Libya: Sequence of events and who or what next

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Rebels flash the V-sign for victory during celebrations in the newly named Martyr’s Square, formerly known as Green Square, after rebel forces overran Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s fortified Bab al-Azizya headquarters in the capital Tripoli, following h

The age-old Gaddafi regime is in the final days, if not already at the very end. The worst it can do is to cause more unnecessary deaths and destruction as the last desperate gasp. The house of cards built over 42 years is about to fall apart. The cocoon of absolute authority and invincibility is about to come crashing down, writes Omar Khasru

WHAT had started with the self-immolation of a young Tunisian street vendor in December 2010 to protest against the harassment and humiliation by municipal officials has resulted in the overthrow of two Arab dictators and the third one is on the brink. The act of Mohamed Bouazizi was the catalyst for the revolution and the ouster of Ben Ali from Tunisian presidency after 23 years of power, and the advent of Arab Spring.

This was followed by the ouster of the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak. It sparked uprisings in Yemen, Bahrain, Libya and elsewhere. Gaddafi, the tyrannical Libyan ruler for 42 years, is about to be toppled and the presidents of Yemen and Syria are tottering.

The regime changes in the last two countries would seem only a matter of time. The Arab Spring would then complete the first phase. The hope is that democratic wind would blow freely in these countries after the long-awaited fall of the despicable despots.

As I watched the fast-track entrance of Libyan rebels into Tripoli on TV, I could not help but remember December 1971 in Dhaka. There are obvious differences in the two situations but also close similarities. The rebels entering Tripoli without much resistance from Gaddafi loyalists was similar to liberation fighters entering Dhaka with no serious challenge from the vaunted Pakistan army. The rumour earlier was rampant that the Pakistani troops would fight a stiff final battle. But they were war-weary, defeated, dispirited and had realised the futility of it all. They did not put up much of a fight.

The major resemblance also is in the significant and valuable support from dominant outside powers. In the case of Bangladesh, it was our big neighbour which eagerly offered assistance because independence of Bangladesh coincided with and advanced the strategic interests of India. In the case of Libyan freedom seekers, it is the NATO support and air strikes against Gaddafi troops and strategic spots. That enabled a ragtag band of Libyan rebels to organise and overrun the opposing troops in six months and enter Tripoli which it is about to capture. This is just as the Indian support had greatly hastened the process for Bangladesh.

The strongest similarity is the unfettered joy and spontaneous celebration of the common people in the new-found freedom, especially since both countries are unwavering testimony to the Martin Luther, Jr assertion that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be snatched by the oppressed. There is nothing like it and nothing else would give the people such complete, collective and unified feeling of ecstasy and thrill and a pure sense of ultimate triumph.

The struggle that will ensue in healing the wounds, national reconciliation, nation building, trial of war criminals and setting up a government that would give the highest priority to sustaining freedom, enhancing human rights and working towards peace, prosperity and progress of the country is monumental. The possible pitfalls, hiccups, discontent and failures would bring everyone down to harsh and stark reality. But that would all come later.

It is useful to present a short chronology of events that has resulted in a near outright victory of rebel forces in Libya. On February 14 of this year, three days after the overthrow of the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, calls went out through the social media of web-based Facebook and mobile phones for peaceful demonstrations against Muammar Gaddafi. The Libyan leader, who has ruled over the country for more than four decades, had supported Mubarak during the Egyptian upheaval.

In response to the clarion call, about 200 demonstrators participated in the protest march in the coastal city of Benghazi on February 16. Several of them were arrested in fully expected harsh police action. A Libyan high official dismissed the incident as minor internecine skirmishes with ‘just young people fighting each other.’

For the rest of the seminal month, protests continued and turned violent and increasingly confrontational but the casualty toll was unclear. There were reports of bloody clashes in Benghazi, with soldiers firing tear gas and bullets. Witnesses said protests also erupted in other cities. Human Rights Watch reported that 84 people had been killed in Libyan demonstrations in February.

A few other notable events of the month were the resignation of Libya’s justice minister to protest the ‘use of excessive force’, Gaddafi declaring that he will never leave Libya and ‘will die as a martyr,’ the United Nations Security Council condemning repression against peaceful demonstrators and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon deploring ‘egregious violations’ of human rights in Libya and the US president, Barack Obama, signing an executive order freezing Gaddafi’s assets.

Among a flurry of other actions last February were: UN Security Council imposing sanctions against Libya and referring Gaddafi to the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity, the opposition movement announcing the former justice minister, Mustafa Abdul, Jalil as its leader, European Union banning sale of arms to Libya and freezing the assets of Gaddafi and his family.

The most notable event in March was the UN Security Council imposing a no-fly zone over Libya, with China, Russia, Germany, India and Brazil abstaining. It authorised all necessary measures to protect civilians. This gave green light to French, British and American military forces to begin immediate military operations. NATO eventually agreed to take command of the mission in place of individual countries and concerted NATO air strikes played a pivotal role in the eventual rebel success.

Also in March, a Libyan woman, Eman al-Obeidy, with bruises all over her body burst into a Tripoli hotel lobby claiming that Gaddafi’s militiamen had beaten and raped her. The government said that al-Obeidy was mentally ill. Later, the government changed its story and said the accused men were being investigated. At the end of the month, Libyan foreign minister Moussa Koussa arrived in London to announce that he had resigned.

In April, Gaddafi urged US President Obama to end the NATO bombing and stop what he called an ‘unjust war against a developing country,’ adding that the opposition were terrorists and members of al-Qaeda. In a speech, he exhorted NATO to end air strikes, accusing the international coalition of killing civilians and destroying the infrastructure in a bid to take over the oil fields. NATO missile attack killed one of Gaddafi’s sons and several of his grandchildren.

As NATO air strikes continued, the conflict between Gaddafi forces and rebels seemed to reach a stalemate in May and June. The European Union opened office in the rebel-held city of Benghazi. Several countries, including Spain and Germany, recognised the opposition National Transitional Council as Libya’s legitimate government. The country’s oil minister defected to Italy. South African President Jacob Zuma lashed out at NATO, accusing it of misusing UN resolution ‘for regime change, political assassinations and military occupation.’ International Criminal Court issued warrants against Gaddafi and his son Saif al-Islam for murder and persecution.

In July, United States and United Kingdom recognised the National Transitional Council as ‘the legitimate governing authority’ in Libya. The commander of Libya’s rebel army was assassinated in Benghazi under mysterious circumstances. The rebel forces claimed huge successes as the battles raged on.

Things seemed to deteriorate for the regime in the battlefield in early August as Gaddafi in a rambling speech urged Libyans to ‘pick up your weapons; go to the fight in order to liberate Libya inch by inch from the traitors.’ In mid-August, a NATO spokesman said that anti-Gaddafi forces had assuming control of the key approaches to Tripoli. A Gaddafi spokesman offered a differing opinion asserting that victory was imminent.

On August 18, the Libyan prime minister, al-Mahmoodi, declared that Libyan military was ‘powerful enough to finish this battle,’ at the same time calling for dialogue to resolve the crisis peacefully rather than militarily. The next day, US officials said that Gaddafi was making preparations for a ‘last stand’ in Tripoli as NATO air campaign continued amidst reports of rebel advances.

Libyan rebels entered Tripoli on August 20 largely unopposed at the outskirts of the city. Libyan official spokesman rejected the rebel claim that Gaddafi was seeking safe haven, saying that neither he nor his family planned to leave the country. In an audio address on state television, Gaddafi called on Libyans to rally to the defence of Tripoli on August 21. The rebels declared, ‘Gaddafi is finished,’ while NATO said his regime was ‘crumbling.’

On August 22, a rebel spokesman said Libya is under the control of the opposition, but intense clashes still raged in parts of Tripoli. Gaddafi’s whereabouts were unknown. ‘The real moment of victory is when Gaddafi is captured,’ National Transitional Council chairman told reporters.

The overall situation is murky, somewhat confusing and unclear as is usually the case in the middle of claims and counter-claims without independent or reliable verification. The situation is ‘very fluid,’ US President Barack Obama said, ‘There remains a degree of uncertainty and there are still regime elements who pose a threat.’ ‘But this much is clear: the Gaddafi regime is coming to an end and the future of Libya is in the hands of its people,’ he added.

This much is clear. The age-old Gaddafi regime is in the final days, if not already at the very end. The worst it can do is to cause more unnecessary deaths and destruction as the last desperate gasp. The house of cards built over 42 years is about to fall apart. The cocoon of absolute authority and invincibility is about to come crashing down.

First Tunisia, followed by Egypt and now Libya, demonstrating the Arab spring is alive and kicking, kicking out the corrupt and power hungry oppressive dictators one at a time. What or who is next? Even with uncertain and questionable future for these countries, freedom-loving people everywhere can rejoice and sing the hymns of freedom.

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Libya aims for govt in 2 weeks

Libya’s interim leader Mustafa Abdel Jalil set a two-week target Monday for the country to have a new government and said a commission of inquiry will probe Muammar Gaddafi’s killing.

‘We have begun talks (on forming a government), and this matter will not take a month but will be finished within two weeks,’ the National Transitional Council chairman told a news conference in the eastern city of Benghazi.

A day after the NTC’s declaration of Libya’s liberation in the wake of Gaddafi’s capture and death, Abdel Jalil also said a commission of inquiry is being set up to probe the controversial killing of the fallen strongman.

‘In response to international calls, we have started to put in place a commission tasked with investigating the circumstances of Muammar Gaddafi’s death in the clash with his circle as he was being captured,’ Abdel Jalil said.

And after having raised concern in the West by stressing on Sunday that the

new Libya will be governed in line with Islamic sharia law, the NTC chief gave assurances it would remain a ‘moderate’ Muslim country.

‘I would like to assure the international community that we as Libyans are Muslims but moderate Muslims,’ he said.

The French foreign ministry said Paris will keep a watch over Libya’s respect for human rights after the promise of a system of sharia to run post-Gaddafi Libya.

‘We will be watchful of respect for human rights and democratic principles, notably cultural and religious diversity and the equality of men and women to which France is unswervingly attached,’ ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said.

And the EU foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, said the introduction of sharia in Libya must respect human rights.

Abdel Jalil’s two-week timeline came as Libya’s new leaders embarked on the tough task of forging an interim government uniting disparate political forces after 42 years of Gaddafi’s iron-fisted rule, under which sharia took a back seat.

‘Today, we begin preparing for a new phase... the phase after the liberation, the phase that we will plan and work hard for the future of Libya,’ said Abdel Hafiz Ghoga, vice chairman of the NTC.

‘Let us start work on the adoption of the constitution,’ he said Sunday as he declared liberation from Gaddafi’s rule at a rally attended by tens of thousands of revellers in Benghazi, birthplace of the anti-Gaddafi revolt.

Under an NTC roadmap, an interim government is to be formed and then polls for a constituent assembly to draft a new basic law held within eight months — the first democratic vote since Gaddafi came to power in a 1969 coup.

Parliamentary and presidential elections would be held within a year after that — or within 20 months of Sunday’s declaration.

The head of operations in Libya for NATO, which has said it will wind down its seven-month mission by October 31, said on

Monday that the country is ‘essentially’ free from threat of attack by Gaddafi loyalists.

‘All areas have been freed,’ Lieutenant-General Charles Bouchard said at a video news conference from the operation’s Naples operational headquarters. ‘The threat of Gaddafi remnants is essentially gone.’

The long-awaited liberation announcement came amid raging controversy over the circumstances of Gaddafi’s death after he was taken alive during the fall of his hometown Sirte last Thursday.

Disquiet has grown internationally over how Gaddafi met his end after NTC fighters hauled him out of a culvert where he was hiding following NATO air strikes on the convoy in which he had been trying to flee his falling hometown.

Mobile phone videos show him still alive at that point.

The corpses of Gaddafi — which a bullet wound to the head — his son Mutassim, and decades-long confidant Abubakr Yunes still lay in a meat market freezer on the outskirts of the city of Misrata on Monday.

But government officials said the body of Gaddafi would no longer be kept on public view and guards shut the gates at the cold storage container where it had been displayed since the fallen leader was killed four days ago, reports Reuters.

From 3:00pm (1300 GMT), the public will no longer be able to view the body,’ a National Transitional Council official said. Guards at the container locked the gates to the surrounding compound at around 3:30pm, barring access.

Since Friday, thousands of ordinary Libyans have viewed the bodies of the slain men, many taking pictures on their mobile phone.

In the devastated city of Sirte, hundreds of returning residents on Monday found their streets littered with corpses, and their houses pillaged and destroyed.

Burst water pipes — gutted during the final, NATO-backed offensive by NTC fighters — flooded streets, while electricity inside people’s homes remained cut and taps dry.

Angry residents said they were struggling to find water and food.

‘Sarkozy is a horrible man!’ an old man yelled at a group of French journalists, referring to France’s president Nicolas Sarkozy who spearheaded international support for the revolution.

Source: newagebd.com/newspaper1

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Gaddafi, in meat locker, still divides Libya

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UN rights office for full probe into the death

Reuters . Misrata, Libya

Muammar Gaddafi’s body lay in an old meat store on Friday as arguments over a burial, and his killing after being captured, dogged efforts by Libya’s new leaders to make a formal start on a new era of democracy.

With a bullet wound visible through the familiar curly hair, the corpse shown to Reuters in Misrata bore other marks of the violent end to a violent life that was being broadcast to the world in snatches of grainy, gory cell phone video.

The interim prime minister offered a tale of ‘crossfire’ to explain the fallen strongman’s death after he was dragged, very much alive, from a highway drainage culvert. But with footage showing him being beaten, while demanding legal rights, to the sound of gunfire, many assume he was simply summarily shot.

Gaddafi’s wife, Aisha, who found refuge in neighbouring Algeria while her husband and several sons kept their word to fight to the death, demanded an inquiry

from the United Nations. Its human rights arm said one was merited.

Controversy over the final moments of a man who once held the world in thrall with a mixture of eccentricity and thuggery raised questions about the ability of Libya’s National Transitional Council to control the men with guns, as well as discomfort for Western allies about respect for human rights among those who claimed to be fighting for just those ideals.

The body appeared to be the latest object of wrangling among the factions of fighters who overthrew him — along with control of weapons, of ministries and of Libya’s oil wealth.

Libyans, and the Western allies who backed their revolt that ended Gaddafi’s 42-year rule two months ago, have indicated their impatience to begin what the United States declared was a democratic ‘new era’.

But regional and other rivalries were holding up the disposal of the corpse of Gaddafi, who was seized by fighters on Thursday, and a formal declaration of Libya’s ‘liberation’.

A failure to find Gaddafi’s son and heir-apparent, Saif al-Islam, left another loose end after Thursday’s surprise climax to eight months of war, when the 69-year-old fugitive was discovered hiding in a drainage culvert under a roadway.

NATO jets had halted a bid by a large armed convoy to break out of his last redoubt in his hometown of Sirte.

Addul-Salam Eleiwa, a commander of the Misrata fighters who brought Gaddafi’s body to the city whose resistance made it a symbol of courage for the rebels, said it would be treated with due respect and buried soon.

Showing the corpse to Reuters, he reflected Muslim custom to inter remains within the day. ‘He will get his right, like any Muslim. His body will be washed and treated with dignity. I expect he will be buried in a Muslim cemetery within 24 hours.’

The body lay on a mattress in a cold storage plant formerly used for meat and other produce in Misrata’s old market area.

A senior military commander for the National Transitional Council said members of Gaddafi’s Gaddadfa tribe were talking to the fighters to discuss the possibility of taking on the task of burying him — a procedure that would follow a tradition also recognised when Saddam Hussein was hanged in Iraq.

However, unlike Saddam the NTC hoped that Gaddafi, his son Mo’tassim and others of his entourage could be buried in secret, to prevent the site becoming a place of pilgrimage.

A senior official of the NTC said there was still division in the upper reaches of the interim authority over where Gaddafi’s final resting place should be. ‘They are not agreeing on the place of burial. Under Islam he should have been buried quickly but they have to reach an agreement whether he is to be buried in Misrata, Sirte, or somewhere else,’ he said.

Interim oil minister Ali Tarhouni said he was urging colleagues to leave the body in cold storage for some days to help dispel any doubts that Gaddafi was indeed dead.

Saif al-Islam was reported by one senior official of the interim government to have escaped the clan’s final showdown in Sirte and to be heading across the Sahara for Niger, which has given refuge to another son and other senior aides.

The United Nations human rights office called for a full investigation into the death of Muammar Gaddafi and voiced concerns that he may have been executed.

Fighters from Misrata, Libya’s third city, have been among the most prominent groups pushing for a bigger say in government.

A declaration of liberation would also, under present plans, formalise a move of the government from Benghazi, the second city and home of the rebellion, in the far east, to Tripoli, the capital, in the west.

But NTC officials were still unclear as to whether the declaration itself would be made in Benghazi or Tripoli.

Long-standing regional rivalries in a country only put together under Italian colonial rule in the 1930s are part of a complex of tribal, ethnic and other divisions which Gaddafi exploited at times to control the thinly populated country of six million and its substantial oil and gas resources.

As NATO powers prepared to wind down their air support mission which helped topple Gaddafi from Tripoli two months ago, US secretary of state Hillary Clinton said his death marked the start of a ‘new era’.

Oil minister Tarhouni said that he was hoping he might be named prime minister next week as the new phase of transition to democracy begins. A period of eight months that had been hoped for as a schedule for a new constitution might be optimistic, however, Tarhouni added.

Confusion over exactly how Gaddafi died illustrates the challenge Libyans face to summon order out of the armed chaos that is the legacy of eight months of conflict.

The killing or capture of senior aides, including possibly two sons, as an armoured convoy braved NATO air strikes in a desperate bid to break out of Sirte, may ease fears that diehards could regroup  —though cell-phone video, apparently of Gaddafi alive and being beaten, may inflame his sympathisers.

Source: newagebd.com/newspaper1

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Oil nears $110 to Libya crisis

Agence France-Presse. Singapore

Brent crude oil rose to nearly $110 a barrel in Asian trade Wednesday, strengthened the connection of Muammar al-Gaddafi with the crisis in the oil-rich Libya after rebels overrun, said analysts.

The Treaty has steadily increased over the last two days after the initial euphoria, the Libyan oil production would return, verdunstet to levels pre-revolt as there will be the country's facilities take some time to go back online.

Brent North Sea crude oil for October afternoon delivery trade enabled lower diving nine cents on $109.22, but analysts said the General trajectory for prices trend higher.

Monday's message that Gaddafi could rule soon to end, prices to under $106 dropped.

New York's main contract, West Texas intermediate light sweet crude for October settlement, facilitated 26 cents to $85.18 per barrel.

Brent is affected the European markets more than WTI the situation in Libya as oil from the North Sea and Libya are used.

About 85 percent of Libyan oil production was exported to Europe, until the revolt of the country disrupted production six months ago.

"The fact that not only the fighting not over, but the realization that it takes at least a year to get the production back to 1.6 million barrels per day, Brent has the effect on that," said Jim Nicholson, regional Vice President with Argus Media energy market News Publisher.

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