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On 5/15/11 7:16 PM, Suresh wrote:
For some reason Einde, instead of dealing with the facts in the article, decided
to post a quote by Lenin. Personally, I'd rather deal with the concrete issues
of nation, class, and anti-imperialism in Libya than seek recourse to the same
old revolutionary catechisms.
Well, what you posted was old news. Within a week after the Benghazi
revolt, there were copious reports in the bourgeois press and
uber-copious reports on the MRZine, Chossudovsky, Marcyite wing of the
left about all this.
It was in line with all the reports about the CIA connections, the
monarchist flags, et al.
If posting all this stuff was supposed to motivate opposing imperialist
intervention, that was the equivalent of breaking down an open door--at
least as far as this mailing list is concerned. Nobody supported western
intervention even though I and others were slandered to this effect.
Let's leave it at this. The Qaddafi dynasty looks like it is on its last
legs. NATO bombing, rebel resilience and its own internal rot conspires
to bring this to a conclusion.
I should add those that who equated Qaddafi's militias to the Cuban
efforts at the Bay of Pigs should probably have their heads examined.
The New York Times
May 14, 2011 Saturday
Late Edition - Final
Captive Soldiers Tell of Discord In Libyan Army
By C. J. CHIVERS
MISURATA, Libya -- The army and militias of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, who
for more than two months have fought rebels seeking to overthrow the
Libyan leader, are undermined by self-serving officers, strained
logistics and units hastily reinforced with untrained cadets, according
to captured soldiers from their ranks.
In interviews this week in a rebel-run detention center where more than
100 prisoners from the Libyan military are housed, the prisoners
consistently described hardships in the field and officers who deceived
or failed them. They spoke bitterly of their lot.
While some showed signs of mistreatment or of making statements to
ingratiate themselves with their captors, the accounts of their
logistical and tactical problems portrayed a Libyan force suffering from
growing problems in a war that began as a mismatch, settled into
stalemate and has recently shown signs of rebel advance.
On one hand, Libyan military units and militias went to war with clear
material and organizational advantages, equipped with tanks, armored
personnel carriers, artillery, rockets and vast stores of munitions.
They arrived to battle with trained snipers and mortar, rocket and
artillery crews.
On the other, the Libyan Defense Ministry thickened the ranks with
veterans recalled to duty in poor physical condition and cadets with
almost no combat training or experience.
Then, after facing weeks of airstrikes and a growing rebel force, some
of these units were cut off, prisoners said, and officers betrayed the
rank and file.
''The commanders told us, 'Stay here and we will be back with more
ammunition,' '' said a cadet who claimed to have been pressed into
service as an untrained infantryman last month, and was assigned to the
fight for this city's center. ''But they did not come back, and the
rebels surrounded us and we had to put down our weapons and quit.''
The prisoners' identities, which were provided by the interviewees, have
been withheld to protect them and their families from retaliation.
The cadet, who had a shaved head and slender hands protruding from a
long black robe, described many forms of disappointment in the Qaddafi
military. At the start of the war, he said, he was a second-year cadet,
and was told by his instructors that he must go serve.
His and his classmates' first mission, he said, was to search vehicles
and check identification cards at one of the country's myriad
checkpoints. There were 11 cadets at the gate of the town where he was
assigned, he said.
''After a while they came and said 11 at the gate is too much,'' he
said. ''And they took six of us and gave us Kalashnikovs and took us
into Misurata.''
That was in April, when Misurata was the center of Libya's most pitched
fight, a block-by-block contest that cost the lives of hundreds of men
on both sides.
Inside the city, he said, he found he was in an unknown neighborhood,
hidden with others in an apartment building as rebel fighters pressed
near and the Libyan Army's lines of logistics were slowly but
persistently severed behind them.
Other prisoners described constant deception by their officers.
One prisoner, a member of the 32 Reinforced Brigade of Armed People, a
unit often called elite and which is led by Khamis Qaddafi, one of
Colonel Qaddafi's sons, said he was the third contingent of the brigade
to be sent from Tripoli to Misurata.
The third group was sent, he said, after the first two suffered heavy
casualties.
He was assigned to the insurance building, a tall office complex that
gained notoriety among rebels for the snipers who watched over the
streets from its many windows.
The captured soldier, scarred on the hand and wearing jeans and a gray
T-shirt that read ''King of the Town,'' said his officers lied to him
throughout, telling him he had been sent to put down a foreign-inspired
jihad.
''When we came here we heard the fighters shouting all the time, 'Allahu
akbar!' '' he said. ''The officers told us the enemy was Al Qaeda and
other terror groups from Syria and Tunisia. But we saw that they were
Libyans.''
The soldier said that he had not put on the uniform to kill Libyans,
and, after listening to Qaddafi mortar crews shell the city with cluster
munitions, he slipped out of the building and hid in a shop. There he
waited, he said, until he heard rebels nearby. Then he surrendered,
turning over his rifle and two grenades.
Other prisoners described being summoned back to duty after leaving the
army two years ago, and finding once they went to battle that there were
delays in evacuating the army's wounded.
One man said that in the fight for Benghazi Street, one of the city's
former fronts, three of his friends were killed and three were wounded.
The wounded, he said, were bandaged and waited three or four days for a
ride out.
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