US-Backed Terrorists in Syria Responsible for Ambassador’s Death in Libya.
Tony Cartalucci, Contributor
Activist Post
The US has sworn to “make pay” those responsible for the death of US Ambassador Christopher Stevens. In reality, those responsible for Stevens’ death are fully armed, funded, trained, and coordinating with NATO special forces in Libya, across North Africa, and in Syria.
Image: Ambassador Stevens (right, wearing a blue tie) had been in Benghazi, Libya since March 2011. He played a leading role in coordinating the violent subversion of Libya by listed terrorist organizations before being named “US Ambassador” to Libya. Despite Libya’s capital being located over 400 miles west in Tripoli, Stevens was based out of Benghazi, the 30 year epicenter of terrorist extremism and Al Qaeda in Libya. Recent attacks on US embassies were designed to give “street credit” to sectarian extremists who are increasingly seen internationally as mercenary proxies of US-Saudi-Israeli foreign policy – Stevens’ death was most likely an accident.
The embassy attacks were tacitly supported by the respective client-regimes recently installed by US political and military destabilization, and were designed to reestablish an adversarial narrative to counter growing public awareness of the US’ use of terrorist proxies, and specifically, Al Qaeda in nations like Libya, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. We are now expected to believe that Egypt’s new dictator Mohamed Morsi, and the terrorists of Libya whom the US is right now arming and supporting in Syria, are once again our implacable enemies.
In all likelihood, those behind the attacks on the embassies intended the violence to be limited in scope, and without any high-profile deaths – designed simply to lend sorely lacking legitimacy to America’s growing list of client-states. Ambassador Stevens apparently was caught in smoke while escaping from the US consulate in Benghazi, and died of asphyxiation – a victim of unforeseen circumstances, not the victim of a targeted assassination. However, with a high-ranking US diplomat dead in Libya, in Benghazi, the very den of Al Qaeda, leaves the United States and its foreign policy, especially in regards to Syria, in tatters.
US Support of Terrorism in Libya Stretches Back Three Decades
The details of the plan were sketchy, but it seemed to be a classic CIA destabilization campaign. One element was a ‘disinformation’ program designed to embarrass Kaddafi and his government. Another was the creation of a ‘counter government’ to challenge his claim to national leadership. A third — potentially the most risky — was an escalating paramilitary campaign, probably by disaffected Libyan nationals, to blow up bridges, conduct small-scale guerrilla operations and demonstrate that Kaddafi was opposed by an indigenous political force. – Newsweek, “A Plan to Overthrow Kaddafi,” August 3, 1981
The Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), along with its affiliates and predecessors, have been armed, trained, its leaders coddled and supported by the West for over 30 years. One of these predecessors, the US-CIA backed National Front for the Salvation of Libya (NFSL) made multiple attempts to assassinate Qaddafi and initiate armed rebellion throughout Libya during the 1980s.
Many of these fighters would also line the US-Saudi created front, Al Qaeda, when first it was conceived in the mountains of Afghanistan in the 1980s. Most of these fighters lived and operated from Libya’s eastern region of Cyrenaica, and in particular, the cities of Benghazi and Darnah.
The US Army’s West Point Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) noted in its report, “Al-Qa’ida’s Foreign Fighters in Iraq,” that these same fighters, drawn in particular from Benghazi and Darnah, would then move on to fighting US troops in both Afghanistan starting in 2001, and Iraq beginning in 2003, as well as contributing to the sectarian violence that made up the backbone of Iraq’s so-called “civil war.”
Whether or not their affiliation with Al Qaeda was official throughout the last 3 decades, the CTC’s report confirms that by 2007, an announced merger was made:
The apparent surge in Libyan recruits traveling to Iraq may be linked the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group’s (LIFG) increasingly cooperative relationship with al‐Qa’ida, which culminated in the LIFG officially joining al‐Qa’ida on November 3, 2007. (page 9, .pdf)
It would seem unthinkable then that the US would pick what was the epicenter of terrorism in Libya to make contacts with militants who had carried out three decades of terrorism and had even fought directly with US troops across multiple theaters of war – especially after these terrorists officially announced their merger with Al Qaeda. But that is exactly what the United States did.
Starting in March 2011, US President Barack Obama appointed Christopher Stevens as “Special Representative to the Libyan Transitional National Council,” and sent him to Benghazi to coordinate US military, diplomatic, and financial support to a “counter government” constituted from Cyrenaica’s Al Qaeda terror battalions and a cadre of US-educated, politically cultivated proxies across the “National Transitional Council” (NTC).
Eventually, Stevens’ mission would become a success. NATO-backed terrorists overran the Libyan government, overthrowing it in Tripoli, brutalizing the cities of Bani Walid and Sirte – with the help of several months of aerial bombardment from NATO – and exterminating or exiling the entire population (10,000 to 30,000 people) of Tawarga. And almost immediately after the US’ success in Libya, the very terror brigades NATO had been funding, arming, training, and providing air support for, set out for the Turkish-Syrian border where they began invading Syria.
Ambassador Stevens’ Murderers Tied Directly to US-Backed Terrorists in Syria
Entire brigades fighting the Syrian government are led by Libyan LIFG terrorists and include within their ranks Saudi-inspired Wahhabi extremists – the ones who surrounded and attacked the US consulate in Benghazi, leading to the death of Ambassador Stevens.
Reuters, in their article, “Libyan fighters join Syrian revolt,” reported, that Mahdi al-Harati, “a powerful militia chief from Libya’s western mountains,” who is actually a militant of the US, British, and UN listed terrorist organization Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), “now leads a unit in Syria, made up mainly of Syrians but also including some foreign fighters, including 20 senior members of his own Libyan rebel unit.” Reuters would go on to explain, “the Libyans aiding the Syrian rebels include specialists in communications, logistics, humanitarian issues and heavy weapons,” and that they “operate training bases, teaching fitness and battlefield tactics.”
Image: Libyan Mahdi al-Harati of the US State Department, United Nations, and the UK Home Office (page 5, .pdf)-listed terrorist organization, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), addressing fellow terrorists in Syria. Harati is now commanding a Libyan brigade operating inside of Syria attempting to destroy the Syrian government and subjugate the Syrian population. Traditionally, this is known as “foreign invasion.”
To reach Syria, Libyan fighters must cross the Mediterranean Sea and enter via Turkey, or cross Egypt, Israel, and enter via Jordan. The government of Syria has threatened Libya in no conceivable manner, making Libya’s campaign an intolerable act of military aggression. Worst of all, the NATO-installed government in Tripoli has officially approved of supporting military operations in distant Syria.
Image: Libya is separated by sea and several nations from Syria. For hundreds, possibly thousands of Libyan fighters to now be turning up in Syria indicates a military operation requiring multinational support, and more specifically, NATO-backing.
Abdulhakim Belhadj, head of the Tripoli Military Council and the former leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, “met with Free Syrian Army leaders in Istanbul and on the border with Turkey,” said a military official working with Mr Belhadj. “Mustafa Abdul Jalil (the interim Libyan president) sent him there.”
Another Telegraph article, “Libya’s new rulers offer weapons to Syrian rebels,” would admit
Syrian rebels held secret talks with Libya’s new authorities on Friday, aiming to secure weapons and money for their insurgency against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, The Daily Telegraph has learned.
At the meeting, which was held in Istanbul and included Turkish officials, the Syrians requested “assistance” from the Libyan representatives and were offered arms, and potentially volunteers.
“There is something being planned to send weapons and even Libyan fighters to Syria,” said a Libyan source, speaking on condition of anonymity. “There is a military intervention on the way. Within a few weeks you will see.”
Later that month, some 600 Libyan terrorists would be reported to have entered Syria to begin combat operations and as recently as last month, CNN, whose Ivan Watson accompanied terrorists over the Turkish-Syrian border and into Aleppo, revealed that indeed foreign fighters were amongst the militants, particularly Libyans. It was admitted that:
Meanwhile, residents of the village where the Syrian Falcons were headquartered said there were fighters of several North African nationalities also serving with the brigade’s ranks.
A volunteer Libyan fighter has also told CNN he intends to travel from Turkey to Syria within days to add a “platoon” of Libyan fighters to armed movement.
On Wednesday, CNN’s crew met a Libyan fighter who had crossed into Syria from Turkey with four other Libyans. The fighter wore full camouflage and was carrying a Kalashnikov rifle. He said more Libyan fighters were on the way.
The foreign fighters, some of them are clearly drawn because they see this as … a jihad. So this is a magnet for jihadists who see this as a fight for Sunni Muslims.CNN’s reports provide bookends to 2011’s admissions that large numbers of Libyan terrorists flush with NATO cash and weapons had headed to Syria, with notorious terrorist LIFG commanders making the arrangements.
So who exactly will the US make “pay” for the death of Ambassador Stevens? Will they pull the funds and weapons they are using currently to wage terror upon the people of Syria? Will they liquidate the terror organizations and bases in Libya recruiting and training militants to fight America’s proxy war in Syria? Unlikely.
US Foreign Policy is Hegemony Through Terror, Couched in “Democracy Promotion”
Clearly, those involved in overthrowing the government of Libya, and attempting to overthrow the government of Syria, are not “freedom fighters,” but listed terrorists. The US, UK, and EU are in violation of both their own domestic anti-terrorism laws (and here), as well as international law in their continued support of listed-terrorist organizations.
What was to be a relatively benign public relations stunt to disassociate the US and its “democracy promotion” from terrorist organizations, has now left a high ranking US diplomat dead and the West’s foreign policy narrative in further tatters.
This illustrates operational incompetence as well as Wall Street and London’s increasing reliance on complex ploys to manage public perception. Stakeholders in the Wall Street-London international order will inevitably begin asking themselves whether or not they will share the fate of Stevens if they do not begin an orderly divestment from a crumbling paradigm.
Furthermore, an increasingly aware public will still be able to look at both the Libyan and Egyptian governments and see proxy-regimes desperately seeking “street-credit” through anti-American, anti-Israeli rhetoric (or embassy raids). However, for example, Egypt’s Morsi cannot erase his US education, the US citizenship of his children, nor his current policy of capitulation to the IMF, and his support of the US-Saudi-Israeli proxy assault on Syria.
Image: A visual representation of the National Endowment for Democracy’s corporate-financier ties found across their Board of Directors. Far from “human rights advocates,” they are instead simply leveraging such issues to disguise what is in reality corporate-financier hegemonic expansion.
Image: The Henry Jackson Society is just one of many Neo-Conservative think-tanks, featuring many of the same people and of course, the same corporate sponsors (see annual report beginning on page 18, .pdf). HJS scribe Michael Weiss couches Neo-Con talking points within “liberal” “humanitarianism” regularly upon the pages of the Telegraph.
The corporate-financier interests of Wall Street and London hope that those in the West continue to make false distinctions between “left” and “right,” as well as fall for new faces telling old narratives. They also hope that regardless of your political views, you continue paying into their corporations and institutions, so that they continue receiving the resources they need to carry on with their agenda.
In the game of chess, pawns are first sacrificed for tactical advantages. When these are expended, higher-valued pieces are next. Ambassador Stevens’ is just such a “piece.” His death was caused by a risky geopolitical stunt for the benefit of his own government, involving extremists he helped arm, train, fund, and install into power. Stevens’ contemporaries must ask themselves if they too are willing to join him in his “sacrifice,” as all the pawns have either been spent, or are stuck in stalemates upon the board.
Tony Cartalucci’s articles have appeared on many alternative media websites, including his own at
Land Destroyer Report. Read other contributed articles by Tony Cartalucci here.
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