Franklin Lamb
The reason I was so surprised is that I was about to ask my hosts that very question. I was thinking that with all their security and serious faced male visitors, some western, coming and going and whispering that the reported Libyan Liberation Front groups along the Seral might be making some progress after not hearing much about them recently.
Of course this observer has little idea if the much talked ‘Green Revolution’ is strong or could topple the current NATO created and imposed government.
- Last week a much circulated report that: “There are green flags flying all over Zawia and the Green Revolution has captured the town!” Quite by coincidence the evening I read that claim on the Internet, I had just come from Sorman and while en route was given a tour of the battle sites from the July-August fighting in Zawia by NTC checkpoint minders. We observed most the intense battle sites including the Gadhafi Hotel site and various other Zawia locations. I observed approximately 35 captured government tanks parked along the main road and still in working condition but there was not one Green (pro-Gadhafi) flag to be seen. I had just come from a cemetery outside of Zabratha where is saw local police/militia removing green cloth swatches from graves of some who had died during the summer fighting. Green flags if they appear in Tripoli are quickly remove and replaced with the tricolor of the NTC.
All of us know that misinformation and disinformation are common during armed conflicts, often politically motivated. But such grossly exaggerated and unsubstantiated claims and conspiracy theories only aid the aggressors, in this case, NATO.
There is clear and growing pro-Gadhafi political and military activity here and it is why NTC leader Mustapha Abdul Jalil, the other day warned against the Gadhafi children raising an insurrection. Aisha Gadhafi, given Saif’s current incarceration, is perhaps the likely leader, given her intelligence, energy and strong commitment to replace “NATO’s rebels”,vindicate her father, preserve his correct legacy, and organize a reform movement along the lines that she and some family members and loyalists were working--with the approval, she claims, of her father before his death.
Every night more pro-Gadhafi graffiti appears on street walls, buildings and around Green (Martyrs Square). Activists, and there appear to be more every day, assert that so far the NTC has not attacked them and they feel fairly free to speak out and even organize. It is anyone’s guess how long this situation will exist before a violent crackdown and open fighting.
Yet, with the elimination of Muammar Gadhafi, which was NATO’s clear intension from March 19 when it took over the UNSCR 1973 campaign against Libya, NATO correctly concluded that without Gadhafi’s charismatic leadership in Libya and in the region, any “Green counterrevolution”would be very difficult. That is what we are seeing today.
In addition to the fury caused by the urinating NATO forces, NATO officials are being ridiculed for all their denials that their bombing missions here in Libya, numbering more than 11,000, caused civilians deaths and their claims that NATO forces conducted themselves according to the higher moral and military standards, and sometimes put themselves at risk to avoid civilian casualties. The claims remind some of a generation of similar ludicrous public relations campaign undertaken regularly by the Israeli government.
Franklin Lamb is doing research in Lebanon. He is reachable c\ofplamb@gmail.com
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