MidnightWatcher – Prophecy in Motion

By James Rosen – “From the first stirrings of change in the Middle East nine months ago, optimism at the prospect of 100 million young people rising up to seize their democratic freedoms has been tempered by fear in Western capitals that radical Islamists might also rise up and try to hijack the so-called Arab Spring.

And now, many analysts say, that fear has been realized.

In Tunisia, where the epic season of unrest began, last Sunday’s historic elections appear to have resulted in an Islamist group winning a governing majority.

In Libya, an ex-terrorist once jailed by the Central Intelligence Agency now runs the country’s foremost military organization, and new political leaders speak openly of enacting Sharia, the ultra-harsh code of Islamic law.

And in Egypt, where the world’s oldest civilization is bracing for elections next month, rioters have recently forced the evacuation of the Israeli embassy and waged vicious attacks on Coptic Christians.

Worrisome in their own right, these developments also raise difficult questions, in an already contentious political season, about the conduct of President Obama and his national security team…

‘Revolutions are unpredictable phenomena,’ Clinton replied. ‘I think a lot of the leaders are saying the right things and some are saying things that do give pause to us….We’re going to do all that we can within our power to basically try to influence outcomes. But, you know, the historic wind sweeping the Middle East and North Africa were not of our making.’

Jamie Smith, a former CIA officer who has made three fact-finding trips to Libya this year, warns that the sense of unity that bound the country’s disparate rebel groups during their eight-month revolt has evaporated since Muammar Qaddafi fell from power.

In the dictator’s place, Smith says, the oil-rich but woefully mismanaged North African state is relying on the Transitional National Council, made up of inexperienced ex-rebels, and the Tripoli Military Council, headed by Abdel Hakim Belhaj. The latter was once head of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), which the U.S. State Department classifies as a foreign terrorist organization.

It is unlikely that Belhaj’s loyalties to the United States run strong: Smith notes that the CIA captured Belhaj in 2004, briefly held him in Thailand, and ultimately returned him to the custody of Qaddafi in Libya, where the former LIFG fighter languished in prison until his release last year.

‘So now you’ve got a radical Islamist terrorist leader who is running the most powerful military group in Libya,’ said Smith, a veteran of the U.S. war in Afghanistan. ‘In that area of the world, the people with the biggest guns make the rules. And this guy has got the guns. And he’s going to make the rules.'” Read more.