Earlier I recommended watching Vice magazine’s The Rebels of Libya, and I hope everyone did. The guys at Vice produce some of the best video journalism around.
After the program aired, Sherif Elhelwa, their fixer in Benghazi, filed a disturbing story for the Web site. An Al Qaeda flag—the black flag that says “There is no God but Allah” above a full moon—is flying from the courthouse in Benghazi.
Earlier this week, I went to the Benghazi courthouse and confirmed the rumors: an al Qaeda flag was clearly visible; its Arabic script declaring that “there is no God but Allah” and a full moon underneath. When I tried to take pictures, a Salafi-looking guard, wearing a green camouflage outfit, rushed towards me and demanded to know what I was doing. My response was straightforward: I was taking a picture of the flag. He gave me an intimidating look and hissed, “Whomever speaks ill of this flag, we will cut off his tongue. I recommend that you don’t publish these. You will bring trouble to yourself.”
He followed me inside the courthouse, but luckily my driver Khaled was close by, and interceded on my behalf. According to Khaled, the guard had angrily threatened to harm me. When I again engaged him in conversation, he told me “this flag is the true flag of Islam,” and was unresponsive when I argued with him that historically Islam has never been represented by a single flag. The guard claimed repeatedly that there is no al Qaeda in Libya, and that the flag flying atop the courthouse is “dark black,” while the al Qaeda flag is charcoal black. To many locals, it’s a distinction without a difference. One man approached me with a friendly warning: “I recommend that you leave now; [the Islamist fighters] could be watching you.”
Al Qaeda doesn’t control Libya, but it’s obviously present and coming out of the shadows. And there’s no chance whatsoever that Al Qaeda will participate in elections and lose gracefully. If Libya’s authorities don’t do something about this, and fast, they—and we—should expect hell.
Libya has authorities that can “do something about this”?
This flag-ruffling makes it appear that it’s time for NATO to polish up the nose cones on “their”/[our] drones. Wipe the dust from the radar scopes. Vacuum the keyboards, and limber up those remote workstation joysticks. Check out the flashing lights, and clipboards.
robert powell has the right summation…..and, I’ll expand on that to add that there’s nothing NATO ( I keep mentioning them instead of “us”.)….can do except react with its newly acquired elan at the appropriate time of NATO’s choosing. Time for us to hold the coats and adapt “economy mode”.
Forget “outreach”. Forget “hearts and minds”. Forget involving our ground-militaries in quagmire-ish “social programs”…..remember, they have no equivalent in Arabic or the Koran.
Yes, there’s something “not right” in Libya. That’s been obvious since the military commander of the rebels was assassinated and nobody was ever able to figure out what happened, and at the same time a bunch of guys with guns (that nobody could identify) showed up and intimidated the TNC officials when they tried to hold a press conference about it at the same time. Then there’s the fact that the leader of Al Qaida in Libya was “elected” to be the new commander of Libya’s rebel fighters shortly after. If there’s anything the transitional council could do about it, I suspect they would have already. Things have gone much better in Libya so far than I expected, but the Al Qaida is the elephant in the room nobody wants to talk about and it’s very worrisome. If AQ does end up on top then “hell” is not a bad description of what Libyans can expect.
Wikipedia (caveat lector) has a convenient summary of the use of black flags by Islamist/jihadist groups, as well as in Islamic history: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Standard
The Taliban flew a similar flag with the colours inverted (the Shahada in black text on a white field).
I guess this is vaguely related:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-15556801
The US has joined criticism of Israel’s decision to accelerate settlement building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem after Palestinians joined UN cultural agency, Unesco.
Is this still our problem? Didn’t we get laid off as moderators in the Arab/Israeli conflict? Seems to me that there’s a lot of stuff happening in Sudan and South Sudan that’s more urgent than a minor development in a conflict that’s been going on for more than half a century when we’ve just been dis-invited from mediating by the people we were trying to help. Not to mention Somalia, Afghanistan, Libya, Tibet, Taiwan, Korea, Columbia, Mexico (especially Mexico, it is right next door after all) and so on. Palestinians have enjoyed much to much attention from the US for far too long. Why are they still entitled to special consideration from Americans, after they told us they don’t need or want us around anymore? Palestinians can fend for themselves. And even if they can’t, they have plenty of other people rushing to help them, such as Iran and China and the entire Arab world.
Mr Carney told a White House briefing that Israel’s decision did not help bring peace talks any nearer.
“Unilateral actions work against efforts to resume direct negotiations, and they do not advance the goal of a reasonable and necessary agreement between the two parties,” Mr Carney said.
Yeah. As if the Palestinians bypassing Israel and going straight to the UN in hopes of getting a settlement imposed on Israel without Israel’s consent didn’t put an end to the “peace talks” fantasy once and for all. Lets all just pretend that was no big deal, Mr Carney. Like it never happened. “Yes we can” put Humpty Dumpty back together again.
“That is the only way to achieve the two-state solution that both sides have as their goal.”
If a two-state solution was really the goal of both sides, it would have been achieved a long time ago wouldn’t it? Took Sudan about one year to come up with a two state solution and that wasn’t exactly an ideal situation there either, was it?
Sine Obama took office the US has become quite adept at saying “none of my business” when it comes to problems in other countries. I actually like that. But now the time is here for the US to say “none of my business” to the Palestinians. 64 years is long enough. People have been born, lived long lives, and died of natural causes in the time that the Arab-Israeli conflict has been a matter of “urgent concern” for the international community. These borders the Palestinians want to assert as their starting point for a one state solution: do people realize that 1967 was almost 45 years ago? Maybe the Israelis should go to the UN and demand that the borders be set back to where they were 1400 years ago, before Arabs invaded and stole their land and their country? I suppose that would make Saudi Arabia obligated to confer citizenship on Palestinians since it was Saudi Arabia that stole Israel from the Israelis but that should be no big deal. Just a few million people, and they already have more than that many foreign “guest workers” in the magic kingdom anyway. I’m sure they can afford it. It’d probably be cheaper than funding all this jihad and it might even help their economy to be able to employ second-class Saudis instead of Pakistanis and Indonesians.
More from that article:
EU policy chief Catherine Ashton urged Israel to reverse the decision and called on both sides to return to the negotiating table.
“Israeli settlement activity is illegal under international law including in East Jerusalem and an obstacle to peace. We have stated this many times before,” she said.
I too believe settlement building is illegal under the Geneva Conventions and I’ve argued with people on this very blog about it, but it is not at all clear that any part of Jerusalem can be considered “occupied territory” under the Geneva Conventions. And if it isn’t occupied territory than the prohibitions on population transfers do not apply. Jerusalem was so heavily disputed that it was to be an internationally administered city under the original partition plan, and if it was disputed territory before the conflict even began then it cannot be considered occupied and undisputed now.
So many issues. Yes, Craig Gilo is one of the annexed settlements so Netanyahu is making a statement about Jerusalem. Terry can correct me if I’m wrong.
AQ in Libya? We guessed that from the start of hostilities and I “suspect” we have been playing cat and mouse with AQ (remember some friendly fire rebel deaths?) for some time. Hell, maybe we just did another “fast and furious” in Benghazi with SA-7s and C4. Lets see where they end up and arrest the end user. NOT
You are right something was seriously fishy when Jalil covered for an obvious rebel hit on their top commander. Meanwhile, Jon Stewart got a laugh last night when he spoofed “doing the Gaddafi” which was strangers getting poked up their butts with some phallic object. That act was taken from the Gaddafi video showing one rebel shoving a knife up his ass. Am I wrong, or is this completely twisted entertainment from the Left Side? Really, that was beyond South Park Comedy Channel.
We will see various Islamist leadership span MENA. Its what we don’t see that counts. Not sure we can drone that.
But we can finally assume AQ has some dangerous mobile threats. And how do Grads on wheels suddenly arrive in Gaza if not for some Egypt Express Agency and the HAMAS Tunnel Authority?
In short, Libya played out as expected. Instead of exile, Gaddafi got nailed. No clear road for “democracy”, but one can “hope”. There is for the moment more freedom and opportunity, but there are serious dangers with a loose network of radicals from North Africa to Somalia, Sinai to Yemen, Southern Lebanon and Gaza to Syria, Afghanistan and Iran. Sudan has forces in the Blue Nile. Cyprus is still boiling over energy claims. Egypt spins dangerously. Turkey arms Islamists. North Korea and Iran continue to develop the needed parts for nuclear weapons. China and Russia are looking for leverage.
Funny how Greece now stands at the door of European Chaos. Turkey at the Eastern.
There better be progress on the debt group negotiations. Time is running out on idiot economics.
Maybe I’m being pessimistic, but I remember an Iranian colleague of mine (who was very against his government) said, referring to radical, political Islam, “maybe they’ll just have to get it out of their systems. We tried it in Iran a generation ago, and now many Iranians not only hate their government, they hate religion all together. The Arabs may, unfortunately, need to take that trajectory themselves.”
I’m not so sure what is true in Iran would be true in an Arab country, Kyle. We’ve already got the example of Iranian women facing similar oppression and discrimination as per somebody’s idea of Islam that women in some Arab countries like Saudi Arabia face. It seems to me that Iranian women have reacted to it quite a lot differently from Arab women.
http://defensetech.org/2011/11/02/stun-bombs-used-to-guard-libyan-wmd-sites/
@ Craig (#9): Iranian women are pretty amazing, at least the ones I know. They definitely deserve better.
Me too, Daniel. I’m not sure how to explain why Iranian women seem so much more talented than the men but maybe its because in their environment they have to be better than the guys to even get a chance. On the other hand, maybe I just like women better