Libya: Col Gaddafi 'has spent £2.1m ($3.5m) on mercenaries'

[Turborama]

Source: Telegraph

Col Muammar Gaddafi's regime has spent $3.5 million (£2.1m) hiring hundreds of mercenaries from north Africa to help defeat anti-government rebels, according to senior Nato officials.
By Con Coughlin 7:10PM BST 20 Apr 2011

Details of a deal to recruit 450 fighters from the disputed Western Sahara region have been passed to Nato officials by a former Gaddafi loyalist who was involved in the negotiations before defecting to the rebels.

According to the defector, who has not been named, the mercenaries are being paid $10,000 each to fight for Col Gaddafi for two months. The deal with the mercenaries was arranged last month after serious anti-government protests threatened to overthrow the regime.

The majority of the fighters are reported to be members of the Sahrawi tribe who are based in the Western Sahara, and have been fighting a war of independence against Morocco as members of the Polisario Front.

Col Gaddafi's officials have also recruited scores of fighters from rebel movements in Niger and Mali that have close links with the Gaddafi regime.

Read more: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/8464254/Libya-Col-Gaddafi-has-spent-2.1m-on-mercenaries.html

[tabatha]

1. It is probably more than that if you add in

the cost of all of the vehicles that have transported the mercs into Libya.

[joshcryer]

2. The unrec brigade is out in force tonight.

Fun times. :hi:

[Turborama]

4. Yep, keeping a news article off the Greatest Page where other DUers might find it...

...is really 'sticking it to the man!'

:hi:

[The_Casual_Observer]

3. Can't hold a candle to the billions the US spends on mercenaries

[Turborama]

5. Not that this justifies any hiring of mercenaries to do your dirty work for you, of course. n/t

[EFerrari]

9. What are those mercenaries doing in our proxy war?

(Okay, I couldn't help it.)

[Turborama]

10. Which ones? I was pointing out that two wrongs don't make a right.

Which is kindergarten level stuff, as you know.

[EFerrari]

11. It is a little silly to complain about mercanaries

when your government is manipulating a civil war for their own purposes. It's a mote and beam problem.

[Turborama]

13. Not really. I'm not a government.

In fact, I consider myself a citizen of the world.

Sounds to me like you're giving Gaddafi a free pass to hire mercenaries for his own purposes - to defend his dictatorship - because the US use them sometimes as well.

Mercenaries are an anathema to me, whoever uses them.

[joshcryer]

14. Typical white washing of Gaddafi's crimes.

It's everywhere these days.

[Alamuti Lotus]

16. remarks about increasingly narrow, myopic naivety =/= composing an alter to the self-styled Colonel

the former is kinda rampant these days, too... mistaken too often for the latter while trying to either score points, bury heads in sand imported from the Sahara, or some combination of both.

[EFerrari]

40. The situation in Libya is complicated.

And it isn't one single evil man vs. Libya, that's for sure, although that is the Official Story. It's sort of appalling that so many people have bought it, hook, line and sinker.

[EFerrari]

25. No, my point is that it's silly to fault Gaddafi for resorting to mercenaries

-- something he has always done to avoid the military taking over Libya -- when Washington is engaging in a proxy war. Using mercenaries is actually the more honest transaction of the two.

[Turborama]

30. My point is that any use of mercenaries is wrong, no matter who is doing it.

The fact that Gaddafi has always been doing it doesn't make it better, it makes it much worse.

Do you think that the dictator of Bahrain's http://www.bahrainrights.org/en/node/3774"> fast tracking of foreigners' citizenship to employ them as mercenaries is a righteous way to prevent the military "taking over" Bahrain?

Do you think Mubarak was stupid using Egyptians in his army?

Whatev, please don't let me stop you defending Gaddafi's brutaltastic methods of controlling his population and holding onto power, at whatever cost.

[EFerrari]

38. I haven't defended Gaddafi in any way.

I've pointed out the double standard.

[Turborama]

41. You're just pointing out hypocrisy, double standards and that Gaddafi is more honest? Sure, OK. n/t

[Cerridwen]

33. Killing hundreds, if not thousands of civilians.

About whom you purport to care when the UN, NATO, or the US kills but about whom you do not seem to care when gaddafi kills them. Your double standard sucks, E.

gadaffi is not chavez and Libya is not South America.

Proxy war? No doubt. It appears that our CIA sponsored "proxy war" has displayed a few holes in our CIA.

Either a) they are so inept they can't get gaddafi

b) they don't want to get gaddafi but continue to use him as the western/US/EU puppet-dictator while allowing or causing the death and injury of hundreds or thousands civilians

c) they are incapable of running an efficient "proxy war"

d) they are incapable of getting our current choice for puppet-dictator in without hundreds or thousands of civilian deaths

e) this ain't ours this time.

f) here's a novel concept; maybe those "rag head," "camel--riding," "naive/stupid" Libyan people are really fighting for some form of democracy. Nah. Can't be. Because "we all" know they're too "naive/stupid" to know what they're doing; even with the help of the mighty CIA who still hasn't taken out gaddafi.

Something stinks in Libya...badly.

When you show as much concern for the civilians injured and killed by gaddafi as you do of those injured and killed by "our" side, I'll take you seriously. Until then, you've a novel double standard going on here. It too, stinks.

[EFerrari]

37. No, I've no double standard here whatsoever.

I will not, however, fall into the trap of demonizing black Africans based on inflated atrocity porn that is being fed to me by the mass media and two or three twitter accounts. I hope that's as clear as possible.

Black Africans in Libya have been attacked and even killed on the suspicion of being mercenaries. That's the lovely peaceful rebellion you folks are so protective of.

And as I've never used any of those racist ephithets about Arabs, your imputing them to me is offensive. The issue in any case isn't that Libyans can't rebel against Gaddafi. The issue is whether they have in fact done that or not.

Not to mention, it is the height of hypocrisy to ooh and ah about Gaddafi's mercs when our government is using NATO and the UN Security Council to do its "dirty work".

[ChangoLoa]

35. Deleterious ethnocentrism is bad for your health

[EFerrari]

39. Right. Except that wasn't ethnocentrism but satire. n/t

[Hardrada]

6. Bump this!

[grahamhgreen]

7. Is Blackwater, XE, Canopy, etc, involved?

[Turborama]

8. There are no reports of American mercenaries involved in fighting for Gaddafi, so far. n/t

[psychopomp]

19. Well, if you believe the West is in it for oil then all of NATO are mercenaries for the rebels

[Alamuti Lotus]

20. mercenary fighters deployed by the right-wing governments in England, France, Italy, etc

all countries with really and truly deplorable records in Africa.

[Turborama]

21. Only if I thought the Security Council are in it for the oil & didn't know what a mercenary is

Which I don't in regards to the former, and I do as far as the latter is concerned.

[psychopomp]

34. France, the US, the UK and Italy have already gone beyond the spirit of the resolution

and will soon openly toss away the window dressing that is the UN sanction. This is all about military action to foment "regime change" now, which the UN did not endorse.

[Blue_Tires]

28. Libya couldn't afford the asking price...

[Hannah Bell]

12. Human Rights Watch: "no evidence of mercenaries being used in eastern Libya"

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x933258

[KurtNYC]

15. $10,000 times 450 merc = $4.5 mil -- NOT $3.5mil

and mercs on the front lines were earlier reported to be getting $3,500 / day. Something isn't right.

[Bragi]

17. Good value for money, I'd say

Since the mercenaries are all that is keeping him in power, I'm sure the Libyan Congressional Budget Office will give this expenditure it a big thumbs up.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

18. How much has NATO spent on mercenaries

Xe, CIA, Special Operations personnel, people who are helping the rebels with communication, training, people who are evaluating the rebels to determine if they are friend or foe?

How much do we spend on deniable non-boots on the ground?

I'd guess Qaddafi is getting a good deal.

As we creep closer to the edge of the quagmire ...

[Baclava]

22. And we've spent a billion dollars trying to blow them up with missles

...to the shores of Tripoli

[frylock]

23. and the mercenaries are dumping babies out of incubators!!1

fuckin rubes. :eyes:

[bvar22]

24. Those aren't "mercenaries".

Those are "Private Security Contractors".



If you're not FOR the New WAR in Libya,
you're WITH The Communists AlQaeda The Terrorists Saddam Qaddafi!!!

[JoseGaspar]

26. Unrec for bad math and even worse logic...

What happend to "50,000" mercenaries and "billions"?

Also, Polisario ain't "mercenaries". I doubt if they would fight for Blackwater.

This story gets worse every day.

[Cognitive_Resonance]

27. A legitimate government with popular support would not require mercenaries

to hold power. It's just a matter of time until the Gaddafi regime is finished. Thanks for posting. Kick

[daleo]

31. No but they might use "contracters"

As is the case in Iraq and Afghanistan.

[Turborama]

32. A legitimate government with popular support would not require mercenaries or "contractors"

I'm not sure how legitimate the latest election results in Iraq were, but the Afghanistan 'election' was a sham, as I'm sure you'd agree.

[Old Troop]

29. To paraphrase Rick in "Casablanca"..."I don't object to mercenaries, just

cut rate ones..."

[Iterate]

36. Libya is a signatory to the UN Mercenary Convention

http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/FULL/530?OpenDocument

Article 5

1.States Parties shall note recruit, use, finance or train mercenaries and shall prohibit such activities in accordance with the provisions of the present Convention.

2.States Parties shall not recruit, use, finance or train mercenaries for the purpose of opposing the legitimate exercise of the inalienable right of peoples to self-determination, as recognized by international law, and shall take, in conformity with international law, the appropriate measures to prevent the recruitment, use, financing or training of mercenaries for that purpose.

3.They shall make the offences set forth in the present Convention punishable by appropriate penalties which take into account the grave nature of those offences.

Full text, list of signatories and state parties at the link.

Also,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Mercenary_Convention
http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/mercenaries.htm

Sorry I didn't see your OP sooner, as I'm sure this link would have prevented much uninformed confusion.

BTW, the US is not a signatory, so I'm sure many critics will be well motivated to use these events to get it passed by the Senate and signed by Obama. It should be easy.

[Prometheus Bound]

42. The New York Times was pushing this story in early March at the height of the war propaganda.

They said 3000 to 4000 mercs at $1000 a day. Now we're down to 10% of the number at $165 a day.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/10/world/africa/10qaddafi.html