Its Official! al-Qaeda Joins Libyan Fighting. Now Which Side Are We On Again?

[Just Win]

Help me out on this one. Which side did President Obama say we were supporting in this "Kinetic Military Action?"


Link to full article = http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/8407047/Libyan-rebel-commander-admits-his-fighters-have-al-Qaeda-links.html

In an interview with the Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore, Mr al-Hasidi admitted that he had recruited "around 25" men from the Derna area in eastern Libya to fight against coalition troops in Iraq. Some of them, he said, are "today are on the front lines in Adjabiya".

Mr al-Hasidi insisted his fighters "are patriots and good Muslims, not terrorists," but added that the "members of al-Qaeda are also good Muslims and are fighting against the invader".

His revelations came even as Idriss Deby Itno, Chad's president, said al-Qaeda had managed to pillage military arsenals in the Libyan rebel zone and acquired arms, "including surface-to-air missiles, which were then smuggled into their sanctuaries".

Mr al-Hasidi admitted he had earlier fought against "the foreign invasion" in Afghanistan, before being "captured in 2002 in Peshwar, in Pakistan". He was later handed over to the US, and then held in Libya before being released in 2008.

US and British government sources said Mr al-Hasidi was a member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, or LIFG, which killed dozens of Libyan troops in guerrilla attacks around Derna and Benghazi in 1995 and 1996.

[The One Man Gang]

Look, it's not the fighters.

The key asset AQ brings to the table in all these "popular uprisings" is C³: Command, Control and Communications.  The reason most uprisings fail is that the government forces (Army, Police, etc.) have C³ assets and the rebels don't.  Therefore the government forces can co-ordinate their response and break up the rebels into small groups that can more easily be neutralized, co-opted or liquidated.  

The Tweets and other social media getting so much airplay are only part of the Communications leg: someone has to be able to decide what to do with the information.  The other two "C's" are as, if not more, vital to the ultimate outcome. One example comes to mind:  During the Mogadishu firefight back in '93, AQ was there using the Arab "Afghans" (Islamist fighters who had learned their skills against the Soviets) as small-unit commanders putting the Somalis (who were doing most of the shooting and dying on the Islamist side) where they could be most effective.  One aspect of that fight as well was a TOTAL breakdown of the AMERICAN C³ system where tactical decisions had to be referred to CENTCOM and beyond before other assets (fire-support, re-inforcements, etc) could be committed to the fight.  The Rangers were literally left out on their own for most of the fight because the local American commander lacked the authority to make a tactical decision. I understand the system has gotten WORSE since then.

There is a fascinating account of the AQ effort in Somalia in Yosef Bodansky's book, Bin Laden: the Man Who Declared War on America.  For the American side, of course, there is "Blackhawk Down,"  the book, not the movie.

Having provided the C³ for the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt it is no surprise that AQ (yes, Virginia, the Muslim Brotherhood is part of AQ - Egyptian Sayyid Qutb is one of the philosophical foundations of modern Islamist thought and a founder of the MB) is now flexing its muscle in a quid pro quo with the MB and the Egyptian Army.  

On look at the map shows Libya to be squarely between Tunisia and Egypt.  It would be far more shocking if AQ were NOT in this up to their eyeballs.