The Jihadist Plot
The Untold Story of Al-Qaeda and the Libyan Rebellion
John Rosenthal
© 2013 by John Rosenthal
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First American digital edition published in 2013 by Encounter Books, an activity of Encounter for Culture and Education, Inc., a nonprofit, tax exempt corporation. Encounter Books website address: www.encounterbooks.com
ISBN: 978-1-59403-682-8
Contents
1. Introduction: Changing Sides in the War on Terror
2. The Mohammed Cartoons and the Eastern Libyan Uprising
3. Black Flags in Benghazi—and Beyond
4. Libya's Al-Qaeda: The Libyan Islamic Fighting Group
5. The LIFG and the Madrid Train Bombings
6. The Al-Qaeda Veterans/Rebel Commanders
7. Qaddafi, the "Apostate"
8. Video and Terror
9. Abu Munthir's Plan
Acknowledgments
Preface
“How could this happen? How could this happen in a country we helped liberate, in a city we helped save from destruction?” Thus Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed what she supposed was the reaction of many Americans to the September 11, 2012 attacks in Benghazi that left American ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens and three other Americans dead. The questioning and self-doubt showed “just how confounding the world can be,” Clinton observed. But the world is not so confounding when one is correctly informed, and the Benghazi attacks are not so confusing and “senseless” as the Obama administration insists. They are in fact the direct consequence of American policy in supporting the Libyan rebellion against Muammar al-Qaddafi, and they make perfect sense when one knows how thoroughly the rebel forces were affiliated with and inspired by al-Qaeda.
Those same forces proudly fly the al-Qaeda flag to this day. They do so not in secretive “jihadi encampments”—such as those for which drones dispatched by the Obama administration are reportedly searching in Eastern Libya. They do so rather in broad daylight on the main boulevards of Benghazi and other Libyan cities. One does not need drones or sophisticated surveillance technology to find them. Videos of the military parades of the Libyan mujahideen—to use their own preferred terminology—are readily available on local Arabic-language websites and YouTube pages.
These are not “small groups” of extremists, as Hillary Clinton assured the American public on the day after the Benghazi attacks. They are the very rebel brigades that formed the military backbone of the rebellion on the ground and that were able to push forward to victory thanks only to the massive air support that they received from America and its NATO allies. As will be seen in the pages to follow, the rebel military commanders on virtually all the major fronts of the Libyan war were al-Qaeda-linked radicals. The rebel brigades have not disbanded; they have not laid down their weapons; and, for all intents and purposes, it is they who dictate their law to the nominal Libyan government and not vice-versa—or rather it is they who, per their own ideology, uphold the law of Allah against all deviations and “foreign machinations.”
Indeed, as will likewise be seen in the following pages, even the brigade that is reported to have provided an escort for marines sent to evacuate personnel from the American consulate on the night of the Benghazi attack is known to fly the black flags of al-Qaeda. This perhaps helps to explain why the supposedly secret “safe house” in which consulate personnel took refuge turned out to be neither secret nor safe, but was the target of a second attack.
Attacks on Western consulates are nothing new in Benghazi. The anti-Qaddafi rebellion is officially known as the February 17th Revolution, in honor of the February 17, 2011 protests that sparked the uprising. But how many Americans know that those protests were timed to commemorate an earlier assault on a Western consulate? On February 17, 2006, the Italian consulate in Benghazi was besieged and set ablaze by a mob of thousands, who had been whipped into a frenzy by Islamist media and Friday prayers following an Italian politician’s defense of the famous “Mohammed cartoons.” The Italian consulate personnel managed to escape harm, because the Libyan security forces of the time stood their ground and protected them. According to eyewitness reports, the members of the Libyan security detachment at the U.S. consulate on the night of September 11, 2012 quickly fled their posts.
Moreover, something else significant had changed in the meanwhile. The mob that stormed the Italian consulate in 2006 was extremely violent, but it was unarmed. It was really just a mob. On September 11, 2012, the American consulate and its “safe house” were attacked by an apparently well-trained armed force using heavy artillery and RPGs.
This too is a direct result of American and allied policy. Under the approving eye of the Western world—or, at any rate, of Western governments—Libya’s Islamist rebels were not only permitted to raid the military stores of the old regime, but they were also armed and trained by sympathetic Gulf monarchies. Indeed, at least one Western nation—France—has admitted to providing arms to the rebels itself. One can see the Libyan mujahideen parading their military wares—mortars, heavy machine-guns, shoulder-fired grenade launchers—in some of the videos mentioned above.
Tens of thousands of Libyans have died as a consequence of the NATO intervention in Libya: whether victims of NATO bombing or of the horrific atrocities committed by the rebels, whether ardent supporters of the old regime or merely people who preferred it to the severe and intolerant form of Islam embraced by the rebellion. Now, four Americans have died as a consequence of NATO’s Libya adventure as well. There is reason to believe they will not be the last.
—John Rosenthal
September 20, 2012
Postscript
Since I wrote the above lines, it has become clear that the primary target of the 9/11 Benghazi attacks was not in fact a consulate—even if much of the media, in keeping with the initial reports, continues to describe it as such. It was rather a small US diplomatic mission devoted to maintaining and cultivating contacts in the Eastern Libyan cradle of the anti-Qaddafi rebellion.
Moreover, thanks to the release of unclassified diplomatic cables by the House Oversight Committee, we now know that only two days before the attacks American officials in Benghazi met with one of the jihadist protagonists of this book: Wisam bin Hamid, a reputed veteran of jihad in Afghanistan and Iraq and the commander of Libya Shield, the most powerful Islamist brigade in Eastern Libya. It was Libya Shield that allegedly came to the aid of American marines on the night of the attacks. But, as will be seen in the following pages, Libya Shield does not only fly the same black flags as Ansar al-Sharia, the allegedly al-Qaeda-linked militia that has been widely accused of perpetrating the attacks. It also shares exactly the same program and ideology.
Chapter 1
Introduction: Changing Sides in the War on Terror
Once upon a time, there was a “war on terror.” The term was highly contested, because it focused on a tactic and left unspecified the practitioners of that tactic with whom the United