Al-Qaeda Tries to Link Itself to Libyan Rebellion
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
By
Patrick Goodenough
Libyan rebels pray some 75 miles east of Sirte in eastern Libya on Monday, March 28, 2011. (AP Photo)
(CNSNews.com) – Regardless of whether al-Qaeda turns out to have a role in the Western-backed anti-Gaddafi opposition in Libya, the terrorist network certainly appears to be trying to associate itself with the rebellion.
Al-Qaeda’s Yemen-based affiliate, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), posted on jihadist Web sites Tuesday the latest edition of its online publication “Inspire.”
According to the SITE Institute, which monitors radical Internet sites, the publication features a report by radical AQAP cleric
Anwar Al-Awlaki on the “tsunami” washing across the Arab world, one that Awlaki said al-Qaeda viewed with elation.
“I wonder whether the West is aware of the upsurge of mujahideen activity in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Yemen, Arabia, Algeria, and Morocco?” it quoted Awlaki as saying.
Earlier this month a senior Libyan terrorist in Osama bin Laden’s network, Abu Yahya al-Libi, released a video clip in which he claimed al-Qaeda had inspired the rebellion in Libya.
“Al-Libi called on Libyans to follow the example of Sidi Omar al-Mukhtar, the Libyan national hero who led the resistance against Italian occupation in the 1920s,” the Jamestown Institute’s Terrorism Monitor reported on March 17.
It said al-Libi had warned the rebels fighting Muammar Gaddafi that “retreating will mean decades of harsher oppression and greater injustices than what you have endured [so far].”
The report said al-Libi had also warned the rebels, who were then on the defensive, not to surrender weapons to regime forces, but rather to stockpile them for future use.
“The Libyan militant mocked U.S. expressions of sympathy for the rebels, saying that al-Qaeda had shattered the ‘barrier of fear’ that had restrained Muslims from rising against their governments: “There is no dignity without cost, and no dignity without sacrifice,” the Terrorism Monitor reported.
“Though Gaddafi has claimed numerous times that the Libyan revolt is led by al-Qaeda operatives, there is no evidence so far that this is the case,” it said.
NATO’s top military commander told a U.S. Senate hearing Tuesday that intelligence reports had picked up “flickers” about possible terrorist presence among the Libyan rebels.
Responding to a question by Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) regarding
concerns about possible al-Qaeda involvement, U.S. Navy Admiral James Stavridis told the Senate Armed Services Committee that NATO was “examining very closely the content, composition, the personalities, who are the leaders of these opposition forces.”
“The intelligence that I’m receiving at this point makes me feel that the leadership that I’m seeing are responsible men and women who are struggling against Colonel Gaddafi,” Stavridis said.
“We have seen flickers in the intelligence of potential al-Qaeda, Hezbollah – we’ve seen different things but at this point I don’t have detail sufficient to say that there’s a significant al-Qaeda presence or any other terrorist presence in and among these folks,” he continued.
“We’ll continue to look at that very closely, part of doing due diligence as we move forward on any kind of relationship.”
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton holds a news briefing after a conference on Libya in London on Tuesday March 29, 2011. (AP Photo/Toby Melville, Pool)
In London Tuesday for intergovernmental talks on Libya, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with representatives of the anti-Gaddafi opposition, including Mahmoud Jibril, a former member of the Tripoli regime.
Asked at a later press briefing about the Stavridis’ comments, Clinton said that her talks with Jibril and two others in the “Transitional National Council” had included discussion on a broad range of matters
“Certainly their presentation … as to what kind of civil society and political structure they are trying to build in Libya are exactly in line with what they have consistently said were their goals,” she said.
“Their commitment to democracy and to a very robust engagement with people from across the spectrum of Libyans is, I think, appropriate.”
“We do not have any specific information about specific individuals from any organization who are part of this,” Clinton continued. “But of course, we’re still getting to know those who are leading the Transitional National Council, and that will be a process that continues.”
Fighting group
Al-Libi, a militant preacher and recruiter whose nom de guerre means “the Libyan” was affiliated with the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), a jihadist gang launched in the early 1990s with the stated aim of toppling the Gaddafi regime and designated a “foreign terrorist organization” by the U.S. government in 2004.
Al-Libi was captured in Afghanistan in 2002 and detained by the U.S. military at Bagram, but escaped from the facility in 2005 with three other detainees. He became a prominent figure in al-Qaeda, appearing in numerous propaganda videos.
According to the State Department, al-Qaeda announced in November 2007 that LIFG had joined its network.
Other Libyans, some of them also using the al-Libi name – like Abu al-Faraj al-Libi, who was captured in Pakistan in 2005 and is now detained at Guantanamo Bay – have also been prominent in al-Qaeda. A West Point study in 2007 found Libyans were disproportionately represented among foreigners involved in the anti-coalition insurgency in Iraq.
In 2007-8, the charity run by Gaddafi’s son, Saif al-Islam, the Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation, started a dialogue initiative aimed at rehabilitating imprisoned members of LIFG and enabling them to “re-integrate into the social fabric.”
Under the program known as “the Corrective Studies of the Concepts of Jihad, Accountability and Governance of People,” the charity announced in March 2009 that 136 LIFG members had been released over the previous two years.
The Gaddafi Foundation implied in a statement at the time that the jihadists had an incorrect understanding of Islamic law (shari’a) and the Libyan regime’s adherence to it.
“The entire Libyan Muslim people adopts shari’a law as an approach in Libya, which is one of the countries most committed to true Islamic religion both in practice and behavior; and this a fact that no one can deny except an ungrateful or a misled ignorant person,” it said.
In October 2009, another 45 LIFG members were released, together with 43 members of what the charity called other jihadist groups.
who are we helping in Libya?
