Kim Sungupta: 'We needed foreign help – but now Libyans must end all this in Tripoli'

'We needed foreign help – but now Libyans must end all this in Tripoli'
By Kim Sengupta in Ajdabiya
The Independent (UNited Kingdom)

The bodies lay strewn, dismembered and burnt. Some of the faces expressed the horrors of the last moments, others lay peaceful, in repose. Around them were the remains of the tanks and artillery of Muammar Gaddafi's army, destroyed in an hour of pulverising and relentless air strikes.

A terrible scene of desolation unfolded on a field edged with pretty wild flowers.

The regime's offensive against the rebels had not survived the first contact with the military might of the West. It remains to be seen whether these were the first shots of the "long war" vowed by the enraged dictator in Tripoli. But for now plans to reconquer land in the east lost to the revolution were in ashes.

In less than 24 hours the loyalist forces have been driven from forward positions in Benghazi to the outskirts of Ajdabiya, the town whose capture was viewed as making it a near certainty that the capital of "Free Libya" would fall. Instead, they were now in chaotic retreat, offering the rebels the unexpected chance to take the war to their enemy's heartland.

Colonel Gaddafi's troops appeared to have taken no action to protect themselves from what was about to befall. Perhaps they were unaware of the ultimatum given by the international community. They were caught; vulnerable; in the open; and what was left afterwards resembled a ghastly montage in miniature of the carnage on the road to Basra when American and British warplanes bombed Iraqi forces fleeing from Kuwait.

In their panic, many of the soldiers had left engines running in their tanks and trucks as they fled across fields. Some raided farmhouses on the way to swap their uniforms for civilian clothes. But others did not make it, their corpses burning with their vehicles or torn apart by spraying shrapnel as they ran to get away.

The rebels, the Shabaab, seemed initially yesterday to be too surprised by the enormity of what had taken place to take advantage of the enemy's rout. Their fighters lingered for long periods, having their photographs taken with the armour, now shredded metal, which had inspired so much trepidation in recent battles. Some fetched their families to join them.

Eventually there was a disorganised push by a handful, in just half a dozen cars, towards where the enemy had fallen back. At Ajdabiya Gate, leading into the town, The Independent witnessed loyalist troops regrouping to carry out an ambush, killing two of their pursuers and capturing three others. But by early evening a convoy of around 50 vehicles was heading towards the new front line with the rebel commanders confident that their demoralised opponents would not put up a fight.

The next stops for the revolutionary forces, maintained Captain Fayyad Bakri, would be Brega, Ras Lanuf and Bin Jawad, towns recently lost to the regime, and then Sirte, the birthplace of Gaddafi and a loyalist stronghold.

"After that we shall be going to Tripoli," he declared. "Although there may already be a revolt there by then. People will rise up against this evil man now they see he cannot get away with terrorising people. We accept we could not have done this without foreign help, especially from the French, and we are very grateful. But... there must be a Libyan end to this."

However, while rebel forces had the upper hand in Benghazi, the regime mounted a new assault on Misrata, 150km east of Tripoli, despite being on the receiving end of coalition air strikes. Tanks and soldiers entered the town centre and snipers on rooftops opened fire. Mohammed Abdelbaset, a rebel official said: "There are so many casualties we simply cannot count them." Boats blockaded the port preventing medicine and food getting through.

US and British warships had launched 110 Tomahawk missiles against air defences around Tripoli and Misrata. The regime claimed 48 people died and 115 were injured, casualties condemned by the Arab League whose support for a no-fly zone has been crucial in underpinning Western military action. In Tripoli, Colonel Gaddafi promised a "long, drawn-out war with no limits" warning his Western enemies: "We shall live and you shall die."

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Tom Engelhardt: The United States of Fear

The United States of Fear
by Tom Engelhardt
Tom Dispatch

...

You Wanna Be Safer? Really?

You must have a friend who’s extremely critical of everyone else but utterly opaque when it comes to himself. Well, that’s this country, too.

Here’s a singular fact to absorb: we now know that a bunch of Yemeni al-Qaeda adherents have a far better hit on just who we are, psychologically speaking, and what makes us tick than we do. Imagine that. They have a more accurate profile of us than our leading intelligence profilers undoubtedly do of them.

Recently, they released an online magazine laying out just how much the two U.S.-bound cargo-bay bombs that caused panic cost them: a mere $4,200 and the efforts of “less than six brothers” over three months. They even gave their plot a name, Operation Hemorrhage (and what they imagined hemorrhaging, it seems, was not American blood, but treasure).

Now, they're laughing at us for claiming the operation failed because -- thanks reportedly to a tip from Saudi intelligence -- those bombs didn’t go off. “This supposedly ‘foiled plot,’” they wrote, “will without a doubt cost America and other Western countries billions of dollars in new security measures. That is what we call leverage.”

They are, they claim, planning to use the "security phobia that is sweeping America” not to cause major casualties, but to blow a hole in the U.S. economy. "We knew that cargo planes are staffed by only a pilot and a co-pilot, so our objective was not to cause maximum casualties but to cause maximum losses to the American economy" via the multi-billion-dollar U.S. freight industry.

This is a new definition of asymmetrical warfare. The terrorists never have to strike an actual target. It’s not even incumbent upon them to build a bomb that works. Just about anything will do. To be successful, they just have to repeatedly send things in our direction, inciting the expectable Pavlovian reaction from the U.S. national security state, causing it to further tighten its grip (grope?) at yet greater taxpayer expense.

In a sense, both the American national security state and al-Qaeda are building their strength and prestige as our lives grow more constrained and our treasure vanishes.

So you wanna be safer? I mean, actually safer? Here’s a simple formula for beginning to improve American safety and security at every level. End our trillion dollar wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; set our military to defending our own borders (and no, projecting power abroad does not normally qualify as a defense of the United States); begin to shut down our global empire of bases; stop building grotesque embassy-citadels abroad (one even has a decorative moat, for god’s sake!); end our overseas war stimulus packages and bring some of that money home. In short, stop going out of our way to tick off foreigners and then pouring our treasure into an American war machine intent on pursuing a generational global war against them.

Of course, the U.S. national security state has quite a different formula for engendering safety in America: fight the Afghan War until hell freezes over; keep the odd base or two in Iraq; dig into the Persian Gulf region; send U.S. Special Operations troops into any country where a terrorist might possibly lurk; and make sure the drones aren’t far behind. In other words, reinforce our war state by ensuring that we’re eternally in a state of war, and then scare the hell out of Americans by repeatedly insisting that we’re in imminent danger, that shoe, underwear, and someday butt bombers will destroy our country, our lives, and our civilization. Insist that a single percent of risk is 1% too much when it comes to terror and American lives, and then demand that those who feel otherwise be dealt with punitively, if they won’t shut up.

It’s a formula for leaving you naked in airports, while increasing the oppressive power of the state. And here’s the dirty, little, distinctly Orwellian secret: the national security state can’t do without those Yemeni terrorists (and vice versa), as well as our homegrown variety. All of them profit from a world of war. You don’t -- and on that score, what happens in an airport line should be the least of your worries.

The national security state is eager to cop a feel. As long as Americans don’t grasp the connections between our war state and our “safety,” things will only get worse and, in the end, our world will genuinely be in danger.

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