A map of the Sahel region showing where Al Qaeda operates (AFP/Graphic)
Posted on 04/26/2012 6:14:34 AM PDT by Milagros
Islamic Socialism
From the CIA factbook:
Following a 1969 military coup, Col. Muammar Abu Minyar al-QADHAFI began to espouse his own political system, the Third Universal Theory. The system was a combination of socialism and Islam derived in part from tribal practices and was supposed to be implemented by the Libyan people themselves in a unique form of "direct democracy.[1]
Author John L. Esposito:
Under Qaddafi three interrelated ideas were woven into Libya's ideological identity: Pan-Arabism, socialism, and Islam. Qaddafi's appeals to Islam were influenced by his personal piety and the sociopolitical realities of his country...
Qaddafi's new gospel for the world was but an extension of his earlier decision to implement his own vesion of a socialism distinct from the prevailing foreign ideologies and erected on the twin pillars of Arabism and Islam: Our socialism is both Arab and Islamic. We stand midway between socialism and communism and socialism and capitalism.
Qaddafi's assessment of the Arab world's plight was cast in the categories of traditional Islamic revivalism. The Green Book championed many of the themes common to Arab nationalism and contemporary Islamic thought: anticolonialism and anti-imperialism; dependence on the West as the source of Muslim weakness and loss of identity; social injustice characterized by exploitation and corruption; the return to Islam to restore Arab/Muslim power and greatness; and Qaddafi's own brand of Islamic socialism or social justice. [2][3]
Heavily influenced by pan-Arab Egyptian leader, G. A. Nasser. The Green Book was published in three parts (1975, 1977, 1978).[4] The basis for The Islamic Legion. Gaddafi's former Mercenaries with its first mission, backing Uganda's Islamic dictator Idi Amin, later on pushing a racist Arabism ideology in the Sudan.[5]
The BBC cites reports that war criminal Charles "Taylor received military training in Libya."[6]
Bah: Islamic sudies, Hezbollah, Libyan training, RUF and Charles Taylor.
From Douglas Farah & Stephen Braun's book Merchant of Death:
Bah, who also used the alias Balde, was a Senegalese whose birth name was Bocande. Born in 1957, Bah fought in the Casamance rebellion in Senegal when he was in his early twenties, then made his way to Libya for special forces training. A handsome, soft-spoken man with a deeply cleft chin and small ears, Bah had studied Islamic theology in Egypt, and in the mid-1980s joined the mujahideen in Afghanistan for almost three years. He returned to Libya in 1985, then fought for two years with Hezbollah in Lebanon before returning to Libya to help Gaddafi train the future leaders of West Africa's failed revolutions. The RUF of Sierra Leone gave Bah the rank of general, and he led an RUF column on its first combat operation... He also became one of the few people Charles Taylor trusted. Bah had access to clients Bout needed. Bah retained close ties to Blaise Compaore, the president of Burkina Faso, and a host of other government leaders on the continent.[7]
Excerpt from a 2011 'Foreign Policy' report:
Colonel Muammar Gaddafi is infamous for abuses he has inflicted on his own people but less well known is a campaign of carnage he inspired across Africa and Latin America.
Sands of time: Rebels hostile to the regime of Col Gaddafi emerge from the desert where once he trained future tyrants..
At the height of his power, Col Muammar Gaddafi was singled out by MI5 as the greatest state-sponsored terror threat of the 1980s.
It was a time when the Libyan leader is said to have become bound to repressive regimes and armed movements worldwide.
Flush with oil money, Gaddafi orchestrated a training campaign for students who became brutal warlords in Africa, a legacy which leaves the region unstable today, according to Douglas Farah, senior fellow at the International Assessment And Strategy Center in Virginia, US.
The national security consultant and analyst says: 'Gaddafi's World Revolutionary Center (WRC) near Benghazi, Libya, became, as scholar Stephen Ellis noted in his 2001 book, The Mask Of Anarchy, the “Harvard and Yale of a whole generation of African revolutionaries”, many of them the continent's most notorious tyrants.'
The desert training camps taught weapons and intelligence techniques, with doses of ideology from Gaddafi's Green Book.
'Courses lasted from a few weeks to more than a year, depending on the level of specialisation and rank one had,' says Farah.
'In addition to the African contingents, Gaddafi's cells trained the Sandinistas from Nicaragua, along with other Latin American revolutionary movements and, in the process, built an enduring relationship with Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua and Venezuela's Hugo Chávez.
Gaddafi, Ortega and Chávez also developed close ties with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), a terrorist group reportedly producing more than half of the world's cocaine.'
At the WRC in the 1980s and 1990s, a select group of students formed a fraternity who provided mutual support in their ruthless campaigns for power.
'That network still wields considerable influence today through its alumni still in power, including Blaise Compaoré of Burkina Faso and Idriss Déby of Chad,' says Farah.
'His closest ally in Africa was Robert Mugabe, who although not a WRC product, has been propped up by Libyan donations and subsidised oil shipments.'
Libyan leader Gaddafi embraces Zimbabwe leader Robert Mugabe..
However, Farah says: 'Gaddafi has done well out of his investments, acquiring at least 20 luxurious properties and a stake in some of the few still-viable state enterprises after riding to Mugabe's rescue.
Gaddafi also intervened militarily in the Central African Republic in 2001...
'Gaddafi recruited Liberia's Charles Taylor, who is now standing trial for crimes against humanity, including the abduction of children for combat, systematic rape and mass murder.
'Another recruit, Foday Sankoh of Sierra Leone's Revolutionary United Front (RUF), would be standing trial in the same court for similar crimes had he not died of natural causes.'
Sankoh formed the RUF under Taylor's auspices and together they pioneered their signature atrocity in the 1990s.
'The amputation of the arms and legs of men, women, and children as part of a scorched-earth campaign was designed to take over the region's rich diamond fields and was backed by Gaddafi, who routinely reviewed their progress and supplied weapons,' says Farah...[8]
Author R. D. Gastil:
The RUF, led by former army corporal Foday Sankoh (who has been detained in Nigeria since the coup), received assistance from Libya during the civil war and is reportedly influenced by Libyan leader Colonel Mu'ammar al-Qadhaff's amalgam of socialist-Islamic philosophies in his "Green Book." Civilians have borne the brunt of the violence. Thousands of children were recruited to fight on both sides, and many demobilized after a November 1996 peace pact have reportedly been again conscripted into the "People's Army."[9]
A map of the Sahel region showing where Al Qaeda operates (AFP/Graphic)
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