The National Transitional Council (NTC) was established on the 5th of March 2011 in Benghazi. The NTC is a coalition of diverse groups and interests:
* The Libyan League for Human Rights (London)
* The National Front for the Safety of Libya ( Riyadh)
* Senoussi The NTC is a coalition of diverse groups and interests:
* The National Front for the Safety of Libya ( Riyadh)
* Senoussi The NTC is a coalition of diverse groups and interests:
* The Monarchists (Riyadh)
* "Liberals", close to Saif al-Islam (including two of his relatives, one close to Human Rights Watch, another AI)
* Personalities from the Gaddafi regime, but opposing his son’s succession and wishing to take power,
* Adherents of radical Islam, particularly activists.
* "Liberals", close to Saif al-Islam (including two of his relatives, one close to Human Rights Watch, another AI)
* Personalities from the Gaddafi regime, but opposing his son’s succession and wishing to take power,
* Adherents of radical Islam, particularly activists.
Individuals who are put forward - mainly lawyers, professors, academics - are actually not accurate representatives. The priority is to those who speak English and know how to communicate with Westerners and the media.
The NTC therefore includes both longtime opponents of the regime and those who have defected recently.The NTC is not homogeneous, some of its representatives conceal their identity for questionable reasons, its leaders are people with a very notorious past. In the present state of things, they offer no real guarantee of “democratic” leadership.
Who is the “opposition” in Libya. The opposition is not a monolithic body. The common denominator is the opposition to the rule of Qaddafi. It has to be said that “actions of opposition or resistance against an oppressor” and an “opposition movement” are also two different things.
There is an authentic form of opposition, which is not organized, and a systematic form of opposition, which is either external or led by figures from within the Libyan regime itself. Opposition and revolt has been encouraged and prompted from outside Libya through social media networks, international news stations, and events in the rest of the Arab World.
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The Senoussi monarchist movement
Gaddafi holds his power due to an alliance between the tribes of the Western, Central and Southern region (Tripolitania and Fezzan), to the detriment of the tribes of the East (Harabi and Obeidat), close to the old monarchy.
Politico-religious tradition dominant in Cyrenaica is that of Senoussi, an anti-Western Muslim sect, founded in 1842 in Al-Baida, which practices a conservative and austere form of Islam. It is closely associated with the monarchy since King Idris I - installed by the British in 1951 and overthrown by Gaddafi in 1969 - was its leader.
These monarchists-fundamentalists are completely opposed to Democracy and remain opposed to any form of modern government, despite their declared intentions. One motivation is their fierce desire for historical revenge, following the coup of 1969, and they have no other purpose than to restore the monarchy and to eliminate Qaddafi.
One of the tribal leaders met Tobruk's - local leader of the NTC, whose father was a minister of King Idriss - has made no secret of his opinion:
the monarchy is to him a necessary condition for stability.
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The leadership of the internal opposition that is emerging in Libya is coming from within the regime itself. Corrupt officials that have rebelled against Gaddafi are not the champions of the people. These opposition figures are not opposed to tyranny; they are merely opposed to the rule of Colonel Qaddafi and his family.
Aref Sharif and Al-Yunis are themselves Libyan regime figures.
It has to also be considered that some Libyan officials that have turned against Qaddafi are doing it to save themselves, while others in the future will work to retain or strengthen their positions.
Abdel Moneim Al-Honi, the Libyan envoy to the Arab League in Cairo, can be looked at as an example. Al-Honi denounced Qaddafi, but it should be noted that he was one of the members of the group of Libyan officers who executed the coup in 1969 with Qaddafi and that later in 1975 he himself tried to take power in a failed coup. After the failed coup, he would flee Libya and only return in 1990 after Qaddafi pardoned him.
Libyan diplomat to put in his papers was Tripoli's Permanent Representative to the Arab League Abdel Moneim al-Honi, who said in Cairo that he had quit his job to “join the revolution” in his country. “I have submitted my resignation in protest against the acts of repression and violence against demonstrators, and I am joining the ranks of the revolution,” said Mr. Al-Honi.
The Second Secretary Hussein Sadiq al Musrati, announced his resignation from China, in an interview with Al-Jazeera, and called on the Army to intervene in the uprising.
Again, these revolting officials, like Al-Yunis are from within the regime. They are not mere diplomats, but former ministers. There is also the possibility that these types of “opposition figures” could have or could make arrangements with external powers.
Abdul Fattah Younis al Obaidi, a former interior minister and at one point Col Gaddafi's number two, was relying on well-established contacts with the SAS as he organised his forces to repel a counter-attack by pro-Gaddafi militias. SAS units have operated in the Libyan desert.
Abdul Fattah Younis al Obaidi, a thick set paratrooper, was head of Libyan special forces until his appointment as interior minister, and oversaw special training programmes between the SAS and his own junior officers. One official said that Gen Obaidi was part of a group of officials that Britain "could do business with" in the post-Gaddafi era.
Rebels holding up the colonial flag of Libya, the ironic symbol of this latest round of Western-backed unrest
The self-appointed figures of the Benghazi-based Transitional Council opposed to Qaddafi are making contradictory statements. The Transitional Council has been described as being similar to Qaddafi’s regime, because “the operation around the rebel council is rife with family ties.” Moreover, the Transitional Council’s claims against Qaddafi are also similar to those made by Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress against Saddam Hussein.
Take for example the position of General Abdul Fatah Al-Yunis (Al-Younis), Qaddafi’s interior minister who defected. General Al-Yunis has said: “[H]e believed that the [W]est should be ready to launch airstrikes against Colonel Gaddafi’s palace in Tripoli to prevent him [from] attacking the Libyan people with chemical weapons or causing terrible casualties in some other way. He [also said that he] was also in favour of establishing an international no-fly zone as soon as possible.”
Despite foreign aid which allows them to continue fighting, they have proved incapable of defeating the Libyan army. Without Western support, they would have been destroyed a long time ago.
“We need more than diplomacy. We need a no-fly zone but we need more than that,” pleaded Iman Bugaighis, a spokeswoman for the Provisional Transitional National Council, the self-styled alternative government, in Libya’s second [biggest] city of Benghazi.
Ali al-Essawi National Transitional Council and...
Opposition leaders have been deliberately giving mixed signals. Some of them claim that they are against military intervention, but that is fallacious. It has to be noted that while the Libyan opposition leaders in Benghazi asked for intervention, the majority of Libyans on both sides were against U.S. and NATO intervention.
To defeat the Libyan military, which is still under the command of Qaddafi’s regime, the opposition forces need military intervention and foreign arms. The Globe and Mail had this to report in this regard:
Even Mustafa Abdul Jalil [Abdel Jalil was born in 1952. He served as justice minister under Muammar Gaddafi, but resigned early last year and betray Libya.], one of leader of the rebel transitional council, concedes the rebels cannot win militarily: “Everybody should know that there is no balance between our capabilities and Moammar Gadhafi’s,” the former justice minister who defected early in the rebellion said.
Numerous interlocutors seek the help of the coalition believing that the military situation would change quickly if NATO ground troops were engaged. Now, for the insurgents, the fall of the Tripoli regime depends on NATO. The idea of intervention is gaining ground because it seems to the leaders of the NTC that there is no alternative. The NTC is willing to accept NATO troops on the ground despite their comments a few weeks ago, wishing against “NATO losses”.
But the support from Washington comes not only in the form of money and Tomahawk missiles, but also in military command. One of the commanders of the Libyan rebel army is General Khalifa Hifter. A long-ago Gadaffi-defector, he lived in a Washington suburb for the last 20 years before he took off to Libya in March this year to command the rebel forces. Khalifa Hifter lived just minutes away from CIA headquarters...
But the support from Washington comes not only in the form of money and Tomahawk missiles, but also in military command. One of the commanders of the Libyan rebel army is General Khalifa Hifter. A long-ago Gadaffi-defector, he lived in a Washington suburb for the last 20 years before he took off to Libya in March this year to command the rebel forces. Khalifa Hifter lived just minutes away from CIA headquarters...
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The members of our mission were very surprised by the artificiality of this "revolution" by proxy, including the actors waving foreign flags, chanting the name of Sarkozy and calling for NATO intervention to achieve its purpose, which they claim is democratic.
The Libyan people have been led into a trap and they are being misled. It must also be pointed out that the good, the bad, and the ugly have also gathered together on the Benghazi-based opposition side led by the Transitional Council.
The enemy’s of genuine freedom and of the Libyan people have taken advantage of the situation in Libya.
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