Thread: The Libyan Crisis

Who will be the lucky one to take dear Muammar in?

looks like the rebels are about to be giving up,

not a good sign, will send a nice signal to the other dictators though

ATHENS, Greece (AP) - A Greek official says a private Libyan jet has crossed through Greek-monitored airspace heading from Libya to Egypt.
The official says the small civilian aircraft flew through the airspace monitored by Greek air-traffic controllers for about 15 minutes on Wednesday. The official isn't saying who was on the plane. Greek state TV says the plane belongs to the Libyan government but cites no source for its information.
The Greek official spoke only on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to give details of the flight.
There have been no public contacts between the Libyan regime and Egypt's ruling generals since the Libyan uprising broke out on Feb. 15.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/n...e-oil-fighting

Libya: BBC team beaten as fighting intensifies

Libyan army and secret police captured, detained and beat a BBC team while they were trying to reach Zawiya.

News DeskMarch 9, 2011 11:33

Libyan rebel fighters launch a rocket towards a position held by forces loyal to Gaddafi during clashes outside the town of Ras Lanuf on March 9, 2011. (Roberto Schmidt/AFP/Getty Images)

Libyan forces captured, detained and brutally beat a BBC news team while they were trying to reach the western city of Zawiya, the BBC states.

The three-member team say Libya's army and secret police beat them with fists, knees and rifles and then performed mock executions.

"We were lined up against the wall. I was the last in line - facing the wall," Chris Cobb-Smith told the BBC. "I looked and I saw a plain-clothes guy with a small sub-machine gun. He put it to everyone's neck. I saw him and he screamed at me. Then he walked up to me, put the gun to my neck and pulled the trigger twice. The bullets whisked past my ear. The soldiers just laughed."

The news team said they witnessed other detainees who were hooded, handcuffed and often screaming in agony.

The team, which was detained Monday and then held for 21 hours, has since flown out of the country.

The attack on the journalists, which included being held in a cage while others were beaten around them, represents the most serious case yet involving the targeting of international media, the Guardian reports.

Meanwhile, forces loyal to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and opposition forces engaged in some of the fiercest fighting yet on Wednesday, as both sides battle for control of the north African nation.

Gaddafi forces attacked rebels at the strategic oil town of Ras Lanuf, ending their attempts to advance further west.

An Al Jazeera correspondent said Gaddafi's airforce targeted junctions at the entrance to the town and attacked an oil facility there in three places.

"There are huge plumes of smoke leaping into the air. We can see mortar fire from Gaddafi troops and the rebels are firing rockets towards the west," according to Al Jazeera.

Other reports state that the heart of the oil refinery was not attacked directly.

Gaddafi's forces on Wednesday continued a sustained assault on Zawiya, 30 miles west of Tripoli, surrounding it with tanks and targeting the main square with snipers, Reuters reported.

It quoted a rebel fighter named Ibrahim saying Gaddafi's forces were in control of the main road and suburbs, while rebels held on to the central square.

"There are many dead people and they can't even bury them," he said. "Zawiya is deserted. There's nobody on the streets. No animals, not even birds in the sky," he said.

The government and rebels both claimed to be in control of Zawiya on Wednesday, the New York Times reports.

"Across the country from each other, in fights of vastly different complexions, Ras Lanuf and Zawiya have become proving grounds in Libya’s emerging civil war. In the east, on a battlefield of desert, dunes and scrub, the rebel force has matured and, improbably, retained control of the town for more than week. But under steady bombardment by government jets and kept at bay by superior artillery, the rebels have not been able to advance toward Tripoli," it states.

"In Zawiya, the rebels have held out against a withering assault by Colonel Gaddafi's forces, including snipers and tanks in close-quarters urban combat. As scores of civilians have been killed, the government has responded with more attacks and apparent falsehoods about its progress and the conduct of its troops."

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has warned any attempt to impose a no-fly zone over his country will be met with armed resistance and be taken as proof that Western powers are trying to steal Libya's oil.

His defiant remarks in a Turkish television interview and a speech broadcast by Libyan state television came as NATO countries weighed the possibility of imposing the measure to halt air strikes on anti-government rebels.

“If they take such a decision [to impose a no-fly zone], it will be useful for Libya, because the Libyan people will see the truth, that what they want is to take control of Libya and to steal their oil,” Gaddafi said in the Turkish TV interview reported by the BBC.

"They want to take your petrol," he said. "This is what America, this what the French, those colonialists, want." He added: "The Libyan people will take up arms against them."

Libya appears to have sent envoys to meet and negotiate with western governments who have called for sanctions and actions against the regime, Reuters reports.

"Libyan government emissaries appeared to have flown to Brussels to talk to European Union and NATO officials meeting on Thursday and Friday, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said, suggesting the situation was very fluid," it states. "Portugal said a Gaddafi envoy met its foreign minister on Wednesday to explain Tripoli's view of the conflict and Greece said another will meet Greek Deputy Foreign Minister Dimitris Dollis, in Cairo on Thursday morning. There were no details of the kind of message the emissaries were bringing."

Britain and France have urged Washington to back their calls to shut down airspace over Libya in response to Gaddafi's use of force against civilians. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said any decision should be made by the United Nations and not led by the United States.

The attacks on Ras Lanuf come amid increasing deadlock between the rebels and Gaddafi's men as the country's four-week-old uprising develops into what some are now calling an all-out civil war.

According to GlobalPost correspondent Nichole Sobecki, reporting from near the frontline, enthusiasm among the rebels is waning as their earlier triumphs are eclipsed by fierce attacks from government troops backed by warplanes

Great set of photos from Al Jazeera's reporter Eben Hill, currently in Libya.

Follow him on Twitter.. Twitter

The road to Sirte - a set on Flickr

Around 300 kilometres of coastal highway lies between Sirte, the well-defended hometown of longtime Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, and Brega, the last relatively safe rebel-held town in the east.

In between is Ras Lanuf, Libya's largest oil refinery, and Sidra, an oil-exporting port. Gaddafi's jets have struck Ras Lanuf, Sidra and Brega in recent days, and the highway to Sirte remains a shifting battleground between the Libyan regime's troops and mostly untrained rebels armed with confiscated heavy weapons.

All photos by Al Jazeera English online producer Evan Hill.

LIBYA: Government forces preparing for full-scale attack on rebels; West should butt out or face defeat, Kadafi's son says

March 10, 2011 | 10:26 am

Seif Islam Kadafi, son of Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi , said Thursday that forces loyal to the government were preparing for a full-scale attack on anti-government forces and that Western countries would face defeat if they chose to support the uprising, according to a report from Bloomberg News.

In a news conference in Tripoli broadcast on the British television network Sky News, the younger Kadafi said the troops were ready to die to defend the country and that the offensive was getting underway, the Bloomberg report said.

Seif Kadafi also said that two Dutch soldiers who had been captured would be released and warned to stay away, Bloomberg reported.

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth...427537949.html

Rebel push stalls outside Ras Lanuf

Hundreds of miles from Gaddafi's home town of Sirte, opposition forces are being pushed back by mortar and air strikes.

Evan Hill Last Modified: 10 Mar 2011 14:11 GMT


The rebels' lack of training might prove more fatal than their limited armory [Evan Hill]

Three weeks after the outbreak of violence in Libya, an impressive rebel advance that liberated most of country's east with lightning speed has stalled outside the key oil refinery of Ras Lanuf.

Until now, armed but untrained fighters had managed to easily overthrow military garrisons in town after town: first Ajdabiya, then Brega, and finally Ras Lanuf, which no one expected would fall easily.

For weeks, rumours were thicker than Gaddafi's troops on the road west. The feared Khamis Brigade, a special-forces unit named after one of Gaddafi's sons, was nowhere to be seen. Lone air force fighters made half-hearted sorties against rebel positions; purposefully or by accident, they never hit their target.

But now, the rebel wave seems to have broken, at least momentarily. Gaddafi troops have halted the opposition's advance at Bin Jawad, a small town between Ras Lanuf and Sirte, Gaddafi's reputedly heavily fortified home town.

Exactly how the loyalist troops have countered the rebel advance remains somewhat of a mystery, since journalists rarely witness head-to-head fighting.

On Wednesday, rebels armed with AK-47 assault rifles, truck-mounted machine guns, anti-aircraft batteries and even what appeared to be mobile Grad rocket launchers advanced west of Ras Lanuf but were pushed back in the face of Gaddafi mortar fire.

An Al Jazeera team on the front lines saw only one army mortar team operating in the area, but there were probably more, since a steady rain of shells fell forced rebels to flee back down the road. Still, the regime forces deployed so far along Gaddafi’s eastern front are surprisingly light: There are no tanks, no rockets, no heavily armed battalions of soldiers advancing under heavy machine gun fire.

Meanwhile, the skill of Gaddafi's air force has seemed to be on the rise. After several days of air strikes near rebel convoys and ammunition depots that yielded only craters in the desert sand, jets on Tuesday and Wednesday hit oil-company residences at Ras Lanuf – they have been mostly abandoned – and storage terminals at Sidra, a nearby port. The latter bombing ignited huge blasts of oil and sent powerful streams of thick, black smoke into the sky.

Untrained rebels

Rebels are armed with large-calibre anti-aircraft weapons, which they fire in the air with gleeful abandon when any journalist approaches to observe, but they aren't trained in their use and do not seem able to track Gaddafi’s jets fast enough to hit them. Rebels said they brought down a Libyan jet on Monday, but no news organisation could independently verify the claim.

Then there are the surface-to-air missiles (SAMs). Though rebels have been photographed firing SAMs, which are likely Russian-made, the weapons don't seem to be in wide or effective use. New York Times writer CJ Chivers has written that experts believe many of the SAMs are old and broken-down. The rebels also keep many of their weapons exposed to the sand and sun, which probably doesn't help their condition.

“We have enough men, and brave men, but the problem is the weapons. Gaddafi has all the modern weapons, the heavy weapons,” said Salah Younis, a 45-year-old Arabic teacher who was watching convoys of fighters pass through a checkpoint at Ajdabiya toward the front lines recently.
But the rebels' lack of training might prove more fatal than their limited armory. Frontline fighters have displayed notable bravery and have organised fairly effective supply lines for weapons, food and fuel, but they often flee when presented with serious resistance and seem to have no organised hierarchy, raising the possibility that the recent series of rebel victories was the result more of strategic withdrawals by Gaddafi troops rather than their full-scale rout.

When rebels briefly took Bin Jawad earlier this week, witnesses said they began celebrating prematurely in the town centre and were ambushed by Gaddafi loyalists who had hidden themselves inside houses in the town. Opposition supporters alleged that enemy troops used residents as human shields, but that claim could not be verified. What was clear was that the rebels fled Bin Jawad and have yet to fight their way back.

Balance of power

One man waiting to refill at a petrol station on the east-west road said that "brave" men had come to the front from major eastern cities such as Benghazi and al-Baida but that the fighting had stalled. He worked at the Ras Lanuf refinery, and his family had already fled far away. He declined to give his name, expressing concern that he still didn’t know which way the "balance of power" would tip.

Another man, Salah Abdelgader, sat outside the Ras Lanuf oil company residences – a spot where rebels have arranged a staging area and checkpoint – and smoked a cigarette as he watched fighters fire their anti-aircraft guns for show. He bemoaned their lack of leadership. If defected army generals did not come to lead them, they were finished, he said.

The outcome may ultimately depend on whether NATO or the Arab League decide to intercede on the rebels' behalf. The Libyan national opposition council has already called for a no-fly zone, but the United States and most European powers have said they don't want to establish one without the United Nations' imprimatur.

Many rebels want foreign powers to go further than that. Several have told Al Jazeera in impromptu roadside interviews that they would be happy if foreign jets conducted limited air strikes in the country, perhaps targeting Gaddafi's personal residence and command centre in Tripoli, the Bab Aziziya. They say they'd even welcome such attacks by the United States, which bombed Libya 25 years ago.

"Oh, that would be great!" Younis said with a smile.

Many draw a distinction between air strikes and boots on the ground. Nobody wants to see a foreign army, especially US troops, come into Libya; residents raise the spectre of Iraq, saying once the Americans come, they don't go.

Gaddafi superiority

Air strikes, however, might be a necessity. Gaddafi has total superiority in the skies above Ras Lanuf. The well-aimed bombing run that ignited the oil terminals at Sidra on Wednesday was an obvious sign that he can strike when and where he wants. His troops also have had three weeks to prepare their defense of Sirte, and locals' estimates put the longtime leader's strength there at around 4,000 men.

There are rumours that pro-Gaddafi troops have been mining the area around Sirte, and the rebels face the likely prospect of again moving forward without much help from their defected army allies.

"The army have some people here to help out, organise, but I don’t think they’re fully participating in this thing," said Emad Abdulhamied, a 28-year-old economist who was standing near the front lines on Monday.

Abdulhamied earned his master's degree in finance from Glasgow University in Scotland in 2009. He was on leave from his job in the banking sector – he asked that we not name his employer – when the revolution broke out. Since then, he has tried to help as best as he can, though he has no experience with weapons.

In an attempt to convince Libyans not to aid the uprising, Gaddafi has said that foreign powers want to "colonise" their country, Abdulhamied said. But he still looked favorably on the possibility of US air strikes on the Bab Aziziya.

"That wouldn’t be a terrible idea," he said.

Around 98 per cent of the population in the east sides with the rebellion, Abdulhamied estimated, and around 80 or 85 per cent in the west. Those that don't he said, are people who have personally benefitted from Gaddafi's reign.

"They are willing to fight for the privileges they have," he said.

Rebel fighters move toward the front lines outside Ras Lanuf [GALLO/GETTY]

Originally Posted by StrontiumDog

enthusiasm among the rebels is waning

Its because the Libyan army has started to fight back and getting shot hurts. They are beginning to realise there is more to this fighting than driving up and down a road firing bullets into the air and the western powers will not want to spill their blood for them.

We have today the French taking on the world from Paris, last week the UK shit themselves when there eliste SAS fucked up and the worlds largest super power cruises around the Medittereanan sea burning expensive oil to placate a small % of it's Fox news watchers.

They will not go in because:

1. There will be many more killed if they do
2. The eastern rebels are a front for Muslim terrorists
3. The Libyan government has a credible air/sea/army force compared with the countries the "coalition" has taken on before.
4. Western regime change is not viewed, by the regional governments, as desirable.
5. They don't have an exit plan because they are spending all their "simulation time" on Iran and China.
6. They wont get a security council vote through.
7. They wont get enough "international agreement"

Libya: A no-fly zone won't stop a massacre on the ground - Telegraph

"Colonel Gaddafi may be winning. He has bided his time, tested the West’s resolve and is ready to take Libya back. Latest reports coming from Libya suggest the regime has re-captured the western town of Bin Jawad, just 30 miles from the strategic oil port of Ras Lanuf. At the time of writing it had been confirmed that, after intense fighting, the town of Zawiyah, 25 miles west of the capital Tripoli, had also fallen into regime hands.
Gaddafi’s strategy is clearer now: wait it out, regroup, and appraise the fighting and organisational ability of the rebels, as well as the West’s appetite for helping them through some form of intervention. He has not been disappointed"

Ex UK Prime Minister: Major

"In a Sky News interview, Sir John said that failing to take decisive action would harm the credibility of the international community.
“I wonder firstly what that does for the prestige of the rest of the world,” he said. “I wonder what that does to encourage other would-be dictators to believe they can act in the same sort of way elsewhere.”
“And I wonder how we would feel if nothing is done when we see the extent and the scale of the reprisals that this vengeful man will undoubtedly enact afterwards.”"

The west lost it's international credibility and legitimacy when in illegally invaded Iraq, Afghanistan and Bosnia. Remember Falluja, Gaza, Jebbain ........

The murders of the 100,000's of men, women and children carried out in the west's name has already done it.

Don't do it again.

indeed, the West has revealed itself in its true colors

and they all wonder why

Insurrection and Military Intervention: The US-NATO Attempted Coup d'Etat in Libya?

Insurrection and Military Intervention: The US-NATO Attempted Coup d'Etat in Libya?

"The US and NATO are supporting an armed insurrection in Eastern Libya, with a view to justifying a "humanitarian intervention".
This is not a non-violent protest movement as in Egypt and Tunisia. Conditions in Libya are fundamentally different. The armed insurgency in Eastern Libya is directly supported by foreign powers. The insurrection in Benghazi immediately hoisted the red, black and green banner with the crescent and star: the flag of the monarchy of King Idris, which symbolized the rule of the former colonial powers. (See Manlio Dinucci, Libya-When historical memory is erased, Global Research, Febraury 28, 2011)

US and NATO military advisers and special forces are already on the ground. The operation was planned to coincide with the protest movement in neighbouring Arab countries. Public opinion was led to believe that the protest movement had spread spontaneously from Tunisia and Egypt to Libya. "

Libya did sound different from the other protests, weapons on both sides and the violence escalating rapidly

from the beginning it did sound like a CIA op, not a movement from the people

if link above is true, then we have learned nothing from the mistakes of Iraq and Afghanistan and history is bound to repeat itself

in that sense, the west as much as Qaddafi are guilty of war crimes against the Libyan people

^ Gaddafi has been claiming similar things to the above post (^^), but he has also claimed that Al Qaeda are behind this and they were giving the insurgents drugs causing them to hallucinate.

Who to believe? Certainly anything that comes from Gaddafi is highly likely to be lies.

I'd suggest that the above piece is written by someone who is in to conspiracy theories way too much....

Clearly the rebels aren't trained or well equipped, using weapons acquired from the Libyan army, so where is this mystical funding they are talking about?

Originally Posted by StrontiumDog

Gaddafi has been claiming similar things to the above post (^^), but he has also claimed that Al Qaeda are behind this and they were giving the insurgents drugs causing them to hallucinate.

Who to believe? Certainly anything that comes from Gaddafi is highly likely to be lies.

Gaddafi graphic language might just be silly, doesn't mean he is wrong on the underlying cause

the west has been less than truthful and well intent in the last several years, at least they are not pretending anymore

Originally Posted by OhOh

US and NATO military advisers and special forces are already on the ground. The operation was planned to coincide with the protest movement in neighbouring Arab countries. Public opinion was led to believe that the protest movement had spread spontaneously from Tunisia and Egypt to Libya. "

Some extraordinary claims! But extraordinary claims need real evidence to back them up if they are to be believed and all I see is rhetoric

The most extraordinary I find is the suggestion that NATO and the US had advanced knowledge of the uprisings in tunisia and egypt. I would never have expected that NATO and the US's intelligence services would have a better idea of what was happening in Tunisia and egypt than the intelligence services. Bin ladin must be quaking in his slippers, at that very thought

Originally Posted by Butterfly

from the beginning it did sound like a CIA op, not a movement from the people

"pupa" rectum againnnnnnnnnnnnnnn!

Originally Posted by Butterfly

Gaddafi graphic language might just be silly

It is.

Originally Posted by Butterfly

doesn't mean he is wrong on the underlying cause

It does.

Asia Times Online :: Middle East News, Iraq, Iran current affairs

"Rebels outgunned, overstretched
By Derek Henry Flood

BENGHAZI - Libya's internecine propaganda war is in high gear here. Colonel Muammar Gaddafi has launched his own "Green" movement, but it's nothing like that of Mir Hussein Mousavi in Iran in June of 2009. "

Originally Posted by StrontiumDog

Who to believe? Certainly anything that comes from Gaddafi is highly likely to be lies.

The fog of war and the lies of politicians abound.

Originally Posted by StrontiumDog

so where is this mystical funding they are talking about?

The "funding" or support is coming from whichever western power wants to put it's head above the parapet.

Trouble is they don't have a strategy, they don't have a plan and they certainly don't have sufficient "intelligence" to determine who is behind the "rebels" or how to extricate themselves if they start invading.

Originally Posted by Butterfly

Gaddafi graphic language might just be silly, doesn't mean he is wrong on the underlying cause

If you look at any mature middle eastern leader when they are speaking they are all noise and grunts.

Gaddafi's son, who spent some time being educated in the UK, has a much more western manner.

Originally Posted by The Bold Rodney

Quote:
Originally Posted by Butterfly
Gaddafi graphic language might just be silly
It is.

And who is his target audience?

Originally Posted by The Bold Rodney

Quote:
Originally Posted by Butterfly
doesn't mean he is wrong on the underlying cause
It does.

Not if you believe in the democratic system and the anti bullying statements as described by Obama and the western governments.

Reported on Euronews,
A bunch of squatters have moved into a mansion worth some £10m in the UK, they are fully protected by UK law, unless a member of the Gaddafi family (the owners) applies in a UK court for an eviction notice.