User:Erikringmar/Alia Brahimi

Alia Brahimi stated in a TV interview with Al-Jazeera on February 24, 2011 that "We were all tremendously surprised by the statements made by Saif el-Islam [Gaddafi in his 'rivers of blood speech]. " During the same interview, which featured her as a specialist on the Middle East without revealing her involvment in a Gaddafi-sponsored research program at the LSE, Brahimi said that Saif had been a reformer for many years but now "seemed to be backpeddling". Brahimi was quoted in the Daily Mail on March 2, 2011: "I’ve got nothing to apologise for. Saif told me he was keen that democratic reform should happen soon in Libya".

Since the start of the civil uprising in Northern Africa, Brahimi has made differing statements about the nature of Gaddafi's regime in Libya.


 * On February 11, 2011, Alia Brahimi, David Held and Kristian Coates Ulrichsen published an article in Open Democracy on the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia. According to the authors an uprising in Libya was less likely due to the fact that: "In Libya, more pronounced tribalism has drawn larger circles of people into the regime’s orbit and given them a stake in its survival.


 * On February 22, 2011, Alia Brahimi wrote on Twitter "Striking parallels between Qadhafi's speech about protesters and speeches he used to give about the Islamists in the '90s #Libya"


 * On March 1, 2011, Alia Brahimi said some sort of multilateral protection force should be on the table to protect civilians but did not provide any further information how such a force should look like. "It would unnecessarily complicate things to have Western forces in the mix unless that's to prevent some sort of genocide," Brahimi added in her interview with Reuters.


 * In a video made available March 5, 2011, Brahimi can be seen making contradictory statements regarding the Gaddafi regime.