07/31/14 – Nancy Youssef – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, you guys, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show, Scott Horton Show.
First up on the show today is Nancy Youssef from McClatchy Newspapers, normally based out of Cairo, but now back in the States, at least for a little while, I guess.
Welcome back to the show, Nancy.
How are you?
Great.
Great to be with you.
Very happy to have you here.
Appreciate it.
And appreciate your coverage of the Libya story, something that I'm actually kind of glad it doesn't get that much attention, because I fear what might be done if it did get a lot of attention.
But it certainly is a lot of bad news out of there, and we need to know it.
So I appreciate the great work that you're doing.
The last piece, at least, that I found from you on it was U.S. evacuates Libyan embassy amid growing unrest, and if people want to get around the McClatchy paywall, you can find this at miamiherald.com as well.
U.S. evacuates Libyan embassy amid growing unrest.
So I guess, if you'll forgive me for asking such a general question, could you just describe the growing unrest for us, please?
Sure.
What's happened in the western part of Libya was something that was really up until a few months ago exclusive to the east, which was fighting between secular and Islamist militia groups.
So for the past few weeks, we've seen really fierce fighting around Tripoli's main airport.
Nearly every plane there destroyed.
We're talking about billions of dollars' worth of damage between these rival militia groups for control of the airport.
And the fighting has only escalated with every passing week, scores dead every week.
And so for the U.S. and for its embassy staff there, the shutdown of the airport really made it all the more precarious in terms of needing to evacuate embassy personnel.
It made it that much harder, given that the airport was essentially a non-option.
And so in light of this fighting, which some would describe as the civil war, there was an assessment made to evacuate the embassy, destroy any classified documents or take out any classified information, and move all personnel out to neighboring Tunisia.
The U.S. ambassador to Libya, Deborah Jones, is now operating from nearby Malta.
Wow.
Yeah, so it was really the airport was the final straw for him, huh?
But then, so you say some call it a civil war.
It sounds like maybe the question there is, a civil war has got to be more organized than this.
There's so many people on the different battlefields that nobody can even tell how much power any given faction is fighting for at any given moment, it doesn't seem like.
Well, the complicating fact in Libya is that it's not just Islamists versus secularists, it's communities versus communities, cities versus cities.
Remember, each city, major city or big city in Libya has a militia.
This was born out of the 2011 uprising.
And each one now feels it has certain rights to the future of the country, or certain claims to the future government and whatnot.
So it's Islamist versus Islamist, it's East versus West, it's city versus city.
And so while it's not as linear as a civil war, I do think that there are organized factions within it that are fighting one another.
It's just in a sense a multi-front war and various interest groups battling one another throughout the country right now.
Well, so I know the BBC has said there are as many as 1,700 different militias.
I guess obviously some of them would be more major tribal militias and others, smaller factions, that kind of thing.
Can you give us any kind of estimate about that?
I can.
I mean, I think that's as good, you know, it depends on how you define a militia versus one versus another.
Is it three men?
Is it four men?
You know, we're talking about people who are claiming that there's no sort of agreed upon definition right in terms of what constitutes a militia.
And because there's no real national force, we're talking about neighborhoods creating their own militias, streets creating their own militias.
So it gets down to such a micro level.
The ones that are sort of most important, though, are the ones that control big cities like Zaytan and Misurata in the West where we've seen them battle it out for control of the airport.
So that's not out of the realm of possibility, 1,700, but the ones that matter are the ones that were really instrumental in the 2011 uprising.
And then, so that's, is that Ansar al-Sharia?
How powerful are they compared to some of the others?
Well, they're very powerful, and in fact, today, they declared that they had taken formally control of Benghazi, the biggest city in the East, the second biggest city in Libya, a city that this country has come to know because of the 2012 attack that killed the U.S. ambassador at the time, Chris Stevens, along with three other Americans.
And so just today, Ansar al-Sharia declared itself in control of the city.
Beyond the militia, they're really one of the most powerful factions in Libya, and not only provide security forces, but social services, control hospitals, control health care, control services like trash pickups, so they're much bigger than sort of when we think of militias as sort of a group that provides security.
Their breadth of control is much wider than almost any other faction in Libya, and the fact that they've declared control today of Benghazi is a big development because it marks a real big loss for Khalifa Heftar, who was the secular commander who had started this Operation Dignity a couple months ago, trying to wrest control of the East away from the Islamists, and it appears, based on today's announcement, that he has resoundingly lost that battle and the Islamists have regained control of the East.
And so what can you tell us about Heftar?
Well, I guess let me be more specific.
Is it your impression that this guy is working for the CIA, that this is their attempted move to marginalize the Islamists and take back over this revolution here, or is he just off on his own here, or what?
That's a great question.
I mean, certainly amongst the Libyans, the presumption is that he's a CIA operative.
He lived in Northern Virginia, had a number of speeding violations while he was here, and was believed to be a CIA operative at the time.
The thing that gives me some pause about whether he's currently working for the CIA is that the United States doesn't seem to have any real control over him, and he seems to be a bit of a loose cannon that for somebody who, if he were sort of a proper CIA operative, one would think would have more control and have a more organized movement than he's had.
But that label, that patina of being a CIA operative, I think has hurt his efforts to rally support around him and his efforts to contain the Islamist threat in Libya, even as so many Libyans oppose what groups like Ansar Sharia are doing.
I think at the same time, they don't trust Khalifa Heftar and his motives and those who back him.
And so now, I guess, as far as the different factions in Tripoli, could you compare his power relative to Ansar al-Sharia's power in Benghazi?
Are they sort of equal but separate at this point?
Or is their power much more than his, you think?
Is Ansar Sharia stronger than Heftar?
Yeah.
Given today's developments, I think it's fair to say that they are, because they were battling Heftar's forces quite aggressively for the past two months for control of Benghazi.
And they have declared themselves the unabashed winners of the East.
Oh, I'm sorry.
I guess I didn't really realize he was the major force they were resisting there.
But what about Heftar's power back in Tripoli?
Well, so one of the reasons we're seeing the battles at the airport are groups that were galvanized by Heftar, the sort of secular forces, and these Islamist forces who had retained control.
So when Heftar started this operation about two months ago, there was a feeling that he had emboldened some of these secular groups to go back and try to take back control of the airport from the Islamists.
So that's sort of been his impact, if you will, on the West primarily.
A lot of the fighting that we're seeing there was sort of instigated by his push in the East to try to take back the country from the Islamists.
Nancy Yousef from McClatchy Newspapers, and you can also find her at miamiherald.com.
U.S. evacuates Libyan embassy amid growing unrest.
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All right, you guys, welcome back to the show here.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show, The Scott Horton Show on Liberty Radio Network.
I'm talking with Nancy Yousef from McClatchy Newspapers.
Usually she reports out of Cairo, but is back in the States here.
And this article is called U.S. Evacuates Libyan Embassy Amid Growing Unrest.
And boy, talk about unrest.
Now, one sign of actual stability, possibly, I think, Nancy, was that they did have some kind of parliamentary election just in the last few weeks.
Did that just make matters worse, or was there much participation in that election?
I don't know if it made matters worse, but one of the things to remember is that, you know, Libya's a relatively young state.
Sort of the modern version that we know is from 1951.
Of course, 42 years of that was under Gaddafi.
And so the state sort of systems are quite weak.
And what we've discovered is essentially there's really no functioning national government in Libya.
And so while there are parliamentary elections, some would argue that it made things worse because Islamist is so badly, and they were therefore emboldened to perhaps turn to violence as a means to get their voice out.
But either way, the state itself has been really quite weak since Gaddafi's fall.
I mean, oftentimes I will talk to someone in Tripoli and ask them about something happening in Benghazi, and they have no idea what's going on, because it's in another part of the country.
And we're talking about ministers, and these aren't just low-level government ministers, commanders, people who presumably would know basic things that are happening in other parts of the country.
All right.
Now, I know that, you know, Libya was actually only even created after World War II, and that it was originally three states with sort of, you know, the east, the west, and the south there.
And I won't try to pronounce the different states, because I'll get it all wrong.
But my question is, is it kind of an ethnic thing?
Like, it's more Berbers in the west and Arabs in the east, something like that?
Or is it just tribal last name kind of differences, or what?
It's a little bit of both.
But what's emerged is, it's also very cultural.
I mean, you really get the sense that you're in a different country when you're in eastern Libya than you are in western.
And it was only exacerbated by Gaddafi himself, because he put more resources into the west where the capital is and where he lived, primarily.
There was a sense of distrust of the east and the south, and so they didn't get the kinds of resources that they once would have presumably gotten if it were operating as one country.
And so the sort of natural divisions were there, and they were only exaggerated by Gaddafi's rules.
So it's the combination of the two that has complicated this effort to think of a unified Libyan state.
All right, now, your former colleague, David Enders, back in 2011 and in 2012, reported from McClatchy about anti-black pogroms.
And I guess especially blacks from Misrata, sub-Saharan Africans, that is, were rounded up, many of them killed, and David reported from a refugee camp where there were mass rapes going on nightly back then, that kind of thing.
And yet we hear so little about, well, whatever happened to the blacks of western Libya anyway?
Are they alive?
It's a great question.
I mean, a community that's been ostracized in Libya throughout its history, but particularly since the fall of the regime, and that doesn't mean that Gaddafi was some kind of defender, but that there was law and order, or at least the fear of the state that sort of kept things in check.
And that's all but dissipated in Libya now.
And so the persecution of black Africans in Libya continues, but a lot have left the country altogether or are being detained, and so it's very hard to get any real assessment, because the country is in such an unstable state that even getting to places that we as journalists could get to six months ago is simply a non-option now.
Even Benghazi itself has become a no-go zone for many journalists because of the Islamist control of it.
So it's so hard to get an assessment of what's happening to black Africans, because as it is, they were ostracized in Libya, and now we're trying to operate under a very dangerous security situation.
Yeah.
It was one of those terrible witch hunt kind of things I remember, too.
They talked about how, well, Gaddafi didn't really have much of a military, mostly just his private Gestapo, and a lot of times he would hire mercenaries, and oftentimes from sub-Saharan Africa.
But then that got completely turned around and conflated, where all black Africans are at least suspected of being hired mercenaries for Gaddafi, even though most of them are just day laborers and maybe even lower on the economic ladder than that.
They're nobodies, but rounded up as though they're the oppressors and the overlords under Gaddafi.
That's exactly right.
I mean, and the thing is, one of the things, Libya is a relatively small state in terms of population.
We're talking somewhere between four to six million, and so many workers left during the 2000 uprising.
There were Filipinos, there were Egyptians, and you would go to the border and see hundreds, if not thousands, of people trying to get out of the country.
But the sub-Saharan Africans who were there had the hardest time getting out of the country, because they were essentially chased by Libyans almost immediately after the uprising began because of that association that you mentioned, that they were seen as fighters on behalf of Gaddafi in the war.
Chad and other conflicts at Gaddafi had started to serve his own interests rather than a national one, or that essentially, from the mainstream Libyan perspective, harmed the state.
All right.
Now, is it okay if I ask you about American intervention over there?
Sure.
Yes, it is okay.
You can say you don't know whenever you don't know.
But Seymour Hersh seemed to report that, if I remember it right, that really after the Benghazi attack of September 11, 2012, when Ambassador Stevens was killed, that the covert support for the mujahideen and funneling guns and fighters to Syria, that that operation basically stopped then.
And I know Eli Lake, although he reported a thing for the Daily Beast about, I don't know, a couple of months ago that said that there was a training base where special forces were training up, you know, so-called Libyan army troops.
But then it got raided and robbed in the middle of the night one night, and they went ahead and pulled out from there.
And that was over closer to Tripoli, I believe.
But anyway, I was just wondering, you know, that's what I think I know about it.
Can you kind of fill in, you know, what you know about the extent of American involvement there in terms of CIA special forces either going on missions or training up the military, working with the government over there, any of that kind of thing?
Well, there was talk about sending Libyans, I believe it was to Romania, but don't hold me to that, to do training missions, but it always gets thwarted.
And now the U.S. is in this difficult position of, who is it that you support?
It's certainly, from the U.S. perspective, not Islamist.
And Hiftar and his forces have proven to be ineffectual and, frankly, unpredictable.
And so the challenge is, who do you train, who do you trust to train, and who would lead them?
And so there's an absence of sort of a reliable partner from the U.S. perspective, but it's only become increasingly harder to carry up those efforts to train and create a national Libyan force.
And incidentally, even if that were possible, there is no real Libyan government to guide them.
So it only leaves the country susceptible to these disparate forces that are armed and those arms getting into the wrong hands.
So but anyway, you're saying, though, that the U.S. government also possesses that same wisdom you just said, and so therefore, they're really reluctant to intervene any more than they already have?
Well, yeah, I...
That just sounds amazing.
Yeah.
How does one intervene?
To what end?
Who does one support?
And does...
Right, but that never stopped them before, Nancy.
That's all I'm saying.
Well, and, you know, the thing is, the interest...
I mean, I was there in 2011, before the U.S. intervention and after it.
And the thing is, one got the sense that it was really under pressure from Britain and France, in particular.to intervene, their fear of cut-off oil production, their fear of Libyan refugees coming through their borders, that there was...
That it was done as much for the Allies as it was for this idea of democracy, promotion in the region.
And now, again, there's disagreement about how to proceed.
What's interesting is, we're not hearing any effort by France or the NATO Allies, who were so eager to intervene in 2011, to do so again now, that they're much more reticent.
And so, that is to say, in hindsight, I think one could argue that U.S. intervention the first time was quite reticent.
And now, it's even more so, given where things have gone in just three years.
Yeah.
Well, that's the best news I've heard all week, really.
It seems I'm amazed daily when I hear very mainstream, very official, very establishment D.C. and New York voices sounding just like me on these same questions about intervening further in Iraq, too.
That no, really, these lessons have been learned.
There's just no way around it.
We just can't do it.
I would have guessed that they would be, you know, they'll stand up, we'll stand down, and all that, you know, George Bush 2005 in Iraq type rhetoric at this point, and mission at this point in the Libya crisis.
I mean, it was that obvious before the war that, you know, the whole state will be destroyed by this and will have to be replaced somehow.
And the fact that they haven't gone full scale toward that kind of nation building, I think, is incredible.
And I'm so grateful for it.
It could only make matters that much worse, but I'm glad to know that they think that that really is the policy now, is to just back off, sounds like.
Yeah.
Well, anyway, so thank you so much for your time.
It's great to talk to you again, Nancy.
Great to talk to you.
Appreciate it.
That's Nancy Yousef from McClatchy Newspapers, McClatchyDC.com.
And if you get stuck behind the paywall, go check her out at MiamiHerald.com.
They reprint all of it there, too.
It's U.S. Evacuates Libyan Embassy Amid Growing Unrest.
We'll be right back.
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