The West and Others

Libya's Green Resistance and the death of Ambassador Stevens

by Mark Robertson and Finian Cunningham

The NATO powers and the bureaucrats they installed in Libya want you to think that all 5.6 million Libyans are happy that NATO and its proxy terrorists destroyed Libya, a country which under Gaddafi had the highest standard of living in Africa.

They want you to think that NATO brought “freedom and democracy” to Libya, not chaos and death.

They want you to think that there is no Green Resistance to the NATO imperialists or NATO’s Islamist allies in Benghazi.

In reality, the Resistance has been increasingly active since shortly after the murder of Muammar Gaddafi in October 2011, as will be shown below. They strike any NATO target they can, and they execute key Libyans who betrayed Gaddafi and sided with NATO. The Benghazi incident was merely their latest blow against what they see as NATO’s illegal occupation of their country.

Everyone in Libya knows about the Green Resistance, whose members are called “Tahloob” (Arabic for “Gaddafi loyalists”). The denial only happens outside of Libya, by the NATO powers and their dutiful Western mainstream media.

Because of this denial, and because most of the world’s people have forgotten about Libya, the internet is filled with blind guesses, unfounded claims, and ridiculous counterclaims regarding the Benghazi incident last week in which US Ambassador Christopher Stevens and at least three other American personnel were killed. And the NATO lie factory is operating at full blast.

CLAIMS, COUNTER-CLAIMS AND DISINFORMATION

The Obama regime says “protesters” irate over an anti-Islam video did it.

The NATO-installed bureaucrats in Libya say that “foreign extremists” did it.

US Congressmen say “Al Qaeda did it”. So does CNN, as well as the alternative media web site Prison Planet, which denounces any reference to the Green Resistance as “absurd”.

Media outlets, such as the UK Guardian, say “an organized terror network did it”.

Turkey’s government says “Syria’s Assad did it”.

Israel says “Hezbollah did it”.

The Sunni monarchs of the Gulf Cooperation Council oil sheikdoms say “Iran did it”.

Even reputable alternative media writers and progressive bloggers have attributed the attack to “the Benghazi Islamists”, and that this is “blowback from imperialism”.

Wikileaks says the attack happened because the US had backed Britain’s threat to storm the Ecuadorian embassy in London and remove Julian Assange.

Some media outlets claim that “Al Qaeda” carried out the attack in revenge for the supposed death in Pakistan (by US drone strike on 4 June 2012) of Libyan-born Abu Yahya Al Libi (aka Hassan Mohammed Qaid) who was supposedly a key aide to Osama bin Laden, and was supposedly the “number two man” in Al Qaeda.

This claim is nonsense, since Al Qaeda has been a group of mercenaries employed by Washington and London since 1980. President Reagan called them “heroes” and “freedom fighters”. The US and Britain sends its Al Qaeda mercenaries to the Balkans, Libya, Syria, Chechnya, Somalia, Sudan, and other places that NATO wants to infiltrate, destroy or destabilize.

NATO pays Ayman Al Zawahiri, the so-called leader of the Al Qaeda mercenaries, to advance NATO imperialism by recording videos and audio-tapes; over 60 of them so far. Zawahiri repeatedly called for the death of Gaddafi, and now he repeatedly calls for the death of Syria’s President Bashar Al Assad. He also calls for Pakistanis to support the Taliban, in order to make the world think the Taliban still exists. He sometimes records in English, and his true identity and whereabouts are a NATO secret. On 11 September 2012, in commemoration of 9/11, he released a video that eulogized Abu Yahya Al Libi, the one supposedly killed by a US drone in June. This “eulogy” had nothing to do with the Benghazi incident, which happened later that night on Tuesday 11 September.

Some claim that Salafists carried out the fatal attack on the US premises. This is more nonsense, since Salafists are NATO allies. Salafists and Wahhabists connote a strict, literalist, and puritanical approach to Islam. They are mainly associated with Saudi Arabia’s feudal style of Islam, and they were allied with NATO against Gaddafi. Now they are allied with NATO against Assad, Iran, Hezbollah, and Shiites generally.

An example of Salafists in Libya is the Ansar Al Sharia – a blanket term for various militias that want to apply strict Sharia law in Libya. Its members are pro-NATO and anti-Green Resistance. They had no reason to attack the US government site in Benghazi which had been instrumental in galvanizing the Islamist insurgency to topple the Gaddafi government, beginning at least from March 2011 and under the supervision of the late Christopher Stevens. Stevens was Washington’s point man in Benghazi and is known to have cultivated strong ties with the Islamists.

In short, it does not make sense that such Benghazi contacts would have wanted or have been motivated to kill their American paymaster.

The most obvious explanation is that cadres – the Green Resistance – loyal to Gaddafi and in opposition to the NATO-imposed regime carried out the attack. NATO and its Libyan quislings don’t want to admit this subversive reality. The fact of a resistance – a potent and growing resistance at that – has to be denied, erased from the record.

TIMING

It was a mere coincidence that the Benghazi attack happened on the eleventh anniversary of 9/11. The Green Resistance was angry that Abdullah Al Senoussi (Gaddafi’s chief of intelligence) had been arrested upon his arrival at Nouakchott airport in Mauritania on 17 March 2012. Then, six days before the Benghazi attack, Mauritania extradited Senoussi to Libya for trial by the NATO-installed bureaucrats.

One day before the Benghazi attack, the NATO puppets put two senior Gaddafi loyalists on trial, accusing them of wasting public money by paying $2.7 billion to families of people killed in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. The two Gaddafi loyalists are Abdul Ati Al Obeidi (who had been Gaddafi’s Prime Minister, Foreign Minister, and Head of State) and Mohammed Zwai (former Secretary General of the General People’s Congress – that is, head of the legislature under Gaddafi).

Also, Baghdadi Ali Mahmudi had been Secretary of the General People’s Committee (that is, Prime Minister) under Gaddafi, but escaped from Tripoli on 21 August 2011 as NATO-backed terrorists swept into the city. Mahmudi was arrested in Tunisia for illegal border entry and jailed for six months until his charges were overturned on appeal. On 24 June 2012, Tunisia’s Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali (acting on NATO orders) suddenly had Mahmudi re-arrested and sent back to the NATO puppets in Tripoli, who promptly imprisoned Mahmudi.

Tunisia’s Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali is pro-NATO, and a friend of American hawkish senators McCain and Lieberman. His re-arrest and extradition of Mahmudi angered Tunisian President Moncef Marzouki, who denounced the extradition as illegal, and it also enraged the Libyan Green Resistance.

As for US Ambassador Christopher Stevens, he had promoted Libya’s destruction, having arrived in Benghazi in April 2011 for that purpose, and remained there throughout the NATO seven-month aerial bombardment of Libya. His job was to coordinate the NATO-backed terrorists.

After Libya was destroyed, Stevens had used a Tripoli hotel as his base, since the Green Resistance had burned down the US embassy in the capital, Tripoli. When the Resistance tried to kill him with a car bomb outside the hotel, Stevens moved to the villas in Benghazi, a city in the east of the country whose inhabitants tend to be pro-US and which has long been a hotbed of Islamist jihadis, many of them furnishing the ranks of NATO’s Afghan Mujahideen in the 1980s and later Al Qaeda.

That was over a year ago. (Stevens formally became Obama’s ambassador to Libya in May 2012.)

Stevens was outgoing, and had so underestimated the Green Resistance that he enjoyed jogging in the streets of Benghazi and elsewhere in Libya.

Everyone knew that he and his American staff were present. One figure among the pro-NATO terrorists, Ahmed Al Abbar, says of Stevens: “He was loved by everybody [that is, in Benghazi]”.

Stevens’ popularity with the Benghazi traitors added to the fury of the Green Resistance when they eventually attacked the US site in Benghazi.

Thus, contrary to claims by Western media outlets such as the British Independent, there were no “major security breeches,” and no “mystery” about the attack. All such claims are red herrings designed to distract from the reality of the Green Resistance.

THEY ALL ADMITTED THE TRUTH AT FIRST

The morning after the Benghazi attack, on 12 September, the NATO puppets unwittingly admitted the truth about the “Tahloob” (Green Resistance), and whined that NATO was not doing enough to help crush it. Libyan Deputy Interior Minister Wanis Al Sharif admitted this in a Benghazi news conference, which was later broadcast on Al Jazeera television.

Libya’s Prime Minister Abdurrahim El-Keib also admitted it, as did Libya’s President Mohammed El-Megarif, as well as Ali Aujali, Libya’s Ambassador to Washington, plus Ibrahim Dabbashi, Libya’s ambassador to the UN. All of them said that Gaddafi loyalists had attacked the US site in Benghazi. They would quickly change their change tune under pressure from their NATO masters.

Back on 24 August 2012, Time magazine had noted that Gaddafi “still commands silent admiration in many parts of Libya”. The article quoted President El-Magariaf as saying: “We know that Gaddafi loyalists are behind these bombings [since the overthrow of Gaddafi]. In the last few months, the security services have intensified their campaign against Bani Walid and Tarhuna.”

Bani Walid is a loyalist stronghold whose people held key positions in Gaddafi’s security services. It was also the last city outside of Gaddafi’s birthplace of Sirte to fall to NATO-backed terrorists on 23 January 2012. Magariaf is from Benghazi, and spent 30 years in the US being groomed for the time when NATO would destroy Libya. On 9 August 2012, NATO installed him as Libya’s head of state after an “election”. Magariaf is allied with the Muslim Brotherhood, which is aligned with NATO.

The initial admissions of the truth about the Green Resistance were made on the morning after the attack. Within hours, however, all top Libyan officials, acting under NATO orders, changed their tune, merely calling the attackers “foreign extremists”. Magariaf, the president installed by NATO, went to Benghazi three days after the attack, and declared that “Al Qaeda did it”.

One bureaucrat who would not adopt the NATO spin was Prime Minister Abdurrahim El-Keib, who continued to insist that Gaddafi loyalists were the perpetrators. Therefore, NATO dismissed him as Libya’s prime minister, and replaced him with Mustafa Abushagur, the day after the Benghazi incident. Abushagur had lived most of his life in the USA, and had always been an enemy of Gaddafi. Like so many other US-installed bureaucrats, he had returned to Benghazi in May 2011 during the NATO-instigated insurgency.

Some alternative news outlets acknowledge the truth about the Green Resistance, for example, the Inter Press News Service, which is a non-profit outlet.

IPS spoke with armed Gaddafi loyalists who vowed that they will step up their fight. Government sources alternately claim the perpetrators are former Gaddafi loyalists or Islamists. Further confusion arises from a government clampdown on the dissemination of information in the local media, and by Libyan security forces preventing foreign journalists from covering the scenes of attacks first-hand, or taking pictures.

The Libyan bureaucrats’ clampdown on media information is understandable, since they want to hamper solidarity with the Green Resistance.

MASS DENIAL

Regarding the Benghazi incident, the mass denial begins with basic facts. For example, most people refer to “the US consulate,” when in reality the US site in Benghazi was not an embassy or a consulate, or even a “compound”. It was a collection of villas (that is, a gated community) privately owned by one Mohammad Al Bishari, who was leasing the villas to US State Department personnel.

Collectively the villas were what the US State Department calls an “interim facility”. It had a level of security known as “simple lock and key,” meaning it had no bulletproof glass, reinforced doors, US Marines, or other features common to embassies and consulates. (In Mexico, for example, Washington has an embassy and 22 consulates, but in Libya the US government had only a single embassy in Tripoli – and then, after the NATO bombardment campaign, used the Benghazi villas.)

The corporate media falsely use the term “US consulate” to make it seem that “terrorists attacked US sovereignty”. This justifies the “war on terror,” plus the past destruction of Libya.

Furthermore, the Obama regime calls the privately owned group of villas a “compound” in order to make it seem that the (non-existent) “protesters” brazenly stormed a fortress similar to the massive US embassy complex in Baghdad.

THERE WERE NO PROTESTERS IN BENGHAZI

The White House claims that protesters against that anti-Muslim video “spontaneously” attacked the so-called “consulate.” In reality there were no protesters anywhere in Benghazi at the time of the attack. When Fox News questioned US officials about this, the officials admitted the truth.

Nonetheless, the Obama administration/regime continues to insist that “protesters did it”. This lie not only conceals the Green Resistance; it also makes Muslims all seem irrational and blood-lusting, thereby justifying imperialist aggression (that is, the “war on terror”).

The absence of protesters was confirmed by one of the eight Libyans guarding the private group of villas used by Ambassador Stevens and his staff. The eyewitness, aged 27, is being treated in a hospital for five shrapnel wounds in one leg, and two bullet wounds in the other. He asked that his name be withheld, and that the hospital not be identified, for fear that “militants” (that is, the Green Resistance) would track him down and kill him.

Of the eight Libyan security guards, the eyewitness and four others had been hired by a British firm. The remaining three were members of Libya’s 17th of February Brigade, a group of pro-NATO terrorists formed at the start of the NATO campaign to destroy Gaddafi and Libyan society.

In an interview with McClatchy news service last Thursday (13 September 2012) the eyewitness said there were no protesters at all.

“The Americans would have left if there had been protesters, but there wasn’t a single ant. The area was totally quiet until about 9:35 pm, when as many as 125 men attacked with machine guns, grenades, RPGs, and anti-aircraft weapons. They threw grenades into the villas, wounding me and knocking me down. Then they stormed through the facility’s main gate, moving from villa to villa.”

That does not sound like a “spontaneous protest” against a blasphemous B-movie that suddenly appeared on the internet, as the White House and others claim; rather, it was a sharply executed military strike that must have been planned meticulously well in advance.

The eyewitness managed to escape by telling one of the attackers that he was only a gardener in the gated community. His account is consistent with that of Mohammad Al Bishari, who owns the villas, and was leasing them to the US government. Bishari gave his own account on 12 September, the day after the attack.

Ambassador Stevens was overcome by “severe asphyxia” (smoke inhalation), and was still alive after the attack. Pro-US Libyans in Benghazi carried him to the Benghazi Medical center, where he died later in the night.

RESISTANCE GROWS

NATO destroyed Libya and reduced its people to poverty and violence. In the post-destruction chaos, there are family feuds and inter-militia rivalries. There are long-standing disputes over land, plus long-standing friction between Arabs and Berbers.

However, we shall focus on Resistance attacks against NATO targets, and Resistance assassinations of Libyan figures that betrayed Gaddafi and sided with NATO. The following are only some of the “scores”.

On 18 March 2012, in the Tripoli neighborhood of Abu Salim (a pro-Gaddafi stronghold) local members of the Green Resistance had a shoot-out with a pro-NATO militia group from Zintan led by one Mohammed El-Rebay. (Zintan is a province in Libya’s western mountains.) The Resistance managed to kill one of the Zintan terrorists, who had been using a Tripoli school as their base.

In April 2012, the Resistance detonated a roadside bomb beside a UN convoy that included Ian Martin, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s Special Representative for Libya.

On 29 April 2012, the lifeless body of Shukri Ghanem, Gaddafi’s former oil minister, was found floating in the River Danube. In May 2011, Ghanem had joined NATO, and went off to reside in London and then Vienna.

On 2 May 2012, the Green Resistance claimed responsibility for assassinating General Albarrani Shkal, a former military governor of Tripoli who had demobilized the 38,000 men of his guard and opened the gates of Tripoli to foreign troops during Operation Mermaid Dawn, the sacking of Tripoli that began on 20 August 2011. (Tripoli’s nickname is “The Mermaid”.)

On 15 May 2012, Khaled Abu Salah, a candidate for the Constituent Assembly controlled by NATO, was assassinated near the oasis town of Ubari in southwest Libya.

On 22 May 2012, a rocket-propelled grenade targeted the headquarters of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Benghazi, but caused only structural damage to the premises. The ICRC is headquartered in Geneva, and its foreign offices are often used as cover by Western intelligence agencies, such as MI6 or the CIA.

On 26 May 2012, Mukhtar Fernana, head of the Military Council for the Western Region, survived an assassination attempt.

On 5 June 2012, the Resistance detonated a bomb in front of the US-operated building in Tripoli, damaging its gates.

On 11 June 2012, in Benghazi’s al-Rabha neighborhood, the Resistance fired an RPG at a convoy that carried British Ambassador Dominic Asquith, wounding two of his bodyguards.

Back in July 2011, Abdel-Fattah Younis, the former Qaddafi loyalist turned “rebel” military commander, was assassinated. On 22 June 2012, the judge investigating the death of Younis was himself assassinated in Benghazi.

On 28 July 2012, Suleiman Buzraidah was killed in a drive-by shooting while he was en route to a Benghazi mosque. Buzraidah had been a military intelligence official under Gaddafi, but betrayed him to join the NATO-backed terrorists.

On 29 July 2012, Khalifa Belqasim Haftar narrowly survived an assassination attempt. Formerly one of Gaddafi’s army commanders, in 1988 he betrayed Gaddafi and lived for 23 years under US government protection near CIA headquarters in Virginia. He returned to Libya during the NATO-led insurgency, hoping that after Gaddafi’s death, he would be made commander-in-chief of the Libyan military (controlled by NATO). However, he had to settle for third place in the hierarchy, and was given the rank of Lt. General before the Resistance caught up with him.

Last month was an especially active four weeks for the Resistance. Security buildings and hotels in Benghazi were rocked by bomb attacks and attempted attacks. Foreign diplomatic staff and embassies were targeted. US embassy staff in Tripoli escaped an attempted carjacking.

On 10 August 2012, eight Resistance members escaped from the Al Fornaj prison in Tripoli after a coordinated attack. Gunmen in pickup trucks outside the prison shot at security guards, while prisoners inside set sections of the prison on fire and managed to overpower a number of guards. This was the third Resistance attack on the prison since the murder of Gaddafi.

On 18 August 2012, the Green Resistance detonated a car bomb outside the Four Seasons Hotel on Omar Al Mukhtar Street in Tripoli. The target was a vehicle being used by Benghazi security officials (installed by NATO) who were staying at the hotel.

Afterwards, the NATO-installed bureaucrats sent heavily armed soldiers to prevent photographs being taken, and to forbid journalists from entering the area, so that word of the Green Resistance would not get out. A Libyan interior ministry official refused to comment further.

The following day, the Resistance set off more car bombs in Tripoli. One bomb was near the administrative offices of the Interior Ministry (controlled by the NATO powers). Two other car bombs exploded minutes later near the former headquarters of a women’s police academy, which NATO now uses for interrogation and detentions. (The latter two bombs killed two passersby.)

The next day in Benghazi (20 August 2012) Resistance members tossed a bomb into the car of Abdel Hamid Refaii, the first secretary of the Egyptian Embassy. This was outside Refaii’s house. However, the assassination bid failed.

The day after that, the then Libyan Prime Minister Abdurrahim El-Keib condemned the Green Resistance in a televised speech, saying: “Desperate and malicious forces among the supporters of the former regime are trying to create tension, send Libya backwards to violence, and sabotage the country’s political process.”

Tripoli’s security chief, Col Mahmoud Sherif, said Gaddafi loyalists were responsible for the spate of violent attacks. He ordered the arrest of 32 suspected Resistance members for interrogation.

Indeed, the police in Tripoli (who now work for the NATO powers) are constantly occupied with defusing car bombs set by the Resistance.

After the Resistance bombing of the former headquarters of a women’s police academy, the NATO puppets sent soldiers to raid a farm where Resistance members were holed up. Several of the Gaddafi loyalists were killed.

One of the members who survived was alleged to have set up sleeper cells in Libya and to have been criss-crossing the border with Tunisia from where he and several comrades were smuggling weapons into Libya for the Resistance.

On 23 August 2012, Abdelmenom Al Hur, official spokesperson for the Supreme Security Committee, installed by NATO, held a press conference in which he admitted that Gaddafi loyalists had penetrated many official security units. He said that a whole barracks full of heavy armaments was under the control of a pro-Gaddafi cell that he called the Awfia Brigade. (The group’s members call themselves the “Martyr Gaddafi Brigade”.) The same Resistance brigade had briefly occupied Tripoli International Airport back in June 2012.

After the attack that killed Ambassador Stevens on 11 September 2012, the Resistance managed to shut down the Benina airport in Benghazi, which the US military was using as a drone base.

With the Resistance firing at US drones, the airport had become unsafe. A Turkish Afriqiyah Airlines flight with 121 people onboard was forced to turn back to Istanbul.

CONCLUSION

The foregoing is only a partial list of Resistance activity over the past year, which has dramatically increased during the last three months, reaching a crescendo in August, and leading to the death of US Ambassador Christopher Stevens last week.

The NATO powers had shifted their focus to destroying Syria, and on continuing their preparations to destroy Iran, while letting their Tripoli bureaucrats handle the Green Resistance in Libya. Now, however, the NATO powers realize that Libya is far from subjugated and that they are being seriously tasked with crushing the Resistance before it gains critical mass.

Marines, drones, and warships have been sent to quash the Gaddafi loyalists – but how to find them? Even the FBI declined to “investigate” the latest attack in Benghazi, realizing that it would be pointless.

Libya presents Washington with another Afghan nightmare – only perhaps worse. If US drones start blasting Libyans, and the US military rounds up tens of thousands of suspected loyalists, then the Resistance can only become stronger. Of Libya’s 5.6 million people, only one in 10 (that is, the population of the eastern city of Benghazi) welcomed the NATO bondage and destruction of their country.

Meanwhile, the NATO powers do not want the Western public to realize any of this awkward truth. They want you to think that all Libyans are happy under NATO’s “liberation” with their Islamist terrorist proxies. Some 50,000 Libyans lost their lives due to NATO’s bombing and ground campaign during 2011. And for what? Only for a Resistance to rise up to illustrate to the world that Libyans had their country stolen from them by NATO powers in a criminal war of aggression.

The more the Libyan Green Resistance gains strength and challenges the NATO-imposed regime, the more clear it becomes that the Western governments and their media lied in their pretexts of “responsibility to protect (R2P)” human rights and democracy. Recall that these were the pretexts invoked by the NATO powers to justify setting up No-Fly Zones in Libya in March 2011. (The same pretexts are again being reiterated with regard to Syria.)

But, as the growing Resistance illustrates, the Western powers did not “liberate” Libya; they invaded a sovereign country and killed massively to execute their real, criminal agenda of regime change and theft of oil resources. Now the people of Libya are resisting this criminal conquest. And that damning truth has to be expunged at all costs.

Before the Benghazi incident, the corporate media had occasionally mentioned Gaddafi loyalists. After the incident, all such mention has suddenly ceased. The media say that “extremists” attacked the US site in Benghazi. Or “Al Qaeda” or “Islamists” or “terrorists,” or “protesters” – anyone but the Resistance.

Not true. The Green Resistance lives, and furthermore it is only getting started.

Mark Robertson is a political analyst based in Mexico City quatloos.x@gmail.com

Finian Cunningham is a freelance journalist based in East Africa cunninghamfinian@gmail.com