2007 West Point Study Shows Benghazi-Darnah-Tobruk Area was a World Leader in Al Qaeda Suicide Bomber Recruitment
“Serpents, thirst, heat, and sand … Libya alone can present a multitude of woes that it would beseem men to fly from.”
Lucan, Pharsalia
Webster G. Tarpley, Ph.D.Lucan, Pharsalia
TARPLEY.net
March 24, 2011
Washington DC, March 24, 2011 — The current military attack on Libya has been motivated by UN Security Council resolution 1973 with the need to protect civilians. Statements by President Obama, British Prime Minister Cameron, French President Sarkozy, and other leaders have stressed the humanitarian nature of the intervention, which is said to aim at preventing a massacre of pro-democracy forces and human rights advocates by the Qaddafi regime.
But at the same time, many commentators have voiced anxiety because of the mystery which surrounds the anti-Qaddafi transitional government which emerged at the beginning of March in the city of Benghazi, located in the Cyrenaica district of north-eastern Libya. This government has already been recognized by France and Portugal as the sole legitimate representative of the Libyan people. The rebel council seems to be composed of just over 30 delegates, many of whom are enveloped in obscurity. In addition, the names of more than a dozen members of the rebel council are being kept secret, allegedly to protect them from the vengeance of Qaddafi. But there may be other reasons for the anonymity of these figures. Despite much uncertainty, the United Nations and its several key NATO countries, including the United States, have rushed forward to assist the armed forces of this rebel regime with air strikes, leading to the loss of one or two coalition aircraft and the prospect of heavier losses to come, especially if there should be an invasion. It is high time that American and European publics learned something more about this rebel regime which is supposed to represent a democratic and humanitarian alternative to Gaddafi.
The rebels are clearly not civilians, but an armed force. What kind of an armed force?
Since many of the rebel leaders are so difficult to research from afar, and since a sociological profile of the rebels cannot be done on the ground in the midst of warfare, perhaps the typical methods of social history can be called on for help. Is there a way for us to gain deeper insight into the climate of opinion which prevails in such northeastern Libyan cities as Benghazi, Tobruk, and Darnah, the main population centers of the rebellion?
It turns out that there is, in the form of a December 2007 West Point study examining the background of foreign guerrilla fighters — jihadis or mujahedin, including suicide bombers — crossing the Syrian border into Iraq during the 2006-2007 timeframe, under the auspices of the international terrorist organization Al Qaeda. This study is based on a mass of about 600 Al Qaeda personnel files which were captured by US forces in the fall of 2007, and analyzed at West Point using a methodology which we will discuss after having presented the main findings. The resulting study1 permits us to make important findings about the mentality and belief structures of the northeastern Libyan population that is furnishing the basis for the rebellion, permitting important conclusions about the political nature of the anti-Qaddafi revolt in these areas.
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Dr Webster
ReplyDeleteThank you for taking the time to draw to our attention the probable sociological/political background of some of the rebels. It seems the US has viewed Islam as such an incohesive force that it has had few scruples about using Al Qaeda forces in Chechnya against Putin’s Russia, or currently in using such forces in the broader struggle to ensure Africa and its oil stays within the sphere of Western- as opposed to Chinese- hegemony. i guess what we are witnessing is the re-emergence of a pseudo de facto Cold war scenario with Islam once again being sabotaged subverted- and crudely fundamentalised- to serve as an instrument of Anglo-American/ French foreign policy. In Qatar i am always profoundly impressed about the Americanisation of local Islamic value systems and structures complemented by the Arabisation of American/French military forces in the petro-sheikdoms (There is a decidedly US mosque Al Fanar that is most friendly and Islamises as quickly or slowly as the militarisation of the locals by Chevron Exxon Mobil and French Totale.) .I do look forward to seeing your other articles. Thank you for demonstrating your implicit moral audacity in your article – a quality that seems in short supply in media coverage of events in Libya presented in Australia. Janice Whitworth