The outrage that broke in Libya on
September 11, 2012, with the killing of the United
States ambassador and three other diplomatic
staffers at the consulate in Benghazi, appears to
be an example of the perfect storm. Diverse but
powerful agendas, local and international,
converged unexpectedly to make it happen, and the
tragic consequences were most likely amplified by
sheer luck. Since the entire Middle East is red
hot with tension, its repercussions may also be
disproportionate and unpredictable.
A
Washington Post report indicates that Ambassador
Christopher Stevens was not meant to be in the
consulate when the attack took place, and was only
there, in the words of United States Senator John
Kerry, by "happenstance". A piece of history may
have repeated itself -
or at least, as Mark Twain once quipped, it may
have rhymed. Exactly 11 years after it reportedly
surpassed its own expectations and brought down
the Twin Towers in New York, al-Qaeda (or a group
inspired by it) may have lucked out again.
Some caution is due: Reuters, for example,
reports that the militants had surprisingly
precise intelligence about the whereabouts of a
safe house where the ambassador was rushed after
the clashes started. While luck clearly played a
role - Stevens died of asphyxiation - it is hard
to say how large exactly that role was based on
the often contradictory early reports.
Although the attack started under the
cover of a protest against a distasteful
anti-Islamic movie created by a previously unknown
man who describes himself as an Israeli-American
real estate developer - a similar though smaller
riot broke out in the Egyptian capital Cairo - it
was clearly professionally executed.
"This
was a well-armed, well-coordinated event," the
chairman of the House Intelligence Committee of
the US Congress, Mike Rogers, told MSNBC. "It had
both indirect and direct fire, and it had military
maneuvers that were all part of this very
organized attack."
The British think-tank
Quilliam reports that the assault consisted of two
waves and was carried out by around 20 militants
seeking to avenge the death of al-Qaeda's second
in command, Abu Yahya al-Libi, who was
assassinated in June.
"24 hours before
this attack, none other than the leader of
al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, released a video on
Jihadist forums to mark the anniversary of 9/11,"
writes Quilliam. "In this video, Zawahiri
acknowledged the death of his second in command
Abu Yahya and urged Libyans to avenge his
killing."
Libyan officials offered a
different version: Deputy Interior Minister Wanis
a-Sharif told reporters that supporters of the
former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, of whom
there are still pockets throughout the country,
were behind the attack. The irony is hard to avoid
- Stevens died in a similar way to Gaddafi, whom
he helped oust and who was lynched by the rebels
last year.
These two accounts are not
necessarily mutually exclusive: there is much
speculation that remnants of the Gaddafi regime
have sought to ally themselves with al-Qaeda - the
dictator's second-oldest son Saif al-Islam had
issued calls for jihad shortly before his capture.
Yet there are other possible domestic
Libyan plots that may have contributed to the
incident. On Wednesday night, the Libyan national
assembly elected Mustafa Abu Shagur, a professor
of electrical engineering and a politician with
ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, the first
democratically chosen prime minister of Libya. It
was a close contest and a dramatic reversal
against Mahmoud Jibril, whose centrist coalition
had come out first in the parliamentary election
in July. Some analysts speculated that the attack
may have been intended in part to influence the
vote.
Whoever was behind the assault, it
could hardly have come at a more explosive moment
in Middle Eastern politics. US President Barack
Obama, who is running for re-election in less than
two months, is engaged in a diplomatic and
political battle on several fronts. He seeks,
among other things, to "lead from behind" in the
ouster of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad - a
situation that broadly resembles that in Libya
last year - to force the Iranians to halt their
nuclear program, to reassure disgruntled allies
such as Israel and to parry domestic attacks on
his foreign policy record by the camp of his main
opponent, Republican presidential candidate Mitt
Romney.
The attack came as a slap in the
face for Obama, who ominously vowed "justice". His
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did not hide
her shock in interviews with the press: "Many
Americans are asking - indeed, I asked myself -
how could this happen?... How could this happen in
a country we helped liberate, in a city we helped
save from destruction?"
Ian Black, the
British daily Guardian's Middle East editor, put
it even more bluntly. "If Muammar Gaddafi were
still alive, he might give a bitter laugh at the
news that the US ambassador to Libya has been
killed in Benghazi," Black wrote. "[Former
Egyptian President] Hosni Mubarak [who was also
reportedly ousted with American acquiescence last
year], in his prison hospital, would growl a wry
'I told you so' after the attack on the
fortress-like American embassy in Cairo."
Romney jumped on the opportunity to
criticize the president, even as his comments
stirred controversy.
The incident
demonstrated, among other things, the dangers of
Obama's policy of direct engagement with the Arab
masses - and also with the Muslim Brotherhood,
which represents the proverbial Arab street in
many parts of the region. Indirectly, it
strengthened the hand of Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu, whose war of words with Obama
had intensified in the last days, and who has also
attacked Washington's Middle East policy.
(Although the latest disagreement was over Iran,
the Israelis have reportedly voiced concerns about
Obama's handling of Egypt and Libya in the past,
and the two arguments are widely seen as related.)
The latter observation, added to the
self-identification of the producer of the
controversial movie "Innocence of Muslims" as an
"Israeli Jew", raises another speculative point.
Some on the Israeli right - or on the evangelical
Christian right in the US, which is supports
Israel and opposes Obama for its own reasons and
which was also reportedly involved in the
production - may have intended to create a
provocation in order to expose the weaknesses of
Obama's foreign policy. If so, they too succeeded
beyond their expectations.
In his
perspicacious article titled Terry
Jones, asymmetrical warrior (Asia Times
Online, September 13, 2010) my colleague David
Goldman explained how "a madman carrying a match
and a copy of the Koran can do more damage to the
Muslim world than a busload of suicide bombers."
The "madman" can clearly do similar damage to
those who seek to ally themselves with the Arab
street.
However, caution is once again
due. Subsequent reports suggest that Sam Bacile,
the said Israeli Jew-cum-California real estate
entrepreneur, is at best a pseudonym and at worst
a fiction. This could easily be a kind of a
false-flag operation, intended to embarrass the
Israeli government as well.
Which brings
us to a final point: perhaps the single greatest
beneficiary of the affair was the regime of Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad.
What better
illustration of Assad's argument that he is
fighting "terrorists" than this dramatic reverse
in Libya, which many foreigners analysts had seen
as a success story to be repeated in his country?
While no evidence currently links the Syrian
government to either the movie or the embassy
attack, the motive is certainly in place. The
argument for an international intervention against
Assad just suffered a body blow.
Whatever
American officials say, the embassy attack is
likely to have serious repercussions on US policy
in Libya and the Middle East. It will certainly
shift in subtle - and maybe not so subtle - ways
the debates inside the Obama administration.
The movie affair, meanwhile, may not be
over. It could be, in fact, that the attack will
serve to bring the movie to the attention of
Muslims worldwide, and to spark further violence.
There is a precedent for this in the incident with
the cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed published by
Danish newspapers in 2005, which caused a delayed
wave of protests in 2006. Over 200 died in that
episode.
In all, there are more question
marks than answers currently related to the
embassy attack in Libya and the movie that sparked
protests there and elsewhere in the Middle East.
The first assassination of an American diplomat
since 1979 is unlikely to go without
repercussions. In the highly charged Middle East,
the crisis could easily spiral out of control,
beyond the imagination even of those who concocted
it.
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