Mar 312011
The U.N. Security Council imposed an arms embargo on Libya on Feb. 26 along with travel bans and asset freezes for Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and members of his family and inner circle. [ID:nN26176835].
The following pictures were taken in and around rebel held Benghazi during the two week period prior to the start of military action by France and the UK on 19 March 2011. They are a pretty clear indication that, prior to the outbreak of hostilities, the rebels had access to some brand new weaponry of standard NATO issue.
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- Out-of-the-box standard NATO machine gun and shells
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- FN-FAL rifle – brand new
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- Brand new state-of-the-art NATO-standard grenade launcher
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- Box of 2 x 106-mm shell for the M40 cannon (US production).
Video update 11 April 2011
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7 Responses to “Who is arming the Libyan Rebels?”
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I am not sympathetic to NATO’s mercenaries aka rebellion, however you should not mislead the people who are reading this. It is simply amateurish and dilettante to wrote this. Neither, I am not sympathetic to the Colonel.
Lot of arms and ammunitions had been sold to regime prior to arms rebellion. FN Herstal (rifle shown of picture) sold guns and rifles to Libya, as well as Beretta of Italy. Actually every major manufacturer of weapons deal with Qaddafi. That recoil gun is old, from Vietnam era, and that anti-aircraft launcher is the Russian old one too. I am not say there in no foreign sourced weapons that those are not ones.
Unlike the Western ‘Official Narrative’, the article is not intended to mislead anyone. It simply lays out some evidence that the Libyan ‘Rebels’ had/have access to modern NATO-standard small arms and other weaponry.
Those responsible for crafting the ‘Official Narrative’ on Libya (and everything else of serious import) know they can rely on a combination of basic good intent, ignorance and gullibility about foreign affairs in their populations – and they milk it mercilessly.
In spite of your claim to lack of sympathy with the Libyan rebellion, the thrust of your comment is helpful to the ‘official narrative’.
If you want some gross in-your-face examples of simplistic, ‘amateurish dilettante’ misleading of the public, try the Daily Mail – or Express – or most of the Western MSM for that matter.
The guy with the grenade launcher looks like a white guy.
What kind of ragtag group of rebels comes up with graphics like these?
http://twitpic.com/4k6dmv/full
if you look in the corner of the image it comes from the website feb17voices.com, also much more sophisticated than anything we saw from any other Arab Spring State. They used what they had already in Egypt. Bloggers that were already popular carried information (as far as I knew.)
So I notice that the people who put that whole presentation together somehow left out photos like this one…
http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/fotostrecke-65259-6.html
For the benefit of those without Google Translate on hand, the caption reads: “A Libyan rebel takes stock of weapons and ammunition in a government military base in Ajdabiya, which the rebels have taken over.” Notice the whole pile of anti-aircraft missile launchers on the ground in the photo.
Hi Nikolay,
I am a Libya citizen who resides now in UK. I watched your video about Libyan Rebel, but sorry I did not get your point. The way this video and its contents were presented gives the audience the impression that the rebel were prepared and trained to do so a head of Feb 17 when the upraising erupted .
Well, to be honest at the first couple of minutes of the video I started believing in what had been said, but after few minutes some claims, which did not make sense at least to me as a Libyan, started popping up. Examples of these claims:
- Pointing more than once on white men and saying that they are not Libyan. I think you were talking about Libya but not South Africa. For your information, around %75-80% of the people population are white, and more than 10% of those are blond.
- The black man whom you said that he is an African mercenary is a typical Libyan citizen from the south part of Libya who must likely leaves in East part of Libya.
- You said the embargo on Libyan last for 42 year. This is also not true. The embargo was imposed around 1984 till 2003. And since 2003 till 2010, Gadaffi and his son managed to close very important weapon deals specially with western countries as trade off to smooth the path for Gadaffi regime to have good relationship with US and Europe.
- Most of the Libyan rebel’s weapons were seized from the army divisions of Kaamis in Bengazi and Aljdabiz. Kaamis is one of Gadaffi’s son who was killed in Alaziza Compound in the third week of the upraising. Kaamis army divisions were very well equipped and trained.
- It was also mentioned that the rebels have FN FAL Belgium weapon. I hadn’t been in army service before, but I asked some friends about that, and all of them confirmed to me that around 10% of Libyan weapons are from Belgium and the other 90% from Russian. By the way, 90% of the Libyan citizen had been trained on some of these weapon in their high School or after their graduated from universities. The army service was compulsory for 2 years on every Libyan between 15 and 50 years old.
- Now, at the end of this video, and in the general conclusion, it was said “there is a suspicion large amount of nonlibyan mugs”. If I heard this sentence correctly, and if it was meant “attackers” by the word Mugs. Then I do not how why you tried to conclude that there are large amount of non-Libyan mugs when he only showed one guy, whom claimed to be an African mercenary, and around 5 foreign Journals; a total of 6 foreigner.
I would like also to express my comments on some of the points that you raised in this video:
1- You said, how did the rebel get this new weapons?
My Answer: Gaddafi has been buying weapons for 40 years and keeping them in stock and rosfores , and did not use them since 1983.
2- Your said. The Rifles is not and has been never adopted by Libyan Army.
My comment is: Gaddafi more than once said that he will not hesitate to collaborate with Satan if needed, and so he paid billions of dollars to get these weapons. Meanwhile, I just wonder about the following phrase: “is not and has been never “ which you had used; it seems to be that you already know all the weapons that Gaddafi purchased
3- You said: The trainer, who is training the rebel on the Chinese heavy machine gun, hold instructions leaflet. You said also “normally machine guns do come with their own instructors to teach how to use them”.
My comment: Why you excluded that the trainers was holding a note book. My assumption that the trainer is holding a note book seems to be more truthful given that less than 0.0001% of the Libyan can read or write Chinese.
There are also some questions which impose itself here:
- Why you did not clearly state you point in the conclusion?
- Do you know that the non of the Libyan youth (what you called them rebels) holds a gun in the first six days of this upraising? They do not destroy even one building in the first six days as it was happened in Tunisia and Egypt. You can refer to achieve to see that.
- Do not you think that The rebel have also the right to protect themselves?
- Do not you think that the Libyan people do not have the right to live in a democratic state?
- Do you believe that one day there will be a president who does what Gaddafi is doing to his own people?
- Have you seen what Gaddafi did in cities like Zawia and Musrata?
What completely surprised me in this video, however, was its END, when I saw some Russian letters, which was the name of the producer, and also when it says “FOR MORE INOFROMATION VISIT WEBSITE nstarikov.ru/en” . Then I knew that this video and its contents were not odd since it was prepared by Russian author. Russians are the best alias to Gaddafi before and even now. Thought, Russians know better than anybody else how aggressive Gaddafi is, Russia was the first country and one of a few countries who stood against any operation against Gaddafi. As a matter of fact, this is what Gaddafi and his son would like to hear and to see about the rebels.
Since you are a respected author and to be a neutral, I aske you to do another documentary only to show the truth of Gaddafi regime and what Gaddafi does to his own people and what Gaddafi has provided to the Libya as a country and Libyan people during has 42 years in power when the total Libya revenue during his 40 years in power exceeded 2000 Billion (Two thousand Billion) US dollars.
Libyan Citizen
I never watched the video, I just read Omran’s comment – great comment!