By Dan Murphy, Staff Writer / February 26, 2011
Benghazi, Libya
The shrinking footprint of forces loyal to Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi has spirits high in Benghazi, the country’s second-largest city and one that is already free from his rule.
As US officials struggle to understand the quickly unfolding events, a predominant concern is that chaos and civil war could emerge after Mr. Qaddafi’s one-man rule is dispatched – if he doesn’t manage to sow it himself first.
But Umm Ahmed, head of the management committee for Benghazi’s new transitional city council, has a message for Washington: Don’t worry.
“Yes, there are no police, no institutions. Law and order as defined doesn’t exist,” she says. “But in practice, Benghazi is incredibly safe. Safer than it was under Qaddafi. People are all volunteering, the banks are opening. We surprised even ourselves.”
President Obama, citing Qaddafi’s use of “wanton violence” against his own people, issued an executive order Friday freezing the assets in the US of the Libyan government and Qaddafi’s family, less than an hour after the last US diplomat was evacuated from Tripoli. The UN is considering sanctions of its own in New York today.
Qaddafi is still reportedly holed up in his Tripoli stronghold of Bab al-Aziziya, a neighborhood filled with his friends, clansmen, and thousands of soldiers who answer to his sons. He has remained defiant, barking threats and insisting that all true Libyans love him. There were reports today from the capital that he’s distributing weapons to his supporters.
Though his rule seems finished, his rhetoric and actions are strong indications that there will be more blood to pay before this revolution succeeds.
Benghazi residents band together
But across ‘liberated’ eastern Libya, a spirit of volunteerism and pulling together is evident. At the “Voice of Free Libya,” the country’s first uncensored radio station in decades, people working there tell of strangers showing up with baskets of food. In the courthouse, an old man scrubs toilets – his way of doing something for the country, he says.…….Read More
Source: Christian Science Monitor
C. Alexander Brown, a Jamaican who was an official of the Canadian Government and for a time a Manager of Canada’s Citizens Rights and Freedom Program, who is retired and lives in the City of Ottawa, Canada’s Capital, is urging that Libya create an interim Human Right’s Commission with a Directorate of representatives from all sectors of Libyan society and all its regions. He believes that South Africa and Ireland would be the best countries to provides advisers for this initiative.
When they were in their teens, two of Col. Ghaddafi’s sons studied briefly in Ottawa under false identities, and Mr. Brown who was involved informally with a group helping Arab students in Canada, met the boys, one of whom he now believes was actually Saif al-Islam.