EMAIL SIGN UP!
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
Tensions, Suspicions Divide Libya After Gaddafi
CAIRO - The long-time dictator who ruled Libya for nearly four decades with an iron fist may be gone, but racial hatred surfaces increasingly now by the day.
In this Sept. 25, 2011 photo, a boy plays with a pre-Gadhafi flag next to destroyed computers in the Tareq Bin Zeyad school, allegedly attacked by revolutionary forces taking revenge, at Al-Shegaiga village, 160 Km south of Tripoli, Libya. Libyan villagers in the western mountains accused of being Gadhafi loyalists say they are being punished by rogue revolutionary forces trying to terrorize the residents, raided their homes and schools and stole private property. The incidents raise concerns for the national council's ability to reconcile tribes accused of harboring Gadhafi loyalists and avoiding further violence. (AP Photo/Alexandre Meneghini) A free and liberated Libya has been declared following an eight-month uprising, which resulted in the death of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
Libyans now set their sights on building a viable democracy, drafting a new constitution and organising the country’s first free parliamentary and presidential elections.
However, since the toppling of Gaddafi’s 42-year regime, the country’s interim leaders of the National Transitional Council (NTC) have struggled to find a common voice.
This reality was echoed by acting prime minister Mahmoud Jibril, during an announcement Oct. 22 that he was stepping down, where he acknowledged that with their common enemy disposed of, unity remained a key challenge for Libyans going forward.
"Removing weapons from the streets, establishing law and order and uniting the disparate factions of the NTC are the main priorities following Gaddafi’s death," he said in a statement to the press at the World Economic Forum’s annual regional meeting in Jordan.
With more than 140 tribes and clans, Libya is considered one of the most tribally fragmented nations in the Arab world. Despite modernisation, tribalism remains a prominent force in a country now awash with weaponry.
In the aftermath of Gaddafi’s reign, nearly 40 different independent militias that reportedly emerged during the rebellion remain at large.
Raising questions as to whether the NTC has the ability to rein in all the various groups, many of which have competing interests and look to settling scores from the past.
For Libyans from the far south this daunting picture has already become a reality. Tawergha - which lies some 40 miles south of Misurata along the western coast of the Gulf of Sirte - was home to an estimated population of over 20,000 people. Now it’s become a ghost town.
According to some Libyans, the name Tawergha was given to the town’s black population because they had dark-skinned features like the original Tuareg.
The Tuaregs, who inhabit the border area of Libya, Chad, Niger and Algeria, were historically nomads that controlled trans-Saharan trade routes and had a reputation for being robbers.
During the seventies, Gaddafi assembled the Tuaregs and other African recruits into his elite battalion known as the Al-Asmar. Al-Asmar means ‘The Black’ in Arabic.
Under Gaddafi’s supervision, these militias were often sent on military expeditions into neighbouring countries. At the onset of the country’s revolt in February of this year, many Tuaregs were unleashed on protestors.
As a result, racial hatred fuelled by unconfirmed rumours that African mercenaries had been hired by Gaddafi to squash discontent created another common enemy - dark-skinned Africans.
In the eyes of Misuratans, Tawerghans were the perpetrators of some of the worst human rights abuses during Gaddafi’s siege on Misurata in March and April.
On Aug. 15, in what human rights groups are calling reprisal attacks, rebel forces going by the name of ‘The Brigade for Purging Slaves, Black Skin’ have reportedly detained and displaced hundreds, while other Tawerghans have disappeared without a trace.
"If we go back to Tawergha, we will then be at the mercy of the Misurata rebels," a woman, who has been living in a makeshift camp with her husband and five children, told UK-based Amnesty International.
"When the rebels entered our town in mid-August and shelled it, we fled just carrying the clothes on our backs. I don't know what happened to our homes and belongings. Now I am here in this camp, my son is ill and I am too afraid to go to the hospital in town. I don't know what will happen to us now."
Also caught up in the crossfire of vengeance are economic migrants, refugees and asylum-seekers from sub-Saharan Africa. Many of them have sought refuge in neighbouring Tunisia or Egypt.
For some, Libya was a transit country, but for others it had become a place of rebuilding.
"Fearing for their life, my parents who are from Al-Fasher city in Darfur fled to Tripoli in 1998. I had never lived outside Libya before the conflict started. My father worked as a cook and my mother was domestic worker. Before fleeing I was in my third year of university pursuing a degree in the medical field," 20-year old Eiman told IPS.
"Unfortunately the uprising in Libya took a bloody turn because people no longer respected the law and started raping women, taking hostages and killing people. For two months my family remained trapped in our house.
"They were accusing and killing all black males caught on the street of being mercenaries, which meant that our mother had to try and gather food but there were many days that we starved."
In an article last month, the Wall Street Journal quoted Jibril as saying, "regarding Tawergha, my own viewpoint is that nobody has the right to interfere in this matter except the people of Misurata. This matter can't be tackled through theories and textbook examples of national reconciliation like those in South Africa, Ireland and Eastern Europe."
Calls by human rights groups urging the NTC to protect black Libyans in the newly liberated Libya seems to have fallen on deaf ears, and this could set a precedent for what is to come.
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...
17 Comments so far
Show All"Calls by human rights groups urging the NTC to protect black Libyans in the newly liberated Libya seems to have fallen on deaf ears, and this could set a precedent for what is to come."
Not surprising. It's not as though it hasn't been reported on all along.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjOsYFW_VIg
http://somalilandpress.com/libya-rebels-execute-black-immigrants-while-forces-kidnap-others-20586
"The al-Qaeda-linked rebels’ campaign of racist terror began shortly after the Benghazi uprising in February. More than a few videos surfaced on the internet in the early months of the conflict showing brutal lynchings and beheadings while Western-backed rebels cheered.
But as insurgent forces solidify their grip over most of Libya, the race-based persecution is quickly intensifying. Entire cities and towns formerly occupied by blacks have been ethnically cleansed and destroyed.
"The Brigade for Purging Slaves, black Skin" — apparently a rebel slogan — was found months ago scrawled all along the road to Tawergha. And today, the coastal city of about 10,000 mostly black residents has essentially been wiped off the map.
Rebel forces rounded up remaining inhabitants and reportedly took them to camps, although reporters searching for the former residents have not been able to locate them. Homes, businesses, and schools were then looted before being burned to the ground.
Finally, graffiti reading "slaves," "negroes," and "abeed" — a derogatory term for blacks — was painted all over the ruins by NATO’s revolutionaries. The former city is now a "closed military area," according to rebels guarding a checkpoint interviewed by the McClatchy news service.
http://thenewamerican.com/world-mainmenu-26/africa-mainmenu-27/9005-libyan-rebels-accused-of-ethnic-cleansing-black-genocide
The west sure does like to set people against each other and then lament that there is fighting going on. Don't buy it. That is, I don't buy the concern. Mommar had no problem keeping the country together, his methods were harsh but the country was whole. Now that the West has arranged for his murder, it wants to bitch that the country is unmanagable, so "don't blame us for an Iraq-style back and forth butchery." I can and will blame you.
I'm sure our dear Wayne would agree with our dear Rumsfeld: Freedom is untidy and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things.
And considering this artical is touching on his favorite justification for attacking Libya: that black people were terrorizing the population with guns...Heavens! It's like Dre's The Chronic came to life! ;) Just kidding, Wayne.
Breaking nation states is much easier than making nation states. Like Humpty Dumpty. All NATO's horses and all NATO's men, cannot put Libya together again. I think Libya, Europe, and USA will all regret that Libya was freed from Gaddafi by civil war and murder. He was an old man and would have died of natural causes soon enough.
Unsurprisingly there is political, racial and personal payback going on. There is not much control, but the "at least the trains ran on time" lament for Gaddafi is absurd.
The interesting thing now will be to watch Obama and his band of fool's try to justify sending money to an Islamic state using Sharia law while condemning other's. He really is unskilled and unschooled.
So far he hasn't had much difficulty justifying such support for Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Yemen, not to mention their brutal suppression of protest.
I guess if you use unjust justification, you can justify anything. You'll note he doesn't mention those country's action's at any time when speaking of humanitarian abuse's in the aqrea.. There is so much to admire about Obama (ugh), makes me sick I voted for the toad.
Let me personally apolgize to you for that right now.
You don't have to apologize to me; I voted for him too. Never again!
Even though I supported third party candidates in 2008, you do not need to apologize for your vote in 2008. Lets face it; Obama was good and I mean real good! At telling the American people what they wanted to hear and that is why I called him the consummate con man in 2007- 2008. We all make mistakes and I blame the presstitued and whore MSM for being a tool for Wall Street and the plutocratic 1% more than so many well meaning people who were conned by Obama.
In 2012 Obamas new campaign slogan: YES WE CAN! KILL WHOMEVER WE WANT; WHEN WE WANT; AND WHERE WE WANT !
I thank you both, never the less, the apology stands and I address it to everyone else here too. What a boo-boo!
" Calls by human rights groups urging the NTC to protect black Libyans in the newly liberated Libya seems to have fallen on deaf ears ". Gaddafi being a thug and a dictator " who ruled with a iron fist, " while maybe having some truth, has been a red herring.
What you will never be told by the MSM, is this: 1. Gaddafi was in the process of replacing the IMF with his own African Monetary Fund. 2. Gaddafi was one the richest men in the world with an estimated wealth of around $200,000,000,000.00 and had earmarked some $300,000,000.00 for an African satellite and communications network. 3. Gaddafi was proposing to change the oil bourse currency from American $ to gold dinars. The evil 1% always, always use the canards of caring about and protecting the people, like in Libya , which may have some truth, because that is the best way to divert the people from their nefarious deeds. It is never about good guys or bad guys, these so called American, wars of liberation, like Iraq, Afghanistan and too many others to list, are always about $$$$$$ and power.
Lets be clear that - That $200billion is being mis-reported as Khadaffi personal funds when in fact it was the reserves of Libya's State owned Bank [IE: the Libyan Peoples fund's]. So why is the so-called main-stream dis-info media 'spinning' Libya's national treasure into Khadaffi's own 'personal' treasure? - From the BBC Aug 26:} 'Libya {was} a relatively rich country [until this FUK-US NATO Assault]. According to the IMF, income per head {was} a relatively healthy $11,300 a year, putting it well into the top third globally. Oil and other natural energy resources are the lion's share of this, providing 25% of gross domestic product and 95% of export earnings. The country has 41bn barrels in oil reserves, the highest in Africa. These earnings lead to the development of the country's sovereign wealth fund, the Libyan Investment Authority (LIA), which has estimated assets of $65bn (£40bn)... Gold too is in abundance. The IMF estimates it has reserves of 4.6m ounces, worth about $8bn, among the highest per head of population holdings in the world. As former central bank governor Farhat Bengdara puts it: "We {didn't} need donors. Libya {was} a rich country. The state activities from the Libyan Investment Authority, the central bank and gold reserves are worth $168 BILLION. But it is all frozen" [by the FUK-US NATO Powers].{ -
From Pambazuka News Article entitled: 'The execution of Gaddafi and the attempted humiliation of Africa' by Horace Campbell [ www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/77459 ]: } 'On Tuesday 25 October 2011 the Los Angeles Times reported that Libya had more than US$200 billion in reserves. As outlined in my article, ‘Global NATO and the Recolonisation of Africa’, it is no secret that leaders such as France’s Nicolas Sarkozy deeply want to get their hands on this money to save the banks in Europe and to save the Euro. But the crisis in the Eurozone area is too far gone and the depth of the structural and systemic crisis is too extreme to save the politicians who oversaw this military campaign inside Libya.' { -
AND- From Info Wars Oct 25 Article: 'NATO Countries Set to Steal $30,000 from Each Libyan Citizen' - by Scott Creighton @ Poor Richard’s Blog:} 'The pro-Western corporatist media outlets are hurriedly trying to help spin every aspect of the murder of Moammar Gadhafi and the ongoing rape and pillage of the Libyan people’s assets. Yesterday Paul Richter of the LA Times wrote an article claiming [IE: spinning the truth] that Moammar Gadhafi was the richest man in the world, holding some $200 billion dollars in assets hidden all over the globe. Buried deep within the body of his article, the truth finally comes out… ["Most of the money was under the name of GovernMent Institutions such as the Central Bank of Libya, the Libyan Investment Authority, the Libyan Foreign Bank, the Libyan National Oil Corp, and the Libya African Investment Portfolio. The new $200 billion figure is about double the prewar annual economic output of Libya, which has the largest proven oil reserves in Africa.” – LA-Times' Paul Richter]... All of the money was invested in Libyan enterprises for the Libyan people but because “investigators” 'claim' Gadhafi {allegedly} could have accessed it {hypothetically}, the globalist spin on this wealth owned by the Libyan people, is that it was Gadhafi’s and not theirs. The difference is that if this money belongs to the people of the Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, then it must be returned to them and cannot be touched. If it were to belong to Gadhafi then it simply becomes spoils of war and can be seized by whomever claims it. The $200 billion dollar figure represents (as Richter points out) “about $30,000 for every Libyan citizen”. This is the amount that is about to be stolen from the people of Libya. The US has still got somewhere around 29.3 billion dollars of Libyan money it took at the beginning of this conflict. Other NATO partners also turned a profit thus far in this conflict.' { -
BUT- Your Points 1 & 3 are definitely on Target!
This little bit of racist genocide on the part the rebel thugs is part of the Empire's master plan -- separate Arab North Africa from sub-Saharan Africa, whether in Libya by supporting the gulf state-supported Islamists, or now with the neo-colonization of South Sudan. Ghaddafi's vision had to be wrecked, as a otherwise an independent and united Africa posed a huge threat to the continuing colonial domination of the continent. Just as in Iraq, it wasn't just about oil but ensuring this domination would continue well into the 21st century.
Indeed, Ghaddafi's cowardly and savage mutilation symbolizes this horrific return to the 19th century.
Another key point that Western propaganda mass media refuses to report is that the war is not over. Green Resistance forces continue struggling against the NATO-backed, racist, genocidal, al-Queda "rebels" (rats). Freedom-loving people who loath Sharia law support the Green Resistance movement's just cause to restore Libya's sovereignty and combat medieval, Saudi-organized reactionaries. Show your support by wearing green clothing to anti-war protests.
The Western media is also, rather astonishingly considering what everyone is supposed to have "learned" in the last twelve years, assuming there will be no blow-back for this. As if everyone on Earth was as sexually exciting about that footage of Mommar being tortured and murdered as they are. That just might cause a little teensy bit of resentment ya' know.
Welcome to the 'New' & 'Improved' Libya [NOT!], now home of a so-called Gov't of AL-CIAeda / King Idris Affiliated Racist Lynch Mobs called the NTC! The FUK-US NATO Cabal & their unofficial propaganda arm [IE: so-called Main-stream News Media outlets & even some so-called alternative media- IE: DN!] knew who & what these guys were / are but didn't give a damn! In fact IMO they may actually wanted a race war & ethnic cleansing of Black Libyans. Why else would they mis-report [IE: LIE] that Khadaffi was slaughtering so-called 'peaceful' protesters when this was an armed rebellion almost from the Get-go?!! Why did they give cover to these AL-CIAeda / King Idris Affiliated Rebels when they were persecuting & Lynching Black Libyans & African Migrant Workers by propagating that hyped BS about Khadaffi's African Mercs & Viagra fueled mass Rapes by Khadaffi Loyalists [note this Pambazuka News Article: 10 Top Myths in the War Against Libya @ www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/77439 ]?!! Most so-called cruise-missle 'liberal' hawks want to justify this be saying 'But Khadaffi was a Dictator', but this was / is Bigger than Khadaffi!!! The fallout from this is likely to Tear Libya to Pieces & even spread into neighboring Chad, Niger & elsewhere! BUT- FUK-US NATO will likely insist of basing AFRICOM in the 'new' Libya to so-call 'FIX' [NOT!] these problems that they're cause of!