Why One Libyan Town Became a Pipeline For Suicide Bombers in Iraq

[SpikeTss]

Source: Newsweek

High Percentage of Foreign Fighters in Iraq Coming From Libya

NEW YORK, April 20 /PRNewswire/ -- Late last year American soldiers raided an insurgent headquarters in the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar. Inside they found some papers with the letterhead "Mujahedin Shura Council." As they analyzed them, one thing struck the American investigators. Of the 606 militants cataloged in the Sinjar records, almost 19 percent had come to Iraq from Libya reports Newsweek Jerusalem Bureau Chief Kevin Peraino in the April 28 cover, "The Martyr Factory" (on newsstands Monday, April 21). Previous intelligence estimates had always held that the bulk of Iraq's foreign fighters come from Saudi Arabia. Indeed, the largest number of militants in the Sinjar records -- 244 of them -- were Saudi nationals. But in per capita terms, Libyans represented a much higher percentage. Perhaps the most startling detail: of 112 Libyan fighters named in the papers, an astoundingly large number -- 52 -- had come from a single small town of 50,000 people along the Mediterranean coast, called Darnah (...)

When Peraino visits the office of Saddik Afdel, the co-chairman of the town's People's Committee -- the Libyan equivalent of a mayor -- at first he denied that his town was sending a significant number of its young men to Iraq. "We don't know exactly the number," he tells Peraino. "Here in Darnah, not more than 10." When he's shown the stack of documents, some of which include small photos of the fighters, the chairman grew quiet."

Read more: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/newsweek-cover-the-martyr-factory,358793.shtml

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This should shed some light on why the oil price is rising ...

[Baby Snooks]

1. And who embraced Libya despite Lockerbie?

Quite a few were shocked by George W Bush acting as if Lockerbie never happened and "normalizing" relations with Libya and no doubt will claim there is no link between Libya and the terrorists in Iraq. But there is, of course, a link between al Queda and the terrorists in Iraq. Even when there isn't. And obviously there isn't. The reality is that al Queda in Iraq is just more propaganda from the war machine we call the Department of Homeland Security.

The war on terror is merely a diverson from the real war which is the war on the American people and Congress declared that war along with George W Bush. I cannot think of one member of Congress apart from Barack Obama who did not approve of all of this at one time or another. Some claim they did not. Some claim they didn't know and would not have approved it had they known. And yet it continues. Despite their knowing now.

All eyes as always turn to Madame Speaker. All of San Franciso should go sit on her sidewalk and tell her to rot in hell. Let her call the police and claim they're homeless people. Quite a few of them will be as a result of her. Quite a few of us may end up wondering where the next round of terrorists who have attacked us have come from. Libya?

[Igel]

2. Question for those informed better than I am.

What's the People's Committee guy referring to? 'When Peraino asks about the town's history of rebellious militants, Afdel couldn't suppress a grin. "Those are the people who used to stand up and fight for their land," he says. "We have to remember them." '

I've come up with "Darnah" and "Derna" as common English spellings for the name, "Darna" seems preferred in French.

Is he referring to

(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darnah,_Libya Occupation of Derna by the Americans during the Barbary Wars? "Jihad" seems an appropriate context for this.

(2) Activity against the Italians prior to WWI?

(3) Some nationalist "activism" in the early 1980s, mostly in Tobruk?

(4) Something completely different and so obvious that this question is surprising?