Tuesday 6 March 2012

The danger of ex-public schoolboys playing at foreign diplomacy

Libyan militants in the city of Benghazi showed their appreciation of the role Britain played as part of the NATO forces which rid the country of the tyrannical rule of Colonel Gaddafi atthe weekend by desecrating British war graves in a local cemetary. Headstones in the cemetary were toppled and destroyed and a crucifix which overlooked the grounds vandalised. The graves belonged to British serviceman killed in North Africa during WWII.
Following the destruction, the people responsible brazenly posted a video of events on the Internet.
The Foreign Office said the attack was belived to have been carried out by a group of hardline Salafist jihadists,because Muslim graves were also desecrated.
The British Ambassador also apparently 'voiced concerns' (I bet that had the Libyans quaking in their boots) with members of the Transitional National Council, including Chairman Abdul Jalil and Prime Minister Abdel Rahim al-Kib.

The NTC has apparently issued an offical statement, apologising to all Christians and instructed police to make regular patrols to ensure no further attacks occur. That's alright then, let's forget the unnecessary sentiment and get on with trying to procure oil, except there seems to be a few other problems, our criminally naive public school educated leaders don't seem to have forseen. For starters, they didn't forsee a former detainee of Guantanamo Bay becoming an influential member of the NTC.
Abdel Hakim al-Hasady, an influential Islamic preacher and high-school teacher who spent five years at a training camp in Afghanistan, oversees the recruitment and training of the NTC armed forces. His commander in the field is Salah al-Barrani, a former fighter from the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, or LIFG, which was formed in the 1990s by Libyan mujahedeen returning home from Afghanistan.
Sufyan Ben Qumu, a Libyan army veteran who worked for Osama bin Laden's holding company in Sudan and later for an al Qaeda-linked charity in Afghanistan, is also training recruits.
Both Hasady and Ben Qumu were arrested by Pakistani authorities in 2001 and were turned over to the U.S. Hasady was released to Libyan custody two months later but Ben Qumu spent six years at Guantanamo Bay before he was turned over to the Libyans in 2007. Wall Street Journal
Something else they didn't forsee is that today, Cyrenaica, the eastern region of Libya, has declared itself autonomous from the rest of the country and elected a regional congress, and appointed the former King's grandson Ahmed al-Senussi as its new ruler. The announcement was condemned as a 'blatant call for fragmentation' by the ruling NTC. http://rt.com/news/libya-split-cyrenaica-autonomy-971/comments/

The Easterners have already formed their own army, the Barqa Supreme Military Council, independent from the NTC and are now ready to fight for autonomy (and it would seem control of the oil).
'Even if we had to take over the oil fields by deploying our forces there or risk another war, we will not hesitate for the sake of Barqa'  Barqa commander Col. Hamid Al-Hassi

No doubt we will have claims from the Foreign Office that these events were unforseeble, but were they? Probably to the naively trusting ex-public schoolboys we have representing us, but not to the rest of the population who inhabit the 'real world'.

No comments:

Post a Comment