Arab League condemns broad bombing campaign in Libya

[fallstuff]

Arab League condemns broad bombing campaign in Libya


CAIRO—The Arab League secretary general, Amr Moussa, deplored the broad scope of the U.S.-European bombing campaign in Libya on Sunday and said he would call a new league meeting to reconsider Arab approval of the Western military intervention.

Moussa said the Arab League’s approval of a no-fly zone on March 12 was based on a desire to prevent Moammar Gaddafi’s air force from attacking civilians and was not designed to embrace the intense bombing and missile attacks—including on Tripoli, the capital, and on Libyan ground forces—that have filled Arab television screens for the last two days.

“What is happening in Libya differs from the aim of imposing a no-fly zone,” he said in a statement on the official Middle East News Agency. “And what we want is the protection of civilians and not the shelling of more civilians.”

Moussa’s declaration suggested some of the 22 Arab League members were taken aback by what they have seen and wanted to modify their approval lest they be perceived as accepting outright Western military intervention in Libya. Although the eccentric Gaddafi is widely looked down on in the Arab world, Middle Eastern leaders and their peoples traditionally have risen up in emotional protest at the first sign of Western intervention.

A shift away from the Arab League endorsement, even partial, would constitute an important setback to the U.S.-European campaign. Western leaders brandished the Arab League decision as a justification for their decision to move militarily and as a weapon in the debate to obtain a U.N. Security Council resolution two days before the bombing began.

As U.S. and European military operations entered their second day, however, most Arab governments maintained public silence and the strongest expressions of opposition came from the greatest distance. Presidents Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, Evo Morales of Bolivia and Fidel Castro of Cuba condemned the intervention and suggested Western powers were seeking to get their hands on Libya’s oil reserves rather than limit the bloodshed in the country.

Russia and China, which abstained on the U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing military intervention, also expressed regret that Western powers had chosen to get involved despite their advice.

In the Middle East, the abiding power of popular distrust against Western intervention was evident despite the March 12 Arab League decision. It was not clear how many Arab governments shared the hesitations voiced by Moussa. But so far only the Western-oriented Gulf emirate of Qatar has announced it would participate despite Western efforts to enlist Arab military forces into the campaign.

The Qatari prime minister, Hamad bin Jassem Al-Thani, told reporters Qatar made its decision in order to “stop the bloodbath” that he said Gaddafi was inflicting on rebel forces and civilians in rebel-controlled cities. He did not describe the extent of Qatar’s military involvement or what the mission of Qatari aircraft or personnel would be alongside U.S., French and British planes and ships that have carried out the initial strikes.

Islam Lutfy, a lawyer and Muslim Brotherhood leader in Egypt, said he opposed the military intervention because the real intention of the United States and its European allies was to get into position to benefit from Libya’s oil supplies. “The countries aligned against Libya are there not for humanitarian reasons but to further their own interests,” he added.

But the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies in the Youth Coalition that spearheaded Egypt’s recent upheavals took no official position, busy instead with Saturday’s referendum on constitutional amendments designed to open the country’s democracy. Similarly, the provisional military-run government took no stand and most Cairo newspapers gave only secondary space to the Libya conflict.

When the Arab League approved imposition of a no-fly zone, only Syria and Algeria opposed the league’s decision, according to Egyptian officials. The Syrian Foreign Ministry on Thursday reiterated Syria’s opposition, as diplomatic momentum gathered for the U.S.-European operation.

“Syria rejects all forms of foreign interference in Libyan affairs, since that would be a violation of Libya’s sovereignty, independence and the unity of its land,” it said in a statement.

Al Qaeda, which could be expected to oppose foreign intervention in an Arab country and embrace Gaddafi’s qualification of the campaign as a new crusade, made no immediate comment. This likely was due in part to the Qaeda leadership’s difficulty in communicating without revealing its position. But it also was a reminder of Gaddafi’s frequent assertions that Al Qaeda was behind the Libyan revolt and that he and the West should work hand-in-hand to defeat the rebels.

Iran and its Shiite Muslim allies in Lebanon’s Hezbollah, reflexively opposed to Western influence in the Middle East, also were forced into a somewhat equivocal position, condemning Gaddafi for his bloody tactics but opposing the Western military intervention.

“The fact that most Arab and Muslim leaders did not take responsibility opened the way for Western intervention in Libya,” declared Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader, in video speech Sunday to his followers. “This opens the way for foreign interventions in every Arab country. It brings us back to the days of occupation, colonization and partition.”

At the same time, Nasrallah accused Gaddafi of using the same brutality against his opponents as Israel has used against Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry, which previously criticized Gaddafi’s crackdown, on Sunday expressed “doubts” about U.S. and European intentions. Like the Latin American critics, it suggested the claims of wanting to protect civilians were just a cover for a desire to install a more malleable leadership in Tripoli and make it easier to exploit Libya’s oil.

Gaddafi has been on the enemies’ list of Shiite activists in the Middle East since 1978, when Lebanon’s paramount Shiite leader, Imam Musa Sudr, disappeared during a fund-raising visit to Tripoli. His fate has never been officially cleared up but Palestine Liberation Organization investigators determined that he was probably killed by Gaddafi’s security agents after they misunderstood an order from Gaddafi to “get rid of” Sudr and his pestering for money.


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Arab League condemns broad bombing campaign in Libya - The Washington Post

 

[fallstuff]

Arab League is irrelevant now. They asked for this, they shouldn't complain.

 

[BATMAN]

The objective of allied forces is to install a minority govt. as is done in Afghanistan.

I do not support enslaving a majority public under a minority yet armed and unaccountable militia.

Specially when state terrorism in Kashmir is being ignored for last 60 years.. where armed indian forces are openaly parading men naked and kidnapping children, shooting women at point blank range is a daily routine...

SHAME ON THE WHOLE WORLD

 

[rubyjackass]

Till now the coalition forces did not cross the line. Let's see what happens in the future.

 

[Unbeliever]

Apparently the Arab league is still insidious as ever and essentially a joke...

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2011/03/2011320202616794816.html

...
The Arab League had urged the UN to impose a no-fly zone on Libya and Arab support provided crucial underpinning for the passage of the UN Security Council resolution last week that enabled Western powers to take military action.

Edward Djerejian, a former US assistant secretary of state and former US ambassador to Syria, said it had been made very clear that a no-fly zone could not be established without taking military action against airfields and anti-aircraft installations.

"A no-fly zone is not just a computer model game," he told Al Jazeera.

"It means military action and that was clear to all parties, including the Arab League."

'nuff said.

 

[Vassnti]

Took 24hours for the worms to turn i am suprised the people giving interviews arent wearing neck braces from the whiplash of such a sudden change of direction.

The US demanded that the rebel forces, the Un and the Arab league all agree that tehy wanted a Un lead no fly zone, every one said yes yes we insist you act.

The next day we have suggestions that perhaps Gadaffi would stop shelling his own people if people just spoke firmly to him.

Come on its a mad man murdering his own people because they suggest after 40years it might be time to give some one else a chance to lead lybia not a puppy that has stained your new rug.

 

[Thomas]

The objective of allied forces is to install a minority govt. as is done in Afghanistan.

I do not support enslaving a majority public under a minority yet armed and unaccountable militia.

Specially when state terrorism in Kashmir is being ignored for last 60 years.. where armed indian forces are openaly parading men naked and kidnapping children, shooting women at point blank range is a daily routine...

SHAME ON THE WHOLE WORLD

Considering almost all of the tribes have come out against him I doubt its a minority.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/03/world/africa/03iht-M03-FATWA.html

Too Late, Qaddafi Seeks the Aid of Muslim Clerics
By EMAD MEKAY
Published: March 2, 2011

CAIRO — Libya’s embattled leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, who crushed his country’s Islamic movement during his 41-year rule, turned in the past week to Saudi Islamic scholars in a bid for religious backing in the face of the spreading rebellion against his regime.

His requests have so far been turned down.

Colonel Qaddafi’s attempt to woo religious leaders came after several moral figures, both inside and outside Libya, backed the pro-democracy protesters.

Sheik Ayed al-Qarni, a prominent Saudi cleric who has written best-selling books and been featured on popular television shows in Arab countries, said Sunday that he had refused an appeal in a phone call from one of Colonel Qaddafi’s sons, Saadi el-Qaddafi, to issue a fatwa, or religious edict, banning demonstrations against his father’s rule.

“Saadi, Qaddafi’s son, asked me to say a word against the protests,” Sheik Qarni told Al Arabiya television, which is based in Dubai. “I refused to back him because they were killing innocent people, killing old men and peaceful demonstrators.”

Instead of supporting Colonel Qaddafi, the cleric issued a fatwa against him, saying it was “a religious obligation” to fight oppressors and to provide medical and humanitarian help for the protesters. Those who died trying to liberate their country from dictators were “martyrs,” he said. “This is, in fact, a blessed revolution against tyranny.”

Another Saudi cleric, Salman al-Ouda, whose books are distributed to millions of pilgrims in Saudi Arabia every year, reported receiving a similar telephone call from another of Colonel Qaddafi’s sons, Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi.

Sheik Ouda said at a news conference that he refused to back the Libyan regime because of its “injustices against the Libyan people.”

“Those regimes are looking for legitimacy. But that regime has reached its end,” he said on his Web site, Islamtoday.net. “That regime is not offering security and peace to the people but it is offering the opposite.”

Mainstream Islamic Web sites mocked the attempts by Colonel Qaddafi’s sons to drum up religious support. “Qaddafi’s sons beg around for fatwas against the revolution,” said a headline on OnIslam.net, a spiritual and religious Web site.

Colonel Qaddafi has often made enemies of Islamic scholars. At one point he sought to market his Green Book, in which he spells out his philosophy, as an alternative to the Koran, a presumption that earned him the title “kafer” or non-believer, from the Saudi Council for Grand Scholars, Saudi Arabia’s highest fatwa authority, 30 years ago. Copies of that fatwa went viral online after the Feb. 17 revolt against Colonel Qaddafi’s rule.

According to the U.S. State Department and many human rights organizations, Colonel Qaddafi has arrested hundreds of Islamic activists for speaking against his rule in the past.

“The government held many political detainees incommunicado for unlimited periods in unofficial detention centers controlled by branches of the security services,” the State Department’s 2009 Human Rights Report on Libya said. “The government reportedly held political detainees, including as many as 100 associated with banned Islamic groups, in prisons throughout the country, but mainly in the Ayn Zara, Jadida, and Abu Salim prisons in Tripoli,” the report said. “Some human rights organizations and foreign diplomats speculated there were 2,000 political detainees, many held for years without trial. Hundreds of other detainees may have been held for periods too brief to permit confirmation by outside observers.”

In Libya, the grandson of the historic resistance leader Omar al-Mukhtar, who led the Libyan fight against the Italian occupation for 20 years in the 1910s and 1920s, has declared support for the anti-government rebels. Omar al-Mukthar, remembered as the Godfather of Libyan nationalism, was wounded in battle, captured and hanged by the Italians.

“All the tribes are united and our capital will forever remain Tripoli from the borders on the east to borders on the west,” the grandson, Mohammed al-Mukhtar told Al Arabiya. “I support the revolution of the young.”

Colonel Qaddafi, who is facing the first real challenge to his grip on Libya since he came to office in a 1969 coup, has threatened his people with a bloody civil war, country divisions on tribal lines, the loss of oil and even foreign occupation if they continued their uprising against him.

Mr. al-Mukhtar’s statement could be a rallying point for Libya’s five major tribes against Qaddafi’s call for division.

Other Libyan religious scholars and national figures have also spoken out against the brutality of the regime.

“Those who kill or help kill protesters have committed a major sin,” said the Shariah Scholars Society in Libya in a statement last week.

“We appeal to every Muslim, within the regime or assisting it in any way, to recognize that the killing of innocent human beings is forbidden by our Creator and by His beloved Prophet of Compassion,” said the statement, which was signed by dozens of religious leaders.

The influential Libyan preacher, Imam Sadeq al-Gheryani, was among the first to back the uprising, praising the revolt.

His edict was endorsed later by Sheik Ali Mohammed al-Selabi, who is considered to be the most influential religious scholar among Libyans abroad. Sheik Selabi is based now in Qatar, where he makes frequent appearances on Al Jazeera television.

Outside of Libya, Colonel Qaddafi was losing the fatwa war, too.

Sheik Ahmed el-Tayeb, head of al-Azhar University in Cairo, one of the most prominent seats of Sunni learning, condemned Colonel Qaddafi as an “oppressor.”

The Grand Sheih of al-Azhar called on army officers and heads of the police force in Libya “not to take orders” from the Qaddafi regime to shoot at the protesters.

“A leader has no justification in Islam to shed blood to keep his worldly reign against the will of the people,” Sheik Tayeb said.

But perhaps the most serious religious opinion came last week from Sheik Youssef al-Qaradawi, a widely respected cleric based in Qatar, who heads the Islamic Scholars Authority, an independent group that gathers dozens of Islamic scholars from across Muslim countries and seeks to unify mainstream religious opinions across.

Sheik Qaradawi said Colonel Qaddafi had been responsible for many deaths in the country after he unleashed his forces against the protesters, killing hundreds.

It is now religiously permissible, he said, to “put a bullet to Qaddafi’s head in order to end to the bloodshed.”