August 22nd, 2011 by Oman Views

Libya rebels in Tripoli, Gadhafi defenses collapse

TRIPOLI, Libya (AP) – Libyan rebels raced into Tripoli Sunday and met little resistance as Moammar Gadhafi’s defenders melted away and his 42-year rule rapidly crumbled. The euphoric fighters celebrated with residents of the capital in Green Square, the symbolic heart of the regime.

Gadhafi’s whereabouts were unknown, though state TV broadcast his bitter pleas for Libyans to defend his regime. Opposition fighters captured his son and one-time heir apparent, Seif al-Islam, who along with his father faces charges of crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands. Another son was in contact with rebels about surrendering, the opposition said.

“It’s over, frizz-head,” chanted hundreds of jubilant men and women massed in Green Square, using a mocking nickname of the curly-haired Gadhafi. The revelers fired shots in the air, clapped and waved the rebels’ tricolor flag. Some set fire to the green flag of Gadhafi’s regime and shot holes in a poster with the leader’s image.

By the early hours of Monday, rebels controlled large parts of the capital. They set up checkpoints alongside residents – many of them secretly armed by rebel smugglers in recent weeks. But pockets of pro-Gadhafi fighters remained: In one area, Associated Press reporters with the rebels were stopped and told to take a different route because of regime snipers nearby.

“We were waiting for the signal and it happened,” said Nour Eddin Shatouni, a 50-year-old engineer who was among the residents who flowed out of their homes to join the celebrations. “All mosques chanted ‘God is great’ all at once. We smelled a good scent, it is the smell of victory. We know it is the time.”

The seizure of Green Square held profound symbolic value and marked a stunning turn in the tide of the 6-month-old Libyan civil war. The regime has held pro-Gadhafi rallies there nearly every night since the revolt began in February, and Gadhafi delivered speeches to his loyalists from the historic Red Fort that overlooks the square.

The sweep into the capital came after the rebel fighters advanced 20 miles from the west in a matter of hours. They took town after town and overwhelmed a major military base meant to defend Tripoli, 16 miles from the city. All the way, they met little resistance and residents poured out on the streets to welcome them.

In a series of angry and defiant audio messages broadcast on state television, Gadhafi called on his supporters to march in the streets of the capital and “purify it” of “the rats.” He was not shown in the messages.

His defiance raised the possibility of a last-ditch fight over the capital, home to 2 million people. Government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim claimed the regime has “thousands and thousands of fighters” and vowed: “We will fight. We have whole cities on our sides. They are coming en masse to protect Tripoli to join the fight.”

But it appeared that Gadhafi’s military was abandoning him quickly.

The rebels’ way into Tripoli was opened when the military unit in charge of protecting Gadhafi and the capital surrendered, ordering his troops to drop their weapons, the rebel information minister Mahmoud Shammam said.

In a sign of the coordination among rebels, as the main force moved into the city from the west, a second force of 200 opposition fighters from the city of Misrata further east landed by boat in the capital. They brought weapons and ammunition for Tripoli residents who join the rebellion, said Munir Ramzi of the rebels’ military council in Misrata.

NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Gadhafi’s regime was “clearly crumbling” and that the time to create a new democratic Libya has arrived.

The sooner Gadhafi “realizes that he cannot win the battle against his own people, the better,” he said in a statement, adding that NATO will continue to strike his troops if they make “any threatening moves toward the Libyan people.”

It was a stunning reversal for Gadhafi, who earlier this month had seemed to have a firm grip on his stronghold in the western part of Libya, despite months of NATO airstrikes on his military. Rebels had been unable to make any advances for weeks, bogged down on the main fronts with regime troops in the east and center of the country.

Gadhafi is the Arab world’s longest-ruling, most erratic, most grimly fascinating leader – presiding for 42 years over this North African desert republic with vast oil reserves and just 6 million people.

For years, he was an international pariah blamed for the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jumbo jet over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 270 people. After years of denial, Gadhafi’s Libya acknowledged responsibility, agreed to pay up to $10 million to relatives of each victim, and declared he would dismantle all weapons of mass destruction.

That eased him back into the international community.

But on February 22, days after the uprising against him began, Gaddafi gave a televised speech amid violent social unrest against his autocratic rule. In the speech, he vowed to hunt down protesters “inch by inch, room by room, home by home, alleyway by alleyway.” The speech caused a furor that fueled the armed rebellion against him and it has been since mocked in songs and spoofs across the Arab world.

As the rebel force advanced on Tripoli, taking town after town, thousands of jubilant civilians rushed out of their homes to cheer the long convoys of pickup trucks packed with fighters shooting in the air. One man grabbed a rebel flag that had been draped over the hood of a slow-moving car and kissed it, overcome with emotion.

Some of the fighters were hoarse, shouting: “We are coming for you, frizz-head.” In villages, mosque loudspeakers blared “Allahu Akbar,” or “God is great.”

“We are going to sacrifice our lives for freedom,” said Nabil al-Ghowail, a 30-year-old dentist holding a rifle in the streets of Janzour, a suburb just six miles west of Tripoli. Heavy gunfire erupted nearby.

As rebels moved in Tripoli, thousands celebrated in the streets of Benghazi, the rebels’ de facto capital hundreds of miles to the east. Firing guns into the air and shooting fireworks, they cheered and waved the rebel tricolor flags, dancing and singing in the city’s main square.

Rebel chief Mustafa Abdel-Jalil in Benghazi confirmed to the AP that the rebels arrested Gadhafi’s son Seif al-Islam but refused to give the details of the capture.

“We have captured Seif al-Islam and he is in safe hands,” he said.

In the Netherlands, the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, said his office would talk to the rebels on Monday about Seif al-Islam’s transfer for trial. “It is time for justice, not revenge,” Moreno-Ocampo told the AP.

Seif al-Islam, his father and Libya’s intelligence chief were indicted earlier this year for allegedly ordering, planning and participating in illegal attacks on civilians in the early days of the violent crackdown on anti-regime protesters.

Another son, Mohammed, was in contact with the rebels and was asking for guarantees for his safety, said rebel spokesman Sadiq al-Kibir. Mohammed, who is in charge of Libyan telecommunications, appeared on the Arabic satellite channel Al-Jazeera, saying his house was surrounded by armed rebels.

“They have guaranteed my safety. I have always wanted good for all Libyans and was always on the side of God,” he said. Close to the end of the interview, there was the sound of heavy gunfire and Mohammed said rebels had entered his house before the phone line cut off.

The day’s first breakthrough came when hundreds of rebels fought their way into a major symbol of the Gadhafi regime – the base of the elite 32nd Brigade commanded by Gadhafi’s son, Khamis. Fighters said they met with little resistance. They were 16 miles from the big prize, Tripoli.

Hundreds of rebels cheered wildly and danced as they took over the compound filled with eucalyptus trees, raising their tricolor from the front gate and tearing down a large billboard of Gadhafi. From a huge warehouse, they loaded their trucks with hundreds of crates of rockets, artillery shells and large-caliber ammunition.

One group started up a tank, drove it out of the gate, crushing the median of the main highway and driving off toward Tripoli.

“This is the wealth of the Libyan people that he was using against us,” said Ahmed al-Ajdal, 27, pointing to his haul. “Now we will use it against him and any other dictator who goes against the Libyan people.”

At the base, the rebels also freed more than 300 prisoners from a regime lockup, most of them arrested during the heavy crackdown on the uprising in towns west of Tripoli. The fighters and the prisoners – many looking weak and dazed and showing scars and bruises from beatings – embraced and wept with joy.

“We were sitting in our cells when all of a sudden we heard lots of gunfire and people yelling ‘God is great.’ We didn’t know what was happening, and then we saw rebels running in and saying ‘We’re on your side.’ And they let us out,” said 23-year-old Majid al-Hodeiri. He said he was captured four months ago by Gadhafi’s forces crushing the uprising in his home city of Zawiya. He said he was beaten and tortured while under detention.

From the military base, the convoy sped toward the capital.

Mahmoud al-Ghwei, 20 and unarmed, said he had just came along with a friend for the ride.

“It’s a great feeling. For all these years, we wanted freedom and Gadhafi kept it from us. Now we’re going to get rid of Gadhafi and get our freedom,” he said.

The uprising against Gadhafi broke out in mid-February, and anti-regime protests quickly spread. A brutal regime crackdown quickly transformed the protests into an armed rebellion. Rebels seized Libya’s east, setting up an internationally recognized transitional government there, and two pockets in the west, the port city of Misrata and the Nafusa mountain range.

Gadhafi clung to the remaining territory, and for months neither side has been able to break the other.

In early August, however, rebels launched an offensive from the Nafusa mountains, intending to open a new, western front to break the deadlock. They fought their way down to the Mediterranean coastal plain, backed by NATO airstrikes, and captured the strategic city of Zawiya.

On Saturday, they consolidated control of Zawiya, then launched their furious rush on the capital.

At the same time, rebel “sleeper cells” inside Tripoli rose up and clashed with Gadhafi loyalists. Rebel fighters who spoke to relatives in Tripoli by phone said hundreds rushed into the streets in anti-regime protests in several neighborhoods on Sunday.

“We received weapons by sea from Benghazi. They sent us weapons in boats,” said Ibrahim Turki, a rebel in the Tripoli neighborhood of Tajoura, which saw heavy fighting the past two days. “Without their weapons, we would not have been able to stand in the face of the mighty power of Gadhafi forces.”

By BEN HUBBARD – Associated Press, KARIN LAUB – Associated Press | AP

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August 21st, 2011 by Oman Views

Libya rebels try to reach capital to aid revolt

JADDAIM, Libya (Reuters) – Libyan rebels battled their way toward Tripoli Sunday to help fighters inside the city who rose up overnight declaring a final showdown with Muammar Gaddafi.

The Libyan leader dismissed the rebels, fighting since February to topple him, as “rats” and said he would not yield.

In a coordinated revolt that rebel cells had been secretly preparing for months, shooting started Saturday night across Tripoli moments after Muslim clerics, using the loudspeakers on mosque minarets, called people on to the streets.

The fighting inside Tripoli, combined with rebel advances to the outskirts of the city, appeared to signal the decisive phase in a six month conflict that has become the bloodiest of the “Arab Spring” uprisings and embroiled NATO powers.

But Gaddafi’s fall is far from certain. His security forces did not buckle, the rebels appeared to control only a few neighborhoods of Tripoli and the city is much bigger than anything the mostly amateur anti-Gaddafi fighters, with their scavenged weapons and mismatched uniforms, have ever tackled.

If the Libyan leader is forced from power, there are question marks over whether the opposition can restore stability in this oil exporting country. The rebels’ own ranks have been wracked by disputes and rivalry.

Rebels said that after a night of heavy fighting, they controlled a handful of city neighborhoods. But whether they hold on could depend on the speed with which the rebels elsewhere reach Tripoli.

“The rebels may have risen too early in Tripoli and the result could be a lot of messy fighting,” said Oliver Miles, a former British ambassador to Libya. “The regime may not have collapsed in the city to quite the extent they think it has.”

ADVANCE ON TRIPOLI

The closest front line was to the west of the capital, along a highway that traces the edge of the Mediterranean Sea.

Rebel fighters returning from the front line said they had taken the town of Jaddaim and that they were now about 20 km from Tripoli and approaching the city’s outlying western suburb of Janzour.

A Reuters reporter near the front said he could hear shells landing, and could see columns of smoke. Ambulances rushed back from the front to a hospital in the nearby town of Zawiyah.

In Jaddaim, fighters were celebrating the advance, shouting “Allahu Akbar!” or “God is greatest!.”

In Benghazi, the eastern Libyan city where the anti-Gaddafi revolt started and where the rebels have their main stronghold, a senior official said everything was going according to plan.

“Our revolutionaries are controlling several neighborhoods and others are coming in from outside the city to join their brothers at this time,” Abdel Hafiz Ghoga, vice-chairman of the rebel National Transition Council, told Reuters.

MESSAGE OF DEFIANCE

In an audio recording broadcast late Saturday, Gaddafi – whose location has been kept a secret since NATO warplanes started bombing government buildings – made clear he had no intention of giving in to the rebels.

“Those rats … were attacked by the masses tonight and we eliminated them,” Gaddafi said. “I know that there are air bombardments but the fireworks were louder than the sound of the bombs thrown by the aircraft.”

A spokesman for Gaddafi, in a briefing for foreign reporters, underlined the message of defiance.

The armed units defending Tripoli from the rebels “wholeheartedly believe that if this city is captured the blood will run everywhere so they may as well fight to the end,” said the spokesman, Moussa Ibrahim.

“We hold Mr Obama, Mr Cameron and Mr Sarkozy morally responsible for every single unnecessary death that takes place in this country,” he said, referring to the leaders of the United States, Britain and France.

SNIPERS ON ROOFTOPS

A diplomatic source in Paris, where the government has closely backed the rebels, said underground rebel cells in the capital had been following detailed plans drawn up months ago and had been waiting for a signal to act.

That signal was “iftar” – the moment when Muslims observing the holy months of Ramadan break their daily fast. It was at this moment that imams started broadcasting their message from the mosques, residents said.

But the overnight fighting inside the city, while fierce, was not decisive. Rebels said they controlled all or parts of the Tajourah, Fashloom and Souk al-Jumaa neighborhoods but there was no city-wide rebellion.

In Tripoli Sunday , the two sides appeared to be jockeying for control of rooftop terraces where they could place firing positions, possibly in preparation for a new burst of fighting after nightfall.

A rebel activist in the city said pro-Gaddafi forces had put snipers on the rooftops of buildings around Bab al-Aziziyah, Gaddafi’s compound, and on the top of a nearby water tower.

As he spoke, single gunshots could be heard in the background, at intervals of a few seconds.

“Gaddafi’s forces are getting reinforcements to comb the capital,” said the activist, who spoke to a Reuters reporter outside Libya.

“Residents are crying, seeking help. One resident was martyred, many were wounded,” he said. It was not immediately possible to verify his account independently.

State television flashed up a message on the screen urging residents not to allow rebel gunmen to hide out on their rooftops.

“Agents and al Qaeda members are trying to destabilize and sabotage the city. You should prevent them from exploiting your houses and buildings, confront them and cooperate with counter-terrorism units, to capture them,” it said.

PRESSURE

Western governments were cautious about predicting Gaddafi’s imminent fall, but they said he was under unprecedented pressure.

“It’s been clear that Gaddafi has not had a firm grip on reality – as we heard from his comments last night – and has not been interested personally in leaving or negotiating,” said Alastair Burt, a foreign office minister.

“But those around him have continued to defect … That pressure indicates that those around Gaddafi know what’s going on. One can only hope that they’re getting messages through to him,” Burt told the BBC.

Ashour Shamis, a UK-based opposition editor and activist, said the Libyan leader’s options were dwindling.

“Gaddafi’s chances for a safe exit are diminishing by the hour. The more he stays the narrower his base, and the easier it will be for him to be caught or killed,” Ashour “I think he’s not being told the whole picture. (His son) Saif al-Islam is the one who is leading the fight for him.”

By Ulf Laessing | Reuters. Additional reporting by Missy Ryan in Tripoli, Robert Birsel in Benghazi, Libya, William Maclean in London, Hamid Ould Ahmed in Algiers; Writing by Christian Lowe; Editing by Ralph Boulton

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July 16th, 2011 by Oman Views

Henchmen for Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi on Monday dismissed arrest warrants issued against him by the international war crimes court as inconsequential with little near-term prospect of being carried out.

But such confidence in a future without punitive measures is perhaps no more than posturing on the part of despots. Amid the turbulence of Arab Spring rebellions, the fate of once seemingly entrenched dictators has become uncertain, to say the very least.

“The ICC [International Criminal Court] has no legitimacy whatsoever,” Gadhafi spokesman Moussa Ibrahim said Monday. “We will deal with it.”

Indeed, with NATO bombs pounding Tripoli (reportedly killing one of Gadhafi’s sons and three grandchildren in April) and growing western impatience with the four-month war, the prospect of a Hague trial on charges of crimes against humanity may seem little threat to the leader compared with other exit scenarios.

Amid the usual stream of bravado from Tripoli, however, reasons abound for Gadhafi to be anxious about how this may end for him.

And not just the Libyan leader. Syria strongman Bashar al-Assad sounded equal parts conciliatory and defiant as he called for a “national dialogue” in a televised speech last week. Though he blamed the violence that has killed more than 1,000 people in three months of anti-government unrest on foreign-directed saboteurs, Damascus notably permitted an opposition gathering in the capital on Monday.

Yemen’s ruler Ali Abdullah Saleh, a one-time close ally in the U.S. war against terrorism, has yet to return from medical treatment in Saudi Arabia after being badly wounded in a rocket attack on his presidential palace in Sana earlier this month.

Saudi Arabia has also become home to Tunisia’s Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, who fled anti-government protests in January in the first of the Arab Spring democratic revolutions. Last week, Ben Ali, described in U.S. diplomatic cables as the head of “the Family,” was convicted in absentia on charges of embezzling a fortune in cash and jewelry from the North African nation he ruled for more than three decades.

Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, who in February followed Ben Ali in fallen Arab strongmen, is also facing criminal prosecution. He and his two sons are due to go on trial in August. Mubarak could face the death penalty, Egypt’s Justice Minister has said.

While the U.S. is urging Arab autocrats to implement reforms demanded by their restive populations, the swift downfalls and bleak exit options have seemingly served as alternative case studies. Regional tyrants, from Syria’s Assad to Bahrain’s Sunni monarchy, have been moved to use all measures necessary to put down unrest and cling to power.

So then what? There may be no easy answers, experts who study democracy movements acknowledge.

“Once you have a revolution, I think the moment for reform is already passed,” said Kurt Bassuener, senior associate with the Democratization Policy Council, a small think tank. “At that point, it’s hard to satisfy those pent-up urges. The more delay and repression, the less likely that anything short of the fall of the regime will satisfy the people.”

“Mass mobilization may not succeed – see Iran, Bahrain, etc.,” Bassuener continued. “But then the regime has to become ever more repressive to maintain power, so reforming out of the problem becomes less likely.”

“There was a time when there were many options for dictators,” said Arch Puddington, director of research at Freedom House, which tracks worldwide governance trends. “Those days are over.”

Saudi Arabia has become the exile venue of choice for dictators fleeing the Arab Spring uprisings, Ellen Knickmeyer observes at Foreign Policy magazine: “From King Abdul Aziz, the founder of the modern Saudi state, on down, the ruling al-Sauds have followed Arab tradition by offering asylum even to some toppled leaders they haven’t particularly liked,” she writes.

“This man asked for our protection. This custom is part of our life,” Saudi Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Prince Turki bin Mohammed bin Saud al-Kabeer explained to Knickmeyer in Riyadh last week, referring to Tunisia’s Ben Ali. “You can’t refuse if someone comes and asks for your assistance and protection.”

But the growing reach of international justice has in fact greatly reduced the willingness of western democracies to give refuge to washed-up dictators.

“If you look around the world, the number of ex-dictators is not that substantial,” said Freedom House’s Puddington. “The number of countries dictators can flee to has narrowed because of the new attitude among the democracies, the doctrine of universal jurisdiction. Even if the government [of refuge] allows you to stay, you are not secure because a private citizen can go to the court and want him put on trial.”

While Haiti’s Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier fled to France in the 1990s and lived in luxurious exile (he returned to Haiti a few months ago), and Peru’s Alberto Fujimori found refuge in Japan from 2000 to 2007.

Chile’s junta leader Augusto Pinochet found his asylum in the United Kingdom insecure after he was placed under house arrest in 2000. It was the first application of universal jurisdiction. Extradited to Chile, Pinochet was placed under house arrest in 2004 and died in 2006 still facing 300 criminal charges.

Gadhafi’s ICC charges would also certainly complicate his exile options, although he’s shown little indication to date he’s willing to entertain the option.

And while the Arab Spring rebellions seem to have stalled out for now, with violent repressions stalemated from Bahrain to Syria, few analysts would see the reigns of the region’s tyrants as stable in the long-term.

Bassuener noted: “It will be very difficult to provide opportunities for growing populations with the political repression necessary to maintain control and the economic isolation that will attend it.”

Dictators then and now:

Mengistu Haile Mariam led Ethiopia from the mid 1970s until he was ousted in the early 1990s and fled to Zimbabwe.

Uganda’s Idi Amin, gotten rid of in the early 1980s, went to Saudi Arabia and lived there till he died.

Haiti’s “Baby Doc” Duvalier fled to France in the 1990s where he lived in wealthy surrender. He returned to Haiti two months ago and was detained immediately.

Former Kyrgyz strongman Kurmanbek Bakiyev, toppled in 2010, fled to Belarus, where he remains.

Peru’s Alberto Fujimori, who fled to Japan in 2000 during a corruption investigation, was extradited to Peru in 2007; he stood trial and was imprisoned in 2008 on human-rights abuses.

Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic was extradited to the Hague in 2001 to face war crimes charges and died at the Hague prison in 2006.

Chile’s Augusto Pinochet fled the United Kingdom, but was placed under house arrest and extradited to Chile in 2000, under the first case of the application of universal jurisdiction. Pinochet was placed under house arrest in Chile in 2004, and died in 2006, still facing 300 criminal charges.

By Laura Rozen | The Envoy

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