Let’s focus on one city (pop. 200,000) in Libya: Zawia. September 6, 2011 there is a blog that reports:
“The city is now in the rebels’ hands. People are randomly arrested in the streets and executed by horrible methods. The reason for the executions are suspicion that people don´t support the NTC, or simply arbitrarily to scare the population into submission. Most people stay in their homes, protecting their children. We constantly hear firearms.”
Let’s focus also on one rebel. At that time, the U.S. was supporting an anti-Gaddafi rebel commander named Abdel Hakim Belhadj, and a BBC profile of him appears in July, 2012. Another far more critical profile dated Sept. 25, 2011 is here. He was the kind of rebel that was executing people in Zawia as a means of controlling the civilian population.
Fast forward to Sept. 3, 2015, when we learn that Belhadj has become the organizational commander of ISIS in Libya. [Please see also material refuting this allegation.] This article informs us that Belhadj was a U.S. hero: “…since 2011 the US and its NATO allies have held up Belhadj as a ‘freedom fighter.’ They portrayed him as a man who courageously led his fellow freedom-lovers against the ‘tyrannical despot’ Gaddafi whose security forces at one time captured and imprisoned many members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), including Belhadj.” In addition, “Belhadj served the US cause in Libya so well that he can be seen receiving accolades from Sen. John McCain who referred to Belhadj and his followers as heroes.”
This is the kind of rebel that Gaddafi meant when he said that the rebels were Al Qaeda rats who should be exterminated. Gaddafi’s comments were twisted against him by the Western powers and press to suggest that Gaddafi intended a massacre of Libyan citizens. Gaddafi’s repeated offers of cease fires, for safe passage for rebels, and his unilateral cease fires were all ignored because these powers wanted to get rid of Gaddafi, the pretext being R2P. Gaddafi’s predictions of a refugee flood were also ignored, again because the Western powers regarded these costs as secondary to achieving their goals.
Finally, come to the present and Zawia. What was in 2011 said to be in the hands of rebels is now a destination for Sudanese refugees fleeing from ISIS controlled Sirte and Derna. However, Zawia is a target for the growth of ISIS or Daesh:
“‘Daesh has not yet declared our town is part of its state, but people have to understand what is coming,’ the al-Khoms official said. ‘There are sleeper cells in Tripoli and Misrata, as well as in the western towns of Zawia and Sabratha. In Libya, we cannot stop the spread of Daesh now.'”
4:07 pm on June 3, 2016
