12/16/13 – Nancy Youssef – The Scott Horton Show

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Hey, guys!
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Alright, y'all, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show, The Scott Horton Show.
Website is scotthorton.org.
Keep all my interview archives there.
We're live 3 to 5 Eastern Time at libertyexpressradio.com.
And our first guest on the show today is Nancy Yosa from McClatchy Newspapers.
Welcome to the show.
How are you doing?
I'm doing great, thanks.
I appreciate you joining us today, live on the phone from Cairo.
I've been reading your stuff for a long, long time.
Happy to finally get you on the show here.
Oh, wonderful.
Thank you.
And it's a pretty big blockbuster story you have here about the goings-on at the Benghazi airport in Benghazi, Libya.
Is that right?
That's right.
And so who's training who?
And what are they training them to do?
Well, basically, since Chris Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three Americans were killed in September of 2012, Ansar Sharia, which is the Islamist jihadist group whose members are believed to have been involved in that attack, have expanded their hold on eastern Libya.
So where they established themselves in Benghazi at the time of the ambassador's death, they've now expanded into other eastern cities and control the security and other buildings in eastern Libya.
And now it seems that they're using the instability and the ungoverned space that is eastern Libya to bring in trainers from as far away as Syria and train them on jihadist Islamist practices.
And what I was able to learn while I was from the airport was that people were flying from as far as Syria, which was new in the sense that we knew that people were coming in from neighboring Algeria and Tunis, but the idea that people were coming in as far as Syria was what was so shocking, that people were actually flying in to Libya to be trained and then take that training back to the war in Syria.
Okay, and then, well, and it's really important too, I guess, from as far from there as Algeria they're coming to, but now what exactly does it mean that they're being trained in jihadist practices there?
Well, our feeling, my sense of it from on the ground was that people are coming to Libya in the case of Syria because they felt that the Libyans were successful in overthrowing their dictator and they were looking for techniques and tactics, military tactics, leadership tactics from their jihadi counterparts in Libya because they felt that they were successful in their fight against the dictator and that they could take those practices back to Syria.
The significance is that you have jihadist training to take over countries rather than the sort of democratic revolutionaries that we first thought of when Arab Spring began in 2011.
Right, and, I mean, you could even include the Muslim Brotherhood with the Democrats, and that, if you want to split it that way, right?
It depends on who you ask in Egypt.
I mean, in Egypt there are people who feel that the Muslim Brotherhood, which is the biggest secretive organization here, one of the biggest organizations both in terms of policy and social movement, as a group that hijacked a democratic movement.
Now, it depends on who you ask.
There are revolutionaries here who feel like the Brotherhood hijacked what they were trying to start here, and there are others who feel that the Brotherhood actually went through the very democratic system that the revolutionaries were proposing and that their frustration is that they lost at the very system that they were trying to bring into play.
Yeah, but even as far as who's who and what they're training to do, I guess, and, you know, what do I know?
I've never been to Egypt, but my sense has been that the Muslim Brotherhood, just being that they're older and wealthier people, property owners and members of the elite, or at least kind of the upper middle class, that they're kind of, by definition, conservatives and not radicals.
And they did try, they did get elected after all, rather than wage some jihad or something like that.
That's right, and you raise a great point, because a lot of times people think of Brotherhood because they're conservative or because they're supporters or beneficiaries of the social rationing that they do, that they're somehow uneducated.
But, in fact, to become a Brotherhood member is a very expensive process.
Just to be initiated in is a seven-year process.
And so, while their supporters may be poor and illiterate, in terms of membership and organization, it's made up of people, usually, who are very well educated and part of the economic elite of the countries that they live in.
Right, and so, but now the guys in Benghazi, now here's the thing, too, and I'm trying to think back, I'm not certain, I'm sure you probably were on top of this all along anyway, but, of course, Patrick Cockburn and many others back in 2011 were reporting that, yeah, I mean, basically, the guys we're fighting this war for, the air war, is air cover for, you know, what are basically the Libyan veterans of the recent Iraq war, where they were fighting, the Americans certainly would have just accused them all of being Zarqawiites, right?
Members of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, they were Libyans who traveled to Iraq to fight the Americans and the Shiites that the Americans were fighting for there, and then they turned right around and they were fighting for these guys all along, right?
Well, I think there's a city in eastern Libya called Darna, which had proportion to its population more people go to Iraq and Afghanistan to fight than any other city in the Middle East.
And it's obviously a very conservative Islamist area.
And so there was a lot of concern that by removing Gaddafi, who had tried to put a lid on them for his own interest, of course, to protect his own power, not for any interest of the United States, that by removing Gaddafi that there was a potential of unleashing those elements into Libya.
And I think that's the concern now, because that appears to be happening, because while most Libyans and the National Democratic Institute just put out a poll that found that the vast majority are against these groups and want their government to succeed, the government is incredibly inexperienced and nascent, and this is a country that's never had a real security force that can properly fend off these groups, who, as you say, have members who have trained in Iraq and Afghanistan.
And so that was the concern when the United States and its NATO allies intervened to stop Gaddafi from overrunning Benghazi.
And eventually contributing to its downfall.
All right, now, as far as the different tribes, I don't know if you know what they all are and all their different relative power structures and whatever, but I wonder, is there an overall sense among the population that, hey, we're all Libyans and we all kind of have at least some kind of unity?
I don't want to praise nationalism, but you understand what I mean?
Rather than, nope, it's the Hatfields versus the McCoys here, and that's how it's going to stay, break back into at least three pieces and that kind of madness.
Because that, of course, would be violence, everybody's stuck on the wrong side of the lines and all that stuff.
No, I think it's better, because when you do go to Libya, it's really, as you mentioned, Libya is a relatively new state and they're not organic borders in the sense of rivers and stuff dividing it.
It was three sections, one in the east, one in the south, and one in the west.
And as you go to each area, it really does feel distinctive.
At one point, the east, which is where Ansar Sharif and a lot of these jihadi groups are operating out of, had tried to create its own sort of state within Libya and separate itself quite formally from the rest of the country.
And so those divisions have always been there.
They've been a defining part of Libya, and they continue to be there.
So the divide that I see is not so much tribal but regional, and they really do feel like three very distinct parts of Libya.
And that was only aggravated under Gaddafi because he tended to fund the western part more, all the way up to Sirte, which was his hometown.
And so those tensions remain in place.
And the fact that these jihadists are operating from there really further only isolates them from places like Tripoli, which has so resoundingly rejected them and are trying to bolster their government, which is also not only advantageous to Libya but to their own power structure because they would retain control of the country and the capital.
And then, you know, it wasn't very long at all after the fall of Tripoli back in 2011.
It may have even still been in 2011, or at least early in 2012, were the first reports of Libyans hopping on boats and hopping on planes and taking off to Syria to go fight in that one, where, again, America is on the side of the revolutionaries against the dictatorship.
And there was at least that Sunday Times report about the different factions fighting over the ship full of guns that had come from, I don't know, somewhere in Libya anyway.
I just wonder whether – and I guess – I don't know what the sources were, but people said that that was part of what Ambassador Stevens and his mission was all about there in Benghazi was helping to coordinate the exporting of the revolution on to the next one.
Well, my sense – I've spent quite a bit of time in Libya, and I started to see a turn a few months after Gaddafi was killed in October of 2011.
It was really born out of the insecurity and instability because nobody controlled the country.
I was in Libya at the time with the United States, and I think the feeling was that the Libyan rebels were organized, that this was a small state, an oil-rich state that had the potential.
The majority of people wanted Gaddafi removed and were against the militias, and I think all that led people to believe that the momentum was on the side of those who wanted a democratic Libya to rise.
My experience was that we started to see a turnaround in early 2012 as the instability seeped in, and as the Libyans reunited around getting rid of Gaddafi, and once that was gone, the division started to emerge, and militant elements, as you say, began traveling back and forth to countries, and the floodgates sort of opened up for not only people leaving, but also members coming in from neighboring countries where they could survive as well as they could in an ungoverned space like Libya.
And now these guys that are training right now, these Ansar al-Sharia guys at the airport and all that, are they training in target practice and bomb-making and that kind of thing, too?
We don't know.
That's the assumption, but it's very hard to know, and in fact, when I asked the government, they didn't know themselves.
Prime Minister Zeidan of Libya says that they stay for about two days, but this government has such a hard time just conducting basic security that developing the intel to really understand what's happening has proven to be very difficult for them.
So I have yet to see anybody to offer any clear explanation of what they're doing.
Now, some of these guys have put out videos, a couple from Tunisian fighters who claim that they came to train, and they talk about training and militancy, but they don't offer any specifics, and it's hard to know the veracity of what they're saying.
And so there's an assumption that they're training on shooting, on building explosives, but there's no definitive proof in terms of not only what they're doing, but where they're doing it or for how long.
Yeah, so I guess I just was hoping you could give us a thumbnail sketch of the power of what's left of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Are all their leaders in jail still, and are they going to be allowed to participate in any coming elections?
Are there going to be any coming elections?
I heard that they were putting forward a draft constitution, but I don't know if anybody took it seriously or what.
No, those are all great questions.
So the Muslim Brotherhood, their leadership, most of it has been arrested, and we're going now to about third or fourth tier in terms of leadership, and it's a big deal for the Muslim Brotherhood because they're such a centralized organization, and so when one eliminates their leadership, it's made it very hard for them to organize and mobilize.
And on top of that, their political party, the Freedom and Justice Party, has been deemed illegal.
And so they appear to be at this point quite marginalized.
That said, the military, while they were roundly embraced for going after the Muslim Brotherhood, have now targeted revolutionaries.
We've seen a number of revolutionary leaders arrested in the last few weeks, and I think that's starting to create some worry and concern amongst Egyptians about the return of the very state that they were rising against just two years ago.
We've just learned that there will be a referendum on the constitution on January 14th.
The assumption is that the constitution will pass, but there will be a sizable minority that oppose it, and that will pose real problems for Egypt because to move forward, it seems difficult to do so when so many people have very real questions and in fact object to the draft constitution that's been put in place.
And so while there have been promises for parliamentary and presidential elections after January, there isn't a feeling that this will lead to more stability, but rather that Egypt's entering a period of persistent instability as it still sorts out what kind of state it wants to emerge after Mubarak and how the military will go about governing the state and what role it will have in the future of the state, because there's no alternative to the military.
And so it really becomes a question of how they conduct themselves rather than what opposing forces come forward.
And the sense is that if they go too far and bring back Mubarak practices too much, which appears to be happening, that you'll start to see protests and instability once again.
All right.
And now real quick, if I can ask you, because I forgot, can you say anything about what's going on in Gaza with the flooding?
Well, I can tell you that the region's just not prepared.
Even in Cairo it's not prepared for the kind of rain and snowfall that we've seen, which is quite rare.
And so in a place like Gaza, which is so cramped and so confined and the infrastructure already is so poor, that it becomes incredibly susceptible to mass flooding, even just for the smallest amounts of rain.
And this is an unusual amount of snow and rain for the region.
And so it's an area that struggles under the best of circumstances.
And so the flooding has really crippled basic daily life in Gaza.
And it's something we've seen throughout the region, but it's particularly difficult in a place like Gaza because of the way it's set up, because of the amount of people that live in such a small space.
And is there any international help coming or anything like that?
If there is, I'm not aware of it.
That doesn't mean it's not happening, but, you know, it's one of these things.
I'm not sure how quickly international help can arrive.
Just the logistics of getting international help to a region like that poses its own challenges.
So even if it's coming in place, I'm not sure how much impact it can have, because under the best of circumstances it's hard to get equipment and supplies into Gaza.
And now, you know, this affects roads and transportation and everything else.
And so how much that help can arrive and whether it can arrive in a way that's timely enough for those who need it, I'm not sure if it's possible.
Well, thank you very much for your time.
I sure appreciate it.
Oh, it's a pleasure.
Thanks so much.
That is Nancy Youssef from McClatchy Newspapers trying to keep warm in the snow there in Cairo, Egypt.
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