Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi continued his defiant rhetoric on Friday, saying that he would “crush any enemy,” according to Reuters. He spoke to thousands of supporters in Tripoli’s Green Square, and threatened to open his military arsenals and make weapons available to his supporters and tribesmen. He shouted and waved his fists. “Get ready to fight for Libya, get ready to fight for dignity, get ready to fight for petroleum! We can crush any enemy. We can crush it with the people’s will.”
Many observers now fear that, unlike the leaders in Tunisia and Egypt, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi will refuse to step down, and will fight to the death — his own death, and the deaths of many Libyans.
As this opinion becomes more commonly held, and as the grisly violence on the streets creates a potential humanitarian crisis, there is increasing international pressure for military action to prevent further genocide. Even if Gaddafi does step down, there is a danger that Libya will collapse into tribal civil war, and this would probably be an even worse scenario.
If the United States intervened militarily, it would almost certainly be done through Nato, according to CNN. Initially, the only military action being considered is enforcement of a no-fly zone, to try to keep the Libyan air force from attacking protesters.
The U.N. Security Council is also considering possible sanctions, including an arms embargo, travel bans and freezing top officials’ assets, and threatened the Libyan leadership with indictments for crimes against humanity.
Indeed, Debka is reporting that hundreds of US, British and French military advisers have already arrived in Cyrenaica to help organize the eastern tribes into a functioning government. If true, this force would also try to prevent a spillover of a civil war into Egypt.
Friday’s riots and demonstrations weren’t limited to just Libya. Hundreds of thousands of Arabs in countries across the Mideast poured out of mosques after midday prayers on Friday, according to Associated Press.
So what we see are two very dangerous major trends going on.
The first trend is increasing unrest and volatility in one country after another in the Mideast.
This is particularly critical in Yemen, the headquarters of Al-Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the terrorist organization that has replaced the Pakistan al-Qaeda as the most dangerous international terror organization. With Houthi rebels fighting in the north, and AQAP and secessionists fighting in the south, Yemen’s government in Sanaa has almost lost control of the country.
The second dangerous trend is economic collapse in the region.
The original riots in Tunisia and Egypt were triggered by food riots, as international food prices reached historic highs. Since then, the economies of Tunisia, Libya and Egypt have been devastated, with knock-on effects in the Palestinian territories and Jordan. And a cutoff of Libyan oil could create knock-on effects around the world.
Now, add to that mix a new military front for American and Nato forces to add the big existing commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan. If American and Nato forces truly are being injected into Libya, then it won’t be long for the Arab world to turn against those actions, irrespective of what Arab leaders may be saying today.
Generational Dynamics predicts that the Mideast is headed for a major new regional war with 100% certainty, re-fighting the genocidal war between Arabs and Jews that followed the partitioning of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel in 1948.
World leaders are going to be rushing to do anything possible to stabilize the current unrest in the Mideast. However, it’s hard for me, at least, to see how they’re going to stop the two dangerous trends that I’ve described. If they can’t, then the situation could spiral into a regional war this year.