generalspeaking

Libya Redux

"Certainly some of the players in ISIL are going to be the same people who fought Gadhafi."
"The ability of these forces to move across borders, to fight in each other's battles, is something that should be looked at more closely in the future."
Martin Shadwick, defence analyst, York University

"The good news for our country and for yours, I believe, is that over the last thirteen years we have vastly improved our ability to detect and disrupt terrorist plots overseas before they reach our homelands. The bad news is we continue to face real terrorist enemies and real terrorist threats."
"Thirteen years after 9/11, it is still a dangerous world. But today the terrorist threat is different from what it was in 2001. It is more decentralized and more complex."
"ISIL is a stateless group of depraved criminals -- rapists, kidnappers, killers and terrorists who control a territory. There is no religion, including Islam and there is no God, including Allah, that would condone ISIL's violent tactics."
Jeh Johnson, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security

"One can quarrel with it or not quarrel with it, but the mission [in Libya] was we would provide air cover for those that were initially subject to Gadhafi's attacks and ultimately became his overthrowers."
"The decision was made at the outset that we were not going to go into Libya (on the ground) per se. It was going to be up to the Libyans to then make the best of the situation."
Prime Minister Stephen Harper

The decision has been made; Canada will indeed send CF-18 fighter jets into Iraq to enable Canadian pilots to do once again what they had done in Libya, with NATO. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant has succeeded in provoking enough concern within the international community, in effect, as a fanatical Sunni group of jihadis, reflecting in good part what the Shiite-Alawite regime of President al-Assad has done to his own Sunni Syrian population, matching brutality for atrocity.

But it is the Islamic State's gruesome atrocities that horrify the international community much more than the Syrian regime's. Largely because no country enjoys seeing its nationals beheaded. So while a coalition of the horrified are set on bombing ISIL/ISIS/Islamic State into oblivion, they are by default aiding Bashar al-Assad in his mission to annihilate all opposition to his criminal rule of Syria, a country he has single-handedly ruined, with ISIS merely adding to the carnage.

Libya's mad dictator found a bad, sad end, but not yet, apparently is such a future in store for Syria's mad, bad dictator. While NATO was busily bombing Libya it was well enough recognized that among the tribal rebels extremists were gathering and they were benefiting from the chaos. Fanatical groups like Ansar al Sharia Libya has been obligingly providing well-seasoned fighters for ISIL. The airstrikes that destroyed Libya's military also helped to disperse Libya's munitions to terrorist groups.

As the Libyan military was gradually defeated, the rag-tag tribal militias in opposition to the tormentor that ruled Libya were enabled to seize control of the country. And unfortunately, the opportunity for Libyans to finally found a liberal democracy of their own, Arab-style, never did quite result; the country remains in violent turmoil. Now it is simply Syria's turn, Iraq's turn, and some chickens are coming home to roost.

The Shura Council of Shabaab al-Islam (Youth of Islam) based in Derna, Libya has voiced its jihadist support for ISIL, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, monitoring global terrorism. The large quantities of arms and ammunition stockpiled for the Libyan military were seized and transported into the possession of jihadi groups throughout Libya, Mali, Niger, Algeria and elsewhere, including providing useful arms to ISIS/ISIL.

There are never any predictable outcomes relating to anything that happens in the Middle East, that doomed quagmire of tribal hatred, sectarian violence and religious, political and social dysfunction. A geography of timeless tormented turmoil.

Labels: Iraq, ISIS, Jihadists, Libya, Middle East, NATO, Syria

posted by Pieface @ Saturday, October 04, 2014