power, without really being aware of it.
His address to the nation was not inspiring nor did he go for
confidence building:
My two kobos worth:
On Feb 21, 10:37 pm, Toyin Falola <toyin.fal...@mail.utexas.edu>
wrote:
> Published on Truthout (http://www.truth-out.org)
>
> Qaddafi's Grip on Power Seems to Ebb as Forces Retreat
> David D. Kirkpatrick and Mona El-Naggar | Monday 21 February 2011
>
> Cairo - The faltering government of the Libyan
> strongman Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi struck back at
> mounting protests against his 40-year rule, as
> helicopters and warplanes besieged parts of the
> capital Monday, according to witnesses and news
> reports from Tripoli.
> By Monday afternoon, a witness saw armed
> militiamen firing on protesters who were clashing
> with riot police. As a group of protesters and
> the police faced off in a neighborhood near Green
> Square, in the center of the capital, ten or so
> Toyota pickup trucks carrying more than 20 men -
> many of them apparently from other African
> countries in mismatched fatigues - arrived at the
> scene.
> Holding small automatic weapons, they started
> firing in the air, and then started firing at
> protesters, who scattered, the witness said. "It
> was an obscene amount of gunfire," said the
> witness. "They were strafing these people. People
> were running in every direction." The police
> stood by and watched, the witness said, as the
> militiamen, still shooting, chased after the
> protesters.
> The escalation of the conflict came after Colonel
> Qaddafi's security forces had earlier in the day
> retreated to a few buildings in the Libyan
> capital of Tripoli, fires burned unchecked, and
> senior government officials and diplomats
> announced defections. The country's
> second-largest city remained under the control of
> rebels.
> Security forces loyal to Mr. Qaddafi defended a
> handful of strategic locations, including the
> state television headquarters and the
> presidential palace, witnesses reported from
> Tripoli. Fires from the previous night's rioting
> burned at many intersections, most stores were
> shuttered, and long lines were forming for a
> chance to buy bread or gas.
> In a sign of growing cracks within the
> government, several senior officials - including
> the justice minister and members of the Libyan
> mission to the United Nations - broke with Mr.
> Qaddafi. And protesters in Benghazi, the
> second-largest city, where the revolt began and
> more than 200 were killed, issued a list of
> demands calling for a secular interim government
> led by the army in cooperation with a council of
> Libyan tribes.
> Mr. Qaddafi's security forces waved green flags
> as they rallied in Tripoli's central Green Square
> on Monday under the protection of a handful of
> police, witnesses said. They constituted one of
> the few visible signs of government authority
> around the capital. The once ubiquitous posters
> of Colonel Qaddafi around the capital had been
> torn down or burned, witnesses said.
> Colonel Qaddafi's whereabouts were not known.
> Tripoli descended into chaos in less than 24
> hours as a six-day-old revolt suddenly spread
> from Benghazi across the country on Sunday. The
> revolt shaking Libya is the latest and most
> violent turn in a rebellion across the Arab world
> that seemed unthinkable just two months ago and
> that has already toppled autocrats in Egypt and
> Tunisia.
> The Libyan government has tried to impose a
> blackout on the country. Foreign journalists
> cannot enter. Internet access has been almost
> totally severed, though some protesters appear to
> be using satellite connections or to be phoning
> information to news services outside the country.
> In a rambling, disjointed address delivered about
> 1 a.m. on Monday, Mr. Qaddafi's son Seif al-Islam
> el-Qaddafi played down the uprising sweeping the
> country, which witnesses and rights activists say
> has left more than 220 people dead and hundreds
> wounded from gunfire by security forces. He
> repeated several times that "Libya is not Tunisia
> or Egypt, " neighbors to the east and west.
> The United States condemned the Qaddafi government's lethal use of force.
> Witnesses in Tripoli interviewed by telephone on
> Monday said protesters had converged on the
> capital's central Green Square and clashed with
> heavily armed riot police for several hours after
> Mr. Qaddafi's speech, apparently enraged by it.
> Young men armed themselves with chains around
> their knuckles, steel pipes and machetes, as well
> as police batons, helmets and rifles commandeered
> from riot squads. Security forces moved in,
> shooting randomly.
> At a time when it's often tough to tell the
> difference between the corporate news and its
> advertisements, it's essential to keep
> independent journalism strong. Support Truthout
> today by clicking here.
> By the morning, businesses and schools remained
> closed in the capital, the witnesses said. There
> were several government buildings on fire -
> including the Hall of the People, where the
> legislature meets - and reports of looting.
> News agencies reported that several foreign oil
> and gas companies were moving on Monday to
> evacuate some workers from the country. The
> Portuguese government sent a plane to Libya to
> pick up its citizens and other residents of the
> European Union, while Turkey sent two ferries for
> its construction workers, The Associated Press
> reported.
> At a time when it's often tough to tell the
> difference between the corporate news and its
> advertisements, it's essential to keep
> independent journalism strong. Support Truthout
> today by clicking here.
> The Quryna newspaper, which has ties to Seif
> al-Islam Qaddafi, said that protests have
> occurred in Ras Lanuf, an oil town where some
> workers were being assembled to defend a refinery
> complex from attacks.
> Quryna also reported that the justice minister,
> Mustafa Abud al-Jeleil, had resigned in protest
> over the deadly response to the demonstrations.
> Al Manara, an opposition Web site, reported that
> a senior military official, Col. Abdel Fattah
> Younes in Benghazi, resigned, and the newspaper
> Asharq Al-Awsat reported that Colonel Qaddafi
> ordered that one of his top generals, Abu Bakr
> Younes, be put under house arrest after
> disobeying an order to use force against
> protesters in several cities.
> Abdel Monem Al-Howni, Libya's representative to
> the Arab League, also resigned. "I no longer have
> any links to this regime which lost all
> legitimacy," he said in a statement reported by
> news agencies . He also called what is happening
> in Libya "genocide."
> Protesters remained in control of Benghazi on
> Monday. Online videos showed protesters flying an
> independence flag over the roof top of a building
> in Benghazi, and a crowd celebrating what they
> called "the fall of the regime in their city."
> The younger Mr. Qaddafi blamed Islamic radicals
> and Libyans in exile for the uprising. He offered
> a vague package of reforms in his televised
> speech, potentially including a new flag,
> national anthem and confederate structure. But
> his main theme was to threaten Libyans with the
> prospect of civil war over its oil resources that
> would break up the country, deprive residents of
> food and education, and even invite a Western
> takeover.
> "Libya is made up of tribes and clans and
> loyalties," he said. "There will be civil war."
> With little shared national experience aside from
> brutal Italian colonialism, Libyans tend to
> identify themselves as members of tribes or clans
> rather than citizens of a country, and Colonel
> Qaddafi has governed in part through the
> mediation of a "social leadership committee"
> composed of about 15 representatives of various
> tribes, said Diederik Vandewalle, a Dartmouth
> professor who has studied the country.
> In addition, Mr. Vandewalle noted, most of the
> tribal representatives on the committee are also
> military officers, who each represent a tribal
> group within the military. So, unlike the
> Tunisian or Egyptian militaries, the Libyan
> military lacks the cohesion or professionalism
> that might enable it to step in to resolve the
> conflict with the protesters or to stabilize the
> country.
> Over the last three days Libyan security forces
> have killed at least 223 people, according to a
> tally by the group Human Rights Watch. Several
> people in Benghazi hospitals, reached by
> telephone, said they believed that as many as 200
> had been killed and more than 800 wounded there
> on Saturday alone, with many of the deaths from
> machine gun fire.
> After protesters marched in a funeral procession
> on Sunday morning, the security forces again
> opened fire, killing at least 60 more, Human
> Rights Watch said.
> The deputy ambassador and more than a dozen
> members of the Libyan mission to the United
> Nations called upon Colonel Qaddafi to step down
> and leave the country in a letter drafted on
> Monday.
> "He has to leave as soon as possible," the deputy
> ambassador, Ibrahim Dabbashi, said, paraphrasing
> the letter. "He has to stop killing the Libyan
> people."
> He urged other nations to join in that request,
> saying he feared there could be a large-scale
> massacre in Tripoli and calling on "African
> nations" to stop sending what he called
> "mercenaries" to fight on behalf of Qaddafi's
> government.
> Mr. Dabbashi said he had not seen the Libyan
> ambassador since Friday and did not know his
> whereabouts or whether he shared the opinion of
> many in his mission.
> But, Mr. Dabbashi said, the United Nations
> mission represents the people, not Colonel
> Qaddafi.
> The man who was the government's chief spokesman
> until a month ago, Mohamed Bayou, called on
> Libya's leadership to begin a dialogue with the
> opposition and discuss drawing up a Constitution.
> On Monday, Reuters reported that Mr. Bayou issued
> a statement referring to Seif Qaddafi: "I hope he
> will change his speech to acknowledge the
> existence of an internal popular opposition."
> Reporting was contributed by Sharon Otterman and
> Neil MacFarquhar from Cairo; Nada Bakri from
> Beirut, Lebanon; and Colin Moynihan from New York.
> This article "Qaddafi's Grip on Power Seems to
> Ebb as Forces Retreat" originally appeared at The
> New York Times.
> © 2011 The New York Times Company
> Truthout has licensed this content. It may not be
> reproduced by any other source and is not covered
> by our Creative Commons license.
> Source URL:http://www.truth-out.org/qaddafis-grip-power-seems-ebb-forces-retreat...
> All republished content that appears on Truthout
> has been obtained by permission or license.
> --
> Toyin Falola
> Department of History
> The University of Texas at Austin
> 1 University Station
> Austin, TX 78712-0220
> USA
> 512 475 7224
> 512 475 7222 (fax)http://www.toyinfalola.com/www.utexas.edu/conferences/africahttp://groups.google.com/group/yorubaaffairshttp://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
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