After Making Capture in Pipe, Displaying the Trophies of War
By KAREEM FAHIM
Published: October 20, 201
MISURATA, Libya — They had the ultimate trophies of the revolution: the colonel’s golden gun, his satellite phone, his brown scarf and one black boot.
Kareem Fahim/The New York Times
Fighters in Misurata surrounded the body of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, flashing the victory sign.
Related
Violent End to an Era as Qaddafi Dies in Libya (October 21, 2011)
Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, 1942-2011: An Erratic Leader, Brutal and Defiant to the End(October 21, 2011)
Mauricio Lima for The New York Times
Libyans took photographs of the body of Muatassim el-Qaddafi in Misurata on Thursday.
A small group of fighters from Misurata, the vanguard of the force attacking Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s former hometown and final hide-out, Surt, said they had stumbled upon him hiding in a drainage pipe. He was bleeding from his head and chest, but he was well enough to speak, with his trademark indignation.
“When he saw us, he said, ‘What’s happening?’ Those were the words that he spoke,” said Omran Shaaban, a 21-year-old Misurata fighter who said he and a friend were the first men in their unit to find the colonel.
On Thursday night, Mr. Shaaban, a student wearing a brown leather jacket, and his colleagues celebrated their victory in the local council meeting room here, hugging one another and passing around the colonel’s prized last possessions. It was a windfall of spoils for the young men, who have lived only half as long as Colonel Qaddafi ruled Libya, and for Misurata, the Mediterranean port city that is their hometown.
Misurata suffered grievously under a long siege by Colonel Qaddafi’s troops in the spring. It responded with rage, sending out its battle-hardened fighters, first to capture Tripoli and, on Thursday, Surt. As the bodies of the colonel and his son Muatassim were displayed for onlookers here in private homes on Thursday night, it struck many Misuratans as a fitting end, providing a measure of comfort to a brutalized city — and a bargaining chip for its place in a post-Qaddafi Libyan government.
“Misurata will sleep very happily tonight,” said Dr. Suleiman Fortia, a member of the Transitional National Council from the city.
At the house where Muatassim Qaddafi’s body was being displayed, a man who had come to see put it more simply. “Thank God that we caught him,” he said.
It remained to be seen whether Misurata’s achievement would soothe resentments against the city that are lingering from the war. Its fighters threw their weight around in Tripoli and were enthusiastic looters of vanquished loyalist cities. Traveling to Misurata in recent weeks practically required a visa. Their neighbors in the city of Tawerga, accused of fighting in support of Colonel Qaddafi, fled their city in August having been told by the Misuratans that they should not return.
The early battles of the uprising forged a formidable fighting force. Misurata’s rebels became known for their relative skill in urban combat and their convoys of black pickup trucks with heavy weapons mounted in the back. When Tripoli fell, it was the Misurata fighters who led the storming of Bab al-Aziziya, the colonel’s fortified compound and a symbol of the regime’s power.
Misurata’s leaders have pushed for a leading role in the constellation of former rebel forces that have made rival claims to control Libya’s armed forces, and they insisted at one time that the prime minister be from Misurata.
Dr. Fortia tried on Thursday to be conciliatory. “It was teamwork,” he said. “But we deserve the cup.”
The Misurata fighters who caught Colonel Qaddafi set out at about 10 a.m. on Thursday to support the final assault on Surt, according to Munir Senussi, 21, one of the fighters. “We used the coast road,” he said. “We were told it was empty.” But instead, they found the remains of a convoy that had been hit by a NATO airstrike. “We started to hit them with heavy weapons,” he said. “We had no idea Qaddafi was there.”
Mr. Shaaban, the soldier who said he had found the colonel, said that he and the other fighters jumped on him, but he insisted that Colonel Qaddafi’s mortal wounds were already visible. The bodies of other men were near the drainage pipe, he said, but none of them were the colonel’s sons.
Colonel Qaddafi was carrying what Mr. Shaaban described as a sack of magic charms. He had a silver pistol in his hand, and in a bag, the fighters found the golden gun.
On Thursday night, Mr. Shaaban looked around at his friends, young men caked in dirt or blood but smiling, congratulating one another on a job well done. “Bring the gun!” Mr. Shaaban said.
Amid the other souvenirs of war, the big prize was Colonel Qaddafi’s body, shuttled around Misurata on Thursday, moved at least once when the crowds gathering to see it grew too large. By the late evening, the body had come to rest in the reception room of a pink villa. Scuffles broke out at the door as local military leaders came to take a look and snap pictures.
He had what appeared to be a small wound just below his chest and what looked like a gunshot wound to his left temple. His face was clean, but his arms were caked with blood. Several visitors tugged at his signature locks.
The exact circumstances of Colonel Qaddafi’s death were not known. But the fighters toyed with his body, banging the head up and down, flashing the victory sign. “This was the opportunity of my life,” said the owner of one house to which the bodies were taken, who refused to give his name. “If I die tomorrow, I’m happy.”
Ali Tarhouni, the interim government’s finance and oil minister, came to Misurata to confirm the colonel’s death on behalf of the cabinet. Mr. Tarhouni had met Colonel Qaddafi when he was a student. “He didn’t look very powerful,” he said, after seeing the body.
“I was looking at the corpse,” Mr. Tarhouni said, “and thinking of all the comrades and friends who spent decades fighting him, that didn’t live to see this day.”
Violent End to an Era as Qaddafi Dies in Libya
Mauricio Lima for The New York Times
Libyan government fighters celebrated after routing the last remaining forces loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi from the coastal town of Surt on Thursday. More Photos »
By KAREEM FAHIM, ANTHONY SHADID and RICK GLADSTONE
Published: October 20, 2011
MISURATA, Libya — Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s last moments Thursday were as violent as the uprising that overthrew him.
Multimedia
Related
Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, 1942-2011: An Erratic Leader, Brutal and Defiant to the End(October 21, 2011)
Battle for a Holdout City Stalls Healing in Libya (October 19, 2011)
Times Topic: Libya — Revolution (2011)
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In a cellphone video that went viral on the Internet, the deposed Libyan leader is seen splayed on the hood of a truck and then stumbling amid a frenzied crowd, seemingly begging for mercy. He is next seen on the ground, with fighters grabbing his hair. Blood pours down his head, drenching his golden brown khakis, as the crowd shouts, “God is great!”
Colonel Qaddafi’s body was shown in later photographs, with bullet holes apparently fired into his head at what forensic experts said was close range, raising the possibility that he was executed by anti-Qaddafi fighters.
The official version of events offered by Libya’s new leaders — that Colonel Qaddafi was killed in a cross-fire — did not appear to be supported by the photographs and videos that streamed over the Internet all day long, raising questions about the government’s control of the militias in a country that has been divided into competing regions and factions.
The conflicting accounts about how he was killed seemed to reflect an instability that could trouble Libya long after the euphoria fades about the demise of Colonel Qaddafi, who ruled Libya for nearly 42 years and is the first of the autocrats to be killed in the Arab Spring uprisings.
At the same time, the flood of good news for the former rebels prompted a collective sigh of relief and quieted talk of rivalries, as strangers congratulated one another in the streets.
For weeks, as the fight for Surt, Colonel Qaddafi’s hometown and final redoubt in the eight-month conflict, reached a bloody climax, NATO forces and Libyan fighters had watched for an attempt by his armed loyalists to flee and seek safety elsewhere. Soon after dawn, they did, leaving urban bunkers in the Mediterranean town and heading west, said a senior Western official in Europe knowledgeable about NATO’s operations in Libya.
Around 8:30 a.m. local time, a convoy slipped out of a fortified compound in Surt, the scene of one of the civil war’s bloodiest and longest battles and a city that was on the verge of falling to Colonel Qaddafi’s opponents.
Before the convoy had traveled two miles, NATO officials said, it was set upon by an American Predator drone and a French warplane. With the attack the convoy “was stopped from progressing as it sought to flee Surt but was not destroyed,” Defense Minister Gérard Longuet of France said.
Only two vehicles in the convoy were hit, neither carrying Colonel Qaddafi, a Western official said. But the rest of the convoy was forced to detour and scatter. Anti-Qaddafi fighters rapidly descended on the scene, telling Reuters they saw people fleeing through some nearby woods and gave pursuit.
A field leader in Surt, who gave his name to Al Jazeera television as Mohammed al-Laith, said that Colonel Qaddafi fled from a Jeep in the convoy and dived into a large drainage pipe. After a gun battle backed by his guards, he emerged. Mr. Laith told Al Jazeera that the former Libyan leader had a Kalashnikov in one hand, a pistol in the other.
“What’s happening?” he quoted him as asking as he came out.
The video on Al Jazeera shows Colonel Qaddafi wounded, but clearly alive. The network quoted a fighter saying that he had begged for help. “Show me mercy!” he was said to have cried. There was little of that, in the video at least.
One fighter is seen pulling his hair, and others beat his limp body. Two fighters interviewed by Al Jazeera said someone had struck his head with a gun butt.
Omran Shaaban, 21, a Misurata fighter who claimed to have been the first, along with a friend, to find Colonel Qaddafi, said he was already wounded in the head and chest and bleeding in the drainage pipe and then whisked away to an ambulance. Precisely how he died after that, Mr. Shaaban said, was unclear.
By all accounts, he was then taken in an ambulance to Misurata, a coastal town to the west that fought perhaps the most ferocious battle against Colonel Qaddafi’s government and whose fighters still celebrate their reputation for martial prowess.
Holly Pickett, a freelance photojournalist working in Surt, reported in a Twitter feed that she had seen Colonel Qaddafi’s body in an ambulance headed for Misurata, along with 10 fighters inside with him. It was unclear from her posts whether he was dead. “From the side door, I could see a bare chest with bullet wound and a bloody hand. He was wearing gold-colored pants,” she said in one post.
The Rebelions actually are destroying a Country's Standard of Living:
What Libya Had Achieved, What has been Destroyed by The Rebeliona and US and NATO...... ???
What Libya Had Achieved, What has been Destroyed by The Rebeliona and US and NATO...... ???
by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research, September 20, 2011
"There is no tomorrow" under a NATO sponsored Al Qaeda rebellion.
While a "pro-democracy" rebel government has been instated, the country has been destroyed.
While a "pro-democracy" rebel government has been instated, the country has been destroyed.
Against the backdrop of war propaganda, Libya
The [Libyan Arab Jamahiriya] has had a high standard of living and a robust per capita daily caloric intake of 3144. The country has made strides in public health and, since 1980, child mortality rates have dropped from 70 per thousand live births to 19 in 2009. Life expectancy has risen from 61 to 74 years of age during the same span of years. (FAO, Rome , Libya, Country Profile,)
According to sectors of the "Progressive Left" which have endorsed NATO's R2P mandate: "The mood across
The rebels are casually presented as "liberators". The central role of Al Qaeda affilated terrorists within rebel ranks is not mentioned.
"Starting afresh" in the wake of destruction? Fear and Social Despair, Countless Deaths and Atrocities, amply documented by the independent media.
No euphoria.... A historical reversal in the country's economic and social development has occurred. The achievements have been erased.
The NATO invasion and occupation marks the ruinous "rebirth" of
The objective of the NATO bombings from the outset was to destroy the country's standard of living, its health infrastructure, its schools and hospitals, its water distribution system.
And then "rebuild" with the help of donors and creditors under the helm of the IMF and the World Bank.
The diktats of the "free market" are a precondition for the instatement of a Western style "democratic dictatorship ".
About nine thousand strike sorties, tens of thousands of strikes on civilian targets including residential areas, government buildings, water supply and electricity generation facilities. (See NATO Communique, September 5, 2011. 8140 strike sorties from March 31 to September 5, 2011)
An entire nation has been bombed with the most advanced ordnance, including uranium coated ammunition.
An entire nation has been bombed with the most advanced ordnance, including uranium coated ammunition.
Already in August, UNICEF warned that extensive NATO bombing of
Meanwhile investors and donors have positioned themselves. "War is Good for Business'. NATO, the Pentagon and the Washington based international financial institutions (IFIs) operate in close coordination. What has been destroyed by NATO will be rebuilt, financed by
"Specifically, the [World] Bank has been asked to examine the need for repair and restoration of services in the water, energy and transport sectors [bombed by NATO] and, in cooperation with the International Monetary Fund, to support budget preparation [austerity measures] and help the banking sector back on to its feet [The Libyan Central bank was one of the first government buildings to be bombed]. Employment generation for young Libyans has been added as an urgent need facing the country."
Whatever one's views regarding Moamar Gadaffi, the post-colonial Libyan government played a key role in eliminating poverty and developing the country's health and educational infrastructure. According to Italian Journalist Yvonne de Vito, "Differently from other countries that went through a revolution –
These developments are in sharp contrast to what most Third World countries were able to "achieve" under Western style "democracy" and "governance" in the context of a standard IMF-World Bank Structural Adjustment program (SAP).
Public Health Care
Public Health Care in Libya prior to NATO's "Humanitarian Intervention" was the best in Africa . "Health care is [was] available to all citizens free of charge by the public sector. The country boasts the highest literacy and educational enrolment rates in North Africa . The Government is [was] substantially increasing the development budget for health services.... (WHO Libya Country Brief )
Confirmed by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), undernourishment was less than 5 %, with a daily per capita calorie intake of 3144 calories. (FAO caloric intake figures indicate availability rather than consumption).
The Libyan Arab Jamahiriya provided to its citizens what is denied to many Americans: Free public health care, free education, as confirmed by WHO and UNESCO data.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO): Life expectancy at birth was 72.3 years (2009), among the highest in the developing World.
Under 5 mortality rate per 1000 live births declined from 71 in 1991 to 14 in 2009
(http://www.who.int/countryfocus/cooperation_strategy/ccsbrief_lby_en.pdf)
| GDP per capita (PPP) |
| ||
| GDP growth rate (%) ^ |
| ||
| Total debt service as a % of GNI ^ |
| ||
| Children of primary school-age who are out of school (%) |
|
Libyan Arab Jamahiriya General information 2009
Total population (000) | |||
Annual population growth rate (%) ^ | |||
Population 0-14 years (%) | |||
Rural population (%) ^ | |||
Total fertility rate (births per woman) ^ | |||
Infant mortality rate (0/00) ^ | |||
Life expectancy at birth (years) ^ |
Source: UNESCO. Libya Country Profile
Libyan Arab Jamahiriya (2009)
Total life expectancy at birth (years) 72.3Male life expectancy at birth (years) 70.2
Female life expectancy at birth (years) 74.9
Newborns with low birth weight (%) 4.0
Children underweight (%) 4.8
Perinatal mortality rate per 1000 total births 19
Neonatal mortality rate 11.0
Infant mortality rate (per 1000 live births) 14.0
Under five mortality rate (per 1000 live births) 20.1
Maternal mortality ratio (per 10000 live births) 23
Education
The adult literacy rate was of the order of 89%, (2009), (94% for males and 83% for females). 99.9% of youth are literate (UNESCO 2009 figures, See UNESCO, Libya Country Report)
Gross primary school enrolment ratio was 97% for boys and 97% for girls (2009). (see UNESCO tables at
Gross primary school enrolment ratio was 97% for boys and 97% for girls (2009). (see UNESCO tables at
The pupil teacher ratio in Libya
Based on more recent date, which confirms a marked increase in school enrolment, the Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) in secondary schools was of the order of 108% in 2002. The GER is the number of pupils enrolled in a given level of education regardless of age expressed as a percentage of the population in the theoretical age group for that level of education.
For tertiary enrolment (postsecondary, college and university), the Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) was of the order of 54% in 2002 (52 for males, 57 for females).
(For further details
(For further details
Women's Rights
With regard to Women's Rights, World Bank data point to significant achievements.
"In a relative short period of time,
Price Controls over Essential Food Staples
In most developing countries, essential food prices have skyrocketed, as a result of market deregulation, the lifting of price controls and the eliminaiton of subsidies, under "free market" advice from the World Bank and the IMF.
In recent years, essential food and fuel prices have spiralled as a result of speculative trade on the major commodity exchanges.
World Bank President Robert Zoellick acknowledged in an April 2011 statement that the price of essential food staples had increased by 36 percent in the course of the last year. See Robert Zoellick, World Bank
The Libyan Arab Jamahiriya had established a system of price controls over essential food staples, which was maintained until the onset of the NATO led war.
While rising food prices in neighbouring Tunisia and Egypt spearheaded social unrest and political dissent, the system of food subsidies in Libya
These are the facts confirmed by several UN specialised agencies.
"Missile Diplomacy" and "The Free Market"
"Missile Diplomacy" and "The Free Market"
War and Globalization are intiricately related. The IMF and NATO work in tandem, in liason with the Washington
The NATO operation purports to enforce the neoliberal economic agenda. Countries which are reluctant to accept the sugar coated bullets of IMF "economic medicine" will eventually be the object of a R2P NATO humanitarian operation.
The NATO operation purports to enforce the neoliberal economic agenda. Countries which are reluctant to accept the sugar coated bullets of IMF "economic medicine" will eventually be the object of a R2P NATO humanitarian operation.
Déjà Vu? Under the British Empire , "gun boat diplomacy" was a means to imposing "free trade". On October 5, 1850, England 's Envoy to the Kingdom of Siam
"should these just demands [to impose free trade] be refused, a force should be present, immediately to enforce them by the rapid destruction of the defenses of the [Chaopaya] river... Siam may be taught the lesson which it has long been tempting-- its Government may be remodelled, A better disposed king placed on the throne and an influence acquired in the country which will make it of immense commercial importance to England" (The Mission of Sir James Brooke, quoted in M.L. Manich Jumsai, King Mongkut and Sir John Bowring, Chalermit, Bangkok, 1970, p. 23)
Today we call it "Regime Change" and "Missile Diplomacy" which invariably takes the shape of a UN sponsored "No Fly Zone". Its objective is to impose the IMF's deadly "economic medicine" of austerity measures and privatization.
The World Bank financed "reconstruction" programs of war torn countries are coordinated with US-NATO military planning. They are invariably formulated prior to onslaught of the military campaign...
The World Bank financed "reconstruction" programs of war torn countries are coordinated with US-NATO military planning. They are invariably formulated prior to onslaught of the military campaign...
Confiscating Libyan Financial Assets
Libya`s frozen overseas financial assets are estimated to be of the order of $150 billion, with NATO countries holding more than $100 billion.
Prior to the war, Libya
The R2P military intervention is intended to spearhead the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya into the straightjacket of an indebted developing country, under the surveillance of the
In a bitter irony, after having stolen
The IMF promised a further $35-billion in funding [loans] to countries affected by Arab Spring uprisings and formally recognized Libya’s ruling interim council as a legitimate power, opening up access to a myriad of international lenders as the country [Libya] looks to rebuild after a six-month war. ...
Getting IMF recognition is significant for Libya
The Marseille talks came a few days after world leaders agreed in Paris to free up billions of dollars in frozen assets [stolen money] to help [through loans] Libya’s interim rulersrestore vital services and rebuild after a conflict that ended a 42-year dictatorship.
The financing deal by the Group of Seven major economies plus Russia is aimed at supporting reform efforts [IMF sponsored structural adjustment] in the wake of uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East .
The financing is mostly in the form of loans, rather than outright grants, and is provided half by G8 and Arab countries and half by various lenders and development banks. (Financial Post, September 10, 2011,
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