13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened in Benghazi Read Online Free PDF Page A

and well-armed 17 February Martyrs Brigade, were hired to provide security and act as a Libyan “Quick Reaction Force” to protect the US State Department’s Special Mission Compound in Benghazi. Financed by the Libyan Defense Ministry, the 17 February militia had established bases and training facilities, assembled an arsenal of light and heavy weapons, and enrolled as many as thirty-five hundred members organized into battalions.
    The United States’ relationship with and reliance on the 17 February militia was a classic example of how the quirksof Benghazi led to strange bedfellows. The militia took its name from an incident on February 17, 2006, during which Libyan security forces killed roughly a dozen people during a violent protest at the Italian consulate in Benghazi. The protesters, who set fire to the consulate building and several cars, were enraged by an Italian government minister who wore a T-shirt displaying controversial cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. The militia’s name also referenced February 17, 2011, the start of the revolution to overthrow Gaddafi.
    Questions lingered about how much the United States’ diplomatic corps could trust the 17 February militia, at least some of whose members were suspected of fierce anti-American sentiments. No such questions existed when it came to several other Benghazi militias, which were outright enemies of the United States.
    The city harbored at least two hard-line Islamist militias, aligned ideologically with al-Qaeda, that openly despised America and the West. One virulent anti-American militia was called the Ansar al-Sharia Brigade, whose name meant “Partisans of Islamic Law” and whose members believed that democracy is un-Islamic and that all authority is derived from the Prophet Muhammad.
    Some members of Benghazi’s radical Islamist militias had fought against American troops in Iraq after the US invasion in 2003. Not only were these jihadis-turned-militiamen highly motivated to kill Americans, they had the means to do so: After Gaddafi fell, Benghazi was awash in weapons left over from the revolution.
    Personal ownership of firearms had been outlawed since Libya gained independence. But when Gaddafi’s soldiers were driven from the city, rebel fighters raided thearmories where the regime had stockpiled thousands of AK-47s and more powerful weapons. After the revolution, anyone who didn’t already have a gun could simply shop for one at a large outdoor market called al-Funduq. Beyond flea market fare, past food stalls with eggs, spices, and poultry, arms merchants threw open their car trunks to display pistols, assault rifles, grenades, mortars, rocket launchers, and heavy machine guns ready to be mounted on pickup trucks. The result of the free flow of guns could be seen on the blood-soaked gurneys of Benghazi’s only hospital equipped for major surgery: 1,761 gunshot wounds in 2011, up from an average of 41 during the previous two years.
    The abundance of weapons, the absence of a working Libyan government, and lingering anti-Western sentiments among certain militias led to increasingly brazen incidents during the spring and summer of 2012. On April 2, a British armored diplomatic vehicle was attacked after driving into a local protest. On April 6, a homemade bomb was thrown over a wall of the US Special Mission Compound. Four days later, another homemade bomb was lobbed at the motorcade of Ian Martin, the UN Special Envoy to Libya. In May, a rocket-propelled grenade struck the Benghazi offices of the International Committee of the Red Cross. A previously unknown organization, the Omar Abdul Rahman group, claimed responsibility and issued a threat against the United States on social media sites.
    The attacks escalated on June 6, when an improvised explosive device blew a hole in the wall around the US diplomatic Compound. No one was injured, but the vulnerability of the Compound property was evident. A pro-al-Qaeda group took credit,