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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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George Joffe
George Joffe is a Research Fellow at the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge.
Benghazi: What happened?
The tragic incident in Benghazi highlights 'the government's inability to assert its control over the state'.
Last Modified: 13 Sep 2012 14:08
Some demonstrations in Benghazi condemned the attack on the US consulate [Reuters]
On the face of it, the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi on Tuesday evening seems a simple, if horrific, affair, but its implications for Libya itself are far wider.
Why did it happen when it did? Who was really responsible? How could four Americans have been killed, given the United States’ role in ending the Gaddafi regime? And what are the implications for the Libyan government about to come into office?
Why now?
First, the timing; those involved claimed that they were protesting a film on Facebook insulting Prophet Mohammed. The film certainly did exist and it is profoundly insulting. It was made by "Sam Bacile", who claimed to be an Israeli-American property developer in California who has now gone into hiding, protesting that he never anticipated such a reaction.
Well, that is difficult to believe: Bacile said he had it dubbed in Arabic by a Coptic friend of his as part of an ongoing anti-Islam campaign in the United States which is now so intense that the Muslim Public Affairs Council in the US has just published a brief exposing the top 25 anti-Muslim rabble-rousers, in an attempt to stop the polarisation of public opinion.
US consulate employee killed in Libya attack
Nor is Bacile alone in his attempt to inflame Muslim opinion; Pastor Jones of Florida, already notorious for threatening to burn the Quran last year, is behind another anti-Muslim film which is doing the rounds. And he had planned an event timed for last Tuesday to highlight the "threat" that Islam, he believes, poses to Western values.
And, of course, it is no accident that all these initiatives should have emerged at the time when they did; at a time when public opinion, both in the United States and in the Muslim world, is especially sensitive about the claims they embody. But, of course, that may not be the only or even the real reason for the incident and the parallel violent demonstration outside the US embassy in Cairo.
Just a few days ago, the current leader of al-Qaeda, Ayman Zawahiri, admitted that a US drone attack had killed Abu Yahya al-Libi, his close and trusted collaborator. He called on Libyans to avenge al-Libi's death which, in fact, had actually occurred in June but which al-Qaeda had not confirmed.
Indeed, back in June, shortly after claims of al-Libi’s death emerged, there was an attack on the US embassy in Benghazi in an apparent revenge, although nobody at the time was hurt. Interestingly enough, Zawahiri's incitement is the explanation preferred by Noman Benotman, of the Quilliam Foundation, a former member of the Islamist opposition to the Gaddafi regime in the 1990s.
Who did it?
And that, of course, raises the question of who did it? The initial reports of the violence in Benghazi suggested that those responsible were members of "Ansar al-Sharia", one of the many extremist Salafi groups that have emerged in Eastern Libya since the revolution, as part of an older tradition of extremism dating back to the 1990s. It has been accused, most recently by Mahmoud Jibril, the leader of Libya’s major political coalition, of being responsible for several recent assassinations in Benghazi
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Yet, the deputy Libyan interior minister also claimed that the attack had been carried out by pro-Gaddafi elements. The claim is not as surprising as it may sound, for there have been a series of attacks and assassinations by such groups in Tripoli in recent weeks, often masquerading as Islamist incidents. And, in any case, only a few days ago, Abdullah Senussi, Colonel Gaddafi’s former security head, was extradited, surprisingly, to Libya, a betrayal they might well want to avenge.
What is clear is that, whoever did attack the consulate came well-prepared, with rocket-propelled grenades and sufficient small arms to outfight and outgun the consulate's guards, both Libyans and Americans. Indeed two American marines were amongst the dead, together with the ambassador and a consulate information officer. Nor were the numbers involved in the actual attack so large; estimates range between 20 and 50 men who were quite separate from other, peaceful protesters who were certainly there because of their anger about the offending film.
Nor, indeed, is this the first time that such an incident has provoked such demonstrations. On February 17, 2006, 14 people were killed by Libyan security forces outside the Italian consulate after an Italian member-of-parliament had provocatively worn, on a TV channel watched in Libya, a tee-shirt bearing one of the 2005 Danish cartoons of Prophet Mohammed, which had caused a storm of protest throughout the Middle East.
How could it have happened?
Given US obsession with the security of its posts overseas ever since the original US embassy hostage crisis and subsequent bombings elsewhere in the early 1980s, it seems surprising that the American ambassador to Libya should have been so lightly protected and that the consulate building had such limited protection too. It was apparently a rocket-propelled grenade that started the fire in the building, in which the ambassador died whilst hasty arrangements were being made to move the staff to a safe house.
Yet, the building also had Libyan guards who, by all accounts, were outgunned and effectively stood aside. Even after the attack, there was no attempt to cordon off the burning building, and locals were able to loot it at will. Yet, even though the attackers were well-armed, their numbers were small and surely the local authorities would have gone out of their way to protect the representatives of a state that had contributed so heavily to Libya’s own victory last year.
In fact, the tragic incident in Benghazi highlights what is becoming the major systemic crisis in Libya; the inability of the government to assert its control over the state. Libya is still in thrall to a myriad of militias which do not necessarily listen to the central authorities in Tripoli. Some have been co-opted into the government’s emerging security organisation - through the ministry of defence's Libyan Shield, which brings the Zintan and the Misurata militias together, ostensibly under government control; others have been conscripted into the ministry of the interior’s Supreme Security Committee, whilst the remnants of the Libyan army are being labouriously reassembled.
But there is still no central authority capable of imposing its will on Libya overall and, until this is achieved, it is difficult to be optimistic about the successful conclusion of Libya's painful transition from the dictatorship of the jamahiriya to a democratic state. In short, what the tragic violence in Benghazi tells us is that the United States has seen its diplomats there fall victim to the security failure that has emerged from the civil war.
George Joffe is a Research Fellow at the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy. |
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Fri Sep 14, 2012 4:22 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Middle East
Libya makes arrests over Benghazi attack
Source Al Jazeera
Officials say "four men are in custody" suspected of having links to killing of US ambassador and three embassy staff.
Last Modified: 13 Sep 2012 19:51
Libyan authorities have made four arrests in the investigation into the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi in which the US ambassador and three embassy staff were killed, the deputy interior minister said.
"Four men are in custody and we are interrogating them because they are suspected of helping instigate the events at the US consulate," Wanis Sharif told the Reuters news agency on Thursday.
He gave no further details.
US ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens and three other Americans died after the gunmen attacked the US consulate and a safe house refuge in the eastern city of Benghazi on Tuesday night.
The attackers were part of a mob blaming America for a film they said insulted the Prophet Mohammad.
Demonstrators attacked the US embassies in Yemen and Egypt on Thursday in protests against the film, and American warships were moved closer to Libya.
Barack Obama, the US president, has vowed to bring to justice those responsible for the Benghazi attack, which US officials said may have been planned in advance. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Washington had nothing to do with the video, which she called "disgusting and reprehensible".
'Big advance'
A "big advance" has been made in the probe into the deadly attack, Prime Minister Mustafa Abu Shagur told the AFP news agency in an exclusive interview.
"We have made a big advance," Abu Shagur said in his first interview since his election as premier on Wednesday night.
"We have some names and some photographs. Arrests have been made and more are under way as we speak."
The new prime minister did not elaborate on how many suspects were in custody or what groups, if any, they were connected to.
Death of US ambassador to Libya
Hoda Abdel-Hamid
Roving correspondent, reporting from Benghazi
“We still don’t have an official version of who is behind the attacks, but I did speak to several eye-witnesses and all of them told me that four vehicles entered the grounds of the US consulate, and there were heavily armed men. One witness said they had black flags, meaning the flags of al-Qaeda, and that the protesters were really outside of the grounds of the consulate.
The consulate consists of four one-storey buildings inside a vast compound, and all four of them are completely torched.
There are holes from rockets on the walls of the buildings, especially the one where the ambassador was holed up in. We understand the attackers concentrated their attacks mainly on that building.
Eye-witnesses also told us that it was only afterwards that the protesters came in, and smashed the windows and grabbed the ambassador from inside, and got him out from the room [he was holed up in]. We were told he was alive then, and that he died either on his way to the hospital or at the hospital.
From the amount of destruction around, it seems to be a well co-ordinated attack.”
"We don't want to categorise these people until we know all the facts," he said.
Sharif was similarly reticent about going into details when he spoke to AFP earlier on Thursday.
"The interior and justice ministries have begun their investigations and evidence gathering and some people have been arrested," he said.
Initial reports said Stevens and the three other Americans were killed by a mob outside the consulate in the eastern city of Benghazi on Tuesday as they tried to flee an angry protest against a US-produced movie deemed offensive to Islam.
But it is now believed Stevens died from smoke inhalation after becoming trapped in the compound when suspected Islamic militants fired on the building with rocket-propelled grenades and set it ablaze.
US officials are investigating the possibility that the assault was a plot by al-Qaeda affiliates or sympathisers, using the protest against the film as a cover to carry out a co-ordinated revenge attack on Tuesday's anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks in the US.
Libyan authorities initially pointed a finger of blame at supporters of Muammar Gaddafi, who was ousted and slain in an uprising last year that was backed by NATO air power, and at al-Qaeda.
But Abu Shagur played down the al-Qaeda line.
"We don't have any proof as yet of an al-Qaeda presence as an organisation in Libya," although "some youths have been influenced by the extremist ideology of al-Qaeda," he said.
Abu Shagur said "extremists" were a tiny minority in Libya who "do not number more than 100 or 150," whereas most of the youth in the country were moderates.
The attack on the US consulate was "a cowardly, criminal and terrorist act," he said, adding it was "isolated, not representing a phenomenon in Libyan society and it will not have negative consequences with our allies" who backed the revolution.
He did not have confirmation that the US was sending two warships off the Libyan coast. "But we will not accept anyone entering inside Libya. That would infringe on sovereignty and we will refuse," the prime minister said.
A decision to deploy a team of 50 US Marines was taken "in co-ordination with Libyan authorities," he added. They would guard the US embassy in Tripoli and two diplomatic residences
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Fri Sep 14, 2012 4:36 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Hoda Abdel-Hamid
Roving correspondent, reporting from Benghazi
I watched her report from Benghazi and found it to be informative. She interviewed many witnesses and she showed the locked door that witnesses believed prevented the safe escape of the Ambassador and his team. As many as ten of his Libyan bodyguards were also killed. |
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Fri Sep 14, 2012 4:39 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Hamid Dabashi
Hamid Dabashi is Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.
Cairo, Benghazi and beyond: Beware the false fury
An incendiary 'movie' should not allow fringe elements to co-opt and realign the trajectory of the Arab revolutions.
Last Modified: 14 Sep 2012 07:53
President Barack Obama is best served to ignore the calls to retaliate to the recent events in Benghazi, writes scholar [Reuters]
Back in the late 1970’s when I was a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania one day my late mentor Phillip Rieff (1922-2006) walked into my small cubical of an office and saw me reading the New York Times. He quietly turned around, went to his own office and came back with a pair of scissors, handed it to me and said: “Never read the papers without a pair of scissors—to cut out clips that will become handy later for your theories——for facts always arise obediently to meet the theory,” and then he stared straight into my eyes with his habitually piercing gaze and said: “Remember we are sociologist we collect garbage.”
It was in that spirit that I actually sat down and watched the atrocity—the whole 13:51 minutes of it put on YouTube—this “Muhammad Movie Trailer” for the evidently even longer calamity called “The Innocence of Muslims”—a film that may in fact not exist, by a fictitious character initially billed as a real state developer named Sam Bacile. A fiction by a fictitious author is just too delicious even for the age of the “death of the author”—if the whole production was not so clinically banal.
Forget about insulting Prophet Muhammad. This imbecility of “Sam Bacile” is an insult to the very idea of cinema.
It is simply impossible to imagine a more inane film—a handful of talentless mannequins hurdled in front of curiously incompetent cameras against projected desert scenes and tent interiors to muffle inane lines all grotesquely written and delivered simply to anger and insult Muslims.
The Innocence of the Islamophobes
According to an initial report by the Guardian: “By his own account, Bacile raised a budget of $5m (£3m) from 100 unnamed Jewish donors for The Innocence of Muslims, which he wrote and directed himself, with the aim of demonstrating his belief, as he described it to the Wall Street Journal, that “Islam is a cancer.””
Before this report of the Guardian and Wall Street Journal was proved to be hasty, the first thought that would obviously come to mind was the desperate gullibility of those who had came together and presumably gave 5 million dollars to this man to make this movie. Why would anyone do anything like that—in this economy, $5m to a moron to make a calamity like this? Are these people so desperate to insult and enrage Muslims that are point blank blinded to what is being sold to them? How did they make those millions that they are wasting them so callously? Bizarre proposition is this logic of capitalism.
But the temptation towards that reading was a trap—and the clues were already evident in the two leading tropes of “100 unnamed Jewish donors” and “Islam is a cancer” thing that put together revealed the deeply anti-Semitic disposition of those behind this film—revealing once again, as I have argued since the Danish Cartoon affair, that the current Islamophobia in Europe and North America is a simple transformation of the classical European anti-Semitism with a not so clever twisting from “the Jew” to “the Muslim.”
Subsequent reports questioned these initial accounts, exposed their innate anti-Semitic disposition, and pointed finger at some other characters—“a California Coptic Christian convicted of financial crimes who acknowledged his role in managing and providing logistics for the production” of this film. According to this AP report, the man, a certain Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, 55, may in fact have fabricated this Sam Bacile identity.
Even more reports have now surfaced pointing finger at a certain Steve Klein character—yet another mercurial Islamophobe creature—as the culprit. Soon another figure appeared, Jimmy Israel, this time—fueling the suspicion that “Israel, Bacile, and Nakoula,” as the Atlantic has reported, “could be working together, or they could all be the same person”—and revealing the fact that that 5 million budget is equally bogus, and not more than 100,000 was the budget—namely the fictitious budget was pumped up in order to justify those fictitious “100 unnamed Jewish donors.”
But the identity of the person or persons behind this film is a rather moot and irrelevant question. The usual Islamophobes usually pop on these occasions—a band of losers preying on “Innocent Islamophobes” (no pun on the title of the film intended here) like Bernie Madoff did on his, cheating them out of their money and delivering garbage as in their propaganda Ponzi scheme.
Always remember the two tropes of this story—“100 unnamed Jewish donors” and “Islam is a cancer” thing—and you have caught the deeply anti-Semitic origin of the current Islamophobia red-handed. According to the New York Times, this film was “promoted by a network of right-wing Christians with a history of animosity directed toward Muslims.” Well, take a wild guess towards who else have “right wing Christians have a history of hostility?” “The Jew” and “the Muslim” are interchangeable there.
Déjà vu: Beware the False Fury
The principle problem with this absurdity, however, is not its origin—but its destination: the riots and demonstrations in front of the US embassies that began in Cairo and Benghazi and have now spread all over the Muslim world.
Attacks on embassies and rage against insult to Prophet Muhammad in the Muslim world have a frightening echo in the ears of an Iranian—remembering the US Hostage Crisis of 1979-1980 and the Salman Rushdie affair of 1988-1989—two smoke screens under which militant Islamists in Iran (some of them now among the so-called “Opposition”) hijacked a revolution and categorically recoded it as “Islamic.”
The current catastrophe called “the Islamic Republic” and the entrapment of 75 million human beings in its theocratic snare is framed between those two smoke screens—two diversionary tactics made out of events that fell on Ayatollah Khomeini’s lap.
As for 444 days the world attention was distracted by the American Hostages Crisis the belligerent lslamists went on a rampage destroying their political rivals and categorically claiming a multifaceted revolution all for themselves—and a decade later as the world attention was once again drawn to the Salman Rushdie affair the selfsame Islamists redrafted the constitution of the Islamic republic to perpetuate the reign of militant Islamists and anoint Ayatollah Khamenei as their Supreme Leader and Vali Faqih.
This was all after the late Ayatollah Montazeri (1922-2009) had repented from his role in making the Islamic republic a viable proposition, objected to the mass execution of political prisoners, and one of his family members, Seyyed Mehdi Hashemi, exposed the arms-for-hostage deal that would later be known as “the Iran Contra Affair.” Ayatollah Montazeri went to his grave having repented that gross miscalculation called “the Islamic republic,” and called the concoction “neither Islamic nor a republic”—about thirty years too late for a population of 75 million human beings now trapped inside a horrid theocracy presided by the Shi’i clerical class.
The differences between 2012 and 1979
The same danger is now looming from Cairo to Benghazi to the rest of the Arab and Muslim world—for militant Salafis or Wahhabis to abuse this ignoramus film to derail a world historic succession of revolutions. But this time around Arab revolutionaries are far quicker in responding both to ghastly Islamophobia and the violent disrespect for the sacrosanct principle of diplomatic immunity. Demonstrations in both Benghazi and Cairo have categorically denounced the violence that has resulted in the death of Ambassador Christopher Stevens.
It is imperative that these denunciations be amply noted—as indeed President Morsi put it succinctly: "We Egyptians reject any kind of assault or insult against our prophet. I condemn and oppose all who... insult our prophet. [But] it is our duty to protect our guests and visitors from abroad... I call on everyone to take that into consideration, to not violate Egyptian law... to not assault embassies.”
This is the difference between Khomeini n 1979 and Morsi in 2012. Beware the false fury. The US has done enough atrocities around the globe to be blamed for just about everything—but this is a different season—this is the season of the Green Movement and the Arab Spring—do not be fooled by these zealotries of the fanatics who are trying to steal the revolution. Diplomatic immunity of even a global hubris like the United States must remain sacrosanct for civilised life to be possible. Many of those who took over the US embassy in Tehran have now repented and joined the opposition—never admitting to the full scale of the calamity they caused in their homeland by having been the instruments of a vicious theocracy.
As the fate would have it this is also an election year—as it was back in 1979 when President Carter was caught in the quagmire that now President Obama faces. The trigger-happy Republicans are pushing President Obama to do something rash. Presidential candidate Mit Romany has accused President Obama of “sympathizing” with the attackers, as Aljazeera reports that “US warships steam towards Libya coast.” This is after Sarah Palin has criticised president Obama’s shortcoming and urged him “to grow a Big Stick.” The depth of this woman’s banality seems to have no limit.
The last thing that President Obama wants to do now is what President Carter did in 1979 and try something foolish like “Operation Eagle Claw.” If I were President Obama I would invite former President Carter to White House and hang out with him for a weekend. President Obama must do absolutely nothing. The true measure of his statesmanship is do exactly the opposite of what Palin urges him to do, and let Muslims raise their own voice in condemning both bigotry and violence at one and the time—as indeed we see it happening in both Libya and Egypt—best summarised in President Morsi’s statement. This is the season of the Arab Spring—binary banalities of fanatics on both sides of the divide cannot derail the course of history anymore.
Hamid Dabashi is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York. His most recent book is The Arab Spring: The End of Postcolonialism (Zed 2012).
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy. |
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Fri Sep 14, 2012 4:55 am |
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