By FRANKLIN LAMB
January
15, 2012
Tripoli
This observer was stunned late last week when during a meeting
in a Maghreb country with three high ranking former Libyan officials, among
hundreds currently in hiding, and some organizing, in countries bordering
Libya, one of them, in all earnest, asked me,
“Do you believe there be a counter revolution soon in the
“Jamarariya [state of the masses, i.e. Libya]?”
The reason I was so surprised is that I was about to ask my
hosts that very question. I was thinking that with all their security and
serious-faced male visitors, some western, coming and going and whispering that
the reported Libyan Liberation Front groups along the Seral might be making
some progress after not hearing much about them recently.
Of course I have little idea if the much talked of ‘Green
Revolution’ is strong or could topple the current NATO created and imposed
government.
Certainly many complaints can be heard today in Libya about
the do-nothing “non-government” that increasingly people in all walks of life
are boldly complaining about. What I have observed personally is that
nearly all the reports on events in Libya on certain internet sites are
false.
This was also the case during the summer months here in Libya
when patently false claims about NATO using MAP 108 Spanish manufactured
cluster bombs against civilian or loyalist military targets, NATO using
depleted uranium, or that 150,000 Libyan civilians were killed were posted as
truth “from reliable sources inside Libya.”
Or additionally wild claims, for example, that Misrata and other
areas were always in loyalist control and that the rebels were surrendering en
masse and that NATO was admitting defeat the next day.
A couple of recent false claims include a much circulated report
last week that:
“There are green flags flying all over Zawia and the Green
Revolution has captured the town!”
Quite by coincidence the evening I read that claim on the
internet, I had just come from Sorman and while en route was given a tour of
the battle sites from the July-August fighting in Zawia by NTC (Transitional
National Council) checkpoint minders.
We observed most the intense battle sites including the Gadhafi
Hotel site and various other Zawia locations. I observed approximately 35
captured government tanks parked along the main road and still in working
condition but there was not one Green (pro-Gadhafi) flag to be seen.
I had just come from a cemetery outside of Zabratha where is saw
local police/militia removing green cloth swatches from graves of some who had
died during the summer fighting. Green flags if they appear in Tripoli are
quickly removed and replaced with the tricolor of the NTC.
There have also been wild reports that Saif al Islam has married
a Zintan tribe woman and has been seen taking walks with his captors and that
they are defecting to his leadership. According to the military commander
of the Zintan militia group holding Saif, this is also nonsense and he claimed
that the Zintan “brigade” (none of the groups here like being referred to
as “militia“ these days) are not preventing Saif from seeing a lawyer but that
the permission must come from the Ministry of Justice in Tripoli.
Specifically, from Mr. Abdul Aziz Hazaii, Chief of Investigations
at the MJ and the gentleman from whom this observer is currently awaiting
approval to visit 11 incarcerated individuals.
All of us know that misinformation and disinformation are common
during armed conflicts, often politically motivated. But such grossly
exaggerated and unsubstantiated claims and conspiracy theories only aid the
aggressors, in this case, NATO.
There is clear and growing pro-Gadhafi political and military
activity here and it is why NTC leader Mustapha Abdul Jalil, the other day
warned against the Gadhafi children raising an insurrection.
Aisha Gadhafi, given Saif’s current incarceration, is perhaps
the likely leader.
Every night more pro-Gadhafi graffiti appears on street walls,
buildings and around Green (Martyrs Square). Activists, and there appear
to be more every day, assert that so far the NTC has not attacked them and they
feel fairly free to speak out and even organize. It is anyone’s
guess how long this situation will exist before a violent crackdown and open
fighting.
It is difficult to gage the anti-NTC/ pro-Gadhafi mix and the
extent to what extent each is propelling increasingly unpredictable event in
Libya.
Yet, with the elimination of Muammar Gadhafi, which was NATO’s
clear intention from March 19 when it took over the UNSCR 1973 campaign against
Libya, NATO correctly concluded that without Gadhafi, any “Green
counterrevolution” would be very difficult. That is what we are seeing today.
While the restive Libyan population appears to be rebelling
against the NTC for a variety of reasons, today, the urinating by NATO forces
on the bodies of Afghanis is dominating the news and discussions in this pious
Muslim country.
NATO has already lost much of its claimed public relations boost
following its Halloween night ending of the bombing. One suspects that
this is because of an accumulation of many more recently discovered cases of
NATO bombing of civilians in Libya.
The population today in Libya is increasingly furious because
more and more cases are coming to light concerning the high numbers of children
who have been killed by NATO.
In addition to the fury caused by the urinating GIs, NATO
officials are being ridiculed for all their denials that their bombing missions
here in Libya, numbering more than 11,000, caused civilians deaths and their
claims that NATO forces conducted themselves according to higher moral and
military standards, and sometimes put themselves at risk to avoid civilian
casualties. The claims remind some of a generation of similar ludicrous public
relations campaign undertaken regularly by the Israeli government.
The signs from Libya are that this country remains volatile and
that contrary to NATO claims that it put into place a “new democratic Libya”
that the predictable next chapter is starting to unfold that may bring the end
of the NTC before the coming June elections when it is scheduled to be
replaced.
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