 |
| Misrata, Libya before 2011 war/Revolution |
The takfiris under the banner of ISIS have come out of the woodwork in Libya. It comes as no surprise to people who know or are aware of the armed insurgencies that have been happening in North Africa that takfiris are taken full stage in Libya's relentless choas. Before ISIS sprang to the world's attention, Gadhaffi and Libya were already fighting against Takfiris in the form of the Islamic Salvation Front in Libya and Al Qaeda in the Maghreb. Both groups had tried to cause the current choas and. Assassinate Gaddhafi in the mid 1999s. It failed and the group members were suppressed violently and placed under life imprisonment. These heavy handed tactics benefited Libya and adjacent North African countries Tunisia, Niger, Mali. At the height of NATO bombings and Libyan miltia wars in 2011, Gaddhafi prophesied that if he was removed from power, Al Qaeda and its Takfiri cousins would spring up and come pouring into Libya from other conflict proned countries. Instead of heeding the warning, Western leaders, diplomats, mainstrea media and so called Libyan experts, dismissed Gadhaffi's foretelling revelation maniac rumblings or an exaggerated bluff to distract from his regime's final overthrow and the birth of democracy and liberation of Libyans. It's only now that some French and U.S. commentators realizes the prophecy is reality in Libya.
Libya today is damaged by the continual infighting among the hundreds of armed self serving militia groups that have split the country into two along political and regionsl lines. The small town of Tobruk and the capital Tripoli have their own desperate governments controlled by militiamen who have yet to disarm for the sake of their own families or wider country. Derna in the Cyrenaica region has a long history of resistance to both government rule from Tripoli and foreign intervention. Also Tobruk is known for it's equally heavy religiosity, which is why local Takfiri gtoups in the town and now ISIS had an easy time emerging within the town than moving on towards Benghazi and now Sirt, Gadhaffi's hometown. Tobruk's government regards itself as the legitimate government of the Libyan people and refuse to give up their power to Tripoli. Once regarded as an important rebel, Al Qaeda as well as Islamic warriors in Libya, Abdelhakim Belhaj is now the leader of ISIS in Sirt. The town is Gaddhafi's hometown where 21 Coptic Christian Egyptians were brutally murdered by ISIS terrorists.
No the Takfiris are not welcome
Libya's equal large neighbor Algeria too battled Fis and other local Algerian Takfiris who built their support off of ordinary Algerians anger at the crumbling services and suppression by Bouteflika and the destruction from the brutal Algerian Civil war which also involved Islamic read Takfiri groups against the government. Both Bouteflika and Gadhafi are secularist and remain so to this day. While Bouteflika has been overlooked by Western countries save France, Gadhafi was continuously derided for his support for terrorist groups and liberation movements across Africa and the Middle East. Despite providing financial support to both secular and mild extreme groups throughout his rule, Gadhafi had no respect or sympathy for Al Qaeda or its Takfiri cousin Islamic front and would've possibly fought against ISIS as well. It's one of the sad ironies that secular governments in North Africa, Iraq, Iran and Syria that have been ostracized and regarded as enemies of the United Stated and the EU, have spent decades fighting Takfiris or the extremists of ISIS and Al Qaeda. Saddam Hussein too was against Al Qaeda while giving lip service to the importance of faith and piety kept his government from embracing the Takfiri and Wahhabi ideology and kept Iraq from sliding into it's own post 2003 invasion sectarian destruction.
Comments
Post a Comment