From Hell, Muammar el-Qaddafi laughs at Western liberal naïveté

[Wehrwolfen]

From Hell, Muammar el-Qaddafi laughs at Western liberal naïveté​

By David Paulin
January 27, 2013

A little over one year ago, Libyan dictator Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi was brutally murdered by his own people. If he's able to laugh from the eternal torment of Hell, he must be laughing at all those liberals in America and the West who had gushed about an "Arab Spring" being at hand.

In a revealing article in the New York Times last week - "Jihadists' Surge in North Africa Reveals Grim Side of Arab Spring" - Robert F. Worth reports:

As the uprising closed in around him, the Libyan dictator Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi warned that if he fell, chaos and holy war would overtake North Africa. "Bin Laden's people would come to impose ransoms by land and sea," he told reporters. "We will go back to the time of Redbeard, of pirates, of Ottomans imposing ransoms on boats."

In recent days, that unhinged prophecy has acquired a grim new currency. In Mali, French paratroopers arrived this month to battle an advancing force of jihadi fighters who already control an area twice the size of Germany. In Algeria, a one-eyed Islamist bandit organized the brazen takeover of an international gas facility, taking hostages that included more than 40 Americans and Europeans.​

He adds:

In a sense, both the hostage crisis in Algeria and the battle raging in Mali are consequences of the fall of Colonel Qaddafi in 2011. Like other strongmen in the region, Colonel Qaddafi had mostly kept in check his country's various ethnic and tribal factions, either by brutally suppressing them or by co-opting them to fight for his government. He acted as a lid, keeping volatile elements repressed. Once that lid was removed, and the borders that had been enforced by powerful governments became more porous, there was greater freedom for various groups - whether rebels, jihadists or criminals - to join up and make common cause.​

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[Wehrwolfen]

Before He Was Overthrown and Killed...Gaddafi Warned Jihadists Would Conquer N. Africa


By Scott Barber
January 25, 2013


Full headline: Before he was overthrown and killed, Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi warned jihadists would conquer northern Africa

During the dying days of his four decade rule, Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi cast an ominous prophecy. If his regime fell, jihadists would subjugate northern Africa, inflicting widespread violence and terror.

“Al-Qaeda considers all the people to be infidels,” Mr. Gaddafi declared in a speech weeks before NATO began its military intervention in Libya. “They deem all people their enemies. They know nothing but killing.”

The Islamists would pour in from Afghanistan, Algeria, and Egypt, he warned, saying, “These are beasts with turbans.”

Now, with France locked in a battle with extremists in Mali; with al-Qaeda-linked groups carrying out a massive hostage taking in Algeria, and with Britain, Germany, and France telling their citizens to leave Libya because of an unspecified threat, the man many considered mad may not have been so crazy after all.

The irony is, he was right,” said Christian Leuprecht, Royal Military College and Queen’s University political studies associate professor.

“Here we have a situation that’s out of control,” said Abdel Kerim Ousman, Royal Military College political science associate professor. “Gaddafi actually said, if you want to destroy [Libya], the result would be the taking over by the jihadists.”

While Mr. Gaddafi may have been right, many blame the West for not anticipating what would happen after the fall of Libya.


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Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi warned jihadists would conquer Africa | World | News | National Post