Libya: green flag raised in Bani Walid

NOVANEWS

After the capture, torture and murder of Libya’s national leader on 20 October, imperialist joy was unbounded in Washington, London and Paris. It seemed the green revolution had been cut off at the head, and now it only remained for the western-backed ‘opposition’ to form a puppet government ready to deliver sovereign Libya and her oil wealth safely into the clutches of imperialism.

Just three days after Colonel Gaddafi was slaughtered, Libya was solemnly pronounced to be ‘liberated’, and all the talk was of minting a brand new constitution and government.

By early November, however, the assorted counter-revolutionary militia had already broken their pledge to give up their weapons and submit to the authority of the National Transitional Council (NTC), instead continuing to fight each other over the elusive spoils of victory. The heavily armed Misrata Brigades, in between engaging in fire fights with their terrorist rivals from Benghazi, have not even refrained from attacking each other in Misrata itself, with brigades setting up rival checkpoints in the city.

Meanwhile, in amongst this chaos of civil war unleashed by imperialism, there starts to emerge also evidence that Libya’s green forces are gathering strength after the setback of losing their leading figure.

And whilst the mainstream media are happy to use the fog of war to muddle up sectarian clashes with acts of resistance, it is clear even from their reports that resistance to NTC attempts to rule is growing. Nor is it always so obvious where militia loyalties lie.

When Gaddafi’s son Saif al-Islam was captured by the Zintan militia, the ecstatic NTC promised he would be delivered to the International Criminal Court. Instead he appears, according to some reports, to have remained under the protection of the Zintan militia, which according to Dr Yusuf Shakir, a veteran Libyan TV broadcaster, may itself be warming to the green cause.

Some sense of the developing pattern of events can be gleaned from the Libya Liberation Front News (LLFN) website, though the information coming through is necessarily patchy and hard to corroborate in detail. This source tells how people chased out of Tawergha (formerly home to 10,000 mainly black Libyans, now a ghost town) in racist pogroms are now crammed into unsanitary concentration camps in the depths of winter, with their children dying of exposure to frost.

Other displaced people inside Tripoli have been attacked and robbed by the Misrata militia. This nation, which a year ago could boast the highest Human Development Index in all Africa, is now reduced to near-barbarism.

Yet the LLFN website testifies how even in the midst of all this chaos, resistance is growing in influence and organisational strength. For example we are told that the “green army has sent teams of engineering battalion to start immediate repairs on the Man-Made River in areas that have been captured by the green army”.

At present, the western stooges use water shortages as a way of controlling the population, cutting off the supply to those who disagree with the NTC’s rebellion or who cannot afford to pay the hefty new bills. By their actions, the green resistance forces are striving to restore fresh water and electricity to city residents.

LLFN reports too that anti-green rebels in the southern city of Sabha have lost control to green forces, calling on the quisling NTC for reinforcements, and armed clashes between rebels and green fighters in Sirte are reported to have left a score of rebels dead. In and around Tripoli itself, it is claimed that recent ground operations by green forces have resulted in the loss of many NTC soldiers, whilst a green attack using two helicopter gunships cost the lives of a number of French and Italian mercenary agents near Bregah.

A resistance attack is also reported upon El Jadida prison involving an intense fire fight and the loss of a number of NTC security goons. A new year report announced that Sabha, Bani Walid, Tarhouna and Zilten are still flying the green flag of the resistance, and people there publicly celebrated the reopening of the Al Jamahriya TV channel, (now beaming in from Egypt to the chagrin of the NTC).

As we go to press, we are much heartened by the following report, which appeared in the Daily Mail of 24 January:

“Libya appeared to be sliding backwards into civil war yesterday when supporters of Colonel Gaddafi’s regime clashed with government forces and seized control of a town.

“At least four were killed in the violence. The fighting came just 24 hours after the head of the interim government said Libya risked becoming a ‘bottomless pit’.

“A resident of Bani Walid, about 120 miles south-east of Tripoli, said both sides fought using heavy weaponry and that 20 had been wounded …

“Another witness said the fighting had stopped but that supporters of the country’s previous regime were in control.

“The violence was sparked when some Gaddafi loyalists were arrested. Other supporters of the former leader, who was captured and killed in October, attacked the local militia’s headquarters in response …

“The uprising could not come at a worse time for the ruling National Transitional Council. It is already reeling from violent protests in the eastern city of Benghazi.” (‘Four dead as Gaddafi loyalists seize town amid fears country is descending into “bottomless pit”’ by Julian Gavaghan)

The impotent NTC has meanwhile announced its fantasy plans for a new electoral system. In place of the mass-participation model of neighbourhood democracy that previously obtained, the quislings propose to ban from standing, not only former government leaders (and this despite the fact that many NTC leaders were themselves senior members of the former Libyan government), but even anyone who secured a university degree relating to academic research on the Green Book. Clearly the only democratic right now in Libya is that being fought for by the green resistance.

Victory to Libya’s green army!