For KPFK 90.7 FM in Los Angeles, I'm Scott Horton.
This is Anti-War Radio.
And this is my interview recorded earlier this afternoon of Jonathan S. Landay, National Security Correspondent for McClatchy Newspapers at McClatchyDC.com.
All right, so let's talk about what's going on in Libya.
First of all, I'd like to spend the first part of this interview talking actually about Libya, and then we'll try to hopefully get into the politics of, you know, America's role in this later on.
But I wonder if you could sort of give us a sketch of how much of Libya is under the control of the opposition at this point, whether it's just a civil war, or is that going too far to say how strong Qaddafi remains, that sort of landscape?
Yeah, I would call it a civil war.
I actually had a bit of a debate with one of my editors about that.
But I would call it a civil war.
I don't know how you couldn't.
The fact is that a lot of his army has defected, including some of his top commanders, and so you have parts of the government.
You've had the senior leaders in the government, his former interior minister, his former justice minister, going to the rebel side.
So in my book, that meets the criteria for civil war.
As far as the way things are shaking out, of course, the situation is pretty hard to read from afar, and even there, given the fact that it's hard for journalists, it's hard for – we have a person on the ground there in the east – it's hard for them to move around.
But I think one can say generally the following.
First of all, one has to understand that most of the population of Libya, which is about 6.4 million people, live along the coast.
That is the Gulf of Sidra, which is an extension of the Mediterranean, because much of the rest of the country is desert, is Sahara Desert.
And indeed, there are parts of the country where there's less than one person per square mile living.
And so, as I said, most of the population lives in the vicinity of the coast.
The entire part of the wing of the eastern coast, that is the eastern coast of the Gulf of Sidra, is present under the control of the opposition, of the rebels.
And indeed, my colleague Nancy Youssef, who's on the ground there, is reporting that a government attack on a major oil refinery town, slightly inland called Ras Lanouf, failed today.
And indeed, the rebels have moved out of Ras Lanouf, after recapturing it, about 35 miles towards a town called Sirte, which is Gaddafi's hometown.
Well, it's called his hometown.
He's from that region.
It is a town that he has lavished largesse from Libya's oil earnings on.
And it was sort of this dusty back road, and now is very, very hard-line Gaddafi.
It sits approximately halfway between the eastern territory that's under the control of the rebels and the western side of Libya, the region known as Tripolitania.
Much of Tripolitania is in Gaddafi's hands, including the capital of Tripoli.
But there are two major towns.
The third largest town in the country, called Misrata, and the fourth largest town in the country, I should say city in the country, a place called Zawiya, are surrounded by Gaddafi's forces.
They rebelled against Gaddafi.
They are in the hands of the opposition, and there was fighting around both today.
And if Gaddafi wants to try and regain control of Saranaika, which is the region of the east, going all the way to the Egyptian border, he's going to have to first secure the west, because else he will be fighting a two-front war.
And so he's going to have to recover these two cities, Misrata and Zawiya, if he wants to then move against the east.
And it doesn't appear as if he's able to do that.
Well, does he have naval forces at all?
I believe that Libya does have a somewhat decrepit navy, one that has been used.
There has been shelling from ships reported in some of these battles, but they're not enough to swing the tide.
Of course, what he seems to be trying to do is impose these blockades, these sieges on both of these towns, cities, sorry.
Zawiya is a city of approximately 100,000 people, and Misrata is a city of approximately 300,000 people.
He seems to be trying to actually starve them out.
I talked to a doctor in the emergency hospital in the trauma center in Zawiya about two hours ago, and he actually said they still have a lot of supplies.
He's not short of supplies right now.
But, of course, they're concerned.
People in the city that we talk to on a regular basis are concerned about the future.
I talked to a gentleman there, a fighter there, about three days ago, who said they have about two weeks of food and medicines on hand in Zawiya.
All right.
Now, I wonder about a few things that you talked about there.
First of all, when you talked about Tripoli really still being the stronghold there, where Qaddafi still has power, I had also read that there have been tens of thousands of people peacefully protesting in the streets of Tripoli.
So I wonder whether those people all have just fled since then, or is that still going on at all, or everybody's staying home in fear?
No, no.
He's got that city locked down.
I mean, there's no doubt there was an attempt last Friday.
The last real big, really big protests that were attempted were last Friday.
When people get out of the noon Friday prayer, they get out of the mosques and they go into the streets.
Well, that didn't happen today.
He had that place pretty well locked down.
My understanding is that a lot of foreign press were in there, were confined to their hotels.
Now, there was an attempt to hold a demonstration in a place about 20 miles southeast of Tripoli, a town called Tejora.
And we've been talking to people there regularly.
There was a lot of trouble there last Friday.
There were people who were shot in the streets by the security forces.
But today, and there was international press on hand today, they came out of the mosque, according to the gentleman I talked to.
And while the international press were there, not much happened.
But as international reporters started to leave, the security forces started firing tear gas at the crowd and live fire in the air and broke it up.
And people are now at home.
The town is under lockdown as well.
All right.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's Antiwar Radio.
I'm talking with Jonathan Landay from McClatchy Newspapers.
That's McClatchyDC.com.
And I wonder if you could give us some kind of percentage, 60-40 type split over who is in charge of how much military power.
Because, you know, when you talk about that city, Zawiya, being basically surrounded, you talked about their supplies.
But I wonder if you know numbers of military forces that they have.
And do they have the ability to withstand the assault at the hands of Qaddafi's forces?
No one really knows that answer, Scott.
I mean, we know that troops have gone over, went over to the rebels.
We know that military commanders went over.
In fact, one of those military commanders was killed in Zawiya today is our understanding.
But it's hard to say what the numbers are because one of the things you have to remember is that, like other autocrats in that part of the world, and I would draw a parallel between Qaddafi, in this regard anyway, and the regime in Iran, they don't trust their armies.
Don't forget Qaddafi was a captain in the Libyan army when he and a bunch of other officers staged essentially a bloodless coup in 1969.
And coups are made by armies, for the most part.
And so what he did is what the regime in Iran did, which was create kind of like a parallel security force of loyalists, who get better pay, better weapons, better accommodation, better perks in return for their loyalty to the regime.
In this case, his security forces, his parallel security forces are commanded by his sons, one of his sons anyway, Qamis.
And they also include the secret police.
And it's rather like the Islamic Republic Guard in Iran, which is totally loyal to Ayatollah Khamenei.
They even have their own air force and their own navy, their own army, their own intelligence service, because the regime doesn't trust the army.
And that's the way it was in Libya as well.
We know that a number of the army troops, a number of army commanders went over in the east.
I've seen photographs on the web, for instance, of the rebels in this other town I talked about, Misrata, last week.
And they were pretty heavily armed.
They've got at least, I saw at least one tank.
I saw they had mortars, heavy mortars.
They had mobile anti-aircraft artillery units.
They had recoilless rifles.
So they're pretty well armed.
But, of course, they're surrounded.
And the question is, how much ammunition do they have to hold out?
Well, you know, it seemed at first as though, wow, the momentum is on the side of the rebels.
Is that changing or is it still just a matter of time, you think?
Because it's not, I mean, you're right that you're pointing out these cities that are surrounded right now, but they're still, you know, the free east or whatever for the rebels to regroup and stage attacks from, right?
Well, the thing is, a couple of things.
One is that our reporter in Benghazi, which is sort of like the center, it's the largest, second largest city in the country.
It's where the uprising began.
It's where kind of the rebel leadership, such that it is, at least some of the leadership is located.
And she says that, and this is our reporter, Nancy Yusuf, says that there are still pro-Qaddafi elements in Benghazi.
And so they probably are in some of these other towns.
But essentially what seems to be taking place here, at least over the last couple of days, has been rather an impasse where Qaddafi's forces haven't been strong enough to overrun the defenses of these rebellious towns, nor are they strong enough to mount offensives into the east, and vice versa.
The rebels, who don't have a central leadership, you know, are a pretty motley bunch armed with a motley collection of weapons.
I mean, all the way from tanks to shotguns and meat cleavers.
They don't seem to be strong enough to move against the territory held by Qaddafi, although Nancy is now telling us that they have advanced 35 miles out of the oil town where the fighting was taking place today, Ras Lanuf, in the direction of Sirte, and Sirte is Qaddafi's hometown.
So we're going to have to wait and see, but this is the first sort of offensive, if you will, by the opposition of any significance.
All right.
Now, you mentioned that a lot of officers and important people have defected from the Qaddafi government.
Are they basically the leaders of the opposition?
And I guess I'm under the impression that there never really was allowed in Libyan society very powerful institutions separate from whatever passed for the state there in the first place, and I wonder whether, you know, is it possible that people are forming political parties now?
Do they have leaders that are coming to the forefront and working with the generals on what to do next, that kind of thing?
I forget the political parties.
It's way too early for that.
There were none before.
Right, exactly.
In fact, if you tried to form a political party, it was a crime punishable by death under the Qaddafi regime.
But what it seems to be happening is, I mean, they are putting feelers out to each other, our understanding is, for the most part, you had individuals, prominent citizens, joining with military defectors in each of these towns and take over each of these towns, and then they formed kind of leadership councils that looked after various aspects of whether it was the defense of the town or whether it was services, political leadership, that kind of thing has been going on.
But there is no central leadership of this revolt.
Yeah, well, that could be to their advantage in a way, but then again...
But it doesn't make for very... if you're fighting a war, it doesn't make for a very effective command.
You need to have, you know, somebody in charge who's giving orders.
Well, I mean, but the military guys are still keeping their ranks when they're coming over, right?
Well, that's true, but there's no central command.
I mean, there's no central commander who says, here's what I want my forces to do.
When there have been these attacks on these towns, essentially what you've had is word of mouth going out, people jumping in cars and streaming higgledy-piggledy towards these towns that have been under attack and effectively pushing back these attacks.
But there doesn't seem to be any central command in all of this.
Okay, so now let's talk a little bit about the American politics of this, because, of course, this has to be all about us, right?
Well, you know, the fact is you've got to think about the following.
You have towns, for instance, like the two I talked about, where there's approximately 400,000 people surrounded, and there's only one country in the world that is capable of at least putting together an effective, efficient, large-scale humanitarian operation to prevent large-scale starvation and to provide medical support for the many, many injured that are there, and that's the United States.
What about the European Union?
They don't have the list capability.
Listen, when you look at all of the, for instance, you know, any of the major peacekeeping operations, even in Bosnia, even though that was a while ago, even in Bosnia the United States had to provide the list, the air list, the logistics list for the Europeans.
It took, I'm trying to remember which army it was, I believe the Hungarian army, but there was a unit, I can't remember exactly which one it was, that was based in Hungary, which is right next door to former Yugoslavia, three weeks to move into Yugoslavia as part of a peacekeeping operation.
The fact is that the United States is the only country in the world that has the air lift and the sea lift that is required.
I can only point to you in the recent past with the terrible flooding that took place last year in Pakistan, and the country that provided the air lift and the sea lift, that was the United States.
So when it comes to humanitarian operations, put aside any kind of military involvement, the fact is that no one else has the capability that the United States has.
Now the administration has been doing everything it can to stay kind of away from this crisis in terms of intervention.
And the fact is that I think the pressure may be building, beginning to build, on the administration to do more than just talk about how Gaddafi's got to leave and imposing sanctions, which for the most part are largely symbolic, because the more you have air attacks and attacks by armored forces on cities with people in it, the worse the conditions get.
And the fact is that the United States, you're right, there is a huge risk to the United States politically to be getting involved in yet another conflict in the Muslim world.
But at the same time, if it was to involve something like humanitarian aid, that is something that could buy a lot of very badly needed goodwill for the United States in the Muslim world, on the Arab street, because the sympathy for the rebels among ordinary people in that part of the world is extremely high.
Well, you know, it's easy to imagine a Berlin airlift kind of thing, but as Robert Gates was telling the Congress, call a spade a spade.
If you're going to do a no-fly zone, you're going to have to have one of those in order to deliver the humanitarian aid, for example, and that means war.
That means we have to bomb the hell out of them so they can't shoot down our humanitarian aid.
No, that's not necessarily true.
You do what you do.
I was talking to a former senior military official a few minutes ago who said, no, you don't need to do that.
What you do is you declare air corridors.
You tell Mr. Gaddafi, we are establishing a humanitarian supply air corridor over these parts of your country.
We will not fly armed aircraft into these corridors.
We intend solely to fly, make humanitarian flights by unarmed planes into these areas to drop food and medicine.
But if we see that you are going to try and attack our planes, then we will take military action.
But there are ways of doing this that don't necessarily involve, right away anyway, taking military action against Gaddafi.
Well, as you say, there are other things to consider, such as the rest of our position in the Middle East and in this revolution.
That's right.
I remember covering the beginning of the war in Bosnia when the people there had been listening to the United States since the end of World War II, talking about freedom and democracy and yearning for the freedom and democracy that we were preaching.
And then when they found themselves under attack, seeing the United States do nothing, that engendered a huge amount of negativity and bad will against the United States and accusations that the United States was hypocritical.
And that's the kind of thing that groups like Al-Qaeda and others can turn around and throw back at the United States, saying, look, you preach a good message, but you don't put your money where your mouth is.
And essentially, you do what you did in Iraq after the 1991 war, when you encouraged uprisings by the Shiites in the south and the Kurds in the north.
You turned around and walked away, and there was mass slaughter.
That's something that the United States, I don't think, can risk having happen again in the Arab world, given all of the negative fallout from the Iraq invasion and things like Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.
Yeah, but isn't that looking at Libya just in a vacuum, where it's not the case that every dictator from Morocco to Iraq, at least, is an American-backed dictator in the form of Ben Ali or Hosni Mubarak or the king in Bahrain or Saleh in Yemen?
In Libya, we're on the side of the people, but in all the rest of these, we arm and finance their dictators?
This is an administration that seems to be moving away from what has been, as you point out, an American policy for decades, where the United States policy has favored stability provided by these autocrats over the denial of rights to their people.
But that's something that seems to be changing.
Look, history is not static.
History moves.
Things develop.
The United States appears to be redefining its position vis-à-vis that part of the world.
When you have that kind of thing going on, when you have people in the leadership of the rebels who tell our correspondent today that they want the United States to impose a no-fly zone, well, those are things that kind of change those calculations.
Well, yeah, but in Spiegel right now, it says if the Americans come, they would steal our revolution.
That's somebody else in the same opposition.
That's what some people say.
And what they mean is, I think what they mean is that we don't want American troops on the ground.
But I know that today, the people in the leadership in Benghazi are telling our correspondent, we need your no-fly zone.
Well, but I thought there was no leadership.
There is in Benghazi.
There is a self-declared government there.
But the question is, it's not one that has control over anything except Benghazi.
Or speaks for anyone but themselves.
But that's true.
I mean, look, if there was a big crackdown against dissent in Mongolia, should America intervene in Mongolia to protect the people from their government there?
Is there a limit at all for where America ought to intervene in other countries' internal affairs?
You raise an absolutely perfect point.
Absolutely.
But guess what?
Every time this kind of thing happens, people turn around and say, America, where are you?
And I think what I'm hearing from you is that we should stay out.
Okay, fine.
Then I'd like to hear what you have to say when 300,000 people find themselves surrounded and the targets of massacres by a regime as virulent as Qaddafi's.
Should we just sit there and let that happen?
Put yourself in President Obama's shoes, where he delivers this speech, unprecedented speech, in Cairo two years ago, talking about how we want to change this relationship.
The last eight years is not what the United States is all about.
We don't intend to continue the way things have been in the past, and we want to rebuild our relationship with the Arab world.
Well, again, I ask you the question.
If Qaddafi's people break through the defensive lines in Zawiya and begin massacring the people there, you as the President of the United States would simply sit there and let that happen?
Yeah, because I would think the opposite is, as soon as he intervenes, we're going to have a war there, and the Americans are going to end up killing a lot more than that.
It'll be another Sunni Muslim Arab country we've invaded to fulfill the script of bin Laden, and it'll make our entire terror war last another generation.
Well, it's not a Sunni country, first of all.
I mean, it's a Shiite country.
Sorry, you're right.
It's a Sunni country.
But right now, no one's talking about American boots on the ground.
And you're right.
The kind of calculation you're talking about is one that carries very, very serious consequences.
But, again, the question that I put to you is you would be willing to sit out the massacre of thousands of people.
Talk about what kind of recruitment tool and propaganda tool that would be in the hands of al-Qaeda.
Look, I mean, right now we're fighting wars in Afghanistan and somewhat still in Iraq in order to protect the governments we've installed in power there.
In Afghanistan, as you report, there are thousands of people dying at the hands of the Americans.
How come Libya is this example?
It's like you're saying nothing's happened since the Berlin airlift.
America is not the face of violence in the Middle East, the face of dictatorship.
We're the force of the democratic revolution.
It doesn't always happen the way that you're pointing out.
I would point out to you the example of Bosnia.
I would point out to you the example of Kosovo.
In both places, there was active American intervention, first in the form of humanitarian assistance and then in the form of no-fly zones and warnings.
And, in fact, in the case of Kosovo, airstrikes by NATO.
But guess what?
They turned the country over to the KLA.
Go talk to the people there and ask them what they prefer.
Well, I guess I should.
The ones who didn't get their organs stolen in the middle of the night.
I was there.
I was with the KLA, and I went across the border with the KLA, and I went back into the country with the 400,000 people who had been ethically cleansed out of it.
The only place overseas where George Bush was popular or any American president as popular as Kosovo.
Well, I mean, that speeds volumes itself, doesn't it?
Albania as well.
But my point being that you can't assign, you can't generalize about the consequences of intervention.
Every case is its own case.
And the fact is that when we first went into Afghanistan, and I was there too when we first went into Afghanistan, we were the first foreign power in Afghan history to be welcomed.
I mean, that was the only place where they threw, you know, they didn't throw flowers and candy at our troops in Iraq, but they did in Afghanistan.
And it was the subsequent squandering of that opportunity by the Bush administration that has left us in the pickle that we are in today in Afghanistan.
It didn't start that way.
All right.
Well, and I guess where we differ is I would just predict that the next intervention will be much more like that than your example of Kosovo.
But, you know, we can certainly disagree.
No, my prediction is that it will actually, what we'll actually see, I believe, is a humanitarian operation.
That's what I believe.
I don't believe we're going to see a no-fly zone.
Not right away.
I believe because they're trying to stay away from that because they don't want to pick sides.
But, you know, which is because, as you point out quite correctly, the American military says that imposing a no-fly zone would require us actually attacking Gaddafi.
But if you launch a humanitarian operation and what happens if you actually launch it?
I mean, there are lots of ways of doing this where the United States isn't directly involved.
For instance, the Arab League two days ago suggested that it could oversee a no-fly zone over Libya.
Well, there's a good idea.
You know, the Egyptians have got one of the best Arab air force in the Arab world.
They have F-16s and top flight pilots.
So do the Saudis.
So how about the United States stepping back, perhaps providing technical assistance and intelligence and guidance, but let the Arabs take the lead?
That's one way of doing it.
So all I'm saying is there are many ways of going about this kind of thing where we don't have to be the people taking the lead.
We don't have to be the people who are doing the shooting.
It gains you, I mean, the potential for gaining enormous goodwill in a part of the world where we don't have a lot is really, the potential there is quite high.
All right.
Well, I'm sorry to cut you off there, but I'll give you the last word.
We're out of time.
Thank you very much, everybody.
It's Jonathan Eslande, award-winning reporter for McClatchy Newspapers.
That's McClatchyDC.com.
And he and Oren Strobel and Nancy Youssef and the crew do a lot of great reporting there.
Thank you very much for your time.
My pleasure.
All right, y'all.
That has been anti-war radio for this evening.
We'll be back at our regular time, 630 to 7, next Friday here on KPFK 90.7 FM in Los Angeles.
