalists one more time in an attempt to seal victory….
Libya’s endgame appears to be at hand, bringing to a climax an uprising against Muammar Qaddafi that just weeks ago appeared to be stalled by inexperience, disunity, and a lack of resources.
For months, Libya has been stalemated as rebels have surged forward, only to be pushed back by Qaddafi loyalists. But aided by NATO airstrikes and better organization, rebels have been steadily building momentum….
“You have seen the strong man judged in a bed in Egypt,” he told the two dozen immigrant members of his congregation who braved the city’s checkpoints to make it to Anglican Mass on Friday. “And so it works that the weak can overthrow the strong,” he added. “This is what is happening in our Middle East.”
In a city of tapped phone lines and ubiquitous government informers, the weekly Mass at the Church of Christ the King is a rare sanctuary: a place to speak freely with a group of Tripoli residents about the anxious, ever-shifting mood of the city.
“When NATO bombs at night, I hear my neighbors clap and cheer ”˜bravo,’ and in the morning they are with the rebels,” a leading parishioner said, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals from the government of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. “People are very, very down, and they are depending entirely on NATO.”
After six months battling a rebellion that his family portrayed as an Islamist conspiracy, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s son and one-time heir apparent said Wednesday that he was reversing course to forge a behind-the-scenes alliance with radical Islamist elements among the Libyan rebels to drive out their more liberal-minded confederates.
“The liberals will escape or be killed,” the son, Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi, vowed in an hourlong interview that stretched past midnight. “We will do it together,” he added, wearing a newly grown beard and fingering Islamic prayer beads as he reclined on a love seat in a spare office tucked in a nearly deserted downtown hotel. “Libya will look like Saudi Arabia, like Iran. So what?”
The leading Islamist whom Mr. Qaddafi identified as his main counterpart in the talks, Ali Sallabi, acknowledged their conversations but dismissed any suggestion of an alliance. He said the Libyan Islamists supported the rebel leaders’ calls for a pluralistic democracy without the Qaddafis.
That Abdel Fateh Younes, the longtime enforcer for Muammar Qaddafi whose stunning defection to the Libyan rebellion in February was an early indication of the depth of the challenge to Qaddafi’s regime, is dead, you can take to the bank. General Younes had been head of the embryonic rebel army from practically the moment he’d switched sides.
As far as the rest of the story ”“ who killed him, when, precisely where, and why ”“ all remains murk and conjecture, created by cross-cutting rivalries within the rebellion and the often misleading and contradictory way that Libya’s Transitional National Council (TNC) communicates with the press and the Libyan public.
Libyan rebels say they are largely in control of the key eastern town of Brega, after close fighting in residential areas.
Rebels say forces loyal to Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi are retreating west towards Ras Lanuf.
The Libyan government denies the claims, insisting it is still in full control of Brega and has killed more than 500 rebels there.
The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi, accusing him of crimes against humanity.
The court had grounds to believe he had ordered attacks on civilians during Libya’s four-month uprising, it said.
New U.S. intelligence shows Col. Moammar Gadhafi is “seriously considering” fleeing Tripoli for a more secure location outside the capital, according to U.S. officials, raising the prospect that the Libyan leader’s hold on power is increasingly fragile.
The intelligence depicts a Libyan leader who “doesn’t feel safe anymore” in Tripoli because of stepped-up strikes by North Atlantic Treaty Organization aircraft and by battlefield gains by rebel forces, according to a senior U.S. national-security official briefed on the recent reports that the intelligence community has shared with the White House and other agencies….
NATO acknowledged Sunday that an errant missile had destroyed a civilian home in the Libyan capital in the early morning, saying it may have killed civilians. It was the alliance’s first such admission in the three-month-long campaign of airstrikes against the military forces of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.
Reporters taken to the site and a nearby hospital saw at least five bodies, including those of a baby and a child. Libyan officials said at least four more civilians were killed.
The episode was NATO’s second admission of a mistaken strike in two days….
GERARD POWERS (University of Notre Dame): Thanks for having me, Kim. I think there are three broad questions. One is, were we morally justified in going in in the first place? The second is are the means that we are using morally justified, or are we proving through the means we are using that humanitarian invention, as some allede, is really just an oxymoron? And three, I think we have to think about what an ethics of exit means in Libya.
[KIM] LAWTON: Well, let’s unpack all of that. Were we justified in going in? The president said it was to protect civilians.
POWERS: I think humanitarian intervention in extraordinary cases to protect the civilian population is justified, and not only that, there’s a duty in some cases to do that. My concern is that that objective seems to be subsumed by other objectives.
NATO’s leaders are scrambling to find tactics that might force Kadafi to give up: military escalation, aid to the rebels, Russian mediation. They’re contemplating outcomes in which Kadafi might not have to leave Libya or stand trial before the International Criminal Court. “All options are open,” Sarkozy said last month. “We are not saying that Kadafi needs to be exiled. He must leave power, and the quicker he does it, the greater his choice.”
But Kadafi shows little interest in a graceful exit, and NATO may soon face a tough decision. British newspapers have already reported that former British soldiers are on the ground spotting targets for NATO airstrikes, reportedly under contract to an unnamed Arab regime. If the air war stalls, Britain and France will have to consider sending in ground forces as the quickest way to finish the job. Hague has already acknowledged that Britain will probably send peacekeeping troops if and when the conflict ends.
In a contest of wills between NATO and Kadafi, NATO still appears likely to win in the long run.
Moammar Gadhafi insists he will not leave his country, South Africa’s president said Tuesday after he met the embattled Libyan ruler.
South Africa President Jacob Zuma’s office said he had pressed Gadhafi to agree to an African Union proposal for a cease-fire and dialogue to settle the Libya conflict and that the Libyan leader agreed.
“Col. Gadhafi called for an end to the bombings to enable a Libyan dialogue,” it said. “He emphasized that he was not prepared to leave his country, despite the difficulties.”
In early 2008, Libya’s sovereign-wealth fund controlled by Col. Moammar Gadhafi gave $1.3 billion to Goldman Sachs Group to sink into a currency bet and other complicated trades. The investments lost 98% of their value, internal Goldman documents show.
What happened next may be one of the most peculiar footnotes to the global financial crisis. In an effort to make up for the losses, Goldman offered Libya the chance to become one of its biggest shareholders, according to documents and people familiar with the matter.
Negotiations between Goldman and the Libyan Investment Authority stretched on for months during the summer of 2009. Eventually, the talks fell apart, and nothing more was done about the lost money.
As NATO’s military campaign against Moammar Gadhafi’s Libyan regime continued last week, the 60-day deadline for U.S. participation expired, based on the 1973 War Powers Resolution. So it’s debatable whether President Obama has the legal authority for continued use of U.S. forces in the Libyan campaign.
The “witching hour” has arrived.
So far, the president hasn’t made a persuasive case for ignoring the deadline. He owes the American people an explanation.
Polls show declining public support for this intervention, despite the president’s repeated upbeat assessments of its progress….
Barack Obama will pressure David Cameron this week not to begin scaling back British forces’ involvement in Afghanistan later this year.
The American president, who arrives at London Stansted tomorrow to begin a full state visit to Britain, after a quick stop-off in Ireland today, will seek the Prime Minister’s backing for a tougher stance on a range of international and security issues from “AfPak” (Afghanistan-Pakistan) and combating homegrown terrorism to missile defence in the former Soviet Union. Mr Cameron will, in return, seek deeper American commitment for Nato action in Libya, where Britain and France seek help towards an exit strategy from the conflict.
A fightback by repressive governments is putting at risk a historic struggle for freedom and justice in the Arab world, Amnesty International says.
Publishing its annual report, the rights group highlights the fight for control over communications technology.
It criticises Libya, Syria, Bahrain and Yemen for targeting peaceful protesters to stay in power.
Few who have seen the front lines would dispute that Libya’s rebels need arms matched to their fight. But as the European powers send military advisers to eastern Libya, the developing NATO plan to help the rebels organize themselves quickly into an effective fighting force confronts their backers with difficult issues.
A survey of weapons carried by hundreds of rebels fighting on two fronts ”” in eastern Libya and the besieged city of Misurata ”” presents a picture of an armed uprising that is both underequipped and in custody of many weapons with no utility in the war at hand. The rebels are also in possession of weapons that if sold, lost or misused, could undermine their revolution’s reputation and undercut their cause.
These include anti-aircraft missiles and land mines, both of which the rebels have used on at least a limited basis so far, and which pose long-term regional security threats. They include as well heavier weapons ”” Type 63 and Grad rockets ”” that rebels have fired indiscriminately, endangering civilians and civilian infrastructure.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy promised Libyan rebel leader Mustafa Abdel Jalil Wednesday that France would intensify air strikes on Muammar Gaddafi’s army, the president’s office said in a statement.
It gave no detail on how the strikes would be ramped up.
“We are indeed going to intensify the attacks and respond to this request from the national transition council,” the Elysee Palace said in a statement after Sarkozy met Abdel Jalil in Paris, their first face-to-face meeting.
“The President said ‘We will help you,'” the Elysee said.
Western powers eager to help Libyan rebels sell oil from territories they control are ignoring the U.N. Security Council’s sanctions committee, leaving Libyan crude in legal limbo, envoys and analysts say.
Without definitive guidance on the legal status of Libyan oil from the politically divided U.N. sanctions committee, U.N. diplomats and traders say the oil could remain virtually untouchable as major trading players take care to avoid running afoul of the U.N. sanctions.
U.N. diplomats told Reuters that Security Council members eager to escalate the pressure on Gaddafi’s government — above all France and Britain — rushed through the two packages of sanctions and may not have foreseen how difficult the U.N. measures would make it to aid the rebels.
British Army officers are being sent to Libya to advise rebels fighting Muammar Gaddafi’s forces.
The UK group will be deployed to the opposition stronghold of Benghazi, Libya’s second city, in a mentoring role to help leaders co-ordinating attacks on the dictator’s army.
While parts of Libya’s northern coast have been changing hands from day to day, the conflict in Misrata has turned into a lethal stand-off.
Weeks of heavy bombardments by forces loyal to Colonel Muammar Gaddafi have failed to break the deadlock.
This is explained partly by the size of Misrata, Libya’s third largest city.
It is the only significant western rebel holdout, and is strategically important because of its deep-sea port, so rebels have fought hard to defend it.
There is a pathway to peace that promises new hope for the people of Libya ”” a future without Qaddafi that preserves Libya’s integrity and sovereignty, and restores her economy and the prosperity and security of her people. This needs to begin with a genuine end to violence, marked by deeds not words. The regime has to pull back from the cities it is besieging, including Ajdabiya, Misurata and Zintan, and return to their barracks. However, so long as Qaddafi is in power, NATO must maintain its operations so that civilians remain protected and the pressure on the regime builds. Then a genuine transition from dictatorship to an inclusive constitutional process can really begin, led by a new generation of leaders. In order for that transition to succeed, Qaddafi must go and go for good. At that point, the United Nations and its members should help the Libyan people as they rebuild where Qaddafi has destroyed ”” to repair homes and hospitals, to restore basic utilities, and to assist Libyans as they develop the institutions to underpin a prosperous and open society.
Nato has refused to apologise for a “friendly fire” attack on rebel tanks in eastern Libya that killed at least four people.
Rear Adm Russ Harding said that, until Thursday’s incident, Nato had not been aware that rebel troops had started to use tanks.
“Our job is to protect civilians,” he told a news conference.