‘Baba Muammar’: ceasefire in Libya?
p2pnet view P2P | Politics:- Libya has declared a ceasefire to comply with a United Nations resolution passed last night, says the Telegraph, going on >>>
Moussa Koussa, the Libya foreign minister, announced that the ceasefire would be “immediate” and would result in “an immediate stop to all military operations”.
“(Libya) takes great interest in protecting civilians,” he said, adding that the country would also protect all foreigners and foreign assets in Libya.
The announcement came as David Cameron said RAF warplanes would be in places in the “coming hours”.
Military action follows a United Nations Security Resolution, backed by Britain, France and the US. The Arab League has also called for a no-fly zone, and Qatar and the United Arab Emirates are expected to contribute forces to any military operation.
Says the Guardian >>>
Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi is a master of propaganda and disinformation. To accept the offer, western and Arab countries would have to be convinced that the regime’s forces had genuinely laid down their arms across the entire country; the ceasefire would have to be independently verified; and they would have to be convinced it was permanent.
But the time for action was before thousands of innocent people were killed or injured, not after.
Friends of Gaddafi
Koussa’s sentiments have as much validity as Obama’s promises of change for the better in America. So how much of his statement is pure flim-flam?
Alive in Libya has been following events there with eye-witness reports from the streets.
Said a post yesterday >>>
We know that everybody is against Gaddafi. I don’t anybody from my friends for example is pro-Gaddafi and I know a lot of people in Tripoli. But these people they have two camps now in Tripoli, one in the old tobacco factory, and that I saw personally, I witnessed, and I would say maybe there is six, seven hundred people who they brought from the south, from Sabha and from Bani Walid and they’re giving them money to stay in that place and to ask them to go out to support the government whenever they are needed. So they’re provided food, they’re provided money and we heard also stories about providing alcohol, I don’t know if that’s true or not, but we heard that. We saw a lot of them drunk anyway, but whether the government supplies the alcohol or not, I really don’t know.They give them a lot of money, and I think they give them for every day it’s like two or three hundred dinars per day to stay in that camp.
There is another camp also in Treg Kremia, Kremia way, and also there is about eight to nine hundred there, including women, some of them are families and they’ve also been brought from the south, from Sabha and Bani Walid and of course from Sirte. So if you can imagine with this number of people, when they are called, when Gaddafi wants to talk in the Green Square, he will just call them and they go out, and it looks like Tripoli is going out now for a demonstration. But believe me, we know, we look even in the plates of their cars, this is very simple to figure out where they are from, and you cannot see any plate from Tripoli. And the way they look, obviously they are not from Tripoli. So what you see in the demonstration, these are people who Gaddafi brought himself, brought from the south.
We also heard from the orphanage house, in Tripoli and from other cities which Gaddafi is saying that these are his children and they call him “Baba Muammar” and these are like also three or four hundred. He also brings them out to the Green Square whenever they are needed. Plus the security forces, when you add that up, then you will have the number that you see on TV. But nothing, nothing, nothing from Tripoli. Not from Zawya, not from Misurata, not from Khums…the people who are the locals, and they live in their towns, they will not accept this. Because of a lot of reasons, because of Gaddafi’s been a tyrant the way he is and also because they feel their country, you will not go out and support him and you know that he is killing civilians and you know he is at war against you and you know he calls you “rats.” It doesn’t make sense, you understand.
French:
…qui est ce groupe? c’est aussi quelque chose que nous sommes etonnes a voir. Nous nous demandons: qui sont ces gens? Nous savons que tout le monde est contre Gadaffi. Je ne connais personne parmi mes amis, par exemple, qui soutient Gadaffi, et je connais beaucoup de gens a Tripoli. Mais ces gens ont deux camps maintenant a Tripoli: l’un dans l’ancienne usine de tabac, que j’ai vu de mes propres yeux, et je dirais qu’il y a peut-etre six ou sept cent gens qu’ils ont amenes du sud, de Sabha et de Bani Walid, et ils leur donnent de l’argent pour y rester et pour manifester en montrant leur soutien du gouvernement quand on a besoin d’eux. Alors on leur donne a manger, et de l’argent, et on a meme entendu dire qu’on leur donne de l’alcool, je ne sais pas si c’est vrai ou faux, mais on l’a entendu dire. Ils leur donnent beaucoup d’argent, et je pense qu’ils leur en donnent pour chaque jour, c’est à peu près deux ou trois cent dinars par jour pour y rester. Il y a un autre camp aussi, à Treg Kremia, Kremia Way, et il y a à peu près sept ou huit cent gens là, y compris femmes, certains sont en famille, et ils ont été amenés du sud aussi, de Sabha et de Bani Walid et bien sur de Sirte. Donc si vous pouvez imaginer, avec cette nombre de gens, quand on les appelle, quand Gadaffi veut parler à Green Square, il les appelle et ils y vont, et ça fait penser que toute Tripoli assiste à ses discours. Mais croyez moi, on sait, nous pouvons même voir d’après leurs plaques de matriculation, c’est très facile à déduire d’où ils viennent, et vous ne voyez aucune plaque de matriculation de Tripoli. Et par leur apparence physique, c’est clair qu’ils ne sont pas de Tripoli. Alors ce que vous voyez pendant ses discours, ce sont des gens que Gadaffi a amenés lui-même, du sud. On a aussi entendu que dans l’orphelinat, à Tripoli et dans les autres villes que Gadaffi dit que ce sont ses enfants et ils l’appellent “Baba Muammar”, et ce sont aussi trois ou quatre cents. Il les sort aussi à Green Square quand il en a besoin. En plus des forces sécuritaires, quand vous faites la compte, vous avez les chiffres qu’on vous donne à la télé. Mais personne, personne, personne de Tripoli. Pas de Zawiya, Pas de Misurata, pas de Khums… ces gens originaires, qui habitent ces villes, n’acceptent pas ceci. Pour beaucoup de raisons: parce que Gadaffi est un tyran en lui-meme, parce qu’ils ressentent leur pays, vous ne sortirez pas le soutenir tout en sachant qu’il tue les civils, et tout en sachant qu’il fait la guerre contre vous-meme quand il vous appelle des “rats”. Ca ne fait aucun sens, vous comprenez.
Translated and Transcribed by: Lauren Upadhyay & @tasnimq
Stay tuned.
Telegraph – Libya: ceasefire declared in wake of UN resolution, March 18, 2011
Guardian – Q&A: the Libyan ceasefire, the UN resolution and military tactics, March 18, 2011
Alive in Libya – Explaining how #Gaddafi is creating illusion of having supporters in #Tripoli, March 17, 2011
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
World War III will be a global information war with no division between civilian & military participation ~ Marshall McLuhan
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March 18th, 2011 at 7:00 pm
Prime Minister Stephen Harper is heading to Paris on Friday night to attend a summit with other world leaders to discuss the ongoing crisis in Libya.
The meeting on Saturday will be hosted by French President Nicholas Sarkozy.
The announcement of Harper’s trip to Paris came soon after six CF-18 fighter jets were deployed Friday afternoon from a Quebec military base to help enforce the United Nations no-fly zone over Libya.
The jets took off in snowy weather from CFB Bagotville, along with 150 personnel. Two C-17s from CFB Trenton are being used to transport the personnel. CBC News has learned the CF-18s, pilots and support personnel will be based, at least for now, at Trapani, Italy, an air base in the western part of Sicily.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2011/03/18/pol-harper-libya.html
Like Jon says “But the time for action was before thousands of innocent people were killed or injured, not after.”
March 18th, 2011 at 7:04 pm
March 19th, 2011 at 2:10 pm
Damn, thought we in the west would have learned from our boondoggle in Iraq. The resulting instability we have caused by continually promoting ineffective leaders within a gridlocked political structure has the potential to kill more civilians then saddam hussein ever did. Why we are trying to protect and promote a rebellion in libya that has shown it cannot even manage to organize a cohesive military defense of a single city just boggles my mind.
Also, while Qaddafi’s police forces are as brutal and politically incorrect as any in the arab world, there have never been any instances of targeted genocide such as in other countries. If British and French leaders really felt like using up a lot of bombs and jet fuel in the name of “protecting civilians” maybe they should have flown all that military hardware down to darfur.
March 20th, 2011 at 11:15 am
Just to add, if the western leaders think that by bombing Qaddafi’s forces they will cause them to abandon the government, or that it will force qaddafi into exile then they have grossly miscalculated the situation. If his forces were going to abandon him, they would have done so during the moments it seemed his government was about to collapse, not when they were just about to march into the rebel capital.
This is a dictator who has spent the better part of his life now in the hardest job on the planet, ruling an arab country and successfully managing all it’s different factions. He has weathered us attacking him before, and he will weather it again, especially since we have already ruled out the inclusion of ground troops in this operation, which would be the only real threat to his regime.
In the end all we have done is turned one of the few arab leaders who was unsympathetic to Al Qaeda and other radical islamist factions against us, and given arab people in general another reason to hate us and our imperialistic ways. I hope the real reason the French and British pushed so hard for this endeavor eventually comes out, because we know western governments never risk military operations anymore simply to “protect civilians” or there would be 800,000 more people in Rwanda right now.