MidnightWatcher – Prophecy in Motion

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK – “TRIPOLI, Libya — After six months battling a rebellion that his family portrayed as an Islamist conspiracy, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s son and one-time heir apparent said Wednesday that he was reversing course to forge a behind-the-scenes alliance with radical Islamist elements among the Libyan rebels to drive out their more liberal-minded confederates.

‘The liberals will escape or be killed,’ the son, Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi, vowed in an hourlong interview that stretched past midnight. ‘We will do it together,’ he added, wearing a newly grown beard and fingering Islamic prayer beads as he reclined on a love seat in a spare office tucked in a nearly deserted downtown hotel. ‘Libya will look like Saudi Arabia, like Iran. So what?’

The leading Islamist whom Mr. Qaddafi identified as his main counterpart in the talks, Ali Sallabi, acknowledged their conversations but dismissed any suggestion of an alliance. He said the Libyan Islamists supported the rebel leaders’ calls for a pluralistic democracy without the Qaddafis.

But the interview nonetheless offered a rare glimpse into the defiant, some say delusional, mentality of the Qaddafi family at a time when they have all but completely retreated from public view under the threat of a NATO bombing campaign, now five months old, and a six-month rebellion.

On one level, Mr. Qaddafi’s avowed embrace of the Islamists represents a sharp personal reversal for a man who had long styled himself as a cosmopolitan, Anglophile advocate of Western-style liberal democracy. He continues to refer to the Islamists as ‘terrorists’ and ‘bloody men,’ and says, ‘We don’t trust them, but we have to deal with them.'” Read more.

Killers of Libyan rebels’ military chief were members of an Islamist-linked militia allied to the rebel campaign  – “The gunmen who shot dead the Libyan rebels’ military chief Abdul Fatah Younis were members of an Islamist-linked militia allied to the campaign to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi, according to a National Transitional Council minister. After 24 hours of confusion surrounding the death, the NTC’s oil minister, Ali Tarhouni, said Younis had been killed by members of the Obaida Ibn Jarrah Brigade, a militia named after one of the companions of the Prophet Muhammad, suggesting that Islamist elements were involved.” Read more.