africom related newsclips 8 march11

8/7/2019 AFRICOM Related Newsclips 8 March11

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United States Africa CommandPublic Affairs Office8 March 2011

USAFRICOM - related news stories

TOP NEWS RELATED TO U.S. AFRICA COMMAND AND AFRICA

U.S. Military Deal With Libya Is Called Off (Associated Press)

(Libya) In the months before Libyans revolted and President Barack Obama told leaderMoammar Gadhafi to go, the U.S. government was moving to do business with hisregime on an increasing scale by quietly approving a $77 million dollar deal to deliver

at least 50 refurbished armored troop carriers to the dictator's military.

Troops Project Humanitarian Aid to North Africa(American Forces Press Service)(North Africa) The team projecting humanitarian airlift missions intoNorth Africaentered its fourth day of operations today, taking satisfaction from the more than 450displaced Egyptian citizens ferried home from Tunisia.

Discord Grows in Washington Over Potential Role in Libya(NYT)(Libya) Nearly three weeks after Libya erupted in what may now turn into a protractedcivil war, the politics of military intervention to speed the ouster of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi grow more complicated by the day for both the White House and

Republicans.

Obama treads carefully on Libya and rebuffs pressure(Reuters)(Libya) The White House pushed back on Monday against rising pressure from somelawmakers for direct intervention in Libya, saying it first wanted to figure out whatvarious military options could achieve.

NATO starts 24/7 surveillance of Libya(CNN)(Libya) NATO has launched around-the-clock surveillance flights of Libya as itconsiders various options for dealing with escalating violence in the war-torn country,

America's ambassador to the organization told reporters Monday.

NATO Defense Ministers to Weigh No-Fly-Zone Plan Thursday(Wall Street Journal)(Libya) NATO military planners should have completed an assessment of a no-fly zonein Libya in time for the issue to be considered by alliance defense ministers at a meetingin Brussels on Thursday, according to the U.S. ambassador to NATO, Ivo Daalder.


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Libyan Rebel: Toppling Gadhafi Regime on Course(VOA)(Libya) A member of the rebels fighting forces loyal to Moammar Gadhafi says theiraim to topple his over four-decade rule is on course, after saying that some members ofGadhafis tribe in his hometown of Sirte have joined the rebellion to topple his regime.

Qaddafi's Airstrikes Spur NATO Discussions of Libya No-Fly Zone(Bloomberg)(Libya) Libyan warplanes repeatedly bombed rebel positions near the oil hub of RasLanuf, adding urgency to discussions among U.S. and its allies about imposing a no-flyzone to curb attacks by troops loyal to Muammar Qaddafi.

A wake-up call in Libya's Ras Lanuf(CNN)(Libya) CNN's Ben Wedeman filed this first-person account of the scene in rebel-controlled Ras Lanuf, Libya, as Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's forces prepared tolaunch an aerial strike against the town Monday.

Who are Libya's sub-Saharan Africans?(Christian Science Monitor)(Libya) The ongoing discussion about sub-Saharan Africans in Libya often lacks precisenumbers, terms, and categories. Libyans are by definition Africans, as are otherNorthAfricans who live in Libya. But bloggers and journalists have been talking about sub-Saharan Africans in Libya in different ways than theyve been talking about NorthAfrican populations there. The reason for making the distinction is that the experiencesof some groups seem to in fact be distinct, and those particularities have politicalimplications. It is good to make these distinctions, but we need to make them verycarefully.

Ivory Coast president nationalizes coffee and cocoa industry(Ivory Coast) Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo, who is fighting to keep a politicaltitle the United Nations says isn't his, on Monday nationalized the nation's two maincash crops, coffee and cocoa, according to state-run television.

Cte d'Ivoire: Growing Humanitarian Crisis(IPS)(Ivory Coast) The U.N. has announced that some 200,000 people have already fled theAbobo neighbourhood, in the north of Abidjan. Each morning for a week now, luggageon their backs, bundles on their heads, the sick riding in wheelbarrows, new bornscradled in their arms, thousands of people have fled Abobo on foot.

Satellite images: 300 burned buildings in Sudan(AP)(Sudan) Satellite images from a group backed by actor George Clooney showed some300 buildings burned to the ground from a militia attack in a contested area of Sudan,the group said Monday.

Somaliland Coastguards and Ground TroopsThe Real Panacea for Sea Piracy(Somaliland Press)


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(Somalia) Efforts to link Somali pirates to terrorism, capture and showcase them inAmerican, European, and African courts, shoot them and hail trigger-happy Marinesnipers as heroes as well as deploy International navies to Somalia run their course, yetno solution to sea piracy.

UN News Service Africa BriefsFull Articles on UN Website

y Sudan: UN official voices concern over civilians displaced from Abyei-------------------------------------------------------------------------UPCOMING EVENTS OF INTEREST:

WHEN/WHERE: Tuesday, March 8, 2011; Johns Hopkins School of AdvancedInternational StudiesWHAT: Civil Society-Military Relations and Human SecurityWHO: Rosa Brooks, Deputy Secretary of Defense; Lisa Schirch, Director of 3D Security,

Eastern Mennonite University; Col. Mark Mykleby, Joint Chiefs of Staff; Fulco vanDeventer, Policy and Political Advisor, Cordaid.Info: http://www.allianceforpeacebuilding.org/events/event_details.asp?id=147732----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

FULL ARTICLE TEXT

U.S. Military Deal With Libya Is Called Off (Associated Press)By Stephen Braun

March 7, 2011

WASHINGTON - In the months before Libyans revolted and President Barack Obama

told leader Moammar Gadhafi to go, the U.S. government was moving to do businesswith his regime on an increasing scale by quietly approving a $77 million dollar deal todeliver at least 50 refurbished armored troop carriers to the dictator's military.

Congress balked, concerned the deal would improve Libyan army mobility andquestioning the Obama administration's support for the agreement, which would havebenefited British defense company BAE. The congressional concerns effectively stalledthe deal until the turmoil in the country scuttled the sale. Earlier last week, after allmilitary exports to the Gadhafi regime were suspended, the State Department'sDirectorate of Defense Trade Controls informed Capitol Hill that the deal had been

returned without action effectively off the table, according to U.S. officials who spokeon condition of anonymity to describe the deal's sensitive details.

State Department spokesman Mark C. Toner said the proposed license was suspendedalong with the rest of "what limited defense trade we had with Libya."


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The Gadhafi regime's desire to upgrade its troop carriers was so intense that a Libyanofficial told U.S. diplomats in Tripoli in 2009 that the dictator's sons, Khamis and Saif,both were demanding swift action. Khamis, a commander whose army brigadereportedly attacked the opposition-held town of Zawiya with armored units and pickuptrucks, expressed a "personal interest" in modernizing the armored transports,

according to a December 2009 diplomatic message disclosed by WikiLeaks, thewhistleblower website.

The administration's own interest in the deal amounted to a first cautious step towardallowing a major arms purchase by Gadhafi's regime even as U.S. officials waved offother Libyan approaches for weapons systems and military aid.

Toner said senior diplomats had repeatedly warned the Gadhafi regime that "we wouldnot discuss the possibility of lethal U.S. arms sales until Libya made significant progresson human rights issues, visas and other areas of bilateral relationship."

The old M113 troop transports are typically outfitted with a single machine gun. U.S.officials said the now-scuttled deal would not have added new cannons or other gunsbecause of strict rules that all defense sales to Libya had to be "non-lethal" defenseproducts.

But despite the "non-lethal" restrictions, some defense industry experts said theproposal should have never gotten off the ground.

"This deal should have been a red flag," said William D. Hartung, director of the Arms

and Security Initiative at the New America Foundation, a non-partisan Washingtonthink tank. "Anything that makes troop transports more useable allows them to beapplied to offensive purposes, even if you don't add guns."

On the whole, U.S. defense shipments to Libya under the Obama and Bushadministrations have been tightly screened in recent years. U.S. sales were dwarfed by atide of arms sold by European allies. European Union nations approved sales of $470million in weapons to Gadhafi's military in 2009 alone a rush of Italian militaryaircraft, Maltese small arms and British munitions, according to a January EU armscontrol report.

By comparison, the U.S. peak was $46 million in approved defense sales in the final yearof the Bush administration in 2008 up from $5 million in Libyan defense sales theyear before. The $46 million included $1 million in explosives and incendiary agents,and Toner said the State Department approved shipments of blasting cartridges used inoil exploration. Other U.S. officials cited concerns that such explosive agents could beconverted to crude battlefield munitions.


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Bush-era officials said the slight increase in Libya defense sales was worth it in returnfor the dismantling of the rogue nation's atomic weapons program. "We were carefuland measured in what we allowed Gadhafi to get," said former ambassador RobertJoseph, who coordinated the 2003 nuclear agreement.

The Obama administration has lagged in providing figures for its recent defense sales,prompting pressure for more specifics from Congress as well as a request late lastmonth for more details on Libyan licenses. One official familiar with defense issues saidtotal military sales to Libya in the Obama administration's first year in 2009 dropped to$17 million but would have ballooned in 2010 had the $77 million armored car dealgone through.

Instead, the transaction ran headlong into congressional worries about the Gadhafiregime's plans for the armored vehicles. The concerns came from both the Senate andHouse foreign relations committees, officials said.

"Congress doesn't usually step in to stop these deals, so they clearly must have hadserious reservations that the administration didn't share," said William Lowell, aveteran defense industry consultant who headed the State Department's defense tradeagency in the 1990s.

Libyan military officials long clamored to upgrade their old M113 transports. Despite a1978 U.S. ban on weapons sales, Libya apparently obtained its fleet of U.S-built,Vietnam-era transports around 1980, according to a defense industry official familiarwith the deal.

In 2007, Libyan army generals told a visiting American delegation they wantedupgraded troop carriers as well as Chinook helicopters to speed their military'stransport, said a senior U.S. official familiar with the request. European subsidiaries ofmajor American defense firms were soon shuttling into Tripoli. General Dynamics andNorthrop Grumman were among companies listed as attending the 2008 and 2010Libya Defense and Security Exhibition in Tripoli.

At the same time, U.S. military officials talked up Libya as a new client. Vice AdmiralJeffrey Wieringa, head of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, told a 2009 nationalsecurity event in Washington that the U.S. might supply Humvees to Libya as "non-lethal" aid. DSCA spokesman Charles Taylor said last week that a Humvee sale nevermaterialized.

Momentum began bubbling for the troop transport deal in 2009 after a U.S. militaryattach in Tripoli told BAE officials about Libyan interest, the defense industry officialsaid. BAE had paired up with a Turkish firm, NUROL Holding, in a joint venture tomodernize old M113s for other Mideast and Asian armies. The joint firm, FNSS Defense


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Systems, submitted the $77 million Libyan proposal in September 2009 to the StateDepartment's defense trade agency, officials said.

BAE is a British firm with a major U.S. defense arm, BAE Systems, Inc., that was listedin 2010 as the nation's 12th largest government contractor. Headquartered in Rockville,

Md., the company's U.S. board is chaired by former Gen. Anthony Zinni, who retired atthe end of Clinton administration; former Indiana Rep. Lee Hamilton, an Obamaforeign policy mentor; and former Bush administration Homeland Security chiefMichael Chertoff.

Libyan officials wheedled for swift action. In a meeting with American diplomats inTripoli in late 2009, a senior aide to Gadhafi's son Saif said that he and his brotherKhamis wanted the U.S. to quickly approve the armored transport upgrades. The aide"requested an update on the status" of the joint venture, Ambassador Gene Cretz wroteon Dec. 14, 2009, in the cable published by WikiLeaks.

The Libyans' obsession with troop transport also showed in their interest in Jordanian-built "Tiger" high-mobility vehicles and in MH-6 "Little Bird" helicopters previouslydenied by U.S. officials. Both items could not be sold to Libya, U.S. officials repeated,according to the memo.

The armored transport deal, though, sailed through. By late 2009, it was green-lightedby the State Department's trade office, officials said. Under rules governing defensetrade, the deal still required congressional oversight before it could be clinched because of the high cost involved and the fact that troop carriers were deemed major

military equipment.

But the deal soon bogged down in doubts. Officials noted that documents citeddiffering numbers of troop transports, ranging from 40 to 60 raising alarm that theLibyans might be padding the figures to obtain additional parts. The committees alsopressed the State Department for a clearer sense of how the Libyans would use thearmored carriers, but complained they did not get definitive answers.

There were also concerns about BAE's role. After months of negotiations with theJustice Department, the parent firm of the British-owned defense giant pleaded guilty inMarch 2010 to conspiracy and false statements charges, agreeing to pay a $400 millionfine in a case involving questionable payments to a Saudi official and offshore shellcompanies.

The State Department then placed a "temporary administrative hold" on weaponsexport licenses sought by both BAE's British and U.S. entities. The department also saidit was considering debarring BAE, a move that would limit the company's ability toexport items with U.S.-made content.


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The State Department has not debarred the defense firm, but BAE's involvement addedto uncertainty about the deal, officials said. "I'm a little surprised the right hand at Statedidn't coordinate with what the left hand at Justice was doing," said William Reinsch,president of the National Foreign Trade Council and a former senior Commerce

Department official.

In a statement, BAE said that "responsible and ethical business conduct is fundamentalto the success of our company and is evident in every aspect of our business, includingin our participation in the Foreign Military Sales Program and our compliance withdefense export control laws."

By summer 2010, the deal was effectively scuttled, stalled by too many doubts.

"I think we should have been more careful," Hartung said. "If Gadhafi wanted a quid

pro quo, we should have given him oil equipment."------------------------Troops Project Humanitarian Aid to North Africa(American Forces Press Service)By Air Force Master Sgt. Jim FisherMarch 7, 2011SOUDA BAY, Crete The team projecting humanitarian airlift missions into NorthAfrica entered its fourth day of operations today, taking satisfaction from the more than450 displaced Egyptian citizens ferried home from Tunisia.

Air Force Staff Sgts. Ashley Vazquez and Justin Hairston strap down cargo on a C-130J

Super Hercules aircraft. They are part of the team working to project airliftedhumanitarian aid into North Africa as part of a broader U.S. government effort led bythe State Department to deal with the developing humanitarian crisis on Libya'sborders. U.S. Air Force photo by Master Sgt. Jim Fisher(Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available.

While the airlift needs were evolving along with the humanitarian crisis on Libyasborders, the team continued the behind-the-scenes functions vital to making surehumanitarian airlift are available for further tasking.

Air Force Staff Sgt. Ashley Vazquez, a command post controller with the 435th AirMobility Squadron, has been working with teammates on everything from trackingpeople and equipment to building flight plans.

We track all the personnel and aircraft -- we track flights, we set up all thecommunications equipment, making sure that we can talk to our flight crews in the air,she said. At Souda Bay, Vazquez is part of the 435th Contingency Response Group,based at Ramstein Air Base, Germany. Known as the 435th Contingency Response


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Element while on Crete, they make the mission happen alongside airmen from the 37thAirlift Squadron.

We just make sure everyones taken care of while they are here, Vazquez said.

Much of this work is not captured by newsreels of evacuees gratefully touching downin Cairo, but is vital to making it happen, said Air Force Lt. Col. Charles Doc Schlegel,the contingency response element commander while deployed here and 435th AirMobility Squadron commander at Ramstein.

There are a lot of little things that must be done for us to be able to fly these missions,Schlegel said. These guys have done a fantastic job, and when you see us on the newsbringing people home safely after they have fled the conflict in Libya, you are onlyseeing part of the piece of the overall effort. Our whole teams, including our CREelement, aircrew, ravens, public affairs specialists and many others have all been crucial

to the success of this important humanitarian mission.

Flexibility and versatility have made it possible for the small team -- fewer than 30people are currently supporting the mission at Souda -- to get a lot done, said Air ForceStaff Sgt. Justin Hairston, an air transportation craftsman with the contingency responseelement.

Were a small unit, and we use cross-utilization training, he explained. Everybodyworks together; everybody knows a little bit about everybody elses job. You have yoursubject matter experts, but everybody helps everybody out. Thats what makes the

[contingency response group] great, Hairston said.

Though their work is behind the scenes, the footage making network news in theUnited States and Europe is what makes it all worth it, Hairston said.

Personally, my satisfaction comes from seeing these people getting home, he said.Its nice to be a part of something like this. A lot of times you see things like this on thenews, but to actually be a part of it, I feel very fortunate, very blessed to be here to helpthese people.

The airlift squadron and contingency response element did not fly today, waiting forfurther requests for assistance as part of the larger U.S. government and internationaleffort to relieve suffering in the wake of the crisis.

We are happy with what weve been able to get done so far in support of our StateDepartment and U.S. Africa Command [missions], Schlegel said. We are standing byfor more.------------------------


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Discord Grows in Washington Over Potential Role in Libya(NYT)By DAVID E. SANGER and THOM SHANKERMarch 7, 2011WASHINGTON Nearly three weeks after Libya erupted in what may now turn intoa protracted civil war, the politics of military intervention to speed the ouster of Col.

Muammar el-Qaddafi grow more complicated by the day for both the White Houseand Republicans.

President Obama, appearing Monday morning with Australias prime minister, tried toraise the pressure on Colonel Qaddafi further by talking about a range of potentialoptions, including potential military options against the embattled Libyan leader.

Despite Mr. Obamas statement, interviews with military officials and otheradministration officials describe a number of risks, some tactical and others political, toAmerican intervention in Libya.

Of most concern to the president himself, one high-level aide said, is the perception thatthe United States would once again be meddling in the Middle East, where it hasoverturned many a leader, including Saddam Hussein. Some critics of the United Statesin the region as well as some leaders have already claimed that a Westernconspiracy is stoking the revolutions that have overtaken the Middle East.

He keeps reminding us that the best revolutions are completely organic, the seniorofficial said, quoting the president.

At the same time, there are persistent voices in Congress and even inside theadministration arguing that Mr. Obama is moving too slowly. They contend thatthere is too much concern about perceptions, and that the White House is toosqueamish because of Iraq.

Furthermore, they say a military caught up in two difficult wars has exaggerated therisks of imposing a no-flight zone over Libya, the tactic discussed most often.

The American military is also privately skeptical of humanitarian gestures that put thelives of troops at risk for the cause of the moment, while being of only tenuous nationalinterest.

Some of these critics seem motivated by political advantage. Others, including thechairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, John Kerry, who is among Mr.Obamas closest allies, warn of repeating mistakes made in Iraqi Kurdistan, Rwanda,and Bosnia and Herzegovina by failing to step in and halt a slaughter.


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The most vocal camp, led by Senators John McCain, the 2008 Republican nominee forpresident, and Joseph I. Lieberman, the Connecticut independent and another hawk onLibyan intervention, say the central justification for establishing a no-flight zone overLibya is that the rebel leaders themselves are seeking military assistance to end decadesof dictatorship.

It is hardly an effort to impose American will in the Muslim world, Mr. Liebermanargued in an interview on Monday.

We have to try and help those who are offering an alternative future to Libya, Mr.Lieberman said, sounding much like Mr. Obama at the White House on Monday. Wecannot allow them to be stifled or stopped by brutal actions of the Libyan government.

But even the critics acknowledge that the best outcome would be for the United Statesnot to go it alone, but join other nations or international organizations, in particular

NATO, the Arab League or the African Union.

Mr. Lieberman and others argue that the risks of waiting may be far greater than therisk of an early, decisive military intervention. He acknowledged that as in Iraq, theUnited States might unleash an uncertain future of tribal rivalry and chaos, in a countrythat has no institutions prepared to fill the vacuum if Col. Qaddafi is driven frompower.

Yet, he argued: Its hard to imagine any new government growing out of thisopposition that is worse than Qaddafi.

On television Mr. McCain has made similar points, and portrayed President Obama asindecisive and weak. But curiously, in a sign of the uncertainties about how the politicsof an American intervention would play out, few of the potential nominees for the 2012Republican presidential ticket have expressed a strong opinion.

For the administration, Mr. Kerrys view is more troublesome, given that he is anormally a strong ally on foreign policy issues. He was a fierce critic of the war in Iraq,but he sees Libya as a different matter.

He has pushed the White House to do more including cratering Libyas airfields sothe planes cannot take off.

Mr. Kerry, who may be trying to give comfort to officials who want the president totake a stronger stance, said he was pushing the administration to prepare for alleventualities and warned that showing reticence in a huge public way is not the bestoption.


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You want to be prepared if he is bombing people, and killing his own people, he said.

He added: What haunts me is the specter of Iraq 1991, when former President GeorgeBush urged the Shia to rise up, and they did rise up, and tanks and planes werecoming at them and we were nowhere to be seen.

Tens of thousands were slaughtered, Mr. Kerry said.

President Bill Clinton, he said, missed the chance in Rwanda, and said later it was thegreatest regret of his presidency, and then was too slow in Bosnia, where the UnitedStates ended up using air power, also in the defense of a Muslim population.

Administration officials make the case that the focus on no-flight zones is overdone.No-fly zones are more effective against fighters, but they really have limited effectagainst helicopters or the kinds of ground operations weve seen in Libya, Ivo Daalder,

the American ambassador to NATO, said on Monday.

He added that the overall air activity has not been the deciding factor in fightsbetween rebels and the loyalists and mercenaries surrounding Mr. Qaddafi.

It is possible that the mere talk of no-flight zones had some effect. Pentagon andmilitary officials confirmed that sorties by aircraft loyal to the Qaddafi government haddropped by half over the past three days. There was no explanation for the change; itcould have to do with maintenance, or a decision to fly helicopters, which are lessprovocative and harder to track.

The biggest voice of caution has been Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates. It was Mr.Gates who laid out last week the strongest case against intervention a case that evensome in the White House say privately they think may have been overstated to make apoint about how military actions that look easy can quickly become complicated. Mr.Gates forcefully warned Congress during budget testimony that the first act inimposing a no-flight zone would be an attack on Mr. Qaddafis air defenses, and thatthe step should only be taken if the United States was ready for a prolonged militaryoperation that could cover all of Libya. He cautioned it might drain resources that arealready overstretched in Afghanistan and Iraq, because Libya is such a large territory.

In interviews this week, even some military officials called Mr. Gatess portrayalextreme. Executing a no-flight zone would not require covering the whole country.Most of the Libyan action would be along the coast, where the major cities now held byrebels are. Even so, the opening mission of imposing a no-flight zone would almostcertainly include missile attacks on air defense sites of a sovereign nation, which somewould indeed regard as an act of war.


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Tactical issues aside, Mr. Gates is concerned, Pentagon officials say, about the politicalfallout of the United States attacking yet another Muslim country even on behalf of aMuslim population. But he is cognizant of the No. 1 lesson of Iraq: That once the UnitedStates plays a major role in the ouster of a Middle Eastern leader, it bears responsibilityfor whatever state emerges in its place.

-----------------------Obama treads carefully on Libya and rebuffs pressure(Reuters)By Ross Colvin and Caren BohanMar 7, 2011 9:24pm ESTWASHINGTON - The White House pushed back on Monday against rising pressurefrom some lawmakers for direct intervention in Libya, saying it first wanted to figureout what various military options could achieve.

"It would be premature to send a bunch of weapons to a post office box in easternLibya," said White House spokesman Jay Carney. "We need to not get ahead of

ourselves in terms of the options we're pursuing."

Officials cautioned that a "no-fly" zone over Libya, an idea popular among Democraticand Republican lawmakers, would be difficult to enforce and might not stop helicoptergunships from attacking rebels fighting to end Muammar Gaddafi's four-decade rule.

The Obama administration has faced sharp criticism, especially from Republicans andconservative commentators, for being too cautious over the turmoil in Libya but hassignaled it will not be rushed into hasty decisions that could suck the U.S. military intoa new war and fuel anti-American sentiment.

One major obstacle: U.S. officials are still trying to identify the main actors within theopposition fighting to oust Gaddafi. The aims of these groups are unclear and it is noteven certain they view the United States favorably.

Carney said the United States was trying to "reach out" to Gaddafi opponents throughdiplomats, business people and non-governmental groups.

He also had a fresh warning to Gaddafi's close associates, saying U.S. intelligenceagencies were seeking to identify those involved in the violence which has forced tensof thousands of people to flee the country.

President Barack Obama said he wanted to "send a very clear message to the Libyanpeople that we will stand with them in the face of unwarranted violence and thecontinuing suppression of democratic ideals that we've seen there."


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But Kori Schake, an associate professor at West Point military academy, was critical ofObama's statement, saying it followed a "pattern of broad pronouncements withoutpractical follow-through."

The White House has long said all options are on the table over Libya but, for the first

time on Monday, it gave a vague priority to the possible military steps being studied.

Bottom of the list is sending in ground troops, Carney told a briefing. Enforcing a no-flyzone was a "serious" option, he said, as was a U.N. arms embargo and humanitarianassistance.

Arming the rebels was also a possibility, he added.

But State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley appeared to contradict Carney when henoted that a February 26 U.N. Security Council resolution barred all weapons transfers

to Libya.

Crowley also denied a British newspaper report that Washington had asked SaudiArabia to supply weapons to rebels.

Military analysts say the rebels do not appear to be short of weapons and the UnitedStates would be wary of providing arms that could end up in the wrong hands and beused against U.S. forces elsewhere.

Brian Katulis, a Middle East expert who has informally advised the White House on the

turmoil sweeping the region, said the Obama administration was constrained by itsreluctance to act militarily without international support.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates reiterated on Monday that any intervention in Libyawould require broad backing.

Underscoring the lack of consensus, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov saidMoscow opposed military intervention. China, a fellow veto-wielding member of theU.N. Security Council, has expressed similar misgivings.

The United States has deployed two amphibious assault ships off the Libyan coast,ostensibly to help with any humanitarian emergencies, while dispatching militarytransport aircraft to airlift stranded Egyptian refugees from neighboring Tunisia.

Over the weekend, leading Republican and Democratic senators urged Obama to domore to help Libya's rebels, who have fought Gaddafi's security forces to a standstill insome areas but are all but powerless to stop repeated air strikes.


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Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in the Senate, said one option was "simply aidingand arming the insurgents," noting that the United States often did this during the ColdWar.

John Kerry, the influential Democratic chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations

Committee who is close to Obama, repeated his call for a no-fly zone and floatedanother idea -- bombing Libyan runways to ground Gaddafi's warplanes.--------------------------NATO starts 24/7 surveillance of Libya(CNN)By the CNN Wire StaffMarch 8, 2011(CNN) - NATO has launched around-the-clock surveillance flights of Libya as itconsiders various options for dealing with escalating violence in the war-torn country,America's ambassador to the organization told reporters Monday.

Representatives of key Western powers also highlighted the possibility of establishing ano-fly zone in Libya -- part of growing campaign to break strongman MoammarGadhafi's grip on power.

British, French and U.S. officials were working on a draft text that includes language ona no-fly zone, diplomatic sources at the United Nations told CNN.

The language in the text will deal with triggers rather than timelines for taking such astep, one diplomat noted. If gross violations of human rights are committed, thediplomat added, the elements of the text could be quickly turned into a resolution.

Any resolution on military intervention in Libya, however, would be subject to a voteby the 15 members of the U.N. Security Council. Such intervention could face sharpcriticism from Russia and China, who rarely approve of such measures.

"The violence that's been taking place and perpetrated by the government in Libya isunacceptable," U.S. President Barack Obama said at the White House. MoammarGadhafi's government "will be held accountable for whatever violence continues to takeplace there."

Obama stressed that NATO is considering a wide range of responses -- includingmilitary options -- for dealing with the crisis.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney later cited three potential responses underactive consideration: establishing the no-fly zone, military-backed humanitarian aid,and stronger enforcement of the U.N. arms embargo.


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Carney downplayed speculation about the possibility of providing arms to the Libyanrebels, telling reporters that "it would be premature to send a bunch of weapons to apost office box in eastern Libya."

"We need to not get ahead of ourselves in terms of the options we're pursuing," he

warned.

A senior U.S. official familiar with the administration's deliberations on Libya denied areport in the British press that the administration had asked Saudi Arabia to arm therebels.

U.K. Foreign Secretary William Hague told members of the British parliament,however, that "we are making contingency plans for all eventualities in Libya."

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told reporters in Belgium that the

organization has no immediate intention to intervene in the Libyan civil war. But "as adefense alliance and a security organization, it is our job to conduct prudent planningfor any eventuality," he said.

Rasmussen stressed that it is important to "remain vigilant" in light of "systemic attacks"by Gadhafi's regime against the Libyan population. "The violation of human rights andinternational humanitarian law is outrageous," he said.

Rasmussen also noted that the defense ministers from member states will meet Fridayand Saturday to discuss how the organization can help partner countries in North

Africa and the broader Middle East.

"We can see a strong wind of change blowing across the region -- and it is blowing inthe direction of freedom and democracy," he asserted.

Libyan Foreign Minister Musa Kasa lashed out the Western leaders, calling theirresponse part of "a conspiracy to divide (and) partition the country."

"The English are yearning for the colonial era" while Obama is acting "like a child," hesaid. "Territorial integrity is sacrosanct and we will die for it."

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, meanwhile, appointed a new special envoy toLibya to discuss the crisis with officials in Tripoli, the United Nations said in astatement Monday.

Abdelilah Al-Khatib, a former foreign minister of Jordan, will "undertake urgentconsultations with the authorities in Tripoli and in the region on the immediate


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humanitarian situation as well as the wider dimensions of the crisis," according to thestatement.

As diplomats debated various options, the violence in Libya continued to intensify.Forces loyal to Gadhafi took aim at the rebel-controlled town of Ras Lanuf, launching

aerial strikes meant to help crush the uprising against him.

Death toll estimates from the conflict have reached as high as 2,000 people. Roughly200,000 people have fled Libya, with nearly equal numbers going to Tunisia and Egypt,according to the United Nations.--------------------------NATO Defense Ministers to Weigh No-Fly-Zone Plan Thursday(Wall Street Journal)By STEPHEN FIDLERMarch 7, 2011BRUSSELS NATO military planners should have completed an assessment of a no-

fly zone in Libya in time for the issue to be considered by alliance defense ministers at ameeting in Brussels on Thursday, according to the U.S. ambassador to NATO, IvoDaalder.

He told reporters that NATO had decided Monday to start round-the-clock surveillanceof Libya using AWACS aircraft. Until now, the aircraft have been operating 10 hours aday tracking air and ground traffic in and around Libya.

A meeting of ambassadors to NATO in Brussels received an assessment Monday frommilitary planners on what the 28-nation alliance might do to help humanitarian

operations. The ambassadors will meet again Tuesday and Wednesday to discuss theissue.

In coming days, military assessments should be completed into a no-fly zone and howto enforce an arms embargo, Mr. Daalder said.

He said a no-fly zone would be more useful to deal with fighter aircraft than againsthelicopters. "It's not going to be the solution to every problem," he said.

"The kind of capabilities that are being used to attack the rebel forces and thepopulation would largely be unaffected by a no-fly zone," he said.

He said there had been a decrease in the regime's air activity over Libya since thebeginning of the weekend. "Perhaps talk of a no-fly zone helps to that extent."

He said NATO defense ministers should be in a position to make a decision on a no-flyzone at a previously scheduled meeting on Thursday "if there is a consensus." But he


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added that governments are watching developments on the ground and that somehaven't made up their minds.

Asked about a United Nations Security Council resolution to mandate a no-fly zone, hesaid: "All of us want a Security Council resolution for that eventuality. That's a pretty

clear requirement. ...We would certainly seek one."

He said that at Monday's meeting he encouraged the use of NATO assets to help out inthe humanitarian crisis, asking whether NATO's command and control capabilitiescould help coordinate the exercise, whether ships currently on a NATO exercise in theMediterranean could be repurposed and whether there is spare airlift capacity to getrefugees home.--------------------------Libyan Rebel: Toppling Gadhafi Regime on Course(VOA)By Peter Clottey

March 07, 2011A member of the rebels fighting forces loyal to Moammar Gadhafi says their aim totopple his over four-decade rule is on course, after saying that some members ofGadhafis tribe in his hometown of Sirte have joined the rebellion to topple his regime.

Awad Juma says the rebels are regrouping to make another attempt to take over thecapital, Tripoli, to remove Gadhafi from power. Juma also says the rebels need theinternational community to enforce a no-fly-zone to, in his words, prevent the regimefrom killing Libyans who want freedom and democracy.

Imposing the no-fly-zone (will help) because Gadhafi now is using the air force andthis is the biggest damage being done to the resistance. If they impose this no-fly-zone,this will be a great help. Secondly, if they start to recognize the National TransitionalCouncil that will withdraw the rag underneath Gadhafi and other states will startdealing with the National Transitional Council, this is what we want, said Juma.

Of course, we need medical help and this is very essential (since) people are dyingnow from the lack of essential medical treatment; so, this is really what we need.

Juma says the rebels are determined to overthrow the Gadhafi regime.

We are relying on the (ordinary) people. We forced him (Gadhafi) out from Benghazi,of Tobruk, of Al Baydaof Misurata; we can do it in Tripoli as well. This (Tripoli) is thelast place for Gadhafi to hide. But, he has got all these mercenaries with him (and) he isusing the airports, which means that he has got people now who are willing to fly theairplanes to strike people. Daily, he is retreating and we are going to force him out,said Juma.


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Im confident that we can remove him, its just a matter of time. Everybody remembersthat unarmed civilians started this in Benghazi with bare hands and they forced him outof Benghazi. If we did it in all these cities, we can do it in Tripoli and all over Libya.

Juma also says the difference between his fellow rebels and forces loyal to the Gadhafi

regime is not the arms every party uses. Its the hands holding these arms and thehearts behind this. We are fighting for a course, but the mercenaries are fighting formoney. This is the difference; so, we can beat them and I am sure and we will soon. Itsjust a matter of time.

Meanwhile, Gadhafi loyalists have carried out multiple airstrikes on targets outside arebel-held eastern town and have engaged in deadly ground battles with oppositionfighters.

Libyan warplanes struck positions around the oil port of Ras Lanuf Monday. One of the

strikes wounded at least two people in a car. A day earlier, anti-Gadhafi fightersretreated to the coastal city from the nearby town of Bin Jawwad, following a heavygovernment counter-offensive aimed at stopping the rebel drive toward Tripoli.---------------------------Qaddafi's Airstrikes Spur NATO Discussions of Libya No-Fly Zone(Bloomberg)By Ola GalalMarch 8, 2011Libyan warplanes repeatedly bombed rebel positions near the oil hub of Ras Lanuf,adding urgency to discussions among U.S. and its allies about imposing a no-fly zone tocurb attacks by troops loyal to Muammar Qaddafi.

President Barack Obama said members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization areconsulting on a wide range of potential responses to the turmoil in Libya, includingmilitary options. Arab Gulf nations advocated a no-fly zone as oil rose to the highestlevel in 29 months in New York.

U.K Foreign Secretary William Hague told Parliament that discussions at the UnitedNations Security Council on a resolution authorizing a no-fly zone are focused onsetting a clear trigger for UN action and the legal basis for military actions. NATOdefense ministers plan to meet March 10 and 11 in Brussels to discuss military andhumanitarian options in Libya.

I cant imagine the international community and the United Nations standing idly by ifQaddafi and his regime continue to attack their own people systematically, NATOSecretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said yesterday in Brussels. NATO has nointention to intervene in Libya, but as a defense alliance and security organization, ourjob is to conduct prudent planning for any eventuality.


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Clashes Escalate

Clashes have become more deadly as the rebels moved west along the coast towardTripoli and Qaddafis troops escalated their effort to retake Misrata and Zawiyah,opposition-held cities near the capital.

Libyan MiG fighters yesterday dropped bombs around Ras Lanuf after rebel forcespulled back from Bin Jawad, about 110 miles (160 kilometers) east of Qaddafishometown of Sirte, the Associated Press reported. Bin Jawad in the face of reinforcedregime forces. The rebels said they will bring in reinforcements from the east, the APreported.

The past three days of fighting killed 30 rebels and wounded 169, said Gebril Hewadi, adoctor at Al-Jalaa Hospital in Benghazi, according to AP.

Ras Lanuf has a tanker terminal that exports about 200,000 barrels of oil a day. It alsohas Libyas biggest refinery, with a daily capacity of 220,000 barrels, more than half thecountrys output, according to the International Energy Agency.

Dubai Shares FallDubais shares retreated for a third day in four as the conflict in Libya sparked concernthat unrest may spread to Saudi Arabia, the Arab worlds largest economy, sparkeddemand for safer assets. The DFM General Index (DFMGI) declined 1 percent, the mostsince March 3. The index has lost 15 percent since Tunisias Zine El Abidine Ben Ali wasousted in January.

Oil has surged more than 25 percent since the start of the conflict in Libya, Africasthird-largest crude producer. Oil for April delivery fell for the first day in three, andwas at $104.89 a barrel at 1:14 p.m. in Singapore. Yesterday, the contract settled at$105.44, the highest since Sept. 26, 2008.

The oil market hasnt priced in a prolonged halt to crude production in Libya and thecountry may not produce much oil over the next six months, Francisco Blanch, NewYork-based head of global commodities research at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, saidyesterday on Bloomberg Radio.

Departure Deal Rejected

Al Jazeera reported that Qaddafi asked a former prime minister, Jadallah Azzuz Talhi,to negotiate a safe departure for himself and family members. A member of the Qaddafifamily and a rebel spokesman both publicly rejected such a deal.


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Saadi Qaddafi said on Al-Arabiya television yesterday that a departure by his fatherwould result in a civil war. The interim council set up by rebels rejected the proposal, AlJazeera reported, without saying how it obtained the information.

Some Libyan officials are promoting a plan for Qaddafi to relinquish power to a

council of technocrats that would oversee a transition toward a democraticgovernment, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing an unidentified person familiarwith the situation. The possibility of prosecution from an international criminal courtcould dissuade him from agreeing to such a solution, the newspaper said.

The United Nations and 17 aid organizations appealed yesterday for $160 million toprovide food, water, medicine and shelter for 400,000 people escaping the violence andanother 600,000 inside the country. Obama yesterday said he authorized $15 million inaid in addition to the $2 million the U.S. has already provided to support emergencyevacuations.

Gulf States Appeal

The six Persian Gulf states of the Gulf Cooperation Council called on the UN to imposea no-fly zone over Libya to protect civilians, the groups Secretary-General, AbdulRahman Al Attiyah, said in Abu Dhabi after a meeting yesterday.

NATO is already increasing its surveillance of Libyan airspace, said the U.S.ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder.

The U.S. alliance has been flying Airborne Warning and Control System radar planesfor 10 hours a day over the Mediterranean Sea and will increase that to round-the-clockcoverage, Daalder told reporters on a conference call yesterday. Information from thatmonitoring and from NATO planning will be assessed by defense ministers, he said.

Towards the end of the week, we will be in a position to know what it would take todo a no-fly zone, he said.

White House press secretary Jay Carney said that while it is premature to discusssending weapons and supplies to the rebels, providing arms is one of the range ofoptions that is being considered.

Regional Unrest

The Libyan revolt is the bloodiest in a wave of popular uprisings in the Middle East inthe past two months that have toppled Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali andEgyptian President Hosni Mubarak.


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At least 52 people were wounded in anti-government protests in Yemen March 6,according to Al Jazeera. The violence came as tens of thousands of protesters continuedtheir calls for the immediate resignation of President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

In Bahrain, where at least seven protesters have been killed in clashes with security

forces in the past three weeks, Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa said there is70 to 80 percent consensus on a plan to engage with the opposition. Protests havebeen led by the countrys Shiite Muslim majority, which is demanding that the Sunniruling family takes steps toward democracy.

Authorities in Sunni-led Saudi Arabia, who face complaints of discrimination by theirShiite minority, released on March 6 Shiite cleric Tawfiq al-Amir, who was arrested lastmonth for calling for a constitutional monarchy and equal rights, according to twoShiite activists. Saudi Arabia, the worlds biggest oil exporter, is an absolute monarchythat doesnt typically allow public displays of political dissent.

Saudi Arabia may escape the wave of regional unrest, along with other smaller energy-rich monarchies such as Qatar and Abu Dhabi, Standard & Poors said yesterday.---------------------------A wake-up call in Libya's Ras Lanuf(CNN)By Ben WedemanMarch 8, 2011Ras Lanuf, Libya - "Down! Down!" the man at my hotel room door said. It was 4:30 a.m.Monday in Ras Lanuf, and I had hoped to get a decent night's sleep for the first time inweeks. Yet again, my hopes were dashed.

Through the haze of sleep deprivation and exhaustion, I could say nothing. Iunderstood nothing.

The staff of the Fadeel Hotel was going from room to room, telling guests -- journalistsonly -- that they had to leave, at once.

I quickly dressed, packed my bag, and went downstairs.

It was still pitch black outside, and the lobby was teeming with still photographers,cameramen, translators, fixers, producers and print and TV reporters, all trying tounderstand why the urgent need to leave.

There were plenty of rumors, and no facts.

"Poison gas! Poison gas! Gadhafi is using poison gas!" one of the fighters told me.

"The army is coming here, they'll be here soon," said another.


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"You must go now," the hotel manager told me. "It's not safe in Ras Lanuf."

The television in the lobby was tuned to the Arabic satellite news channel Al-Arabiya,which was flashing that Libyan government forces had taken up defensive positions

around Ras Lanuf, which had been taken over by anti-Qaddafi rebels two days before.

The rebels had advanced beyond Ras Lanuf, by about 30 kilometers, to the town of BinJawad, but were pushed out within hours. Their advance westward, begun in therefinery town of Al-Brega, had come to a screeching halt.

And now it was beginning to look as if the tide was turning.

As we waited in the lobby, I had visions of the Libyan army pulling up outside thehotel, rounding us all up and taking us back to Tripoli, hands bound and blindfolded,

to be put on trial. Libyan state television had announced that all journalists who hadentered the country from Egypt without visas would be considered outlaws and, worse,collaborators with al Qaeda. As the first Western television journalist to enter Libyafrom Egypt during the current crisis, I had reliable information I was high on Tripoli'swanted list.

I watched as the Ras Lanuf press corps bundled into cars, or onto the back of pickuptrucks, and drove away in the dark. We decided to wait until first light before moving.

In the meantime, the hotel staff was removing the big flat-screen TV in the lobby, and

desktop computers and printers from behind the reception desk and back offices.

After the other journalists had left, the cleaning staff -- migrant workers fromBangladesh -- cleared away dozens of paper coffee cups, mopped the floor and emptiedashtrays overflowing with the butts of dozens of jumpy journalists.

When it became light, instead of going east -- away from the supposedly advancingLibyan army -- we and a crew from the BBC went west, toward Bin Jawad, to see ifthere was any truth to the claims Gadhafi's men were on the move.

We drove slowly, stopping regularly to survey the terrain, to ask any fighters along theway about what they had seen and what they knew about the front lines.

The few we met assured us the government forces were still on the outskirts of BinJawad and weren't moving forward. It was disconcerting, however, that as wecontinued to drive, there was almost no one to speak with. The usual gatherings ofboisterous, friendly rebel fighters gathered around cars, pickup trucks and Chinese- andSoviet-made anti-aircraft guns were nowhere to be seen. The road was almost empty.


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We stopped one last time about five kilometers east of Bin Jawad. Three kilometersaway we could see something blocking the road. The BBC crew, who had a bigger andbetter camera, went a bit further to get a better look, but after about five minutes cameracing back, lights flashing.

Meanwhile, we heard a jet overhead. We'd had two close misses with bombs a few daysbefore, so we jumped to the side of the road, ready to lie flat in the sand in case theybombed again.

In the distance we heard the loud, hollow pop of anti-aircraft fire. The plane flew in awide arch twice above us, but dropped no bombs. When it flew on, we regrouped withthe BBC crew, who recounted that while videotaping down the road, a shot had beenfired over their heads. The cameraman said he saw in his viewfinder vehicles pointingeast toward Ras Lanuf, and men who were all wearing identical uniforms. That didn't

sound like the motley opposition forces. And if they had been opposition forces, theywould have opened fire with everything they had on the jet above. But they didn't.

In other words, those dots down the road were probably soldiers from the LibyanArmy.

Driving back toward Ras Lanuf, we saw a huge plume of black smoke and brown dusta few kilometers up ahead. Libyan Air Force jets were attempting to bomb rebel targetsagain. It was just one of many such air strikes in the area Monday.

Along the main Benghazi-Tripoli road that skirts Ras Lanuf, we found groups ofopposition fighters chanting and joking about Gadhafi "the dog," Gadhafi "the donkey,"but it was beginning to all ring hollow. There seemed to be less of them about, andfewer and fewer appeared to be moving to the front.

We returned to the hotel in mid-afternoon. It was open again, but the staff had fled. Thenew "staff" was comprised of men and teenagers with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. They were going from room to room, turning on the TVs, using thebathrooms, calling to their friends from the balconies. In the parking lot outside, theyregularly fired rounds from their automatic weapons. Although I didn't see it, a printreporter friend told me they had spent much of the afternoon smoking hashish. Toborrow a line from one of my old scripts, "morale is high, and so are the troops."

In the coffee shop, more fighters were crowded behind the bar, helping themselves towhatever was available, handing out bowls of cornflakes with milk and chocolatesyrup. Everything was free.


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Pickup trucks had pulled up in front of the hotel, and they were loading them with foodand crockery from the kitchen. Theoretically, I suppose, they were commandeeringsupplies for opposition forces in the area.

All the while, they were eager to reassure the few journalists who had returned in the

hopes of spending another night in the Fadeel Hotel that all was well, that they wouldbe safe, that they would sleep soundly.

The more insistent their reassurances, however, the more tenuous the prospect of anight at the hotel became. The thought of stoned adolescents armed to the teethstumbling around the halls at night, in addition to the very real possibility of anighttime assault by the Libyan army on Ras Lanuf, was more than even the mostbattle-hardened war correspondents cared to ponder.

The CNN crew was among the last guests to leave the hotel just after sunset. There was

no need to settle the bill or return the keys.-----------------------Who are Libya's sub-Saharan Africans? (Christian Science Monitor)By Alex ThurstonMarch 7, 2011The ongoing discussion about sub-Saharan Africans in Libya often lacks precisenumbers, terms, and categories. Libyans are by definition Africans, as are otherNorthAfricans who live in Libya. But bloggers and journalists have been talking about sub-Saharan Africans in Libya in different ways than theyve been talking about NorthAfrican populations there. The reason for making the distinction is that the experiences

of some groups seem to in fact be distinct, and those particularities have politicalimplications. It is good to make these distinctions, but we need to make them verycarefully.

Put more concretely, who are the foreign workers in Libya? What are the experiences ofrefugees from sub-Saharan Africa? Migrants? Students? Refugees? The fuzziness ofterms and categories on the one hand, and the scattered numerical data on the other,make talking about these issues difficult, and in some cases have helped set updistorted narratives about ruthless African mercenaries, racist Libyans, orAfrican migrants. This post doesnt tackle the terminology problem, but rather tries tohelp clarify the situation of sub-Saharan Africans in Libya by compiling some of thenumbers floating around in the reporting. Examining the numbers will help identifytrends and highlight differences.

Here are some of the key figures Ive seen, arranged from largest to smallest. Somesources on this list are more reliable than others.

2.5 million: Estimated number of foreign workers in Libya.


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500,000: Top estimate of Sudanese in Libya.300,000: Top estimate of Chadians in Libya.180,000: Total number of people who fled Libya between February 20 and March 3.100,000: The total number of (sub-Saharan) Africans the UN expects to flee Libya intoNiger.

100,000: The total number of refugees (of all nationalities) who have fled Libya intoTunisia (presumably this includes some sub-Saharan Africans).50,000: Top estimate of Nigerians in Libya.10,000: The number of Ghanaians estimated to live in Libya, mainly artisans andconstruction workers. The Ghanaian government has evacuated nearly 700 of itscitizens, and over 1,000 more are waiting near the Libya-Egypt border.3,000: Rough number of Somali refugees in Tripoli and Benghazi.2,000: The number of Sudanese who have returned home so far.2,000: The total number of Nigerians that the Nigerian government hopes to repatriatefrom Libya.

1,500: The number of citizens ofNiger who have reportedly already left Libya (out of atotal of several thousandNigeriens living in Libya).485: Number of Senegalese living in Libya.170: Number of Ethiopians who will return home.Other countries with significant expatriate populations in Libya include Mali (at least122 factory workers repatriated so far) and Mauritania (I found no numbers) and SierraLeone, and many African countries have a few dozen or a few hundred nationals livingin Libya.

This list offers a basic (though still speculative and incomplete) look at the sub-Saharan

African population in Libya. Even though many of the numbers are estimates (someperhaps wildly off the mark), the size and diversity of the sub-Saharan Africancommunity in Libya is clear: it includes people from many different nations and peoplewho came for various reasons (work, study, and asylum, seemingly in that orderaccording to the numbers). So writers, including me, need to talk about the Africanexperience in Libya with great care and it seems better to talk about experiences,plural.

For those wishing to gain a better sense of peoples experiences in Libya and in flightfrom Libya, I suggest reading here, here, and here.

As for numbers of mercenaries, both the BBC and AFP cite sources claiming the numberof Tuareg mercenaries in Libya is in the hundreds. I have not yet seen a definitiveestimate of the total number of mercenaries in the country.----------------------Ivory Coast president nationalizes coffee and cocoa industry

By Unattributed AuthorMarch 8, 2011


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Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo, who is fighting to keep a political title theUnited Nations says isn't his, on Monday nationalized the nation's two main cash crops,coffee and cocoa, according to state-run television.

In a statement read on air, the government announced that "the purchase of coffee and

cocoa from producers and producer groups is done exclusively by the state on theentire national territory."

"The export of products of the coffee-cocoa sector is carried out by the state, by anylegal person mandated by the state or holder of an exporter license," the governmentannounced. "Approved exporters get their cocoa beans and green coffee from the stateor any legal person mandated by the state."

The Ivory Coast is the world's largest supplier of cocoa beans.

Gbagbo, the incumbent, has refused to give up power since an electoral commissiondeclared challenger Alassane Ouattara the winner of the November presidentialelection. Gbagbo's refusal to step down has sparked violent clashes between supportersof the two rivals, resulting in the deaths of 365 people since December.

Ouattara's "New Forces" loyalists claimed on the group's website to have taken the westIvory Coast city of Toulepleu after intense fighting with Gbagbo forces on Sunday.

Gbagbo's ability to maintain control over the nation's coffee and cocoa industry couldbe key to his staying in power. Coffee and cocoa experts have provided the embattled

leader with a lucrative revenue source to pay loyal civil servants and military officers.

In January, Ouattara called for a ban on cocoa and coffee experts in an effort to shutdown that revenue stream and force Gbagbo out of office.-------------------Cte d'Ivoire: Growing Humanitarian Crisis(IPS)By Fulgence Zambl7 March 2011Abidjan The U.N. has announced that some 200,000 people have already fled theAbobo neighbourhood, in the north of Abidjan.

Each morning for a week now, luggage on their backs, bundles on their heads, the sickriding in wheelbarrows, new borns cradled in their arms, thousands of people have fledAbobo on foot.

It was in Abobo, a populous quartier generally supportive of the man internationallyacknowledged to have won the presidential elections, Alassane Ouattara, where women


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marching to demand the exit of Laurent Gbagbo were violently attacked on Mar. 3. Atleast six women were killed, according to witnesses.

Siege conditions

Where people have remained behind, they have been deprived of food by the closure ofmarkets. Water and electricity supplies have been cut off and schools are effectivelyclosed throughout the territory.

In the west of the country, according to international humanitarian organisations,around 65,000 Ivorian refugees have crossed the frontier and been registered inneighbouring Liberia in the last two weeks.

All of these are people fleeing the escalating violence and confrontation over the pasttwo months between the two rival parties who claim victory in the presidential election

of November 2010 in Cte d'Ivoire. Laurent Gbagbo was announced as the winner bythe Constitutional council, while Ouattara was declared winner by the IndependentElectoral Commission and is recognised as such by the international community.

"We have spent three sleepless nights because of fighting. It's impossible to find food,"Adrienne Tohoua, 35-year-old mother of four told IPS. Tohoua abandoned her house inAbobo PK 18, a precarious precinct in the north of the capital, home to more than 50,000residents.

"We left several people behind who didn't know where to go and they would have been

exposed to the fighting. Mortar shells fell among the houses and would have spared noone," she said, tears in her eyes.

Three hundred refugees have taken shelter in the Saint-Ambroise de Cocody-Angrparish in the city's northeast. Some 500 others have already passed through, on theirway to other locations. Every day, displaced people file along the road towards thisreligious site.

"I have come eight kilometres to reach here. I'm going to rest briefly before returning tothe road to reach my older brother who is already sheltering 13 people at his house,"explained Sraphin Tty, holding his sixty-year old father by the hand. "He suffers fromhypertension, so we need to find a health centre so we can manage his condition."

Many of the displaced lack the financial means to pay to flee. "I have a little in the bank,but it's closed. I have to move part of my family to the village and I find myself unableto pay for it," said Marcellin Tanoh.


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According to Tanoh, his neighbourhood of Anyama, north-east of Abidjan, is also shortof water, to the point that his family had not been able to take a bath for four days.Their store of three containers full of water, carefully reserved for drinking, is nearlyexhausted.

Agencies concerned

This situation is worrying for humanitarian organisations and human rights defendersin the West African country, plunged into crisis since the rebellion in September 2002,and now aggravated by the post-election conflict.

On Mar. 1, the International Committee of the Red Cross in Abidjan said it was"concerned by the massive exodus of residents, mostly women and children".

The organisation revealed that many families are still trapped in their homes and have

not been granted permission to leave the front line/zone of confrontation withoutpaying or giving up personal goods to armed groups.

Meanwhile, the elderly, the sick and pregnant women are not able to move, said theRed Cross.

The joint chief of the regional delegation of the organisation, Phillippe Beauverd, notesthat following the clashes in Abidjan in the last week of February between the Securityand Defence Forces loyal to Gbagbo and an unidentified group of armed men,volunteers from the Red Cross attended to 34 people and evacuated 19 who were

seriously injured.

"The situation is worse than deplorable that it's the innocent population that pays thehighest price for an electoral dispute," said Gervais Boga, president of the IvorianFoundation for Human Rights and Political Life, an NGO based in Abdijan.

"We are at the edge of a serious humanitarian crisis, and the different embargosimposed on the country, among them those relating to medicines, constitute a crimeagainst humanity."

Meanwhile, the African Union has extended by one month the mandate of a panel ofheads of state charged with putting forward a binding solution on the two protagonistsof the crisis. The United Nations believes the country is on the edge of civil war.-----------------------Satellite images: 300 burned buildings in Sudan(AP)By Unattributed AuthorMarch 7, 2011


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JUBA, Sudan Satellite images from a group backed by actor George Clooney showedsome 300 buildings burned to the ground from a militia attack in a contested area ofSudan, the group said Monday.

Fighting elsewhere in Southern Sudan was reported to have killed more than 50 people.

The buildings were burned in a village near the town of Abyei, a disputed area betweennorth and south Sudan that is the most contentious issue between the two regions.Abyei has seen a wave of attacks in recent days that have killed more than 100 peopleand sent tens of thousands of people fleeing the area.

The Satellite Sentinel Project said its latest images confirm the "widespread andsystematic targeting of civilian infrastructure across the Abyei region."

"Village burning has caused tens of thousands to be displaced, unknown numbers of

civilian casualties, and the deliberate destruction of at least three communities," saidClooney.

In Washington. U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said the disclosure"really doesn't change what we already know. We have known for some time about thedangers of the unresolved situation in Abyei. We've obviously known in recent daysand weeks about the clashes among the parties there."

The latest images document an attack Saturday on the village of Tajalei. Previousimages from the group showed huts burned in two other villages.

"If this violence is left unchecked, it could put the entire north-south peace process atrisk," Clooney said.

Southern Sudan voted in January to secede from the north, but the violence in Abyeiunderscores the challenges still facing the leaders of north and south before the oil-richsouth declares independence on July 9. Both sides are laying claim to the region.

Charles Abyei, speaker of the parliament in the Abyei area, said after the first twovillages were attacked, rumors spread that Tajalei would be next, so civilians fled.Abyei blamed the attacks on the Popular Defense Forces, a militia that was used as aproxy force by the northern Sudanese military through the two-decade-long north-south civil war.

"The place was empty and these elements of the Popular Defense Forces came andfound nobody except one man who was mentally sick," said Abyei. "They killed himand they burned down the whole village."


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The Geneva-based Small Arms Survey reported in October that it had confidentialmilitary documents confirming that the northern military has armed members of theMisseriya cattle-herding population since the signing of the 2005 north-south peacedeal.

The group said the strategy of combining "regular and irregular forces" to forcibly clearthe Ngok Dinka, a tribe native to Abyei, from their homes was used through the civilwar and more recently in the separate conflict in the western region of Darfur.

The latest images from the Satellite Sentinel Project appear to confirm that type ofactivity, with images showing 300 scorched buildings. The group said that "roughlytwo-thirds of those buildings appear to be consistent with civilian residential structures,known as tukuls."

A round of north-south talks over Abyei began in Khartoum, Sudan's capital, on

Monday, but officials from Abyei are not optimistic.

"We are not expecting anything to come out of the talks," Charles Abyei said. "IfKhartoum was serious they would not have supplied the whole areas of northern Abyeiwith arms. They have the intention of occupying the whole area of Abyei to try tocontrol it."

Sudan President Omar al-Bashir and Southern Sudan President Salva Kiir are scheduledto meet with former South African President Thabo Mbeki next week for talks on Abyei.Mbeki hosted north-south talks on economic issues in Ethiopia last week. The talks did

not result in any concrete agreements.

In a separate region in the south, UpperNile state, fighting on Sunday was reported tohave killed more than 50 people, though the two sides gave differing accounts.

The south's army spokesman, Col. Philip Aguer, said militia forces loyal to the rebelleader George Athor clashed with military forces, killing 56 people. Aguer did notspecify which side the deaths were on.

A spokesman for Athor, Dok James Tuok, said 13 of Athor's men and 52 southernmilitary forces were killed. Tuok said that Athor's forces were declaring a cease-fire andcalled on the army to do the same.

Aguer dismissed that call, saying that Athor violated a previous cease-fire.

"Definitely the military operations are ongoing since they violated the cease-fire," saidAguer. "(Athor) violated the cease-fire. We don't have any cease-fire with him."-------------------


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Somaliland Coastguards and Ground TroopsThe Real Panacea for Sea Piracy(Somaliland Press)By Dalmar KaahinMarch 7, 2011Efforts to link Somali pirates to terrorism, capture and showcase them in American,

European, and African courts, shoot them and hail trigger-happy Marine snipers asheroes as well as deploy International navies to Somalia run their course, yet nosolution to sea piracy. And UN condemnations and anti-piracy resolutions remain amere symbolic while the International Maritime Bureaus (IMB) outcry grows louder.Although the United States admits a defeat in the hands of pirates, the U.S. and the restof the International community overlook a simple solution to sea piracy: Somalilandcoastguards and ground troops can effectively do the job that the combined worldnavies fail to undertake miserably, up to now. How is that possible, you may ask?

One thing that the international community has yet to realize is that Somaliland

achieves much more success in combating against piracy than the multinational navies.Why pirates fail to hijack ships travelling on Somaliland waters? And why pirates neversucceed in launching attacks from Somaliland soil? The answer to the first question isthat Somaliland has few hundred coastguards supported by Britain. Time and timeagain, they have successfully and repeatedly thwarted pirate attacks in Somalilandwaters. The answer to the second question: the local fishermen despite being poorremain law-abiding citizens. For one thing, the Somaliland culture doesnt tolerate orcondone piracy. For another, the government with its meager resources does its best tohelp the local fishers to discourage them joining piracy. Also, Somaliland coastguardsprotect their marine resources from greedy European and Asian fishing fleets from

entering Somaliland waters illegally. The illegal fishing expeditionsthe condonedpiracy, the multimillion dollar business, and toxic dumpingwithout a doubt, remainthe root causes of piracy. Nonetheless, Somaliland coastguards battle against not onlySomalias high seas thugs but also European and Asian pirates looting Somalilands richmarine resources.

According to U.N. monitoring groups report on Somaliland and Somalia, unlikePuntland, the Somaliland authorities and community leaders have adopted a firm anddecisive posture against piracy. Visiting Hargeysa and Berbera in October 2009, themonitoring group had the opportunity to observe the counter-piracy efforts of theSomaliland authorities. Despite very limited means, 64 the coastguard patrols 850 km ofcoastline and maintains a dozen manned observatories, which are alerted and informedby the local community of any suspicious activity in the area. Somalilandpursuesand prosecutes pirates with genuine vigour. adds the report. Evidently, Somalilandsanti-piracy approach: deploying coastguards, licensing foreign fishing trawlers, andhelping the local fishers remain a true success.


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Understandably, International laws and other legal challenges could complicate themultinational navies possible military operations against pirate bases and perhaps thisexplains why so far they stayed away from hitting the pirates dens. But what aboutcooperating with Somaliland? After all, Somaliland is still, theoretically, part of Somaliaand if Somaliland coastguards and ground troops launch simultaneous attacks against

pirates, Somaliland wont violate any International laws. Even better, Somalilandalready offers its port Berbera in the Red Sea to be used as a launch pad to attackpirates, not just as a dumping ground for piratessomething Somaliland people willresolutely reject.

Given the resources, navy boats and helicopters, military hardware for its groundtroops, and trainings Somaliland forces are the most suited to engage the pirates onland and at sea. Somaliland army knows the terrains, the local clans, and their culture.If provided adequate resources, Somaliland security forces could plant a ring of agentsacting as pirates among the real pirates operating in Somalias coastal communities,

where every move they make, every word they whisper, and every attack the plan willbe monitored. Evidently, Somaliland cannot directly curb pirates on the high seas, but itcan eliminate their bases and deny them safe areas to operatesubsequently, reducingpiracy in high seas.

Ignoring the root cause of piracy and portraying pirates as a fungus that should beeradicated still dominates the news. In 2009, I wrote, the ignorance towards the rootcause of Somali piracy is amplified by the insipid response to piracy from the Secretaryof State Hillary Clinton. She states, These pirates are criminalsthey are armed gangson the sea, and those plotting attacks must be stopped and those carrying them out

must be brought to justice.

I continue, But what the Media and Hillary Clinton conveniently avoid informing theirever gullible audiences as well as TV worshipers of North America is: Somali piracystems from the unabated European and Asian illegal fishing expeditions and toxicdumping into Somalias waters. Portraying pirates as savage criminals while putting alipstick smudge on the vicious vultures pillaging Somalias fish and dumping nuclearwaste into its waters is a testimony of how the scheme is rarely mentioned much lesscondemned.

In 2011, Hillary Clinton expresses her own failure to combat piracy effectively, Im fedup with it. We need to do more, and make it clear that the entire world better getbehind what we do and get this scourge resolved, she adds. This is her exact words in2009. Back to square one, no progress whatsoever!

In fact, if anything, piracy has gotten worse. With four innocent Americans killed, anumber of hapless Danish children and adults in captivity, and 815 desperate seafarers


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and 50 ships held, mainly in Puntland, pirates and their foreign-business counterpartsreap millions of dollars.

Once again, I will reiterate the same appeal that I echoed in 2008. I wrote, However,rarely ever do military approaches alone work without offering alternative economic

incentives to those who are involved in piracy. Just as military strategies alone failed toeradicate terrorism, and so will they fall short to prevent piracy. But reconstructing thedevastated Somali fishing communities, providing local fishers training and fishingequipments, cleaning up the toxic waste dumped as well as stopping the incursions ofillegal foreign fishing fleets into Somalias sea waters, is yet another effective tactic tominimize piracy in the region. This strategy will give the Somali pirates a reason to bedecent citizens again.

An injured Somalia national suspected of being a pirate is escorted into federal court by

U.S. Marshall's in Norfolk, Va. U.S. District Judge (April 23, 2010, AP)Doubtless, the root cause of piracy is the least understood or addressed. No one inSomaliland or Somaliaincluding the piratesis, however, convinced that the world isserious about curbing piracy and finding a lasting solution. After all, piracy is a bigbusiness, with many actors from all over the world. Somalis are the biggest losers,despite the nonsensical arguments aired by Western mass media. Somalis loseapproximately $500 millions worth of tuna to foreign trawlers; Somalis receive only 15percent of the ransom money paid to transnational criminal networks. Ships sailing toSomaliland and Somalia pay higher maritime insurance rates; consequently, shipscharge double or triple the fees to ship goods to Somaliland and Somalia. Above all, for

many generations to come, Somalis will have to deal with the toxic littered in theirseabeds and the diseases that come with it.

Finally, if the world is serious about eliminating piracy on Somalias waters, Somalilandis better suited and cultured to engage with Somali pirates on land and sea. It is not justabout who posses the bigger guns and navy ships, but it is also about who knows thecoastal communities, their culture and language. Who is able to filtrate into piratecommunities and collect intelligence.

With a proven record of putting pirates on leashes, Somaliland so far achieves muchmore success than the international navies. Since Somaliland doesnt violate anyinternational laws, its coastguards and ground troops could serve as a lethal weaponagainst pirates. However, few years from now, will the U.S. still echo its frustrationwith pirates as it did in 2009 and 2011 or will the U.S. cooperate with Somaliland to getto the bottom of the problem?

Strong, well-armed and trained Somaliland navy could serve a dual purpose: it couldreduce piracy to almost nonexistence after all pirate bases are annihilated. Even better,


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the navy could protect Somaliland and Somalias waters. Lack of protection is after allthe biggest grievance that Somalis have. But such a navy could also undermine themulti-billion dollar businesses: the illegal fishing industry, high maritime insurances,cheap toxic disposals, and lucrative piracywhich benefit none other than some of thecountries that keep their navies in Somalias waters, under the pretext of curbing piracy.

Shrewdly, Britain is the only nation that understands how to beat pirates in their dens,without launching military campaignsby simply strengthening Somalilandcoastguards. Will the rest of the world follow in suite?-------------------------------------UN News Service Africa BriefsFull Articles on UN Website

Sudan: UN official voices concern over civilians displaced from Abyei7 March The United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator for Sudan has voiced concern

over the plight of civilians affected by the recent fighting in the disputed area of Abyei,which has caused many residents to flee to neighbouring villages to seek shelter withrelatives or other communities.

africom related newsclips 8 march11

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