In Information Dissemination, Raymond Pritchett makes a terrifying prediction:
Libya has all the makings of a prolonged, uncontrolled tribal war similar to Somalia where groups are likely to link up with elements of Al Qaeda like AQAP and AQIM for support towards taking political control once Gaddafi is removed.
Libya is also emerging as the new nexus in North Africa for Al Qaeda, and anyone who says otherwise is ignoring how that fight against Al Qaeda is the fight everyone knows is coming after Gaddafi loses power.
On Twitter, Pritchett went even further:
Libya looks more and more like the next Somalia every day. We are removing Gaddafi only to have to remove Al Qaeda later. […] AQIM influence grows.
His sources?
[…] NATO, Pentagon, and others. It is fairly consistent concern in virtually all intel circles I speak to.
So which is it, I asked him, is the influence of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb actually growing in Libya in some measurable and documentable way, or is this merely a concern, as in “officials in Stockholm are concerned that Al Qaeda influence is growing in Sweden”?
Alas, no answer.
So let me get this straight. There’s this mega-secret hivemind — so secret, in fact, that you’re only allowed to use its whisperings to sucker-punch skeptics on Twitter — and because it thinks Libya might one day become a terrorist-infested wasteland, we can now all call it, without a shred of evidence, “the new nexus in North Africa for Al Qaeda”?
Yes, apparently we can. Of course, by the same token we could also call Sweden the new AQ nexus in Europe. But never mind.
Just for fun, let’s look at that quote again, with emphasis added:
Libya is also emerging as the new nexus in North Africa for Al Qaeda, and anyone who says otherwise is ignoring how that fight against Al Qaeda is the fight everyone knows is coming after Gaddafi loses power.
Yep. That’s a baseless assertion based on a baseless assertion. “I say this is true, and I know it is true because I am right.” Even Gaddafi couldn’t have put it better (although he has tried).
I’m not saying it isn’t possible that at some future point some terrorist organisation will try to insert itself into the war in Libya, or, indeed, that something like that isn’t already taking place.
It’s just that there isn’t any robust open source data to support the claim. Yes, desperadoes from Darnah became suicide bombers in Iraq in 2005-2007, but that doesn’t mean those men — much less Al Qaeda — are now heading the fight in Libya. Yes, NATO commander Stavridis has hinted at “flickers of Al Qaeda” among the Libyan opposition; but he has also admitted he has “no details of a significant Qaeda presence”. Oh, and yes, there is this Daily Telegraph story, based on an article in the Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore, that surfaces on Twitter every time a pundit wants to argue that the West has been duped into supporting a horde of homicidal hipsters.
But what about AQIM, the Salafist hellhounds “we” are supposed to “remove” after Gaddafi falls? As usual, real experts are reluctant to go along with the hype. According to Andrew Lebovich, a researcher at the New America Foundation, even if AQIM has actually managed to grab weapons and explosives from Libya, the organisation is probably more interested in defending its home bases in Niger and Mali against Western special forces than getting mixed up in someone else’s revolution:
This incident provides more evidence that, rather than seeking to run the revolt in Libya (as some members of the U.S. security establishment and Congress seem to want to believe), AQIM is using the chaos there to take what it can, before retreating to Algeria or Mali. No one has provided any indication that more than two or three AQIM members are entering Libya at any given time, and while they could be making contacts with rebels or other assorted jihadists for the purpose of fighting, it is just as likely that they are scouting the terrain, or laying the groundwork for other smuggling convoys.
Sadly, the “Libya will be the next Qaeda Emirate” story is just one of many fantasy memes currently spreading through the Googleverse.
Another popular one, also initially put forth by Gaddafi, is the doomsday scenario about the war degenerating into a tribal holocaust. Again, such a tragedy is not inconceivable, and as the rebels capture more loyalist towns, eyewitness accounts of targeted reprisals have started to appear. Still, there is no evidence of widespread tribal violence.
That didn’t stop analysts critical of the NATO intervention from jumping at a Wall Street Journal story about the old animosity between Misrata and Tawergha. The piece, by Sam Dagher, never mentions actual violence, and it certainly doesn’t say anything about ethnic cleansing. Yet, as if by magic, the word “vengeance” started cropping up in articles quoting the story, with one normally astute observer calling the Misrati tough talk an “eruption” that is “consuming” the city, claiming that “ethnic violence” is now taking place, and finally warning that Libya may turn into “a nation of Misratas”. (A puzzling notion to those of us who have been afraid of the very same thing but for totally different reasons.)
What puzzles me is not the yawning gap between analysis and reality. It’s the bloodthirsty glee with which pundits, particularly Americans, pounce on any morsel of news that might show the Libyan uprising in an unflattering light, be it AQ influence, tribal vendettas or extra-judicial violence (by default, the rebels are assumed to be the executioners). It’s almost as if the misadventure in Iraq and the bungling of Afghanistan have left the analysts in permanent snark overdrive, wishing ill on everyone and finding disaster where it hasn’t yet happened, to hell with facts.
[…] Lindholmin viimeaikaiset kirjoitukset mm. argumentoivat varsin tehokkaasti, miksi kaiken maailman kommentaattoreiden sanaa ei välttämättä kannata ottaa todesta, miksi Libyan kapinallisten sotilaallista kykyä ei tulisi yliarvioida, ja miksi Gaddafin […]