The Begining of the End-Rebels in Tripoli

[Che -Guevara]

Don't know who to believe in this propaganda war. I thought they say his compound was over-run but now there's pockets of fierce fighting in the compound or near it. There is fighting in other areas of Tripoli including the road to the airport.

[nuune]

^^ Che, not just pockets, the rebels are also saying they don't control the whole compound, most parts of Tripoli are in fighting as well, Gadafi son, Khumsi with his Brigade are in feirce fighting, and hard to defeat since they are loaded and the road to Sirte is open to them.

 

Also, the road that connects to the Tripoli airport is now controled by Gaddafi forced, but only handful media are reporting it!

 

 

it is fascinating to see that every media outlet is now siding with the rebels, and if they report anything about Gaddafi they will be arrested or ousted.

 

 

True, Gadafi no longer controls Libya, but no one controls the country,, except the forces that destroyed it(NATO)

[A_Khadar]

Tooko bar tooko maaho.. sheeko waalan & dagaal waalan.. Let us see when garoorka iyo biyuhu kala miirmaan..

[Che -Guevara]

Nuune....I think the longer this drags the worse it looks for the future of this country and you are right the mainstream media seem to be have lost objectivity or simply sided with the rebels and their handlers. It's said the sparsely southern desert is in hands as well.

[nuune]

Che, Abu Salim, and other Tripoli districts are in the hands of the Gaddafi loyalists, the city is big, but now divided, fighting still going on in these neighborhoods.

 

 

Convoys of army from Benghazi heading to Sirte to commit massacre, birth place of Gaddafi, now hopefully UN will draft a resolution to protect civilians in Sirte and Sabha.

 

 

Last night, the rebel leader said Sirte will surrender within the next 24 hours and had negotiated their surrender, that wasn't the case though, and Sirte is loaded with weapons of all kinds, they have being playing Gaddafi audio messages on large screens in Sirte all day today.

[Che -Guevara]

^I thought they were in talks with tribal leaders in Sirte and Sabha to surrender. Sirte is heavily guarded and fortified ?

[nuune]

indeed, well, another breaking news, 4 Italian Journalists kidnapped, can you sense the Baghdad ways of life in 2003 and after that.

[nuune]

Rebel spokesman to Haaretz: Libya needs world's help, including Israel's

 

Ahmad Shabani says recognition of Israel by future elected Libyan government is 'very sensitive question. The question is whether Israel will recognize us'.

 

 

Libya needs any help it can get from the international community, including from Israel, a spokesman for the opposition to Muammar Gadhafi's regime told Haaretz Tuesday by phone from London.

 

When asked what sort of assistance Libya required, Ahmad Shabani, the founder of Libya's Democratic Party, said: "We are asking Israel to use its influence in the international community to end the tyrannical regime of Gadhafi and his family."

Libya August 24, 2011 (AP)

 

Libyans holding a huge flag celebrate overrunning Muammar Gadhafi's main compund in Tripoli, Libya, Wednesday, Aug. 24, 2011.

Photo by: AP

 

Shabani, 43, is the son of a former minister in the cabinet of Libya's king, who was deposed in 1969. After the military coup led by Gadhafi, the Shabani family fled Libya and settled in London.

 

Shabani, who was educated in Britain, later returned to Libya and began working for an opposition group.

 

In March, he began to speak out against the regime, but he returned to London when he felt his life was in danger.

 

The weight he carries in Libya's emerging political fabric is unclear. But in recent months Shabani has appeared in the Western media as a spokesman for the opposition.

 

When Shabani was asked whether a democratically elected government in Libya would recognize Israel, he responded: "That is a very sensitive question. The question is whether Israel will recognize us."

 

Shabani mentioned Gadhafi's eccentric ideas about the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including the founding of a single country to be called "Israstine." But Shabani said his group believed in two countries, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace - the two-state solution.

 

Regarding Gadhafi's claims that Al-Qaida operatives were supporting the rebels, Shabani said the opposite was true. He said Al-Qaida activists have been working for Gadhafi, among them Libyans and, according to reliable intelligence reports, foreigners who infiltrated the country's porous borders.

 

According to Israeli intelligence, since the uprising, as part of a huge black market in weapons in Libya, arms have been smuggled from Libya to the Gaza Strip via Egypt. Shabani said the opposition was aware of the smuggling and hoped to end it.

 

According to Shabani, the transition to the new Libya needed an organization under the aegis of the United Nations to supervise democratic elections. He said he hoped to see a South Africa-style reconciliation committee established to prevent acts of revenge or a new civil war.

[Nina Fox]

I hate war but one thing is a given, by the time Im 50 (IA) I'll be fluent in Arab/Afghani/African little towns that I had no interest in. Luuq luuq ee noo kala barooyaan, I feel like we're the speaking version of Google Earth.

 

Yaaab anagaa aragni

[A_Khadar]

^^ lol@Nina, is that a 40 years from now? Ma ka yaabtay, I never heard of Bab Alaziziya, green square, Misrata, Benghazi and more.. Few months it was Liberty square (Taxriir something) @ Cairo..

[nuune]

Spot on article:

 

 

 

Libya's imperial hijacking is a threat to the Arab revolution

 

Only when those who fought Gaddafi force Nato to leave will Libyans be able to take control of their country

 

Seumas Milne

 

guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 24 August 2011 22.00 BST

 

 

 

They don't give up. For the third time in a decade, British and US forces have played the decisive role in the overthrow of an Arab or Muslim regime. As rebel forces pressed home their advantage across Libya under continuing Nato air support , politicians in London and Paris preened themselves on their role as the midwives of a "new Libya".

 

It's all supposed to be different this time, of course. The lessons of the west's blood-drenched occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan are said to have been learned: no boots on the ground, UN backing, proper planning and Libyans in the lead. But the echoes of Baghdad and, even more, Kabul have been eerie – and not only in the made-for-TV images of the sacking of compounds and smashing of statues, or the street banners hailing Nato leaders.

 

As in Afghanistan in 2001, the western powers have taken sides in a civil war, relying on air power and special forces to turn the tide against an unpopular authoritarian regime.

 

In Libya, the basis for foreign military intervention has been the claim that Muammar Gaddafi's forces were about to carry out a massacre of civilians in Benghazi after he threatened to hunt down armed rebels "house to house". Violent repression was certainly meted out against a popular uprising, but once insurrection had morphed into war there's little evidence that the regime's troops were in a position to overrun an armed and hostile city of 700,000 people. And reports from Amnesty and Human Rights Watch have since cast serious doubt on a string of war atrocity stories used to justify Nato bombing.

 

But they helped deliver UN resolution 1973, authorising "all necessary means" to protect Libyan civilians. That has since been used as Nato's fig leaf to justify the onslaught against Gaddafi and deliver regime change from the air. And while the western powers claimed to be saving lives, thousands have died on the ground – including uncounted numbers of civilians killed by Nato's own air attacks, such as the 85 reported incinerated near Zlitan earlier this month.

 

If stopping the killing had been the real aim, Nato states would have backed a ceasefire and a negotiated settlement, rather than repeatedly vetoing both. Instead, after having lost serious strategic ground in the Arab revolutions, the Libyan war offered the US, Britain and France a chance to put themselves at the heart of the process while bringing to heel an unreliable state with the largest oil reserves in Africa.

 

None of that means the euphoria on the streets of Libyan cities at the fall of a regime long decayed into dynastic despotism isn't entirely genuine. Or that the rebels who fought their way across the country haven't made heavy sacrifices for a victory they regard as their own – let alone that Libyans were incapable of bringing down the Gaddafi regime by themselves.

 

But the facts are unavoidable.Without the 20,000 air sorties, arms supplies and logistical support of the most powerful states in the world, they would not be calling the shots in Tripoli today. The assault on the capital was supported by the heaviest Nato bombardment to date. Western intelligence and special forces have been on the ground for months – in mockery of the UN – training, planning and co-ordinating rebel operations.

 

It was the leading Nato states that championed and funded the Transitional National Council – including members with longstanding CIA and MI6 links – and officials from Nato states who drew up the stabilisation plan now being implemented on the ground.

 

However glad people are to see the fall of the Gaddafi clan, it's clear that such intimate involvement of the US and the former colonial powers taints and undermines the legitimacy of Libya's transformation. They will expect a payback for their investment in the Libyan war: in oil and commercial deals, political support and perhaps even the return of western military bases.

 

The British government's refusal to rule out sending troops to take part in a "stabilisation operation" is an ominous sign of where Libya may be heading. And if Libyans end up with the kind of democracy foisted on Iraq and Afghanistan, courtesy of their western advisers, that will be no liberation at all.

 

Beyond Libya, the apparent success of Nato's operation has given an unwelcome boost to the doctrine of pick-and-choose liberal interventionism, just as its dangers had come to be recognised in the wake of the disasters of the war on terror. That matters in the Middle East now more than ever.

 

Since the Arab revolution despatched two western-backed dictators in quick succession at the start of the year, there has been a three-pronged drive by the west to bring it under control. In Egypt, US and Saudi money has been poured in to suborn it. In Bahrain, conservative Gulf states have been given support to crush the uprising by force. And in Libya, the western powers have attempted to hijack it, while channelling covert support to the brutally repressed opposition in Syria.

 

There are many in the region who now hope the fall of Gaddafi will give new momentum to the stalled Arab awakening, bringing down another autocrat, perhaps in Yemen. But the risk could instead be that it sends a message that regimes can only now be despatched with the armed support of Washington, London and Paris – available in the most select circumstances.

 

Nato's intervention in Libya is a threat to the Arab revolution, but the forces that have been unleashed in the region won't be turned back so easily. Many of those who have fought for power in Libya, including Islamists, clearly won't accept the dispensation that's been prepared for them. But only when Nato and its bagmen are forced to leave Libya can Libyans truly take control of their own country.

 

 

Souce, don't miss out the comments by the mainstream public, didn't know there were that many sane people in Britain!

[Jacpher]

British special forces are on the ground in Libya helping to spearhead the hunt for Col Muammar Gaddafi, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.

 

As a £1 million bounty was placed on Gaddafi’s head, soldiers from 22 SAS Regiment began guiding rebel soldiers after being ordered in by David Cameron.

 

For the first time, defence sources have confirmed that the SAS has been in Libya for several weeks, and played a key role in co-ordinating the fall of Tripoli.

 

With the majority of the capital now in rebel hands, the SAS soldiers, who have been dressed in Arab civilian clothing and carrying the same weapons as the rebels, have been ordered to switch their focus to the search for Gaddafi, who has been on the run since his fortified headquarters was captured on Tuesday.

 

Libya’s National Transitional Council (NTC) said Gaddafi was wanted “dead or alive” and promised an amnesty to any of his inner circle prepared to betray his whereabouts.

 

Nato still has no idea where the despot is holed up, and yesterday he taunted his opponents by claiming in a TV interview that he had secretly toured the streets of Tripoli without being spotted.

 

More

[nuune]

Protecting civilians has turned out to be regime change, ground special forces guiding the rebels, then manhunt, now they helding conferences in Paris, Doha, London, to do what, to build an interim government, headed by long time exiles who will be dictated on what to do, when to talk, and when to shut up, yes, just like Iraq.

[Libaax-Sankataabte]

Nuune thanks, and keep us updated. This is getting fascinating.

[NASSIR]

I opposed the Libyan intervention from the start.

 

 

 

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