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Libya Singles Out Islamist as a Commander in Consulate Attack, Libyans Say

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
Published: October 17, 2012

CAIRO — Libyan authorities have singled out Ahmed Abu Khattala, a leader of the Benghazi-based Islamist group Ansar al-Sharia, as a commander in the attack that killed the American ambassador to Libya [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/libya/index.html ], J. Christopher Stevens [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/j_christopher_stevens/index.html ], last month, Libyans involved in the investigation said on Wednesday.

Witnesses at the scene of the attack on the American Mission in Benghazi have said they saw Mr. Abu Khattala leading the assault, and his personal involvement is the latest link between the attack and his brigade, Ansar al-Sharia, a puritanical militant group that wants to advance Islamic law in Libya.

The identity and motivation of the assailants has become an intense flash point in the American presidential campaign. Republicans have sought to tie the attack to Al Qaeda to counter President Obama’s claim that by killing Osama bin Laden [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/osama_bin_laden/index.html ] and other leaders his administration had crippled the group; Mr. Abu Khattala and Ansar al-Sharia share Al Qaeda’s puritanism and militancy, but operate independently and focus only on Libya rather than on a global jihad against the West.

But Mr. Abu Khattala’s exact role, or how much of the leadership he shared with others, is not yet clear. His leadership would not rule out participation or encouragement by militants connected to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, an Algerian Islamic insurgency that adopted the name of Bin Laden’s group a few years ago to bolster its image, but has so far avoided attacks on Western interests.

Like the other leaders of the brigade or fighters seen in the attack, Mr. Abu Khattala remains at large and has not yet been questioned. The authorities in Tripoli do not yet command an effective army or police force, and members of the recently elected Parliament have acknowledged with frustration that their government’s limited power has shackled their ability to pursue the attackers. The government typically relies on self-formed local militias to act as law enforcement, and the Benghazi area militias appear reluctant to enter a potentially bloody fight against another local group, like Ansar al-Sharia, to track down Mr. Abu Khattala.

Asked last week about Mr. Abu Khattala’s role, an American official involved in a separate United States investigation declined to comment on any particular suspects, but he indicated that the United States was tracking Mr. Abu Khattala and cautioned that the leadership of the attack might have been broader than a single man. “Ansar al-Sharia is not only a shadowy group, it’s also quite factionalized,” the official said. “There isn’t necessarily one overall military commander of the group.”

It was not immediately clear if that assessment might have changed with new information from Libyan witnesses. The New York Times reported on Tuesday [ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/16/world/africa/election-year-stakes-overshadow-nuances-of-benghazi-investigation.html ] that Mr. Abu Khattala was a leader of the brigade, but withheld accounts of his specific role in the attack to protect witnesses. On Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported that three witnesses had seen him during the Sept. 11 attack and that the Libyan authorities were focused on his role.

The Journal reported that Mr. Abu Khattala had been seen at large in the Leithi neighborhood of Benghazi, known for a high concentration of Islamists. But his exact whereabouts are unclear. Libyan border security is loose, so it is possible that he will flee or has already left the country.

Mr. Abu Khattala was a member of the Islamist opposition under Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/q/muammar_el_qaddafi/index.html ] and was imprisoned in his notorious Abu Salim jail. Unlike most of the other Islamist prisoners, however, Mr. Abu Khattala never renounced violence as means of seeking political change. He was let out of prison only last year, along with a batch of other political prisoners released in a futile bid [ http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/02/world/africa/02abusalim.html?pagewanted=all ] by the government to appease the nascent uprising.

Mr. Abu Khattala fought Colonel Qaddafi along with the rest of the Libyan opposition and the current leaders of the big militias in eastern Libya. But as those groups lined up behind the transitional government and the democratic process, Mr. Abu Khattala and a small core of like-minded Islamists formed Ansar al-Sharia, which now includes 100 to 200 fighters. Its name means “supporters of Islamic law,” and it opposes electoral democracy as a man-made substitute.

It has staged displays of armed might intended to deter Western-style secular liberals whom it suspects of moving to liberalize Libya, where alcohol is currently banned, polygamy [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/p/polygamy/index.html ] is legal and the vast majority of women wear an Islamic head covering. But Ansar al-Sharia also guarded a local hospital and engaged in preaching and charitable work, before popular anger at the group for its role in the mission attack forced it to scatter and hide out of sight.

Suliman Ali Zway contributed reporting from Tripoli, Libya, and Eric Schmitt from Washington.

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Related

Memo From the Middle East: Election-Year Stakes Overshadow Nuances of Libya Investigation (October 16, 2012)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/16/world/africa/election-year-stakes-overshadow-nuances-of-benghazi-investigation.html

Attack on U.S. Mission in Benghazi Becomes Subject of Strongest Words (October 17, 2012)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/17/us/politics/attack-on-us-mission-in-benghazi-becomes-subject-of-strongest-words.html

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© 2012 The New York Times Company

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/18/world/africa/us-singles-out-libyan-islamist-as-a-commander-in-consulate-attack-libyans-say.html


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The Benghazi Embarrassment

By Jeffrey Goldberg
Oct 17 2012, 8:43 AM ET

The embarrassment of the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi is not that it happened. America has its victories against terrorism, and its defeats, and the murder of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three American security personnel represents one defeat in a long war. The embarrassment is that political culture in America is such that we can't have an adult conversation about the lessons of Benghazi, a conversation that would focus more on understanding al Qaeda affiliates in North Africa, on the limitations and imperfections of security, and on shortfalls in our intelligence gathering, than on who said what when in the Rose Garden.

What we've got now is a discussion about who needs to be fired, and which candidate is in a better position to score cheap points. Does Mitt Romney actually think that Barack Obama doesn't believe that what happened in Benghazi was an act of terror? A larger question: Does anyone seriously believe that Barack Obama, a president who is at war in more Muslim countries than any president in American history, is soft on al Qaeda? And one other question: Does Barack Obama believe that Republicans somehow aren't allowed to raise serious questions about the Administration's response to the attack [as if Obama has actually indicated he believes that]? Again, I wish the Republicans would frame these questions not to raise doubts about the commander-in-chief's innermost feelings about terrorism, but to ask what specific actions do we need to take, quickly, to try to prevent follow-on attacks? Whatever happened to that whole notion of politics stopping at the water's edge?

Four quick points:

1) Because the conversation around Benghazi is so stupid, we're going to end up with more mindless CYA security "improvements" that will imprison American diplomats in their fortress compounds even more than they are already imprisoned.

2) It would be good if at least some of the blame for the assassination of Chris Stevens was apportioned to his assassins. Both candidates would do us a service if they would re-focus the debate on ways to defeat Islamist terrorism.

3) Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama can both take the blame, or the responsibility, for this attack if they want, but the truth, quite obviously, is that neither one of them is in charge of assessing the security needs of individual American embassies and consulates. The job of leaders is to hire well, supervise their hires to the degree possible, and then, if something goes wrong, spend the time and energy to figure out how to fix the problem. It is unrealistic to believe that either leader could have known about what is ultimately a small problem in a large war. We should spend more time judging them on how they respond to defeats then on blaming them for the defeats. (By the way, I would hold George W. Bush to the same standard re: 9/11, and Bill Clinton to the same standard when it came to his Administration's unsuccessful efforts to stop the spread of al Qaeda in the late 1990s.)

4) As Blake Hounshell put it, "Amb. Chris Stevens was a big boy and he made his own decision to go to Benghazi despite the risks. If he thought it was too dangerous, he should not have gone." We've lost thousands of American government employees over the past 10 years in the Middle East and in Afghanistan. Nearly all of them were in uniform, but Foreign Service officers know the risks as well. We need to treat the loss of these four men in Libya as a battlefield loss. That would require people such as Darrell Issa, who chaired a House Oversight committee hearing on the Benghazi attacks, from saying foolish things, like he did the other day. I wrote about this in my Bloomberg View column [ http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-15/benghazi-attack-brings-infantilizing-response.html ]:

What Republicans shouldn't do is make statements like the one Issa made on CBS's "Face the Nation" on Oct. 14. Issa argued that if security officials had repeatedly requested reinforcements for U.S. diplomatic outposts in Libya "and that's not being heard, then it isn't just Ambassador Stevens who is now dead -- it's everybody who works throughout the Middle East is at risk."

Eleven years after the Sept. 11 attacks, and 12 years after the fatal raid on the USS Cole in Yemen, and Issa has just realized that assignment to the Middle East might pose risks for American government personnel!

Here's the problem with Issa's stunning insight: In his desire to cast the administration as incompetent, he does an enormous disservice to the cause of forward-leaning diplomacy and engagement. American embassies are already fortresses. Issa would dig a moat around them. After a point, there's simply no reason to dispatch diplomats to hostile capitals if they can't engage with actual citizens. Risk is inherent for U.S. diplomats posted to the Middle East.

Copyright © 2012 by The Atlantic Monthly Group

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/10/the-benghazi-embarrassment/263735/ [with comments]