A CIA commander for the Libyan rebels (3/28)

[Hannah Bell]

The Libyan National Council, the Benghazi-based group that speaks for the rebel forces fighting the Gaddafi regime, has appointed a long-time CIA collaborator to head its military operations. The selection of Khalifa Hifter, a former colonel in the Libyan army, was reported by McClatchy Newspapers Thursday and the new military chief was interviewed by a correspondent for ABC News on Sunday night....the article notes that he was once a top commander for the Gaddafi regime, until “a disastrous military adventure in Chad in the late 1980s.” Hifter then went over to the anti-Gaddafi opposition, eventually emigrating to the United States, where he lived until two weeks ago when he returned to Libya to take command in Benghazi...

The McClatchy profile concluded, “Since coming to the United States in the early 1990s, Hifter lived in suburban Virginia outside Washington, DC.” It cited a friend who “said he was unsure exactly what Hifter did to support himself, and that Hifter primarily focused on helping his large family.”

To those who can read between the lines, this profile is a thinly disguised indication of Hifter’s role as a CIA operative. How else does a high-ranking former Libyan military commander enter the United States in the early 1990s, only a few years after the Lockerbie bombing, and then settle near the US capital, except with the permission and active assistance of US intelligence agencies? Hifter actually lived in Vienna, Virginia, about five miles from CIA headquarters in Langley, for two decades...

A 2001 book, Manipulations africaines, published by Le Monde diplomatique, traces the CIA connection even further back, to 1987, reporting that Hifter, then a colonel in Gaddafi’s army, was captured fighting in Chad... He defected to the Libyan National Salvation Front (LNSF), the principal anti-Gaddafi group... “the Haftar force, created and financed by the CIA in Chad, vanished into thin air with the help of the CIA shortly after the government was overthrown by Idriss Déby.” The book also cites a Congressional Research Service report of December 19, 1996 that the US government was providing financial and military aid to the LNSF and that a number of LNSF members were relocated to the United States...

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/mar2011/pers-m28.shtml

[Hannah Bell]

1. k

[Starry Messenger]

2. k&r

[azul]

3. rec'd. How the CIA escaped oversight: unrec's at DU.

Is the CIA the president's secret army, or the president the CIA's puppet? And who could really say?

[joshcryer]

4. This is a completely dishonest article as Younis contests Hifter role.

It was written almost an entire month ago, the OP just wants to dredge up old debates over trivial innuendos.

No wonder our school system is so fucked up if this passes for genuine debate. :puke:

Here's a more updated article about Hifter, the CIA manipulator evil guy: http://www.idahostatesman.com/2011/04/12/v-print/1603350/libyan-rebel-chief-with-us-ties.html

And people wonder why I call out intellectual dishonesty. It's all over the place. :puke:

[Hannah Bell]

6. it certainly is.

[joshcryer]

9. I'm glad you agree that it is a completely dishonest article.

Why did you post it?

[Hannah Bell]

11. no josh, i agree that intellectual dishonesty is rampant.

[joshcryer]

13. Oh, you admit to your own intellectual dishonesty?

Hifter is not a rebel commander and his role is marginal at best. But you knew that. You've been told this before.

[sabrina 1]

21. The rebels do not trust him and they do not trust Younis

Nor would I. And since these 'commanders' arrived all of a sudden the 'rebels' are begging for foreign troops on the ground, the exact opposite of what they orignally asked for. What happened to the original rebels? From what I'm reading many of them are feeling betrayed and now worry only about protecting their own homes.

I know I was fooled in the beginning. I actually thought the REAL rebels had a chance to overthrow Qaddafi because I thought a majority of Libyans were opposed to him. However, it became obvious before long that those crowd scenes were not staged, that a possible majority of Libyans actually do support him. What that means is that if the Western powers once again invade yet another oil producing Arab/Muslim nation, many, many Libyans are going to die, just like Iraq. They will fight foer their country and they will die just like Iraqis and Afghans and Pakistanis.

I didn't support Iraq, I am not going to support another Iraq with a 'coalition of the willing' and more and more involvement as the Libyan people will fight foreign troops. What a disaster. This is not EGypt or Tunisia, this is something else altogether.

[joshcryer]

22. Uh, the Misrata rebels are asking for toops, it remains to be seen if the TNC rebels agree.

You act as if all situations are the same, they're not.

You weren't fooled in the beginning, you're being fooled now by conspiracy garabge that makes no logical sense and dinegrates the rebels. It's the White movement scare all over again.

[Hannah Bell]

23. you guys are *so* in the know.

[joshcryer]

24. Did I say anything incorrect?

[EFerrari]

5. Kick

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

7. Having a CIA stooge heading things isn't exactly "revolutionary".

Not that our humanitarian and democracy loving CIA has ever helped thugs before..except in Congo, El Salvador, Angola, Vietnam, Guatemala, Cuba, Afghanistan....

[joshcryer]

8. A CIA stooge is not "heading things" it is a flat out lie.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

10. What's he doing there setting up a pizza parlor?

Or, are you saying he's not a CIA stooge?

[joshcryer]

12. I'm saying no credible evidence has been presented to suggested he is a CIA stooge.

Or that he is heading things.

He's an old man trying to be important.

[Hannah Bell]

14. In March 2001, Le Monde diplomatique published a chapter of the book Manipulations africaines,

in which the author indicated that "the Haftar force, created and financed by the CIA in Chad, vanished into thin air with the help of the CIA shortly after the Hissène Habré government was overthrown by Idriss Déby" (see also The Washington Post 26 Mar. 1996). A report published by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) on the Web site of the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) notes that in 1996 the main opposition group in Libya was the Libyan National Salvation Front (LNSF), founded in 1981 and headed by Muhammad Al-Muqaryif (CRS 19 Dec. 1996). Its military wing is known as the Libyan National Army and is headed by Colonel Haftar (ibid.; see also The Washington Post 26 Mar. 1996).

The same report indicates that Colonel Haftar joined the LNSF in March 1987 after he was captured in the Chadian war; his goal was to create an army to fight against the Libyan authorities (ibid.). The Washington Post reported on 26 March 1996 that, according to some sources, Colonel Haftar was the leader of the Libyan National Army, a group of counter-revolutionaries supported and trained by the United States and operating in Libya. According to the sources cited in the article, anti-government uprisings in Libya were led by Colonel Haftar from the United States (The Washington Post 26 Mar. 1996; see also CSR 19 Dec. 1996). A CRS report states that the United States was providing financial and military aid to the LNSF at that time and that a number of LNSF members were living in exile in the United States (ibid., see also The Washington Post 26 Mar. 1996). An article on the Daily Nation Web site at nationmedia.com reports that the American authorities permitted the "Haftar forces" to stay in Kenya before welcoming them to the United States (1 Mar. 1999). The "Haftar forces" had previously attempted to overthrow the Libyan government (Daily Nation 1 Mar. 1999)

http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/publisher,IRBC,,LBY,45f147662,0.html

[joshcryer]

16. LOL, that doesn't support your claims.

It doesn't show that the TNC is representing Hafter or that Hafter is even relevant.

[Hannah Bell]

17. it shows he's in the US government's pocket. close enough.

no idea what tnc is.

there is no evidence of cia connections that would satisfy you, josh, as the cia isn't likely to say "he's our boy".

but the evidence of past associations is enough to tell me he's a stooge.

[joshcryer]

20. No, I would be willing to believe a statement like "officials say Hefter being paid..."

...etc.

But what reports we do get about Hefter is that he's an old man with no pull.

You have to dredge up quotes from almost 20 years ago to justify your bias, your 'beliefs.'

[Hannah Bell]

25. the only person saying he's an old man with no pull is -- *you*. the guy writing the daily paens to

the "rebels".

[joshcryer]

26. Yes, I'm the only one to characterize it that way, but the other reports are clear.

http://www.africaintelligence.com/MCE/power-brokers/2011/04/14/foreign-based-dissidents-pushed-aside%2C89350287-ART-login">Foreign-based dissidents pushed aside

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/libyan-rebels-struggle-to-explain-rift/2011/04/02/AFEpJFRC_story.html">Libyan rebels struggle to explain rift

http://www.economist.com/node/18530535?story_id=18530535&fsrc=rss">Libya's fledgling government: Early days, early rivalries

http://slatest.slate.com/id/2290286/">Rift Appears in Libyan Rebel Leadership

http://www.thenational.ae/news/worldwide/africa/quarrels-among-rebel-leadership-threaten-to-split-anti-qaddafi-opposition">Quarrels among rebel leadership threaten to split anti-Qaddafi opposition

Report after report after report. But then I look for something like "CIA backed Haftar" and such reports are conspicuously absent, it's one or two originators. When you have one or two people making the same argument using tenuous evidence, and then you look at the history of those people and see that, overall they have an ardent bias, it is difficult to consider them objective.

I admit that I am likely undergoing a similar process, but I try damn hard to read information from both sides.

But it's like with global warming deniers. Eventually you just get tired of the fucking bullshit.

[bindelh]

18. Colonel Khalifa Haftar another Chalabi?

http://www.workers.org/2011/world/libya_cia_mi6_0414/

CIA & MI6 in Libya
U.S.-British covert operations exposed
By Abayomi Azikiwe
Editor, Pan-African News Wire
Published Apr 7, 2011 8:01 PM

The New York Times, the Washington Post and other corporate news sources are now openly admitting that the opposition forces fighting the Libyan government are supported and coordinated by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and Britain’s MI6 with in-country special forces.

President Barack Obama in March signed an order dispatching CIA operatives to identify targets for bombing and to vet potential leaders within the rebel forces in the event of toppling the Libyan government.

Al Jazeera says in a recent article that both U.S. and Egyptian Special Forces are providing training to the rebel groups at a secret facility in eastern Libya. This adds greater clarity to the insistence on the part of the Obama administration that the current leader of Libya, Moammar Gadhafi, be forced from office. The U.S. wants a compliant regime in control of this oil-rich North African state of more than 6 million people.

Egypt’s military receives in excess of $1.5 billion a year from the U.S. for training, equipment and cooperation with Washington. An unidentified rebel fighter described being trained in military techniques by U.S. and Egyptian military forces.

“He told us that Thursday night (March 31) a new shipment of Katyusha rockets had been sent into eastern Libya from Egypt. He didn’t say they were sourced from Egypt, but that was their route through. He said these were state-of-the-art, heat-seeking rockets and that they need to be trained on how to use them, which was one of the things the American and Egyptian special forces were there to do.” (Al Jazeera, April 4)

The fact that the rebel forces are receiving arms and training from U.S., British and Egyptian intelligence and military units illustrates the hypocrisy of the naval blockade being imposed on Libya, under the guise of an arms embargo. The only arms embargo is against the Libyan government, while the imperialist states and their allies in the region are free to provide air and sea support for the rebels.

While Al Jazeera has been supportive of the military and political campaign against the Libyan government, it was forced to admit on April 4 that “since the rebels appear to be receiving covert support in terms of weaponry and training, it is not surprising that they are not inclined to criticize NATO openly.”

U.S. cover story falls apart

The Obama administration claims it does not know who the so-called “rebels” are in Libya. But Khalifa Haftar, officially appointed leader of the military campaign against the Libyan government, has for many years been financed and supported by the CIA. For two decades he lived in Virginia near CIA headquarters in Langley.

A report by the right-wing Jamestown Foundation declares, “Today as Colonel Haftar finally returns to the battlefields of North Africa with the objective of toppling Gadhafi ... he may stand as the best liaison for the United States and allied NATO forces in dealing with Libya’s unruly rebels.”

This same study revealed that Haftar played an important role in June 1998 in establishing the so-called Libyan National Army, the military wing of the National Front for the Salvation of Libya “with strong backing from the Central Intelligence Agency.” Not only did the CIA set up the LNA but it also created a training camp in Virginia where members of the group were taught counterinsurgency and destabilization tactics by the U.S. government.

The Nation magazine, in an April 3 article entitled, “The CIA, the Libyan rebellion, and the president,” concludes, “An event that Americans were led to believe was an autonomous rising on the model of Egypt turns out to have been deeply compromised from the start, and compromised by American meddling. All the external parties are in Libya for different reasons. Things could not have gotten this far without the CIA.”

The CIA and Africa

While the first clandestine operations of the CIA were directed against leftists in Europe after World War II, it soon focused on weakening oppressed nations, national liberation movements and socialist states. In 1953, the CIA engineered a coup against Mohammad Mossadegh, the elected leader of Iran, who had tried to nationalize the oil industry for the benefit of the people. He was replaced by the Shah, a U.S. puppet, who was finally overthrown in 1979.

The CIA was behind the 1954 overthrow of the progressive Arbenz government of Guatemala. In Cuba in 1961, CIA-trained exile forces landed at the Bay of Pigs in an attempt to topple the revolutionary government of Fidel Castro.

In 1966, the CIA was behind the destabilization and overthrow of the Pan-African and socialist-oriented government of President Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana. Nkrumah had supported national liberation movements throughout Africa and the world and formed close relations with the Soviet Union, China, Cuba and Yugoslavia.

In 1975, the CIA attempted to prevent the consolidation of national independence in the oil-rich Southern African nation of Angola. Agency operatives aided the racist South African Defense Forces and the counterrevolutionary UNITA and FNLA movements. Angola finally was liberated in 1994.

Importance of anti-imperialist perspective

An important role of the CIA has been to foster chaos in order to destabilize and overthrow governments in countries where U.S. imperialism wanted to intervene to protect its strategic interests. Thus it has a long track record of fomenting disinformation and psychological warfare.

The corporate media are always ready to build public support for U.S. imperialist aims and objectives, both domestically and internationally. As Washington sends the CIA, stealth bombers and “Tomahawk” missiles to engineer regime change in Libya, the media have framed this as an act of humanitarian relief designed to protect civilians. They have little to say when Libyans die and property is destroyed.

It is the duty of the anti-war and peace movements in the U.S. and throughout the Western industrialized countries to expose the role of the CIA and other intelligence services and uphold the right of oppressed, post-colonial and revolutionary governments to self-determination and sovereignty.

Any other approach strengthens the imperialists and their intelligence and military apparatuses. It only delays the struggle for international solidarity of the workers and oppressed inside the U.S. and around the world.

Articles copyright 1995-2011 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalifa_Belqasim_Haftar

Not to pee in any one's corn flakes...

Ex-U.S. ally Chalabi, now Iran's friend, likely winner in Iraq



Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/02/26/88870/ex-us-ally-chalabi-now-closer.html#ixzz1K2LRAZaV

[azul]

19. I expect the CIA to be on the ground in Libya, directing events

to stabilize multinational businesses' investments.

What is out of the ordinary, mentioned in NPR stories today, is that the NATO mission to topple the Libyan regime
is having a difficult time in destroying Libya's military firepower, and may have to put troops on the ground there to lessen the collateral damage.

Like NATO is obliging the over-extended US military.

Maybe the idea is to capture enough nationalized oil to fund the military adventures of capturing and securing the damned oil. Like the invasion of Iraq that paid for itself with oil revenues?

I don't think the State Dept is running the show.

[Starry Messenger]

15. In other news...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704530204576232960992148244.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

WASHINGTON—The Libyan rebel courting U.S. support for the government-in-waiting launched his academic career by chronicling America's response to the 1969 coup by the man he now wants to depose: Col. Moammar Gadhafi.

Mahmoud Jibril, the 58-year-old de facto foreign minister for a rebel council based in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi, has been a key player in drumming up international support for the opposition in recent weeks. He helped galvanize European backing for military aid, and has repeatedly met with U.S. diplomats, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Jibril's wiki has been altered this month, but I c/p'd it before it got heavily edited:

Mahmoud Jibril (Arabic: محمود جبريل‎, also transcribed Mahmoud Jabril or Mahmoud Jebril, and formerly known as Mahmoud Gebril ElWarfally) (born 1952<1>) is a Libyan politician who, since 23 March 2011, is the current Prime Minister of the Libyan Republic, one of two entities currently disputing control of Libya. He is also head of the Executive Team of the National Transitional Council. His government has recently been recognized as the "sole legitimate representative" of Libya by France but, at the current time, recognition has not been given by the great majority of United Nations member states.<2>

He is currently leading the meeting and negotiations with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, and in the past years he was the the key man for penetrating in Libya the economic interests of United States and United Kingdom.<3>
Career

Jibril graduated in in Economics and Political Science from Cairo University in 1975,<1> then gaining a masters in political science in 1980 and doctorate in strategic planning in 1984, both from the University of Pittsburgh.<1> He taught strategic planning at Pittsburgh for several years, and has published 10 books on strategic planning and decision-making, including Imagery and Ideology in U.S. Policy Toward Libya, 1969–1982 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1988).<1> For all his life he has been a strong advocate of neoliberalism.<3>