08 September 2011
TRIPOLI: A Tripoli military commander with suspected Al-Qaeda links, Abdelhakim Belhaj, said “the West has nothing to fear” from Libyan revolutionaries and thanked NATO for its support.
“I can assure you that the Libyan revolutionaries have no natural agenda to spark fears from the East or West,” Belhaj, the head of Tripoli’s military council, told AFP in an interview late Tuesday.
“We have no ideological link with Al-Qaeda. The only thing is that we found ourselves on the same field of operations [Afghanistan] with this organization, and that does not mean we have the same ideological values.”
According to French daily Liberation, Belhaj was a founder of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, close to Al-Qaeda. He was arrested by the American CIA in 2004 before being handed to the Gadhafi regime.
Letters recently discovered in Tripoli documenting the collaboration between Western intelligence services show that the CIA informed Libyan authorities that Abdullah al-Sadiq (Belhaj’s fighter name) and his pregnant wife were travelling from Kuala Lumpur to Bangkok where the American agency should “grab” and deliver him to the regime.
Now considered a powerful military chief after anti-Gadhafi fighters routed the strongman’s forces in the capital last month, Belhaj waxes lyrical about the Western countries who helped topple Moammar Gadhafi.
“We are grateful for all those who supported our cause, a support which has notably been demonstrated by U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973,” that authorized the protection of civilians and made Western intervention in Libya possible.
Belhaj also paid homage to NATO for having helped liberate Tripoli by providing air cover to the operation launched by fighters against the capital, which on Aug. 23 led to the conquest of the Bab al-Aziziya fortress, Gadhafi’s powerbase.
According to the military chief, “There is no possible comparison between Libya and Iraq. In Libya, there are no allegiances to foreign parties, there are no confessional or ethnic parties, and nothing to feed political differences.
“The situation is even more different because there has never been a direct military intervention [ground troops] in Libya,” he said.
“We have led a revolution that responded to the people’s aspirations,” Belhaj said, emphasizing the difference between the situation in his country and Iraq in 2003, where there was no uprising against Saddam Hussein’s regime.
As far as the situation in Tripoli is concerned, the military chief appeared reassuring. “The situation is stabilizing. I don’t think Gadhafi’s military brigades still have the capacity to react. They can no longer destabilize Tripoli, but some remaining operations cannot be ruled out … We have drawn up many plans that consist of securing the entrances to the city and its vital amenities.”
He said that the operation to free Tripoli rested on three tactical elements: “The first had been to introduce arms in the capital from the sea and the eastern and western fronts… Secondly, we had positioned fighters on the outskirts of Tripoli and in nearby cities and towns … Thirdly, NATO air cover had assured the operation’s success.”
Copyright The Daily Star 2011.
