Libya Blames Islamic Militants and the West for Unrest
Moises Saman for The New York Times
Opponents of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi chanted slogans in the center of Zawiya, Libya, on Sunday. More Photos »
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and KAREEM FAHIM
Published: February 28, 2011
TRIPOLI, Libya — In the face of a mounting international outcry for the ouster of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi and sanctions to force him out, the Libyan authorities blamed Islamic radicals and the West on Monday for a conspiracy to cause chaos and take over the country.
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Opponents of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi in Benghazi on Sunday. More Photos »
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At the same time, there were new reports of fighting with the rebels claiming that they had shot down a military aircraft on Monday as they repulsed a government bid to take back Libya’s third city, Misurata, 125 miles east of Tripoli. There, as in Zawiyah, 30 miles to the west, government forces seem to have encircled rebels but have been unable to dislodge them.
The increasingly tense standoff has prompted a huge exodus of poorly-paid contract workers streaming to Libya’s borders with Tunisia and Egypt. The United Nations refugee agency called the situation a humanitarian emergency as workers hefting suit-cases of possessions stood in long lines to leave Libya, many of them uncertain how they would finally get home.
At a news conference for foreign journalists invited to Tripoli, a government spokesman, Musa Ibrahim, denied reports that Colonel Qaddafi’s loyalists had turned their guns on hundreds of civilians. “No massacres, no bombardments, no reckless violence against civilians,” he said, comparing Libya’s situation to that of Iraq before the American-led invasion in 2003.
But his words seemed unlikely to stem a growing chorus of international voices calling on Colonel Qaddafi to leave power. The French prime minister, François Fillon, told the RTL broadcaster that the French government was studying “all solutions to make it so that Colonel Qaddafi understands that he should go, that he should leave power.”
British Prime Minister David Cameron also declared: “It’s time for Colonel Qaddafi to go.”
The European Union adopted an arms embargo against Libya on Monday, as well as an asset freeze and visa ban focused on Colonel Qaddafi, his family and his top associates, The Associated Press reported. Meanwhile, Germany, acting on its own, offered a proposal to cut off all financial payments to Libya for 60 days, Reuters said.
As the financial noose appeared set to tighten further around Colonel Qaddafi and his government, Libya had brought 130 foreign journalists to Tripoli to show that the loyalists had nothing to hide, the spokesman said. The visit came a day after defecting officers in the east of the vast, desert nation took steps to establish a unified command while their followers in the rebel-held city of Zawiyah, just outside the leader’s stronghold in the capital, displayed tanks, Kalashnikovs and antiaircraft guns.
Mr. Ibrahim said reports of massacres by government troops were analogous to those suggesting that Saddam Hussein had developed unconventional weapons in Iraq, suggesting that they were designed as a reason for military attack.
“The Islamists want chaos; the West also wants chaos,” he said, maintaining the West wanted access to Libya’s oil and the Islamists wanted to establish a bridgehead for international terrorism. “The Iraq example is not a legend — we all lived through it. Doesn’t this remind you of the whole Iraq scenario?” he said.
Later on Monday, the authorities, keen to show calm prevailing, took reporters on a tour that included Roman ruins at Sabratha, 40 miles west of Tripoli, where a pro-Qaddafi crowd chanted slogans. Afterwards, a member of the crowd was asked by a reporter whether he had been paid to demonstrate in favor of the government. “Yes,” he replied, suggesting that he harbored sentiments other than those he had chanted in the slogans supportive of Colonel Qaddafi. “And, believe me, we will get our freedom.”
The official Libyan arguments have become familiar as Colonel Qaddafi’s opponents seem to gain ground, and world powers, meeting on Monday in Geneva, seek to increase pressure to force him from power. The focus of the diplomacy is a meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Council, to be attended by leaders including Secretary of StateHillary Rodham Clinton.
Referring to Libya, the head of the human rights body, Navi Pillay, demanded in a speech on Monday that: “The rights of the protesters must be upheld and asylum seekers, migrants and other foreign nationals fleeing the violence must be protected,” news agencies reported.
But Mr. Ibrahim insisted that Libya still sought some kind of gradual political opening as suggested by the colonel’s son, Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi.
“We are not like Egypt or Tunisia,” the spokesman said. “We are a very Bedouin tribal society. People know that and want gradual change.”
Reporters told him that, on Sunday, they had visited Zawiyah, 30 miles from Tripoli, and saw no evidence of Islamist forces. “They knew you were coming,” the spokesman said. “They were hiding those with an obvious Al Qaeda look.”
The news conference came after a day of increasing self-confidence among the rebels, who spoke of tapping revenue from the vast Libyan oil resources now under their control — estimated by some oil company officials to be about 80 percent of the country’s total. And in recognition of the insurrection’s growing power, Italy’s foreign minister on Sunday suspended a nonaggression treaty with Libya on the grounds that the Libyan state “no longer exists,” while Secretary of State Clinton said the United States was reaching out to the rebels to “offer any kind of assistance.”
On Sunday, the most striking display of strength was seen in Zawiyah, one of several cities near the capital controlled by rebels, who have repulsed repeated attempts by Colonel Qaddafi’s forces to retake them. And the arsenal they displayed helped to explain how the rebels held Zawiyah.
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“Army, army, army!” excited residents shouted, pointing to a defected soldier standing watch at Zawiyah’s entrance as he raised his machine gun in the air and held up two fingers for victory.
A few yards away a captured antiaircraft gun fired several deafening salutes into the air, and gleeful residents invited newcomers to clamber aboard one of several army tanks now in rebel hands. Residents said that when Colonel Qaddafi’s forces mounted a deadly assault to retake the city last Thursday — shell holes were visible in the central mosque and ammunition littered the central square — local army units switched sides to join the rebels, as about 2,000 police officers had done the week before.
And on Sunday, scores of residents armed with machine guns and rifles joined in a chant that has become the slogan of pro-democracy uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen and across the Arab world: “The people want to bring down the regime!”
The opposition’s display came as a global effort to isolate Colonel Qaddafi and possibly force his resignation gained momentum over the weekend, with the United Nations Security Council moving to impose punitive financial sanctions and NATO allies discussing steps that included a possible no-fly zone over Libya.
But with their increasing firepower, the rebels appeared to break the pattern of nonviolent revolts set by neighboring Egypt and Tunisia and now sweeping the Middle East — just as Colonel Qaddafi has shown a willingness to shed far more of his citizens’ blood than any of the region’s other autocrats.
The maneuverings by both sides suggested they were girding for a confrontation that could influence the shape of other protest movements and the responses of other rulers who feel threatened by insurrections. Colonel Qaddafi’s militias, plainclothes police and other paramilitary forces have kept the deserted streets of Tripoli under a lockdown.
And residents of Zawiyah said Sunday that his forces were massing again on its outskirts. As a caravan of visiting journalists left Zawiyah, a crowd of hundreds of Qaddafi supporters waving green flags and holding Qaddafi posters blocked the highway for a rally against the rebels. “The people want Colonel Muammar!” some chanted.
In interviews with ABC News, two of Colonel Qaddafi’s sons appeared to mix defiance and denial. “The people — everybody wants more,” said Saadi el-Qaddafi, apparently dismissing the public outcry for a more accountable government. “There is no limit. You give this, then you get asked for that, you know?”
He described the uprisings around the region as “an earthquake” and predicted, “Chaos will be everywhere.” If his father left, he said, Libya would face a civil war “one hour later.”
His brother Seif seemed to challenge journalists to look for signs of unrest. “Please, take your cameras tomorrow morning, even tonight,” he said. “Everything is calm. Everything is peaceful.”
But when government-paid drivers and minders took visiting journalists on an official tour to visit here Sunday morning, they found a town firmly in rebel hands, where Libyan officials and military units did not even try to enter. It was the second consecutive day that an official tour appeared to do more to discredit than bolster the government’s line, and questions arose about the true allegiance of the official tour minders, who appeared to mingle easily with people of rebel-held Zawiyah. Some suggested that the Qaddafi government might in fact have believed its own propaganda: that the journalists would discover in Zawiyah radical Islamists or young people crazed by drugs supplied by Osama bin Laden.
But the residents showed little interest in Islamist politics or hallucinogenic drugs. They mocked Colonel Qaddafi’s allegations, painted the tricolored pre-Qaddafi flag that has become the banner of the revolt on the side of a burned-out government building, and chanted, “Free, free, Libya.”
Several said that on Thursday morning the Qaddafi forces had blasted peaceful protesters gathered in the square with machine guns and artillery, pointing to holes in the sides of pillars and even a mosque. They showed journalists seven fresh graves dug in the square to bury those killed in the fight.
But the battle had made them even more confident of their power, they said, because military units had joined their cause instead of fighting against them. They said the city was now under the control of a committee of prominent citizens — doctors, lawyers, judges, engineers and the like — who were organizing its public services and continued defense. In Benghazi, the eastern city where the revolt began, rebels said that Libyan soldiers had joined the rebels in securing vital oil industry facilities around that part of the country. Some oil industry workers fleeing across the Tunisian border in recent days said they had seen Libyan soldiers fire their weapons to drive off foreign mercenaries or other security forces who had approached oil facilities not far from here.
Hassan Bulifa, who sits on the management committee of the Arabian Gulf Oil Company, the country’s largest oil producer, said that the rebels control at least 80 percent of the country’s oil assets, and that his company, based in Benghazi, was cooperating with them. The company resumed oil shipments on Sunday, loading two tankers at a port in Tobruk, Mr. Bulifa said. The ships — one bound for Austria and the other for China — represented the company’s first shipments since Feb. 10.
Although the revenue from those sales goes the company’s umbrella organization, Libya’s National Oil Company, Mr. Bulifa said Arabian Gulf Oil had ceased any coordination with the national company, though it was honoring oil contracts. And he insisted the proceeds would ultimately flow to the rebels, not Colonel Qaddafi. “Qaddafi and his gangsters will not have a hand on them,” he said. “We are not worried about the revenues.”
