The Sirte Massacres: 100 Dead in the Fuel Depot Incident

December 26, 2011
last edits Dec. 28

<< The Sirte Massacres

Another Massacre?
The following is not officially (per NTC sources) a massacre of any sort, and may not be one even in reality. But quite a few people, over 100 by some reports, were killed on October 24, four days after Muammar Gaddafi and 100 with him were killed, capping a brutal campaign of massive shelling and bombardment and an effective life embargo, massive arrests, and numerous cruel massacres yielding several hundred anonymous dead dumped in a mass grave, blamed on Gaddafi loyalists (see the link above for details).

This incident was blamed not on loyalists, just then becoming a shadow threat only, but on accident. Reports from commanders and locals say about 50 to more than 100 were killed, while lined up at a fuel depot, in an explosion sparked by a neighboring power station. Many bodies were of course left charred beyond recognition, but many others survived.

If an accident, this incident is a testament to the harsh realities imposed on the people of Sirte. The fuel embargo was meant to stop them living until they surrendered (along with de facto food, water, electricity, and medicine embargoes). With wartime damage everywhere in Sirte, when the electricity is switched back on, something could go wrong. Specifically, as Euronews reported, "there are claims that the facility was damaged by NATO bombs and blew up because of an electrical short circuit when power was restored."

Otherwise, there's the possibility I'll mention without marrying, that this was an engineered inferno to explain the many dead they had already parked there and burnt to anonymity. The survivors, as far as I know, could be just made up, to make it sound more realistic.

Should the Sirte massacres be expanded by 50-100? I can't yet say one way or the other, so I won't.

Sources of Information
Articles
Fuel Depot Blast in Libya's Sirte kills 100: Commander

“There was an enormous explosion and a huge fire. More than 100 people were killed and 50 others wounded” in Monday’s blast, a National Transitional Council (NTC) commander, Leith Mohammed, told AFP.

He said the scene was “a heart wrenching spectacle with dozens of charred bodies.”

“We are still unable to put out the fire,” caused by a spark from a nearby electricity generator, said Mohammed.

The accidental explosion came as a crowd of people waited near the fuel tank to fill up their cars...An AFP correspondent said the tragedy took place near Sirte airport, some 30 kilometres (18 miles) south of the Mediterranean city, hometown and last bastion of Libya’s slain veteran leader Kadhafi.

A radio station and two large fuel reservoirs stand nearby, said the correspondent, who saw at least 29 vehicles blackened by huge flames that shot into the sky, burnt shoes, melted plastic jerrycans and shreds of clothing.

“The explosion happened yesterday (Monday) at around noon,” said Ali Faraj who helped evacuate the wounded. “It was very strong. I live 25 kilometres away and I heard it..Omran Ajelli, a doctor at Ibn Sina hospital in Sirte, said he treated 26 people, five of them “in critical state” with severe burns, and three bodies were brought in, with the other casualties apparently taken elsewhere."

The Telegraph repeats most of that, some of it twice, and adds:

Some of the victims had returned to the town, the last bastion of resistance by Gaddafi loyalists, which fell on Thursday, to inspect the damage to their properties, the NTC commander added.

The Canadian CBC reported:

Dozens of people are dead after a blast tore through a fuel depot in the Libyan city of Sirte, local officials say.

The exact number of people killed in Monday's blast is not yet clear.

A local resident told Reuters that about 50 people were killed. The Telegraph, meanwhile, cites a National Transitional Council official, who put the figure at roughly 100.

Jalal al-Gallal, a spokesman for Libya's National Transitional Council, said Tuesday he did not have further details about the explosion. He said Ali Tarhouni, a cabinet minister, would provide details in a news conference later in the day.

The explosion in the coastal city was likely the result of an accident, reports said.

Photos

Photos by Youssef Boudlal, Reuters, exclusively, I think.
Locals gather and watch the fire
Locals gather: one man who doesn't want to be seen, one who looks almost happy at this fire.
Residents try to carry a dead body that was found near the site of burning tankers on the outskirts of Sirte
Carrying a charred body
carrying the same body
At right, excerpts from all three images with bodies. They might all three show the same one, and they show no more than two. They're among the extremely charred. Reuters (see video below) counted fifteen cars and saw only "at least two bodies" removed.

Videos
Reuters Video, Youtube
Reuters video with transcript
Euronews Youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecpkak9YolI (later in the video)

Observations:

Cars "lined up in a cue" or simply parked all around? How far down any "line" would the fire spread? If there's a big path of fuel connecting them all, why?

This vehicle shown on the Euronews video is at a good distance from the epicenter. I cannot see a fireball from the depot reaching this far, but the path of blackened pavement around suggests the fire followed some line of spilled oil that people should have had a moment to leap out of. Perhaps they did, at this distance.

For what it's worth, we have a location. I found it on Google maps, but didn't think it was it, but petri says it is. I haven't verified that, but I think he's right. Anyway, here's the spot, within a spot, within a spot 10-11 miles the south of Sirte. It's at the end of a long dead-end road, a decent drive from Gardabya airport. It's defineitely an out-of-the-way spot for civilian motorists to fill up on... some type of fuel.

If as the rebel commander said "Some of the victims had returned to the town ... to inspect the damage to their properties," they likely drove out and back in, in cars that, like normal ones, run on gasoline/petrol. They would have gone where gas was more available than in tightly-squeezed Sirte (anywhere else in Libya), and must've filled the tank at least enough to return, and maybe fill some gas cans too. So why, on returning, would they go fill their tanks in Sirte? And why at this presumably damaged or drained depot, of fuel we're not even sure is gasoline, ten miles south of town when most would be returning from the east or west coastal roads?

From a comment, Petri adds these technical thoughts, suggesting the fuel here was diesel, making the rebel commanders' story unlikely in two important ways, one that most cars do not run on it and had no reason to cue up for it:

The compound in the desert, west of Sirte airport is a radio transmitter, operating most likely in the long wave band. The Wikipedia article states Libya has a long wave transmitter, but no Libyan transmitter is included in the list of longwave broadcasting transmitters.

There are two building in the inner fenced area. The one on the eastern side is the radio transmitter. It is connected by an aerial cable to two guyed steel masts standing some 150 meters apart, due north of the transmitter. The shadows indicate the masts may be over 200 meters high. Long wave transmission uses high power; this transmitter in Luxembourg transmits at 2 megawatts.

The building to the west must be an emergency power station, most likely with diesel generators. The fuel in the tanks would be diesel oil, also known as light heating oil.

The story still does not quite add up. If this was gasoline (UK: petrol) the high number of victims would be easy to explain. Diesel oil is is however very difficult to ignite, and even less likely to "explode." Even if one was able to ignite one tank, how would the fire spread to the other tank?

Libya's Free Market Future

May 11 2011
last edits August 5

The Future Path and the Basic Problem
Gheriani tried to assure me that the new state the rebels envision would be led not by confused mobs or religious extremists but by “Western-educated intellectuals,” like him.
- Jon Lee Anderson, New Yorker, April 4

This message from rebel Transitional National Council spokesman Mustafa Gheriani is re-assuring in a way, ominous in another. The mobs of "pro-democracy demonstrators" the world is so excited to protect are a troubling lot, with the urge to burn soldiers and lynch blacks entirely too close to the surface of their hearts, oozing hatefully with the slightest scratch of a Twitter rumor. Known al Qaeda operatives took the lead in Dernah and apparently set up an Islamic emirate (quickly recalled and denied). Some rebels looted, raped, tortured and killed for fun. All of this was part of the overall takeover, but not part of the long-term future, it's hoped by more level heads.

That future path will surely run to the West, and will be informed by base material and geopolitical motives - obviously oil, but also its amazing water system, the central bank and so on. The whole Libyan state is public-sector, government run, with proceeds that took Libya from among the poorest countries in the world to the richest (per capita) in Africa and with the highest living standards by far. There's a certain level at which it's obvious that this is the crux of the decades of demonization, sanctions, the epic framing of Libya for Iran's destruction of Pan Am 103, and so on. Too much shared with the people, not enough with Wall Street.

A vendetta against Gaddafi's unusual economic system could also help explain NATO-types' approach to this "humanitarian crisis." It's costing more lives in "stalemate" than Gaddafi's repression likely would have, but it does have the opposite outcome for who runs Libya. Coincidence?

Obvious air support for the rebels (or is it the rebels are obviously NATO's ground troops?) is masked always as a simple measure to protect innocent civilians. An obvious assassination atempt that kills four innocent civilians, three of them under two years of age, was a simple part of the aforesaid mission, targeting command and control, and communications, intelligence, morale, whatever. It's all obvious, just too much so to bother explaining. Doublespeak is what it's become.

The French Connection and February 17 Movement
All this when much evidence suggests the spontaneous revolt was planned in advance with outside (mostly French) help. Nouri al-Mesmari was Libya's protocol minister - Gaddafi's C-3PO - until he resigned in protest at the shooting of protesters on the Day of Rage. He was in Paris at the time, having gone there for some reason four months earlier, in between meeting with French secret service and leaders of the planned rebellion.

Alex Lantier at the World Socialist Website describes al-Mesmari as "a prominent pro-free-market reformer in the Libyan ruling elite." In a video interview shortly after resigning, he revealed he is the son of a monarchist minister, who's long been trying to get back nationalized family wealth.

Another leftist at the Monthly Review, Vijay Prashad, describes the top leaders of February 17, three of whom allegedly met with al-Mesmari: "These men (Fathi Boukhris, Farj Charrani, Mustafa Gheriani and All Ounes Mansouri) are all entrepreneurs."  [5] As the quote above shows, their spokesman Gheriani, the one not on the Paris trip, at least-considers himself western-educated.

Rebel Leadership and Privatization Fixation
Those entrepreneurs were arrested, aside from Gheriani, in the days before the war started. From there, he and others then became important in the Interim Transitional National Council in Benghazi. Vijay Prashad wrote of two of the more important and prominent among these:

The Benghazi council chose as its leader the colorless former justice minister Mustafa Abdel Jalil. Jalil's brain is Mahmoud Jibril, a former head of the National Economic Development Board (NEDB). A U.S. embassy cable from May 11, 2009 (09TRIPOLI386) describes Jibril as keen on a close relationship with the U.S. and eager "to create a strategic partnership between private companies and the government." Jibril's NEBD had collaborated with Ernst & Young and the Oxford Group to make the Libyan state more "efficient." Jibril told the ambassador that "American companies and universities are welcome to join him" in the creation of new sectors outside hydrocarbons and that "we should take him up on his offer." His Ph.D. in strategic planning from the University of Pittsburg is useful in this context.

More comes to us via the Willyloman wordpress page, May 10: Al Qaeda Linked “Rebels” in Libya Need More Money… So They Come to Congress. It says in part:

The money poured in already by outside sources looking to cash-in on the wholesale privatization of Libya like the 20 million ponied up by Great Britain, is running out. Or so claims Ali Tarhouni, Washington’s man on the inside of the Interim Transitional National Council (TNC). Tarhouni is an American professor of economics at the University of Washington but he’s taken a bit of a leave to serve as the TNC’s minister of finance, oil and economics.

Now he has returned to Washington * from Benghazi to pass the hat so to speak in D.C. looking for access to the 35 billion or so of the Libyan people’s money that Hillary Clinton [sic] froze. You see, he want’s to use the people’s money to return Libya back to the good old days of the corrupt monarchy, the system that was entrenched in Libya before the revolution in 1969 led by one Moammar Gadhafi.

*(To clear up some confusion - the Washington of that University is the state in the northwest. "You dub," as it's called around here, is in Seattle.)

This American theft ("freezing") of Libyan riches is a shameful and cruel episode. By fiat of piracy Obama withheld this money - over $5,000 for each Libyan man, woman, and child - until they join the rebels (whom we're willing to pay) or come under their rule. It was deceptively called Gaddafi's personal fortune, siphoned from the Libyan people. An equal or larger amount was also frozen by various nations outside the United States, turning the people of Libya into something like Human shields in a socio-economic sense.

To explain his trip back to the US, finance minister Tarhouni told MSNBC:

“We’re faced with the same sanctions as Gadhafi,” he said, referring to U.S. sanctions that have frozen more than $34 billion of Libyan government assets, in addition to U.N. and European sanctions. “I don’t have access to any foreign exchange to cover any purchases, open lines of credits to merchants, so that’s a very challenging aspect to what I do.”

An older article I missed had mentioned Dr. Tarhouni in his American acedemic connection - Dr. K. R. Bolton, Foreign Policy Journal, Feb 26

“Most participants argued for privatization and a strong private sector economy.” That is a statement culled from a report of a panel discussion entitled “Post-Qaddafi Libya: The Prospect and The Promise,” organized by Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies in 1994. Dr Ali Tarhouni stated at the conference, “with privatization, entrepreneurs will reach out and get involved in regional cooperation by searching for markets.” Is that what the long-planned, well-funded “spontaneous revolts” now toppling regimes like a house of cards is actually about?”

The handy thing is how many talking heads and think-tank experts there are to back these guys up. "Of course privatization is the answer! Gaddafi was against it and he was evil! Had mercenaries on Viagra rape kids! Just look at the state Libya was in before under Gaddafi's Green Book sytem!" Indeed, take a look - ask for specifics. Environmentally speaking, do we need more bio-diversity, or more monoculture? Why is it different when it comes to economic systems?

And let's be honest a moment - in an age of such Western economic failure, is the Euro-Atlantic community really more likely to be dispesnsers of good advice - good enough for a regime change war?  Or to be looking for some stored up financial blood to suck, via a regime change war and the plunder-by-privatization of Libya?

Libya’s Money

May 22, 2011

The following is a re-post from Hermes Msafiri's Mercury Mail blog, as Libya Turmoil 142. High-lighting and bolding mine, see notes below.

Libya’s money
In Tripoli the “journalists” of ABC asked me how long Gaddafi could last financially?
I answered them much longer than the US.
They couldn’t believe me and continued: ”no seriously, how many months can he last?”
My answer, 10/20 years, brought a very big surprised expression on their faces: “NO, impossible”.

Our society of money changers and bean counters is not able anymore to think about a solid society, not based on debt or credit.

Libya has known an embargo for decades and a real ostracism for 42 years.
Gaddafi was never understood nor accepted. He was declared crazy and loony from the very beginning because he didn’t accept the orders from his “betters”. His feeling of oppression by the Western powers that be and afterwards his betrayal by the Soviets convinced him to look for an alternative solution, based on their native tribal structure.
He didn’t spend money because he couldn’t, the embargo obliged him to save money.
This frugal lifestyle wasn’t really bad for the country, they learned to live with it.
Only the Western educated and latter “revolutionaries” wanted more pieces of the cake.
I have seen governors of provinces, with budgets of billions, walking around in old army fatigues and plastic sandals, driving in old Toyota Corolla’s, with absolutely no desire for more luxury.

Gaddafi himself is of the same ilk, money doesn’t drive him, the fate of his country is his only driving force.
If that is enough to consider him a lunatic than he will proudly declare himself a lunatic.

As far as the money of the country is concerned, the calculation is rapidly made.
The total revenue during 42 years went far over a trillion dollars.
During the embargo time Libya spent only the interest of its investments, they didn’t touch their capital.
They had some amounts in foreign, US, European and Arab countries and banks.
That money was continuously siphoned off by those banks, they didn’t receive any interest on their money, the paid expenses every year on that money, pure highway robbery.

Gaddafi is a very astute investor and made several very good investments worldwide, which saved Libya a lot of money and kept their capital intact.
Today Libya is still sitting on a cash hoard of far over one trillion, the second largest after China, but safer. China has too much worthless US paper.
Because of his cash position, Libya was thinking to make Africans benefit of their commodities by introducing their own gold backed currency and their own Reserve Fund.

This would have shown the decrepit situation of the world credit system and the real abysmal situation of the Western banks.
Because the emperor had no clothes anymore Gaddafi had to disappear.

Russia and China are still hesitating what to do and whom to join. The sirene songs of Wall Street are very seductive but extremely empty. The main US corporations are already voting with their feet to Asia, just in case.

I hope Gaddafi survives the criminal onslaught and will have the chance to see his enemies crumble. The stakes are extremely high.

A fascinating viewpoint all around. I find the bolded parts most interesting, considered together. The sanctions weren't just punishment for blowing up airplanes, I suspect. Especially considering anyone in the know must know they were innocent for at least the Pan Am 103. It was more of a tool for the Western control matrix - squeeze the people with sanctions under some excuse, weaponize the population by causing enough suffering they blame the regime and hopefully figure out how to change it, or to be more receptive to outside change. Witness Eastern Libya today after two generations of this treatment. It is interesting that Msafiri finds those educated in the west were the most receptive to effects of Western sanctions. And consider the makeup and expertise of the steely-visioned rebel TNC, with quite a number of them hosting American PhDs in strategic planning, privatization, information warfare, and hostile takeovers.

Frozen Funds / Defrost Piracy

May 7 2011
last update May 22

Money is important. It helps you buy things. That's why people steal it, to buy neat things for themselves and their own selfish purposes. Sometimes they also steal, in part, to hurt someone they don't like, but that's another type of the same selfishness.

Below is the story so far of a recent very large theft of money and the plans to spend it, both aimed at illegaly destroying the government of a sovereign state and plunge it into chaos.

By February 26, it had become clear the Libyan protests had mobilized into a viable civil war, with over half the cities in rebel hands. U.S. president Obama that day announced the freezing of certain Libyan funds under its control - a record-setting quarantine of about $30 billion. The idea that you can just do that is still strange to me, but he did it. As one expert put it:

"Treasury hits a button and everything is frozen," according to Erich Ferrari, the founder of Ferrari Legal, a firm that specializes in trade sanctions. [source]

A February 28 follow up announces the freeze has happened and might expand. At this time, the impression given was that all of Libya - even the military - had mutineed, and only Gaddafi's family, "African mercenaries," and the personal funds that linked the two, stood in the way of an amazing adventure in free market reform - er - in people power freedom things.

But Obama knew it might be a rockier road than that, and this partial cutting of funds was just the beginning of an escalating push against the grain for that fleeting "utopian" image. And as the government stayed together and tried to push back, it proved one heck of a start. As Peter Dale Scott recently noted:

If the idea to attack Libya originated with France, Obama moved swiftly to support French plans to frustrate Gaddafi’s African initiative with his unilateral declaration of a national emergency in order to freeze all of the Bank of Libya’s $30 billion of funds to which America had access. (This was misleadingly reported in the U.S. press as a freeze of the funds of “Colonel Qaddafi, his children and family, and senior members of the Libyan government.” But in fact the second section of Obama’s decree explicitly targeted “All property and interests… of the Government of Libya, its agencies, instrumentalities, and controlled entities, and the Central Bank of Libya.”)

While the U.S. has actively used financial weapons in recent years, the $30-billion seizure, “the largest amount ever to be frozen by a U.S. sanctions order,” had one precedent, the arguably illegal and certainly conspiratorial seizure of Iranian assets in 1979 on behalf of the threatened Chase Manhattan Bank.

The European Union initially froze only the more narrowly defined evil Gaddafi clan funds. But on March 8, it was revealed, they agreed to follow Obama's lead, and expanded an existing freeze to cover, as Washington's did, all state funds. They just took the government's money, to ensure they couldn't pay employees or debts or purchase new supplies or feed people should a crisis break out, or anything.

Other nations followed suit (Australia on March 9, and so on), and the amounts blocked off grew steadily. Even the Swiss finally came on board, on May 5 announcing they had found 360 million Swiss francs ($418.4 million) of assets that, as al Jazeera put it, "were potentially illegal and belonged to either Muammar Gaddafi or his circle." But as they reported, deputy foreign minister Khaled Kaim said that the money was far less ("closer to $29 million"), and was the peoples' money, not the leader's.

"The money in bank accounts abroad is part of the investment portfolio of the government abroad," he told reporters. "If there is a single penny of the leader's money ... you are free to take it and to give it to anyone."

By the end of March, people on Capitol Hill had started wondering if all this handy frozen wealth could be thawed out and used to pay ourselves back for the expensive air war we'd just begun against the regime. But as CNN reported, duh, the answer was no.

The idea is that if Gadhafi falls, the next government will take control of the assets. "We will safeguard the more than $33 billion that was frozen from the Gadhafi regime so that it's available to rebuild Libya," Obama said on Monday. "After all, the money doesn't belong to Gadhafi or to us - it belongs to the Libyan people. And we'll make sure they receive it."

Once his conditions are met - a legally recognized replacement regime of his approval. And perhaps conditional to other things, like a nice finder's fee, commercial concessions, military basing ...

And then, maybe we don't even have to wait for that. Without funds now, the good guys might never even get to take over. So on May 5, two things happened. The Libyan people spoke up, insisting Gaddafi stay in power, and the rebels and NATO should go away. And European and allied leaders meeting in Italy to plan their exact opposite version on behalf of the same people. Among the points broached in the Libya script conference was a promise to give some of that money, soon, to the Libyan people (those who behaved well by taking up arms against the government, anyway).

The United States is trying to free up part of $30 billion it has frozen in Libyan assets so it can better support opponents of Moammar Gadhafi, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told a conference Thursday on Libya.
[...]
Clinton said the Obama administration, working with Congress, wants “to tap some portion of those assets owned by Gadhafi and the Libyan government in the United States, so we can make those funds available to help the Libyan people.” [source]

They used to be able to take care of theselves, when the government had money and hadn't lost control of much of the country. And it's only getting worse.
Kadhafi regime hits out over rebel war chest
By W.G. Dunlop (AFP) – May 6

TRIPOLI — Moamer Kadhafi's regime reacted angrily Friday to a decision by world powers to provide funding to Libya's rebels, asserting that plans to tap assets frozen abroad were "piracy."
[...]
The fund, agreed at a meeting of the International Contact Group on Libya on Thursday, is intended to provide an emergency lifeline to the rebels, whose provisional administration has no source of financing to replace receipts from oil exports, which have come to a virtual halt.
It will initially receive international donations. Blocked assets -- estimated to be worth $60 billion (40 billion euros) in Europe and the United States -- are to be used at a later date.

The dates and manner and exact amounts, of course, are to be decided for "the Libyan people" by their great white guiding hands. For reference, at a unity and peacetime population of just over 6 million, this stolen amount of $60 billion is nearly $10,000 for each man, woman, and child on both sides of the civil war. And it's been locked away just to starve the government, and those who still rely on it, to force them all to surrender to the rebel hordes - the "people of Libya" who suffer the misfortune of being "outnumbered" - in Libya.

The funds made available are far less than the figure of up to $3 billion dollars that had been sought by the rebels, but their leader, Mahmud Jibril, said "it's a good start." Jibril said three billion dollars represent "a six-month budget."


French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said the new fund could be up and running "within weeks." However, he said it would take longer to tap Libyan government assets frozen abroad under UN sanctions to secure a longer-term credit line sought by the rebels, as unblocking the assets "poses legal problems."

Yes, problems with laws - designed to prevent piracy just like this. Funny how we can talk abut it openly though, since everybody hates Gaddafi and wants to do whatever it takes to rinse away the foul taste. Enter the "complicated" thinking of lawyers, currently poring over how to avoid breaking the narrowest "word" of the law. As the Wall Street Journal reports:

To get frozen assets to the Libyan opposition is fraught with complexities. “It is a lot more complicated than saying we are going to unfreeze these assets and hand them over,” says Harriet Territt, a London-based lawyer at Jones Day.

The U.K., for instance, is keen to help address humanitarian needs, but needs to clear a number of complex obstacles, said a person familiar with the situation. “We’re considering a number of options to do this and we will see what is legally possible,” a spokesman for the U.K.’s Foreign Office said. [source]

Just keep humming and ignore the Gaddafi thugs when they almost seem to make sense:

Kadhafi's government was infuriated by the prospect of seeing funds it regards as its own being used to finance the rebels. "Libya still, according to the international law, is one sovereign state and any use of the frozen assets, it's like piracy on the high seas," Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled Kaim said. [source]

Update May 22: Please see Libya's Free Market Future for some later moves by rebel interlocutors to thaw out and access these funds.