Revealing Gaddafi’s killer: What the media failed to mention?

Posted on October 24, 2011 by Sappho

The Amer­i­cans claim they killed Gaddafi with a drone, the French claim that their planes killed Gaddafi, and there are con­flict­ing NATO-rebels sto­ries on who killed the for­mer Libyan leader, like this guy who said that found Gaddafi walk­ing in the street with few chil­dren (which means that Aljazeera story of drainage pipe in fab­ri­ca­tion). They are fight­ing over the car­cass as vul­tures says Pepe Esco­bar on Asia Times

But what is not told in the media is the real killer. The one who hide behind the curtains:

Sources told news­pa­per Al-Manar that after he was injured in NATO bomb­ing on his con­voy, he was trans­ferred wounded Gaddafi in French heli­copters to a place close to Mis­rata, where he was beaten to death by the rebels.

NATO forces near the bomb­ing site could have saved Gaddafi, but they handed him over to Mis­rata rebels group to kill him. The source denied that Gaddafi was hid­ing under a bridge in a drainage pipe because this Site is down the road and com­pletely open.

Under the title “Why France announced its planes inter­cept Gaddafi’s con­voy?”, news­pa­per Al-Intiqad revealed the iden­tity of the real killer and the one who never men­tioned by the West­ern media:

The Emir of Qatar in his last visit to France meet­ing Sarkozy, requested the assas­si­na­tion of Muam­mar Gaddafi, which is the eas­i­est solu­tion for all.

Qatar insisted on the coop­er­a­tion of the U.S. in this process in terms of satel­lite intel­li­gence as well as through spies on the ground, because Qatar can not afford to do this alone.

Qatar advised the NATO that time is not on their side, espe­cially, elec­tions in the US, France and Spain are very close, all the three coun­tries are par­tic­i­pat­ing in the war against Libya.

It seems that Sarkozy, who is fac­ing a sharp pop­u­lar­ity defeat to his rival Social­ist (Fran­cois Hol­lande), needed to kill Gaddafi to gain more pub­lic sup­port, but the hor­ren­dous images and videos emerged back­fired against Sarkozy. How­ever, this does not mean that Gaddafi’s death is not in the inter­est of all West­ern coun­tries and the Libyan rebel NTC.

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Iraq: Al-Sadr more pressure on Maliki

Posted on October 23, 2011 by Sappho

While Maliki’s gov­ern­ment faces the calls of inde­pen­dence and sep­a­ra­tion by the Kurds and some Sunni fac­tions because of the lack of ser­vices and the polit­i­cal and eco­nomic sit­u­a­tion … Yet Muq­tada Al-Sadr opens up another front to put more pres­sure on the Prime Minister.

Under the guid­ance of Al-Sadr, who is right now in a strong posi­tion inside and out­side the Iraqi gov­ern­ment, 40 Sadrists deputies in the Par­lia­ment insisted on dis­cussing Al-Sadr’s demands in a par­lia­ment ses­sion which is approved by Par­lia­ment Speaker Osama Najafi

Muq­tada Al-Sadr made three demands: First, dis­trib­ute a share of the oil to the peo­ple, sec­ond: the appoint­ment of at least 50.000 unem­ployed (two mil­lion unem­ployed — accord­ing to offi­cial sta­tis­tics) — and the third is to pro­vide free fuel to the National Elec­tric­ity gen­er­a­tors. Sadr said that this is the last oppor­tu­nity for the Gov­ern­ment to the sur­vive and his pres­ence as a part­ner in the Government.

Sadr, who is accus­tomed to issue demands between one week and another, mobilise his fol­low­ers to demon­strate here and there to put pres­sure on Maliki. Most of Sadr’s threats are quick reac­tions, but this threat is the first of its kind for the sur­vival of the National Alliance.

If this is not enough for Maliki, Muq­tada Al-Sadr issued a state­ment yes­ter­day (first image below) in which he rejected the increase of the employ­ees of the US embassy in Iraq from 5000 to 15000 saying:

They are all occu­piers and must be resisted

Later he issued a more detailed state­ment (sec­ond image below) to clar­ify his position:

The for­mer mas­ter evil [George Bush] has said “There will be a photo of the Amer­i­can Pres­i­dent in Each Iraqi house” … Their behav­ior reached the point that he ended up with the throw of a shoe .… Lies are their goal, Thou­sands in the their embassy … Thou­sands as secu­rity con­trac­tors, Thou­sands as train­ers. This is a farce, they can’t deceive any­one with these [fab­ri­ca­tions].

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British forces and Al-Qaeda fighters side-by-side in Libya

Posted on October 22, 2011 by Sappho

This is the Alger­ian cor­re­spon­dent who went miss­ing for 10 days in Libya, appeared again yes­ter­day say­ing that he paid the Libyan rebels 600 Euro to allow him to join them in Sirte-fight and this is his report (there also many pho­tos):

Dur­ing our stop we are joined by three peo­ple, later I learned that one of them is a trans­la­tor and oth­ers are British forces car­ry­ing satel­lite tele­phones with them to pin­point Gaddafi’s forces where­abouts, espe­cially towards the sea, an area cov­ered by dense trees and believed to be a mer­ce­nar­ies secu­rity camp.

On the 2nd night, I approached the British to ask them for their role in the war of Libya but the trans­la­tor Abdel-Hamid said, it is for­bid­den to talk with them they are here to help the Libyan peo­ple and to coor­di­nate the infor­ma­tion pro­vided by detainees of for­eign mer­ce­nar­ies and the Libyans, who are fight­ing for Gaddafi.

The he added this:

A large num­ber of fight­ers shout­ing cries of Allahu Akbarو Allahu Akbar there is no God but Allah, we live or die for this strug­gle. A num­ber of them were wear­ing Afghan cloaks and dress hold­ing the black ban­ners and flags of “There is no‮‬ God but Allah and Moham­mad is his mes­sen­ger”, The Islamic Khal­i­fate flag.

This is Al-Qaeda flag, first used by “Al-Qaeda in Iraq” aka “Iraq Islamic State”, later adopted by all Al-Qaeda factions.

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Libya’s post-war commandment: Thou shall not exclude the enemy

Posted on October 21, 2011 by Sappho

Libya’s future started with Kalash­nikov. Jeeps loaded with gun­men, a mix of under­stand­able Ara­bic and none-understandable bar­ber, but the fact remains: a false start: eupho­ria that Libya not be proud.

Alaa al-Ameri, a pseu­do­nym of a British-Libyan wrote in the Guardian:

For every life he took, for every future he stole, we must com­mit to rebuild­ing not just our coun­try, but our whole soci­ety to such a stan­dard that when we’re fin­ished, there will be no evi­dence that he or his par­a­sitic fam­ily and entourage ever existed.

If only it were that easy, as if Gaddafi’s clan, Islamists, the dif­fer­ent rebel fac­tions, East­ern and West­ern tribes dif­fer­ences can dis­ap­pear with a snap of the fingers.

Rem­nants of the for­mer regime will wait and play on the time fac­tor, which may pro­duce con­flicts between the new rulers of Libya about how to dis­trib­ute the spoils of war, oil and author­ity portfolios.

Libya’s TNC is now in power, but cul­tur­ally there is a lit­tle gain: the coun­try is infested with Gaddafi sym­pa­thiz­ers. Those are not bad peo­ple, but cit­i­zens who were at the mercy of Gaddafi’s secu­rity appa­ra­tus enjoyed good income, edu­ca­tion, shel­ter and safety.

Gaddafi’s sym­pa­thiz­ers are very impor­tant fac­tor to sta­bilise Libya wrote Christo­pher R. Hill, a for­mer U.S. Deputy Sec­re­tary of State in an opin­ion piece can be put in few words; Take the ene­mies in service.

Larry Kaplow on FP puts his points as “com­mand­ments” of “how to behave with your enemy. The cliché “love your ene­mies” is now a neces­sity. A need which the British Libyan Alaa al-Ameri do not seem to understand.

“Gaddafi’s death is not enough,” he writes. “We have to for­get him. And there­fore we must erase all his influ­ences, from every aspect of our lives. Only then can we be free”

But if the era­sure the traces of the past also threat­ens peo­ple, then Libya will remain unset­tled for a long time. Gaddafi opened the arms depots, almost every house­hold now has a Kalash­nikov. Gaddafi is dead but his spirit will haunt the coun­try if the peo­ple who are griev­ing have no future in the new Libya.

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Muqtada Al-Sadr’s American finger and the US presence in Iraq

Posted on October 12, 2011 by Sappho

What is impor­tant about Muq­tada Al-Sadr’s last state­ment reject­ing the US pres­ence in Iraq is a one line he used (and not reported by the West­ern media). Al-Sadr said exactly: If my fin­ger is an Amer­i­can, I will cut it off.

Very impor­tant words because these are the same words used by Muqtada’s uncle say­ing: If my fin­ger is a Baathist, I will cut it off, before he get killed by Sad­dam Hus­sein, and Al-sadr bor­rowed this line giv­ing the impres­sion that he ready to “die” for this cause.

Hillary Clinton’s last state­ment “The future of pol­i­tics will be decided in Asia, not Afghanistan or Iraq”, Iraqi Pres­i­dent Tal­a­bani under­stood the hid­den mes­sage that the US will not delay its plans because the few Iraqi politi­cians refused the pres­ence of the US sol­diers. Tal­a­bani directly released a state­ment say­ing that the gov­ern­ment accepts the pres­ence of 5,000 US soldiers.

For­get all the waves of state­ments and expec­ta­tions from both Iraq and the US about the extend of the US troops in Iraq, but there are few facts:

Iraqi and Amer­i­can sides reached an agree­ment to return to the Strate­gic Frame­work Agree­ments between the two sides, which allows the US Defense Depart­ment to pro­vide the logis­tic and train­ing expe­ri­ence to Iraqi Defense Ministry.

Accord­ing to the Frame­work Agree­ment, the U.S. State Depart­ment to send thou­sands of Amer­i­can civil­ians may have been mil­i­tary, will be under the com­mand of the U.S. ambas­sador in Bagh­dad, Mr. James Jef­frey) in coop­er­a­tion with the Iraqi For­eign Min­istry Iraq to pro­tect the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

Iraq Par­lia­ment Secu­rity and Defence Com­mis­sion announced the post­pone­ment of the (draft agree­ment with NATO) that will allow the NATO to pro­vide the train­ing of Iraqi secu­rity forces until after the U.S. with­drawal end of the year.

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Libya, exposing Al-Qaeda NATO-Jihadists in Sirte

Posted on October 12, 2011 by Sappho

Alger­ian cor­re­spon­dent in the Libyan front line sent a very inter­est­ing report from Sirte, expos­ing the Libyan rebels.

Libyan Afghan Jihadists lead the fight

Most impor­tant point of the fight­ing on Sirte front from the west­ern side, is the par­tic­i­pa­tion of Salafi jihadists marked by the bat­tle of the past two days by echo­ing the cries of “Allahu Akbar” con­tin­ued through the audio devices in ambu­lances and armed cars armed, which was super­vised by the field com­man­der “Abu Bilal Al-Afghani” a bat­tal­ion com­man­der who fought years ago, accom­pa­nied by Abdul­lah Anas Al-GaZari (now a refugee in Europe). Many mem­bers of his bat­tal­ion fought against the Soviet in Afghanistan, as well as against the US inva­sion of Afghanistan dur­ing the rule of the Tal­iban Movement.

Tar­get­ing civilians

Rebels are tar­get­ing fam­i­lies and civil­ian build­ings with Russian-made tanks and rocket launch­ers long-and medium-range, have claimed the homes of the fam­i­lies of civil­ians caught in the cross fire. These attacks raised dis­putes among the young rebels and tanks super­vi­sors resulted in the with­drawal from the areas they had seized hours ear­lier to the rear lines.

Such inci­dents forced the remain­ing fam­i­lies in Sirte women and chil­dren to take arms to defend them­selves fear­ing of assas­si­na­tion when the rebels enter the homes, such cases reported often.

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For the sake of Palestine, why Western countries allowed Russia and China to veto the UN resolution against Syria?

Posted on October 8, 2011 by Sappho

UN Secu­rity Coun­cil held Tues­day evening, Octo­ber 4 2011, a heated debate, ended with no suc­cess in pass­ing the draft UN res­o­lu­tion seek­ing to con­demn Dam­as­cus. BRICS coun­tries voted against and vetoed the res­o­lu­tion which has raised ten­sions between the key inter­na­tional forces within the Coun­cil. Later West­ern coun­tries started to shed croc­o­dile tears over the Syr­ian activists.

Tra­di­tional prac­tices in the UN Secu­rity Coun­cil is to hold inten­sive con­sul­ta­tions before the sub­mis­sion of a draft res­o­lu­tion for the final vote, but the impor­tant ques­tion is: Why Euro­pean coun­tries and the US agreed to sub­mit the draft res­o­lu­tion to the vot­ing sys­tem within the Coun­cil, despite know­ing in advance the Moscow and Bei­jing will veto the resolution?

Wash­ing­ton will be forced to use its veto against a draft res­o­lu­tion of the inter­na­tional recog­ni­tion of the Pales­tin­ian state, which will lead to anger the polit­i­cal Islam activists who are cur­rently active in the Mid­dle East.

Since the polit­i­cal protest in Syria is sup­ported by polit­i­cal Islam in the Mid­dle East, the fact that Wash­ing­ton and its allies try­ing to pass a UN res­o­lu­tion will improve the image of Wash­ing­ton, Paris and Lon­don in the near term, at the same time pro­voke anger and hatred against Moscow and Beijing.

Later, when Wash­ing­ton will use its veto against the inter­na­tional recog­ni­tion of the Pales­tin­ian state, the anger of the Islamists in Mid­dle East will be less harmful.

But, still there is one ques­tion, which I can’t answer: Every­one knows that the objec­tion to a deci­sion of the Secu­rity Coun­cil needs to use the veto right by one state, and does not need two. Why this veto has been used by Rus­sia and China together?

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Despite Sadrists rejection, US trainers to stay in Iraq … without immunity

Posted on October 5, 2011 by Sappho

Iraqi Gov­ern­ment spokesman Al-Dabagh released a very strange state­ment telling Al-Mada news­pa­per that the gov­ern­ment decided to ban the US Con­gress del­e­ga­tion from enter­ing the Iraqi ter­ri­to­ries because they the met with the Iraqi oppo­si­tion leader Harith Al-Dhari.

What is weird about this state­ment is that the US con­gress del­e­ga­tion is already in Bagh­dad since yes­ter­day and they are already held a meet­ing with the Iraqi par­lia­ment — For­eign Rela­tions Committee.

Fol­low­ing my pre­vi­ous input, it seems that Maliki man­aged to find the bal­ance point and sur­vive the first test.

For the first time since the U.S. occu­pa­tion of Iraq in 2003, tak­ing Iraqi polit­i­cal lead­ers rejects immu­nity of U.S. train­ers. Sadrists are the only polit­i­cal bloc who still refuses the pres­ence of the US train­ers with or with­out immunity.

We still don’t know Washington’s opin­ion on this devel­op­ment, espe­cially Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden, who is respon­si­ble for the Iraqi issue in the U.S. admin­is­tra­tion and had pres­sured the Iraqi lead­ers to keep the Amer­i­can troops as train­ers with immu­nity, but all indi­ca­tions show that The Amer­i­can side will reject the Iraqi decision.

I think Iran will accept the above solu­tion, since the pres­ence of few US train­ers is no longer a real threat.

But, what is more impor­tant is what is going on inside Al-Iraqiya.

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Between the hammer and the anvil, US presence in Iraq and Maliki’s future will be decided today

Posted on October 4, 2011 by Sappho

Between the US ham­mer and the Iran­ian anvil, not only the US pres­ence in Iraq, but Maliki’s future will be decided today. Iraqi Pres­i­dent Talabani’s call for a meet­ing among the lead­ers of the polit­i­cal coali­tions is the meet­ing which will decide the US pres­ence in Iraq.

On the loos­ing side, and unmo­ti­vated to attend the meet­ing, leader of Al-Iraqiya List Allawi knows that it is dif­fi­cult for The Iraqi pres­i­dent and the PM to give him the required guar­an­tees that he insists upon. Both Tal­a­bani and Maliki have their own objec­tives from this meeting.

Accord­ing to the lat­est devel­op­ments in the Iraqi scene there are two pri­or­i­ties, one con­cerns Maliki as prime min­is­ter, and the sec­ond con­cerns Tal­a­bani as part of the Kur­dis­tan Alliance.

Tal­a­bani already said:

To dis­cuss the Amer­i­can troops’ with­drawal as there is una­nim­ity on the with­drawal. And the topic of train­ers will be dis­cussed in the said meet­ing and God will­ing we hope to a reach a unan­i­mous deci­sion in the next meeting.

As for Maliki, is the ques­tion of the pres­ence of U.S. train­ers after the with­drawal of Amer­i­can troops late this year.

Maliki exposed to three types of pres­sures, one pres­sure of the polit­i­cal blocs who want to throw the ball in his court to indi­cate whether Iraq needs US train­ers or not, and can be given immu­nity or not.

[a del­e­ga­tion from the National Alliance met with the polit­i­cal body of the Sadrist Move­ment in order to con­vince the Sadrists to agree on the US train­ers pres­ence with­out immu­nity.]

The sec­ond of these pres­sures is the US, where Maliki does not want to look rebel­lious before the Amer­i­cans, and there­fore through this meet­ing he is try­ing to get rid of the US ham­mer, as much as pos­si­ble by assur­ing the approval of the blocks includ­ing the Al-Iraqiya on the pres­ence of the US trainers.

[The Amer­i­cans started to threat Maliki’s gov­ern­ment, a US con­gress del­e­ga­tion met with the Iraqi Harith Al-Dhari oppo­si­tion group in Amman-Jordan two days ago.]

In the same con­text, Maliki knows that sur­viv­ing the US ham­mer will not save him from falling into the Iran­ian anvil, seek­ing to cre­ate a del­i­cate bal­ance between the US sat­is­fac­tion with­out anger­ing the Iranians.

As for Tal­a­bani, since his return from Wash­ing­ton he started to focus on the US pres­sure expressed by the Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden on the level of the US train­ers and how to pro­vide a suit­able ground for the suc­cess of talks between the Kur­dish polit­i­cal del­e­ga­tion in Baghdad.

If both Maliki and Tal­a­bani reached full con­sen­sus today, the polit­i­cal land­scape will turn upside down to re-represented in the strate­gic alliance between the Shi­ite and Kur­dish coalitions.

But if there is no sig­nif­i­cant progress, the Kurds will play with Maliki using Allawi again, threat­en­ing him to with­draw con­fi­dence which will force Maliki to cre­ate a very dif­fi­cult balance.

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A US drone or US warplanes? Al-Awlaki is not dead

Posted on October 3, 2011 by Sappho

Maybe it’s not that impor­tant, but there are two ver­sions of Al-Awlaki’s assas­si­na­tion story. One runs on the US media say­ing that drone is used to kill Al-Qaeda leader in Yemen, and other on the Ara­bic media says that US war­planes tar­geted Al-Awlaki (which means that US air­base in a neigh­bor­ing coun­try is used to tar­get Al-Awlaki).

What sup­ports the Ara­bic ver­sion is that, the attack on few Al-Qaeda mem­bers is directly reported and pub­lished by eye­wit­nesses in Yemeni Ade­nal­ghad, with­out know­ing that Al-Awlaki is the target.

This is the story pub­lished on the news­pa­per on 20-09-2011:

Local sources in Abyan Province reported on Tues­day after­noon that war­planes believed to be an Amer­i­can raided the tribal areas to the south-west of the Province, where sim­i­lar attacks have occurred in late 2009 and resulted in the deaths of dozens of villagers.

The war­planes hov­ered in the sky above the moun­tains before tar­get­ing mul­ti­ple sites in the moun­tains but did not know until this moment whether these raids have resulted in deaths or injuries.

One local res­i­dent said he saw smoke ris­ing from the moun­tains where shep­herds gather fire­wood in wooden storage.

Later the same news­pa­per reported that Al-Awlaki wasn’t in the the motor­cade, and is con­firmed today by his fam­ily who failed to iden­tify the body.

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