Exit the Colonel (43 page)

On the military side, there were two personalities of note, as of mid-March, Khalifa Hifter and Abdelfattah Younes. Khalifa Hifter had spent many years in the US helping train Libyan dissidents for possible future action against Gaddafi. Hifter returned to Libya on March 14 to “take charge of the rebels' chaotic military campaign.”
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Abdelfattah Younes named head of the rebel army–Libyan Free Forces shortly after his defection on February 22, had been well known—a bit too well known for the comfort
of many—as a longtime confidante and zealous partisan of Gaddafi, who held the posts of minister of public security and then minister of interior.

Younes's long service to Gaddafi was the reason Gaddafi sent him to crush the Benghazi insurrection in February. His delayed but dramatic defection to the rebel side was a significant blow to the regime, and was deemed greater than that of former head of external security Musa Kusa in March and his calls for intensified bombing critical to sustained NATO action. In the spring, Younes traveled by car to convince a group of tribal leaders near Sirte to turn from Gaddafi, instructing his bodyguards to kill him immediately if he was captured by loyalist troops. Ironically, he was ultimately killed by members of the opposition.

According to a
Telegraph
obituary:

Many continued to hold Younes responsible for Abdullah Senussi's escape from Benghazi.

As early as late March, and in the subsequent months, however, cracks began to appear in the NTC. Abdelhafiz Ghoga, then chief NTC spokesman, and others in the council seemed to contradict each other in public statements; members of the council accused Mahmoud Jibril, interim foreign minister, of spending most of his time outside the country and being “out of touch” with the people.
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Militarily, a clear chain of senior command was often not evident. Abdelfattah Younes entered the fold as chief rebel commander after February, while an NTC military spokesman said a few weeks later that Hifter had been appointed to the same post. Younes and Hifter feuded publicly through early April. Ghoga, then interim vice president, said: “We defined the military leadership before the arrival of Hifter from the United States. We told Mr. Haftar [sic] that if he wants, he can work within the structure that we have laid out.”
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In part to allay fears the NTC was falling apart, on May 5, the organization announced it had created an executive council, composed of ten individuals, including Mahmoud Jibril, Ali Essaoui (former minister of the economy and ambassador to India), and Ali Tarhouni.
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Younes' inability to command uniform respect among the disparate rebel forces (in Misurata, the Jebel Nafusa, and the east) may have sealed his fate, as it was clearly a factor in his inability to make decisive gains on either the western or eastern fronts. Lack of movement gave those who felt he was the wrong man for the job room to complain louder. The rebel military campaign reached a critical inflection point with Younes's assassination on July 28 along with two of his lieutenants, under circumstances best described as “murky” (by now a favored term in the international media for much of what was happening in Libya). Abdeljalil admitted to calling Younes in for “questioning” about possible evidence of double-dealing with the regime. As of the time of writing, it remains unclear whether Younes was killed before or after this questioning, a somewhat critical distinction.

In the days that followed, various theories emerged attempting to explain Younes's murder. But the most credible (both in the immediate aftermath, and at the time of writing) held that he was killed by Islamist elements, perhaps with the knowledge of members of the NTC, in revenge for his oversight of anti-Islamist or opposition groups in the east while working with the regime. In November 2011, Ali Essaoui, former interim deputy prime minister, was fingered by the NTC's chief military prosecutor as the source of the order to kill Younes. Essaoui, who continues to deny any connection to the assassination, was dismissed, along with several other NTC members at that time.
⁵¹

At a press conference on the day of the assassination,
salaat al Janaza
(funeral prayers) broke out either directly outside or, according to one witness, within the Tibesti Hotel, forcing guests to crawl upstairs to the first and second floors on their hands and knees to an empty room to seek shelter from the ensuing crossfire. Word on the street was that this had been, in fact, an assassination attempt against Abdeljalil, who had delivered remarks at the hotel.

In the following days, “Oswald-like conspiracies” spread through the city, with some identifying a “Gaddafi Fifth Column,” and others insisting it was an inside job.
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Most in Benghazi seem to be willing to give Younes the benefit of the doubt. Four months later, the Tibesti Hotel was flanked by two billboards bearing larger-than-life images of Younes in military attire, above the words “Libya will not forget you.” Across town, a particularly artistic piece of graffiti depicted Saif Al Islam as a small devil perched on his father's shoulder, offering him a gun (a clear play on the good Saif/ bad Saif dichotomy, with the bad Saif ascendant).
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Younes's death—and the implication of Islamist factions within the NTC—signaled the emergence of religious agendas in the conflict. Ali Sallabi, whom we previously saw as the principal mediator between the regime and the LIFG, had called upon the US and the European Union on March 11, 2011, to aid the rebel cause by recognizing the council, providing weapons and supplies and imposing a no-fly zone, even as he tried to assure the West that the Libyan LIFG members and their associates posed no threat to Western interests.
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Several months later, and around the time of Younes's death, he returned to Libya with access to Qatari money, attempting to beef up the Islamic credentials of the new leadership. His initiatives included the removal of “pagan” symbols—flags of coalition partners—from the main squares where daily group prayers were held, as well as encouraging local imams to issue fatwas discouraging rape victims from reporting the crimes. There was a palpable reaction against Sallabi in the commercial and NTC circles for the above reasons as well as his previous mediation role and the fact that he had openly remained in communication with the Gaddafi regime long after the conflict had started.

The situation in Benghazi in the immediate aftermath of Younes's murder was, in any event, extremely tense. Without a charismatic leader of the caliber of Younes, some felt the rebellion might collapse. Others saw his assassination as the first of a series of necessary reckonings with dissenting, armed groups, both secular and Islamist, which the NTC had been putting off for fear of forcing or exposing further divisions. These fears were exacerbated by the approach of the month of Ramadan, which meant that a lull in the fighting would offer an advantage to loyalist forces. On this basis, and given increased chafing by member nations regarding the length of commitments, NATO and the West were exerting pressure on the rebels to “wrap it up.” The NTC was seen to have poorly concealed its dirty laundry. Abdeljalil quickly appointed one of Younes's cousins (and member of the Obeidat tribe) as interim successor, used the occasion to demand that the various militias within Benghazi lay down their weapons and submit to central control or face “severe consequences” and subsequently “fired” the NTC executive committee.
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When one of the militias refused to comply with NTC orders, the latter sent units to disarm them, provoking a seven-hour gun battle on the outskirts of the city, which left plumes of dark smoke over the city in the morning light.

Yet even while chaos seemed, for a few days, to threaten to overtake Benghazi and the rebel leadership, Younes's death coincided with a decisive
end to the military stalemate, whether by accident or something in the command structure that had been dislodged. The way was suddenly clear for rebel forces, those based in the east moving west, and those in the west (effectively under separate leadership) to regroup and make a decisive move on Tripoli.

CHAPTER 12

The End and a Beginning

SADIQ NEIHOUM
¹

 

M
any expected Gaddafi's end to come as a result of a precision bomb, a suicide attack, or even an assassination by one of his inner circle within Bab Al Azziziya. This did not happen. First, he had to be dislodged from his stronghold.

Abdelhakim Belhaj led the unit that ultimately sacked Gaddafi's compound in Bab Al Azziziya. He was the same Belhaj the CIA had delivered to Gaddafi in 2004. Belhaj had been released in March 2010 as part of Saif 's amnesty program for Islamists, in return for promises of good behavior. As soon as the revolution broke out, Belhaj and several others with similar backgrounds were given intensive training in Qatar and the UAE, and sent back to fight. To the embarrassment of the US (given the past relationship), Belhaj was promoted to head of the Tripoli Military Command. After militias from Zintan and Misurata—acting in concert with NATO—made the final assault on Tripoli on August 21 to 23, Belhaj was widely credited with helping “flip” Tripoli to the rebel side.
²

Mahmoud Jibril, then alternating NTC foreign and prime minister, in an interview in
Asharq Al Awsat
on October 18,
³
insinuated that the US and NATO had purposefully delayed the quasi-coordinated rebel attack on Tripoli. He did not offer a motive. Some Libyans speculated that NATO was hoping Gaddafi might thus be flushed out to a neighboring state, where the
International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant could be served (thus avoiding a trial in Libya). An alternate speculation was that NATO and/or the US were trying to hedge their bets with respect to a possible takeover by Islamist elements, thereby preserving the possibility that Saif Al Islam or some other regime figure might be brought in at the last minute to restore the status quo if things got too messy.

Jibril said the liberation of Tripoli had been delayed three times, the third time specifically by NATO. The original date of the assault on Tripoli was to have been July 14, but, as Jibril noted, “many unexpected things happened, forcing us to delay because the necessary weapons had not arrived.” NATO moved D-Day to August 17, then August 20.

For the final assault, Tripoli was divided into quarters. Each neighborhood was assigned three or four commanders, supported by groups of armed men. On August 20, NATO yet again asked for a delay, just four hours before the action was to begin. The original list of targets within Tripoli proper included eighty-seven sites, which were then winnowed down to twenty-seven, given impracticality of hitting some of them (individual apartments within high-rise buildings, for example). Two months later, Jibril linked this narrowing of targets and the fact that NATO struck only twelve of the final twenty-seven sites, to Gaddafi's escape. He suggested that details of the impending attack on Bab Al Azziziya had been leaked, just as the Italians and Maltese were said to have leaked the attack on Bab Al Azziziya in 1986.
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“In the world of politics nothing is either impossible or unlikely,” Jibril told
Asharq Al Awsat
. “The world of intelligence has rules of its own and sometimes the State says one thing and, the intelligence goes in the opposite direction.”
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