How Real is the Green? Rumor and Anger
Mount in Libya
12 Feb 2012
By Franklin Lamb
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 will be a counter revolution soon in the
"Jamarariya (state of the masses)?"
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 this observer has little idea if the much
talked ‘Green Revolution' is strong or could topple
the current NATO created and imposed government.
Certainly there are heard today many complaints 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. Frankly 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 additional 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:
- Last week a much circulated report 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 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 I 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.
-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, given her intelligence,
energy and strong commitment to replace "NATO's
rebels", vindicate her father, preserve his correct
legacy, and organize a reform movement along the lines
that she and some family members and loyalists were
working--with the approval, she claims, of her father
before his death.
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 which each is propelling
increasingly unpredictable events in Libya.
Yet, with the elimination of Muammar Gadhafi, which
was NATO's clear intension from March 19 when it took
over the UNSCR 1973 campaign against Libya, NATO
correctly concluded that without Gadhafi's charismatic
leadership in Libya and in the region, any "Green
counter-revolution" 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 is
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 and additionally the reports of innocent
non-threatening soldiers as in Pakistan, Iraq, and
Afghanistan. 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 NATO
forces, 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 the 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.
Franklin Lamb in doing research in Libya and can be
reached c/o fplamb@gmail.com
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