On May 2, the Libyan National Army (LNA) released a video documenting the very last minutes of a group of Syrian mercenaries fighting on the side of the Turkish-backed Government of National Accord (GNA).
The group was neutralized by LNA units during clashes in the district of Saladin, right to the south of the Libyan capital, Tripoli.
The video shows the mercenaries heading aboard a Turkish ACV-15 armored personnel carrier (APV) to storm a villa in the district. Minutes after arriving in the villa, the group got hit with an ordnance.
Most of the group’s militants were killed or injured in the strike. The group’s leader, nicknamed al-Hayani [likely because he is from the town of Hayan in northern Aleppo], immediately panics and start shouting on the radio asking for help as troops from the LNA approach the villa.
“Guys, they are storming us, they are storming us … They are shooting at us, they reached us,” al-Hayani shouts on the radio in a clear Aleppo dialect.
Frustrated as his commanders continue to ignore his repeated calls for help, al-Hayani began to shout even louder and louder on the radio
As an ACV-15 passes by their village without stopping, he shouts “stop, stop, stop for God’s sake stop, tell him to come back, to come back.”
The video ends with al-Hayani saying “Guys, please send us an ACV … Guys, we are dying … Guys, everyone with me are injured only I’m alive.”
The video demonstrates the poor training of Turkish-backed Syrian militants as well as the lack of serious coordination between them and GNA forces.
According to a recent report by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), 233 Syrian militants have been killed in Libya, thus far. A total of 7,400 Syrian militants were deployed by Turkey in Libya to support the GNA.
The deployment of Syrian militants allowed GNA forces to hold onto their remaining positions around Tripoli. However, this came at a high cost.
The new Lebanese Government has been pre-destined to fail; and for no wrong doing on its part. Actually, PM Diab formed the cabinet on the 22nd of January 2020, and as I sit down to write this on the 26th of February, I would have to say that, irrespective of the conditions upon which Diab was chosen to be the new PM, he has not yet had the chance to prove his worth or otherwise.
The popular street anger that emerged in Lebanon on the 18th of October 2019 has forced former PM Hariri to resign. Among other reform requests, the protesters demanded a cabinet comprised of new non-political faces, and Diab’s cabinet as well as Diab himself, are technically-speaking indeed new on the Lebanese political arena. But even before Diab formed the new cabinet, he himself was touted to be a Hezbollah supporter, and this made him unacceptable by the protestors. And after he named his cabinet members, more such claims were made; and I am not in a position to assert them or otherwise.
This article is not intended to address history as such and/or Diab’s alleged loyalties. It is rather about what is behind the money trail that has been part-and-parcel of all political developments in Lebanon ever since 1975 and before.
When the Lebanese Civil War broke out in 1975, the exchange rate of the Lebanese Lira (LL) to the US Dollar (USD) was in the vicinity of 3 LL to 1 USD . And, even though the war devastated the country whose economy was primarily underpinned mainly by tourism and banking services, the Lebanese economy did not seem to suffer, at least significantly. There were times when certain commodities were hard to find, but that was mainly due to transport-related problems caused by road closures, and not due to economic conditions that stood in the way of their availability.
The LL remained strong, but eventually slipped and took a minor dive towards the end of 1984. By September 1984, the exchange rate was 5 LL to 1 USD. Even though that 5:1 mark generated panic, in hindsight, it reflected further fiscal strength of the LL given that this landmark happened more than nine whole years into the war. And, between 1984 and 1990 or so, it slipped to 1500 LL to 1 USD.
There was much turmoil during this period and many retirees and ex-pats lost their life-long savings. As for those still at a working age, they suffered severely until their wages were eventually indexed and the LL maintained its 1500-1 ratio to the USD for a very long time; actually till the time the recent uprisings commenced just 3 months ago.
In hindsight, there is no mystery or divine intervention behind the rather strong Lebanese economy during the first 9 years of the Civil War and which kept the exchange rate steady.
The buck stops with war money and the war money trail.
Seven years into the Lebanese Civil War, Israel invaded Lebanon and the PLO was forced out. Two years later, the LL began to slump.
Coincidence? Perhaps not.
During the first few years of the Civil War, Lebanon lost its traditional “golden age” sources of income, but it was inundated with war money.
The main donors were Gaddafi, Saddam and Saudi Arabia.
Some would argue that the CIA made heavy investments, and this is quite possible. But the CIA and similar agencies, including the Mossad, had their individual operatives. On the other hand, Gaddafi, Saddam and Saudi Arabia were sponsoring whole armies; so to speak.
Virtually all Left wing Lebanese political parties sent delegations to Libya seeking financial support. This includes what was referred to in Lebanese political terms as political “shops”. Some of those “shops” were comprised of small groups with a dozen fighters. They all came back with millions of USD, some with tens of millions.
The Saudis were very keen to finance the emerging Salafist militia (even though they were not referred to as such back then) because those militia were fighting the Right wing “Christian infidels”. At the same time, they were happy to finance those same “Christian infidels” because they were fighting the Communists (who were party to the Lebanese political Left).
Saddam, the Iraqi Baathist, on the other hand was very keen to sponsor any group that stood up against the rival Syrian Government of the other Baath Party faction.
The Kuwaitis, Gulfies and Qataris played more or less the same game as that of the Saudis.
All up, there were huge sums of war money pouring into Lebanon. Adding to that was what the Lebanese ex-pats sent their families and what they invested into their savings. The Lebanese banking system found alternatives to tourism and foreign investment, and the economy remained prosperous despite the devastating civil war that was destroying much of what the eye could see.
But the Lebanese political parties and “shops” were not the only recipients of “brotherly” aid and not the largest ones either. By far, the biggest recipient was the PLO in all of its branches and subdivisions.
Whilst most of the monies “invested” in the Lebanese Civil War were spent on munitions, operatives on the ground were canvassed, employed as mercenary fighters with most generous pay. One would not zero out the possibility that the Lebanese banking system benefited from those transactions.
Throughout the first decade of the Civil War years of Lebanon, there was no shortage of money or jobs for those prepared to literally cut throats for a living. Pragmatically-morbid as this may sound, war money and its willful recipients kept unemployment levels low and the economy buoyant.
Now, was the initial slump of the LL exchange rate in 1984 a direct result of the expulsion of the PLO and its associated funds from Lebanon? No one can answer this question with reliable economic accuracy. That said, the timing of the events begs the question.
What we do know is that between 1984 and the year the war ended in 1989, the LL slumped from 5:1 USD, to 1500:1 USD.
As the Civil War eventually came to an end in 1989, Rafiq Hariri emerged on the scene as a savior. He made huge investments in rebuilding certain aspects of the Lebanese infrastructure. The self-made billionaire, Lebanese by birth, but a dual national of Saudi Arabia, who eventually became Lebanon’s PM, bolstered the economy not only by bringing in his own investments, but also by presenting and ensuring a strong Saudi regional backup to his ventures.
Hariri also established the philanthropic “Hariri Foundation” which sponsored tens of thousands of Lebanese youth to receive tertiary education at home and abroad.
Hariri also created jobs as he rebuilt downtown Beirut, and certainly his American style election campaigns injected millions of dollars into the streets.
Hariri resurrected the confidence in the Lebanese economy and the LL. As a result, the LL maintained its exchange rate of LL 1500 to 1 USD and the Gaddafi/Saddam war funds were superseded and made redundant by the “peace” Hariri/Saudi funds. In any event, by then, the demise of Saddam was just around the corner.
The Rafiq Hariri money injections replaced the lost PLO war money, which in turn replaced the original Lebanese golden age economy pillars of banking and tourism that supported the Lebanese economy during its “golden age”.
When Rafiq Hariri was assassinated in 2005, change was on the horizon.
His son, Saad, carried his legacy and continued to fund his father’s initiatives at all levels.
When the war on Syria began, with the help and facilitation of Saad Hariri, the Saudis and Qataris injected huge sums of money into Lebanon in order to lure jihadi recruits, arm them and send them into Syria. The northern city of Tripoli was the main hub for this influx. And, because Tripoli had its own internal conflict between Bab el Tabbana fighters who were loyal to the then Hariri/Saudi/Qatari camp in their fight with the Alawite fighters of Jabal Mohsen, money kept flowing in.
In the most dire of situations therefore, in peace and in war, the Lebanese economy has always had a lifebuoy.
Furthermore, the Lebanese Government was able to receive international aide and grants, especially after major escalations. All up, in the so-called Paris 1, 2 and 3, together with the so-called Cedar 1 fundraisers, the plan was to provide Lebanon with USD 17 Bn to be provided according to a schedule that terminates in 2025. The fund providers were the EU, the USA and the Arab oil states. It is not clear how much has already been received.
The Lebanese people cannot see where these funds have gone to, and now the government has repayment commitments to make and which it cannot meet and this is public knowledge.
What is pertinent here, is that all war funds have now run dry, with the exception of the Iranian aid to Hezbollah. That aid however, never really had a significant effect on the economy in the past, and it is not expected to have one now either.
Gaddafi and Saddam are long gone, the Saudis are no longer in partnership with the Qataris, but neither party is sponsoring any warring entity in Lebanon at the moment. Hariri’s Saudi Oger giant construction company has gone bankrupt, and even though Saad Hariri is believed to have quarantined at least a billion dollars for himself, he has closed all charity organizations, electoral offices and payments to his loyal troops.
There is no doubt at all that all benefactors that have traditionally been assisting Lebanon are quite aware of the corruption and theft, and they must be growing sick and tired of being constantly asked to give more; especially that they know beforehand that their funds will be squandered. Ironically however, many of them did not worry about the fate of their funds when they were financing warring factions. Nonetheless, they are employing the issue of corruption to hold back on providing loans and finance to Lebanon.
For the first time in its history, neither the Lebanese people nor the political parties or government are receiving any lifeline funds.
To add insult to injury, Lebanese banks have implemented draconian measures to limit withdrawals. The figures have improved slightly, but the withdrawal limit is still around USD 200 a month. Even if one has millions invested, he/she has to stop at this limit. This includes businesses and as a result many employers have had to dismiss their workforce. As if this alone is not bad enough, it is preventing hundreds of thousands of Lebanese expats from sending money to their savings accounts and relatives at home. Expat money had always been one of the corner stones of Lebanese economy.
Any of the above factors can alone cripple the back of a country’s economy; let alone all combined. And even if Diab was clean as a whistle and willing and able to stamp out corruption and move forward, to say that he is not allowed to succeed is not a far-fetched statement to make. One does not have to be a conspiracy theorist to see that the different economic strangleholds imposed currently on Lebanon did not line up accidently.
What does not meet the eye here is that Lebanese people are deliberately being squeezed into the corner of poverty, even starvation, so that they revolt. But the main target of inducing this anger is not to affect reform against corruption, but rather to inflame the anti-Hezbollah passion in order to disarm it and keep Israel safe from its rockets.
Because the Axis of Resistance has been victorious, corruption is now used by its enemies to cripple Lebanon economically in order to bring Hezbollah to its knees and provide Israel with it has not been able to achieve by force.
The big irony here, is that none of the politicians who are corrupt and have been named to have thieved from the public purse is a Hezbollah official. Admittedly though, Nabih Berri (leader of Amal) and Gibran Basil (son-in-law of President Aoun) have been named as highly corrupt, but they are allies of Hezbollah, not members; and there is a big difference. The list of corrupt officials however, includes virtually all officials from all traditional Lebanese parties and dynasties; not Hezbollah.
And even though protestors in the streets are demanding reform and the return of stolen funds and chanting out “Killon Yani Killon” (ie “all of them means all of them”), the anti-Hezbollah/Syria/Iran fervor is very specifically high on their agenda.
They have been playing videos showing thugs carrying Hezbollah flags and chanting Shiite slogans, attacking the peaceful demonstrators. If Hezbollah wanted to attack the demonstrators, would it be so unsavvy to carry flags? But ironically, no one questions the identity of those thugs and who is really behind them. Such videos are further inflaming the sentiments and the calls for disarming Hezbollah. This is exactly what Israel wants. This is social engineering 101, but some even moderate-thinking Lebanese are now reiterating that disarming Hezbollah is part-and-parcel of the reform needed.
Lebanon is not under any Western sanctions as such. It is under siege, a covert siege, a covert financial war against Hezbollah and the way out of it requires wisdom and diligence.
قبل يوم 25 آب/ أغسطس الماضي كانت نظرة جميع أهل الاختصاص والباحثين الاستراتيجيين في المنطقة قائمة على أساس أن منطقة الشرق الأوسط بما تحتوي على أهداف استراتيجية أساسيّة كبرى هي منطقة حيوية للغرب بقيادة أميركية وأن الغرب لا يمكن أن يقف مكتوف الأيدي أمام أي تهديد مهما كان مداه لأي هدف من تلك الأهداف مهما كان حجمه، وان رد الغرب قد يكون حرباً تدميرية ضد أي طرف يشكل هذا التهديد. وهذا بالفعل ما حصل لصدام حسين عندما اجتاح الكويت وهدّد جزئياً أحد الأهداف الاستراتيجية للغرب المتمثل بنفط الكويت والهيمنة الغربية عليه.
وكان الغرب ويظن انه لا زال يعتبر منطقة الشرق الأوسط قلب العالم الذي يحتوي على معظم الاحتياط النفطي العالمي، وعلى الممرات المائية الرئيسية الضرورية لتجارة العالم، وفيه القاعدة الغربية الأساسية إسرائيل ، ولأجل ذلك نشر الغرب عامة واميركا خاصة القواعد العسكرية في المنطقة لتأمين فرض سيطرته عليها ومنع تشكل أي حالة تهدد أمن او مصير أي من الأهداف الاستراتيجية الكبرى الثلاثة السابقة الذكر نفط، ممرات، إسرائيل .
وبالمناسبة نقول إن أميركا وحدها نشرت في المنطقة 65000 جندياً بشكل دائم وتتحضر لتشكيل تحالف دولي لمعالجة أي تهديد او خطر يحدق بالأهداف الاستراتيجية تلك، وصولاً الى الاستعداد لحشد قوى عسكرية مركبة برية وجوية وبحرية قد تصل الى 400 ألف جندي وضابط كما فعلت في مرات سابقة في العقود الثلاثة الماضية. وقد أقامت أميركا لأجل انتشار جنودها في المنطقة 54 قاعدة عسكرية، دعمتها بأساطيل ثلاثة هي الخامس والسادس والسابع.
هذه القوة الدائمة معطوفة على إمكانية تعزيزها على الدوام بقوات إضافية فاعلة، أقنعت دول الخليج وغيرها من دول المعسكر الأميركي بأنها تنعم بالحماية الأميركية وأن لها أن تطمئن الى وجودها ومستقبلها في مواجهة أي تهديد داخلي او خارجي. وهي ومن اجل الاستفادة من هذه الحماية والدفاع عن أنظمتها في وجه شعوبها ووجه أي كان في المنطقة او خارجها ليست بحاجة لبناء الجيوش الفعلية، بل هي ملزمة بدفع المال للغرب تحت عنوان شراء الأسلحة وتأمين الرعاية واستمرار التبعية والهيمنة الأميركية عليها. وكانت أنظمة الخليج مطمئنة كلياً أن مالها المدفوع للغرب عامة ولأميركا خاصة سيؤمن لها الحماية المطلقة والتامة بوجه أي كان.
بالقوة تلك تمكنت أميركا أن تمتلك السيطرة على المنطقة وأن تؤمن لنفسها الهيمنة الدائمة واستجرار الثروة والمال وارتكازاً على تلك القوة بوجهيها المادي – التشكيلات العسكرية المختلفة – والمعنوي الناشئ عن الهيبة العسكرية المقرونة بالقوة السياسية والدبلوماسية، أخضعت اميركا قوى المنطقة دولاً وكيانات غير رسمية لقرارها وبات الموظف في السفارة الأميركية في أي دولة من تلك لدول هو الحاكم الفعلي لها.
لكن هذا الوضع بدأ يهتز مع ظهور مقاومة رافضة له، حيث نشب صراع بين دعاة الاستعمار وإقامة الشرق الاوسط المستعمر أميركياً من جهة، وبين الطامحين الى إقامة شرق أوسط لأهله متعاون مع دول العالم في حدود الاحترام المتبادل الذي يحفظ الاستقلال والسيادة الوطنية والشعبية لشعوب وكيانات المنطقة من جهة اخرى.
وفي خضم هذا الصراع اندلعت حروب ومواجهات عميقة خلال العقود الماضية، إلى أن كانت الحرب بـ القوة البديلة التي أضرمت نارها في المنطقة تحت عنوان الربيع العربي ، حرب ابتغى من شنها المعسكر الأميركي ضرب المقاومة الرافضة لاستعمار الغرب، وتفكيك المحور او الجبهة المقاومة التي راحت بعد العام 2000 تتوسّع وتشمل كيانات وفئات شعبية واسعة تنتشر على كامل جغرافيا الشرق الاوسط.
لقد ظن أصحاب المشروع الاستعماري أن حربهم بالقوى البديلة ذات الطبيعة الإرهابية الإجرامية، ستمكنهم من تدمير المنطقة وتجويع أهلها ومن ثم إخضاعها بعد إعادتها عشرات العقود الى الوراء ما سيشغل أهلها عن التفكير بالحرية والاستقلال لأن همهم سيكون مرتكزاً على لقمة العيش قبل كل شيء. ومن أجل ضمان النجاح في ذلك أقرنت الحرب الإرهابية الإجرامية النارية في الميدان بحرب إرهابية اقتصادية قادتها الولايات المتحدة بشكل غير مسبوق في التاريخ ونفذتها مطمئنة الى ان التناغم بين الحربين النار والاقتصاد سيوفر لها ما تبتغيه من استمرار السيطرة وسقوط المقاومة وتفكيك جبهتها ومحاورها.
لكن نتائج المواجهة لم تكن كما تشتهي اميركا ومعسكرها، بل افضت الحرب الإرهابية والعدوانية في الأسابيع الأخيرة الى خيبة للآمال الأميركية وأسقطت الأوهام الخليجية وشكلت فضيحة لكامل معسكر العدوان الأميركي بعد أن ارتسم من اليمن والسعودية وإيران فسورية ولبنان مشهد يؤكد:
– العجز عن إسقاط سورية، وتمكن الحكومة السورية من المحافظة على وجودها وعلى الكيان السياسي للدولة، ثم نجاحها في استعادة معظم ما كانت فقدت السيطرة عليه، ثم ترسيخ فكرة استحالة وصول معسكر العدوان عليها استحالة تحقيقه أي من اهداف العدوان عليها.
– تقييد إسرائيل بمعادلة ردع استراتيجي صارمة، وإلزامها باحترام قواعد الاشتباك التي تحمي لبنان ومقاومته وتعزيز تلك القواعد بقاعدة إضافية تتصل بالحماية الجوية.
– عجز السعودية وكامل معسكر العدوان على اليمن والمتشكل تحت وسم التحالف العربي ، عجزهم عن تحقيق أهداف العدوان ثم اضطرار هذا المعسكر وخاصة السعودية الى التحول الى الدفاع في مواطن بالغة الأهمية ولم تكن ضربة أرامكو – بقيق بمسيرات وأسلحة يمنية الا بداية لعهد جديد لم يظهر منه بعد أكثر من رأس جبل الجليد.
– العجز عن شنّ حرب على إيران ـ وعدم القدرة على تكرار ما حصل سابقاً على يد اميركا في كل من افغانستان والعراق وليبيا، وظهور إيران بمظهر ذات القوة المنيعة الجانب القادرة بذاتها ومع حلفائها على توجيه أبلغ الصفعات لمعسكر العدوان. ومن المهم هنا التذكير بالقواعد العسكرية الـ 54 الأميركية المنتشرة في الشرق الأوسط حيث تحول من فيها من الجنود الـ 65000 من قوة لفرض السيطرة على المنطقة والحاقها بالقرار الأميركي، الى رهائن تحت قبضة النار الإيرانية والمقاومة، وإن مجرد التفكير الأميركي بسلامة هؤلاء يحمل أميركا وحلفاءها على الاحجام عن شن حرب، والانتقال من حال القوة القادرة على تنفيذ الإرادة الأميركية الى حال القوة العاجزة عن إنفاذ مشيئة اميركا واتباعها في الخليج. وهنا كانت الخيبة السعودية فبعد الظن بأن أميركا ستعمل شرطياً في الخليج لصالحهم لمسوا أن اعتقادهم وهم أكيد.
وأكد الرئيس الفرنسي ماكرون منذ ثلاثة اسابيع على هذا بعبارة جاء فيها يجب ان يقر الغرب بأن عهد هيمنته على الشرق بدأ بالأفول . كما أعلنت أميركا بعد ضربة بقيق من أن على السعودية ان تحمي نفسها وان اميركا تقدم لها الدعم فقط و لن يكون الجيش الأميركي جيش مرتزقة يحارب من اجل السعودية .
هذا المشهد يؤكد، بان الحرب والقوة التي يتكئ عليها الغرب للسيطرة على المنطقة استنفدت وظيفتها ولم تعد في الوضع الذي يحقق فيه الغرب أهدافه. اما الحرب الاقتصادية فقد بدأت تعطي نتائج عكسية، حيث بدا الباحثون والخبراء يتحدثون بثقة عن تراجع الدولار او انهياره وقرب أفوله. يحدث ذلك بعد ان صمدت الدول والكيانات التي استهدفتها تلك الحرب، ثم بعد ان بدأت تتحول الى نظام مالي وتجاري واقتصادي بديل، ما يؤشر الى بدا بانهيار إمبراطورية اميركا المالية.
و بالمحصلة نؤكد بأن فشل الحربين الإرهابية القتالية والاقتصادية او عجزهما على الأقل عن حماية السيطرة الأجنبية، لن يكون في تداعياته محصوراً في مكان او محل او إقليم، بل إن هذا الفشل سيتوسّع بتداعياته لينسحب على العلاقات الدولية برمتها. وسيجد الباحثون كم كان ماكرون دقيقاً وصائباً عندما نعى الهيمنة الغربية على الشرق الأوسط وأن الطموح الأميركي ببناء شرق اوسط أميركي بات حلماً مستحيلاً حيث يتقدم مشروع شرق أوسط لأهله ما يفرض على أمم الشرق الأوسط الرئيسية الثلاث العرب والترك والفرس الدخول في حوار جدي لإقامة هذا الشرق المتحرر المستقل وسيد نفسه.
The State Department—under the leadership of the Zionist fellow traveler, former CIA boss and tank commander Mike Pompeo—has tweeted out the following propaganda produced with your tax dollars (or debt spending that will be passed on to your children).
…
Department of State
✔@StateDept
The Iranian regime is the most destabilizing force in the Middle East and the world’s top sponsor of terrorism. That’s why the U.S. launched a campaign of maximum pressure. It’s producing maximum results.
This Big Lie production about Iran’s alleged malevolence toward its neighbors has dramatic music and graphics to support an obvious falsehood—Iran is the number one terror state in the world.
In fact, that designation is reserved for the United States government and its junior partner, Israel.
History is replete with examples—from both world wars to dozens of imperialist ignited brush fires including Vietnam and Iraq. As for Israel, it has been at war with its Arab neighbors for well over 70 years.
The State Department is the grand choreographer of conflict and murder in the name of a corporatist and bankster neoliberal order now crumbling. It is the largest and worst terrorist on the planet. Most recently, it installed Nazi throwbacks in Ukraine, reduced Libya to a failed state, and armed Wahhabi fanatics in Syria.
The above video is essentially an advertisement for the cruel torture of the Iranian people through economic warfare in addition to the US-Israel assassination of scientists, malware attacks on Iranian infrastructure, and various terror attacks, including the 2017 attack on the Iranian parliament.
This latter incident was blamed on the Islamic State, a Pentagon fabricated terror group. If you believe a genuine Islamic (Sunni-Wahhabi) terror group was responsible for this attack and a simultaneous one on the Mausoleum of Ruhollah Khomeini, you may be interested in a bridge for sale in Brooklyn.
According to a Reuters report today, the sanctions imposed on Iran are resulting in the country having problems buying rice, cooking oil and other staples to feed its 74 million people.
It is not simply oil the sanctions target, but all kinds of imports, according to commodities traders…
Before long they will engage in even more barbarous war crimes after Israel bombs Iran’s suspected nuclear sites and the United States follows up with a general bombardment of the country’s civilian infrastructure not dissimilar from the bombardment of Iraq and Yugoslavia, both Nuremberg level war crimes.
Since that time, the situation has grown far worse for ordinary Iranians.
In 2014, Israel and the US didn’t bomb “suspected nuclear sites” in Iran, mostly because Obama, while carrying out the globalist agenda in Democrat fashion, stepped back from annihilating the country at the pestering insistence of Bibi Netanyahu.
That wasn’t the case with Libya. It didn’t have the ability to fight back, not like Iran, which does.
John Bolton tried to get a bombing raid going but failed due to Trump’s fear an invasion—which would turn into a large regional conflict—will ruin his chance at re-election. Trump the Schizoid Man flits back forth between violent rhetoric aimed at Iran (and Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea, Syria) and saying we don’t need another expensive war in the Middle East.
Donald Trump is a miracle—on one hand, a proclaimed noninterventionist and MAGA poster boy, and on the other a neocon enraptured with the apartheid regime in Israel. His personality disorder is on display 24/7. After showing Bolton the door, he hired a more acceptable and less abrasive neocon to be his national security adviser.
The latest kerfuffle in Saudi Arabia has resulted in Trump pumping troops into that medieval nation, a message to Iran it will not be permitted to resist and respond to the economic destruction.
I initially figured the attack on Saudi oil facilities was a false flag to get a war going. I now believe Iran is responsible for the attack. It warned months ago that the embargo of its oil will result in the Wahhabi emirates suffering a likewise fate. Iran is living up to that threat and responding in kind.
For the indispensable ruling elite, self-defense is impermissible, lest you desire mountains of rotting dead bodies, typhus, cholera, cancer from depleted uranium and other military toxins, malnutrition, and endless sectarian conflict to keep the vassals from going after the real culprits. Syria, Libya, and Yemen are only the latest examples.
Iran has the ability to resist this neoliberal death-head onslaught. It was decided that war and its horrific consequence is far more honorable than the humiliation of starvation and disease, which is the ultimate message of the State Department’s absurd propaganda video.
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Kurt Nimmo writes on his blog, Another Day in the Empire, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Featured image is from the author
The original source of this article is Global Research
Speaking for the first time about reasons for firing his national security advisor John Bolton, US President Donald Trump said he was “way out of line” on Venezuela, even as the State Department doubled down on regime change.
“I disagreed with John Bolton on his attitudes about Venezuela. I thought he was way out of line,” Trump told reporters at the Oval Office on Wednesday.
The failed attempt to effect regime change in Caracas – which Bolton has been at the forefront of since January – was only one of the issues the president brought up. Bolton’s sabotage of denuclearization talks with North Korea, earlier this year, was another.
“We were set back very badly when [Bolton] talked about the Libyan model” with North Korea, Trump added. “That’s not a question of being tough, that’s a question of being not smart to say something like that.”
Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi had agreed to give up his nuclear and chemical weapons programs to the US, only to be violently overthrown and murdered by US-backed groups in 2011.
Bolton also “wasn’t getting along with the people in the administration that I consider very important,” Trump added, making sure to point out that he had opposed the 2003 Iraq War while Bolton was an unapologetic advocate of it.
None of that explains why Trump hired Bolton and kept him on as his principal foreign policy adviser for nearly 18 months, however. Nor does it explain why Trump agreed to appoint Bolton’s colleague Elliott Abrams as Washington’s point man on Venezuela, despite a history of his Trump-bashing public comments.
The Trump administration on Wednesday showed no signs of abandoning the approach to Caracas championed by Bolton and Abrams since January, despite it having failed miserably. Shortly after Trump’s comments, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the US has invoked the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (TIAR), which would give legal framework for military intervention in Venezuela.
Pompeo’s pretext is that this was requested by Juan Guaido, the self-proclaimed “interim president” of Venezuela recognized by the US and a handful of its allies, but no one else in the world. Guaido’s repeated attempts to take over power in Caracas since January have failed miserably.
Trump maintained that his policy on Venezuela is “humanitarian” and designed to “help” people there, and blamed “socialism” for the country’s economic woes. He has framed his 2020 re-election bid as stopping the “socialist” Democrats from taking over the US.
“I don’t want to talk about that,” Trump said when asked if he would be willing to meet with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. This was in stark contrast to his readiness to meet with the Iranian president, another thing Bolton reportedly opposed.
US President Donald J. Trump speaks during a press conference on the closing day of the G7 summit in Biarritz, France, 26 August 2019. (Photo: IAN LANGSDON, EPA-EFE)
The G7 summit took place in France’s Biarritz in the period from August 24 to August 26 involving leaders of the US, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Canada, and the UK, as well as the top EU bureaucrat Donald Tusk.
The G7 Leaders wish to underline their great unity and the positive spirit of the debates. The G7 Summit organized by France in Biarritz has successfully produced agreements by the Heads of State and Government themselves on several points summarized below:
Trade
The G7 is committed to open and fair world trade and to the stability of the global economy. The G7 requests that the Finance Ministers closely monitor the state of the global economy. Therefore, the G7 wishes to overhaul the WTO to improve effectiveness with regard to intellectual property protection, to settle disputes more swiftly and to eliminate unfair trade practices. The G7 commits to reaching in 2020 an agreement to simplify regulatory barriers and modernize international taxation within the framework of the OECD.
Iran
We fully share two objectives: to ensure that Iran never acquires nuclear weapons and to foster peace and stability in the region.
Ukraine
France and Germany will organize a Normandy format summit in the coming weeks to achieve tangible results.
Libya
We support a truce in Libya that will lead to a long-term ceasefire. We believe that only a political solution can ensure Libya’s stability. We call for a well-prepared international conference to bring together all the stakeholders and regional actors relevant to this conflict. We support in this regard the work of the United Nations and the African Union to set up an inter-Libyan conference.
Hong Kong
The G7 reaffirms the existence and importance of the Sino-British Joint Declaration of 1984 on Hong Kong and calls for violence to be avoided.
After the G7 in 2018, when US President Donald Trump withdrew its signature from the final declaration, the 2019 was shown by some mainstream media outlets as a success. However, it’s just another indication that the format is dying after the exclusion of Russia.
No surprise that the return of Russia in fact became one of the key topics during the G7 summit. The Guardian even reproted that there was a kind of scandal on this topic with the US leader openly arguing that Russia should be returned.
U.S. President Donald Trump and Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson arrive for a bilateral meeting during the G7 summit in Biarritz, France, August 25, 2019. Erin Schaff/Pool via REUTERS
“Russia be readmitted to the group, rejecting arguments that it should remain an association of liberal democracies, according to diplomats at the summit in Biarritz.
The disagreement led to heated exchanges at a dinner on Saturday night inside the seaside resort’s 19th-century lighthouse. According to diplomatic sources, Trump argued strenuously that Vladimir Putin should be invited back, five years after Russia was ejected from the then G8) for its annexation of Crimea.
Of the other leaders around the table, only Giuseppe Conte, the outgoing Italian prime minister, offered Trump any support, according to this account. Shinzo Abe of Japan was neutral. The rest – the UK’s Boris Johnson, Germany’s Angela Merkel, Canada’s Justin Trudeau, the EU council president, Donald Tusk, and the French president, Emmanuel Macron – pushed back firmly against the suggestion,” The Guardian reported.
The report was followed by an official statement by Trump that having Russia in the group “is better than having them outside” the G7. So, The Guardian’s report part regarding Trump’s stance on the topic was true. At the same time, the newspaper claimed that all others were against. Let’s take a closer look:
Italy supported the idea.
The report claimed that Japan was neutral. However, in fact, Japan is interested in the expansion of diplomatic formats for the dialogue with Russia, especially regarding the Kuril Islands question. The bilateral talks on this topic is a dead end for Japan because Russia is not going to make any consenquences. The only chance of Shinzo Abe to make some progress is wider formats with help from his Western allies.
French President Emmanuel Macron allegedly was against this move during the G7. However, other French statements clearly indicate that Paris will act in the framework of its Big Brother, the US. It is not up to France, that lost a large part of its influence under the new presidency, to decide.
German’s Angela Merkel officially linked the return of Russia to the implementing the Minsk agreements related to the situation in eastern Ukraine. Crimea is for a long time beyond the diplomatic rhetoric of Merkel.
In fact, the UK and Canada were the only powers really standing against the return of Russia. Since the start of Trump’s first term, the UK has been the key power representing interests of the Euro-Atlantic establishment. So, there is no surprise in this. At the same time, Canada is not a really independent state that can provide a really independent foreign policy. It’s an open secret that the UK still appoints a Governor General of Canada that has a wide range of options to impact the Canadian policy – for example, to dissolve the Parliament.
The EU council president Donald Tusk was also against, according to The Guardian. However, it remains unclear what did he do there. It’s the G7, not the G7 + “EU buerocrats”. If there is a decision to invite various persons to summit to make fun, SouthFront recommends to invite Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in 2020. He would use his comedian skills to make a great show for the participants.
David Lipton (IMF), Moussa Faki (AUC), David Malpass (World Bank), Scott Morrison (Australia), Antonio Guterres (UN), Narendra Modi (India), Guy Ryder (ILO), Pedro Sanchez (Spain), Angel Gurria (OECD), Akinwumi Adesina (African Development Bank). Front: Boris Johnson (UK), Cyril Ramaphosa (South Africa), Paul Kagame (Rwanda), Abdel Sisi (Egypt), Shinzo Abe (Japan), Justin Trudeau (Canada), Donald Trump (US), Emmanuel Macron (France), Angela Merkel (Germany), Macky Sall (Senegal), Roch Marc Christian Kaboré (Burkina Faso), Sebastián Piñera (Chile), Guiseppe Conte (Italy), Donald Tusk (EC) Photograph: Andrew Parsons/PA
TEHRAN (FNA)– The privately-owned media is still dominated by the interests of the US political and corporate elites, and used as a tool by the government to manufacture public consent.
In any circumstance, they use the media to publish fabricated news, lies and biased information to get the public in line with their political motives, aiming at achieving their agendas. In many cases, the US has used the media to distort facts in regard to its foreign policy action in the Middle East.
Not so long ago, US corporate media played an integral role in fueling the Iraq War in 2003. It had no doubts that the Bush administration went to war because they wanted to strengthen the credibility and influence of America in the Middle East to reassert its position as an un-challengeable hegemon after the 9/11 attack.
But they distorted the facts surrounding Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and terrorist harboring as invasion rationale. It was published by many Western media coverage outlets, particularly the US media, to disseminate to the public. In the weeks leading up to the illegal invasion, nearly three-quarters of the American public believed the lie promoted in that moment. Then, the US-led military coalition, which included their allies, invaded Iraq. After the invasion was done, the truth was revealed that there were no such WMDs.
Another prime example comes from the war against Qaddafi of Libya. Media distortion and manipulation were used to start the war against Libya. To gain support for the invasion and aggression, which is part of the traditional tactics the US and NATO have followed, perception management was overtly employed through well-known US media agencies and other Western mainstream news.
After The Financial Times, for instance, reported that Libyan military jets attacked civilian protesters, US and EU officials hardly condemned Qaddafi’s regime and took military action. Truly, there was no piece of video evidence proving the attack, and the report turned out to be false. Libyan military planes only got involved later on during the conflict when they missioned to bomb ammunition depots to prevent the rebels from getting arms, after the media claims were made about jets firing on protesters.
There was no doubt that reports were distorted. To some critics of the US military actions in foreign countries, it is undoubtedly conclusive that there have been lies and distortions involved in wars the US has fought in. The most recent example could be Syria and its imaginary chemical attacks on its own people.
It is even more interesting that the US uses media not only to manufacture the public consent of its domestic citizens in association with wars in foreign countries, as mentioned above, but also employs it as fact distortion in international affairs outside of America.
As the world order is moving to multi-polarity, and the Islamic Asian civilization is being realized, particularly by Iran’s growing economic and political development, the competition between the status quo dominant US and Iran has continuously been obvious in recent years.
The current confrontation amid the unresolved economic terrorism has certainly demonstrated this fact. Concerning this, the US has used as many tactics as possible to contain challenger Iran in international issues, regionally and globally.
As a superpower with dominant power in global media, the US will inevitably continue to use the media to manufacture public consent regarding domestic and international affairs. There is no doubt that the US corporate media, to an extent, will play a complimentary role in its foreign policy approach in publishing false ideas and news, creating concepts and framing theories that favor its own interests, and not the ones that serve regional peace and global stability.
THE LIBYA CONSPIRACY
A Definitive Guide to the Lies of the Libya ‘Intervention’ & the Crime of the Century
By S. Awan
This work is dedicated to Muammar Gaddafi, to the true people of Libya, and to all the victims of an immoral conspiracy.
‘The Libya Conspiracy’
By S. Awan
‘The Burning Blogger of Bedlam’
Copyright, S. Awan 2015
All rights reserved
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CONTENTS
Introduction
Gaddafi’s Libya: Before the Crisis
The Obama Letters
February 2011: The Beginning of the End
Gaddafi Faces the Media\
Collapse of a Nation: How it (Really) Started
The ‘Day of Rage’
Ultra-Violence & the State of Terror
Peaceful, Pro-Democracy’ Protesters
Bernard Levy
Mass Deception: Enter the Corporate Media
The Media Deception Campaign
Saif Gaddafi
The Russian Satellite Data
Utilising Social Media: The Propaganda Masterstroke
Persona Management Software
The You-Tube Strategy
A Nation ‘Destabilised by Al-Jazeera’
The Brink of the Abyss: “We are the People of Libya!”
Rebels, Mercenaries, Terrorists, Proxy Militias
‘Everyone is Terrified’
Al-Qaeda’s Day in the Sun
‘Until the Judgement Day Comes…’
Billion-Dollar Mercenaries
“Drugged and Supporting the Devil”: A Word About ‘Captagon’…
The Psychology of Youth/Guantanamo Bay
The UN Resolution and NATO’s Imperialist War
UN Resolution 1973
The UN Charter
The War on Libya Begins
‘Disguised as Arabs’ – The ‘Fifth Element’ in Libya
Boots on the Ground
Special Forces, MI6, Qatar & Criminal Warfare
The 2010 Unconventional Warfare Manual of the US Military
The Corporate Media Fiction & the ‘Crimes of the Regime’
The Benghazi Narrative
The Viagra Stories
The African Mercenaries
Amnesty International & International Crisis Group
BBC, Al-Jazeera, CNN & co Go to Town
The Information War
Timeline of Destruction: March – October 2011
Operation Destroy Libya
NATO War Crimes
‘Criminals and Barbarians’ – NATO’s Civilian Casualties
‘Piles of Bodies…’
The Fall of Tripoli
Operation Target Gaddafi
The Osama bin Laden Ruse
The ‘Nazi-Fascist Role’
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Gaddafi’s Last Stand
The End of Gaddafi & the End of Libya
The ‘Largest Demonstration in World History’
Sirte & the Brutal Murder of Gaddafi
End-Game: The Gaddafi Check-Mate
Citizens Commission on Benghazi Report
Further Information to Convict Hilary Clinton, Sarkosy & Possibly Others of Murder…
The ‘White-Flag’ Convoy
The ‘Return to Barbarism’
Sarkozy and the French Connection
‘Too Dangerous’ For a Trial
Three Decades of ‘Operation Assassinate Gaddafi’
After Gaddafi: The ‘National Transitional Council’
Ethnic Cleansing, Torture, Persecution & Murder
Who the ‘Opposition’ Leaders Really Were
Revolution or ‘Counter-Revolution?
Jalil’s Confession
The War in Syria
Libya NOW: A ‘Failed State’
Warlords, Terrorists, Rival Militias, & No Government
Black Libyans, Christians & Minorities
‘Islamic State’, Sharia Law, the Persecution of Women
2011 ‘Civil War’ as ‘Battle of the Sexes’
Mass Migration & the Mediterranean
The Case for the Prosecution: The Crime & the Criminals
Obama, Hilary, David Cameron & the Whole Mafia
The Mass Media Warfare
The Pentagon Tapes
Decades of Propaganda
Lockerbie
The Berlin Disco Bombing
The Failure of the UN
The Motive: Why Libya Was Targeted
Libyan Oil
Gaddafi’s ‘Great Man-Made River’
The Gold Dinar & African Development
The Gold Heist of the Century
The Lockerbie Reimbursements
The ‘World Revolution’
Gaddafi, the Liability
The ‘Islamic State’, the ‘Clash of Civilisations’ & the ‘Perpetual War’
CONCLUSIONS
We Have ‘Become the Devil’
Dangerous Precedents for the Future of the World
What We Can Do: Our Only Real Power…
The Final Word – ‘Here’s to the Good Guys’
Gaddafi’s 2009 Speech to the UN
Full list of Links/References
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“Let the free people of the world know that we could have bargained over and sold out our cause in return for a personal secure and stable life. We received many offers to this effect but we chose to be at the vanguard of the confrontation as a badge of duty and honour.
Even if we do not win immediately, we will give a lesson to future generations that choosing to protect the nation is an honour and selling it out is the greatest betrayal that history will remember forever despite the attempts of the others to tell you otherwise.”
Muammar Gaddafi
Introduction
First an introduction: I have been working on compiling this piece for well over a year.
I had, in fact, been researching and studying all the available information since 2011 when the crisis in Libya, the collapse of the country, the murder of Muammar Gaddafi and the role played by our governments, NATO, the UN and the corporate media all made it painfully, vividly evident that we are the collective victims of a vast and immoral deception that has major implications for every one of us and the entire world.
The postscript to the NATO intervention in Libya is still going on now. Europe is facing a mass migration crisis, while thousands of desperate people are drowning in the Mediterranean Sea. Terrorists and extremist militias are flourishing like never before in history and are using the fallen Libya as a staging area to wage terror on multiple nations. We are being drawn towards the brink of a continent-spanning crisis and sectarian ‘Clash of Civilisations’ that may eventually engulf the entire world. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed amid several collapsing nations, with Libya itself now declared ‘a failed state’ in mainstream commentary.
And most of it goes back to 2011, the NATO-led ‘humanitarian intervention’ in Libya and the assassination of Muammar Gaddafi.
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All of this, coupled with the lies *still* being told even now by our political leaders about the 2011 intervention, convinced me that a thorough, comprehensive and clear chronicle of what really did happen in Libya in 2011 still needs to be laid down. We need to see through the fog of confusion and misinformation; need to understand what happened, how it happened, and *why* it happened; who caused it, who planned it and what the intention was.
This text you are now reading is an attempt to accomplish that in clear, unambiguous terms.
Why, you might ask, do you need to understand what happened in Libya in 2011?
Because understanding what happened in Libya means understanding the nature of the world; it means understanding who the criminals are, understanding what the forces and alliances are, and most of all understanding how the criminal conspiracy works, the reality of how the world now works, how our governments operate, how the media and information works, what our nations stand for, and who and what it is you validate when you vote our leaders and officials into office.
Because this isn’t just about Libya; it was Syria after that, and it could be any of us in any society at any time, even tomorrow.
And we all need to know how. Please consider this document therefore a comprehensive resource for understanding what happened in Libya in its true, full context and what it means. Needless to say, this is a very comprehensive, very detailed text: it had to be. Because there should be no ambiguity, no room for doubt and no space for the deliberate lies and propaganda of the conspirators and their mass-media accomplices to continue to hold any weight.
Some of you may already be well versed in some of the information, but will nevertheless come across information in this document that may be new to you. Meanwhile those of you who aren’t so versed in the information yet are the main reason this has been compiled.
Please read and share this text far and wide. This text will demonstrate clearly that;
(1) the NATO powers are War Criminals that need to be brought to account for their actions in 2011, (2) that key officials of the governments of the US, the UK, France, several European nations and the Gulf States need to be tried in an international court for these crimes, including Hilary Clinton, Nicolas Sarkosy, and David Cameron, (3) that the alliance of governments, corporations and military agencies that currently control the Western world are morally bankrupt and need to be thoroughly investigated as criminals.
And (4) that the mainstream/corporate media and news broadcasters are entirely complicit in aiding and abetting an international criminal conspiracy and should also be either investigated or boycotted.
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In doing so, this article will also demonstrate;
(1) that there was no ‘Civil War’ in Libya in 2011, (2) that there were no civilian ‘demonstrations’ against Gaddafi or the Libyan government in 2011, (3) that wholesale lies and fabrications were concocted by our governments and by the corporate news-media and that neither Gaddafi nor the Libyan regime was guilty of any of the ‘crimes’ it was accused of, (4) that NATO and the Western governments deliberately murdered Muammar Gaddafi and installed Al-Qaeda into Libyan cities, (5) that the entire operation was illegal under international law, and (6) that NATO, France, Britain and America, committed mass murder in Libya.
This document will also clearly demonstrate *how* it was all done; how the corporate/mainstream media organisations operate to service the illegal agendas of the immoral and criminal international conspirators, how the relatively modern mediums of social-media and the Internet are manipulated to play their part, and how the UN is used to validate illegal and immoral conspiracies on behalf of its dictatorial controllers.
In order to present this comprehensive case, I have structured this analysis like a presentation in a court of law, in which I will briefly act as both defense lawyer for the late Muammar Gaddafi (who himself was never allowed a trial) and the former Libyan government and as prosecution lawyer against the criminals responsible for what has been the crime of the century; a crime for which they will never stand trial or be held to account for.
We now go beyond the scripted fiction of the mainstream narrative and acquaint ourselves with reality.
But before all of that is demonstrated, we first should establish some reality concerning Muammar Gaddafi and concerning what Libya was like prior to the 2011 crisis, as this will provide a fuller context to everything that followed…
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Gaddafi’s LIBYA: Before the 2011 Crisis
In 1951 Libya was the poorest country in Africa and one of the poorest in the world. By 2011, after four decades under Gaddafi’s stewardship, it was the most successful nation in Africa and was acknowledged by the UN to have a higher rate of development than even countries like Russia, Brazil and India. For a more comprehensive study of Libya in the Gaddafi era, see here.
Among many other academics who were willing to voice a more considered view of Libya than the standard mainstream-media propaganda was a Professor Garikai Chengu, a scholar of Middle Eastern affairs at Harvard University, who wrote; “In 1967, Colonel Gaddafi inherited one of the poorest nations in Africa; however, by the time he was assassinated, Gaddafi had turned Libya into Africa’s wealthiest nation. Libya had the highest GDP per capita and life expectancy on the African continent. Less people lived below the poverty line than in the Netherlands.”
The UN’s Human Development Index report* from 2010 – less than a year before the 2011 collapse of Libya – cited Libya as No.1 on its index for rate and scale of development.
And unlike in most other oil-rich Arab countries favoured by Western governments, there wasn’t a big disparity between rich and poor, wasn’t a big class division, there were no ghettoes and no homelessness. Housing, healthcare, education and living allowances were not considered commodities or privileges, but human rights. Unlike the Gulf States or Saudi Arabia, for example, Gaddafi wanted the oil wealth being distributed among the people, so that the population directly benefited from Libya’s oil exports. Libya’s social welfare system – a novelty in itself in Africa and most of the Arab world – was incredibly generous in regard to housing, medical care, allowances, etc. A debt-free society was created, built on interest-free money.
In 1969, Gaddafi had vowed to house every Libyan before even his own parents; he kept this promise and his father died before he was able to be housed. But every Libyan was housed. 40% of the population had lived in shanties, tents or caves prior to Gaddafi and the 1969 revolution. The country he and the revolutionaries took over in 1969 was barely a generation beyond the brutal Italian colonial occupation of Libya in World War II, in which over a million Libyans had died in concentration camps.
The highly customised form of Socialism Gaddafi had instituted in Libya was an unparalleled success, both economically and socially; while gross domestic product had been estimated at $3.8 billion in 1969 when the old monarchy was ousted, it had risen to $13.7 billion in 1974, and $24.5 billion by 1979. As a direct result, the standard of living for Libyans drastically improved over the first decade of Gaddafi’s administration. In fact by 1979, the average per-capita income for Libyans was at $8,170 – this being compared to $40 in 1951: this was in fact above the average for many modern, fully industrialised societies, including Britain.
And this, keep in mind, was all within less than a decade of Libya having been a poor, ‘Third World’ country under Colonial control.
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A broadly secular society had been imposed in Libya following Gaddafi’s 1969 ousting of the old Colonial-backed monarchy; one which championed the rights and status of women, and in which the massive social reforms and welfare programs drastically raised the quality of life, life-expectancy, education, even literacy. Again, for a broader look at Gaddafi’s Libya, read this article.
*All links and references are listed in ‘References’ section at the end.
It’s also important to understand that although Islam certainly remained an important part of this Libyan culture and day-to-day life, this was to a far lesser extent that in other Arab countries. Gaddafi and his supporters were thoroughly opposed to political Islamists, religious fundamentalism or Wahhabi-influenced Salafist ideologies. In fact, if there were two primary things they wanted to guard the country and the society against it was (1) a return to Colonial/Imperialist domination via Western style Capitalist interests and (2) the influence of religious fundamentalists.
A key point we also need to establish, because it’s very important to the rest of this article: Gaddafi insisted that he had held no official power or office since 1977, only holding a symbolic or honorary position instead. He had long since handed power to the ‘People’s Congresses’ that he had established decades earlier; whether this was true in practise or not, Western governments and media broadly failed (or refused) to acknowledge this and instead permanently chose to describe him as a ‘dictator’ (or a ‘brutal tyrant’), failing to understand the highly customised nature of the Libyan system. There was a mistaken view propagated that anything and everything done by the Libyan government or by Libyan security forces was ‘Gaddafi’s doing’, as though he issued all of the ‘orders’.
Again, this didn’t really appear to be the case; while Gaddafi may well have made many of the decisions and the officials and various departments might’ve deferred to him in many cases, he wasn’t strictly-speaking in a position to issue orders in the way that a President or ‘ruler’ might. The Western government officials and the media continued to (deliberately) portray Gaddafi as a standard ‘Arab dictator’ no different to a Saddam Hussein, simply because it was beneficial to the agenda to have everyone perceive him that way.
While mainstream Western critics tended to either avoid all discussion of the political system Gaddafi instituted in Libya or to regard it as some quaint novelty, various academics were happy to acknowledge that this system of “direct democracy” offered a serious alternative model and solution for Africa and other parts of the ‘Third World’, where multi-party ‘democracy’ has been a failure, resulting in ethnic/tribal conflict, social fragmentation, rampant corruption and political chaos.
A January 2011 report of the UN Human Rights Council, released a month before the crisis began, praised aspects of the country’s human rights record, particularly the status of women in the country, while also citing improvements in other areas. It acknowledged that the government protected “not only political rights, but also economic, educational, social and cultural rights.” It also lauded its treatment of religious minorities, and “human rights training” of its security forces. Read the PDF, if you’re interested (see ‘References’ section at the end).
Also in 2011, again literally just weeks before the crisis began, Gaddafi was a frontrunner for Amnesty
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International USA’s online poll for ‘Human Rights Hero, 2011’; you might think I’m making that up, but I’m not.
Meanwhile, also in January 2011, a WikiLeaks file passed onto The Telegraph indicated that Gaddafi was manoeuvring to allow for fully democratic elections, including for a possible ‘Prime Minister’ position. This was published on 31st January 2011, just a fortnight before the unrest began. It illustrates that even decades into his ‘Green Revolution’, he was still manoeuvring to make social and financial reforms to further improve and evolve the situation in Libya. There were in fact plenty of indications that Libya was gradually moving towards more and more reforms aimed at a more orthodox democracy.
Again, read this article for a more comprehensive examination of Libya and the Gaddafi era; but the point here is to illustrate that the reality of Libya prior to the 2011 crisis (literally up until just weeks before the unrest) was something very different to what was being portrayed once the crisis began.
With that now established, let’s look at what happened in 2011…
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In October 2011, hours after Libya’s decades-long leader and figurehead Muammar Gaddafi had been brutally murdered by NATO and Al-Qaeda in the city of Sirte, Barak Obama walked onto the White House lawn and directly addressed the people of Libya. “You have won your revolution,” he told them, after several months of relentlessly bombing the country. “And now we will be a partner as you forge a future that provides dignity, freedom and opportunity…”
It may have been one of the most deceitful, heinously misleading statements ever publicly made by a national leader; but the deception and hypocrisy was hardly anything new to us, after virtually everything George W. Bush and his administration had ever said about Iraq before and after the 2003 invasion. Obama’s statement came at the conclusion of several months of NATO bombing and ‘humanitarian intervention’ in Libya, which had been based on alleged attacks on civilian protesters by the Gaddafi government.
First of all, let’s establish a fact: in 2011 there was no legitimate uprising, ‘civil war’ or rebellion in Libya, only an extended criminal enterprise by a few hundred gangsters and criminals, funded and aided by France, America, the UK, the Saudi and Gulf States. This fact shall be backed up by information in due course; but for now the point is that Obama, of course, knew this; all of our leaders did.
In a letter sent by Muammar Gaddafi to President Obama as the crisis was developing, the besieged Libyan figurehead wrote; “We are fighting nothing other than Al-Qaeda in what they call the Islamic Maghreb. It’s an armed group that is fighting from Libya to Mauritania and through Algeria and Mali.”
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He then asks the US President, “If you had found them taking over American cities by the force of arms, tell me what you would do?”
This wasn’t a public speech or broadcast: it was a letter directly sent from Libya’s symbolic leader to the American President, practically begging the US and its allies to pull back from the insanity that was about to be embarked upon. Gaddafi was communicating man to man, operating under the mistaken impression that Obama was perhaps ignorant to what was really going on and needed to be told before it was too late.
He may have thought Obama was being misled by the French into a false-reading of the situation in Libya. What Gaddafi may not have understood at this early stage was that there was no misunderstanding, but rather that a planned operation was well underway.
Gaddafi’s naivety at this stage may have been understandable; Gaddafi himself was known to have regarded Obama sympathetically, potentially even as an ally. He had openly celebrated Obama’s presidential victory when Obama had first inherited the Oval Office and it is clear from various Gaddafi statements in the years prior to 2011 that he considered Obama a “son of Africa” and considered Obama’s presidency of the world’s super-power as something that would finally result in positive developments in Africa in general; he often referred publicly to Obama as “our Kenyan brother”.
So he wrote that letter in good faith, under these mistaken notions. What Gaddafi failed to understand was that “brother Obama” wasn’t his “Kenyan brother” but an American President: and no American president since John F. Kennedy has been anything other than a frontman for multi-national corporate alliances and shady, secret organisations and pacts.
In a subsequent letter, Gaddafi was still trying in-vein to appeal to Obama directly as a human being, even though the NATO carpet-bombing of the country was already underway. He wrote; “NATO is waging an unjust war against a small people of a developing country. This country had already been subjected to embargo and sanctions, furthermore it also suffered a direct military armed aggression during Reagan’s time. This country is Libya,” he writes.
In the letter, he goes on to call on Obama to return to “serving world peace”, and asks him, for the sake of “friendship between our peoples” and “for the sake of cooperation against terrorists”, to pull back from the destructive course the US and NATO was by this point following. Gaddafi adds, “you are in a position to keep NATO off the Libyan affair for good.”
Gaddafi, as clever as he was in so many other ways, was capable of naivety – as will be demonstrated elsewhere in this article.
And yet he wasn’t completely naive, of course. In 2008 at a meeting of the Arab League leaders, Gaddafi angrily criticised many of the corrupt, self-serving leaders of other Arab nations, criticising them for “plotting against each other” and for “laughing at each other’s misfortune”. This was primarily in relation to the invasion of Iraq and the execution of Saddam Hussein. Gaddafi warned the Arab nations, “Any one of us might
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be next. An entire Arab leadership was executed by hanging, and yet we sit on the sidelines, laughing. But any of these days, America may hang us.”
Some of those present laughed at him; but then of course some of those leaders are vassals or collaborators for American and European Geo-political/corporate interests and Gaddafi was not speaking among friends. Gaddafi was right, of course; and his address was highly prophetic…
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February 2011: The Beginning of the End…
Many of you might recall the interview Gaddafi granted to the BBC, ABC and The Sunday Times in February 2011, early in the crisis. “We never thought Al-Qaeda would come to Libya one day,” he says. “Suddenly, in the last few days they’ve taken advantage of what happened in Egypt and Tunisia… they stole weapons and started killing policemen and soldiers. These people have been drugged… they are on hallucinogenic drugs. They attacked ammunition depots and took to the streets. They used mosques as headquarters and set up emirates under Al-Qaeda control.”
His interviewers, including the BBC’s Jeremy Bowen, appeared not even to be listening to him. These ‘seasoned journalists’ instead appeared to be reading from a script, occasionally exchanging glances with each other or staring, with mocking smirks, at ‘the mad dictator’. Instead of listening to what he was telling them or asking him to elaborate, they simply kept repeating the same mantras fed to them by their corporate-news media, the Western politicians and the UN Security Council – specifically the ‘why are you attacking your own people?’ line and the ‘why will you not stand down from power?’ question.
“Have the (UN) Security Council members come here?” an exasperated Gaddafi asks. “Have they seen the young men with weapons terrorising people in the streets?”
“But if your people love you, why are they taking up arms, capturing Benghazi, etc…?” the veteran BBC reporter asks, still clearly not listening.
A fed-up Gaddafi then snaps, “It’s Al-Qaeda, Al-Qaeda; it’s not my people, it’s Al-Qaeda – they came in from the outside. Al-Qaeda started killing and confiscation of arms and it is now terrorising people in Benghazi…”
Anyone who never watched this interview at the time, should do so; it is one of the most compelling and unsettling interviews you might ever watch. Why? Well, firstly because it demonstrates how worthless the mainstream news-media is in a situation of this kind, and secondly it demonstrates the impossible situation Gaddafi was being manoeuvred into: a situation in which the only ‘end to the crisis’ being offered to him was to be murdered. This document will soon demonstrate that fact clearly: that
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Gaddafi’s death was the only option the NATO-led international community was allowing.
But first let’s stay with this February 2011 interview and listen to what he was saying.
There is a clear moment in the interview where Gaddafi seems to realise that he’s wasting his breath trying to explain things to these reporters; resigned, he gives up trying to speak in English and reverts tiredly back to Arabic, relying on his translator. “Al-Qaeda is one thing, and children who have been given drugs and duped into doing things is another, and the Libyan people is another thing…”
Finally he says, with a look of tired resignation, “I am amazed at the United States and the whole world… that when we are fighting Al-Qaeda, they impose sanctions against us.”
Tiredly now, Gaddafi tells the corporate-media representatives, “The leaders of Al-Qaeda, who are inside the mosques… I would like you to go see them. Some of them used to be Guantanamo inmates…”
Many commentators on television the next day made fun of him for his statements; they laughed and mocked, and most print journalists dismissed it as the mad ramblings of an unhinged dictator desperately trying to cling to power and cover up his crimes. Clearly the interviewers in the room were bemused by Gaddafi’s answers; but whether they believed him or not is irrelevant. What is relevant is the fact that none of the corporate news organisations, none of their investigative journalists, and worse, none of our Western government agencies, made any attempt to investigate his claims or to try to ascertain whether, as he said, Al-Qaeda was taking over Libyan cities by force.
But of course they didn’t: this wasn’t an accident, wasn’t negligence, but a planned operation that was by now well underway. The reason the journalists and news broadcasters didn’t investigate the Al-Qaeda presence was the same reason Barak Obama paid no attention to Gaddafi’s letter – they already knew what was going on.
Libyan officials had also written letters to the British government, warning them that Al-Qaeda was behind the unrest and expressing disbelief that the UK was turning its back on Libya. “What is the UK thinking?” one official wrote. “Why are you doing this?” But like Obama, the British government responded to none of these letters. It was by now refusing to communicate with *anyone* from Libya’s governing bodies, despite the fact that no investigation had been carried out to determine the reality of the situation.
Former CIA agent Kevin Shipp, subsequently a member of the Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi, has expressed his bafflement at the US government’s actions, particularly its sudden decision to cut of all contact with Gaddafi once the crisis was unfolding. “One of the most astounding parts of this whole thing is that Gaddafi was providing us with a steady stream of intelligence on Al-Qaeda movements,” he said. Shipp said Gaddafi “was collaborating with us as an ally; so for the Obama administration, the White House National Security team and the State Department to break off all contact with Gaddafi was amazing, especially when he was asking to step down and seek asylum.”
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“Who are you?” Gaddafi asked in a now infamous speech close to the tragic and bloody final days of his life, questioning the legitimacy of those seeking to overthrow his government at the time.
He called them extremists. More than that, they were foreign agents, he said; “rats” and “drug-addicts”. Everyone mocked that speech and various people even made joke versions of it online. “You rats,” Gaddafi called them during the height of the uprising, “you men with beards…”
Still the media commentators laughed. Of course they did; this policy of mocking or caricaturing Gaddafi was nothing new, but had been going on since Ronald Reagan’s time. In order to divert public attention away from what Gaddafi had actually been doing in Libya for four decades – the vast social reforms, the immense welfare program, the infrastructure-building, etc – from the 1980s onwards Western politicians and media instead created a caricature ‘villain/dictator’ image of Gaddafi to confuse popular perception.
As a result of that decades-long campaign, by the time the 2011 crisis was unfolding, few people in the West were inclined to have any sympathy for him or to take him seriously; and fewer still had a reasonable view or understanding of Green Libya. Which made it much easier for our political leaders and news-organisations to lie about what was going on.
And to do what they were about to do.
But now, with Gaddafi’s statements in mind, let’s look at exactly what *was* going on in Libya from February 2011 onward; not what the mass media told us was going on, but what actually *was* going on…
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The Collapse of a Nation: How It Started…
To begin with, were there any ‘mass protests’ against the Libyan government or Gaddafi?
On the 16th February 2011 a group of lawyers staged a demonstration in front of the North Benghazi court, calling for some legal and political reforms. The demonstration seemed to have passed peacefully and without incident – contrary to corporate media portrayal of Libya, peaceful protests were actually fairly commonplace in the country. This relatively small event on the 16th is the *only* recorded incident of ‘peaceful civilian protest’ against the government in Libya at that time. Subsequent gatherings of anti-government demonstrators did occur later on, but only once the fighting and spread of weapons was already underway.
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Please note that fact as you read on.
It is also relevant to note that the contrived call for a “Day of Rage” in Libya on the 17th, which had flooded highly suspect social media and on-line platforms, hadn’t originated in Libya at all, but from the London-based Libyan opposition leaders of the ‘NCLO’. The initial ‘unrest’ was in fact a project concocted from London.
At this same time, there is absolutely no question that what was also happening – but not covered in the corporate, Western media coverage – was that numerous jihadist Islamists were coming into the country from various locations, including Afghanistan, Iraq and, crucially, some having originated from Guantanamo Bay.
There was a – particularly good video compiled and put on-line by Dr R. Breki, G Oheda and David Roberts – that clearly and concisely reported what was actually happening in Libyan cities at this point in time; crucially this video isn’t something that was produced with the benefit of hindsight, but was composed and put on-line very early in the conflict, as the situation was developing, and it therefore remains a very good, reliable resource, being based entirely on actual footage from the events coming out of Benghazi and Tripoli, and devoid of any spin, bias or corporate-propaganda.
Subsequent to the initial minor protest, on 16th February in Benghazi, a violent crowd set ablaze three police stations, the headquarters of the internal security force and the public attorney’s office. In the city of Al-Baida, simultaneous to the Benghazi incidents, police stations and security headquarters were attacked. Hussein al-Juweifi military barracks east of Al-Bayda and the Labraq airbase outside of Benghazi came under unexpected attack. Video footage of the attack on the army barracks clearly shows that the soldiers did not open fire on the demonstrators; it shows them only firing into the air as they retreat further back into the grounds of the barracks.
Attackers stormed both locations and seized a number of weapons; all of the government soldiers, including those guarding the air-base and the airport were brutally slaughtered, and one was publicly hanged in the main square in Derna. Note again that the existing footage shows that the soldiers didn’t open fire on the ‘demonstrators’ (even though it was becoming clear that these weren’t mere ‘demonstrators’ at all).
An “Islamic emirate of Barqa” was announced in Derna, while two policemen were hanged in Al-Baida who had been trying to disperse the crowds. A group of ‘protesters’ also killed the managing director of Al-Galaa hospital in downtown Benghazi; according to some sources, the victim’s body displayed clear signs of torture.
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Some ‘rebels’ with their stolen weapons.
40 kilometres west of Tripoli, army bases and ammunition depots were attacked in the early hours of the morning, with security forces caught off-guard. More weapons were seized. Captured tanks and anti-aircraft guns were then paraded in the streets (all of it on film) and began being distributed among those involved in the unrest. In Green Square, ‘protesters’ set fire to the People’s Hall of the General People’s Congress.
In Misrata, ‘rebels’ launched an armed attack from several directions on Misrata air-base using their stock of stolen weapons.
A pattern was now emerging in cities across Libya; police stations, internal security buildings and headquarters and military buildings were being attacked or burnt down; one of the key reasons the ‘rebel’ attacks were proving so effective at this stage was because the Libyan police, military and other authorities were under orders not to open fire on ‘protesters’ under any circumstances (an instruction that may or may not have come from Gaddafi himself and a fact that he repeatedly alluded to in the famous February BBC/ABC interview). Those doing the attacking targeted every location where they knew they could confiscate large quantities of weapons and ammunition.
On the 18th, attackers used TNT explosives, Molotov cocktails and heavy vehicles, all stolen from a mixture of Libyan and foreign companies, to demolish the walls of the Alfadeel Abu-Omar military camp army barracks in Benghazi. On the 19th this attack continued, with the rebels now using machine-guns and other weapons stolen from military camps.
By the 20th, the attackers were now using tanks, bombs and light rifles. The attacks finally succeeded in storming the barracks. More brutal execution of security personnel occurred.
Now let’s pause a moment: does *any* of this sound like the actions of ‘civilian protesters’? Or supposedly ‘peaceful pro-democracy demonstrators’?
There was nothing about the situation unfolding in Libya that bore any resemblance to the mass protests that had been going on in Tunisia and Egypt in the preceding weeks; this was something completely different. None of these locations where these incidents took place were any of the usual places or city-centres where demonstrations or protests were usually held: and I say ‘usually held’, because, again, peaceful demonstrations were not uncommon in Libya, despite what Western media would have
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us believe. Instead, all of these confrontations happened at either police stations, security offices or military barracks.
These were targeted, coordinated attacks. The fact that Libyan government forces didn’t open fire at this early stage is frankly an extraordinary reflection of the nature of life in Libya – a nature that no one in mainstream Western media had any understanding of, as evidenced by the extent to which so-called seasoned journalists working for, for example, the BBC, continuously displayed utter ignorance of the Libyan political system and Libyan society in the months that were to follow (“I understand how the system works in Libya…” the BBC’s Jeremy Bowen awkwardly assures Gaddafi in that aforementioned BBC/ABC interview; to which a fed-up Gaddafi responds “No, don’t say you understand – you don’t understand”).
In any other country in the Arab world (in fact in most Western countries too), the military or the police would’ve responded with force much earlier. We can see this in, for example, how the National Guard was sent in to deal with the Baltimore unrest in America recently or how violent protests are dealt with in practically any country in the world. There were reasons that the Libyan security forces lost control of the situation early on. Firstly, it needs to be understood that this kind of public, mass violence or armed activity was not something Libyans were used to.
Even the original Libyan Revolution decades earlier, in which Gaddafi had ousted the country’s former Monarch, had been entirely a bloodless coup. Gaddafi’s 1969 ‘revolution’ had been entirely without violence or bloodshed and was conducted with popular consent; on the other hand, this so-called ‘revolution’ of 2011 was an absolute bloodbath carried out amid a fog of confusion and misinformation.
The news-media told us these were oppressed civilians rising up; the narrative coming from Libyan officials was of course different, with spokesmen claiming the security forces had arrested “dozens of foreign members of this network who were specifically trained on starting clashes.”
We should note that Amnesty International, in its May 2011 report, mentions the bloody incident at the Hussein al-Juweifi military barracks. A resident of Al-Baida told Amnesty that when government soldiers inside the barracks had started to lose control of the situation, he had tried to mediate in order to avoid further bloodshed. He asked to speak to a senior officer at the compound; “I gave him my word and said: if your soldiers surrender, they will be safe. As the group of soldiers were coming out to surrender, the protesters shot dead two soldiers… they were Libyans, not foreign mercenaries. I feel guilty because was it not for me,” he says, “they may not have come out.”
The protestations of Saif Gaddafi (the eldest of Gaddafi’s sons), as hollow as they may have sounded to cynical Western ears, seemed to tally more with the apparent reality of what was happening in February than the corporate-media version of events did. “We are not killing our fellow citizens,” Gaddafi’s son insisted. “We are not dropping bombs on them. We and our army have shown unprecedented tolerance towards our own people,” Saif insisted, adding that the people causing the disturbances “are already armed with tanks and heavy artillery…”
Saif’s explanations were based in reality; it is very clear that the ‘rebels’ in Libya were armed with
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NATO/Western weaponry from the very start; from literally day one.
Even the entirely anti-Gaddafi Al-Arrabiya news and Al-Jazeera confirmed at this early stage that the security forces, once they did respond, had only “reportedly shot rubber-coated bullets and used water-cannons in Benghazi city.”
Libyan officials reported what they believed was behind the unrest, but their statements make it clear they were still not aware of the true scale of the danger; “Some outsiders infiltrated that group,” an official said. “They were trying to corrupt the local legal process which has long been in place. We will not permit this and we call on Libyans to voice their issues through existing channels, even if it is to call for the downfall of the government.”
It might be pertinent to mention here the exposure of a 50-million dollar US government program that had been in place to organise ‘training sessions’ for activists from many of the Arab Spring countries, and to equip protesters with ‘new technologies’ to help them evade detection and capture by their governments. It might also be pertinent to mention the unidentified ‘Frenchmen’ who tried to quietly land in Malta right after the start of the ‘Civil War’, having come straight from Libya (more on that later).
By now the various groups of ‘rebels’ had taken control of several Libyan cities in what had clearly been a pre-planned and well-coordinated process.
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Were these the ‘peaceful protesters’ and ‘pro democracy activists’ the French, American and British governments claimed were in ‘danger’ from the Gaddafi government? Were these the ‘innocent victims’ the BBC, CNN, Fox News, Al-Jazeera and all the other corporate-media propagandists were so concerned about?
And what about all the ponderous, bleeding-heart French ‘liberals’ and journalists who were urging their government to intervene in Libya – where were they getting *their* information from? Or did they invent it out of thin air? By far the most influential was the celebrated French-Jewish ‘philosopher’ (for ‘philosopher’, read ‘billionaire Zionist’), Bernard Levy. A highly lauded ‘thinker’ in both France and Israel, Levy was one of the main voices pushing for Libyan intervention and was particularly key in getting much of the ‘high-minded’ media to pay attention to the idea.
In March 2011, Levy took it upon himself to fly to Benghazi to ‘engage’ Libya’s insurgents directly; and on the basis of just one meeting he immediately telephoned Nicholas Sarkosy and advised French intervention. Sarkosy instantly agreed to meet with Libyan rebels.
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French ‘philosopher’ Bernard Levy.
Quite why a ‘philosopher’ was meeting with armed rebels in Africa is anyone’s guess, but Levy’s advocacy for intervention was highly influential in France. As others have noted, Mr Levy seems to crop up wherever there’s a possibility for foreign ‘intervention’, including in Syria and then in Ukraine.
By now the ‘rebels’ were estimated to have had possession of some 250 tanks, 73 armoured vehicles, 176 anti-aircraft machine-guns, 254 rocket launchers and various other weapons and resources. As Breki, Oheda and Roberts noted in their assessment of the evidence in February 2011, these rebels now had an arsenal superior to that of most neighbouring *countries*.
And this was just in the first few days of the crisis.
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Mass Deception: Enter the Corporate News Media…
By this point, the major news broadcasters in the Arab world were already propagating a false, pre-planned picture of the situation. Stories and images were being fabricated and widely circulated to support this agenda: specifically that Gaddafi and the government were attacking and killing ‘peaceful, civilian protesters’.
Unidentified ‘eye-witnesses’ and ‘unconfirmed sources’ were frequently cited to build up the desired picture. The international media was no better; BBC, CNN, Fox, France24, virtually all corporate, mainstream news corporations cited the same ‘unconfirmed sources’ and unidentified ‘eye-witnesses’ for their explanation of what was going on in Libya; little or no effort was made to confirm accounts or details, to verify information or to independently investigate.
A typical example of some of this highly questionable media coverage, even in print, can be found in this CNN piece from February 2011. Just look how many unidentified witnesses or unverifiable reports it cites for its information;
‘The man, who was not identified for safety reasons…’
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‘CNN could not independently confirm information on the escalating unrest in Libya… though it has interviewed numerous witnesses by phone.’
‘Said the Doctor, who CNN is also not identifying for security reasons…’
‘A Libyan woman supportive of the protesters, who was not been identified to protect her safety…’
And that’s just in one article; but that’s also generally what other media organisations across the board were doing too. Worse than this, international authorities, including the UN Security Council, also chose to rely on these same, unverified and unreliable sources of information; they neglected to investigate any of it themselves, neglected to even send fact-finding commissions to Libya to ascertain the truth, despite the fact that Gaddafi had not only welcomed a UN investigation but had openly ASKED FOR ONE.
But of course Gaddafi was labouring under the misapprehension that the UN would be interested in ascertaining the truth: they weren’t – because the UN is ruled by its Security Council and the Security Council already knew what was happening in Libya… and it was all unfolding according to plan.
The UN’s subsequent endorsement of the NATO-led intervention in Libya was based on three key criteria (all of which become laughable when you actually think about them); (1) That the Libyan authorities had opened fire on peaceful unarmed demonstrators, had committed atrocities and had killed thousands of people, (2) that the Libyan army had used aircraft to bomb residential locations in Tripoli, (3) that the Libyan government had employed ‘mercenaries’ from several African nations to come into the country to confront Libyan demonstrators and commit crimes.
The other key justification that would soon be cited by various politicians was the need to ‘prevent an imminent bloodbath in Benghazi’: this being based on the prediction that Libyan forces were ‘about to’ commit a massacre of civilians in the city.
Every one of those accusations was entirely false; which will continue to be illustrated as you read this article.
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But at this point, it’s worth noting that all three of those above crimes cited to justify the foreign intervention were crimes subsequently committed *by* NATO in its Libyan operation! NATO… (1) attacked unarmed, peaceful pro-Gaddafi demonstrators in Tripoli, (2) NATO used aircraft to bomb residential locations all over the country, and (3) NATO’s Al-Qaeda aligned proxies were largely mercenaries brought in from various locations. Every single bit of criteria the UN Security Council cited to justify the intervention were perfect descriptions of the crimes they themselves would soon be committing. You couldn’t make this stuff up!
But let’s return to the matter of the Libyan government’s alleged ‘crimes’. In these early stages of the fighting, Western media claimed ‘many thousands of civilians had been killed’ by the Libyan security forces. Again, this never happened. The best estimate for the number of people killed was in fact around 250 (or 233, according to Human Rights Watch): and these included casualties from both sides of the conflict.
For context, it’s worth noting that the casualty figures from the Tunisian unrest had been about 300 and in Egypt it was estimated at 846, the latter being far in excess of the Libyan casualties. It is also a matter of simple fact that in regard to the events in Benghazi, most of the victims – on both sides – died at the gates of the military barracks as these locations were being stormed by the gangs of armed thugs. The actual accounts of the incident in fact suggest that the security forces didn’t respond as harshly as they probably should have by this point.
On 22nd March, USA Today carried a striking article by Alan Kuperman, titled ‘Five Things the US Should Consider in Libya’, which offered a powerful critique of the NATO intervention as violating the conditions of ‘humanitarian intervention’. But one of the most interesting things about the piece was the point that ‘despite ubiquitous cellphone cameras, there are no images of genocidal violence’.
Of course there wasn’t – because the whole thing was a lie from the very beginning. There remains TO THIS DAY not one piece of reliable evidence – not one bit of evidence – that the Libyan government or security forces ever attacked civilians or ever opened fire on peaceful protestors.
There in fact remains no evidence that there even *were* any ‘peaceful civilian protesters’ or protests.
Of course, the point did come where the Libyan security forces began to fight back: of course they did. In any other country, they would’ve been fighting back much earlier and much harder. The casualties rose once the regime forces began defending themselves and Libyan cities from the expanding rebel attacks. But the number of casualties still didn’t rise to anything like the numbers the foreign media was suggesting; those numbers were basically being plucked out of thin air.
Later, in July 2011, Saif Gaddafi had an interview with RT in which he denied the ICC’s allegations that he or his father had ordered the killing of civilian protesters. He pointed out that he was not a member of the government or the military and therefore had no authority to give such orders. He also said that his father had made recorded calls to General Abdul Fatah Younis (who later defected to the rebel forces), in order to request the army *not use force* against protesters, to which he said Fatah Younis had responded that protesters were attacking a military site and the soldiers were merely acting in self-defense.
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Asked by RT who did order the ‘brutal crackdown’, Saif replied: “Nobody ordered, nobody. The guards fired – that’s it. The guards were surprised by the attack and they started firing. They don’t need an order to defend themselves and to defend their barracks and their camps.”
He went on to say that, “the people who died at the beginning, 159 – most of the people died when they attacked a military site and this would happen anywhere in the world – in Russia, in America, in France, in Germany and Italy. If people in the street move towards a military site trying to steal ammunition or arms, the military will prevent that, and this is what happened in Benghazi.”
Saif Gaddafi encouraging loyal supporters in Tripoli in the
midst of the crisis.
And as Dr R. Breki and co point out, ‘the number of casualties from any single rebel attack, soon to be supported by NATO air cover and bombings, far exceeded that of *all* the victims who died in all of the incidents that occurred at the beginning of this conflict: and any fact-finding mission would verify this.’
And was a ‘fact-finding mission’ ever sent into Libya? No, of course not: because the UN Security Council, our governments and the corporate/mainstream media already knew what was going on and were choosing not to report it.
But here was the big one now: here was the big ‘crime of the regime’ that would be cited to justify all-out intervention and regime-change. According to the BBC, Al-Jazeera and others, on the 22nd February the Libyan air-force conducted air-strikes against civilian areas in Benghazi and Tripoli. What we were told by the media and by our governments was that the ‘regime’ allegedly bombed civilian areas, killing thousands of people. But did this ever happen?
Of course it didn’t. Not only did it not happen, but it must rank as one of the stupidest, most unconvincing lies ever concocted by our governments and the news media. The notion that Gaddafi, whose entire era has been centered on the dignity and safeguarding of the Libyan people, would order Libyan planes to bomb civilian areas was something
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that lacked even the smallest morsel of credibility. Yet Western government official after Western government official, not to mention the mainstream media, kept citing this ‘crime’ as if it was pure fact.
Renowned whistleblower and Libya expert Susan Lindauer wrote on a popular website at the time, ‘For some reason, the world is supposed to believe that Gadhaffi’s government – which has no history of attacking its own people in 41 years of rule – is suddenly guilty of the most hideous offences.’
In fact, even at the time, the Russian government revealed that they’d been monitoring the situation from *space* and that their satellite data unequivocally revealed that no such air-strikes had been carried out.
In other words, the BBC, Al-Jazeera and others simply fabricated the entire story: and the rest of the news-media simply regurgitated what the BBC and Al-Jazeera had reported. It had never happened. And if it ever did happen, then why was no evidence ever produced or presented by either our governments or the news stations? No journalist anywhere near Libya ever reported on or corroborated this alleged attack by the Libyan air-force. Many journalists visiting Libya were transiting through Egypt at that time and none claimed to have heard any first-hand account or confirmation of this alleged attack.
The only ‘source’ our governments and the media could refer to corroborate the story of these attacks was on-line social media, particularly Twitter. Which brings us to what was a key element in the propaganda campaign expertly utilised to destroy Libya.
As of February 2011, the relatively modern tool of social media was heavily employed to create the illusion and to sway popular opinion for the purposes of destroying a nation…
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Utilising ‘Social Media’: The Propaganda Masterstroke…
Here’s a question. As this keen-eyed observer points out in this video, You Tube had been blocked in Libya from 2010. In other words, people in Libya were unable to access You Tube and were certainly unable to post to it.
So how was it that an array of You Tube videos were posted in these early weeks of the 2011 crisis, all purporting to show government crimes against civilians? Fox News, the
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BBC, Al-Arrabiya and Al-Jazeera, among others, all showed or referenced these sorts of videos, taking them as fact and using them to build up a desired picture of the ‘situation’. But any outside agencies that actually went into Libya at that time were stunned to find none of the chaos or violence that the news channels, the You Tube videos or the social-media accounts were referring to.
In Tripoli, for example, they found remarkably ordinary city scenes, people just going about their normal business; no fighting, no protests, no Libyan army, nothing. Yet as the aforementioned video-poster points out, the international media chose not to show or report any of this, and instead they kept referencing these unverifiable You Tube videos… videos somehow posted by hundreds of Libyans, despite Libyans not having access to You Tube.
The answer to how this was possible is simple; and it’s the same explanation as to why all those Twitter accounts were posting about ‘government crimes’, the air-strikes on civilians and the African mercenaries supposedly working for the regime. Because, buried away in the realms of independent Internet journalism far from the reportage of the mainstream media was the fact that the US government had contracted HBGary Federal to develop the software that would allow for ‘the creation and use of multiple fake social media accounts’ for the purposes of ‘swaying public opinion’ and ‘promoting propaganda’.
An example of one of the scores of probably fake social-media accounts.
For example, Information Week recorded (date, curiously enough: February 22nd 2011) that the US Air-Force ‘was taking an odd route in its Cyber Security campaign by requesting something called ‘Persona Management Software’ that would enable it to ‘command an on-line unit of non-existent identities on social-media sites’. It referred to a ‘software program that could manage up to 10 personas per user, including background, history, supporting details and cyber-presences that are technically, culturally and geographically consistent’.
It went on, ‘personas must be able to appear to originate in nearly any part of the world and can interact through any conventional on-line service and social media platforms’.
The article (and there were others reporting the same thing elsewhere too) doesn’t make any reference to Libya specifically, but the date this was being leaked was exactly the same week the Libya crisis began. See here and here for more on HBGary Federal and the ‘millions of fake social-media accounts’ being created. Again, note that these leaks were breaking *literally* at the same time the first incidents of unrest in Libya were occurring; though none of these articles at the time connected those dots or made any reference to Libya.
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This piece on Mashable, dated March 17th 2011, reports US-CENTCOM’s acquisition of the software and illustrates that ‘Using the software, one member of the US military can control up to 10 different fake accounts that appear to belong to civilians living in other countries.’ The Washington Times on March 1st had already begun to report on this, highlighting the point that ‘Personas must be able to appear to originate in nearly any part of the world’.
To clarify, in other words, fake social-media accounts were created in large numbers (especially on Twitter) in order to flood the web with false stories about the situation in Libya; which could in turn by cited by corporate news media as testimony ‘from inside Libya’.
Most, probably all, of these accounts (along with every post and every tweet) were being run by American operatives; and as the same people would’ve been managing multiple user-accounts, they could use each account to appear to corroborate the details being posted by the other accounts and therefore paint a consistent picture.
One dead giveaway is that all of these Twitter and social-media accounts were in English.
Another is that only something like 5% of Libyans were believed to even *use* the Internet, so this vast amount of Libyan social-media accounts that all of a sudden existed in February 2011 is highly suspect. But these thousands of tweets and posts, all amplified for maximum dramatic effect, were used by the traditional mass media for ‘proof’ of the Libyan government’s crimes and for painting the picture of a widespread, grassroots civilian revolution.
The only problem was that it was all faked.
Ireal Shamir sums up the beginning of the ‘civil war’ best of all, writing in May 2011*, ‘Initially the Benghazi Uprising was nothing more than a small local riot; the ‘rebellion’ was unknown in other cities. Soon, however, the (Libyan) government was destabilized by Al-Jazeera…’
What he’s saying in effect is that *the media* WAS the ‘rebellion’. And he isn’t wrong. The role played by the corporate media in bringing about the chaos in Libya and the downfall of the government cannot be understated. Particularly in the early weeks from mid-February to late March, the news stations – beginning with Al-Jazeera and Al-Arrabiya – were basically portraying a mass fiction for the sake of igniting international outrage.
And some of the videos posted to You Tube (and acting as ‘proof’ of the Libyan government’s crimes) were so laughably fake that the mainstream media broadcasters who kept citing them as ‘evidence’ must’ve been secretly laughing to themselves. This site* was a very good, very thorough and vigilant, source for ‘evidence’ analysis during the 2011 crisis. It also helped to expose many of the videos and images as highly
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staged/choreographed fakes designed to maintain the illusion of civilian protesters being under attack from the government security forces.
Regarding just one of the many fake videos, for example; ‘People run and scramble to hide from the sound of gunshots – hundreds of feet away from these… weaponless attackers? Some others lay there helpless on the pavement, un-helped, not carried away, but not bleeding either… One of the victims sits up and looks around, waving at people.’As reader ‘Felix’ describes it “this video clearly shows a “protester” ambling onto set (and it is essentially a film set with actors) then slowly getting down, then lying dead on his back, at about 0.16 onwards. He occasionally pops his head up just to check he isn’t dead.”… Indeed, anyone else take a look and see how ridiculous this is. Note also the creepy stiff man in a black trench coat who at the end walks right over to that same jackass and stands over him. As if to say “what the hell was that? Don’t you realize what we’re trying to do here?”…’
*Again, for all links, see ‘References’ section at the end.
As the site admins note, ‘it was very important for Muslim world opinion that Gaddafi be seen as anti-Islam and an attacker of mosques.’ Which was why we got quite obviously faked videos being uploaded; one, for example, titled “Muammar Gaddafi infidel, criminal, and a mosque was bombed [az Zawiya] 6311 [March 6]”. As the admin sarcastically notes, ‘You know it’s real because they pan to the minaret, wondering “hey, what if something were to happen to it right now? I’d better be filming and whoa, did you see that puff of smoke?” Smoke bombs attached to its circumference go off with a light bang, then some gunshots in the air and people cheerfully shouting Allahu Akbar…’
This was the general level of on-the-ground ‘video evidence’ coming out of Libya and being regarded as ‘evidence’ for what was going on. And being used by ‘reputable’, mainstream media news organisations to convince their viewing publics that the fiction was in fact reality.
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The Brink of the Abyss: “WE Are the People of Libya!”
By now, it was evident that Gaddafi himself finally understood what was actually happening – that he was facing a multi-pronged and pre-planned criminal conspiracy on all sides.
In a telephone address to the people of Benghazi (March 26th 2011), a Gaddafi who was by now becoming angrier, says: “They don’t care about the future of the Libyan people, or whether Benghazi dies or lives. They are attempting to destroy you and then bring (in) foreign, colonising powers…” In the same address, Gaddafi
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exhorts his people, trying to give them courage and reminded them “We are the people of Libya.”
Gaddafi and the Libyan officials are by this point said to be receiving thousands of calls from families in Benghazi, begging for help, asking for someone to go and rescue them. “Those criminals who have been released out of prison, those drug addicts and murderers… have cut off electricity and communications. They broke them out (of the prisons) and handed them weapons…”
On March 29th President Obama wasted no time in signing the secret documents authorizing the CIA to support the armed ‘rebels’ in their military efforts to topple Gaddafi. This is confirmed by Reuters on March 30th. However, this too was a lie; as American involvement pre-dated this official start-point.
In fact, American and Western meddlers couldn’t wait to get on the ground in Libya and hasten the spiralling chaos. On April 22nd US Senator John McCain says, “I would encourage every nation, especially the United States, to recognize the Transitional National Council as the legitimate voice of the Libyan people.” He tells reporters, “They are my heroes.” Note: Senator John McCain, in Libya to represent the American government, the American people and American interests, was happy to go on record as saying that his “heroes” were essentially the armed gangs and Al-Qaeda agents that had slaughtered policemen and soldiers. He would prove to have form in this department, however; as months later he would be in Syria, meeting with the extremist rebels there too and championing their cause.
Senator John McCain in Benghazi with Libyan ‘rebels’,
accompanied by Britain’s Foreign Minister.
What’s remarkable also is that Gaddafi’s government hadn’t even fallen yet, but foreign officials and representatives were already violating the country, already on the ground in Libya, making speeches and colluding with the opposition forces. What was John McCain doing in Libya; what legal right did a US Senator have to be on the ground in a Libyan city, colluding with armed groups? If possible, he should’ve been arrested straight away by government security forces and held indefinitely.
He wasn’t, of course; because the government forces were by now on the back-foot and had lost control of several key cities. But when you watch the footage of Hilary Clinton or John McCain arriving in Benghazi and shaking hands with ‘rebel’ soldiers, keep in mind that they’re actually shaking hands with allies of Al-Qaeda commanders,
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murderers and extremist jihadists (which will be demonstrated beyond doubt in a moment) – and they know it, of course.
As has been well attested, almost immediately after NATO successfully destroyed Libya’s government, its terrorist proxies were mobilized to take part in the conspirators’ next campaign against Syria. Libyan terrorists would be sent first to NATO-member Turkey were they were staged, armed, trained, and equipped, before crossing the Turkish-Syrian border to take part in the fighting there; and the same voices – Hilary Clinton, John McCain, etc – would be saying the same things about Syria as they were saying in Libya.
Also the mainstream narrative that would have us believe Western involvement with the rebels and the uprising didn’t begin until March 2011 (and as a response to the developing situation) was entirely false: which will be clearly demonstrated as you read on.
As NATO proceeded to bomb Libya’s key infrastructure locations, entirely ignoring the thousands of Libyans protesting in the streets for an end to the bombings, the rebel groups consolidated control of various captured cities and locations. Tanks and armed gangs became a daily sight in the streets, with an atmosphere of intimidation of civilians. In the (forced) absence of the country’s security infrastructure, lawlessness flourished, along with mass killings (especially of Black migrants, of which there were around one-million in the country), arbitrary executions in public places, and all other manner of War Crimes.
Wherever the ‘rebels’ were, these crimes were committed and public acts of violence were occurring, including rape.
Yet the Western media and our governments continued to tell us that Gaddafi, and not the rebels, was the problem. He, the man who had kept peace, stability and prosperity in Libya for over four decades, was the criminal, and the rampaging gangs of armed extremists and thugs were ‘the Good Guys’, the ‘Freedom Fighters’.
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‘Rebels’, Terrorists, Mercenaries, Thugs, Proxy Militias…
So who exactly were these ‘Freedom Fighters’?
In Misrata, the rebels – in full public view – cut the limbs off a Libyan soldier, cut out his heart and trampled it.
In Benghazi, a captured prisoner was hacked to death, cut into pieces and had his head cut off… in front of a vast, watching crowd of onlookers. As Dr Breki and co
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noted in their early analysis, this particular crime was carried out in a square adjacent to the Benghazi Court House – the seat of the ‘National Transitional Council’ (NTC) that NATO was putting into power and that the international community was by then already choosing to recognise as the new Libyan government, despite the NTC having no clear popular mandate. Video footage of this gruesome crime can still be found on the Internet (but don’t watch it if you’re faint-hearted).
In Al Baida, captured Libyan soldiers were being summarily executed; and as Breki and co noted, these executions “bore all the hallmarks of Al-Qaeda”.
Despite images and videos of many of these crimes being available on the Internet within days (in some cases even hours) of them occurring, our news and media organisations chose to entirely ignore them and instead to remain focused on the spurious allegations against the Gaddafi government and the same ‘unconfirmed accounts’ and ‘unidentified eyewitness reports’ of alleged government crimes from unidentified sources. This exact same policy, down to the letter, would months later be repeated by all the same parties – terrorists, our governments, our news media – in Syria.
The other favoured tactics of the terrorists, our government officials and the media, all working together, was to film or photograph instances of rebel/terrorist atrocities and then present them as ‘crimes of the government’; in Libya and Syria this tactic was rampant (and often exposed as fraud, as was the case with the infamous ‘Houla Massacre’ in Syria). Scattered videos shot on mobile-phones and uploaded to the Internet were available during these stages of the uprising, showing, among other things, rape and mutilation of young Libyan girls.
More ‘rebels’ rampaging around a city centre.
Renowned whistleblower and Libya expert Susan Lindauer wrote on a popular website at the time, ‘There are two important reasons why NATO Rebels would commit these acts. First, in committing war crimes, NATO Rebels have deployed a strategy for provoking panic and confusion at the street level, where they must control the people. They have frightened their opposition into silent submission. Ordinary Libyans can see with their own eyes that Libyan Rebels are all powerful, with NATO enforcers watching their back, and pro-Gadhaffi loyalists had better shut their mouths or face terrible consequences. For some reason, the world is supposed to
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believe that Gadhaffi’s government – which has no history of attacking its own people in 41 years of rule – is suddenly guilty of the most hideous offences.’
As Saif Gaddafi tells ABC’s Christiane Amanpour by telephone; “Everybody is terrified because of the armed militias. They live in terror. Armed people are everywhere. They have set up their own courts. They execute the people who are against them.”
Everyone was so unrelenting in their choruses of how the Libyan government was committing ‘atrocities’ (but not one shred of proof), yet the same Western government officials and corporate-media broadcasters were much more reticent in reporting on any of the known war crimes and excesses carried out by rebel fighters, including crimes committed by the scores of non-Libyan mercenaries sent in from elsewhere.
The Guardian reported on 23rd of April that Save the Children had uncovered horrific stories from civilians in Benghazi. The families told the charity’s staff that children as young as eight had been sexually assaulted, often in front of their families. Girls were being abducted, held hostage for days and raped. These were Libyan civilians being terrorised and abused by the armed gangs, Al-Qaeda fighters and jihadist mercenaries, all being funded, armed and legitimised by our governments – by Hilary Clinton, Nicloas Sarkosy, David Cameron, Barak Obama, the UN Security Council, NATO and all its members.
Gaddafi seemed to be in no doubt that the uprising was being orchestrated by foreign agents. “It is now necessary to open the stores and arm all the masses with weapons to defend the independence, unity and honour of Libya,” Gaddafi declared in one of his most referenced broadcasts.
Does that sound like something he would propose to do if he was afraid of his own people being against him?
Or more like something he would do to help the civilian populations defend themselves against the armed criminals and terrorists who had flooded into Libya and were now terrorising entire cities and towns? In other words, why would a ‘dictator’ being turned on by his own population propose to arm that population? Earlier, on February 28th, Saif al-Islam had also already promised, at a rally of loyalist supporters, to arm the civilians so they could defend themselves against the foreign mercenaries and terrorists.
So again, who were these ‘freedom fighters’ that our governments were so fond of?
Gaddafi, as his statements in February demonstrated, was confused as to why no one from the outside world was listening to him when he tried to explain the Al-Qaeda assault on his cities. Unfortunately, what Gaddafi had failed to understand was that Al-Qaeda and the American government are not enemies but long-term allies: if he had understood that quicker, he wouldn’t have wasted so much time trying to explain. Again, Gaddafi can be accused of having been naive in some respects.
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There had been fundamentalists and extremists in parts of Libya for many years; not as many as in countries like Pakistan, Yemen or Saudi Arabia, but still a significant amount. Extremists had in fact festered for decades in eastern Libya, but were mostly rendered impotent by the regime which had zero tolerance for religious fundamentalists or Salafists. In fact many of the ‘brutal regime’ allegations regarding Libya over the years were based on the government’s suppression of militant Islamists and fundamentalists (not dissimilar to how the current Egyptian military government deals with radical Islamists). By the 1990s the situation was believed to have been well in-hand; however, there may have remained some sleeper cells in parts of the country, biding their time, just as there were in Syria. There may also have been Western intelligence agencies in contact with those sleeper cells for many years – a point that I shall return to later in this post.
Unlike say the US, Israel or even Syria, Gaddafi’s approach to dealing with militants and extremists wasn’t solely based on military means; he chose to pursue dialogue. The Gaddafi Charity organisation engaged in dialogue with leaders of these groups, this being both those who’d been in prison in Libya or those returning from illegal activity in Afghanistan, Iraq or from Guantanamo Bay.
This dialogue resulted in leaders of the ‘Libyan Islamic Fighting Group’ and others to renounce violence once and for all. Following this, several hundred of these militants were released from Libyan prisons over several years, with the promise of having renounced violence and seeking to reform; the final hundred or so of these were released on 15th of February 2011. This progressive attitude, this desire to deal with the problem through rehabilitation, was, with hindsight, one of Gaddafi’s biggest mistakes: many, possibly all, of these released prisoners were involved in the bloody attacks that soon followed. What Gaddafi had to learn the hard way was that you simply don’t negotiate with hardline political Islamists: a lesson that Syria’s Bashar Assad learnt in part by watching what was happening to Gaddafi and Libya in 2011.
But this element of home-based extremists was in all likelihood only one factor in the larger equation: the bigger factor being the foreign mercenaries and terrorists entering into Libya.
“We are dealing with something imported to us from abroad: I mean Al Qaeda,” Gaddafi told RT early in the crisis. “They hide themselves in buildings and open fire during night time, terrorizing the residents. They butcher people like Al-Qaeda did. This is nothing other than crime. The Al-Qaeda leadership began to tell the world about protests in Libya, about shooting and of thousands killed. All of a sudden we found out the whole world was against Libya. But we have had no protests. How could news agencies have reported such things? The number of victims is 150-200: how could one speak about thousands?” he asks, confused by the all the exaggerated media coverage.
Known Al-Qaeda and former Guantanamo-Bay prisoners were acknowledged, even by several Western newspapers, to have been supervising ‘training camps’ in Libya aimed at sustaining and expanding the attacks.
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A leader of Al-Qaeda (and one of the ugliest people you’ll ever see in your life), ‘Abu Yahya al-Libi’, appeared on the Internet, calling on Al-Qaeda members now in Libya to capture as many weapons as possible and take full advantage of the collapsing security situation. Al-Qaeda spokesman and propagandist Ayman al-Zawahiri also released a video statement urging Al-Qaeda members on in Libya (months later he would also be doing the same in Syria). Extremist Al-Qaeda leader, Abdul Latif Tarahouni was known – and shown – to be acting as a field commander in the rebels’ ranks during attacks on several Libyan cities. When he was killed in action, his funeral was attended by members of the NATO-backed National Transitional Council (NTC); let’s reemphasise that – a known Al-Qaeda operative orchestrating ‘rebel’ attacks was openly, publicly mourned and celebrated by members of the transitional ‘government’ NATO and the West was championing. Apparently everyone was okay with this.
The evidence of the Al-Qaeda and general terrorist link to the armed gangs in Libya was cropping up all over the place. This is a must-read article on the website of Webster Griffin Tarpley, PhD, demonstrating how so many of the ‘rebels’ fighting in Libya were the same radical Islamists fighting against US troops in Iraq a few years earlier.
Professor Peter Dale Scott also wrote a comprehensive, early assessment of the situation on the Center for Research on Globalisation site in March 2011.
And Gaddafi’s claim that former Guantanamo inmates were inciting the uprising was later confirmed, for example in this article in The Telegraph.
NATO-backed Libya ‘rebels’ with a Black African migrant worker.
The Al-Qaeda member and former Guantanamo detainee Abu Sufian Ibrahim Ahmed Hamuda Bin Qumu was another of those known to be involved in the uprising. Qumu had previously been imprisoned in Libya for ten years for alleged “murder, physical assault, armed assault and distributing narcotics”, but had escaped and fled to Afghanistan. A clear pattern emerges concerning many of those figures most involved in driving the uprising; aside from the Al-Qaeda connections and the history of involvement with US intelligence entities, these were often people with personal grudges against the government or Gaddafi – in the case of Qumu, the fact that he’d been imprisoned.
Need more? Well, The Telegraph reported that one of the Libyan rebel commanders had openly admitted his fighters were Al-Qaeda.
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The proofs of Al-Qaeda’s central role in the uprising were there the whole time, cropping up virtually every day; and yet whenever Gaddafi tried to explain this to the outside world, he was dismissed or laughed at. And the rebels’ military commander in Tripoli was none other than the “butcher of Afghanistan”, the Al-Qaeda mercenary Abdel-Hakim Belhadj, also known under the alias of Hasidi.
This Abel Hakim al-Hasidi was essentially an Al-Qaeda Commander there in Libya with full MI6/CIA backing. An asset for both British intelligence and Vitol Oil, Belhadj was in fact made commander of the Tripoli Military Council. By taking control of Tripoli, Belhaj was given authority over a third of the country’s population and a major portion of its wealth. And for the record, Belhaj now leads the ISIS/ISIL branch in Libya.
Meanwhile there was the aforementioned ‘Libyan Islamic Fighting Group’ (LIFG); an organisation listed by the US State Department as a “terrorist organisation”: this didn’t stop the US and NATO arming them and working with them in 2011 (there is also more to the connection between this LIFG and Western intelligence agencies; which will be highlighted later in this article).
As would soon be witnessed in Syria and then again in Iraq in 2014, mass graves were already being found in Benghazi, where the rebels had buried Libyan soldiers they’d executed. The bodies were found to have been mutilated in various ways. Our corporate media continued to completely gloss over these aspects of the rebel groups NATO was supporting. Through ignorance? No, of course not: but through policy – and not merely a policy of silence, but a policy of deliberate misdirection and sleight of hand.
And yet this hotchpotch of armed groups were often dictating NATO’s actions, dictating instructions to British, American and French forces. Even British government officials, for example in the pro-rebel Al-Jazeera film ‘Gaddafi: The End Game, State of Denial’, openly admit that the rebel groups had easy access to the British Foreign Office in London and that they would regularly phone in and tell them what Libyan government targets NATO should be hitting on any given day.
At this point, let’s go back to what Gaddafi was trying to explain to the BBC, ABC and the journalists in February. “Have you seen the Al-Qaeda operatives?” he asks his incredibly condescending interviewers. “Have you heard all these Jihadi broadcasts? It is Al-Qaeda that is controlling the cities of Al Baida and Darnah; former Guantanamo inmates and extremists unleashed by America to terrorise the Libyan people.”
Again watch these ‘seasoned interviewers’ of the world’s premier news broadcasters: they don’t ask him to elaborate. They look bewildered, and then they just push on with their pre-scripted questions, which were all tailored – as with all the coverage – to portray Gaddafi as a delusional madman trying to cling to power.
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For the record, the ‘Darnah’ Gaddafi refers to is now the main stronghold for ISIS/ISIL in Libya in 2015.
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Referred to as a ‘pro-democracy movement’ by the BBC and other mainstream media outlets, these people were being openly armed and trained by the French, British and American governments. The CIA was already on the ground in Libya with the rebels, something openly admitted even by CNN at the time it was reporting on the uprising. The CIA had in fact recruited over 1,500 men from Mazar-e-Sharif (Afghanistan) for fighting against Gaddafi’s government in Libya: a fact not even being denied by this stage. By August, even mainstream publications were reporting this.
In what world is it legally (not to mention morally) acceptable for one nation to recruit armed fighters from a second nation and send them into a third nation to wage war upon it?
I direct us back to Gaddafi’s comments to RT. He asks, “How can the UN Security Council and the whole world decide (to attack us) based just on media reports? It was the terrorists themselves, Al-Qaeda, who sent their reports about it to the news agencies…”
He goes on, “The rebels specifically attacked prisons to free criminals sentenced for illegal drug-dealing, killings and smuggling. The criminals were issued weapons for them to fight on the side of the rebels…”
In the same interview, Gaddafi insisted the UN Resolution was invalid and, according to the Charter, shouldn’t allow for international interference in a state’s internal affairs – but only in situations involving more than one state. I will come to that UN Resolution in a moment.
Concerning Al-Qaeda and the rebels’ agenda, Gaddafi said, “They declare all the people as infidels. They have no demands, neither economic, political nor social. Their principle is ‘Kill, kill, kill until the Judgement Day comes’,” he explained, highlighting the prophetic/apocalyptic ‘End-Times’ philosophy that many of the jihadists subscribe to. “What has transpired has nothing to do with the Constitution and the civil society system or civil rights. This armed group has no interest in democracy. You know Al-Qaeda: they consider democracy godlessness created by infidels. They do not recognize democracy but recognize only caliphates and the like.”
On 22nd February Gaddafi had blamed the uprising on “Islamists”, and warned that an “Islamic emirate” had already been set up in Bayda and Derna, where he now threatened extreme force to stop the extremist ‘Islamification of Libya’. With hindsight, Gaddafi was essentially predicting the emergence of ‘Islamic State’ or ‘Daesh’: ISIS didn’t exist in 2011, but the chaos in Libya was being callously stage-managed by the international conspirators so that something very much like ISIS/ISIL would emerge and engulf the region. ISIS/ISIL, as many observers have since noted, are simply a re-branded offshoot of Al-Qaeda: and Libya in 2011 was quite simply Al-
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Qaeda being unleashed to run riot across an entire nation by their American, British, French, Saudi and Qatari sponsors.
It is a particular irony to note that Libya was the very first country in the world, and Gaddafi the very first leader, to condemn Al-Qaeda and issue an arrest warrant for Osama bin Laden; this was back in 1996, and it is even more interesting to note that both Britain and the US had refused to cooperate with Gaddafi or Libya even back then in going after Al-Qaeda (a fact of history we will return to later in this document).
In regard to Al-Qaeda, ‘Islamic State’ and the flourishing of ultra-violent Islamist terrorism, history will one day show that Gaddafi was the one standing in the way of this orchestrated apocalypse.
Without having any clear perception of what these rebel groups consisted of or intended to do in the long-run, the mass media simply went along with our governments’ – the governments of more or less every wealthy nation on earth – unanimously deciding to recognise these armed criminals as legitimate “freedom fighters” and began championing them; and worse, arming and funding them.
David Cameron had already invited representatives of the Libyan rebels to open an office/embassy in London; this being despite clear and numerous evidences emerging of both Al-Qaeda’s involvement in the uprising and of the kinds of brutal crimes being committed by the rebels. But of course… our mass media, just like our governments, already knew what was going on in Libya: they were just choosing to be very selective with what they revealed.
In London, NTC officials, now given control of the Libyan embassy, laid a doormat bearing Gaddafi’s image so visitors would trample on his likeness whenever they came.
Over a billion dollars of aid was given to the rebels by international agencies, particularly from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States who made a big show of this ‘donation’. There was foreign-provided military equipment, American weapons, and even American instructors on the ground teaching the ‘rebels’ how to use some of the more complicated weaponry. The agenda was so brazen by now that it wasn’t even being covered up anymore: this, for the record, is what happens when ‘too big to fail’ institutions and conspirators know that they can get away with anything – they stop even bothering to properly cover up their iniquities anymore. France alone paid $259 million to the gangs and rebels, with America donating an estimated $25 million.
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A Libyan ‘rebel’ and one of his wealthy ‘patrons’ – France.
Qatar (awarded the 2022 FIFA World Cup at literally the same time it was arming terrorists in Libya and Syria) later even admitted that it deployed hundreds of its own forces into Libya, involved in the armed uprising. There’s no other way to describe that than a foreign nation directly taking up arms against another sovereign state and purely by stealth (without any declaration of war): yet no one in any of our high-minded governments, no one in the UN, and hardly anyone in the media, even raised an eyebrow at that. Qatar would prove to have form in this department, as a number of its Intelligence operatives would soon also be discovered operating among the ‘Syrian rebels’ that would soon be fighting to overthrow the Assad government.
Qatar, let it be said, has been one of the chief architects of the violent assaults on both Libya and Syria.
Now perhaps I am a naive sort of fool, but foreign nationals being sent to fight alongside armed militias in a sovereign nation to overthrow that nation’s legitimate government seems like something that breaches every principle of international law, doesn’t it? And yet this activity became so commonplace in regard to Libya in 2011 that news organisations and journalists would casually report on such violations of a sovereign state without even batting an eye-lid at the illegality of it (much less the immorality).
For example, there was a Canadian citizen who commanded 250 rebel fighters and happened to also come face to face with Muammar Gaddafi at the moment of the leader’s murder. “Men were hitting him. He was begging for mercy and yelling that what they were doing to him was haraam (forbidden). The beatings lasted a few minutes. Then someone holding a pistol approached. He fired twice,” he told The National Post. “The first bullet tore into Gaddafi’s head; the second, through his stomach. After a moment of shock, a violent frenzy erupted. Gaddafi’s corpse was grotesquely defiled.” The witness speaking here is Gourbal Djiddi Nokour, a Canadian citizen form Ontario. Such is the perverseness of the way the mainstream media had come to regard the Libya situation that The National Post reported this as if Mr Nokour had every right to be there, commanding ‘250 rebel fighters’ in the first place; it reports this as if this was some kind of innocuous vacation activity. But the cold reality was this: Mr Nokour was a non-Libyan in Libya and commanding hundreds of armed terrorists in a war against Libyan citizens and their legitimate government.
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But this Mr Nokour was simply one among probably hundreds of foreign nationals on the ground in Libya and involving themselves in the rape and pillage of the country.
There was also, among many others, the 33-year-old American Matthew Van Dyke: a film-maker and correspondent who travelled to Libya to fight with the NATO-backed rebels. His film Kony 2012 was in essence a badly measured propaganda exercise to glorify the thugs, violence and gang warfare of 2011, entirely omitting the Al-Qaeda connections and serving primarily to act as justification for NATO’s policies and Gaddafi’s murder.
Again, no one seemed to raise an eyebrow at the fact than an American (a civilian too) was on the ground in a foreign, sovereign nation and actively contributing to warfare upon the people and the government of that nation.
Apparently that’s okay. Van Dyke was at one point captured by Libyan government forces and held in prison, but was neither tortured nor killed and eventually rejoined the rebels and continued contributing to their campaign.
As far as this foreign involvement on the ground is concerned, it gets worse – much, much worse: but we will come to that in a moment.
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“Drugged and Supporting the Devil”: A Word About ‘Captagon’…
And what of Gaddafi’s claim that the rebels were feeding young Libyan men hallucinogenic drugs to fuel their violent activity?
Again, the media commentators and journalists laughed, dismissing this as a delusion or a lie. Yet evidence has since emerged from the fighting in Syria that many Syrian (and foreign) rebels were fuelled by illicit substances. Syrian rebels have been captured and video-recorded clearly in drug-induced frenzies and altered states: whether this explains some of the depravity of many of the rebels operating in Syria (and in ISIS/ISIL) in those early stages of the Syrian Civil War or whether they were just brutal, ultra-violent people anyway is difficult to say. These are people, let’s remember, that were, among other things, beheading Syrian children and leaving their headless bodies in the street.
But it’s worth noting that most of the very worst and most brutal crimes of the various jihadists and militants operating in Syria occurred in the early months and the first year or so of the fighting: which was around the time jihadists and militants were flooding into Syria from Libya.
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‘Captagon’, an amphetamine said to be widely used in the Middle East but mostly unknown elsewhere, was reported to be keeping fighters (in Syria) on their feet during gruelling battles and generating money for more weapons. As this video attested, evidence was starting to emerge that the brutal conflict in Syria, despite having various causes, was also being fuelled by both the export and *consumption* of rapidly increasing quantities of illegal drugs. Again, footage exists on-line of various Islamist militants in Syria or Iraq where they are noticeably deranged: their behaviour and their mannerisms are visibly a type of ‘mania’.
Remember Abu Sakkar, the crazed Syrian rebel who was filmed ripping the heart out of a Syrian soldier and eating it? Reminiscent, it has to be said, of the ‘Libyan rebels’ who tore out the internal organs of Libyan soldiers in Misrata early in the uprising.
A scholarly analysis of ‘captagon’ in Saudi Arabia can be read here. Even very recently, a reported shipment of around six-million captagon pills were seized, headed for ISIS/ISIL fighters in Syria, and the accusation is being made from multiple sources that NATO itself began production of the drug in a Bulgarian laboratory in 2011 – the year of the Libyan and Syrian ‘uprisings’ – and that they are now also producing the drug elsewhere too. That may or may not be true; but it’s curious that Gaddafi’s claim about ‘drugged’ rebels and criminals seems to be backed up by evidence from elsewhere.
“Bribed, drugged, and supporting the Devil…” was one of Gaddafi’s more colourful descriptions of the armed gangs terrorising the Libyan people. Based on the evidence, that seems a rather pertinent description; and all the media commentators and journalists who made fun of him for saying it are now the ones with egg on their face. The utter absence of proper, investigative journalism or fact-finding in regard to Libya in 2011 was utterly astounding.
These substances and their proliferation would’ve, in all likelihood, been intended to create manic behaviour and possibly increased susceptibility to following morally-questionable orders. It seems possible that some of the particularly barbaric crimes were being committed by people on these substances; though in truth many of those involved in the armed uprising were simply brutal people anyway, as is the nature of most Salafist/Islamist groups and is certainly the nature of Al-Qaeda.
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The other key element of the uprising was young Libyan men; kids in many instances. This was something Gaddafi openly admitted, if you watch the interviews: that young Libyan men were taking up arms and rampaging in the cities. But he specified that these youth were being indoctrinated by Al-Qaeda ‘imams’ who established themselves in mosques. And that they were then being given weapons and drugs by those leading the uprising and encouraged to join in.
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This isn’t difficult to envision happening; many bored or listless young men can be excited by all the street warfare, the opportunity suddenly to own and use weapons and to rebel. Rebellion is part of the psychology of youth and young men often have a predilection for action, adventure and excitement. That doesn’t mean such young men understood what they were fighting for necessarily or even what they were fighting against.
A Vice News film made inside the Libyan rebellion showed that children as young as around thirteen and fourteen were being given arms and trained to use rocket-launchers. They were being swept up in all the excitement and chaos, influenced by older men with more focused minds; they may also have been under the influence of drugs, just as Gaddafi claimed. The same Vice News documentary showed a boy who could’ve been no older than 14 playing with weapons, boasting about how he can launch missiles, and asking (on camera) America to send him more new weapons; the boy is also wearing an American baseball cap with the US flag on it the whole time.
14 year-old boys don’t know what they’re fighting for; they don’t have considered philosophies or visions of how a future government should be run. They like excitement and bombast and they get swept up in the mania, and if action-men with tanks and weapons show up and offer to hand them guns and ammunition and feed them free mind-altering substances, then a great many of those young men will say yes and go along with the show (witness what goes on in ISIS-controlled territories in Syria and Iraq and how many young men find themselves drawn to the ‘adventure’ and excitement). There were also persistent stories of Libyan children being forcibly ‘recruited’ at gun-point.
Former CIA officer Jack Rice seemingly confirms Gaddafi’s view of the situation when he explains to RT the nature of the ‘rebellion’ that America and the West was directly supporting. “These kids – and they are kids in a lot of cases – these twenty-year old kids who walk into Gaddafi’s (army) compound and walk out with a lot of weaponry…”
Many young Libyan men were encouraged and excited
into taking up arms and joining in.
So the clear picture on the ground in Libya was of a mixture of Al-Qaeda fighters (and commanders) and various terrorist/militia fighters, mercenaries from abroad, prisoners broken out of jail, and young Libyan men being given weapons (and drugs) and told to join in.
Another key point to remember is Gaddafi’s insistence that some of those ‘Al-Qaeda imams’ who’d installed themselves in the mosques were former Guantanamo Bay inmates who’d been in American custody before coming to Libya (and, for all we
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know, released from American detention on the understanding that they become US ‘assets’ in Libya in the planned campaign against Gaddafi).
With hindsight, one begins to wonder if this might’ve been part of the point of Guantanamo Bay all along.
I was curious to note, not much later, that former Saudi military official Anwar Al-Eshki would later confirm to the BBC that his country had provided arms to Islamist fighters at the al-Omari mosque in Daraa in Syria; an absolute copy-and-paste of what Gaddafi earlier claimed was happening in Libyan cities at the beginning of 2011, as in the “Al-Qaeda Imams” were setting up ‘mini emirates’, using mosques as their headquarters for recruiting and arming young men.
As stated earlier, the Libyan and Syrian ‘Wars’ were in essence one event, albeit happening in separate nations.
This hotch-potch of ‘rebels’, aside from massacring police officers and security personnel and terrorising the populations, also further behaved in ways that revealed the essentially Non-Libyan agenda they were carrying out. For example, the rebels blew up key sections of Gaddafi’s great ‘Man-Made River’ (what should’ve been one of his great, abiding legacies for Libya and Africa; Gaddafi has described it as the “Eighth Wonder of the World”): why would they do that?
What interest would Libyan rebels have in destroying the water-supply for Libyan citizens? Logically, none. Libyans wouldn’t destroy their own water-supply or for that matter such a modern-marvel that was so important to the country’s economy and self-sufficiency.
But who would have an interest in destroying the great Man-Made River? Quite obviously those international forces that were intent on destroying Libya’s infrastructure, its self-sufficiency and its resources: NATO and the unashamedly Imperialist American, French, British and European forces. Thus demonstrating quite clearly that the ‘Libyan rebels’ were – at least in part – doing the bidding of foreign masters from the very beginning. Indeed, NATO bombers would later target and bomb Gaddafi’s Great Man-Made River as well. It was part of the objective from the beginning.
In addition to these various elements that made up the ‘Libyan rebels’, there was also an additional element involved in the uprising; what we shall for now call the hidden ‘Fifth Element’.
We will come back to that ‘Fifth Element’ shortly because it is highly significant. But for now we’ve covered the ‘rebels’ that were rampaging in 2011. What of NATO?
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The UN Resolution and NATO’s Imperialist War…
By early March, the legitimate Libyan government was in fact said to be winning the conflict, pushing back the marauding rebels in key cities. At this point, Western governments renewed false allegations of civilian victims in Libya as justification to intervene militarily. Our governments pushed for military intervention precisely *because* the Al-Qaeda led rebels were by now losing the war.
By 15th March, Gaddafi loyalists had retaken more than half a dozen lost cities. Except for most of Cyrenaica and a few Tripolitania cities (such as Misrata), the majority of cities had returned to government control.
So on March 17th the UN Security Council (which Gaddafi himself had called the “world terrorism council” in his famous and incendiary UN speech in New York in 2009) passed a ‘Resolution 1973’, imposing a no-fly zone over Libya in an attempt to limit the ability of Gaddafi and anyone in his circle to move freely; or, for that matter, to escape the country – this resolution was passed in part to ensure that Gaddafi and those closest to him would either be captured or killed within the chaos sweeping the country. This was a measure put in place to trap the leaders of the legitimate Libya and also to cut off Gaddafi and his people from the outside world (including any of his allies in other governments and nations: all members of the African Union were also barred from entering Libya).
Libya, now fast falling to the roving Al-Qaeda mercenaries and criminal rebels on the ground while simultaneously having its resources, infrastructure and cities bombed by NATO air-strikes, was entrapped with no way out and moreover with no way to express the truth of the situation to any outside observers. The resolution passed by the UN Security Council on 17th March authorized member states “to take all necessary measures… to protect civilians and civilian populated areas”; but let’s cut through the jargon: what this really meant was ‘all necessary measures… to protect rebel-held areas’.
So let’s take a moment to look at this UN Resolution upon which the entire NATO operation hinged.
The Resolution to authorise the immediate no-fly zone was passed without a vote ever having been conducted; just as Gaddafi had said in his 2009 address to the UN General Assembly, the General Assembly itself was shown again to be worthless, under the dictatorial power of the Security Council. Three days later the Americans, the British and the French began bombing Libyan cities, and were soon joined by a coalition of forty nations. The basis for all of this? Well, in the first instance it all rested on the undocumented, unproven allegations provided by a group of Non-Governmental Organisations (mostly French) that insisted Gaddafi and the Libyan regime was attacking its own civilians: no evidence was ever provided – it was just words on paper.
The resolution was adopted under ‘Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter’. The UN Charter’s prohibition of member states of the UN attacking other UN member
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states is central to the purpose for which the UN was founded in the wake of World War II: to prevent war, in other words. The Nuremberg Trials’ concept of a crime against peace is “starting or waging a war against the territorial integrity, political independence or sovereignty of a state” In an irony of ironies, this is exactly what the UN now authorised NATO to *do* in Libya, yet Chapter VII was used to justify the intervention, when, as Gaddafi had pointed out, no member-state’s independence or sovereignty had been threatened by the Libyan government.
Indeed the Libyan government had threatened no one but the armed rebels: it was now NATO that was waging war on a ‘sovereign, independent’ nation and it was therefore NATO that was in violation of the UN Charter. The Libyan government, on the other hand, had at no point in the crisis violated any international law.
NATO also explicitly violated the terms of Security Council resolutions by the repeated supply of arms to the rebels (by France and Qatar initially and then others) in what was an obvious breach of the arms embargo demanded by the Security Council in Articles 9, 10 and 11 of Resolution 1970 and again reaffirmed in Articles 13, 14 and 15 of Resolution 1973.
Hugh Roberts, former director of the International Crisis Group’s North Africa Project, summed up the strategy perfectly when he wrote that ‘By inserting ‘all necessary measures’ into the resolution, London, Paris and Washington licensed themselves, with NATO as their proxy, to do whatever they wanted whenever they wanted in the full knowledge that they would never be held to account, since as permanent veto-holding members of the Security Council they are above all laws.’
The Libyan Foreign Minister, Mousa Kousa, told reporters that Libya would impose “an immediate ceasefire and stoppage of all military operations” against rebel forces; note that he says ‘rebel forces’ and not ‘civilian protesters’, because no one in the Libyan government seemed to acknowledge there that *were* any civilian protests. Kousa was critical of the “unreasonable” UN Resolution, which allowed for the use of international military power. “This goes clearly against the UN Charter and it is a violation of the national sovereignty of Libya,” he complained.
And he was right, of course. The UN Resolution was a complete farce, demonstrating how worthless principles or rules are if they can be so easily violated by those implementing them.
Some governments saw the inherent problems with the resolution, though very few were willing to speak out against the dictatorship of the Security Council’s permanent members. India abstained because it correctly perceived the resolution as being based on uncertain information (or lack of “credible information on the situation on the ground in Libya”). Brazil too abstained, “concerned about the possibility that the use of military force, as called for in paragraph 4 of today’s resolution, could change that narrative in ways that may have serious repercussions for the situation in Libya and beyond.”
Silvio Berlusconi in Italy insisted, “This has nothing to do with a popular uprising. The Libyan people love Gaddafi, as I was able to see when I went to Libya.” President Cristina Kirchner of Argentina outright denounced the coalition attacks in Libya, saying, “When you consider that these so-called civilised countries are trying to solve problems by dropping bombs, it makes me proud to be South American.” Meanwhile Bolivia’s President Evo Morales demanded that US President Barack Obama be stripped of his Nobel Peace Prize immediately.
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But it was too late now: the die, as Julius Caesar might say, had been cast.
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Military intervention in Libya began on 19th March, as fighter jets of the French Air-Force destroyed several pro-Gaddafi vehicles advancing on the rebel stronghold of Benghazi. US and British submarines then fired over 110 Tomahawk cruise missiles at targets throughout Libya, severely disabling the regime’s air-defense capability and allowing a wider enforcement of the no-fly zone to begin.
In a rather worrying bit of symbolic coincidence (or not), the commencement of the military campaign in Libya came on the eight-year anniversary of the start of the War in Iraq; it was March 19th 2003 that President George W. Bush told Americans that coalition forces “have begun striking selected targets of military importance to undermine Saddam Hussein’s ability to wage war.” Now it was Gaddafi’s and Libya’s turn – just as he had prophesied at the 2008 Arab Summit.
From this point onward, any advancements made by loyalist Libyan forces against the rebels were methodically thwarted by NATO and foreign air-strikes precisely targeted to take out key communications and defense locations.
At this point in our analysis, we should also note that the so-called ‘imminent massacre of civilians’ that supposedly was due to occur in Benghazi (cited by various Western government officials, such as Hilary Clinton and the UK’s William Hague, to justify the pre-emptive NATO air-strikes) was in fact simply a small convoy of Libyan government personnel heading into Benghazi to attack criminal/rebel positions. Not only did the French jets bomb a retreating column, but what was shown was a very short column that included ambulances and that clearly could not have destroyed nor occupied Benghazi even if it was intended to. NATO strikes killed government forces, saved the Al-Qaeda rebels and prevented the government from restoring order.
This was the primary NATO strategy for the weeks and months that followed: from the air they struck the legitimate Libyan forces wherever they were about to achieve a victory against the rebels. On account of this, there was by now simply no way Gaddafi or the Libyan government could win the war.
It should be made absolutely clear, by the way, that the UN Resolution called for the implementation of a ‘no-fly zone’ and an immediate ‘ceasefire’: it did not authorise NATO to bomb the country, attack government forces or aid the rebels. Therefore the NATO forces, the American, French, British and other government officials, were all *knowingly* going far beyond the UN mandate – and the UN, being an impotent entity, did nothing to stop it.
Renowned intellectual and fierce critic of US foreign policy, Noam Chomsky, pooh-poohed the intervention from the start, pointing out that there “was no effort to institute a no-fly zone; the triumvirate (France, Britain, America) at once interpreted the resolution as authorizing direct participation on the side of the rebels. A ceasefire
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was imposed by force on Gaddafi’s forces, but not on the rebels. On the contrary, they were given military support as they advanced to the West, soon securing the major sources of Libya’s oil production.”
Chomsky highlighted an obvious point that most media and political commentators completely failed to pick up on: specifically, how can it be a ‘ceasefire’ to attack one side of the conflict and directly aid the other?
The early measure taken to stop the movement of weapons (so that a ceasefire could be accomplished) was also merely a sleight of hand and was never in reality what our governments were trying to do; NATO had “given permission to a number of weapons-loaded aircraft to land at Benghazi airport and some Tunisian airports,” a recent intelligence report revealed, identifying masses of weapons including tanks and surface-to-air missiles. These were all for use by the rebel groups.
In one conversation recorded in summer 2011 between Libyan officials and an intelligence asset dispatched by the Pentagon as a back-door channel, the asset told a ‘Mr Ismael’, who served then as Gaddafi’s chief of staff, that US officials were going to take Gaddafi’s frozen money assets in Western banks and make the money available to the rebels: in other words, to steal (there’s no other word for it) Gaddafi’s money and use it to fund the very terrorists who were trying to kill him.
More than this, NATO bombers were targeting the water-facilities, causing an estimated 90% of the civilian population to be without water and leading to a vast humanitarian crisis. This strategy went beyond merely the illegal or immoral and into the virtually Satanic.
Now South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma, who with four other African heads of state met Gaddafi for several hours at the Libyan leader’s Bab al-Aziziyah compound, called on the UN and NATO to stop the air-strikes on Libyan government targets and to “give ceasefire a chance”. Every step of the way, Gaddafi and the Libyan government expressed their willingness to enter negotiations, discuss peace and look for a solution; and every step of the way the Islamist rebel groups refused to enter into any talks and the US-French-British-led NATO powers absolutely refused to discuss any solution other than Gaddafi’s complete removal.
In June 2011, Muammar Gaddafi and his son Saif al-Islam had also both announced that they were willing to hold elections and that Gaddafi would step aside if he lost. Saif stated that the elections could be held within three months and transparency would be guaranteed through international observers. NATO and the rebels rejected the offer and NATO soon resumed their bombardment of Tripoli. And all of this being even after it was abundantly clear that the bulk of this ‘popular uprising’ was in fact constituted by heavily-armed Islamist terrorists.
It is worth noting that this movement towards elections and more and more orthodox democracy in Libya was already something both Saif and his father had been discussing even prior to the beginning of the 2011 crisis and that Saif had openly stated that he wanted democracy in Libya; there is a very strong argument to be made that a more democratic Libya (in the Western sense) was very much on the cards and would’ve come to pass organically and over time, particularly in light of Libya’s post-sanctions reconciliation with the West. Instead, in 2011 a foreign-orchestrated bloodbath was carried out, utilising supposedly ‘pro-democracy’ forces that were really nothing of the sort.
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“What we have in Libya are not revolutionaries but NATO stooges,” Jordanian-based professor, Ibrahim Alloush noted, watching events in Libya closely. And of Gaddafi’s actions in the crisis, he surmised, “What we have is a heroic last stand and defense of Libya against a NATO-led invasion.”
A vast bounty was also put out for Gaddafi to be taken ‘dead or alive’: he was now being treated by the international community as if he was a terrorist like Osama bin Laden or a common criminal; when in fact he was the ideological leader of a country and was directly engaged in battle *against* the rampaging terrorists (including Al-Qaeda) and criminals on the ground.
Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican member of the Senate Armed Services committee, was all in favour of this ‘Kill Gaddafi’ policy, noting that the quickest way to end the emerging stalemate was to “cut the head of the snake off”. He said, “The people around Gaddafi need to wake up every day wondering, ‘Will this be my last?'” What lovely representatives the American people are blessed with.
Didn’t anyone find it odd that right up until February 2011 Saif al-Islam was being viewed by the West as the modernising, reform-minded face of the Libyan establishment? The 38-year-old, with an MBA from Vienna University and a PhD from the London School of Economics (LSE) and the manager of the Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation, was suddenly now wanted by the International Criminal Court for ‘crimes against humanity’. And odder still of course that Muammar Gaddafi himself, being praised by various organisations – including for Human Rights activity – right up until literally a few weeks before the crisis, was now suddenly back to being described as the ‘Evil Tyrant’ of the 1980s?
Someone was simply rewriting the script overnight.
On 24th March, journalist Alexander Cockburn writes “The war on Libya now being waged by the US, Britain and France must surely rank as one of the stupidest martial enterprises.” He was right, but he was focusing on the ‘stupidity’ rather than the more important *criminality* of the campaign; Cockburn was being too generous if he thought it was mere ignorance or oversight that was wrong with the international plan.
Because, at this stage of the analysis, there’s another very important element to the story that needs to be established: having established what the various elements of the Libyan ‘rebel’ groups were made up of, we also need to understand the *other element* I previously mentioned – the “Fifth Element” on the ground…
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“Disguised as Arabs”: The ‘Fifth Element in Libya…
It was another fact that the television media was for months refusing to report on and that our governments were refusing to acknowledge: and that was the presence of
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British SAS, American CIA and French Intelligence personnel on the ground in Libya in large numbers, working directly with the ‘rebel’ and Al-Qaeda groups… and therefore breaking every possible international law and contradicting every principle that Britain, America and France would claim to stand for.
All of this was eventually openly reported in mainstream press.
The Guardian was reporting on both SAS Special Forces and French intelligence agents being on the ground in Libya, coordinating with the Al-Qaeda rebels. This was in fact happening from the very beginning of the conflict. All of our governments’ assurances that there would be no ‘ground troops’ was in fact a nonsense: there were foreign forces on the ground all along.
An article published in The Telegraph outright contradicted our governments’ claims that (1) they were not trying to kill Gaddafi and (2) that this had been a purely Libyan rebellion with no foreign ‘boots on the ground’.
The article clearly revealed that;
‘Defence sources have confirmed that the SAS has been in Libya for several weeks, and played a key role in coordinating the fall of Tripoli.’
‘SAS soldiers, who have been dressed in Arab civilian clothing and carrying the same weapons as the rebels, have been ordered to switch their focus to the search for Gaddafi’.
‘NATO has ordered all available surveillance aircraft, including British spy planes, to focus on tracking Gaddafi. ‘
And then again, in The Daily Mirror (20th March 2011);
‘Hundreds of British SAS soldiers have been operating with rebel groups inside Libya for three weeks’.
Note that this was in March, long before any British or NATO-aligned personnel should’ve been involved at all.
Again, this time from The Daily Mail: ‘The bombing of the country came as it was revealed that hundreds of British Special-Forces troops have been deployed deep inside Libya targeting Colonel Gaddafi’s forces – and more are on standby.’
While David Cameron, William Hague and the British government was continually repeating that UK ground troops would not be involved, there were already an estimated 350 already mounting covert operations – with ‘more on standby’. Note that, as The Daily Mail specified, this was all happening *before the NATO campaign had even begun* and in all likelihood before even the UN had been convened to discuss the crisis.
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The SAS was therefore in Libya with no mandate, no legal basis for their presence, and engaged in aiding warfare against government and police personnel. This was an international crime on every level; and again, even though it probably doesn’t need to be said, let’s be absolutely clear that neither Gaddafi nor the Libyan government had committed any crime against British interests or indeed against *any* foreign or Western citizen or institution.
Yet, as The Daily Mail confirmed, elite troops and MI6 spies were being sent to invade Libya (and ‘invade’ is the word); ‘MI6 operatives backed by the SAS are to land in the east around the key rebel stronghold of Benghazi ‘within days’,’ the newspaper reported. ‘In addition, 600 soldiers of the Black Watch are on 24-hour standby…’
Even Qatari agents’ known involvement on the ground in Libya is especially relevant, because Qatari intelligence has a long relationship with the British SAS and are especially useful for being sent into Arab countries or towns because they can easily impersonate indigenous Arab, Libyan (or later, Syrian) fighters.
It is therefore, let’s reiterate, a recorded matter of fact that British, American and French intelligence and/or military personnel were already in Libya operating against the country’s government and all of its legitimate authorities. Again, am I being a naive fool or is that in itself *illegal activity* under international law? Doesn’t this qualify as violation of a ‘sovereign, independent state’, as specified in the UN Charter? If Libyan ‘agents’ or ‘special forces’ had been in the UK, France or America, disguising themselves as Englishmen, Frenchmen or Americans, and helping criminals and gangs to launch attacks on police personnel and army locations… would that be considered illegal?
Obvious foreign/Western mercenaries and/or military personnel
active in the fighting in Libya.
You see then how deep this ‘rabbit-hole’ goes once you start looking at the facts? Because what if – what if – these same SAS Special Forces, CIA operatives and French and Qatari intelligence agents were in fact directly involved in
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the very earliest attacks on Libyan government buildings, police stations and military buildings in February?
What if they were the ones coordinating the rebels from day one and ensuring that they hit the right targets in order to capture the maximum amount of weapons? What if they were complicit in the earliest murders of Libyan police and security personnel? Again, the SAS troops were disguised “in Arab civilian clothing and carrying the same weapons as the rebels” according to The Telegraph.
If this was in fact what was going on and this was how the ‘Libyan uprising’ started, then it becomes very, very clear exactly *why* all of the mainstream media channels were failing to investigate anything – how could they? They would’ve had to reveal not only the Al-Qaeda presence, but the possible reality that British, American and French personnel were running riot in Libyan cities along with Al-Qaeda and all the criminal gangs. That would’ve been an absolute bombshell that would’ve totally contradicted all the false narratives being supplied by our government officials.
But this is exactly what was happening; the sovereign nation and government of Libya was being operated against by foreign intelligence and military operatives on the ground. They had no legal right to be there: it was a covert (and armed) infiltration that should be regarded as a criminal operation by the rest of the world.
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There is an even bigger ‘smoking gun’, however, and it’s this: something called The 2010 Unconventional Warfare Manual of the US Military.
The document published by the US military lays out the strategies for infiltrating and destroying any sovereign nation of choice via ‘irregular’ means; in other words, via means other than traditional military invasion or war (after the costly debacle of the Iraq War, one suspects). “The intent of US Unconventional Warfare is to exploit a hostile power’s political, military, economic and psychological vulnerabilities by developing and sustaining resistance forces to accomplish US strategic objectives,” the document explains. ‘For the foreseeable future, US Forces will predominately engage in irregular warfare operations’.
This manual, it is crucial to note, was published in 2010. The Libyan and the Syrian Civil Wars erupted in 2011. There is absolutely no question for any intelligent observer that the Libyan and Syrian horrors (with their hundreds of thousands of deaths) were operations conducted, to the letter, in accordance with the Unconventional Warfare Manual of the US Military.
The manual outlines US strategy for step-by-step subversion of a country by means including guerrilla warfare and ultimately regime change, utilising incitement and
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mobilisation of the populations against their governments and mass civil unrest. What transpired in Libya and Syria matches the objectives and methods of this document 100%.
Says the document; ‘Resistance and external forces conduct psychological preparation to unify populations against (the) established government… and prepare population to accept US support…’
If you’re sceptical, please read the official PDF here.
This perfectly and conclusively explains why American, British and French personnel were on the ground and operating with the ‘rebels’ and armed gangs. It explains also why SAS troops were in Libya, ‘disguised as Arabs’ and posing as Libyan rebels. They were following the US military strategy established in 2010. This particular element – the SAS troops – was replicated in Syria just as in Libya, with the strong implication being that SAS forces were involved in starting the Syrian Civil War too.
The potentially horrific role played by foreign, Western agencies on the ground is not to be underestimated. Former US Congressman and civil rights activist Walter Fauntroy, who went into Libya on a peace mission, reported that he had watched French and Danish troops storm small villages late at night beheading, maiming and killing both rebels and Gaddafi loyalists ‘to show them who was in control’…
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I hope that, by this stage, this article has demonstrated that, (1) Al-Qaeda was centrally involved in the attacks in Libyan cities and being supported by the US and other Western governments, (2) the British SAS, and American, French and Qatari intelligence personnel were *in Libya* working directly with various terrorists, rebels and armed gangs, (3) that the UN Resolution and NATO mandate had no legitimacy, (4) that no fact-finding missions were sent to Libya by the UN or any of our governments, nor by any of the corporate media organisations, and (5) that none of the alleged ‘crimes’ Gaddafi or the Libyan government was accused of had any basis in fact, and (6) that all of the much-hyped social media reports of crimes against ‘civilian protesters’ by the Libyan authorities were in all likelihood fake accounts being managed by American personnel.
Now let’s look again more closely at the reasons NATO and the UN Security Council gave for intervening in Libya;
These were; (1) the ‘widespread, popular protests’ against Gaddafi and the government, (2) the alleged government attacks on these ‘peaceful protesters’, (3) the imminent ‘massacre of civilians’ in Benghazi, and (4) the alleged Libyan air-force strikes on residential areas in Tripoli, and (5) the alleged ‘African mercenaries’ the Libyan government had brought in to attack civilians.
Were any of these stories true…?
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The Corporate Media Fiction and the ‘Crimes’ of the ‘Regime’…
The story that peaceful protests were attacked violently by government forces “resulting in thousands of deaths” was the basis for Western support of Libyan rebel groups: but it was a complete and utter fabrication from the very beginning. The evidence suggests that here *were no* peaceful demonstrations, and in fact there were no popular demonstrations at all.
Part of the reason this lie was so easy to propagate around the world was due to the broader context of what had also been going on in Tunisia and Egypt in those weeks, where popular demonstrations *were* taking place as part of the so-called ‘Arab Spring’. Given this context, the idea that the same was now happening in Libya was easy to sell to an unsuspecting public in Western nations. Saudi and Gulf-State funded news organisations were the first to begin propagating this story of mass civilian protest (and mass civilian casualties) occurring in Libya.
It never happened. What actually did happen, as already illustrated, was groups of armed criminals and gangs attacking police stations and military buildings, seizing weapons and ammunition and brutally murdering both police officers and army personnel – *that* was where and how the Libyan ‘uprising’ began, with not a ‘peaceful demonstrator’ anywhere to be found.
As was widely reported, investigations by Amnesty International failed to find any evidence for the alleged human rights violations and in many cases discredited or cast doubt on them. It also found indications that on several occasions the rebels in Benghazi appeared to have knowingly made false claims or manufactured evidence.
As reported in The Independent, Donatella Rovera, senior crisis response adviser for Amnesty, who was in Libya for three months after the start of the uprising, said “we have not found any evidence or a single victim… there is no proof of mass killing of civilians.”
This was confirmed by a similar report by the International Crisis Group, which found that while the Libyan regime did have some history of violently repressing opponents, there was absolutely no question of “genocide”. The report adds the criticism that “Western media coverage has from the outset presented a very one-sided view of the logic of events,” and that it was inaccurately “portraying the protest movement as entirely peaceful” and repeatedly “suggesting that the regime’s security forces were massacring unarmed demonstrators who presented no security challenge.”
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You can read or download the PDF of the ICG report here.
But European and American media organisations never bothered to investigate or ascertain the truth of what was happening: they simply reported the same unfounded stories that the Saudi/Gulf-State-owned Arab media had initiated. As an aside, let’s also remember that the genuine popular protests in Bahrain, for example, were harshly cracked down on by their government forces, who’d also been sent Saudi personnel to help them attack Bahraini civilians. Yet no one in Western governments made a fuss about this and the corporate media barely even reported on it. So much for Bahrain’s ‘Arab Spring’.
Al-Jazeera, Al-Arabbiya, the BBC, Saudi and Gulf State media, Fox, CNN and the US news networks and pretty much all of the Western mainstream media was not only reporting with extreme, pre-determined bias, but were actually caught planting false stories, trying to stage fake ‘protests’, etc, and completely ignoring the mass rallies of pro-Gaddafi supporters that were going on in the country throughout the crisis.
“These are all false reports… please take your cameras and go to any town, any city, in Libya… there is a big gap between the reality and the media reports,” Saif Gaddafi (son of Libya’s leader) said, speaking to ABC. And he was right; but the Western media corporations didn’t take his advice – they didn’t take their cameras to various Libyan cities to show what was going on. Instead they resorted to utter fabrications.
The footage exists of one particular incident where you can see the Al-Jazeera news crew choreographing a (very small) crowd of anti-Gaddafi protesters and warming them up. Even a rebel leader later admitted that footage of Libyan civilians in Tripoli celebrating the fall of Gaddafi was in fact fake – it had in fact been shot in Qatar, where a vague ‘recreation’ of Tripoli’s Green Square had been fabricated for this very purpose.
There’s simply no doubt about it: the mass media was engaged in a mass deception.
And when they couldn’t find any evidence of anti-Gaddafi protests, they resorted to making it up. Take a look at this BBC news report supposedly showing us the mass protests in Libya. In fact it was stock footage of entirely unrelated protests in India! Apart from the fact that Libyans don’t dress like that, what was the other giveaway? They forgot to edit out the Indian flags clearly being waved!!
This was going on all over the print media too; this article, for example, shows us an image of “People gathering in Benghazi to protest Gaddafi’s rule”, but then is forced to add that ‘the content, date and location of this image could not be independently verified.’ Well then why *show* the image?
Even the most ‘optimistic’ estimates for how many people in Libya might actually have demonstrated against Gaddafi and the government has the figure at something like 2% of the population (at most). If this number of protestors is justification for ‘Civil War’ or ‘regime change’, then clearly the UK should’ve been bombed by NATO after over a million people marched on the streets of London protesting the invasion of Iraq?
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Or what about all the people in the US marching against police brutality? I made that point already about Baltimore; the same for Ferguson or any number of other cities in America or Europe where citizens have been known to turn violent, damage property or attack the police.
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Then there was the alleged ‘imminent bloodbath in Benghazi’ that Obama, Hilary Clinton, David Cameron, Nicolas Sarkosy and the rest of the Western leadership claimed as a justification for urgent and immediate intervention.
Without exception all the mainstream media coverage at the time insisted that Gaddafi had threatened this ‘imminent bloodbath’ in which thousands of civilians would be killed. In fact, he did nothing of the sort. At NO POINT did Gaddafi threaten civilians; his famous ‘no mercy’ speech of March 17th was directed at the armed rebels and mercenaries who’d seized weapons and murdered government personnel.
And the ‘filthy rats’ he referred to were Al-Qaeda and the other armed criminals. In fact even the New York Times reported that Gaddafi had at the very same time offered amnesty to those involved in the armed attacks – on the condition that they lay down their weapons and cease the terrorism. Alan J. Kuperman, Associate Professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, pointed out that Gaddafi had even offered these various armed rebels and mercenaries an escape route out of Libya (because so many of them weren’t Libyan) and into Egypt so that the war could stop.
At no point had Gaddafi threatened ‘civilians’; his much-referenced
threat was clearly directed at the armed rebels and foreign
mercenaries.
Let’s just reiterate that: Gaddafi offered them an actual amnesty and an escape route in order to avoid ‘a fight to the bitter end’.
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So again, where was the ‘imminent bloodbath in Benghazi’? Even those in the media questioning whether an intervention was justified or not were still nevertheless framing the debate in terms of whether it was our business to intervene or not: no one actually bothered questioning whether the story was actually true. It wasn’t. And yet even to this day, politicians still repeat this nonsense as their justification for what was done to Libya; yet anyone with half a brain could see that the people Gaddafi was threatening were the terrorists and not the civilian populations (remember: he wanted to *arm* the civilian population!).
Our government officials and the news-corporations simply twisted and tailored Gaddafi’s broadcast so that it could be portrayed in a certain way – a way that would help justify the ‘urgent’ bombing. The idea that Gaddafi would order attacks on Libyan civilians was always absurd. That lie could only work on people with no knowledge or understanding of Gaddafi or Libya (which, as it happened, was most people watching the corporate news). But as Libya expert, Susan Lindaeur, pointed out, ‘Gadhaffi’s actions reveal a great deal about his character. As a leader, does he throw his people to the wolves? Or abandon them for convenience? Notoriously not. He claims the Libyan people as his own. He protects them no matter the cost to himself.’
The dignity and welfare of Libyan citizens had in fact always been so paramount to Gaddafi that he endured years of crippling sanctions for refusing to hand over the two Libyan citizens (falsely) accused of the Lockerbie bombing, because he knew they were innocent and knew they wouldn’t get a fair trial. He eventually did hand them over in 2002, but only to end the sanctions.
Yet our leaders and officials continued with the lie. “If we waited one more day,” Barack Obama said in his March 28th address, “Benghazi could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world”. In a joint letter, Obama, with UK Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, asserted: “By responding immediately, our countries halted the advance of Gaddafi’s forces. The bloodbath that he had promised to inflict on the citizens of the besieged city of Benghazi has been prevented.”
“Tens of thousands of lives have been protected,” the US President said. It was pure fiction; the pre-emptive NATO strike to ‘protect’ Benghazi simply destroyed a very small convoy of government vehicles, including ambulances.
Professor Alan J. Kuperman, in an article titled ‘False Pretense For War in Libya’, dismissed the fictional Benghazi narrative; ‘The best evidence that Khadafy did not plan genocide in Benghazi is that he did not perpetrate it in the other cities he had recaptured either fully or partially; including Zawiya, Misurata and Ajdabiya, which together have a population greater than Benghazi.’
And again, there was the alleged Libyan bombings of civilian populations. It was Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya News that first reported that Libyan fighter jets had been bombing civilian areas in Benghazi and Tripoli, with Al-Jazeera and the BBC then also running with the story; and then every other corporate news broadcaster in the West ran with this story. Yet remarkably, no one managed to record any of this alleged activity happening; no one – not NATO, not humanitarian agencies, not the US with all its satellite surveillance – NO ONE managed to provide the media with any evidence of this alleged bombing of Tripoli by the Libyan Air-Force.
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And in fact, as already stated, Russian satellite data showed precisely the opposite: demonstrating clearly that no such attacks had occurred. Russia *proved* that the alleged attacks from the air *never happened*… and still the mass media continued running with the story and STILL our political leaders continued citing it as justification for immediate intervention.
As Nazi propaganda minister Josef Goebbels famously said, “If you tell a big enough lie and keep repeating it, people will eventually believe it.”
On March 1st, in a Pentagon press conference, when asked “Do you see any evidence that he [Gaddafi] actually has fired on his own people from the air? Do you have independent confirmation? If so, to what extent?”, the US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates replied, “We’ve seen the press reports, but we have no confirmation of that”. Backing him up was Admiral Mullen, saying “That’s correct. We’ve seen no confirmation whatsoever”. Yet this fictional crime continued to be referred to by some media broadcasters, and more importantly by key Western officials, as if it were fact.
As Gerald A. Perreira wrote pointedly in July 2011 on the Center For Research on Globalisation, ‘Qaddafi has handed out over one million kalashnikovs to the Libyan people. If he was the brutal dictator that NATO would have us believe him to be, then the armed population could have turned their guns on him by now, especially as they would have NATO’s full backing if they did so.’
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What else were Gaddafi and the Libyan government accused of?
In late April, US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice alleged that soldiers loyal to Gaddafi were given Viagra and encouraged to commit rapes in rebel-held or disputed areas.
The validity of these rape allegations was challenged by, again, Amnesty International, which said it had not found evidence to back up the claims; Amnesty went further and said that there were indications that on several occasions the rebels in Benghazi appeared to have knowingly made false claims or manufactured evidence, hoping it would be picked up by foreign media broadcasters and taken as fact by foreign governments.
On March 26th much was made of the story of a Libyan woman with bruises all over her body bursting into a Tripoli hotel housing international journalists, shouting that she was taken from a checkpoint and held for two days while 15 of Gaddafi’s men beat and raped her. “Look at what Gadhafi’s brigades did to me,” Eman al-Obeidy says before government officials and hotel staff whisk her outside to car and drive her away. This was clearly simply a staged drama for the benefit of the foreign journalists.
Amnesty’s findings were at odds with the claims of ICC prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, who told a press conference that “we have information that there was a policy
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to rape in Libya those who were against the government. Apparently he [Colonel Gaddafi] used it to punish people.” US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton added fuel to the fire by saying she was “deeply concerned” that Gaddafi’s troops were participating in widespread rape in Libya. “Rape, physical intimidation, sexual harassment, and even so-called ‘virginity tests’ have taken place,” she casually stated, as though it was a fact. It wasn’t; like so much else, it was just a story.
The British aid agency Save the Children said it did get reports that children were raped by ‘unknown perpetrators’, but also warned that these reports could not be confirmed. It was then said that 259 refugee women had been asked to fill in a questionnaire, which reported that they had been raped by Gaddafi’s soldiers; however the accounts of these women could not be independently verified as the psychologist who conducted the questionnaire said that “she had lost contact with them”. And in actual fact, there was plenty of testimony and evidence to suggest that the jihadists and rebels were brutalising civilians and committing extreme acts; and little, if any, to suggest that the government forces or anyone loyal to Gaddafi was doing so (and literally *nothing* to suggest that Gaddafi himself had been complicit in any such crime or issued any instructions for any such crime to be committed).
As Susan Lindauer noted in the summer of 2011, ‘Headlines that Gadhaffi issued Viagra to fuel rape binges by his soldiers played very well on CNN. However former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney has determined that ‘the only major purchaser of Viagra bound for Libya was the US Government itself, which handed out Little Blue Pills to older Rebel soldiers to energize them for battle. Judging from rape testimonials coming out of Libya, the US strategy succeeded in the most tragic ways.’
It was known that on June 22nd, non-governmental fact-finders were travelling some 200 miles to video a boy who had been castrated and had his both eyes gouged out by NATO Rebels as punishment for refusing to join their unit, as well as a father who described the kidnapping of his virgin daughter from the family: she had been dragged out of the house at gun-point and taken to a rape party, before the NATO-sponsored rebels finally cut off her breasts with a knife and she bled to death.
The stories of this nature were numerous, and for every report that managed to trickle out of Libya there were probably dozens and dozens more that went unreported.
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As for the alleged African ‘mercenaries’ brought in by the Libyan authorities, no evidence was ever produced to support this claim.
The first so-called ‘mercenary’ that was allegedly captured was displayed on Al-Jazeera as ‘proof’ of this claim; the Black individual was being lynched by an angry mob; he was then publicly hanged from a bridge in the city of Al-Baida, his death cheered on by a massive crowd. It actually then turned out that this man was a Libyan Army soldier: in fact, a number of the more racist among the Libyans were simply using the pretext of these alleged ‘African mercenaries’ as an excuse to lynch and murder Black people in Libya, mostly migrant workers. Gaddafi, the arch Pan-Africanist, had encouraged a large number of migrant workers from other African nations to live in
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Libya, though some in the country may have resented the presence of these ‘foreigners’ and they now had an excuse, particularly in the lawlessness that was created by Al-Qaeda, to act on their hatred.
As Dr R. Breki, G Oheda and David Roberts explain in their superb video, ‘a number of black African migrants fleeing into Egypt testified that when they’d been captured in Benhgazi and Al-Baida, they’d been forced (by the rebels) to wear Libyan military uniforms while being filmed and to *confess* that they were mercenaries…’
Ibrahim Dabbashi, a former Libyan Deputy-Ambassador to the UN (and a man suspiciously quick to defect to the side of the rebels) was an early source for this claim about African mercenaries brought in by the government to attack civilians; but his claim appeared to have emerged after he’d already defected to the NTC (Dabbashi was one of the first turn-coats to defect from the government to join the NATO-backed NTC).
Another African migrant worker in the hands of the ‘rebels’.
But even Human Rights groups investigating found no evidence that African mercenaries had at any stage been brought into Libya by the Gaddafi loyalists. It was in fact a lie initiated by Al-Jazeera and then picked up by other agencies; the purpose of it was partly to counter the fact that no proof existed of the Libyan government itself having attacked any civilians; in the absence of that proof, a new story had to be invented to explain to the watching world how it was that Gaddafi’s government was supposedly killing its people – hence the African mercenaries.
In fact, most or all of the images circulating around the world of Black Africans being rounded up and executed by Libyan rebels was actually footage of simple migrant workers, of which there were many in Libya (they had come over in large numbers to work on Gaddafi’s vast building projects). And where *were* these massacres allegedly carried out by the fictional African mercenaries? When did they occur? The news media reported this myth as fact but never once referred to an actual, verifiable incident or a location.
Personally, I would go even further and argue this: even if the Libyan government had brought in African mercenaries (though it hadn’t), it might even be viewed as a legitimate response to the foreign mercenaries that constituted the rebel groups already fighting against the government – fight mercenaries with mercenaries. But that’s me saying that: Gaddafi outright denied ever having brought in mercenaries… and again, no actual proof has ever been produced to prove this story.
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In his You Tube video, ‘Libya Race, Empire, and the Invention of Humanitarian Emergency’, Maximillian C. Forte (Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Concordia University, Canada) points out, the myth of the African mercenaries also served a greater purpose, which was to engineer a hostile sectarianism between Libyans and the rest of Africa for the purposes of ending Gaddafi’s pan-African ideals and initiatives. Quite simply, by playing upon the most xenophobic, racist elements within Libyan society (primarily the Islamists), those plotting against the government exacerbated a mistrust of Black Africa in Libya to ensure that the ‘New Libya’ would leave Africa behind and instead forge a new alliance with Western, Colonial, Imperialist interests and their Capitalist initiatives.
This severing of Libya from Africa is very significant – and we will come back to that at the end of this article.
Meanwhile, The Washington Post, among others, reported on how black Libyans were being tortured, killed and denied hospital treatment, and that many were not pro-Gaddafi fighters but migrant workers “taken at gunpoint from their homes, workplaces and the street on account of their skin color.”
According to African Union chairman Jean Ping, the “NTC seems to confuse black people with mercenaries.” Ping said that for the rebels, “All blacks are mercenaries. If you do that, it means (that the) one-third of the population of Libya, which is black, are also mercenaries. They are killing people, normal workers, mistreating them.”
It was pure xenophobia and racism, fuelled by the rabid Salafist/Al-Qaeda ideologies and enabled by the international community; evidence of possible ‘ethnic cleansing’ by the anti-Gaddafi forces would also later emerge. The mass media should be considered indirectly culpable in this racial persecution of Black Libyans too, as they happily promoted this idea of the African mercenaries and contributed to the backlash against Black people in Libya. As Maximilian C. Forte pointed out in this article, ‘Indeed, the media even collaborates, rapid to assert without evidence that any captured or dead black man must be a ‘mercenary’.’
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Yet even beyond this, still there were more accusations and fictions being thrown about by Western officials. Some American media, led by officials like John McCain, also began to say that Gaddafi “may begin using chemical weapons against his people”.
This was a total bullshit exercise, entirely devoid of reality (much like Saddam Hussein and the WMDs in 2003, or the later, highly dubious claims about Assad and chemical attacks in Syria). For one thing, Libya had given up its chemical weapons stockpile years earlier; and for another thing, here was that word again, “may”. He “may” use chemical weapons, just like he “may be about to massacre civilians in Benghazi”.
In reality *none* of the accusations being made against Gaddafi or the government could be demonstrated to be true. Again, whenever asked to produce any proof of the alleged government or security-forces attacking civilians, our governments and officials came up empty-handed.
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In the excellent film – Libya Race, Empire, and the Invention of Humanitarian Emergency, Maximilian C. Forte notes that even more than a year after Gaddafi’s murder, no evidence had ever emerged to prove that Gaddafi’s government or army had carried out or even intended any massacre of civilians or any action against civilians at all. Indeed, a year after Gaddafi’s death, his government’s intelligence buildings were taken over by the rebels and the NTC and yet nothing – not a shred of evidence, not even a single name or order – was discovered anywhere to suggest that any attack against civilians had been planned, ordered or carried out by Libyan government forces at any stage in 2011. As Mr Forte notes, surely if there *was* any such evidence, the NTC and its NATO sponsors would be keen to release it publicly in order to prove the claims that were being made.
Accusations were frequently also made that the Libyan regime was cynically trying to control information and perception, including eventually restricting foreign journalists. Firstly, controlling information and perception is what governments do; massaging certain facts and perceptions – but that could be viewed as standard practise; governments, even democratic ones, do it all the time (ours do it from week-to-week as a matter of course), and the Libyan government, at this time under direct attack and facing violent chaos, was bound to try to control information. Given the far greater information war being conducted against it from outside agencies (and all of the lies being told by foreign media), it was in fact a necessity.
And, as some news sources point out, the rebels were doing this too. The rebels abducted five journalists from Russia in April 2011 in Ajdabiya. They took away the journalists’ documents and equipment. In the city of Misrata, rebel leaders also imposed restrictions on the foreign media. Journalists were prevented from travelling to the village of Dafniya and were turned back at rebel-held checkpoints. Journalists were then only able to use officially approved translators.
So why would the rebel groups need to resort to that kind of control over the foreign media reporters? The Libyan regime of course would have logical reasons to do that, as – in theory – they were the ones with ‘something to hide’; but why would the ‘innocent’ rebels waged in a just campaign against a ‘brutal regime’ need to restrict the foreign media’s activities? The fact is simply that the rebels’ were only cooperating with those elements of the foreign media that were ‘on their side’, so to speak, which wouldn’t have included Russian journalists. In fact, as Gaddafi had pointed out in an earlier interview, the foreign corporate media was simply acting as a mouthpiece for the rebels: rebel groups would report something to the media and then the media, without fact-checking or investigating, would relay this as fact.
British freelance journalist Lizzie Phelan was one of the loudest voices to speak out against the corporate media campaign during the crisis. Phelan, who spent significant time in Libya during the crisis, insisted that a Western-backed genocide was taking place in Libya and there were no independent journalists left on the ground to cover the story.
By now, I hope it has been effectively demonstrated that the corporate news broadcasters were guilty, to varying degrees, of both fabricating ‘evidence’ and of deliberately ignoring available information that would’ve contradicted the fraudulent claims they were making.
Most of the corporate print-press was no better, serving to aid and abet the criminal conspiracy; though there were some exceptions and there therefore remains a scattering of rather embarrassing leaks that enable people like us to build a case against the conspirators.
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The Timeline of Destruction: April – October 2011
April 14th 2011: the BBC shows the now famous footage of Gaddafi driving through the streets of Tripoli, standing up through the sun-roof of the vehicle for the entire journey. In this footage he is waving to the people – scores and scores of Libyan citizens, residents of Tripoli – who enthusiastically wave back or cheer him or raise their fists in the air of salute to ‘Brother Gaddafi’.
In several parts of the footage, citizens actually rush over to high-five him or shake his hand. This is in April, right in the middle of the so-called ‘Civil War’ in Libya. This was not only a show of defiance by Gaddafi but a show of how much support he still had even as NATO and the Western governments were openly plotting his downfall. And what was Gaddafi wearing? No bullet-proof vest or any kind of protective clothing, just a casual black t-shirt and blazer and what looks like a Trilby hat.
Gaddafi rides through Tripoli, cheered by the masses
– this is April 2011, at a time the media tells
us his own people are rising against him…
This footage was filmed and broadcast on the same day and at a time when Western governments and the mainstream media were trying to tell us that there was intense fighting, attacks on civilians and general chaos tearing up the city: what we saw in fact were fairly normal-looking street scenes, a city simply going about its usual business and the only odd aspect of the footage was the fact that Gaddafi showed absolutely no fear or being shot at by anyone or of coming to any harm from his own people. There was no fighting, no unrest, no protests. Indeed the BBC News anchors covering the
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footage seemed confused, even startled, by it and had little idea what to say – because it completely flew in the face of all the corporate government/media propaganda that was being regurgitated.
By 19th April, three weeks into the NATO bombing campaign, its representatives were reporting that the NATO bombers had already conducted ‘well over 2,800 missions’, and averaging at ‘just over 1,000 a week’. The corporate/mainstream media was reticent in reporting just how many civilian casualties there were and what precisely was being targeted by the bombers.
But in a televised interview of RT’s ‘Worlds Apart’ programme, Hanne Nabintu Herland, a Norwegian author and historian born and raised in Africa for 20 years, revealed the truly odious nature of the NATO-led international campaign against Libya. “Libya is the worst example of Western countries’ assault in modern history; it’s a horrible thing to be a European intellectual and to watch your own political leaders go ahead and engage in something like this,” he told the excellent RT presenter Oksana Boyko. “In Norway, for example, when it comes to something like the Libyan war … [political leaders] sent SMS messages to the other people in parliament; it was never a discussion in parliament, it was just an SMS saying “Let’s bomb because someone called from America.” We [Norway] dropped 588 bombs over roads, water supplies and cities in Libya at that time. And we had a documentary in Norway after that where the fighters, the pilots that flew over Libya and dropped these bombs, they actually said in the documentary that “We were sent up in the air and we weren’t even told what to bomb – just bomb something that looks valuable.”
Let’s hear that again: “just bomb something that looks valuable.” That, ladies and gentlemen, is what they call ‘humanitarian intervention in Libya’.
Contrary to Western government claims of only attacking military locations, there were some 60,000 bombing raids against civilian targets, including hospitals, hotels, homes, schools, media centers and power-plants. While no verifiable account of the civilian death-toll has ever been provided, the estimate of 50,000 has also frequently been suggested, thought it cannot be confirmed. It wasn’t just bombing all government or security-forces targets and directly aiding the rebels wherever it could, but bombing the population’s water and electricity supplies, communications networks, television and radio broadcasters, bombing the Great Man-Made River (as previously noted), and crucially also bombing civilian populations (which I shall return to shortly).
NATO was methodically destroying every element of Libya’s infrastructure and functionality. Four decades of development, building and modernisation was being laid to waste by war-planes sent by more or less every modern, ‘First-World’ nation of the West.
This wasn’t a humanitarian operation, it was a callous and methodical destruction of a society. In a summit in Copenhagen, Vladimir Putin expressed his severe misgivings about what was happening in Libya, summing up the character of the NATO campaign; “When the might of the so called civilised world indiscriminately bombs a small
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country using all its power, destroying what took generations to build, I don’t know if that’s a good thing…”
NATO bombers were also known to be using cluster-bombs with Depleted Uranium. The devastating long-term effects of DU are no secret anymore. Depleted Uranium is a radioactive and chemically toxic heavy metal produced as waste by the nuclear industry. It has been used by UK and US military forces to harden armour-piercing shells fired in the Balkans and in the Iraq wars, as well as in Libya. DU is thought to have also been in use by around 18 other countries, including France, Israel, Russia, China and Saudi Arabia. When these weapons burn, they release a hazardous dust that contaminates wide areas. Both civilians and soldiers exposed to this contamination claim to have suffered from cancers, birth defects and other illnesses as a result.
An example of the effects of Depleted Uranium, courtesy
of http://www.cadu.org.uk/index.htm
So, I don’t know what the cancer rate was prior to 2011, but it’s a fair bet that cancer cases and other DU-related sicknesses and deformities will be increasing in the coming years in Libya. Why Depleted Uranium is ever used at all remains unfathomable: it goes far beyond warfare and, again, into the Satanic. It should be stressed that Libya, being a very self-reliant and well-insulated country in the Gaddafi era, had a generally high level of good health among the population, with very few diagnosed cancer patients compared to most other countries.
It is now claimed that as a result of the saturation of agricultural crops, livestock and water sources that were (deliberately) polluted with radiation, new forms of cancer that were not known among ordinary Libyans are appearing at a high rate, just as in Iraq where Depleted Uranium was also used, along with deformities in newborn babies.
The dreadful nature of the NATO bombing was somewhat captured by Cynthia McKinney, who was in Tripoli and said, ‘Last night’s NATO rocket attack on Tripoli is inexplicable. A civilian metropolitan area of around 2 million people, Tripoli sustained 22 to 25 bombings last night, rattling and breaking windows and glass and shaking the foundation of my hotel. I immediately thought about the depleted uranium
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munitions reportedly being used here – along with white phosphorus. Inside the hotel, one Libyan woman carrying a baby came to me and asked me why are they doing this to us? Whatever the military objectives of the attack (and I and many others question the military value of these attacks) the fact remains the air attack was launched a major city packed with hundreds of thousands of civilians.’
April 30th: Gaddafi asks NATO for a ceasefire. He gives a 45-minute address on state TV, calling on NATO and the UN to stop the bombing and enter into talks. The bombings, he says, are destroying the nation’s infrastructure and killing civilians. “Come and negotiate with us! You are the ones attacking us. You are the ones terrifying our children and destroying our infrastructure. You American, French and British – come and negotiate with us!” Gaddafi says. “What are you trying to do? Trying to take the oil? The Libyan people will not allow you. The oil is under control of the Libyan government and (it is) for the people!”
Some media organisations decline to report Gaddafi’s speech; but The Guardian is among those that do. They confirm that Gaddafi had said his government had previously agreed to a cease-fire already and had urged the UN to re-assess (the legality of) the NATO strikes.
Gaddafi addresses the Libyan masses. “It cannot be a
cease-fire from just one side…”
“We are the first ones who wanted and agreed on a cease-fire,” Gaddafi says. “But the NATO crusader airstrike did not cease,” he complains. “It cannot be a cease-fire from just one side…”
Hugh Roberts, former director of the International Crisis Group’s North Africa Project, notes that ‘Gaddafi, whose forces were camped on the southern edge of Benghazi, announced a ceasefire in conformity with Article 1 and proposed a political dialogue in line with Article 2. What the Security Council had demanded and suggested, he provided in a matter of hours. His ceasefire was immediately rejected on behalf of the NTC by a senior rebel commander, Khalifa Haftar, and dismissed by Western governments. ‘We will judge him by his actions not his words,’ David Cameron declared, implying that Gaddafi was expected to deliver a complete ceasefire by himself: that is, not only order his troops to cease fire but ensure this
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ceasefire was maintained indefinitely despite the fact that the NTC was refusing to reciprocate.’
Again, Gaddafi was entirely looking to discuss solutions; having accepted the African Union’s proposed road-map for peace. South African President Jacob Zuma had wholly testified to this after leading a delegation of African leaders at talks in Tripoli, calling upon the international community to respond to Gaddafi’s calls for talks. Note that there was *every opportunity* for a peaceful solution even at this stage of events to be found by NATO, America, France and Britain… but they weren’t looking for a compromise or for peace; because everything was unfolding according to plan.
Even as early as May, Libya’s government had said they were prepared to talk even to the rebels. Prime Minister Al-Baghdadi al-Mahmoudi (who has just recently been sentenced to ‘death by firing squad’ by the NATO-backed Libyan militias, along with Saif Gaddafi and several others) told reporters he was willing to hold talks with “all Libyans”, including members of the rebel groups based in Benghazi. But he maintained that Gaddafi was “in the heart of every Libyan. If he leaves, the entire Libyan people leave.”
Moussa Ibrahim meanwhile maintained that Gaddafi had been trying to introduce even more democratic reforms and new anti-corruption laws (which was true; right up until just before the crisis started, and it may have also been one of the reasons for the ‘uprising’ – a point we shall return to later), but that the rebel attacks and NATO intervention was curtailing all of that. He insisted Gaddafi was a “safety valve for the country to remain together”, and tried to explain to the outside world that “they (the people) are scared if he is not there…”
Gaddafi himself formally offered a ceasefire or to enter into talks on several separate occasions, including 30th April, 26th May and 9th June. He was ignored by both the rebels and their European and American backers on each occasion.
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“Criminals and Barbarians”: NATO’s Civilian Casualties…
NATO, as a matter of indisputable fact, murdered more civilians in its operations than *anything* that was done at any point by the Libyan government or Gaddafi loyalists. Was this mere collateral damage, as Americans like to call it?
No; NATO knowingly and deliberately targeted vast civilian populations for this reason and this reason alone: because those vast civilian populations were loyal to the existing, sovereign government of Libya and to Muammar Gaddafi.
When Gaddafi spoke of his people – “all my people are with me, they will die for me” – in that now infamous and prophetic BBC/ABC interview in February, he was referring to these populations. If NATO had left them alive, they would’ve still represented an enormous (in size) opposition to the armed rebel-groups and Al-Qaeda
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battalions that the international community was trying to install into control of the country. Furthermore, this civilian population would have, given time and the abatement of the fighting, been able to speak out about what was really happening in Libya and about their loyalty to Gaddafi and the unique Libya he had established. These were the civilians NATO was ‘accidentally’ killing.
It is, again, an indisputable fact that almost all corporate news media observed a complete black-out of any coverage of the mass, pro-Gaddafi, pro-government rallies going on in Libyan cities, as well as the demonstrations against NATO’s assaults. But such videos existed at the time, and some of them can still be found now on-line, of the vociferous support for Gaddafi and the government even at the height of the so-called ‘Civil War’. You can watch footage of young women begging NATO to stop bombing, and of masses of citizens chanting their loyalty to ‘Brother Gaddafi, the Leader of the Revolution’.
You can watch particularly heartbreaking footage of a young child, amid these desperate demonstrations, bursting into tears and expressing his fears that the West is trying to murder Gaddafi and give Libya over to new powers. “They are bombing our country, bombing our cities. Why are they bombing him (Gaddafi)? What did we do to them? They air-strike us all day and night,” he says, bursting into tears, “That’s cruel; what did we do?”
A Libyan child is shown on state TV.
“Criminals and barbarians” is what Gaddafi called the NATO coalition when it had begun attacking civilian areas in Libyan cities. And that’s exactly what the Libya intervention was; an operation carried out by “criminals and barbarians” posing as liberators and humanitarians.
Crucially, Vladimir Putin had said, during a summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, that there were specific NATO bombing operations that were not being referred to by the media in Europe: that the media, in other words, was observing a shared silence on specific attacks. RT later reported that one of the key operations deliberately omitted from European media involved NATO bombers decimating the area of Tripoli where the largest, staunchest number of loyal Gaddafi supporters were situated.
It is said that these civilians – all pro-Gaddafi, pro-government loyalists – defiantly braved the foreign/NATO onslaught for five whole days, until finally on August 24th
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the NATO bombers simply attacked “anything that moved”, after which “piles of bodies lined the streets”.
This, we were told, was ‘humanitarian intervention’. This, we are *still* told to this day, was ‘humanitarian intervention’; just listen to Hilary Clinton or David Cameron *still* talking about it in those terms. The Western governments (and media) claimed – and still claim – that the crucial city of Tripoli fell ‘without resistance’; neglecting to mention the reputed 1,300 civilians who were said to have been massacred in Abu Salim.
As the Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister noted at the time; “Gaddafi couldn’t have killed more people than NATO did.” Thousands of civilians were killed by NATO and the rebels in just Sirte alone on just one day – 29th September. Again, regarding the fall of Tripoli, British journalist Lizzie Phelan, who had been *in Tripoli*, reported that ‘After heavy bombing and attacks by Apaches in Tripoli’s poorest neighbourhood… eye witnesses reported seeing masses of bodies covering the streets.’ Listen to her account of what was happening in Libya.
Myself, I still vividly remember seeing a report early in the crisis of Gaddafi broadcasting again on state TV, desperately trying to convince the rampaging gangs and armed rebels to stop what they were doing; I remember it so vividly because it was moving;
“If Tripoli is to burn, like Baghdad did… how can you allow this to happen? How can you let Tripoli, which was beautiful and safe… how can you allow it to become a place of destruction and for it to be set alight?” he asked, his voice cracking from strain and emotion. “This must not happen…”
Investigative journalist Michel Collon, who’d been inside Libya when the uprising was happening, reported that the NATO/US airstrikes had killed more civilians than any of the actual fighting on the ground had (and it was his opinion that the US and NATO attacked Gaddafi and Libya for a combination of oil interests and most of all preventing Gaddafi from becoming a major opposition to the IMF in his plans for African development – more on that later).
By the first days of May, NATO was bombing Gaddafi’s properties; four explosive projectiles were fired into one particular house, the house of Seif Gaddafi, known as “Aruba” to most Libyans, who was the youngest of the Libyan leader’s children. Prior to his death, “Aruba” might’ve been having flashbacks: after all, he had been injured in, but survived, the US aerial bombardment of his father’s Tripoli house decades earlier when, in 1986, President Reagan had also ordered attacks on Gaddafi’s properties. Some things never change, he might’ve thought to himself – if there’s one constant in life, it’s that American planes will be dropping bombs. According to all accounts, Seif Gaddafi (not to be confused with the older ‘Saif’ Gaddafi) had little or nothing to do with politics in Libya and was essentially a civilian target.
This attack also killed Muammar Gaddafi’s three grandchildren, all under the age of 12. Author and radio host Stephen Lendman unhesitatingly said, “This was a
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war crime,” but then added “Being in Libya at all is a war crime; all of the complicit NATO countries involved are committing war crimes every day in Libya, attacking civilian targets and killing civilians.”
As a side-note, it should be noted for the record that the reason President Obama ordered the ‘hit’ on Osama bin Laden in Abbotobad on that exact date was to cover-up the fact that NATO had been bombing the homes of Gaddafi and his family members. Before the ‘breaking news’ of Bin Laden’s extra-judicial assassination, the main news story of the day would’ve been about Gaddafi’s properties being hit and his family members being killed: but the Bin Laden story instead took up all the headlines and most news coverage focused solely on that story and ignored what was going on in Libya.
This is a classic corporate government/media collusion tactic to ‘bury unwanted news’ with something bigger; in this case it was because NATO and all of the Western government officials were still insisting that killing Gaddafi was not part of their agenda in Libya, when clearly it was.
Assuming Osama bin Laden was even still alive in 2011 (which many would argue he wasn’t), US intelligence would’ve known he was in Abbotabad for a long time: they simply used this specific moment to make use of this pantomime in order to cover up their crimes in Libya. As Vladimir Putin pointedly asked at the time; “They say killing Gaddafi is not their goal; then why bomb his properties..?”
Gaddafi with one of three grandchildren killed in the
NATO bombing of the family homes.
Journalist Ireal Shamir (Counterpunch, May 5th) made important points regarding ‘The latest war crime, the murder of Qaddafi’s family, his son and three grandchildren, and the assassination attempt on the life of the Libyan leader’. He wrote, ‘Cameron, Sarkozy, the NATO field commanders and the Danish air crew should all be indicted for this crime. UNSC Resolution 1970 is not a licence to commit mass
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murder. The resolution simply established a no-fly zone; it was designed to stem the violence, not turn Tripoli into a killing field.’
Curiously, the date of the operation was known well beforehand and had already been openly discussed in late April by the Russian Secret Service SVR (External Intelligence Service). On April 29th, a Russian net-zine had published an article by a Kirill Svetitsky, who quoted an anonymous source within SVR: “There will be an attempt to kill Muammar Qaddafi on or before May 2. The governments of France, Britain and the US decided on it, for the warfare in Libya does not proceed well for the anti-Libyan alliance: the regular army has substantial gains; Bedouin tribes entered the fight on the government’s side; in Benghazi, a “second front” was opened by the armed local militias who are tired of rebels’ presence, their incessant fights and robberies. But the main reason for the timing is that the Italian parliament plans to discuss Italy’s involvement in Libyan campaign on May 3. Until now, decisions were taken by Berlusconi, but there are strong differences of opinion within the government coalition regarding the Libyan war, and they will probably bring the government down on May 3, and Italy will effectively leave the anti-Libyan alliance. It is likely to have a domino effect. For this reason leaders of the UK, the US and France decided to eliminate Qaddafi not later than May 2nd, before the session of the Italian parliament on May 3rd.”
It was therefore no coincidence that on May 1st, the US, France and Britain conducted their (failed) attempt on Gaddafi’s life, even though they only ended up killing his three grandchildren, one of his sons, and a number of other civilians.
On May 27th, from Tripoli, Gaddafi’s long-time wife, Safia, lashes out at the UN/NATO, as recorded by CNN; “International forces are looking for excuses to target Muammar. What has he done to deserve this? My children are civilians and they have been targeted. What do they have to do with this? The UN is committing war crimes,” she complains. “Forty countries are (acting) against us. Life has no value anymore. What would I want with life now? All I want out of life now is that the truth be heard. We will live or die alongside the Libyan people. In the end, history will judge us,” she says indignantly.
From the very beginning and then all the way through the Libya crisis, the truth of what was happening was being suppressed by our biggest news and media organisations. But what few alternative and on-line media outlets were capable of obtaining a flow of on-the-ground information from civilian sources helped to reveal at least some of what was going on.
NSNBC, for example, claimed to have reports from civilian sources;
“There is heavy bombing in Sirte and Bani Walid all the time. The hospitals are running out of medical and other supplies, and operations often have to be performed without anaesthetics – even for the children. Civilians pay the suffering by cutting water supplies and electricity. There are still many victims under the rubble from the bombing who can not be evacuated or rescued, because of the relentless aerial bombing. Civilians that have tried to leave the city have been killed. It is very difficult to obtain information from the greater area because telephones and electricity have been bombed.”
Another, from Zawia, reports: “The city is now in the rebels’ hands. People are randomly arrested in the streets and executed by horrible methods. The reason
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for the executions are suspicion that people don´t support the NTC, or simply arbitrarily to scare the population into submission. Most people stay in their homes, protecting their children. We constantly hear firearms.”
Another, from within Tripoli: ”…NATO began bombing all the checkpoints so that the rebels could easily enter Tripoli. The people of Tripoli responded right away and huge masses gathered to defend the city from the rebels. The next day NATO was even more aggressive and they bombed all broadcasting stations, killing dozens, while claiming that rebels had taken control of them. At the same time there were rumours spread – like the one that Gaddafi and his family and government officials had left the country – as psychological weapons against the Libyan people. Of course the people did not listen. Instead they gathered and marched to the Green Square. At the same time Muammar Gaddafi drove around the city in his army uniform, encouraging the people, telling them not to believe the lies. At that time both the Green Square and Bab Elezeeya were under our (civilian) control, but NATO responded by bombing so as to pave an entrance for the rebels. Apache helicopters were used to shoot at the people to disperse the massive gatherings.”
NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen refuses to acknowledge, even to this day, that were any civilian deaths caused by the months of bombing. During his monthly press briefing on 3rd November, he says “As regards collateral damage, I have to say that we conducted our operations in Libya in a very careful manner, so we have no confirmed civilian casualties caused by NATO”.
This was clearly a ludicrous fiction he was maintaining. Among many other incidents, NATO fighters are reported to have dropped a 1000-kgm bomb on Zlitan children’s hospital, killing approximately fifty people. And in addition to the matter of Depleted Uranium mentioned earlier, there were also allegations that NATO used a large thermobaric bomb (called the nuclear bomb of the poor) in Bani Walid, which is said to have killed everyone within two square meters by either burning or suffocation. According to German and Algerian reports, 1200 deaths was the result. There were also unconfirmed allegations that NATO had used cluster-bombs and mustard gas.
By August 30th, NATO was, as previously mentioned, directly bombing the Great Man-Made River and destroying the water supply. Gaddafi had built the Great Man-Made River as a gift to both his own people and to the Third World; he did so without any financial aid from the IMF or the World Bank; the world’s greatest irrigation project, supplying water to the Sahara Desert, it was the largest water transportation system ever created and can be regarded as a modern engineering marvel. It was one of Gaddafi’s defining achievements in Libya. And it was now being bombed by NATO forces – by French, European, American and British planes carrying out the criminal orders of their criminal governments.
Western leaders and representatives began to also announce that Gaddafi had fled Libya and taken up sanctuary as a guest of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. British Foreign Minister William Hague was one of those who most openly spread this story, despite the fact that Gaddafi had insisted several times he would never leave Libya to these terrorists and gangs and that he would fight to the end. In fact, Gaddafi hadn’t fled at all, but with the country’s communications and media having been strategically destroyed by the NATO bombers, the government was struggling to counter the foreign misinformation campaign; the effect of Mr Hague’s misinformation was that a
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number of Libyan government people, representatives and ambassadors, panicked and defected from their positions, perceiving that with Gaddafi’s departure all was lost.
Presumably many Libyan citizens might’ve felt the same way if they’d heard this false ‘news’ too. Gaddafi stayed and fought; but the damage was done.
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Watching some of Gaddafi’s interviews and speeches through the course of the Libyan uprising makes for both compelling and sometimes bittersweet viewing.
The media tried to paint all of this as the unhinged ramblings of a man who’d lost touch with reality or as the desperate fictions of a dictator trying to cling to power. But they were, much more simply, the proclamations of a man telling the truth, trying to warn his people of the reality of what was happening and trying in-vein to explain to the outside world what was going on. He never could do that, however: because the media organisations broadly controlling perception in the outside world were *in on the conspiracy* and were conducting a pre-meditated strategy to twist, misrepresent or mock anything Gaddafi was saying for those several months.
Gaddafi appearing unsettled and shaken on Libyan
TV. “They will turn Libya into another Iraq…”
You notice that about Gaddafi during the crisis; there’s a point where he gives up trying to explain things to the international media, because he eventually realises they are basically mocking him and that most of what he says will either be censored or twisted to suit the pre-existing agenda. Yet, even with all the information about Al-Qaeda and the brutality of what was going on, the standard policy of most newspapers was to simply treat the Libyan crisis as some kind of bizarre melodrama and Gaddafi as a deluded comedy character.
If any proof were needed that we live in a mass-media culture that has had all the heart, and the moral fibre, sucked out of it, it was this. It has all become a game, of course; a pantomime, with perception increasingly divorced from
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reality. We are helpless spectators to a grotesque puppet show.
A televised speech on February 22nd 2011, at the earliest stages of the crisis, had been remarkably prophetic. “They will turn Libya into another Afghanistan, another Somalia, another Iraq,” Gaddafi had warned, regarding the crisis that was now fast unfolding. “Women won’t be allowed out, they will transform Libya into an (extremist) Islamic Emirate and America will bomb the country under the pretext of fighting terrorism,” he declared.
According to our corporate-media institutions these were the unhinged ramblings of a lunatic. They would frequently also point out Gaddafi’s odd-looking demeanour and body language, among other things, citing this as proof of his ‘instability’ and ‘mania’. A better reading of that, however, would be to understand that a rather elderly (by now) man was having his country suddenly mass-infiltrated by ultra-violent terrorists, while at the same time being under military attack from forty countries and at the same time being vilified and mocked in a propaganda campaign by international media – frankly, him looking a little below-the-weather is understandable, particularly once his three young grandchildren had been murdered by NATO bombs.
Do you think David Cameron or Nicolas Sarkosy would look any better in his place? Are you kidding? Sarkosy would be curled up in a foetal position on the floor and Cameron would be hiding behind Mummy. The David Camerons and Nicolas Sarkosys and Hilary Clintons of this world are not leaders of their people, are not champions of their societies – they are, at best, career politicians and front-men for corporate interests, and, at worst, something far, far more sinister.
Gaddafi stayed and fought. He could’ve left, could’ve fled. That’s exactly what everyone was telling him to do. I recall some commentators and even Western government officials actually calling him ‘a coward’ at the end for trying to hide in a sewage pipe when the Islamist mob was trying to capture him. A coward? What a perverse, perverted and morally bankrupt state of affairs we witness when some comfortable, wine-sipping media commentator or government official living in the safety and luxury of London or Washington, Paris or wherever else, looks on from a continent away as a man is surrounded by hundreds of drug-addled, vicious monsters and murdered… and they call him a ‘a coward’ for trying to hide? For trying to hide, for that matter, after NATO directly bombed his vehicle and then informed the terrorists where he was hiding?
And that’s ‘a coward’? If that’s a coward, who are the heroes? The highly-paid personnel guiding the drone-strike that destroyed Gaddafi’s convoy? You know, those guys safely all the way in Las Vegas, assassinating a 69 year-old man from two continents away, like it’s literally a computer game?
Or maybe the ‘heroes’ were the rebels mutilating the corpses of security personnel and ripping out their organs? Or the SAS troops ‘disguised as Arabs’ and violating a sovereign, independent nation? But no, according to our commentators, Muammar Gaddafi, the elderly leader who refused to leave the country, refused to abandon his
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people to NATO and Al-Qaeda, who insisted he would stay, fight and die with the Libyan people… he’s the ‘coward’.
If you were closely studying the progress of the Libyan crisis as I was (or if you go back now and study the sequence of events, coverage and information), something else you notice vividly is that of all the main players we were shown in the crisis – Gaddafi, the NTC, the rebels, NATO and the Western governments – Gaddafi was the one who came across as being genuinely upset, genuinely heartbroken, at the destruction of Libyan cities and the collapse of Libyan society. The rebels and their NATO allies on the other hand seemed to revel in the destruction, and the NTC seemed at best indifferent and opportunistic.
That’s because it was Gaddafi who’d built Libya. This ‘son of the desert’, born in poverty to poor and uneducated parents, who’d educated himself and worked his way through the military, had not only ended the control of the Colonial Powers; but raised the quality of life immeasurably, given the people the direct power to run their own political discourse, raised the rate of education and literacy, brought welfare and free health-care and education to the entire population, kept the entire country and every citizen free from debt, free from outside control and free from financial slavery to the IMF, the World Bank or the international financial powers. He even discovered water in the desert and built the Great Man-Made River, bringing that water to the entire population.
And now he was watching it all being methodically destroyed by bombers from practically every wealthy, First-World country in the world. And worse, he knew he couldn’t protest to the outside world, couldn’t explain anything to the world, because all of the major news corporations were involved in the misinformation campaign.
On 9th August, the head of UNESCO, Irina Bokova condemned a particular NATO strike on Libyan State TV, Al-Jamahiriya, that killed 3 journalists and wounded others. Bokova declared that media outlets could not be legitimate targets for NATO’s assaults, as they weren’t military locations or a threat to civilians. Clearly the broadcasting stations were targeted to finish off any means Gaddafi or the government had of addressing the population. Soon Gaddafi’s only media outlet was Syrian state TV, which was still allowing Gaddafi a platform (no doubt in part because what had happened in Libya was already by then happening in Syria too).
Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro, who’d met with Gaddafi a number of times over the years, offered a better reading of the situation when he said that the ‘Nazi-fascist role’ was being played by NATO with its thousands of bombing missions by the most modern aircraft known to the world. “The crude attacks against the Libyan people, which have taken on a Nazi-fascist character, may (also) be used against any Third World nation,” Castro warned.
Castro added, “If he (Gaddafi) resists and does not yield to their demands, he will enter history as one of the great figures…”
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September/October 2011: The End of Gaddafi and the End of Libya…
By mid-October the Gaddafi era and the Libyan government was in ruins and had essentially lost the battle. Sensing by now that all hope was lost for the country, Libyan civilians and Gaddafi supporters even now took to the streets en-masse to stage one last defiant round of demonstrations against the NATO onslaught. But these final weeks, most pro-Gaddafi demonstrators were being suppressed by the NTC forces and having their Libyan flags and Gaddafi banners and images confiscated. There were reports, even from impartial news broadcasters as far a field as Brazil, that such people were being arrested particularly violently, many of them even stabbed. Every possible international law concerning human rights was being outright violated by NATO, by America’s Al-Qaeda proxy forces and by the ‘National Transitional Council’, right to the end.
Gaddafi, even now, tried to give the people hope and called on them to defend their society even at this late hour. “I call on the Libyan people, men and women, to go out into the squares and the streets in all the cities in their millions…”
Millions of ‘Green Libya’ loyalists and Gaddafi supporters
come out in what is one of the largest demonstrations – possibly
the largest – in world history.
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“Go peacefully,” Gaddafi exhorts them, “be courageous, rise up, go to the streets, raise our green flags to the skies. Don’t be afraid of anyone. You are the people. You have right on your side. You are the rightful people of this land,” he says in an audio message broadcast via Syrian Al-0Rai TV on 20th September.
And neither the BBC, Al-Jazeera, CNN, Fox, French news stations, or any of the Western corporate media ever showed us the 1.7 million people said to have marched in Tripoli’s Green Square on July 3rd in support of Gaddafi and in opposition to NATO. But they did march: 1.7 million of them came out, in spite of the bombs from the air and the terrorists on the ground, to declare their absolute support for Gaddafi and to demonstrate against the NATO bombings. This was *far* greater a protest in terms of numbers than anything the mythical ‘anti-Gaddafi protestors’ of the corporate media and Western governments could’ve conducted at any stage of the turmoil.
Even *knowing* that the end was near, even *knowing* that the entire international community was closing in to assassinate Gaddafi and even *knowing* by now that the NATO-backed ‘National Transitional Council’ was already being handed control of the nation, these 1.7 million Libyan civilians still came out to show their support for Gaddafi and the real Libya: some have argued that this figure in fact represented approximately one-third of the entire population of Libya.
Some international outlets called it ‘the largest demonstration in world history’. The crowd chanted over and over again ‘We want Qaddafi’ while unveiling a green flag 6 kilometers long. The mass-media didn’t care; and chose not to show it.
There were also pro-Gaddafi rallies in Palestine, London, Harlem (New York), Egypt, Tunisia, Malta, Italy, Serbia, Iraq and several other places. The news-media didn’t report on any of them either. Former US Congressman and civil rights activist Walter Fauntroy, who went into Libya on a peace mission, reported that “Contrary to what is being reported in the press, from what I heard and observed, more than 90 percent of the Libyan people love Gaddafi.”
British independent journalist Lizzie Phelan described Tripoli after it had fallen. ‘The previously bustling roads with families rushing around… were empty, the green flags replaced by rebel ones, and the sparse checkpoints previously run by male and female volunteers had been replaced by checkpoints every 100 or so meters, manned by tanks and exclusively male fighters holding sophisticated weapons supplied by the world’s most powerful military force, NATO.’
Tripoli had fallen; but not to ‘pro democracy’ Libyans; rather to Al-Qaeda, the gangs of armed criminals and their NATO/Western-government sponsors.
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Gaddafi was said to have fled to Sirte on August 21st, the day Tripoli fell, in a small convoy that travelled through the loyalist bastions of Tarhuna and Bani Walid. Little is known about his state of mind by this point, but it was said by sources close to him that he had very little with him apart from a single phone, which he was now using to make frequent statements to a Syrian television station that had now become his only remaining outlet. “He was very afraid of NATO,” someone close to Gadaffi is reported to have said; very afraid, specifically, that NATO was going to kill him.
Rami El Obeidi, the former head of foreign relations for the foreign-backed ‘National Transitional Council’, said he knew that Gaddafi had been tracked through his satellite telecommunications system as he frequently talked to Bashar Al-Assad in Syria. NATO experts were able to trace the communications-traffic between the two leaders and so pinpoint Gaddafi to the city of Sirte, where he was soon to be murdered.
On October 19th (?), a convoy of cars left Sirte, carrying Muammar Gaddafi.
It is important to note that all of these vehicles are said to have had clearly raised white flags (a point we shall return to shortly). The white flag is long understood all over the world to represent either surrender or truce – even I knew that by the age of seven. No one from these vehicles was reported to have attacked anyone or used any kind of weapons.
October 21st 2011: an American/CIA drone (being operated from Las Vegas) spots the convoy and alerts NATO bombers, which immediately begin bombing the convoy. It was French planes that started the attack, but soon NATO war-planes from other nations also arrived and joined in. Many or most of those human beings in these vehicles on the ground were incinerated, while others were torn apart by machine-gun fire. Gaddafi himself survived this air-strike, but was forced to flee a burning vehicle (at least one account suggests he also had burns from the conflagration) and to look for some hiding place. We know, of course, that the armed gangs later found him hiding in a sewage pipe.
It is an established fact (confirmed even by newspapers such as The Telegraph) that NATO and British SAS forces helped the bloodthirsty rebels in Sirte locate and capture Gaddafi. British SAS troops coordinated the ground forces (Al-Qaeda and the rebel jihadists) and unconfirmed reports have persisted that French agents were actually *among* the crowd of crazed rebels that tortured, sodomized and executed Gaddafi.
He was paraded, bloodied and dazed, dragged about by the manic, crazed, drug-fuelled mob with their blood-curdling cries of ‘Allahu Akbar’, filmed for the benefit of all the world’s news stations and newspapers and then at some point in the chaos he was executed.
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The targeted assassination of Muammar Gaddafi by NATO and its Al-Qaeda ‘rebel’ allies was in itself entirely illegal in international law, representing a violation of Geneva Conventions and all the principles of Nuremberg. It was an operation to deliberately murder a national figurehead and to force (by warfare) a change in government of a sovereign nation. Libya had not attacked any nation. Neither Gaddafi, nor the Libyan government of the time, nor the people of Libya had attacked or committed any offence against any foreign entity.
In reality the only ‘crime’ of the Libyan ‘regime’ had been to attack violent rioters in February with “water canons and rubber bullets” and later to use military force to stop armed criminals and Al-Qaeda groups from taking over cities by force.
Gaddafi’s death was announced by Mahmoud Jibril, the Prime Minister of the country’s NATO-backed ‘National Transitional Council’ government, who told a press conference in Tripoli, “We have been waiting for this moment for a long time. Muammar Gaddafi has been killed.” Speaking in Downing Street moments after Mr Jibril officially confirmed Gaddafi’s brutal death, British Prime Minister David Cameron said he was “proud” of the role Britain had played (a role that had, let’s remind ourselves, included SAS troops disguised as Arabs operating hand-in-hand with Al-Qaeda militias).
Gaddafi is tortured, humiliated and executed
by the crazed mob.
Some accounts state that Gaddafi was tortured and beaten for over an hour before finally being killed. If you watch any of the videos, you can see his captors won’t even let him wipe the blood from his eye. Mutilation of prisoners is expressly forbidden in the Geneva Conventions, but all the evidence confirmed that Gaddafi’s body had been badly mutilated.
There are additional controversies also surrounding the official version of Gaddafi’s murder. There were indications from multiple sources that, aside from NATO’s air-strike directly hitting Gaddafi’s convoy, it may have also been a NATO Special Forces unit – although of which nation is unknown – that had located and captured Gaddafi on the ground in Sirte.
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If true, it would mean that NATO (European or American) forces would’ve been perfectly able to take Gaddafi alive and place him in some safe location where his legal fate could be determined: and that instead they *deliberately* chose NOT to do that and chose to hand him over instead to the crazed rebels that they knew would kill him.
A report at the time from the Israeli intelligence outfit Debka also suggested, citing solid military sources for the information, that Gaddafi had in fact been captured by NATO Special Operations Forces on the ground and that they’d shot him in both legs (so that he couldn’t flee at any point) and then handed him over to the Misrata rebels who could film his capture and murder for the world’s media. This would’ve been partly so that foreign/European or American personnel couldn’t have the murder attributed to them. This story might be given additional weight by Omran el Oweyb, the rebel commander who claimed he had captured Gaddafi: he said that when his group captured him, Gaddafi had ‘managed to stagger only 10 steps or so’ before falling to the ground – possibly indicating that there was something wrong with his legs.
Amid all the self-congratulatory celebrations and high-fives going on in our governments, some were rightly asking the question of whether this brutal murder of Gaddafi was a War Crime (of course it was). Human Rights Watch said footage showed him severely beaten by rebel forces and stabbed with a bayonet in his anus, and later filmed loaded into an ambulance half-naked (and dead). The fact that Gaddafi was sodomised with a knife was omitted from almost all mainstream-media coverage, with that portion of the videos edited out; Channel 4 in the UK showed it and referred to it, however, and footage and images of that act exist on-line.
Crazed ‘rebels’ revel in the murder of Gaddafi.
Although corporate European, American and Gulf-State media made a big joke of Gaddafi’s last worlds allegedly being “don’t shoot, don’t shoot”, it is stated by rebels there on the scene that his last words had actually been to ask them “do you know right from wrong?”
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch called for an independent autopsy and an investigation into how Gaddafi died in captivity, but Mahmood Jibril
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(bizarrely) said neither step was necessary. He also continued to put out the clearly false story that Gaddafi had been accidentally killed in crossfire between NTC rebels and Libyan loyalists. Even after having been tortured, humiliated for the world’s media to see, and brutally killed, Gaddafi still wasn’t afforded any dignity. His body was kept in a refrigerator for several days while hundreds of people came to see it and to take photos and ‘selfies’ with the corpse. Even as the body was starting to decompose, this continued.
No one knows where Gaddafi is buried.
The response in the West to the murder of this 69 year-old man demonstrated more than anything in recent history how much of a moral vacuum we live in. From Hilary Clinton’s beaming demeanour and physical celebrations (“We came, we saw, he died,” she says glibly) to the celebratory commentary across almost every aspect of the mainstream/corporate media, even in death Gaddafi was still treated as joke.
“Boy, I tell you, these Arab dictators – they’re not very original. Just like Saddam Hussein, they caught him in a hole,” sneered Bill Maher, an overpaid American talk-show host who, like everyone else, didn’t seem to realise Gaddafi hadn’t been ‘dictator’ since 1978. Meanwhile, in typically non-cerebral fashion, Fox News countered any concerns people may have had with the manner of Gaddafi’s murder by reminding its viewers simply that “Muammar Gaddafi was a bad guy”; oh, well that’s okay then.
With Gaddafi dead, US Senator (and now Presidential candidate) Lindsey Graham gave it to us straight: “Let’s get in on the ground, there is a lot of money to be made in the future in Libya, there is a lot of oil to be produced,” he said gleefully, pretty much giving the game away; if nothing else, at least this was more honest than the nonsense coming from other Western leaders and officials.
Let it be noted that almost as soon as Gaddafi was toppled, the Al-Qaeda flags were flying over the Benghazi courthouse in celebration. America, France and the rest of the Western governments and their regional Arab allies celebrated with them; a great victory for ‘The Good Guys’.
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The slaughter didn’t end with Gaddafi’s death; by October 21st, Human Rights Watch was reporting that many other Gaddafi supporters had been executed by the NATO-backed jihadist fighters at a hotel in Sirte. All of them were discovered with their hands tied behind their backs, having been shot with AK47s.
“The evidence suggests that the NATO-backed militias summarily executed at least 66 captured members of Gaddafi’s convoy in Sirte,” Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director at HRW, said in a statement. HRW said one clip filmed by rebel militias showed a large group of captured convoy members in detention being cursed at and abused. It used hospital morgue photos to establish that at least 17 of the detainees visible in the phone video were later killed at the nearby Mahari Hotel. Two days later, the team found the decomposing remains of at least 53 other people at the hotel, some with their hands still bound behind their backs.
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Another of Gaddafi’s sons was also murdered; the highly unpopular ‘Mo’tassim’ was filmed being transported by members of a Misrata militia to their city. By the evening, his dead body, with a new wound on his throat that wasn’t visible in the prior video footage, was being publicly displayed in Misrata.
Human Rights Watch soon also accused NATO’s Libyan rebels of other offenses. For example, there was the torture and murder of Libya’s former Ambassador to France, Omar Brebesch. The body of the 62-year-old was found with broken ribs, cuts and torn toenails. Amnesty International and Doctors Without Borders also reported that the torture and violence being used by the new, NATO-sponsored Libyan officials and rebels was widespread. Even months later, up to 8,000 prisoners were being held indefinitely and without trial. This flourishing of mass torture, murder and persecution is a defining reality of post-Gaddafi Libya right up until today, in 2015 – which is a reality we shall return to before the end of this article.
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End-Game: Checkmate GADDAFI…
While in the early weeks of the international intervention, our various leaders claimed not to be targeting Gaddafi himself, it is obvious that this was a lie and that Gaddafi’s death was the intention all along: again, among the very earliest targets of the NATO air-strikes were Gaddafi’s properties and the homes of his family members, such as the air-strikes that killed his three infant grandchildren. Again, it was confirmed even in mainstream press that UN jets were bombing Gaddafi’s properties for days on end: his assassination was always the goal.
The fact that they were trying to kill him as early as March and that he lasted all the way to October – against both a ground war and a ceaseless war from above – logically suggests that there were an enormous number of people loyal to Gaddafi and trying to protect him to the end. But without doubt, the objective of our governments and officials from day one was nothing less than assassination of the national figurehead.
Louis Farakhan, who was one of the most passionate and eloquent objectors to NATO’s assault on Libya, called the outcome from the very moment the world’s attention had begun turning towards the country in February: “He (Obama) and his Secretary of State (Hilary Clinton), and Sarkosy and Prime Minister David Cameron and others would love to go into Libya and kill Brother Gaddafi and kill his children…” Farakhan had said. And that’s exactly what they did. When the 2011 criminal enterprise was underway, Farakhan called it an operation conducted by ‘a coalition of demons’; which is as apt a description of the forces and alliances manoeuvring against Gaddafi as I’ve heard.
“What gives NATO the right to murder Gaddafi?” Vladimir Putin had asked in Copenhagen. “Did he get a fair trial?”
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No, and he never *could* get a ‘fair trial’, because he hadn’t committed any of the crimes and therefore no trial could be allowed to happen. The plain fact is that, as I pointed out earlier, Gaddafi was being afforded no option other than death by our governments, NATO, the NTC and the rebels. There was no other outcome being offered, if you analyse the situation he was manoeuvred into. Because, as I observed earlier, he had more than once announced his willingness to negotiate for both a ceasefire and even a handover to a transitional government: his offers were entirely rejected by the NTC.
Meanwhile his movements were being tracked by NATO so that he couldn’t leave the country and the no-fly zone restricted his ability to leave anyway; and, as previously mentioned, Hilary Clinton, Barak Obama, the French and British governments, NATO, all outright rejected any offers Gaddafi made to negotiate.
Gaddafi sits to play chess with a Russian envoy
in Tripoli in the early weeks of the crisis.
Hugh Roberts of the International Crisis Group summarised the situation succinctly; ‘London, Paris and Washington could not allow a ceasefire because it would have involved negotiations, first about peace lines, peacekeepers and so forth, and then about fundamental political differences. And all this would have subverted the possibility of the kind of regime change that interested the Western powers. The sight of representatives of the rebellion sitting down to talks with representatives of Gaddafi’s regime, Libyans talking to Libyans, would have … denied the Western powers their chance of a major intervention in North Africa’s Spring, and the whole interventionist scheme would have flopped. The logic of the demonisation of Gaddafi in late February,’ he continues, ‘crowned by the referral of his alleged crimes against humanity to the International Criminal Court by Resolution 1970 and then by France’s decision on 10th March to recognise the NTC as the sole legitimate representative of the Libyan people, meant that Gaddafi was banished forever from the realm of international political discourse, never to be negotiated with, not even about the surrender of Tripoli when in August he offered to talk terms to spare the city further destruction – an offer once more dismissed with contempt.’
And moreover, what all of the Western government officials and leaders kept calling for – the removal of the ‘Gaddafi regime’ – was in essence a nonsense: there was no ‘Gaddafi regime’. Gaddafi had formally given up official powers in the late 1970s. Gaddafi’s power was mostly symbolic and his position honorary, in some ways comparable to the role his friend Nelson Mandela played in South Africa in the years after his presidency had ended. He didn’t have a formal post to stand down *from* and he wasn’t in charge of the armed forces or the security forces. Therefore the demands
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being made of him by the international coalition were literally demands that were *impossible to meet* because they didn’t make sense!
“For 40 years I have not been the ruler of the people, have not been the authority – the authority is with the people,” he told Australian interviewer George Negus in this very good interview shortly prior to the uprising.
This was something that no one in the West – not the politicians, not the journalists – had ever seemed to understand. The lack of understanding of how the Libyan political system and power-structure worked was frankly a criminal level of inadequacy on the part of people who are supposed to know such things. If the people guiding and deciding on international policies, military interventions and ‘regime change’ don’t even have a working knowledge of how a political system works in a country like Libya, then what right do they have even commenting on the situation (much less interfering in it)?
However, the more likely explanation is that all the politicians knew how the system worked in Libya, knew that Gaddafi had nothing he could ‘stand down’ from, and that they demanded it of him anyway – precisely *because* they wanted to entrap him and they counted on the overwhelming majority of people on the outside not having enough knowledge of the Libyan system to question the validity of those demands.
The simple fact is there was literally no way Gaddafi could ‘comply’ with anything that was being demanded of him. And the ‘attacks on civilians’ couldn’t be ‘stopped’ – because they’d never been occurring in the first place.
Benjamin Barber characterised the campaign by writing that this was ‘Nato’s dirty war’ in The Guardian, May 2nd 2011; ‘But it is the plain stupidity of the NATO commitment to assassination and violent regime change that is most disconcerting. What on earth is the end-game? And end to the Green Revolution. The expansion of McWorld. Privatizations and re-structuring…’ He concludes, ‘Want to be sure that Gaddafi will fight to the finish at maximum cost to others? Corner him, try to kill him and his family, and warn him that he has no way out but abject surrender, certain arrest and probable execution. Self-fulfilling prophecy. Provoke that which will “require” the desired end-game.’
Congratulations, however, must be offered to the various international conspirators; they got their desired end-game.
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Now, as a postscript to all of that, there is the Citizens Commission on Benghazi (CCB) report; a relatively recent development in our understanding of what really was going on.
A commission – comprised of 17 retired American admirals and generals, former intelligence agents, active anti-terrorist experts, media specialists, and former Congressmen – has been conducting its own investigation and working behind the
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scenes for the past year and a half to ensure American Congress uncovers the truth of what happened in Benghazi and holds people accountable.
Their interim report reveals, among other things, the following;
That Gaddafi had “expressed his willingness to abdicate shortly after the beginning of the 2011 Libyan revolt, but the US ignored his calls for a truce, which led to extensive loss of life… and detrimental outcomes for US national security objectives across the region.”
That Gaddafi had “expressed interest in a truce, and possible abdication and exile out of Libya.”
That Gaddafi had “even pulled his forces back from several Libyan cities as a sign of good faith.”
Gaddafi only had two ‘conditions’ for stepping aside, according to the report; (1) “He wanted to ensure that there was a residual military force left in Libya to oppose the Al-Qaeda forces, and (2) “he wanted safe passage for his family and friends.”
Essentially, Gaddafi had been willing to step aside, but only if he could “ensure Al-Qaeda didn’t take over the country.”
That was one obvious reason why no one from our governments was willing to negotiate with him; because the whole point *was* for Al-Qaeda to take over the country. Former CIA agent Kevin Shipp, a member of the Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi, also expressed his utter amazement that the Obama administration had stood by not only while Al-Qaeda had toppled Gaddafi but also while they’d killed him. “It amounted to a de facto, third-party assassination committed ultimately by the United States, if you ask my opinion,” he concluded.
Read the CCB report here.
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Further Information to Convict Hilary Clinton, Sarkosy & Possibly Others of Complicity in Murder…
Not long after Gaddafi’s death, even more specific allegations were emerging concerning his murder.
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Now let’s talk about the ‘White Flag’ again, as this is a detail that I think really does demonstrate just how ruthless, how evil, our senior government officials are, and it also is the “smoking gun” needed to convict Hilary Clinton, and possibly others, of complicity in murder.
It was reported in, among other sources, the Asian Tribune on the 27th October that ‘Gaddafi had been travelling under a negotiated “White Flag” truce last Thursday in an agreement to leave Libya. The National Transitional Council did in fact agree to allow Gaddafi and his convoy safe passage out of Libya’.
As this archived article pertinently asks, ‘Who authorized the US Predator Drone strike on the “White Flag” convoy? It also raises the question did Hillary Clinton and the Obama Administration knowingly authorize a US Drone strike on a convoy travelling under a White Flag truce? If so, both Clinton and Obama should immediately be charged with War Crimes and accessory to murder’.
Just after, one imagines, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld and the other war-profiteers and international criminals have finished being tried for the Iraq War in an international criminal tribunal. Then it’ll be Hilary, Cameron, Sarkosy and co’s turn.
It is known that on October 19th Hillary Clinton was in Libya meeting with the armed rebels, and it is heavily implied that she was fully aware of a late, last-ditch agreement that had finally been reached between the NTC representatives and Gaddafi for him to leave the country.
An ecstatic Hilary Clinton with rebels in Benghazi.
And yet in spite of this – and in spite of the white flags and the fact that Gaddafi’s convoy was clearly trying to leave the city peacefully – it was still attacked brutally by US Drones.
Did Hilary not communicate this NTC/Gaddafi agreement to Washington? Or was she, President Obama and everyone else entirely aware of the truce and did they simply decide to kill Gaddafi and his people anyway?
As Wayne Madsen points out, ‘If the rebels or NATO reneged on a promise of safe passage and ignored the universally recognized white flag signifying truce and surrender, it would constitute a gross violation of the Hague Conventions of 1899
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and 1907, as well as the Geneva Conventions, and would, therefore, be a war crime’. He continues, ‘If NATO and the rebels violated the white flag in Sirte, it would represent one of the first major violations of a practice that began with the Eastern Han dynasty in China in the year 25, and was recognized by the Roman Empire, armies during the Middle Ages, and every major and minor nation since. A violation by NATO of the flag of truce would represent a flagrant return to barbarism by the “collective defensive” organization’.
The website Larry Sinclair.org claimed it had obtained reliable information from inside Libya and said, ‘It is our opinion that the information received from our sources inside Libya is factual. It has also been reported that journalists were not immediately allowed to report from the site of the US Drone attack on Qaddafi’s convoy until the rebels had the opportunity to dispose of any remaining evidence of the “White Flags” which were clearly connected to the convoy vehicles.’
If this was, as the evidence suggests, a drone-strike carried out on a white-flag convoy during an agreed truce, then it was a direct violation of the Geneva Convention and a War Crime of the highest order. But then the entire intervention in Libya was a War Crime anyway, so this would’ve been just the nasty icing on the rancid cake.
There’s more too. Most people outside of Libya didn’t hear about them until a year later when former leaders of the Western-backed National Transitional Council accused then-French President Nicolas Sarkozy of personally ordering the assassination of Gaddafi on October 20th 2011.
In an interview on the French news site Médiapart, Rami El Obeidi, former coordinator of the NTC’s foreign intelligence services, asserted that “French foreign agents directly assassinated Gaddafi.” He said this was specifically because of Gaddafi’s threats, shortly before France launched the war on Libya with NATO backing, to reveal secret donations he had made to Sarkozy in 2007 to finance Sarkozy’s presidential election campaign. On September 29th, the Italian daily Corriere della Sera confirmed Obeidi’s assertions, writing: “Mahmoud Jibril, the former premier of the transitional government has re-launched the story of a plot ordered by a foreign secret service. ‘It was a foreign agent infiltrated into the revolutionary brigade who killed Gaddafi,’” he had told an Egyptian TV channel. The paper also quoted Western diplomats in Tripoli as having said that if a foreign agent was involved, “he was almost certainly French.”
The British Daily Mail and other papers then also spoke of a foreign agent: “He is said to have infiltrated the violent mob mutilating the captured Libyan dictator last year and shot him in the head.” On October 26th 2011, five days after Gaddafi’s assassination, the satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaîné had reported that “on Wednesday October 19th in the late afternoon, a Pentagon colonel telephoned one of his contacts in the French secret service…the American announced that the Libyan leader, tracked by US predator drones, was trapped in a Sirte neighbourhood and could not now be ‘missed.’” In Le Canard Enchaîné’s account, the American official added that if Gaddafi got away, he would become a ‘real atom bomb.’
The Canard wrote that the White House had said, “We must avoid giving Gaddafi the international platform that a possible trial would give him.”
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That makes sense, of course; Gaddafi was far too ‘dangerous’ to keep alive after what NATO/Al-Qaeda had just pulled off in Libya. No one wanted to give him the chance to stand trial… for non-existent crimes that had been entirely made up. Gaddafi, who could be very eloquent and who moreover would have plenty to say about the legality of NATO’s operations in Libya, the reality of what the ‘NTC’ and the rebel groups really consisted of and also what the real reasons were for the NATO intervention… that was far too problematic. In order for the international criminal operation to fully get away with its atrocities, he had to fall silent forever. He simply wasn’t someone who could be bought off or shut up.
International consultant and author Adrian Salbuchi said Gaddafi’s death was undoubtedly a message for the whole world, as it was not just about Libya. “We are seeing how Hilary Clinton, US Secretary of State, expressed it very clearly: ‘We came, we saw, he died,’ and then started laughing. This is a message to the world of how this new world order model actually works,” he stated. “When they decide to change the regime, they do so with the utmost violence and it is a whole model. First they target a country by calling it a rogue state; then they support local terrorists and call them freedom fighters; then they bring death and destruction upon civilians and they call it UN sanctions. Then they spread lies and call it the International Community’s opinion expressed by the Western media. Then they invade and control the country and call it liberation…’
Fittingly enough one of the brutal rebels most prominently featured in the Gaddafi assassination video was himself violently killed a year later; 22-year-old Omran Shaaban was, however, curiously flown to France to be treated for his injuries, which invites suspicions that French agents might’ve had a special interest in him. The ‘French connection’ was, of course, intimately tied to the Libyan crisis from the very beginning. There was also the mystery of the French nationals who had tried to quietly land in Malta in February, right at the start of the crisis; they’d come from Libya, just at the point where the crisis had escalated from the initial ‘protest/rioting’ stage to the full-on ‘Civil War’ phase. Only one of them had a passport. If there were foreign operatives among those earliest rioting crowds, leading the vandalism, attacks and bloodshed, they were almost certainly French.
In essence though, whether Sarkosy ordered the assassination, whether French or foreign agents fired the shots, whether Hilary and the US government is guilty of a War Crime, or whether Gaddafi was simply murdered by the terrorist mob on the ground, those are almost just semantics now, as we’re never going to be in a situation where all-powerful and permanently protected individuals like Clinton and Sarkosy are ever going to be brought to trial, any more than the likes of Bush, Blair, Rumsfeld, Cheney and co will be brought to trial for Iraq.
The fact is that the governments of France, America and Britain, the NATO forces, the Al-Qaeda forces, the criminal gangs – they were all Gaddafi’s murderers and were all the murderers of the former Libya.
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But in fact it wasn’t just about 2011; this plot against Gaddafi and Libya went back much further.
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As far back as the mid 90s, a former MI5 agent, David Shayler, testified that British intelligence were employing the services of an Al-Qaeda cell inside Libya, paying them a large fee to assassinate Gaddafi (at least one assassination attempt was carried out at that time). Shayler revealed that while he was working on the Libya desk in the mid 90s, British Secret Service personnel were collaborating with the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), which was connected to one of Osama bin Laden’s trusted lieutenants (and which was deeply involved in the 2011 uprising). During his closing speech in court, Shayler affirmed that he had been gagged from talking about “a crime so heinous” that he felt he’d had no choice but to go to the press. During Shayler’s trial, the then Home Secretary David Blunkett and the Foriegn Secretary Jack Straw had signed Public Interest Immunity documents that banned journalists from being able to report on the plot against Gaddafi.
This, with hindsight, reveals not only that a campaign to assassinate Gaddafi was already being worked on over fifteen years before 2011, but also that the British intelligence community’s relationship with the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, central to the 2011 uprising, also went back to that same time (or earlier): long before the bloody events of 2011. What all of this also confirms is that Gaddafi had been, as previously mentioned, *the* first international leader to issue an arrest warrant for Osama bin Laden. According to journalists Guillaume Dasquié and Jean-Charles Brisard, an adviser to French President Jacques Chirac, the British and US intelligence agencies buried the fact that this earliest ever arrest warrant for Bin Laden had come from Gaddafi and Libya.
America and Britain refused to take Gaddafi’s side against Al-Qaeda or Bin Laden even at this early time.
Five months later, Al-Qaeda killed more than 200 people in the truck bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. But then why wouldthe US or the UK be interested in operating against Al-Qaeda – a terrorist group that would prove so useful in the years to come?
Like the invasion of Iraq, the Western governments’ destruction of Libya was intended for a long, long time. It was simply that the fog and confusion of the ‘Arab Spring’ in Egypt and Tunisia provided a perfect opportunity for the thieves, murderers and criminals that run our governments to carry out their enterprise (like ‘thieves in the night’, to paraphrase Jesus of Nazareth).
America had also tried and failed numerous times to assassinate him, including Ronald Reagan’s 1986 attempt. CIA covert operations were financing opposition groups as far back as 1981 when they helped establish the ‘National Front for the Salvation of Libya (NFSL)’ and its militant wing called the Libyan National Army, based in Egypt.
The National Front for Salvation Libya was financed for years by the House of Saud, the CIA & French intelligence.
An article dated February 22nd 1987, and written by the renowned Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh, corroborates this ongoing assassination agenda as well as an ongoing operation to externally orchestrate a coup. ‘Since early 1981, the CIA had been encouraging and abetting Libyan exile groups and foreign governments, especially those of Egypt and France, in their efforts to stage a coup d’etat – and kill, if necessary – the bizarre Libyan strongman.’ Hersh was writing
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this as far back 1987, based on highly-placed sources in the American government and intelligence community.
The former Libyan Foreign Minister under Gaddafi also maintained that MI6 had been operating in Tripoli right until the start of the ‘revolution’ in February 2011.
With Gaddafi’s death of course, the ‘old Libya’ was dead; and a new Libya could be established.
At least, that was the idea; that was the spiel smugly fed to us by our government officials to justify all the shock and awe, all the destruction and death and Depleted Uranium. But of course, four years later and there is no ‘new Libya’; just absolute chaos…
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After Gaddafi: The ‘National Transitional Council’
And of course the bloodshed and sectarianism didn’t end with the collapse of the government or death of Gaddafi. Why would it? Only an idiot would think that when you create and empower that much carnage, bloodlust and violence, it will simply stop once you say “cut” and turn off the cameras. When you arm a rabid mob with enough military hardware to constitute a small army, who really expects them to play by your rules once your objectives have been fulfilled?
Of course the signs that this would be the case were never difficult to spot. The Sunday Telegraph reported on 11th September 2011 that almost the entire population of Tawergha, a town of about 10,000 people, had been forced to flee their homes by anti-Gaddafi fighters after their takeover of the settlement. The report suggested that Tawergha, which was dominated by black Libyans, may have been the subject of ethnic cleansing provoked by a combination of racism and bitterness on the part of Misratan fighters over the town’s support for Gaddafi. The Report of the The International Commission of Inquiry on Libya noted that the Misratan thuwar had been open about their views of the Tawerghans.
One fighter told the Commission he thought that Tawerghans deserved “to be wiped off the face of the planet”. NATO provided air cover for the attack on Tawergha and must have been aware of the genocidal intent of the rebel leaders which, for one thing, was reported in the Wall Street Journal prior to the attack.
NATO and the various Western politicians who gave approval for the attack can therefore be regarded as entirely complicit in this “crime against humanity.”
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This persecution of pro-Gaddafi supporters after Gaddafi’s death became commonplace. Even after Gaddafi was dead, loyalists remained and among the civilian population there were still plenty willing to speak openly about where their support had lay. “We lived in democracy under Muammar Gaddafi, he was not a dictator. I lived in freedom, Libyan women had full human rights. We want to live just as we did before,” said Susan Farjan, in this piece in The Telegraph.
“The rebels are worse than rats. NATO is the same as Osama bin Laden,” said a resident in Sirte. “We have ten families staying with us now, there is little food, not enough clean water and no gas. Now we live worse than animals.”
An 80 year-old named Mabrouka Farjan said, “Life was good under Gaddafi, we were never afraid.”
“They are killing our children. Why are they doing this? For what? Life was good before!” shouted another elderly lady.
“Everyone loves Gaddafi, and we love him because we love Libya. Now the rebels have taken over. We might have to accept that, but Muammar will always be in our hearts,” said the mother of one family.
But from now on even being a Gaddafi loyalist would be a crime and a life-threatening thing. Persecution, summary executions and beheadings and the like all continued even after the ‘war’ had been ‘won’, along with rampant retaliatory attacks.
But what of the provisional ‘replacement government’ that NATO and the Western officials were putting in charge of Libya’s future? What of the ‘National Transitional Council’ championed by America, France, Britain and the West?
It is worth noting that Western powers were endorsing and guiding this ‘transitional government’ very early in the crisis, long before Gaddafi or the actual Libyan government had collapsed; indeed it is well demonstrated that many of the leading figures in the NTC had been colluding with foreign government collaborators even prior to the events of February 2011. What is certainly a fact, however, is that behaviour associated with elements of the NTC didn’t exactly paint the picture of the angelic ‘pro-democracy’ activists that our officials wanted us to view them as.
“There’s torture, extrajudicial executions, rape of both men and women,” said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay, confirming that the UN-backed ‘legitimate government’ was torturing Gaddafi loyalists to death long after Gaddafi’s own death (the accounts have it that these people were routinely raped, beaten, electro-shocked, fingernails pulled off – all the good stuff). This was reported in London’s Evening Standard, February 17th 2012. It was known that the militias were torturing Gaddafi supporters in camps and that many hundreds of prisoners, including civilians, were being held indefinitely in prison without trial. All of this continues to this day.
But even putting that aside, there’s very little reason to assume there was anything especially ‘legitimate’ about the make-up of the NTC; aside from the armed rebels and their commanders, most of this ‘government’ was presumably made up of willing stooges for foreign corporate interests who were probably bought off in return for helping facilitate the corporate/Colonial operation. Others were a mixture of people who defected from the existing Libyan government when they saw which way the wind was blowing.
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It’s worth noting that a number of the most influential movers in the NTC were specifically members of the old government who had personal grudges with Gaddafi or personal reasons to want Gaddafi gone.
For example, by February 2009 Gaddafi was asking for public support to distribute Libya’s oil wealth directly into the bank accounts of the population. However, senior officials feared losing their jobs “due to a parallel plan by Gaddafi to rid the state of corruption.”
“As long as money is administered by a government body, there would be theft and corruption,” Gaddafi had said back then. This initiative was being reported by, among others, the BBC prior to the beginning of the uprising in February. This prompted an unusually open airing of dissent from top government officials, who said the plan would wreak havoc in the economy. And Gaddafi himself warned Libyans that the scheme, which promised up to 30,000 dinars ($23,000) a year to about a million of Libya’s poorest citizens, would cause chaos before it brought about prosperity.
Gaddafi had then called upon the people to back his plans to dismantle the minimal government apparatus and go ahead with his oil-wealth redistribution plan instead of having it go through middlemen with their own interests. As in all governments there were some individuals found to be no longer working in the interests of the people but in their own self-interests; Mustafa Mohamed Abud Ajleil and Mahmood Jibril, for example, were known corrupt individuals within the government and both were among the first to defect to the side of the rebels and the NTC, largely because they were exactly the kind of officials Gaddafi was planning to undermine. These then were many of the ‘representatives’ of Libya that Western governments were empowering to lead and guide the international perception of the situation.
In general, it could be argued that most of those manoeuvring against Gaddafi and the Libyan system were those with discernible personal agendas. Abdurrahim el-Keib, for example, had previously belonged to the Abu-Dhabi based Petroleum Insititute sponsored by British, French, Japanese and other oil companies. The General Khalifa Haftar was a known CIA collaborator and we’ve already mentioned Al-Qaeda’s Abdel-Hakim Belhaj, who was given control of Tripoli (and now swears allegiance to ISIS/ISIL). On the matter of Khalif Haftar, he had defected from the Libyan government much earlier and set up his own militia that was financed directly by the CIA.
He spent two decades living within walking distance of CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Shortly after the 2011 ‘protests’ began, the CIA air-lifted him into Benghazi and told everyone to start calling him the ‘leader’ of the rebels.
Muhammad as-Senussi, son of the former Crown Prince and grand-nephew of the late King Idris (who Gaddafi and his revolutionary allies ousted from power in 1969), was one of the most vocal advocates for foreign intervention and condemnation of Gaddafi and the government during the crisis, and was flown to various locations, including to
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address the European Parliament, to evangelise for the rebels’ cause. A rival claimant to the throne, Idris bin Abdullah al-Senussi, announced in an interview that he was ready to return to Libya and “assume leadership” (restore the old monarchy?) once the change had been initiated. These weren’t objective, impartial voices, but people with an obvious agenda and an obvious grudge against Gaddafi being allowed to steer part of the discourse abroad. For the record, the former Libyan monarchy had essentially been a European/Colonial-installed puppet regime that served Western/corporate interests and kept the population in poverty.
Hugh Roberts, former director of the International Crisis Group’s North Africa Project, in this superb analysis shortly after Gaddafi’s death, poses the question of whether ‘what we have been witnessing is a revolution or a counter-revolution.’ As he points out, many of the victorious rebels were ‘brandishing the old Libyan flag of the 1951-69 era, the protesters identified their cause with the monarchy Gaddafi & Co overthrew.’ He continues, ‘As the elites saw it, the 1969 coup had been carried out by ‘Bedouin’ – that is, country bumpkins. For Gaddafi & Co, the traditions of the urban elites offered no recipe for governing Libya: they would only perpetuate its disunity.’ Ironically enough, if there’s one word you’d use to describe post-Gaddafi Libya it would precisely that: disunity.
Lead ‘NTC’ official, Mustafa Abdul Jalil, walks arm-in-arm
with his backers David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkosy who
arrive in Libya after Gaddafi’s death. Note French/Zionist ‘
philosopher’ Bernard Levy in the background.
Most of the main players in the NTC and the push for foreign/Western intervention were expatriates not even living in Libya, but in various other countries, including France, Britain, America, Canada and other nations involved in the NATO operation. The evidence suggests that for years they had been petitioning in the West for this eventuality and likewise that Western agencies were colluding with them for the same end purpose.
It is of course not the interest of this article to label everyone who was involved in the NTC or joined the anti-Gaddafi forces as corrupt, self-serving or criminal; no doubt many of them felt it was the right course, and no doubt some simply saw that Gaddafi and the government had no chance of surviving once the European/American aerial onslaught began and so they took a logical decision to switch allegiances.
But I wonder how many of them now, in 2015, are still celebrating the death of Gaddafi and the end of four decades of peace, stability and growth?
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It is in fact fairly easy to discern, as this article argues, that ‘the entire Libyan rebel movement has been backed by the US and UK for nearly 30 years. We can confirm that the initial calls for a Libyan “Day of Rage” came not from the streets of Benghazi, but from the London based ‘National Conference for Libyan Opposition’ (NCLO). We can confirm that NCLO leader Ibrahim Sahad was literally sitting in front of the White House giving an interview to the Western media in the opening stages of the Libyan unrest, parroting verbatim the West’s desire to militarily intervene with a no-fly zone.’
And further to all of this (and much after the fact), the lead NTC official Mustafa Abdul Jalil has admitted that he knew at the time that Gaddafi *hadn’t* given anyone any order to fire on civilians in Benghazi, but that he had gone along with the lie for the sake of having Gaddafi toppled.
He also admits that it wasn’t Libyan security forces that fired those first shots against protesters back in February 2011, but foreign intelligence operatives – and furthermore that he had been briefed in advance (by foreign agents) that it was going to happen. This admission in itself is the final, damning, ‘smoking gun’ to prove the conspiracy beyond all doubt; and of course all of the major media broadcasters have all completely ignored it.
Meanwhile, the aforementioned General Khalifa Haftar, who had betrayed Gaddafi and defected to the side of the rebels and the NTC in 2011 in collusion with the CIA, is now a key figure involved in trying to accomplish the impossible task of getting Al-Qaeda out of Libya.
In a recent interview, when asked about Gaddafi, he said without any intended irony that “Gaddafi was an angel” – which is something even I wouldn’t have said. And like Jalil, he also admitted that the entire 2011 crisis was a lie, a ‘phoney revolution’.
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And you’d think the whole sick, tragic story would end there, but it doesn’t.
Because what was happening in Libya was also a precursor to what would soon happen in Syria; where all of this would be repeated.
As has been well-attested, once Gaddafi was out of the way, the Libyan armouries were looted and massive quantities of weapons were sent by the Libyan rebels to Syria. The weapons, which included anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles were smuggled into Syria through NATO-member Turkey, as confirmed by The Times on September 14th 2012, three days after Ambassador Chris Stevens was famously killed by the
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jihadist attack on the US embassy in Benghazi. Chris Stevens had served as the US government’s liaison to the Libyan Al-Qaeda rebels since April 2011.
While a great deal of media attention at the time had focused on the fact that the State Department didn’t provide adequate security to the consulate and was slow to send assistance when the attack started, the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh published an article in April 2014 that exposed the classified agreement between the CIA, Turkey and the Syrian rebels to create what was referred to as a “rat line”. The “rat line” was a covert network used to channel weapons and ammunition from Libya, through southern Turkey and across the Syrian border, with funding provided by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Stevens’ death meant that any direct US involvement in that arms shipment was buried and Washington could continue to deny having sent heavy weaponry into Syria.
It was at this time that jihadist fighters from Libya began flooding into Syria as well, to do in that country what they had been empowered and enabled to do in Libya. As Ahmad Barqawi succintly says; “It was a deliberate, calculated policy sought after and implemented by NATO and its allies in the Gulf to turn the north-African country into the world’s largest ungovernable dumpster of weapons, Al-Qaeda militants and illegal oil-trading.”
And that’s what Libya is now; and you can add to that list ‘a hub for illegal migrant-trafficking’.
On 19th October 2011, Libya’s new Western-backed ‘National Transitional Council’ became the first government in the world to recognize their Middle-Eastern counterparts the ‘Syrian National Council’ (SNC) as Syria’s “legitimate authority.” In November, the new Libyan authorities met secretly with members of the SNC and offered them money, arms and volunteer fighters for the spiralling insurgency against the Syrian government. The oft-mentioned Abdelhakim Belhadj, the CIA-backed head of the Tripoli Military Council (and Al-Qaeda commander), met at this time with leaders of the ‘Free Syrian Army’ to discuss sending Libyan fighters to train the Syrian Rebels.
As I noted earlier, the Libyan and Syrian Wars were not separate events; but one horrific event unleashed onto two nations. And of course it was sickeningly perverse that we had this illegitimate, NATO-backed ‘Libyan government’ using its illegitimate position to declare that an equally illegitimate alliance in Syria was now – on absolutely no logical basis – the “legitimate authority” in Syria.
Anyone, by the way, who assesses the kind of brutal crimes committed by various Syrian rebel factions (particularly in 2012 and 2013), including members of the FSA, will immediately note the similarity to some of the brutal crimes committed by rebels in Libya in 2011.
This is logical, of course, as both were externally-orchestrated ‘civil wars’ based on the The 2010 Unconventional Warfare Manual of the US Military, as previously mentioned. And the Al-Qaeda inspired arena of bloodlust and carnage that was created in Libya in 2011 by Western governments and the rebel groups was essentially the advent of the organisation and ‘brand’ we now call ‘Islamic State’.
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But getting back to Libya and the immediate post-Gaddafi aftermath; in early May 2012, the NTC passed its most sweeping measures, granting immunity to former rebel fighters for any acts committed during the civil war (including, we assume, all murders, unlawful executions, ethnic cleansings, rapes, etc).
It also adopted ‘Law 37’, prohibiting the publication of “propaganda” criticising the uprising or questioning the authority of Libya’s new governing organs, or praising Muammar Gaddafi, his family, his government, or the ideas expressed in Gaddafi’s Green Book.
Freedom of expression was not high on the agenda of this supposedly ‘pro-democracy’ movement our governments were so in love with; and Gaddafi’s Green Revolution that had characterised Libya for decades is now illegal to even praise. And that’s what our governments’ and media call ‘pro democracy’.
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Libya NOW: “A Failed State”…
So what is the reality of this ‘brave new Libya’ that was supposed to have been created through all the bombing of 2011?
We are now four years beyond the uprising and the murder of Gaddafi. For most of those intervening four years, the same corporate/news media that was so adamant about how terrible Gaddafi was and how necessary the international intervention was is almost completely silent about Libya, declining to report on the country or send anyone over there (although, in fairness, unlike in the Gaddafi era, it is now far too dangerous for journalists).
It was as if the media’s role was simply to demonise and help destroy Gaddafi and once he was dead, the matter was over. From Gaddafi’s assassination onward in fact the various British, French, American and NATO officials who were the most adamant about the Libya intervention also seemed to revert to silence on the matter, no doubt due to a mixture of embarrassment, guilt and, most of all, not wanting to draw attention to what was happening in Libya after Gaddafi and the collapse of the nation. It hasn’t been until the last six months or so that mass-media organisations have reluctantly started to talk about Libya again, partly due to the fact that the increase in migrant deaths in the Mediterranean waters have made it impossible to pretend everything’s alright – because the tragedy is now directly threatening a European crisis.
The reality is that the fall of Gaddafi’s administration has created all of the country’s worst-case scenarios: Western
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embassies have all left, the south of the country has become a haven for international terrorists, and the Northern coast is an uncontrollable hub for illegal migrant trafficking.
Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia have all closed their borders with Libya (Tunisia is now even building an Israeli-style wall to cut itself off from Libya). This all occurs amidst a backdrop of widespread rape, daily assassinations and commonplace torture that completes the picture of post-Gaddafi Libya. This is Hilary Clinton, David Cameron and co’s gift to the Libyan people. The rule of law has been completely absent since Gaddafi’s fall. And there is no semblance of the national unity and pride that was engendered in ‘Green Libya’ in the Gaddafi era; indeed there is no unity at all.
And the biggest joke is that the great ‘National Transitional Council’ is already history and there hasn’t been a proper government in Libya since Gaddafi’s death; now instead we have multiple rival ‘governments’ trying to assert themselves as the authority while the Western nations and the UN have absolutely no idea who to recognise, how to help or what to do. In an irony of ironies, Libya’s PM was allegedly threatening protesters with troops just last year, long after the end of the Gaddafi era – just as Gaddafi had been accused of doing by the West (except in his case, it wasn’t true).
Perhaps now, belatedly, some of our officials and diplomats might find themselves thinking back to all those offers Gaddafi had made to negotiate a compromise.
Islamist militants ‘Ansar al-Sharia’ now ride around
in convoys like ISIS/ISIL.
And from 16th May 2014 (and ongoing) a Second Civil War has been going on in Libya, with the various factions who’d united to end the Gaddafi era now having turned on each other, as they were always bound to. Is anyone surprised by that? Again, you can’t just fund, arm and unleash that level of bloodlust, violence and anarchy and then expect it to stop when you click your fingers. Our governments, even the UN, simply left the Libyans to it after 2011. The world stopped paying attention; but the killing never stopped. But the Hilary Clinton’s, the David Cameron’s and Nicolas Sarkosy’s of the world washed their hands of it and didn’t care anymore.
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A few months ago, Amnesty International published a document revealing the extent to which Libya is now a real-life horror story. Declaring that ‘Libya is a place full of cruelty’, it reminds us of the thousands of people who ‘face abductions for ransom, torture and sexual violence by traffickers, smugglers and organized criminal groups’ and tells us of the ‘religious minorities, in particular Christian migrants and refugees, are persecuted and are at highest risk of abuse from armed groups that seek to enforce their own interpretation of Islamic law.’
Since 2011 Libya has been experiencing a refugee crisis of unprecedented proportions, a financial crisis, an environmental crisis and an infrastructure crisis. The country hasn’t been rebuilt from all the NATO bombing. Benghazi is currently facing a major, ongoing humanitarian crisis. How bad is it? A petition was recently being circulated, started by a group of Libyan activists, demanding that Benghazi be declared a “disaster zone”.
NBC goes further and defines Libya as a “failed state”.
It has in fact been called a “failed state” several times recently by various analysts. A ‘failed state’? Who *made it* a ‘failed state’? Was it a ‘failed state’ prior to 2011? Or was it the most prosperous, successful nation in Africa? NATO, the US, France, the UK and every other nation involved in the intervention in Libya took a successful, self-reliant nation and TURNED IT INTO A ‘FAILED STATE’ through bombing, the arming and supporting of terrorists and through targeted assassination.
As for regional bodies like the Arab League and African Union (AU), they have shown minimal interest in the ongoing Libyan conflict. The African Union opposed the NATO-backed offensive against Gaddafi and as such is viewed with suspicion by NATO’s proxy ‘government’ in the new Libya anyway. African countries were from the beginning highly concerned about what NATO did in Libya, fearing it would worsen instability in countries such as Mali, Niger and Nigeria – which is EXACTLY what it has done.
A brief overview of Libya now;
Warlords, Terrorists, Rival Militias, and No Government
This BBC piece on ‘Lawless Libya’ reflects how dire the situation is in the country. Numerous militias each govern their own patches of territory, with successive “governments” struggling to exercise control. Libya has essentially been turned into a mixture of the Wild West and the kind of tribal/warlord dynamics that defined Afghanistan during the 9/11 era. There are lots of different armed groups – up to 1,700, according to some sources – with entirely differing goals. But money and power are what is said to be motivating most forces and parties, with religious extremism motivating the others. ‘Libya continues to suffer from a chronic absence of security, with almost daily assassinations, bombings and kidnappings.’
This sounds like an absolute copy-and-paste of what much of Iraq was like following the US-led invasion. Which is of course what Gaddafi said would happen; “they will turn Libya into another Iraq, another Somalia…” he had said in February 2011.
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The Libyan tribes, what’s left of the Libyan National army and the elected Parliament in Tobruk are working hard to rid their country of the Al-Qaeda, LIFG, Ansar al-Sharia, ISIS/ISIL and other extremist/terrorist brigades that Western governments imported into their country in 2011; but the grim evidence suggests Libyans are going to have an even more difficult and longer struggle than the Iraqis in ridding their country of the terrorists and violence that has been imported in. ISIS/Daesh and other extremist militias have taken over key resources, including major oil-fields.
Most of the Libyan people themselves had all of their weapons taken away by NATO and its on-the-ground proxy militias are therefore are at the mercy of all the foreign militias and terrorists. Meanwhile kangaroo courts and cowboy ‘justice’ are rampant, with sham ‘trials’ and sentences for those who are afforded that formality and extrajudicial executions for many others. Gaddafi loyalists, believers in Green Libya and campaigners for human rights are still routinely persecuted and tortured, and there is no properly functioning legal system or law-enforcement apparatus to curtail the rampant criminality and violence.
Additionally, members of the Gaddafi-era government are cruelly demonised and eliminated. The ‘Libya Dawn’ militia in Tripoli just recently sentenced Saif al-Islam Gaddafi to death, along with eight others, including the former security-chief Abdullah Senussi and the former Prime Minister, Al-Baghdadi al-Mahmoudi. They are now to die by firing squad, according to the militia court, after a ‘trial’ that has been universally condemned as utterly farcical. Like the Russian Romanovs a century ago, all trace of the Gaddafi family is in danger of being erased, along with all traces of the former state, in a discernible policy of cleansing in a Libya no longer owned or run by Libyans.
Not that Saif would be expecting any kindness or favors from Faustian former friends anymore; he was fully cleansed of that naivety four years ago, once he’d realised that the political and financial elites of France, Britain, America and the West had simply used him in those few years of ‘reconciliation’ in order to convince his father to drop his guard.
The biggest, most bitter irony of course is that Saif Gaddafi was probably Libya’s best hope of democracy, reform and progression. Instead, ‘the golden prince’ hailed as ‘the reformer’ has been left to be tortured and sentenced by a court run by criminals put there by the very Western ‘democracies’ whose very ideals he had hoped to emulate.
Ethnic Cleansing of Black Libyans, Persecution of Christians and Minorities
And what else is happening in the ‘new Libya’? Well, for one thing, aside from mass lynching of Black people that followed Gaddafi’s fall, Christians were also being persecuted once Gaddafi was gone. See here and here.
Things like this didn’t happen in Gaddafi’s Libya, of course, which had been vehemently opposed to sectarianism in general and to Islamic fundamentalism in particular. It’s the same, of course, in Syria and Iraq; wherever the West’s proxy terrorists go, minorities and Christians are persecuted or killed and the inter-cultural fabric is torn apart.
Following the end of Gaddafi’s rule, there were reports of attacks also against sites of Sufi Muslims. In late 2011, a Sufi school in Tripoli was stormed by armed men who
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“burned its library, destroyed office equipment and dug up graves of sages buried there,” and “turned the school into a Salafist mosque.” None of this sort of sectarian behaviour is surprising to anyone with a reasonable understanding of the culture and make-up of most Arab societies; the Salafist Islamists don’t tolerate other religious sects, be they Christian, Shia or even Sufi.
The Salafist groups operating in Libya – and heavily involved in the 2011 uprising – are the same gangs, following the same ideologies, as those operating among Syrian rebel groups and those now in Iraq under the banner of ‘Islamic State’.
Sufism, by the way, is one of the oldest, most traditional interpretations of Islam; a minority sect in places like Libya, it is under attack from the various Wahhabi-inspired groups who want a puritanical, intolerant version of Islam to wipe away all other schools of thought. The Sufis traditionally place more emphasis on the spiritual, mystical side of the Muslim religion, somewhat comparable perhaps to the old Gnostics of early Christian traditions.
‘Islamic State’, Sharia Law, the Persecution of Women
Sharia Law is in effect in various Libyan cities and towns, the Islamists establishing their various ’emirates’, just as Gaddafi said would happen. The same “Al-Qaeda Imams” Gaddafi told us were “in the mosques” in 2011 are now in the town halls and civil buildings, legitimised by our Western governments. ‘Fatwas’ are being issued on a regular basis; ‘fatwas’ and indeed all the other traits of hard-line Islamist/Salafist culture were entirely alien to Libya in the previous four decades.
Hardline Islamists Ansar al-Sharia ride around in ‘police’ convoys looking very much like ISIS/ISIL, who also now have a major presence in Libya despite being a product of Iraq and Syria.
The status of women in the new, NATO-backed Libya has therefore – predictably – taken a severe turn for the worse; in many ways, the ‘Civil War’ of 2011 might be viewed as having been a ‘Battle of the Sexes’.
Gaddafi’s system championed women’s involvement in decision-making, education and rights issues, in a way that most Arab countries don’t. Women in the old, Green Libya were equal citizens. Support for Gaddafi among women in Libya had been especially strong; it’s no coincidence that those vast, pro-Gaddafi rallies in 2011 were heavily populated with women or that that women were the loudest, most vociferous chanters and green-flag wavers.
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It was no coincidence that so many of Gaddafi’s most
ardent supporters were Libyan women.
Hilary Clinton, laughably viewed by some in America as some kind ‘women’s rights’ campaigner, gave Libyan women Al-Qaeda in place of progress. It was in fact reported very soon after Gaddafi’s death that one of the earliest new laws being sought by a number of men was the legal right to still have sexual intercourse with the corpses of dead wives for a certain amount of time before burial. That’s the sort of level we’re talking about. Western commentators could make fun of Gaddafi having an all-female bodyguard unit if they like (sure, it was very odd), but the same people are silent about Libyan women being subject now to fundamentalist-Islamic rules and restrictions – which was everything Gaddafi and his supporters worked hard to make sure never came to Libya.
Unlike many other Arab nations, women in pre-2011 Libya had the right to education, hold jobs, divorce, hold property and have an equal income to men. The United Nations Human Rights Council had in fact praised Gaddafi in particular for his promotion of women’s rights, and, again, it’s no coincidence that so many of the most ardent pro-Gaddafi loyalists were women. It’s all gone now.
In March 2013, for example, Sadiq Ghariani, the ‘Grand Mufti’, issued a fatwa against the UN Report on Violence Against Women and Girls, condemning it. Later in 2013, lawyer Hamida Al-Hadi Al-Asfar, advocate of women’s rights, was abducted, tortured and killed. It is alleged she was targeted for criticising the Grand Mufti’s declaration. No arrests were made. Ghariani in fact has been using the UK as a base from which to encourage the violent extremists, including Islamic State, to consolidate their control of Libya. There was also, among others the murder of Libyan human rights lawyer, Salwar Bughaghis. Such assassinations, along with torture, are commonplace.
Also, for the record, most (or all) of Gaddafi’s famous female bodyguards (who were made such a joke of throughout all the Western media coverage of the Libya crisis in 2011) were brutally murdered after his death, some of them sexually assaulted first. One of them was reported to have been viciously tortured and gang-raped for days before being strangled to death with the words “the fate for Gaddafi’s whores” beside her, her body rotting when discovered. Let’s note that in actual fact all of Gaddafi’s female guards were said to be virgins who’d sworn an oath of celibacy.
In the (forced) change from Gaddafi’s Libya to the post-NATO Libya, women have gone from being highly active in Libyan life, going to universities and being a major part of the work force, to now facing the new reality of Sharia Law and the possibility also of being sold to ISIS/ISIL fighters as “virgin brides”.
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This is the gift Hilary Clinton, Samantha Powers, Susan Rice and the others have given the women of Libya.
It may be valid to argue, in fact, that the entire ‘revolution’ of 2011 was an exclusively and excessively male enterprise that, from beginning to end, had a dim view of women in general. This seems even more significant when you look at coverage of the pro-Gaddafi gatherings and demonstrations and note, as I said earlier, that they were heavily constituted by Libyan women. This was certainly in large part because Libya’s women understood how dangerous Gaddafi’s absence would be for them, particularly given the highly religious/Islamist nature and make-up of those trying to overthrow him.
Mass Migration and the Mediterranean
And of course the greatest sign, the greatest validation, of the great ‘success story’ of NATO and the West’s intervention in Libya has to be the thousands of people risking their lives to flee Libya across the sea in the hope of reaching Europe.
This simply fulfils Gaddafi’s prediction prior to his murder that the Mediterranean would “become a sea of chaos” if the government fell. Hundreds and hundreds at a time are drowning in the sea trying to leave the country that our governments ‘liberated’ in 2011. Note that this phenomenon didn’t exist either in Gaddafi’s Libya; simply because no one needed to leave, no one had anything to run away from, and indeed many, many from Sub-Saharan Africa actually came to Libya to live and work. As noted, there were well over a million African migrant workers living in Libya up until 2011; but the subsequent persecution and ethnic cleansing has meant that African migrants who used to have Libya as their destination are now fleeing the country for safety or being moved through the country and onto greener pastures.
The ‘migrant crisis’ Europe is now facing is a direct result of the forced collapse of Libya. These and these are yet more casualties of the ‘great job’ our governments did ‘liberating’ the country. And even those asylum seekers who do manage to reach Europe are in many cases held in poor conditions for an indefinite amount of time (or worse in Australia, where they held off-shore in virtual concentration camps).
They were, not long ago, citizens of a functioning society, with access to rights, privileges and welfare; they are now herded about like cattle.
To the traffickers operating in Libya (including ISIS/ISIL, who openly threatened to use the post-Gaddafi Libyans as migrants and ‘psychological warfare’ against Europe), they are pawns, while to most European and Western governments they are inconvenient statistics and to many newspapers and Western citizens they are ‘lousy immigrants and asylum-seekers’ trying to ‘sponge off our countries’.
This grim analysis of post-Gaddafi Libya could go on and on; but you’ve gotten the picture by now.
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The Case for the Prosecution: The Crime and the Criminals…
You’ll note I keep referring to Libya/2011 as a ‘criminal enterprise’ rather than a ‘humanitarian intervention’. If we accept that premise, every ‘crime’ needs a mastermind and a motive. We’ll come to Motive shortly; but who were the Criminal Masterminds?
Well, that’s easy. They were (1) our government officials and political leaders, (2) multi-national corporations and financial institutions, (3) America’s Al-Qaeda and other terrorist legions/proxies, and (4) our mass, corporate media organisations.
Meanwhile this criminal conspiracy was wilfully aided and abetted by (5) the UN.
In addition, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE and some of the other Arab countries were promised some of the spoils – all of these countries, for the record, are ruled by Western puppet dictatorships: they are ultra-Capitalist states that use religion to control the masses. Many of these Arab regimes and rulers were openly happy to see Gaddafi fall, as they had suffered a long, antagonistic relationship with him.
Gaddafi had always been a highly outspoken and divisive figure who would criticise, condemn or challenge other Arab leaders frequently and often to their faces; Gaddafi’s appearances at Arab Summits, for example, were often characterised by him engaging in verbal clashes with other leaders, particularly the Saudi Arabia Royal Family. It wouldn’t have taken much for those leaders and regimes to be convinced to contribute to Libya’s destruction, particularly if offered some of the future spoils. Evidence in fact suggests that Qatar was a principle orchestrater of the Libyan bloodbath, just as it was in Syria.
The outright, bald lies told by our officials and leaders in order to accomplish their goals were practically endless. In addition to all those fabrications already highlighted earlier in this document, President Obama told the world that Libyan forces were “going city to city and town to town, brutalising civilians”. Never happened, completely made up.
And of course, as previously mentioned, both Amnesty and the International Crisis Group outright rubbished these claims for which they could find no supporting evidence.
Hilary Clinton: “When the Libyan people sought to realise their democratic aspirations, they were met by extreme violence from their own government. The Libyan people appealed to the world to stop the brutal attack upon them.” When did
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that happen? What ‘extreme violence’? When was this ‘brutal attack’? The armed rebels certainly did appeal to foreign governments for intervention: of course they did – they wanted to win the war, and much of the corporate media reporting was *based* on information from the armed rebels, who obviously were seeking aid. This was also precisely the scenario in the first year-and-a-half of the War in Syria.
But when did ‘the Libyan people’ do so? What is Hilary talking about? The hundreds of fake social-media accounts being run by American personnel, as reported in February 2011? And what about all the Libyan people who were begging for the NATO intervention to stop? What about the million-plus in Green Square? Don’t they count? Aren’t they the ‘Libyan people’ too?
Further, The Washington Times a few months ago published audio tapes of conversations between US officials and Libyan officials in 2011, revealing that the US intelligence community had gathered no evidence of an “impending genocide” in Libya in 2011 and that Hilary Clinton was well aware of that all along. If you listen to the audio, you hear Pentagon officials actually telling Libyan representatives, including Gaddafi’s oldest son Saif, that *they themselves* don’t even believe the information being propagated by Hilary Clinton and the State Department.
This leak includes recorded audio of conversations between US Congressman Dennis Kucinich and Saif Gaddafi regarding the grounds for NATO intervention in Libya.
The Washington Times further reports that ‘the information being gathered by the intelligence community was at loggerheads with the claims of the main supporters for war with Libya, which included French President Nicolas Sarkozy; Senator John McCain, Foreign-Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry, and three powerful women close to President Obama: Mrs Clinton, US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice and adviser Samantha Powers.’ Susan Rice is a sibling of Neo-Con and Iraq War schemer and profiteer Condoleeza, by the way.
The article continues with this retrospective assessment, highlighting the Pentagon’s doubts about the Clinton/Sarkosy narrative in Benghazi; ‘The specific intelligence was that Gadhafi had sent a relatively small – by Western standards – cadre of about 2,000 troops armed with 12 tanks to target armed rebels in Benghazi.’ It continues, ‘In fact, the Pentagon’s judgment was that Gaddafi was unlikely to risk world outrage by inflicting large civilian casualties’.
And still it continues, revealing that American ‘Defense Officials had direct information that Gaddafi gave specific orders *not to attack civilians* and to narrowly focus the war on the armed rebels.’
The Pentagon and the Intelligence community knows full well Hilary Clinton lied. Yet the all-out NATO genocide in Libya went ahead anyway. And now, such is the level of corruption in the American political/financial system, that the same woman is allowed to launch a lavish bid for the Presidency, which, if she wins next year, will make her the most powerful political figure in the world. Still, there’s nothing novel in that: her fellow criminal, Nicholas Sarkosy, is also due to launch another campaign for the French Presidency again. We are quite, quite demonstrably run by criminals, you see. Which, again, isn’t so surprising, given that George W. Bush and his criminal administration won a second term even after waging illegal and unprovoked war in Iraq.
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These recent revelations concerning Hilary, the Pentagon and the fake Benghazi narrative are too little too late. Just as the former NTC leader’s admission that Gaddafi hadn’t ordered any attacks on civilians (and that foreign agents had started the Libyan Civil War) is also too little too late – Gaddafi is dead and Libya is gone. Where were all these ‘revelations’ four years ago? Where were all the investigative journalists in the mainstream media? Where was the ‘commission’ then? Where was the fact-finding operation?
The UK of course was every bit as involved as the French and American governments. David Cameron: “This was your revolution, not ours. It was those brave people in Misrata, in Benghazi, in Tripoli, who were incredibly brave in removing the dreadful dictatorship of Gaddafi…” What brave people? Al-Qaeda? The armed thugs who brutally massacred police officers and Libyan security personnel? Or the vicious mob that sodomised and murdered the 69 year-old Gaddafi? ‘Your revolution, not ours…’?
There was no ‘revolution’: just armed warfare and criminal activity and a state – an entire political system – overthrown and replaced with nothing. And why was Cameron so careful to state “your revolution, not ours” when he was presumably well aware of the MI6 role in the uprising and the presence of SAS Special Forces on the ground ‘disguised as Arabs’?
The British intelligence community’s role in the collapse of Libya isn’t to be understated, particularly given the historical involvement with the LIFG, Al-Qaeda and others (no wonder the Libyan regime was always so paranoid about dissidents and opponents, given how much foreign manipulation and infiltration was going on).
During the 2011 crisis, Mousa Koussa, one of Gaddafi’s long-time inner circle, and who was believed to have been heavily involved in torture and mistreatment of prisoners over the years, resigned from his position and was strangely flown to the UK in what all observers viewed as suspicious circumstances (particularly as he wasn’t a defector and hadn’t joined the rebels or the NTC); this led some to speculate he might’ve been a double-agent working with British interests.
This was further aroused by Mr Koussa then being flown straight from the UK to Qatar, where he was kept in luxury accommodation. Qatar, for the record, was one of the chief financers of the armed uprising in Libya (just as it was in Syria). Whatever the situation was, it is curious that the British intelligence community, which long claimed to believe Koussa was involved in the planning of the Lockerbie bombing and potentially in the shooting of PC Yvonne Ridley in London in 1984, nevertheless flew him over to London, had secret meetings with him and then sent him off to Qatar.
More than all of that, where were all the mass protests by civilians? In the entire course of the Libyan crisis, how many actual scenes of peaceful civilian protest against the government were ever shown on the corporate news media? I’ve seen the mass gatherings of pro-Gaddafi supporters, the footage of which exists, but even four years later I’m yet to see *any* of the anti-government demonstrations other than one piece of news footage of around 50 – 100 people being visibly choreographed by Al-Jazeera
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film crews. Oh, and the laughable BBC footage of a protest in India (!). The whole thing was an utter, utter, fiction concocted by the news corporations that were acting in concert with foreign government officials and misinformation enterprises.
And there was no impartiality; not from the media, not from the UN, not from our governments – it was the most biased, one-sided depiction of a situation in living memory. This was a pre-planned campaign – on the military level, on the propaganda level and on the legal level – being carried out in a concerted programme between governments, corporations and news-media…
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Of course, this wasn’t he first time in Libya’s modern history or Gaddafi’s life that false accusations were concocted by American or European institutions and officials. The 1986 bombing of a Berlin disco was blamed on Gaddafi and resulted in the American bombing of one of Gaddafi’s homes, resulting in the death of his infant (adopted) daughter (along with 49 civilians); but this was later found to have been a false conviction set up by the CIA.
Almost every government in the world condemned the US attack, citing is as a breach of international law; Italy, Spain, Russia, China, Iran, the entire African Union, among others, all expressed deep disapproval of the attack on Reagan’s attack on Libya and on Gaddafi’s personal property. Others saw the United States motive as an attempt to eliminate Libya‘s revolution entirely, as opposed to simply retaliating for the Berlin incident. Libyan officials responded by warning that America was trying to establish itself as “the policeman of the world”.
Yet police officials in West Berlin repeatedly told journalists that they knew of no evidence linking Libya to the discotheque bombing.
One week after the attack, Manfred Ganschow, chief of the anti-terrorist police in Berlin, was quoted as having rejected the US government’s verdict that Libya had been responsible for the bomb. Christian Lochte, president of the Hamburg office of the Protection of the Constitution (a domestic intelligence unit) said, just five days after the bombing, “It is a fact that we do not have any hard evidence, let alone proof, to show the blame might unequivocally be placed on Libya… Such hasty blame, regarding the two dreadful attacks at the end of the year on the Vienna and Rome airports, for which Libya had immediately been made responsible, did not prove to be correct.”
A strong suggestion has remained that the Berlin bomb had been set up by the CIA and with the bomber himself having been an Israeli Mossad agent. The United Nations General Assembly adopted resolution 41/38 which “condemns the military attack… which constitutes a violation of the Charter of the United Nations and of international law.” A predictably angry (and predictably colourful) Gaddafi said,
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“Reagan is mad. He is trying to kill me. He is an Israeli dog.” And added, “Thatcher is a murderer…Thatcher is a prostitute. She sold herself to Reagan.”
And of course there was most famously the Lockerbie bombing, which was the basis for Libya’s ‘pariah state’ status and the crippling international sanctions imposed upon the Libyan people for well over a decade: but of course Scottish investigators never believed in the official verdict concerning the bombing of that Pan-Am flight and in fact revealed that the key piece of evidence – the bomb timer – was planted on the scene by a CIA operative, while the expert who examined the timer admitted to having manufactured it himself and the crucial witness who connected the bomb to the suitcase later revealed to having been paid $2 million to lie in the trial. Abdel Basset al-Magrahi sat in a prison cell in Scotland for years for a crime he didn’t commit; even when the Scottish government decided to send him back to Libya because of his prostate-cancer, the American and British governments still both objected.
Jim Swire, the spokesman of ‘UK Families Flight 103’, and whose daughter was killed in the Lockerbie bombing, has repeatedly expressed grave doubts about the official version of events. Hans Köchler, the Austrian jurist appointed by the UN to be an independent observer at the Lockerbie trial, expressed concern about the way it was conducted (particularly the suspicious role played by two US Justice Department officials who sat next to the Scottish prosecuting counsel throughout the process and appeared to be giving them instructions). Köchler would later describe al-Megrahi’s conviction as “a spectacular miscarriage of justice”. Jim Swire, who also was present through the trial, then launched the ‘Justice for Megrahi’ campaign, being utterly unconvinced by the official verdict.
If you still think Lockerbie was the doing of Libya or Gaddafi, see here, here, here, here and here.
The Lockerbie bombing of 1988 can be seen to have been a program conducted by US and British intelligence (possibly in concert with agencies from other governments) to permanently vilify Gaddafi’s Libya and justify trying to bring about the country’s decline. This is an extremely important point: the sanctions imposed on Libya were designed to reverse the country’s success and its attainment of self-sufficiency, to cripple the nation with deprivation and incite ill-feeling towards
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Gaddafi from within the population (for the purposes of provoking, over time, an insurrectionist element).
The only way offered to end the sanctions program was for Gaddafi to pay what was reckoned to be the biggest compensation package ever imposed onto any country – he/Libya would have to pay a total of $10 Billion to the Lockerbie victims’ families.
In the late 80s, at a point where Gaddafi was trying to limit the powers and activities of the Revolutionary Committees, this line of development was cut short by the imposition of the international sanctions. This created a state of national emergency that served to reinforce the regime’s more conservative elements and made Gaddafi’s intended reforms too ‘risky’. In a society that included political Islamists and radicals and various corrupt operators, the idea of opening up Libyan society to previously unknown degrees of political freedom at a time when the economy was suffering from the massive sanctions and the government was unable to maintain strong, well-equipped security forces, was just too dangerous (witness present-day Egypt and the suppression of the Muslim Brotherhood).
It would take roughly a decade after this before Gaddafi would feel safe enough to try again to push reforms.
It was only in 2003-4, after Libya had paid that massive sum in compensation to the Lockerbie families in 2002 (having already surrendered Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi and Al Amin Khalifa Fhima for trial in 1999), that the UN-imposed sanctions were finally lifted. At this point, a movement towards reformation and democracy once again emerged, this time headed by Gaddafi’s son Saif al-Islam. As already demonstrated, this was the direction Libya was going in organically in the post-sanctions years, characterised by the country’s ‘rapprochement’ with the West. Anyone who has studied the Libya situation knows that the country was moving towards more and more reforms, with a view to more orthodox democracy.
It can be seen, with hindsight, that at the two key points where Libya had been moving towards more reforms and more loosening up of the security apparatus – specifically the late 80s and then the years from 2002 to 2011 – these efforts were impeded due to outside interference. The Libya that NATO attacked in 2011 was the closest it had ever been to major reform and democratisation; it is also curious that the defectors and anti-Gaddafi plotters within the Libyan state chose that time to demand regime-change – literally at the point where Gaddafi was already talking about elections and reforms.
The other condition that had been imposed after Lockerbie was that Gaddafi also had to formally acknowledge responsibility in the UN for his officials’ orchestrating of the Lockerbie bombing. Gaddafi eventually went along with these demands, but to his domestic audience he permanently denied any responsibility or involvement in Lockerbie and told his people that the extortionate reparations Libya was having to pay wasn’t an admission of guilt, but merely the price having to be paid in order for Libya to re-enter the international community.
In 2011, he probably found himself wishing he hadn’t bothered; because it was all for nothing. The billions of dollars of extortion money the West forced from Libya – for a crime Libya probably hadn’t committed – was quite simply massive theft/robbery
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made ‘legitimate’ by the UN (no wonder Gaddafi was so scathing towards the UN in 2009). What happened in 2011 of course was an even bigger, more outright theft/robbery operation carried out by international thieves and criminals.
International consultant and author Adrian Salbuchi hit the nail on the head when he wrote, “The worst terrorists” are “in the White House and Palais de l’Élysée in France, and at 10 Downing Street. We have very high-class terrorists and mafias running those countries and the better part of the world.”
Gaddafi knew that, of course. And his people knew that, because he told them. And yet these same “high-class terrorists” of ours are experts at keeping a straight face and telling us who the real ‘bad guy’ is. “He (Gaddafi) has lost all legitimacy…”
This is what Barak Obama, David Cameron and several others repeatedly said to justify intervention. Lost all legitimacy? Said who? According to who and what? Who decides whether a country’s government is ‘legitimate’ or not? Have our governments ‘lost legitimacy’ after the 2008 Financial Crisis? Should they be forcibly ‘removed’ from power? Should the US government have been violently overthrown after the illegal Iraq War? Should the US President be violently executed by a mob in the street? And what about the 1.7 million Libyan civilians who bravely marched in Tripoli’s Green Square in July 2011 to affirm their support for their state? Did they think Gaddafi had “lost legitimacy”? When was the last time 1.7 million people gathered to show their support for David Cameron or Nicolas Sarkozy?
And what of the UN?
The UN failed to verify any of the allegations against Gaddafi’s government and the Libyan authorities; failed in fact to even investigate any of it, even after being asked by the Libyan government to send a fact-finding commission.
Libya was the final, conclusive and damning proof that the UN is an utterly worthless, pointless institution, just as Gaddafi himself had said in 2009. Ironically, of all the people and world leaders to ever speak at the UN, the one who most summed up the true nature of the UN was Muammar Gaddafi himself, in that famous 2009 address, which should go down as the one of the greatest in the UN’s history. Addressing the assembly both as representative of Libya and Chairman of the African Union, Gaddafi argued that power should be held by the General Assembly and not the Security Council. “65 wars since 1945 have not been prevented by UN,” he told the assembly. The UN was not democratic, he said.
According to Gaddafi, the General Assembly is made worthless by the domination of the superpowers and the dictatorial powers held by the Security Council’s five permanent members. He argued that there should be democracy and equality among the member states and that power should be transferred from the Security Council to the General Assembly. He argued that a structure where the General Assembly has to do whatever the Security Council dictates was unfair and unjust, but that the Security Council should instead be subject to the democratic wishes of the 192 nations represented in the General Assembly.
“How can we be happy about global peace and security if the whole world is controlled only by five countries? The Superpowers have global interests and they use their vetoes
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to protect those interests,” Gaddafi said, as he tore up a piece of paper representing the UN Charter and startled the assembly in New York.
And how ironic that this same Security Council Gaddafi was so unhappy about in 2009 was the same Security Council that sealed his fate in 2011. If the UN was worth anything, it wouldn’t have allowed such a callous criminal enterprise as the 2011 intervention to occur. More than that, it would have some means to hold to account the nations, governments and parties who were responsible for it. But the UN is nothing; just “Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park,” as Gaddafi called it, “we make speeches, we talk, and that’s all.”
Saif Gaddafi told Sky News at the outset of the crisis, “We told them – the British and the French – to send fact-finding missions (to Libya).”
And of course no fact-finding mission was sent: because they couldn’t risk ‘facts’ being ‘found’.
The claims made by Obama and Hilary Clinton that thousands of people were ‘about to be massacred’ in Benghazi was never backed up with any evidence: because there was none, it was a lie. But by any logic or reckoning, surely the UN had a duty to send a fact-finding commission before allowing a military intervention by NATO to be launched?
Did anyone even bother talking to Gaddafi or the Libyan officials?
I have searched and searched every available resource or reference I can think of and I have not found a single reference anywhere to indicate that anyone from the UN or from any of the NATO-aligned governments even *bothered* to *talk* to Gaddafi or the Libyan government at any stage of this crisis. If you’re going to attack or destroy a government, surely – surely – the very least that should be required is to TALK TO THEM first: even Hitler and the Nazis were offered that much.
But of course it’s easier to stab someone in the back than to look into their eyes while you’re doing it. Obama never did reply to Gaddafi’s letters in March. And there was a *reason* the British government was ignoring all attempts by Libyan officials at communication right at the beginning of the crisis and yet bending over backwards to roll out the red carpet for the rebels and the NTC representatives. On the surface of it, it looks confusing; why would our governments suddenly refuse to communicate with Gaddafi or the Libyan government (having been on good terms with them for several years by that point) and yet immediately throw all their support behind a vague, largely unknown mish-mash of rebels and defectors?
Simple: because it was all *planned* in advance and everyone except Gaddafi and the Libyan loyalists knew what was going on.
But even if it had been a ‘Civil War’ (which it wasn’t), what would give NATO or even the UN the right to intervene on one side of that conflict when it *should* be deemed an internal crisis that needs to be resolved internally? The various armed factions that constituted the ‘rebel’ groups would almost certainly not have won the war without
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NATO’s bombing campaign against the Libyan government; NATO wouldn’t have had any *need* to militarily intervene if it thought the rebels were going to win. It was NATO – it was France, the US, the UK and everyone else involved – that determined the outcome of the ‘Civil War’ in Libya, not the rebels on the ground. The UN Resolution was meant to impose a ceasefire, but as Noam Chomsky and others pointed out, NATO didn’t try to impose a ceasefire – they simply aided the rebels and relentlessly attacked the government forces.
Impartial experts remain divided to this day as to the legality of the intervention and whether the precedents genuinely exist in international law to make the NATO/UN interference in Libya legitimate.
They don’t – NATO’s decimation of Libya was a War Crime and it violated the UN Charter. There is no other conclusion that can be drawn. The officials and leaders who authorised that War Crime need to be investigated and made to stand trial.
Any American, French, British or other government official who was directly involved in bringing about the intervention in Libya – whether it’s a President, a Prime Minister, a Secretary of State or some other office – should, by any legitimate reckoning, be investigated as a criminal and made to answer for what happened. They certainly shouldn’t be allowed to continue in office (and certainly shouldn’t be allowed to run for subsequent office). They have, to turn their own phrase back on them, “lost all legitimacy”.
A statement from Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez at the beginning of the Libya crisis was highly pertinent. On 18th March 2011, Chavez said; ‘Hypocrisy and double-standard in dealing with terrorist outfits make it difficult to eliminate the monster, because there are powerful countries in the United Nations Security Council that condone, fund and practice terrorism as a matter of institutional necessity to maintain their grip and hold on the world resources and wealth. These powerful countries stand guilty and indicted for Crimes Against Humanity. It is no longer a secret that the covert intention of the US, UK and France in the Libyan crisis is to destabilize the North African nation, overthrow the legitimate government of Muammar Gaddafi and milk the country’s oil and natural gas.’
Hugo Chavez’s statement brings us to the matter of resolving *why* this illegal, immoral and diabolical intervention in Libya was conducted. This is the absolutely crucial part; the part that goes beyond Libya itself and into a study of what is happening in *the world*, who and what is in control and what it is they may be trying to do…
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The Motives: Why Libya Was Targeted…
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Firstly, the primary reason for the overthrow of Gaddafi and the forced ending of Libyan society was almost certainly so that the Colonialist, globalist powers can seize control of Libya’s resources – oil, water, gold – with the consent of the illegitimate forces it installed into power. But there may have been other, very significant reasons too. And these go beyond just the 2011 bloodbath and into the reasons why Gaddafi and Libya were demonised for decades and subject to international conspiracy.
We can now look at some of them carefully.
1. The Oil
Let’s get the obvious one out of the way first: Libya was an absolute treasure-trove of natural resources and valuable assets. One of Gaddafi’s sons noted at the time that Libya was “like a McDonalds’ for NATO”. This wasn’t an exaggeration. With 39.1 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, Libya represents a significant portion of the planet’s existing ‘proven reserves’.
One of the principal reasons for the war on Libya may have been to install a puppet government in order to access those reserves. Gaddafi rather famously would never do that; would never be a “colonial puppet” and never let Libya be “colonised” or occupied for theft of its resources. Gaddafi’s nationalistion of the country’s oil wealth was a non-negotiable policy safeguarding the welfare of the Libyan people and ensuring the country’s freedom from foreign domination and international slavery.
Noam Chomsky noted that the NATO strategy from very early on saw the rebel groups “securing the major sources of Libya’s oil production.” Chomsky laid out his views on the Libya crisis in March 2011, highlighting that “oil specialists believe it (Libya) may have rich untapped resources” and that “a more dependable government” than Gaddafi’s would be “open to Western exploitation.”
Gaddafi’s agenda for nationalization of Libyan oil was always a giant no-no for the multi-national oil companies. Companies like British Petroleum, Royal Dutch Shell, ExxonMobil, Verenex, Occidental and Nippon Oil were not going to stand by and allow Gaddafi to undermine their operations. International banksters like Barclays, J.P. Morgan Asset Management and HSBC Standard Chartered were also all heavily invested in Libya. When it comes to Corporate Giants and their involvement in Geo-politics, always remember that we are not dealing with human beings with human interests; we are dealing with corporate entities with purely corporate interests.
They will do whatever it takes to protect those “interests”: it does not matter how many people have to die. If putting babies on spikes was in the interests of those corporations, then babies would be put on spikes and our political leaders would come up with whatever spin or justification they need to make putting those babies on those spikes legal. The multi-national corporations and the international financial elites are in control of our governments and therefore of the world situation.
The International Energy Agency confirmed early on that many of the repairs to the country’s damaged oil infrastructure would have to be performed by foreign specialists working for the international oil companies, with most oil-companies having deployed small teams to restart production. The National Oil Company said it had taken over full control of marketing Libyan oil and said that all future deals would give preference to actors who had shown early support during the uprising (which
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would presumably put France, the US, the UK and the likes of Qatar at the top of the list). In that context, it also might be worth noting that in the early months of the 2011 crisis, Gaddafi had already said he would give preference to Russia, China and India in future oil deals.
The little items of incriminating evidence crop up all over the place for those who look for them. For example, the same Russian Intelligence source that revealed the May 2011 plan to assassinate Gaddafi also leaked a letter from Libyan rebel leaders promising France 35 percent of all Libyan oil.
There was far more than oil going on, however.
2. The Gold Dinar and African Development
As RT and some others were reporting, Gadaffi’s plans were underway to introduce the gold dinar, a single African currency made from gold. British activist Dr James Thring told RT at the time, “it’s one of these things that you have to plan in secret; because as soon as you say you’re going to change from the dollar to something else, you are going to be targeted…”
It was an initiative that would’ve radically altered the balance of the world, with oil-rich nations selling only for these gold dinars; countries’ ‘wealth’ (and therefore their ability buy the oil) would depend on how much gold they had and not on how many dollars or how much false ‘money’ they had the ability to move around in an abstract economy. The US, for the record, has *no* gold; the Federal Reserve owns absolutely no gold at all and hasn’t since 1934.
Gaddafi’s plans were an enormous and immediate threat to the multi-national leviathans, the world’s central banking institutions, the Rothschild Zionists and other Elites, and in short the entire criminal mafia that owns and runs our societies. The French criminal Sarkosy called Gaddafi “a threat to the financial security of all mankind”.
The broader context to this radical currency initiative is that Gaddafi was establishing himself as the pioneer of African development and currency; establishing himself as the alternative to the IMF in Africa. It cannot be emphasised enough that Libya was absolutely central to Africa’s aspirations of freedom from the predatory central banks and international lending agencies. Gaddafi, an idealist, had repeatedly tried to establish an alternative to the Draconian money lenders of the IMF and the World Bank. He had already freed his country from the insane and abject conditions otherwise demanded of all societies by the IMF/World Bank cartels; but being the arch pan-Africanist, he was then manoeuvring to extend this Libyan model to the rest of Africa, in order to free Africa from the Western model of debt-slavery; through this plan, African nations would be able to deposit and borrow from a central African bank, giving them an option other than the corporate/Imperialist forces of international finance.
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Just how significant Gaddafi’s presence was to Africa is something that Western media has always tried to downplay. But Gaddafi alone had allocated two-thirds of the $42 billion that was required to launch a public African Central Bank (based in Nigeria), an African Monetary Fund (based in Cameroon) and an African Investment Bank based in Libya. Note that the Obama administration has stolen that money (as of August 2011) and frozen the entire initiative. If established, it would have provided low-cost (or possibly interest-free) loans for health, education, and other social projects and reforms, as well as vital infrastructure development, in all participating African states – just as had been accomplished in Libya. The African Monetary Fund (AMF) would’ve meant no more borrowing from Rothschild Central Banks for African countries, but production of its own currency for Africa, interest-free and backed by Gold standard.
It was also Gaddafi who had funded Africa’s only communications satellite. In doing so, he saved hundreds of millions of dollars for low-cost incoming and outgoing calls. You might wonder why that’s significant, but it is: it was genuinely a huge setback for European nations and corporations, because they get paid some $500 million every year by African nations for the services European satellites provides to Africa.
Gaddafi had also flat-out refused to cooperate with AFRICOM – the proposed, Western-backed body to rule Africa.
In America, Louis Farrakhan had set the stage years earlier, pointing out that “Europe and the US cannot go forward into the new century without unfettered access to the vast natural resources of Africa.” He added, knowingly: “Gaddafi is the one who stands in their way.”
Gadaffi, in essence, was moving to free the entire African continent from the clutches of Western corporate/military imperialism. He was, as Farakhan pointed out, the biggest obstacle. Tingba Muhammad, in an article in The Final Call, wrote, ‘Since he came to leadership in 1969, Col. Qaddafi has amassed a record of accomplishment for Black Africa unmatched in modern history.’
3. The Libyan Financial System
Understand that Libya was one of the last nations in the world that had its own state-run banking system and control over its own money supply (Syria is/was another). By having this system in place, they could demand oil purchases to be made in Libyan currency and not the Euro or the US Dollar.
It also meant that Libya had ensured itself a stable economy, with little inflation and currency devaluation as most of the industrialized world is subject to under the domination of the private central banks. Under Gaddafi, Libya had essentially created its own interest-free money, the Libyan Dinar, which was used productively and purely for economic growth, infrastructure-building and the welfare of the people, and not for speculation, profits or bonuses for bankers.
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Gaddafi had in essence created a self-reliant, moral economy; ‘bankers’, in the sense that we in the West understand the term, didn’t exist in this Libya.
The expansion of this Gaddafi/Libyan model into more of Africa could potentially have revolutionised economic and social development across African nations and could have made Africa far more self-sufficient, freeing it of what Malcolm X had called the global Apartheid against African development. The Gold Dinar would’ve seriously damaged the current international financial system, but it also would’ve also been set to give self-empowerment to African nations and populations – something the US and the multi-national corporate world forces were unlikely to let happen. The French in particular have always had vested interests in Africa and have, for well over a century, been dominating Africa via puppet regimes and client states – Gaddafi has always been a problem for the Colonialist French. They had no legitimate or legal means, however, of stopping African governments from following this course if they chose to; so it had to be stopped at the *source* and done by deception and force.
It is therefore unsurprising also that immediately after the NATO intervention of 2011, a privately-controlled ‘Central Bank of Benghazi’ was immediately established to let Western bankers, not Libyans, take financial control of the country. This creation of this new bank was in fact practically the first thing that was done with the NTC as soon as Gaddafi was out of the picture; which is rather telling.
This plan, we can assume, was in place from the beginning by those who want complete global control over all oil and economic systems in order to achieve a decisive and final financial enslavement of all mankind. Robert Wenzel wrote in the Economic Policy Journal at the time, ‘I have never before heard of a central bank being created in just a matter of weeks out of a popular uprising. This suggests we have a bit more than a rag tag bunch of rebels running around and that there are some pretty sophisticated influences.’
The Rothschild-controlled newly-privatised central bank (controlled via the puppet intermediary of ABC Bank Bahrain) will simply allow Libyan wealth to be redistributed to Britain, America, France and the Gulf States. Furthermore, Gaddafi had kept Libya 100% free of debt. The country was in no debt to any foreign entity. Does anyone think that will remain the case once all the reconstruction begins? Western agencies will presumably be only too happy to *lend* Libya substantial amounts of money for the rebuilding, once the security situation is stabilised.
As of 2011, the ‘gold dinar’ is dead, Pan-Africanism is finished, Africom can proceed unopposed, Gaddafi’s ‘Great River’ is in ruins, and Africa will remain in its age-old condition of ineffectual government and long-term dependency on predatory foreign ‘intervention’.
4. The Water
It isn’t just Libya’s black gold (oil) that the West coveted, but Libya’s “blue gold” – specifically Gaddafi’s Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System, the only fresh water source of its kind in North Africa and the Middle East, a region now threatened by droughts. When future droughts do occur, along with possible famines, that Libyan aquifer and Gaddafi’s Great River will be of almost immeasurable value.
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Two French water firms, the largest in the world (Veolia and Suez S.A.) have wanted to get their hands on this water, estimated to be worth billions in future profit. The soon-to-escalate ‘Water Wars’ have been written about by a number of academics, bringing to mind Anwar Sadat’s prediction in 1979 that “in the future, all wars will be fought over water”. Every IMF or World Bank loan is issued on the condition that the victim-nation sells its water supplies to the predatory private investors. The ‘Water Wars’ are not just science fiction: they will be coming, particularly in parts of the world where water is sparse (Africa particularly).
For some further elaboration on this subject, I refer you to this article and this video.
The French corporations wanted to get their hands on those massive underground fresh-water aquifers. This French agenda was one of the poorest kept secrets; but the NATO damage done to Gaddafi’s great Man-Made River will require a vast rebuilding project. We shouldn’t be surprised if it ends up being French companies that both take on that job and acquire control of the water supply.
Africa is the most drought-prone continent in the world, often to horrific effect (remember, for example, the terrible Ethiopian famines); the control of water literally becomes a matter of life and death and a resource of huge political and financial value.
The global criminal/financial elite that believes it is entitled to ownership of *all* the world’s resources, commodities and financial systems had its all-seeing eye on Gaddafi’s Man-Made River from the moment the construction program began decades ago. What begins with destruction in 2011, then will eventually end with theft and ownership.
Gaddafi’s Man-Made River, the world’s largest irrigation project, carried more than five million cubic metres of water per day across the desert to coastal areas, vastly increasing the amount of arable land and providing an almost unlimited supply of water for the Libyan people. Scientists estimated this amount of water to be equivalent to the flow of 200 years of water in the Nile River. This estimated $70 trillion worth of ‘Blue Gold’ in Libya was what the criminal financial/banking elite, particularly the French (who are massively into monopolising the water supply in Africa), wanted to get its hands on.
As Hugh Roberts noted; ‘Gaddafi planned to exploit the immense water reserves under Libya’s Sahara and to provide water to the Sahel countries, which could have transformed their economic prospects, but this possibility has now almost certainly been killed off by Nato’s intervention, since Western (and perhaps particularly French) water companies are lining up alongside Western oil firms for their slice of the Libyan action.’
In essence, Gaddafi’s agenda was Libyan and African development and aid. The West’s agenda is simply ownership, monopoly, profit and theft.
5. The Gold
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We come back to the point that Libya had significant gold bullion reserves: estimated to have been 144 tons.
America, as already stated, has none – no gold whatsoever. America has in fact owned absolutely no gold since the 1933 gold seizure when, under the deception of trying to end the Great Depression, all American citizens were ordered (under threat of imprisonment) to turn in all their gold bullion, robbing the population of whatever gold (as in whatever genuine money) they had left.
All American currency from that point onward was no longer ‘redeemable in gold’ but was backed by absolutely nothing: a valueless piece of paper that the criminal banking conspirators could use to exercise total control of all society. From then on, the criminal financial institutions that own America could entirely control the money supply, determine its value and circulation, and essentially hold the power to control everyone. They could now create ‘money’ out of thin air and issue it with whatever ‘conditions’ they pleased. That is of course the desired, abject state they want the entire world in eventually; it was never going to happen in Libya with Gaddafi still in a position of influence.
It is known of course that the all-powerful financial/banking system is in the business of demanding countries give up their gold. No country is being allowed to own significant amounts of actual commodities with real value, because the plan is for all nations to be in-thrall to the system’s ‘phantom’ money – the false, invisible currency that is the central control mechanism of all our societies and economies and through which our unelected, financial controllers (and thus rulers) control our societies. Gaddafi of course understood that. He did everything possible for four decades to make Libya independent, self-sufficient and in control of its own resources and commodities.
“If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issuing of currency, the banks and corporations that grow up around them will deprive the people of their property until their children wake up homeless…” Thomas Jefferson had once warned. He and Gaddafi would’ve probably seen eye to eye on such matters.
So the question arises: where is Libya’s gold now? Who has it and who is *going* to have it? The fact is that no one knows (or admits to knowing) where all the Libyan gold has gone. To suggest that 2011 was one of the greatest ‘gold heists’ in history might not be an exaggeration.
6. The Reimbursements for Lockerbie
As the US whistleblower Susan Lindauer told RT that the summer before the uprising, Gadaffi was pressuring US, British, French and Italian oil companies to reimburse Libya for the cost of the payments to the families of the Lockerbie bombing – the UN had forced Libya to pay damages over many years to the Lockerbie families to the tune of 2.7 billion dollars. The UN had severely crippled Libya with with these sanctions (based on a crime that wasn’t committed by Libya): Gaddafi demanding this reimbursement may have been the final straw.
Lindauer covered Libya at the UN for nine years from 1995 to 2003 and is an expert on Libya and the Libyan people; she insisted right from the very beginning of the crisis
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that it was extremely unlikely that Gaddafi or the government was committing any of the crimes it was being accused of and that it was far likelier that Western governments and corporate interests were simply using the smokescreen of the ‘Arab Spring’ to finally go after Gaddafi and get into Libya. Those Lockerbie payments were an immense injustice, enforced by the UN and at the cost of the Libyan people and the country’s economy; in essence, the country was robbed of 2.7 billion dollars and the purpose of this policy was to cripple the nation and the government.
It was Libya’s self-sufficiency most of all that various other governments – and particularly the global financial powers – despised. It should be understood, however, that the latter years of the Gaddafi era had seen some significant decline in Libya’s domestic situation compared to the early decades; this was in large part due to the crippling sanctions imposed by America and then the UN from the eighties onwards. If the international forces had wanted to cripple Gaddafi’s ‘Utopia’, then the sanctions were an excellent path to follow, as the economic toll was large and keenly felt by the population; it also affected the government’s ability to fulfil its ideological visions.
In effect, from the sanctions onward it is difficult for history to judge whether Gaddafi’s Green Revolution and his Libya was a ‘success story’ or not – that is to say, it’s impossible to tell how successful the society would’ve been had it not been forced to endure the both the sanctions and the long-standing ‘pariah state’ status and demonisation.
But if the earlier decades after the 1969 revolution were anything to go by, then Libya would’ve continued to be an independent, self-made success story; and many of the ideas and visions that Gaddafi had had for the country would’ve been fulfilled. As it was, the sanctions and the international isolation prevented that from properly happening. The long-term toll of the sanctions may also have significantly contributed to the pockets of dissatisfaction and unrest in the country that rushed to the surface in 2011; this in fact may have been the purpose of this international policy towards Libya for all those years – to incite/induce anger towards the government from among elements of the population.
If we accept also that the Lockerbie bombing wasn’t carried out by Al-Magrahi or Libya (and the evidence suggests it wasn’t), then we have to wonder who *did* carry out Lockerbie and whether the intention of that false-flag operation (with 207 deaths) was to create a *reason* to impose the sanctions, a reason to cripple Libya’s growth and to be able to firmly declare Gaddafi’s Libya a ‘terrorist state’: all designed to cripple Gaddafi’s position and to, in international terms, back him and his Green Revolution into a corner.
7. Gaddafi Was Independent and a Liability
The other real problem most leaders had with Gaddafi was that he simply wouldn’t play ball, would never join the club in the long run. He remained utterly independent, arrogant and entirely unconducive to commonly-shared international agendas. There is absolutely no doubt anymore that a major shake-up of the state of the world and
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radical re-designs of the Geo-political make-up and the future of nation-states, is being conducted – one needs only look to the blood-soaked mess in Iraq and Syria to see that.
Leaders, and even nations, that are clearly not conducive to (or willing to cooperate with) that programme are being vilified, demonised and plotted against: Gaddafi would’ve been one of the first people on that list, (1) because he was an outspoken opponent and (2) because he had created in Libya a working alternative model that people could look to as an example for how to shun the NWO and the global financial mafias. That model had to be crippled (which was attempted from the late 1980s from Lockerbie onward); but when even this didn’t result in a popular uprising or overthrow of Gaddafi and the model, it had to instead be outright destroyed (2011).
Gaddafi, more than any world leader I can think of (and to his own detriment), possessed both this willingness and this ability to ruffle all the wrong feathers, to stick his finger up at the forces, institutions and policies of the international community. Considering himself firmly secure in his position within Libyan society (wrongly, as it happened) and considering Libya itself firmly independent and self-sufficient, he didn’t need to ‘play the game’ with any international powers or institutions, even if he sometimes did so (and when he did so, it was by choice and not bondage).
But more than all that, he was a liability. Because, it is said, he knew things; he had the dirt on too many powerful people in Western and Arab governments. It wasn’t just Sarkosy (who he had directly threatened to expose), but several others too, right across the spectrum of the ruling Establishments and Elites, in the UK, in France, in the US, in Israel, in Saudi Arabia… practically everywhere. And because he wasn’t interested in creating a Capitalist or even Communist society in Libya (but instead had literally created a singular, unique system to meet the specific needs of Libyans), he couldn’t really be bought off or made to assimilate with the broader societal or globalist program.
And he had no qualms in calling out the conspiracies or foul-play where he saw them, whether it was the Israeli nuclear weapons stockpile, the Kennedy assassination, the Zionist control of Washington, the complicity of certain Arab states in the US-led invasion of Iraq, or whatever else. Remarkably in the same 2009 UN speech I referenced earlier, Gadaffi called for new investigations into various assassinations, focusing especially on John F. Kennedy in 1963 and Martin Luther King in 1968. Many thought it was a joke; it wasn’t a joke.
Someone needs to stand up in the UN and now add Gaddafi’s own assassination to that list. But of course, no one will – because they’re all mostly pussies.
7. The ‘World Revolution’
“We know that this Mad Dog of the Middle East has a goal of a World Revolution,” US President Ronald Reagan had famously said in a press conference on 9th April 1986.
That statement in fact became the defining image of Gaddafi and Libya in Western, mainstream perception for the years that followed and remained the defining image right through the 2011 bloodbath. While the reality is that Gaddafi had probably given up on those global revolutionary ideas by the later years of his life, the thought of it was still a cause for ongoing concern amid the realms of Western Corporataucracy.
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Gaddafi’s Libya had of course been labelled a ‘state sponsor of terrorism’ for many years, and this label had been based largely on his and Libya’s substantial support for such movements as the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO), Nelson Mandela’s ANC, the Sandanistas in Nicaragua, the IRA in Ireland, and various other organisations: organisations that Gaddafi insisted were ‘liberation movements’ and not ‘terrorist’ groups. Whether he was always correct in that assertion is something we can debate, but there’s plenty of grey area in that subject; for example, it is a fact of history that while almost all Western, ‘civilised’, democratic governments were continuing to support and endorse the Apartheid South-African government, it was Gaddafi and Libya that were openly supporting the ANC and Black South-Africa.
This is why Mandela regarded Gaddafi a friend and a hero. Mandela, who named his own grandson after Gaddafi, and called Gaddafi one of the 20th century’s “greatest freedom fighters”, and insisted the eventual collapse of the Apartheid system owed a great deal to Gaddafi and Libyan support. In turn, Mandela later played a key role in helping Gaddafi gain (brief) mainstream acceptance in the Western world.
Over the years, Gaddafi came to be seen as a hero in much of Africa due both to his epic revolutionary image and to what he had accomplished in Libya. After Mr Mandela became South Africa’s first black president in 1994, he rejected pressure from Western leaders – including then-US President Bill Clinton – to sever ties with Gaddafi, who had in fact largely bankrolled his election campaign. “Those who feel irritated by our friendship with Gaddafi can go jump in the pool,” Mandela had said. Mandela in fact felt far more strongly about his friendship with Gaddafi than he did about his relationships with Western officials like Tony Blair, Bill Clinton or George Bush. “No country can claim to be the policeman of the world and no state can dictate to another what it should do,” the South-African icon had said in response to Western officials’ urging him to shun Gaddafi.
“Those that yesterday were friends of our enemies have
the gall to tell me not to visit my brother Gaddafi…”
Mandela had added pointedly, “Those that yesterday were friends of our enemies have the gall today to tell me not to visit my brother Gaddafi…”
Mainstream commentators therefore are simply engaged in semantics. Gaddafi always claimed to be entirely against ‘terrorists’; he entirely condemned Al-Qaeda and other
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Islamist groups (and was in fact the first to do so), and to be in favour only of ‘legitimate liberation movements’. And many of course would agree that most of the foreign movements he supported – again, the PLO, ANC, or Sandinistas, for example – were indeed genuine liberation movements engaged in struggles for freedom or independence.
This was the ‘world revolution’ Reagan was referring to: a world in which oppressed peoples across the globe may have been empowered to rise up and cause trouble for their oppressors and systems of control. In the 70s and 80s, Gaddafi was the World’s No.1 sponsor and champion of those causes, from supporting the Aborigines in Australia to the Palestinians choking in the strangle-hold of Zionist Israel. He may have been naïve in some of his ideas for what could be accomplished, but, nonetheless, this was why he was hated and that’s why the Western Corporataucracy demonised him, imposed crippling sanctions, and watched permanently for any chance to assassinate him and end his Libyan society.
Gaddafi was, it might be said in future decades, the greatest revolutionary figure of the last hundred years. And even if that threat of ‘World Revolution’ had waned considerably by the time of 2011, the West never forgave him for those past gestures and remained permanently worried that he might resume his old philosophies.
Again, the ‘state sponsor of terrorism’ tag that the West had labelled Libya with for decades was simply a semantic way to avoid saying ‘state sponsor of revolution’ instead. The real ‘state sponsors of terrorism’, of course, are now nations like America, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and its allies: and never was this so vividly in evidence than in 2011 when they sponsored and unleashed their Al-Qaeda-led proxy criminals in Libya… and the real ‘terrorists’ and their real ‘sponsors’ had their day.
8. Libya Was an Easy Target
This point is crucial: even Saif Gaddafi admitted that the Libyan government had been naive in their complacency. Muammar Gaddafi releasing so many Islamists from prison in the hopes of ‘rehabilitation’ and ‘dialogue’ was naivety; but their biggest mistake, Saif told RT during the crisis, was that they hadn’t bought new, better arms and weapons and didn’t build a bigger army.
Why? Because Gaddafi and Libya had been lured into a false sense of security and reconciliation by the Western Colonial powers.
Our leaders demanded Gaddafi’s Libya make itself militarily weak in order to be accepted back into the international community after decades of ostracising, demonisation and sanctions. They essentially lured Gaddafi into thinking Libya had been accepted as a ‘friend’ of the West in a new era of peace, particularly post-9/11. This put Libya precisely where America, NATO and the European powers wanted it: weak and defenseless.
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“We delayed building a stronger army or buying new weapons,” Saif explained to RT, “because we thought ‘we will not have to fight again’; because we thought the Europeans and the Americans are our friends now.”
In reality, everything Gaddafi and Libya did over a number of years to ‘reconcile’ with the West, everything they did to be accepted again by the international community, left them vulnerable to the attack that NATO and Al-Qaeda launched upon them at the beginning of 2011. The Libyan armed forces were using largely outdated military equipment by this point and once the air-forces of 40 NATO countries were attacking them from the air there was no hope. They were a ‘soft target’ easy to catch off-guard.
Libya’s biggest strategic mistake was giving up its tentative WMD program several years prior to the uprising. If Libya had developed WMDs, it’s very likely that this criminal NATO/Western/Al-Qaeda intervention wouldn’t have happened, (1) because the international conspirators would not have risked letting its Al-Qaeda proxy army get hold of any such WMD’s in Libya, and (2) because the WMDs would’ve acted as a deterrent, which is precisely the point of owning such weapons. I’m a pacifist, by the way and I believe all WMDs should be dismantled and given up; however, that only means anything if every government makes the same gesture.
Gaddafi gave up the WMD program as a voluntary gesture of goodwill, firstly to demonstrate to America and Europe that Libya was not a hostile or ‘rogue’ state with ill intentions, and secondly to demonstrate solidarity with America and the West following 9/11. Gaddafi might’ve morally done the right thing, followed the right path; but he’d made a strategic error that would cost him and Libya dearly.
In a sense this reminded me of something I’d always thought about Saddam Hussein and Iraq; specifically the irony that if Saddam *had* developed WMD’s, it’s questionable whether the US-led invasion of 2003 would’ve happened. The fact that he hadn’t and that America simply said that he had and then went ahead and invaded Iraq anyway always seemed tremendously ironic. This is also pretty much a justification for why Iran has every right to develop its nuclear weapons programme.
9. To Turn Libya into an ‘Al-Qaeda Emirate’ and to Create War, Sectarianism and a Gateway to Europe…
And this is the most important one perhaps: they literally turned Libya into a vast terrorist training ground and staging area and a hub for the flow of weapons. To some this strategy might seem to not make sense; but to those who understand that Global Powers are orchestrating both a ‘Clash of Civilisations’ and possibly even a Third World War for the purposes of forging a new global order, it makes perfect sense.
Anyone who examines the available information will conclude that America has never been engaged in a ‘War on Terror’, but has in fact been the No.1 sponsor and funder of terrorism in the world, Al-Qaeda and ISIS/ISIL both included. The real ‘War on Terror’ was being waged by people like Muammar Gaddafi (and now Bashar Assad), who was, as history records, the very first world leader to publicly condemn Al-Qaeda back in the 1990s, with Libya being the first government to issue an arrest-warrant for Osama bin Laden. What Gaddafi may not have properly understood,
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however, was the extent to which Al-Qaeda and its affiliates are essentially the Globalists’ ground-army or irregular legion in the Middle East and Northern Africa.
In 2011, the year Osama bin Laden was supposedly killed and Al-Qaeda appeared to be running out of both steam and credibility, the region’s terrorists and militants were given an enormous, unprecedented injection of life by being sent into Libya, given money ($1 Billion from the Saudis alone), given arms and given a vast battlefield to operate in.
Al-Qaeda was literally *rescued* from looming obscurity by Western agencies and had Libya handed to them on a plate.
From there, the phenomenon of armed Islamist terrorism was enabled to flourish like never before, spawning the War in Syria, the birth of Boko Haram in Nigeria, various militant groups in Africa, and of course leading to the advent of ISIS/ISIL. But in 2011 they were literally given license to run riot in Libyan cities, developing (and revelling in) a bloodlust and a level of barbarity that they would then carry east into Syria and Iraq and south into central Africa. This was all enabled and encouraged by our governments: everything we’ve seen since then and all across the region is therefore sponsored by our governments.
Libya, Syria, Iraq, and more, have all been part of a post-9/11 agenda to create a ‘war without end’ scenario for multiple purposes. The spread of violent Islamist-inspired militias and terrorists in Africa has all been *a direct consequence* of the West’s destabilisation of Libya; which Gaddafi himself warned would happen if Libya was interfered with. Even something as mainstream as The Washington Times has, months ago, been highlighting how concerned Libyan officials were in 2011, ‘as Secretary of State Hilary Clinton was trying to remove Gaddafi from power, that weapons were being funnelled to NATO-backed rebels with ties to Al-Qaeda, fearing that well-armed insurgents could create a safe haven for terrorists’.
‘ISIS’ or ‘ISIL’ has now taken advantage of the chaos in Libya
and established a major presence; seen here allegedly
executing a number of Coptic Christians.
And even CNN admits the Islamic State’s presence in Libya now is simply many of the same sectarian terrorists who left Libya to fight in Syria now returning to their initial arena; and also admits that some of these terrorists had existed in Libya
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for decades and were kept in check primarily by the Libyan regime. With Gaddafi eliminated and all semblance of national unity destroyed by NATO’s “intervention”, Al-Qaeda has been able to not only prosper in Libya but to use the decimated nation as a staging area for invading and ruining other nations, with the flow of weapons out of Libya having been, as mentioned earlier, a major contributing factor to the spread of terrorism and warfare both in Africa and in the Middle East; we already know how the Libyan army’s weapons were stolen and redistributed all across the region, particularly to ISIS/ISIL and the other ‘rebel’ groups operating in Syria to topple Syria’s government.
2011 – precisely a decade on from 9/11 – marked the orchestration of the next phase in America’s ‘War Without End’; the Bin Laden/Al-Qaeda era was over (again, it’s no coincidence Bin Laden was killed off that same year) and something new, much worse and much more dramatic (for the purposes of those back home watching on TV news) was needed.
Iraq had already been carefully and meticulously turned into a staging ground and arena for that; Libya was made the same so that it could more directly impact both Africa and Europe (via the Mediterranean Coast). Understand that we have been meticulously manoeuvred towards an apocalyptic-style ‘Clash of Civilisations’ scenario in which every possible religious or cultural sectarianism is being amplified and played upon, first in the Middle East and Africa and then in Europe and America too. It is worth keeping in mind too that, should ISIS/ISIL ever ‘invade’ Europe in large numbers, it will be through either Libya or Turkey; and they have in fact already *said* that they plan to invade Europe via Libya and the Mediterranean. But, of course, ‘ISIS’ was – in the first instance – a manufactured, multi-purpose ‘bogeyman’; a Frankenstein’s monster of Western intelligence agencies.
A monster that has now evolved out of control. Its birthplace wasn’t just post-war Iraq, nor just the manufactured battlefield of Syria – but the manufactured battlefield of Libya in 2011. Funded, armed and celebrated by our governments.
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Conclusions: We Have Become the Devil
Libya is gone. The real Libya, that is.
Whoever emerges as the future ‘recognised’ government of Libya (a question still not resolved even in 2015), they will be forced to pay for the reconstruction of all the cities, resources and infrastructure that NATO and the international community destroyed in 2011 (one of the main reasons why the NATO bombing campaign was so all-inclusive
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and thorough) through debt, at the expense of the Libyan people; this will keep the country enslaved to its new foreign, Colonial masters for generations – precisely the fate that Muammar Gaddafi had been working for four decades to avoid at all costs.
This is the great, supreme irony, of course: that the real ‘Libyan Revolution’ – the one that Gaddafi led four decades ago – was ultimately brought to an end by a phoney ‘revolution’ launched by NATO and Al-Qaeda to undo those four decades of work and take away from Libya what it had attained.
European and American multi-national corporations, oil companies, construction companies, etc, will be profiting for years to come: once the current chaos in the country – which will probably eventually require another ‘intervention’ (which is already now being suggested by the criminal David Cameron, who wants to start bombing again – in other words, bombing the people for whose sake he was originally bombing Gaddafi’s people) – has finished serving its various Geo-political purposes. A senior French official estimated it could cost $200 billion over 10 years to rebuild Libya. French, American, Canadian, British, and other nations’ companies were all tripping over each other to secure building contracts, oil deals, etc, with Libya’s new officials and authorities in 2011. The full scale of that multi-national corporate operation is yet to be fully implemented, but it will come.
The New Zealand Herald reported, at least a month prior to Gaddafi’s murder; ‘As Libya’s new rulers consolidate their grip on the country, the big oil majors are circling the nearly liberated, petroleum-rich country… Italy’s ENI and France’s Total are leading the charge, while UK giants BP and Royal Dutch Shell are exploring for oil there.’ And again, US Senator Lindsey Graham summed it up best in his reaction to Gaddafi’s murder, when he said, “Let’s get to work. There’s a lot of money to be made in Libya.”
“Gaddafi was a great leader, a true revolutionary who should not be confused with the new Libyan leadership swept into power by NATO’s bayonets and by oil multinationals,” said Mario Borghezio after Gaddafi’s death in October 2011. Libya will never again own its own resources, control its own fate or its own quality of life. There will never be another Muammar Gaddafi in Libya or in Africa; it’s questionable whether there will ever be anyone like Muammar Gaddafi anywhere in the world for that matter, as the last remaining independent societies and leaders are being manoeuvred against at a more accelerated pace even as we speak. He was unique and so was his Libya. But, as I said, Libya is gone.
Our elected leaders meanwhile are little more than willing puppets of the multi-national corporations and “too big to fail” banks and financial institutions. We are living in an age where multi-national corporations and international finance conspirators are all-powerful: so powerful that they are able to wage wars against nation states and populations.
Libya in 2011 was an operation servicing the agendas of world-banking mafias and the multi-national corporations, with various government officials and networks (and corporate-owned media) facilitating the operation. They are all parts of the same system of illusion and control.
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The current financial/banking/government system that dominates most of our societies may be close to a state of collapse, like the shoddy, illegitimate edifice it is; in fact it would’ve collapsed already if our governments hadn’t stepped in and performed a rescue act for the sake of The System and at the expense of their citizens, instead of looking to reform or revaluate that System (2008 should’ve been its end, in fact). But as this state of collapse continues to loom, the powers at the top of the pyramid will become more and more desperate and more and more ruthless, and therefore the governments they control will be forced more and more to take disastrous actions and follow disastrous, often immoral, policies all for the sake of protecting The System.
The Iraq War (Saddam Hussein, you might recall, was moving to convert oil payment from the dollar to the Euro), the War in Syria, and the utter devastation of Libya, are all symptoms of that severe Systems Failure and of the spiralling immorality and deception required to prevent that failure.
However, until and unless these criminal enterprises, mass deceptions and illegal policies are somehow brought to account via some kind of legal process, they will simply continue.
But of course it won’t happen any time soon, because the real criminals and conspirators are immune from justice or even being held to account. So much so that open War Criminals can live out their lives in privilege and luxury (or even run for the highest offices in some cases), while vast, organised operations like the ritual/sexual abuse of children in massive numbers in Britain, America and other nations by members of the ruling Establishment can be carried out permanently without prosecution or accountability, while government officials ensure their immunity from justice.
But these people, these institutions, are in essence not separate; again, they are all parts of the same system of illusion and control. Such institutions and networks of people are not here to service the interests of populations either in America or Britain or Europe or populations in countries like Libya, Syria, Iraq or any of Africa. People are, at best, statistics; at worst, ‘collateral damage’. Indeed the murder or displacement of entire populations are mere afterthoughts. Moreover, those powers are now covertly (and in some cases overtly) waging bloody war upon various societies and populations and via various means. Libya, as demonstrated, was a crucial part in enabling that.
With Resolution 1973 and the intervention in Libya, NATO and its member-governments have also set a precedent for future illegal military assaults on sovereign nations, including forced regime change (witness, after Gaddafi, the campaign to remove Bashar Assad and the government of Syria from power). And the UN has become simply a subservient vehicle to this end.
Conversely, the utter catastrophe of the Libya intervention and the vast deceptions employed to enable it may make us all less and less willing to believe our governments, our media or bodies like the UN in the future if and when any real ‘duty to protect’ situation or looming massacre may be in danger of occurring (another Screbrenica, for example). In every possible way, what was done in Libya has made the world a far worse, far more dangerous and far less honourable place.
Libya, more than anything else, is where and when the governments and mass media institutions of the West fully
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and finally lost their souls, and were not merely doing the work of ‘the Devil’, but had in fact become the Devil. ‘A coalition of demons’, Louis Farakhan had said – and it’s as apt a description as any.
Some news organisations, even mainstream ones including the BBC and CNN, and various journalists, are now belatedly willing to discuss Libya again and talk about various ‘errors’ in the NATO intervention. Again, it’s too little too late: they should’ve been addressing those issues *at the time*, instead of faking news coverage and running cynical propaganda. In failing to do so, they demonstrated their own worthlessness. And even when they talk about it now, they of course never address the real elephants in the room; such as what exactly hundreds of SAS Special-Forces personnel were doing in Libya with Al-Qaeda, such as why French Intelligence agents were in the Sirte mob at the moment of Gaddafi’s murder, or such as why for example the BBC aired fake protest footage and tried to pass it off as Libyan civilians… until they’re willing to address those issues (and more besides), nothing they have to say now has any value and none of it is worth our attention.
How about the corporate media giants apologise to their millions of viewers for their fake videos and various other deceptions? How about NATO be investigated for its war crimes? How about the UN Security Council be brought to task for its illegal warfare and its violations of the UN Charter? How about Nicolas Sarkosy, Hilary Clinton and all the others be investigated for their operations and be made to stand trial? How about an apology be formally issued to both the people of Libya and the few surviving members of the Gaddafi family? How about Saif al-Islam Gaddafi be released from prison?
How about our governments stop supporting Salafist/Islamist terrorists in Syria? How about enormous reparation payments be made to the people of Libya, with money invested into rebuilding the country and the infrastructure? How about each of our countries’ legal systems conducts an inquest into the actions of our government officials and Armed Forces? How about the financial institutions and the banking cartels face a public inquest? No?
No, I suppose not.
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What We Can Do: Our Only Real Power…
Reading this, you may then feel it is a hopeless scenario we observe.
You may think that there is no solution, no hope, and that opposing the corrupt, morally bankrupt forces that have hijacked control of our governments and international bodies is entirely futile. In some sense, that may be true. After all, the number of mainstream journalists willing to expose the truth are few, and the number of mainstream, reputable
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outlets willing to give voice to such journalists are even fewer. And virtually no politicians are willing (or to be fair, even able) to rock the boat or risk their own careers.
But there are things you can do.
The first thing is information. Share the information. Share articles like this one (and others like it) with your friends, family, and social networks. Tell people the truth even in casual conversations. And continue to support independent journalism and alternative media.
If you’re in the US, wherever Hilary Clinton goes, bring up Benghazi and bring up the leaked Pentagon tapes. Bring up the fact that Gaddafi’s convoy was travelling under a white flag of truce when it was attacked. If you’re in France, ambush Nicholas Sarkosy’s public events wherever you can: ask him if he ordered the killing of Gaddafi. Ask him why French Intelligence agents were in Sirte. If you’re in the UK, ask David Cameron and co why SAS troops were in Libya disguised as Arabs; ask them at every opportunity.
Write letters to your local representatives: bombard them with mail asking pertinent questions. Bombard the comments-sections of news websites when the subject comes up and write letters into the newspapers. Start petitions. Spread this information far and wide. Tweet it out on Twitter, make posts on Facebook; hell, graffiti it on walls. The criminals may get away with the crime, but don’t let them get away with a clear conscience and don’t let them get away with their reputations intact. Point the finger – always. Make their crimes follow them around for the rest of their lives like ghosts.
And there are some things that can be done, some actions, even if limited in effect, that can be undertaken. For example, the government of Malaysia recently convicted George W. Bush and Tony Blair in absentia of ‘War Crimes’ for the illegal invasion of Iraq. Governments – even of the smallest nations – could all do this too, and could do it in regard to Libya or Syria (or any other future conspiracy). It may not result in immediate trials or legal actions, but it sends an important message and creates a new climate – a climate of accountability and consequence; if more governments did this over time, the accumulative effect could be massive, along with the embarrassment to the accused governments and the stigma.
Or, for another example, I was recently contacted by a journalist based in Turkey, who informed me of the formal filing he’d made with the International Criminal Court to indict the ‘United States, Turkey and Their Global Gang’ (as he put it) of War Crimes in Syria. This endeavour may not accomplish anything; but symbolically it is immensely significant – and the more people there are, especially people of good standing, who do this, the more a positive accumulative effect may be accomplished.
The UK Parliament has in fact just begun an official inquiry into the British government’s role in the Libyan crime of 2011. This is something I hadn’t imagined would be done when I started compiling this document. It’s still too little too late, and it is only being done because the dire consequences of the 2011 Criminal Conspiracy are becoming an inconvenience to British and European security. Even so, it’s something. And the inquiry is also accepting submissions from anyone with relevant information of the subject. If anyone reading this wishes to share any information from this document with the inquiry, do feel free to do so.
It is up to people like us, people like you. Because one thing has become entirely clear in recent years: we cannot rely on (or even trust) our news corporations or most of our
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mainstream papers and journalists to challenge these crimes or their perpetrators: as Libya/2011 demonstrated, they are in fact, for the most part, in on the crime. It is up to people like us to continue to counter the narrative.
And most of all, be awake to the reality. Know that you are being lied to. Boycott the corporate media and its empire of lies: switch off and bankrupt them. And think twice before voting for parties and politicians that have been complicit or instrumental in these crimes. By voting for them, you are validating their crimes.
These are the things we can do. It may not seem like much; but we are not criminals, but law-abiding citizens, and information – and how we use that information – is our only real power.
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A Final Word: ‘Here’s to the Good Guys’…
So let’s say a final word about Muammar Gaddafi; a man who, in 2011 (right before the ‘uprising’ began), was, as I said at the beginning, a frontrunner for Amnesty International USA’s online poll for “Human Rights Hero, 2011”.
And this just illustrates how big a gulf exists between reality and popular perception.
The one thing you could never do was define Gaddafi in a simple sentence. In life, and beyond death, he remains difficult to make any blanket statements about. I don’t generally lionise people when it comes to politics or world affairs, and I would never claim Gaddafi was a ‘hero’ in any absolute sense; he was certainly a hero in 2011 and he died a hero. But life is too complicated and international affairs too nebulous and mired in corruption and agendas to make general statements about political figures.
In some ways he was an echo of the kind of world-changing, groundbreaking figures that existed in long gone times; he was a modern equivalent of an Augustus, or of an ancient Greek styled ‘Statesman-Philosopher’ type. As such, perhaps he was simply not fit for this time – not someone the current world order could tolerate.
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AllAfrica.com predicted it “would take 50 years” before historians could decide whether Gaddafi was a “martyr or villain.” I tend to wonder, in fact, if in 50 years time (or less) history will record Gaddafi in a very different light to the fake, contrived demonisation campaign that Western governments and media maintained for so many years. In an article in The Final Call, Africa journalist Tingba Muhammad described Gaddafi as ‘a man whose progressive record of accomplishments very well may be unmatched by anyone who has ever led a nation in modern times.’
The ‘Mad Dog’ of the Middle East was what Ronald Reagan called him; a slur that was readily adopted and propagated by the corporate media for decades. By propagating and popularising this caricature they could essentially deflect attention away from the actual progress that was being made in Libyan society or the reforms and systems Gaddafi had helped implement and it also ensured that anything Gaddafi ever said was treated with either mockery or derision by most people in the West. It was simple propaganda strategy: by making a caricature or joke out of someone, you nullify them in the popular mindset, ensuring they’ll never be taken seriously.
While Gaddafi certainly did have admirers and supporters in various parts of the world, in the West he was effectively nullified from very early on. This popular ‘joke version’ of Gaddafi was so embedded in people’s perception that by the time the horrors of 2011 arrived, no one was willing to listen to him or speak in his defense, and even as he was dragged to his death, people in the West were still making jokes.
In reality he was the lion who was set upon by a nocturnal alliance of wolves, jackals and vultures. “If he resists and does not yield to their demands,” Fidel Castro had said, “he will enter history as one of the great figures.” Perhaps in some ways this was the only fitting end for the man who had been the ultimate revolutionary.
Even as his country was being ravaged and everything he’d built for four decades was being destroyed around him, still it was all a joke, a game, to Western officials and corporate-owned media. Addresses to his people that he was making amid this spiralling nightmare were mocked and parodied not only all over the Internet but also by mainstream, ‘responsible’ media institutions. There was even an insulting parody video of one of these speeches, set to music, of Gaddafi going viral on the web, made by an Israeli with too much times on his hands (Noy Alooshe, who profited nicely from his ‘satire’; and it was called ‘Zenga, Zenga’): all of this while the combined military force of the Western world was dropping bombs on his cities, murdering the civilian
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population and also murdering his family, including his three grandchildren. But still they joked, revelling in the destruction and despair.
The gruesome video of Gaddafi’s murder, which was a horrific display of unhinged brutality and extreme violence, was in essence a precursor to the kind of barbaric crimes that were soon to be committed in Syria and later by ISIS/ISIL in Iraq. People should’ve understood there and then that the species of ‘freedom fighters’ NATO and our governments were championing in Libya were nothing to celebrate. However, even Gaddafi’s horrific death didn’t draw condemnations from world leaders or even from the mainstream media; on the contrary, everyone went along with it happily, everyone seemed perfectly comfortable with this ignoble end for this ‘mad tyrant’.
Hilary Clinton, the woman probably destined to be the next American President, even celebrated his murder with unabashed glee; she was joined by major newspapers and media commentators rubbing their hands together in smug satisfaction that the ‘Mad Dog of the Middle East’ was being put down, all while our politicians and leaders made stomach-turningly false and scripted gestures and statements to portray themselves as noble, humanitarian saviours coming to the aid of the innocent civilians.
The Murdoch press, particularly Fox News in America and the The Sun newspaper in Britain, revelled in his death, showing his bloodied face and his last moments of life on its front-cover, with the headline ‘That’s For Lockerbie!’ (note for the terminally stupid: Gaddafi and Libya had nothing to do with Lockerbie).
I’ll say this without any hesitation: anyone who bought that propaganda, anyone who fell for that mass deception, is an absolute idiot.
We inhabit a moral vacuum, of course; in which for one moment we clap and cheer at the callous obliteration of a small nation and at the brutal murder of its leader and in the next we’re back to watching celebrity news stories and all the other bullshit that constitutes the anaesthesia of our vacuous, modern cultural landscape. The Big Brother media says this man is evil, then this man must be evil. The government says this is a humanitarian intervention, then great – we’re the good guys.
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We raise our glasses to victory; a great victory for the ‘good guys’. And then we turn away and go back to our business. Because that’s the programme; and it’s far easier to join in the programme and to laugh at the 69 year-old man being brutally murdered by the terrorist mob as having gotten ‘his just desserts’ than to consider that the real Bad Guys are actually the criminals running our governments and institutions. And we mock and belittle the silly ‘little country’ with its quaint little system of government and we dismiss Gaddafi’s ‘Direct Democracy’ system as some kind of sham, sparing little thought to the fact that our own democracies are in fact largely illusions being run by unelected powers and that we are nothing more than spectators to a shared, inherited fantasy.
We have all been conned, of course; you are all being conned right now, every day.
But ‘here’s to the Good Guys’, as they say. ‘Here’s to the Good Guys’; the criminals, the terrorists, the murderers, the thieves, the bankers, the corporations and their government bedfellows, Hilary and the Bohemian Grove Satanists, Sarkosy and the assassins, McCain and the criminal rebels, Cameron and the PR-Men for Murder Inc. Here’s to ‘The Good Guys’; “we came, we saw, he died,” as Hilary so gleefully put it.
In closing, let’s end with the sentiments of Muammar Gaddafi himself, back in that extraordinary UN speech of 2009. Rallying against the undemocratic nature of the UN, the dictatorial powers of the super-powers and the Security Council and calling for all nations to be considered equal in the discourse, Gaddafi calls one last time for change and revolution, warning that “Otherwise we will all become victims and sacrifices and every year it would be the turn of someone…”
“We are not animals and we are not sacrifices. We are defending our existence, we are defending ourselves, our sons and our grandsons,” he said. “We have the right to live. This globe is not only for the super-powers. God created it for all of us. We should never have to live in humiliation…”
In closing, I can think of only one fitting thing to end with and it’s this; here’s to the Good Guys – and here’s to Muammar Gaddafi.
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Full List of Links/References
Gaddafi’s LIBYA: Before the 2011 Crisis
An In-Depth Study of Gaddafi’s Libya; https://theburningbloggerofbedlam.wordpress.com/2015/08/13/the-life-death-of-gaddafis-libya-a-study-of-the-libya-that-no-longer-exists-1969-2011/
UN’s Human Development Index report from 2010
January 2011 PDF/report on Libya by the UN Human Rights Council
February 2011: The Beginning of the End…
You Tube: Gaddafi’s now infamous interview with the BBC, ABC and The Sunday Times, February 2011;
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The Collapse of a Nation: How It Started…
Video analysis of first days of Libya crisis, compiled by Dr R. Breki, G Oheda and David Roberts (http://globalciviliansforpeace.com/)
Example of more contrived coverage of the Libya crisis, using unverifiable sources, uncredited data and images; http://www.nbcnews.com/id/42164455/ns/world_news-mideastn_africa/?gt1=43001
Gerald A. Perreira, discusses Gaddafi and the fake media coverage, in July 2011 on the Center For Research on Globalisation;
‘Libya Race, Empire, and the Invention of Humanitarian Emergency’ by Maximilian C. Forte (Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Concordia University, Canada); ‘even a year later, no evidence of Gaddafi’s crimes…’
Human Rights Watch asks whether Gaddafi’s murder was a ‘war crime’; also uncovers evidence of additional executions, torture and rebel crimes;
138 Muammar Gaddafi’s death might have been a war crime: ICC
Mainstream media reports that Gaddafi’s homes and properties ‘bombed for days on end’; http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13585019
End-Game: The Gaddafi Check-Mate
Hugh Roberts of the International Crisis Group on why London, Paris and Washington were unwilling to enter any negotiations, discuss any ceasefire or peaceful solution; http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n22/hugh-roberts/who-said-gaddafi-had-to-go
Gaddafi’s fascinating 2010 interview with Australian interviewer George Negus, just months before the start of the Libyan crisis;
The Citizens Commission on Benghazi (CCB) report/PDF;
I was recently contacted by a journalist based in Turkey, who told informed me of the formal filing he’d made with the International Criminal Court to indict the ‘United States, Turkey and Their Global Gang’ (as he put it) of War Crimes in Syria; http://www.brighteningglance.org/slaughter-in-syria-war-crimes-charges-against-turkey-and-america.html
The UK Parliament has in fact just begun an official inquiry into the British government’s role in the Libyan crime of 2011 (feel free to submit information from this document to the inquest via the link below if you wish to); http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/foreign-affairs-committee/inquiries1/parliament-2015/libya-policy/
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Copyright Notice
It has proven impossible to track down the individual copyright owners for most of the images used in this document, as their various sources have not specified the copyright owners.
All images used in this document are used on a ‘Fair Use’ basis. This is a non-profit work.
If you have any objection or complaint concerning an image used in this document, please contact me directly via this contact-form – https://theburningbloggerofbedlam.wordpress.com/contact-the-burning-blogger/ – and the offending item will be immediately removed from all versions of the document. Thank you.
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S. Awan is a freelance writer, novelist, blogger, researcher, smoker and (failed) journalist who has written for various websites and minor print publications.
More importantly he is an objector to immoral crime, murder, illegal warfare and mass-media deception.
His personal blog is ‘The Burning Blogger of Bedlam’; a cultural, political, and entertainment site. http://theburningbloggerofbedlam.wordpress.com
طهران ترفض عرضاً إماراتياً للانسحاب: تخطّيتم الخطوط الحمر
«أنصار الله» لأبو ظبي: سنحيّد منشآتكم الحيوية
إبن راشد لإبن زايد: صاروخ يمني واحد في دبي يدمّر كل ما بنيناه
«الإمارات تنسحب من اليمن». حتى اللحظة، يجري التعامل مع الحدث الذي أُعلِن قبل أيام بالكثير من التشكيك. لكن المعلومات المستقاة من مصادر واسعة الاطلاع تُظهر قراراً استراتيجياً اتخذه حكام أبو ظبي نتيجة التهديد بوصول الحريق إلى داخل «دارِهم». ولأجل إبعاد هذه الكأس عنهم، استنجدوا بطهران وموسكو
«لا شيء لدينا نتفاوض حوله معكم بعدما تخطّيتم الخطوط الحمر». كان هذا الرد الحاسم الذي سمعه وفد أمني إماراتي رفيع المستوى زار طهران قبل أسابيع قليلة، عقب التفجيرات التي استهدفت سفناً تجارية وناقلات نفط في ميناء الفجيرة الاماراتي في 12 أيار الماضي.
الوفد الرفيع (الذي يتردد أنه زار طهران مرتين) حمل معه، وفق مصادر دبلوماسية مطلعة، ما اعتقد الاماراتيون يومها أنه «عرض لا يُقاوم». ثلاثة بنود واضحة: الأول، إعادة العلاقات بين البلدين إلى طبيعتها. الثاني، تأمين حماية مشتركة من البلدين للممرات البحرية لتأمين تدفق النفط من كل الدول المطلّة على الخليج. الثالث، والأهم: نحن مستعدون لمغادرة اليمن!
لم ييأس الاماراتيون بعد الردّ الايراني الصارم، فتوسّلوا وساطة روسية مع طهران اثناء زيارة وزير الخارجية الاماراتي عبدالله بن زايد لموسكو في 25 حزيران الماضي. لكن الجواب كان واحداً: لا شيء لدينا لنفاوض حوله. كان واضحاً لدى الايرانيين أن أبو ظبي تبحث عن «استراتيجية خروج» من المستنقع اليمني، وتريد بيعها. بضاعة كاسدة كهذه لا تُسوّق في بازار طهران، «ويمكنهم أن يخرجوا كما دخلوا».
ولكن، ما هي خلفيات هذا التحوّل الاماراتي؟
(أرشيف)
بصرف النظر عمّن يقف خلف هجوم ميناء الفجيرة الواقع على خليج عُمان (جنوب مضيق هرمز)، بدا واضحاً للجميع أن أي حظر على تصدير النفط الايراني يعني ان الدول الخليجية لن تكون قادرة على تصدير نفطها متجاوزة السيطرة الايرانية على المضيق. قُرئ الهجوم على انه تحدّ غير مسبوق واستفزاز افترضت الرياض وأبو ظبي انه سيشعل شرارة الحرب الأميركية المنتظرة على الجار الايراني المزعج. خيّبت واشنطن هذه الآمال، تماماً كما خيّبتها بعد إسقاط قوات الدفاع الجوي التابعة للحرس الثوري طائرة تجسس أميركية في 20 حزيران الماضي. أُريد للحدثين أن يشكّلا زلزال «14 شباط ايراني» على شاكلة زلزال «14 شباط اللبناني» (اغتيال رئيس الحكومة اللبناني رفيق الحريري)، وما تلاه من تغييرات اقليمية ودولية. لكن الأميركي كان في واد آخر.
أدرك الاماراتيون أن الأميركيين إذا لم يهاجموا ايران الآن فقد لا يهاجمونها أبداً. لذا جاءت انعطافة أبو ظبي الأخيرة «بالانتقال من استراتيجية القوة العسكرية أولاً إلى استراتيجية السلام أولاً»، بعد أربع سنوات ونصف سنة من انخراطها في الحرب على الشعب اليمني. إرهاصات القرار بدأت مع زيارة وزير الخارجية الاماراتي لموسكو وإعلانه أن التحقيق في حادث الفجيرة لم يشر بدقة الى الجهة الفاعلة، مشيراً الى أن بلاده غير معنية بأي تصعيد مع طهران.
وفق المصادر المطلعة، فإن «شبه الانسحاب الاماراتي هو، عملياً واستراتيجياً، قرار بالانسحاب يجري تظهيره كخروج ملطّف حتى لا تكون له تبعات الهزيمة». وقد حتمّت هذا القرار جملة اسباب، داخلية وخارجية، أولها وصول «قدرة التحمّل الاماراتية» لتبعات التورط في اليمن الى حدّها الأقصى على صعد عدة:
1) النزيف البشري الذي نجحت الامارات على مدى اربع سنوات ونصف سنة في التغطية عليه، وتمكنت أخيراً من الحد منه عبر الابتعاد عن المواجهات المباشرة واستخدام «أطر بديلة» تتمثل بمجموعات ميليشيوية يمنية جنّبت الجيش الاماراتي مزيداً من الخسائر، ولكن بعدما طالت هذه الخسائر معظم أبناء الطبقات الوسطى والفقيرة، ووصلت الى بعض أبناء العائلة الحاكمة.
2) النزيف الاقتصادي الذي بات يسبّب تململاً ليس في أبوظبي فحسب، وانما في بقية الامارات مع شعور بأن تبعات الحرب بدأت تترك تأثيرات استراتيجية على الاقتصاد القائم اساساً على التجارة والخدمات.
3) النزيف السياسي: مع التيقن بأن سقف الحرب بات مقفلاً على إمكان تحقيق انتصار واضح وناجز، وتخلخل الحلف الذي تقوده السعودية بخروج شركاء منه، شعر الاماراتيون بأنهم قادمون على تحمّل جزء أساسي من تبعات الهزيمة السياسية ويريدون تجنّب دفع جزء معتبر من هذا الثمن.
إلى ذلك، بدا أن وضع الاتحاد الاماراتي بات على المحك مع تصاعد تململ حكام الامارات الست من التماهي الكامل لرجل أبو ظبي القوي محمد بن زايد مع رجل الرياض القوي محمد بن سلمان في توتير العلاقات مع الجيران الخليجيين والجار الايراني، ومن التورط في الحرب اليمنية وأثمانها الاقتصادية. وفي المعلومات أن اجتماعاً عقد قبل أسابيع بين ثلاثي «أولاد زايد» (محمد وهزاع وطحنون) وحاكم دبي محمد بن راشد الذي تمثل إمارته «درّة النموذج الاماراتي»، أبلغهم فيه الأخير، بوضوح، أن هناك ضرورة ملحّة للخروج من هذا المستنقع. ولفت إلى ان «نزول صاروخ يمني واحد في واحد من شوارع دبي كفيل بانهيار الاقتصاد والتضحية بكل ما حققناه». كما سمع «أولاد زايد» كلاماً مماثلاً من حكام الفجيرة، أبدى فيه هؤلاء خشيتهم من ان السياسة الحالية قد تجعل إمارتهم ساحة أي معركة مقبلة، كونها واقعة على بحر عُمان، وخارج مضيق هرمز.
مصادر دبلوماسية: معلومات عن طلب إماراتي من القاهرة التوسط لإعادة تفعيل العلاقة مع دمشق
الأهم من كل ما سبق أن الاماراتيين لمسوا أن الاندفاعة اليمنية النوعية الأخيرة باتت قادرة على قلب الموازين الاستراتيجية للصراع بعد تفعيل أسلحة جديدة واستهداف منشآت حيوية كخط ينبع ومطار أبها وغيرهما، فيما أخفقت كل «الجدران الاستراتيجية» (كالباتريوت) في وجه هذه الهجمة. ووفق معلومات «الأخبار» فإن الامارات تلقّت رسالة واضحة من «أنصار الله»، بعدما لاحت بوادر انعطافتها الأخيرة، مفادها أن منشآتها الحيوية لن تكون هدفاً للقصف «ومعركتنا ستكون حصراً مع السعوديين»، ما يفسر حصر القصف الأخير بالأهداف الحساسة السعودية.
في المحصلة، تؤكد المصادر أن التحول الاماراتي «ليس مناورة. هم أخفقوا أولاً في هجوم خليفة حفتر على طرابلس الغرب. وأخيراً أيقنوا أن واشنطن ليست جاهزة لمواجهة مباشرة مع ايران». لذلك، «ستكمل الامارات استدارتها لتشمل الموقف من سوريا». وتلفت في هذا السياق الى «معلومات عن طلب إماراتي من القاهرة بالتوسط مع دمشق» لإعادة تفعيل العلاقة من حيث توقفت بعدما فرملها الأميركيون مطلع هذه السنة.
Ahead of the G20 Osaka Summit, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke with The Financial Times Editor Lionel Barber and Moscow Bureau Chief Henry Foy, The Kremlin, Moscow, June 27, 2019.
Lionel Barber: Mr President, you head for Osaka shortly as the senior statesman at the G20. Nobody has been to so many international meetings of this grouping and the G7 over the last 20 years while you have been in charge of Russia. Before we talk about the G20 agenda and what you hope to achieve, we know that there are rising tensions between America and China in trade, the risk of conflict in the Gulf. I would be very grateful if you could talk a bit about how you have seen the world change over the last 20 years while you have been in power.
President of Russia Vladimir Putin: First, I have not been in power for all these 20 years. As you may know, I was Prime Minister for four years, and that is not the highest authority in the Russian Federation. But nevertheless, I have been around for a long time in government and in the upper echelons, so I can judge what is changing and how. In fact, you just said it yourself, asking what has changed and how. You mentioned the trade wars and the Persian Gulf developments. I would cautiously say the situation has not changed for the better, but I remain optimistic to a certain extent. But, to put it bluntly, the situation has definitely become more dramatic and explosive.
Lionel Barber: Do you believe that the world now has become more fragmented?
Vladimir Putin: Of course, because during the Cold War, the bad thing was the Cold War. It is true. But there were at least some rules that all participants in international communication more or less adhered to or tried to follow. Now, it seems that there are no rules at all. In this sense, the world has become more fragmented and less predictable, which is the most important and regrettable thing.
Lionel Barber: We will return to this theme of the world without rules, fragmentation, more transactional. But first, Mr President, tell us what you want to achieve in Osaka, in terms of your relationships with these other parties? What are your main goals for the summit?
Vladimir Putin: I would very much like all the participants in this event, and the G20, in my opinion, is a key international economic development forum today, so I would like all the G20 members to reaffirm their intention – at least an intention – to work out some general rules that everyone would follow, and show their commitment and dedication to strengthening international financial and trade institutions.
Everything else is details that complement the main topics one way or another. We certainly support Japan’s Presidency. As for the development of modern technology, the information world, the information economy, as well as our Japanese colleagues’ attention to matters such as longevity and the environment – all this is extremely important, and we will certainly support it and will take part in all these discussions. Even though it is hard to expect any breakthroughs or landmark decisions in the current conditions; we can hardly count on it today. But in any case, there is hope at least that during these general discussions and bilateral meetings we will be able to smooth out the existing disagreements and lay a foundation, a basis for positive movement forward.
Lionel Barber: You will have a meeting with Mohammad bin Salman in Osaka. Can we expect an extension of the current agreement on oil production? Limitations?
Vladimir Putin: As you know, Russia is not an OPEC member, even though it is among the world’s largest producers. Our daily production is estimated at 11.3 million barrels, I believe. The United States has surged ahead of us, though. However, we believe that our production stabilisation agreements with Saudi Arabia and OPEC in general have had a positive effect on market stabilisation and forecasting.
I believe both energy producers, in this case, oil producing countries, and consumers are interested in this, because stability is definitely in short supply at present. And our agreements with Saudi Arabia and other OPEC members undoubtedly strengthen stability.
As for whether we will extend the agreement, you will find out in the next few days. I had a meeting on this issue with the top executives of our largest oil companies and Government members right before this interview.
Lionel Barber: They are a little bit frustrated. They would like to produce more. Is that correct?
Vladimir Putin: They have a smart policy. It is not about increasing production, although that is a major component in the work of large oil companies. It is about the market situation. They take a comprehensive view of the situation, as well as of their revenues and expenses. Of course, they are also thinking about boosting the industry, timely investments, ways to attract and use modern technology, as well as about making this vital industry more attractive for investors.
However, dramatic price hikes or slumps will not contribute to market stability and will not encourage investment. This is why we discussed all these issues in their totality today.
Lionel Barber: Mr President, you have observed four American presidents at close quarters and will maybe five, you have had direct experience. So, how is Mr Trump different?
Vladimir Putin: We are all different. No two people are the same, just like there are no identical sets of fingerprints. Anyone has his or her own advantages, and let the voters judge their shortcomings. On the whole, I maintained sufficiently good-natured and stable relations with all the leaders of the United States. I had an opportunity to communicate more actively with some of them.
The first US President I came into contact with was Bill Clinton. Generally, I viewed this as a positive experience. We established sufficiently stable and business-like ties for a short period of time because his tenure was already coming to an end. I was only a very young president then who had just started working. I continue to recall how he established partner-like relations with me. I remain very grateful to him for this.
There have been different times, and we had to address various problems with all other colleagues. Unfortunately, this often involved debates, and our opinions did not coincide on some matters that, in my opinion, can be called key aspects for Russia, the United States and the entire world. For example, this includes the unilateral US withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty that, as we have always believed, and as I am still convinced, was the cornerstone of the entire international security system.
We debated this matter for a long time, argued and suggested various solutions. In any event, I made very energetic attempts to convince our US partners not to withdraw from the Treaty. And, if the US side still wanted to withdraw from the Treaty, it should have done so in such a way as to guarantee international security for a long historical period. I suggested this, I have already discussed this in public, and I repeat that I did this because I consider this matter to be very important. I suggested working jointly on missile-defence projects that should have involved the United States, Russia and Europe. They stipulated specific parameters of this cooperation, determined dangerous missile approaches and envisioned technology exchanges, the elaboration of decision-making mechanisms, etc. Those were absolutely specific proposals.
I am convinced that the world would be a different place today, had our US partners accepted this proposal. Unfortunately, this did not happen. We can see that the situation is developing in another direction; new weapons and cutting-edge military technology are coming to the fore. Well, this is not our choice. But, today, we should at least do everything so as to not aggravate the situation.
Lionel Barber: Mr President, you are a student of history. You have had many hours of conversation with Henry Kissinger. You almost certainly read his book, World Order. With Mr Trump, we have seen something new, something much more transactional. He is very critical of alliances and allies in Europe. Is this something that is to Russia’s advantage?
Vladimir Putin: It would be better to ask what would be to America’s advantage in this case. Mr Trump is not a career politician. He has a distinct world outlook and vision of US national interests. I do not accept many of his methods when it comes to addressing problems. But do you know what I think? I think that he is a talented person. He knows very well what his voters expect from him.
Russia has been accused, and, strange as it may seem, it is still being accused, despite the Mueller report, of mythical interference in the US election. What happened in reality? Mr Trump looked into his opponents’ attitude to him and saw changes in American society, and he took advantage of this.
You and I are talking ahead of the G20 meeting. It is an economic forum, and it will undoubtedly have discussions on globalisation, global trade and international finance.
Has anyone ever given a thought to who actually benefited and what benefits were gained from globalisation, the development of which we have been observing and participating in over the past 25 years, since the 1990s?
China has made use of globalisation, in particular, to pull millions of Chinese out of poverty.
What happened in the United States, and how did it happen? In the United States, the leading US companies –the companies, their managers, shareholders and partners – made use of these benefits. The middle class hardly benefitted from globalisation. The take-home pay in the US (we are likely to talk later about real incomes in Russia, which need special attention from the Government). The middle class in the United States has not benefited from globalisation; it was left out when this pie was divided up.
The Trump team sensed this very keenly and clearly, and they used this in the election campaign. It is where you should look for reasons behind Trump’s victory, rather than in any alleged foreign interference. This is what we should be talking about here, including when it comes to the global economy.
I believe this may explain his seemingly extravagant economic decisions and even his relations with his partners and allies. He believes that the distribution of resources and benefits of globalisation in the past decade was unfair to the United States.
I am not going to discuss whether it was fair or not, and I will not say if what he is doing is right or wrong. I would like to understand his motives, which is what you asked me about. Maybe this could explain his unusual behaviour.
Lionel Barber: I definitely want to come back to the Russian economy. But what you said is absolutely fascinating. Here you are, the President of Russia, defending globalisation along with President Xi whereas Mr Trump is attacking globalisation and talking about America First. How do you explain this paradox?
Vladimir Putin: I don’t think that his desire to make America first is a paradox. I want Russia to be first, and that is not perceived as a paradox; there is nothing unusual there. As for the fact that he is attacking some manifestations of globalisation, I made that point earlier. He seems to believe that the results of globalisation could have been much better for the United States than they are. These globalisation results are not producing the desired effect for the United States, and he is beginning this campaign against certain elements of globalisation. This concerns everyone, primarily major participants in the system of international economic collaboration, including allies.
Lionel Barber: Mr President, you have had many meetings with President Xi, and Russia and China have definitely come closer. Are you putting too many eggs in the China basket? Because Russian foreign policy, including under your leadership, has always made a virtue of talking to everybody.
Vladimir Putin: First of all, we have enough eggs, but there are not that many baskets where these eggs can be placed. This is the first point.
Secondly, we always assess risks.
Thirdly, our relations with China are not motivated by timeserving political any other considerations. Let me point out that the Friendship Treaty with China was signed in 2001, if memory serves, long before the current situation and long before the current economic disagreements, to put it mildly, between the United States and China.
We do not have to join anything, and we do not have to direct our policy against anyone. In fact, Russia and China are not directing their policy against anyone. We are just consistently implementing our plans for expanding cooperation. We have been doing this since 2001, and we are just consistently implementing these plans.
Take a look at what is written there. We have not done anything that transcends the framework of these accords. So there is nothing unusual here, and you should not search for any implications of the Chinese-Russian rapprochement. Of course, we assess the current global developments; our positions coincide on a number of matters on the current global agenda, including our attitude towards compliance with generally accepted rules in trade, the international financial system, payments and settlements.
The G20 has played a very tangible role. Since its inception in 2008, when the financial crisis flared up, the G20 has accomplished many useful things for stabilising the global financial system, for developing global trade and ensuring its stabilisation. I am talking about the tax aspect of the global agenda, the fight against corruption, and so on. Both China and Russia adhere to this concept.
The G20 has accomplished a lot by advocating quota changes at the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Both Russia and China share this approach. Considering the major increase in the global economic share of emerging markets, this is fair and right, and we have been voicing this position from the very beginning. And we are glad that this continues to develop and to proceed in line with changes in global trade.
Over the past 25 years or so (25, I believe), the share of G7 countries in the global GDP has declined from 58 percent to 40 percent. This should also be reflected in international institutions in some way. That is the common position of Russia and China. This is fair, and there is nothing special about this.
Yes, Russia and China have many coinciding interests, this is true. This is what motivates our frequent contacts with President Xi Jinping. Of course, we have also established very warm personal relations, and this is natural.
Therefore, we are moving in line with our mainstream bilateral agenda that was formulated as far back as 2001, but we quickly respond to global developments. We never direct our bilateral relations against anyone. We are not against anyone, we are for ourselves.
Lionel Barber: I am relieved that this egg supply is strong. But the serious point, Mr President, is, you are familiar with Graham Allison‘s book, The Thucydides’s Trap. The danger of tensions or a military conflict risk between a dominant power and a rising power, America and China. Do you think that there is a risk of a military conflict in your time between you, America and China?
Vladimir Putin: You know, the entire history of mankind has always been full of military conflicts, but since the appearance of nuclear weapons the risk of global conflicts has decreased due to the potential global tragic consequences for the entire population of the planet in case such a conflict happens between two nuclear states. I hope it will not come to this.
However, of course, we have to admit that it is not only about China’s industrial subsidies on the one hand or the tariff policy of the United States on the other. First of all, we are talking about different development platforms, so to speak, in China and in the United States. They are different and you, being a historian, probably will agree with me. They have different philosophies in both foreign and domestic policies, probably.
But I would like to share some personal observations with you. They are not about allied relations with one country or a confrontation with the other; I am just observing what is going on at the moment. China is showing loyalty and flexibility to both its partners and opponents. Maybe this is related to the historical features of Chinese philosophy, their approach to building relations.
Therefore I do not think that there would be some such threats from China. I cannot imagine that, really. But it is hard to say whether the United States would have enough patience not to make any rash decisions, but to respect its partners even if there are disagreements. But I hope, I would like to repeat this again, I hope that there would not be any military confrontation.
Lionel Barber: Arms control. We know that the INF agreement is in grave jeopardy. Is there any place, from Russia’s point of view, for future arms control agreements or are we in a new phase when we are likely to see a new nuclear arms race?
Vladimir Putin: I believe there is such a risk.
As I said already, the United States unilaterally withdrew from the ABM Treaty, and has recently quit the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty as well. But this time, it did not just quit but found a reason to quit, and this reason was Russia. I do not think Russia means anything to them in this case, because this war theatre, the war theatre in Europe is unlikely to be interesting to the US, despite the expansion of NATO and NATO’s contingent near our borders. The fact remains, the US has withdrawn from the treaty. Now the agenda is focused on theStrategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START). I hope that I will be able to talk about it with Donald if we happen to meet in Osaka.
We said that we are ready to hold talks and to extend this treaty between the United States and Russia, but we have not seen any relevant initiative from our American partners. They keep silent, while the treaty expires in 2021. If we do not begin talks now, it would be over because there would be no time even for formalities.
Our previous conversation with Donald showed that the Americans seem to be interested in this, but still they are not making any practical steps. So if this treaty ceases to exist, then there would be no instrument in the world to curtail the arms race. And this is bad.
Lionel Barber: Exactly, the gloves are off. Is there any chance of a triangular agreement between China, Russia and America on intermediate nuclear forces or is that a dream, pie in the sky? Would you support such an end?
Vladimir Putin: As I said at the very beginning, we will support any agreement that can advance our cause, that is, help us contain the arms race.
It should be said that so far, the level and the development scale of China’s nuclear forces are much lower than in the United States and Russia. China is a huge power that has the capability to build up its nuclear potential. This will likely happen in the future, but so far our capabilities are hardly comparable. Russia and the United States are the leading nuclear powers, which is why the agreement was signed between them. As for whether China will join these efforts, you can ask our Chinese friends.
Lionel Barber: Russia is a Pacific power as well as a European and Asian power. It is a Pacific power. You have seen what the Chinese are doing in terms of their buildup of their Navy and their maritime strength. How do you deal with those potential security problems, territorial disputes in the Pacific? Does Russia have a role to play in a new security arrangement?
Vladimir Putin: You mentioned the build-up of naval forces in China. China’s total defence spending is $117 billion, if memory serves. The US defence spending is over $700 billion. And you are trying to scare the world with the build-up of China’s military might? It does not work with this scale of military spending. No, it does not.
As for Russia, we will continue to develop our Pacific Fleet as planned. Of course, we also respond to global developments and to what happens in relations between other countries. We can see all of this, but it does not affect our defence development plans, including those in the Russian Far East.
We are self-sufficient, and we are confident. Russia is the largest continental power. But we have a nuclear submarine base in the Far East, where we are developing our defence potential in accordance with our plans, including so that we can ensure safety on the Northern Sea Route, which we are planning to develop.
We intend to attract many partners to this effort, including our Chinese partners. We may even reach an agreement with American shippers and with India, which has also indicated its interest in the Northern Sea Route.
I would say that we are also primed for cooperation in the Asia Pacific region, and I have grounds to believe that Russia can make a considerable, tangible and positive contribution to stabilising the situation.
Lionel Barber: Can we just turn to North Korea? How do you assess the current situation and do you believe that in the end, any deal or agreement will have to accept the fact that North Korea has nuclear weapons and that total dismantling is just not possible? If I could just add, Mr President, I ask you this because Russia has a fairly small but still a land border with North Korea.
Vladimir Putin: You know, whether we recognise North Korea as a nuclear power or not, the number of nuclear charges it has will not decrease. We must proceed from modern realities, which are that nuclear weapons pose a threat to international peace and security.
Another pertinent question is where this problem stems from. The tragedies of Libya and Iraq have inspired many countries to ensure their security at all costs.
What we should be talking about is not how to make North Korea disarm, but how to ensure the unconditional security of North Korea and how to make any country, including North Korea feel safe and protected by international law that is strictly honoured by all members of the international community. This is what we should be thinking about.
We should think about guarantees, which we should use as the basis for talks with North Korea. We must be patient, respect it and, at the same time, take into account the dangers arising from this, the dangers of the nuclear status and the presence of nuclear weapons.
Of course, the current situation is fraught with unpredictable scenarios, which we must avoid.
Lionel Barber: You have obviously thought of this as an experienced foreign policy and security analyst and a strategist. How do you see the North Asia security situation over the next five to ten years, given you have Russia, you have China, you have Korea and Japan?
Vladimir Putin: You have said correctly that we have a common border, even if a short one, with North Korea, therefore, this problem has a direct bearing on us. The United States is located across the ocean, and the UK is located far away, while we are right here, in this region, and the North Korean nuclear range is not far away from our border. This why this concerns us directly, and we never stop thinking about it.
I would like to return to my answer to your previous question. We must respect North Korea’s legitimate security concerns. We must show it respect, and we must find a way of ensuring its security that will satisfy North Korea. If we do this, the situation may take a turn nobody can imagine today.
Do you remember what turn the situation took after the Soviet Union adopted the policy of détente? Do I need to say anything else?
Lionel Barber: Mr President, you have been in power or very close to power. I think in Davos I said to you when we met – you were not in power but still calling all the shots. After 20 years at the top or near the top, has your appetite for risk increased?
Vladimir Putin: It did not increase or decrease.Risk must always be well-justified. But this is not the case when one can use the popular Russian phrase: “He who doesn’t take risks, never drinks champagne.” This is not the case. Quite possibly, risks are inevitable when one has to make certain decisions. Depending on the scale of any decision, risks can be small or serious.
Any decision-making process is accompanied by risk. Before taking one’s chances, one has to meticulously assess everything. Therefore, risk based on an assessment of the situation and the possible consequences of the decisions is possible and even inevitable. Foolish risks overlooking the real situation and failing to clearly comprehend the consequences are unacceptable because they can jeopardise the interests of a great number of people.
Lionel Barber: How big was this Syria risk in terms of your decision to intervene?
Vladimir Putin: It was sufficiently high. However, of course, I thought carefully about this well in advance, and I considered all the circumstances and all the pros and cons. I considered how the situation around Russia would develop and the possible consequences. I discussed this matter with my aides and ministers, including those in charge of law enforcement agencies and other senior officials. In the long run, I decided that the positive effect from our active involvement in Syrian affairs for Russia and the interests of the Russian Federation would far outweigh non-interference and passive observation of how an international terrorist organisation grows ever stronger near our borders.
Lionel Barber: What has the return been like on the risk taken in Syria?
Vladimir Putin: I believe that it has been a good and positive return. We have accomplished even more than I had expected. First of all, many militants planning to return to Russia were eliminated. This implies several thousand people. They were planning to return to Russia or neighbouring countries with which we do not maintain any visa regime. Both aspects are equally dangerous for us. This is the first thing.
Secondly, we have managed to stabilise the situation in a nearby region, one way or another. This is also highly important. Therefore, we have directly strengthened Russia’s domestic security. This is the third thing.
Fourthly, we have established sufficiently good business-like relations with all regional countries, and our positions in the Middle East region have become more stable. Indeed, we have established very good, business-like, partner-like and largely allied relations with many regional countries, including Iran, Turkey and other countries.
Primarily, this concerns Syria, we have managed to preserve Syrian statehood, no matter what, and we have prevented Libya-style chaos there. And a worst-case scenario would spell out negative consequences for Russia.
Besides, I would like to openly speak of the mobilisation of the Russian Armed Forces. Our Armed Forces have received such practical experience that they could not have obtained during any peace-time exercises.
Lionel Barber: Are you committed to Mr al-Assad remaining in power or can we see, at some point, the transition in Syria that Russia would support, which would not be Libya?
Vladimir Putin: I believe that the Syrian people should be free to choose their own future. At the same time, I would like the actions of external players to be substantiated and, just as in the case of the risks you have mentioned, predictable and understandable, so that we can consider at least our next moves.
When we discussed this matter only recently with the previous US administration, we said, suppose Assad steps down today, what will happen tomorrow?
Your colleague did well to laugh, because the answer we got was very amusing. You cannot even imagine how funny it was. They said, “We don’t know.” But when you do not know what happens tomorrow, why shoot from the hip today? This may sound primitive, but this is how it is.
Therefore, we prefer to look at problems thoroughly from all possible angles and not to be in any hurry. Of course, we are perfectly aware of what is happening in Syria. There are internal reasons for the conflict, and they should be dealt with. But both sides should do their bit. I am referring to the conflicting parties.
Lionel Barber: Mr President, does that same argument apply to Venezuela? In other words, you are not prepared to see a transition in Venezuela and you are absolutely committed to President Maduro.
Vladimir Putin: Oh, and it seemed we had started so well. Please do not take offence to what I am going to say next. You won’t, will you? We were off to such a terrific start, talking seriously, and now you have moved back to the stereotype views on Russia.
We have no nothing to do with what is happening in Venezuela, if you know what I mean.
Lionel Barber: What are those advisors doing then in Caracas?
Vladimir Putin: I will say this now, if you just let me finish. There is no problem with that.
Back under [President] Chavez we sold weapons to Venezuela, without any limits and problems. We did this absolutely legally just as it is done all around the world and as every country does, including the United States, the UK, China and France. We did this too – we sold weapons to Venezuela.
We signed contracts, which say what we have to do when it comes to servicing this military equipment, that we must train local specialists, ensure that this equipment is maintained in combat readiness, and so on. We provide maintenance services for this equipment. I have already said this many times, including to our American partners: there are no Russian troops there. Do you understand? Yes, there are Russian specialists and instructors there. Yes, they are working there. Only recently, I believe it was a week ago, a group of our advisers and specialists left the country. But they can return.
We have an agreement that our aircraft fly there from time to time to take part in exercises. And this is it. Are we regulating the rebels’ actions as some of our partners are doing, or the actions of President Maduro? He is the president, why should we control his actions? He is in control. Whether he is doing well or not, this is another matter altogether. We do not make any judgments.
I believe that many things could have been done differently there when it comes to the economy. But we do not meddle in things; it is none of our business. We have invested billions of dollars there, mostly in the oil sector. So what? Other countries are doing the same as well.
It looks like everything is preserved only by Russian weapons. This is not true. It has nothing in common with reality. Where are the self-proclaimed presidents and opposition leaders? Some of them have taken refuge in foreign embassies and others are in hiding. What do we have to do with this? This problem should be sorted out by the Venezuelan people themselves. This is all.
Lionel Barber: I was just applying your theory and your experience of seeing what happened in Libya and Iraq to Venezuela. And therefore, logically, you would say, “We are committed to Mr Maduro because we do not want to see regime change from outside.” Is that the Russian position? Or might you be willing to say, “We will support Guaido because we have important oil interests in Venezuela”?
Vladimir Putin: We are prepared for any developments in any country, including Venezuela, if they are taking place in accordance with internal rules and the country’s legislation, its Constitution, and in line with the people’s will.
I do not think that Libyan or Iraqi statehood would have been wrecked if there had been no intervention there. It would not have happened in Libya, the situation was absolutely different there. Indeed, Gaddafi wrote his books there, set forth his theories, and so on, which did not meet specific standards, and his practical work did not meet European or American perceptions of democracy.
Incidentally, the President of France said recently that the American democratic model differs greatly from the European model. So there are no common democratic standards. And do you, well, not you, but our Western partners want a region such as Libya to have the same democratic standards as Europe and the United States? The region has only monarchies or countries with a system similar to the one that existed in Libya.
But I am sure that, as a historian, you will agree with me at heart. I do not know whether you will publicly agree with this or not, but it is impossible to impose current and viable French or Swiss democratic standards on North African residents who have never lived in conditions of French or Swiss democratic institutions. Impossible, isn’t it? And they tried to impose something like that on them. Or they tried to impose something that they had never known or even heard of. All this led to conflict and inter-tribal discord. In fact, a war continues in Libya.
So why should we do the same in Venezuela? Do we want to revert to gunboat diplomacy? What do we need it for? Is it necessary to humiliate Latin American nations so much in the modern world and impose forms of government or leaders from the outside?
By the way, we worked with President Chavez because he was president. We did not work with President Chavez as an individual, but we worked with Venezuela. That is why we channelled investments in the oil sector.
And where did we plan to deliver Venezuelan oil while investing in the oil sector? As you know, Venezuela has unique oil that is mostly delivered to US refineries. What is so bad about that? We wanted the Venezuelan oil and gas sector to operate steadily, predictably and confidently and to make deliveries to those US refineries. I do not understand what is so wrong with this.
First, they faced economic problems, followed by domestic political problems. Let them sort things out by themselves, and these leaders will come to power by democratic means. But when a person enters a square, raises his eyes to the sky and proclaims himself president? Let us do the same in Japan, the United States or Germany. What will happen? Do you understand that this will cause chaos all over the world? It is impossible to disagree with this. There will be pure chaos. How could they act like this? But no, they started supporting that person from the very outset.
He may be a very good person. He may be just wonderful, and his plans are good. But is it enough that he entered a square and proclaimed himself president? Is the entire world supposed to support him as president? We should tell him to take part in elections and win them, and then we would work with him as the state leader.
Lionel Barber: Let us talk about another democracy in Europe, my own country. You are going to have a meeting with Mrs May, which is going to be one of her last meetings before she steps down as Prime Minister. Do you think that there is a possibility of some improvement in Anglo-Russian relations and that we can move on from some of these issues that are obviously of great sensitivity, like the Skripal affair? Or do you think that we are going to stay in a deep freeze for the next three or five years?
Vladimir Putin: Listen,all this fuss about spies and counter-spies, it is not worth serious interstate relations. This spy story, as we say, it is not worth five kopecks. Or even five pounds, for that matter. And the issues concerning interstate relations, they are measured in billions and the fate of millions of people. How can we compare one with the other?
The list of accusations and allegations against one another could go on and on. They say, “You poisoned the Skripals.” Firstly, this must be proved.
Secondly, the average person listens and says, “Who are these Skripals?” And it turns out that Skripal was engaged in espionage against us [Russia]. So this person asks the next question, “Why did you spy on us using Skripal? Maybe you should not have done that?” You know, these questions are infinite. We need to just leave it alone and let security agencies deal with it.
But we know that businesses in the United Kingdom (by the way, I had a meeting with our British colleagues in this same room), they want to work with us, they are working with us and intend to continue doing so. And we support this intent.
I think that Mrs May, despite her resignation, could not help but be concerned that these spy scandals made our relations reach a deadlock so we could not develop our ties normally and support business people, who are doing what? They do not only earn money, this is what is on the outside. They create jobs and added value, plus they provide revenue at all levels of the tax system of their countries. This is a serious and multifaceted job, with the same risks you mentioned, including risks related to business operations. And if we add an unpredictable political situation, they will not be able to work at all.
I think that both Russia and the United Kingdom are interested in fully restoring our relations. At least I hope that a few preliminary steps will be made. I think it would be easier for Mrs May, maybe, because she is leaving and is free to do what she thinks is right, important and necessary and not to bother about some domestic political consequences.
Lionel Barber: Some people might say that a human life is worth more than five pennies. But do you believe, Mr President that whatever happened…
Vladimir Putin: Did anybody die?
Lionel Barber: Oh yes. The gentleman who had a drug problem and he died after touching the Novichok in the car park. I mean somebody did that because of the perfume. It was more than one person that died, not the Skripals. I am just…
Vladimir Putin: And you think this is absolutely Russia’s fault?
Lionel Barber: I did not say that. I said somebody died.
Vladimir Putin: You did not say that, but if it has nothing to do with Russia… Yes, a man died, and that is a tragedy, I agree. But what do we have to do with it?
Lionel Barber: Let me just ask this and I really want to talk about the Russian economy. Do you believe that what happened in Salisbury sent an unambiguous message to anyone who is thinking of betraying the Russian state that it is fair game?
Vladimir Putin: As a matter of fact, treason is the gravest crime possible and traitors must be punished. I am not saying that the Salisbury incident is the way to do it. Not at all. But traitors must be punished.
This gentleman, Skripal, had already been punished. He was arrested, sentenced and then served time in prison. He received his punishment. For that matter, he was off the radar. Why would anybody be interested in him? He got punished. He was detained, arrested, sentenced and then spent five years in prison. Then he was released and that was it.
As concerns treason, of course, it must be punishable. It is the most despicable crime that one can imagine.
Lionel Barber: The Russian economy. You spoke the other day about decline in the real wages in the Russian workforce and Russian growth has been less than expected. But at the same time, Mr President, you have been accumulating foreign exchange reserves and international reserves at some 460 billion. What are you saving for? What is the purpose? Can’t you use some of this money to ease up on the fiscal side?
Vladimir Putin: Let me correct a few very small details. Real wages are not in decline in Russia. On the contrary, they are starting to pick up. It is the real household disposable income that is falling.
Wages and income are two slightly different things. Income is determined by many parameters, including loan servicing costs. People in Russia take out a lot of consumer loans and interest payments are counted towards expenses, which drags down real income indicators. Also, the shadow economy is undergoing legalisation. A substantial part of self-employed people – I believe, 100,000 or 200,000, have already legalised their business. This, too, affects real incomes of the population, disposable incomes.
This tendency has persisted for the past four years. Last year we recorded a small increase of 0.1 percent. It is not enough. It is still within the margin of error. But it is one of the serious problems that we need to deal with and we are dealing with it.
Real wages started to grow recently. Last year there was an 8.5-percent increase. This year, the growth rate of real wages has significantly decreased due to a whole range of circumstances. I mean that last year we saw a recovery growth and there are some other factors involved. However, it continues. And we really expect that it will have an effect on real household disposable incomes.
Even more so because lately we have adopted a number of measures to speed up the growth of retirement pensions. Last year the inflation rate was 4.3 percent and, based on these results, in the beginning of this year pensions were adjusted for inflation by 7.05 percent. And we set ourselves a goal, a task – which, I am certain, will be achieved – to adjust pensions by a percentage that is above the inflation rate.
Now, real incomes were also affected because we had to increase VAT from 18 to 20 percent, which affected people’s purchasing power because the inflation rate exceeded 5 percent.
In other words, we expected that the negative impact of the VAT increase would be short-term, which is exactly what happened. Fortunately, it worked out and our calculations proved right. Now the inflation rate is going down, the macroeconomic situation is improving; investment is rising slightly. We can see that the economy has overcome those difficulties that were caused by internal and external shocks. The external shocks were related to restrictions and slumping prices on our traditional export products. The economy has stabilised.
The macroeconomic situation in the country is stable. It is not accidental and all rating agencies registered it. The three major agencies raised our investment rating. Economic growth last year was 2.3 percent. We do not think it was enough but we will, of course, work on speeding up the pace. The growth rate in industrial production was 2.9 percent and even higher, up to 13 percent in some industries (light industry, processing and garment industries and several others). Therefore, overall, our economy is stable.
But the most important task we need to achieve is to change the structure of the economy and secure a substantial growth of labour productivity through modern technologies, Artificial Intelligence, robotics and so on. This is exactly why we increased VAT, to raise budget funds for performing a certain part of this job that is the state’s responsibility, in order to create conditions for private investment. Let us take transport and other infrastructure development. Hardly anybody besides the state is involved in it. There are other factors related to education and healthcare. A person who has health problems or has no training cannot be efficient in the modern economy. The list goes on.
We really hope that by starting this work on key development areas, we will be able to increase labour productivity and use this basis for ensuring an increase in the incomes and prosperity of our people.
As concerns the reserves, you are not exactly correct here, either. We have over 500 billion in gold and foreign currency reserves, rather than 460 billion. But the understanding is that we need to create a safety net that would let us feel confident and use the interest on our existing resources. If we have 7 percent more, we can spend those 7 percent.
This is what we plan for the next year and there is a high probability that we will succeed. Do not think that this money is just sitting on the shelf. No, it creates certain guarantees for Russia’s economic stability in the midterm.
Lionel Barber: The Central Bank has done a very good job in helping to secure macroeconomic stability even if some of the oligarchs complain about banks being closed.
Vladimir Putin: You know, first of all, we do not have oligarchs anymore. Oligarchs are those who use their proximity to the authorities to receive super profits. We have large companies, private ones, or with government participation. But I do not know of any large companies that get preferential treatment from being close to the authorities, these are practically non-existent.
As for the Central Bank, yes, it is engaged in a gradual improvement of our financial system: inefficient and small-capacity companies, as well as semi-criminal financial organisations are leaving the market, and this is large-scale and complicated work.
It is not about oligarchs or large companies; the thing is that it affects, unfortunately, the interests of the depositor, the average person. We have relevant regulatory acts that minimise people’s financial losses and create a certain safety net for them. But each case should be considered individually, of course.
In general, the work of the Central Bank, in my opinion, deserves support. It is related to both the improvement of the financial system and the calibrated policy regarding the key interest rate.
Lionel Barber: Mr President, I would like to go back to President Xi and China. As you know, he has pursued a rigorous anticorruption campaign in order to clean up the party, maintain the legitimacy and strengthen the party. He has also read the history of the Soviet Union, where Mr Gorbachev essentially abandoned the party and helped to destroy the country – the Soviet Union. Do you think that Mr Xi is right in his approach that the party is absolutely crucial? And what lessons do you draw for Russia? If I can just add, you said something interesting a few years ago about the breakup of the Soviet Union being the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century.
Vladimir Putin: These two issues are not connected. As for the tragedy related to the dissolution of the Soviet Union, this is something obvious. I meant, first of all, the humanitarian aspect of it. It appears that 25 million ethnic Russians were living abroad when they learned from the television and radio that the Soviet Union had ceased to exist. Nobody asked their opinion. The decision was simply made.
You know, these are issues of democracy. Was there an opinion poll, a referendum? Most (over 70 percent) of the citizens of the USSR spoke in favour of retaining it. Then the decision was made to dissolve the USSR, but nobody asked the people, and 25 million ethnic Russians found themselves living outside the Russian Federation. Listen, is this not a tragedy? A huge one! And family relations? Jobs? Travel? It was nothing but a disaster.
I was surprised to see the later comments on what I said, in particular, in the Western media. They should try to live through seeing their father, brother or any other close relative finding themselves living in a different country, where a whole new life has started. I assure you.
As for the party and the party state building in China, this is for the Chinese people to decide; we do not interfere. Today’s Russia has its own principles and rules of life, and China with its 1.35 billion people has its own. You try to rule a country with such a population. This is not Luxembourg, with all due respect to this wonderful country. Therefore, it is necessary to give the Chinese people the opportunity to decide how to organise their lives.
Lionel Barber: Again a big picture question. I talked at the beginning of our conversation about fragmentation. Another phenomenon today is that there is a popular backlash against elites and against the establishment and you have seen that – Brexit in Britain. Perhaps you were speaking about Trump’s America. You have seen it with the AFD in Germany; you have seen it in Turkey; and you have seen it in the Arab world. How long do you think that Russia can remain immune to this global movement of backlash against the establishment?
Vladimir Putin: You should look at the realities in each particular case. Of course, there are some trends, but they are only general. In each particular case, when looking at the situation and how it unfolds, you should take into account the history of the given country, its traditions and realities.
How long will Russia remain a stable country? The longer the better. Because very many other things and its position in the world depend on stability, on internal political stability. Ultimately, the wellbeing of the people depends, possibly primarily, on stability.
One of the reasons, the internal reason for the Soviet Union’s collapse was that life was difficult for the people, whose take-home wages were very small. The shops were empty, and the people lost the intrinsic desire to preserve the state.
They thought that it could not get worse no matter what happened. It turned out that life became worse for very many people, especially at the beginning of the 1990s when the social protection and healthcare systems collapsed and industry was crumbling. It could be ineffective, but at least people had jobs. After the collapse, they lost them. Therefore, you should look at each particular case separately.
What is happening in the West? What is the reason for the Trump phenomenon, as you said, in the United States? What is happening in Europe as well? The ruling elites have broken away from the people. The obvious problem is the gap between the interests of the elites and the overwhelming majority of the people.
Of course, we must always bear this in mind. One of the things we must do in Russia is never to forget that the purpose of the operation and existence of any government is to create a stable, normal, safe and predictable life for the people and to work towards a better future.
There is also the so-called liberal idea, which has outlived its purpose. Our Western partners have admitted that some elements of the liberal idea, such as multiculturalism, are no longer tenable.
When the migration problem came to a head, many people admitted that the policy of multiculturalism is not effective and that the interests of the core population should be considered. Although those who have run into difficulties because of political problems in their home countries need our assistance as well. That is great, but what about the interests of their own population when the number of migrants heading to Western Europe is not just a handful of people but thousands or hundreds of thousands?
Lionel Barber: Did Angela Merkel make a mistake?
Vladimir Putin: Cardinal mistake. One can criticise Trump for his intention to build a wall between Mexico and the United States. It could be going too far. Yes, maybe so. I am not arguing about this point. But he had to do something about the huge inflow of migrants and narcotics.
Nobody is doing anything. They say this is bad and that is bad as well. Tell me, what is good then? What should be done? Nobody has proposed anything. I do not mean that a wall must be built or tariffs raised by 5 percent annually in the economic relations with Mexico. This is not what I am saying, yet something must be done. He is at least looking for a solution.
What am I driving at? Those who are concerned about this, ordinary Americans, they look at this and say, Good for him, at least he is doing something, suggesting ideas and looking for a solution.
As for the liberal idea, its proponents are not doing anything. They say that all is well, that everything is as it should be. But is it? They are sitting in their cosy offices, while those who are facing the problem every day in Texas or Florida are not happy, they will soon have problems of their own. Does anyone think about them?
The same is happening in Europe. I discussed this with many of my colleagues, but nobody has the answer. The say they cannot pursue a hard-line policy for various reasons. Why exactly? Just because. We have the law, they say. Well, then change the law!
We have quite a few problems of our own in this sphere as well. We have open borders with the former Soviet republics, but their people at least speak Russian. Do you see what I mean? And besides, we in Russia have taken steps to streamline the situation in this sphere. We are now working in the countries from which the migrants come, teaching Russian at their schools, and we are also working with them here. We have toughened the legislation to show that migrants must respect the laws, customs and culture of the country.
In other words, the situation is not simple in Russia either, but we have started working to improve it. Whereas the liberal idea presupposes that nothing needs to be done. The migrants can kill, plunder and rape with impunity because their rights as migrants must be protected. What rights are these? Every crime must have its punishment.
So, the liberal idea has become obsolete. It has come into conflict with the interests of the overwhelming majority of the population. Or take the traditional values. I am not trying to insult anyone, because we have been condemned for our alleged homophobia as it is. But we have no problems with LGBT persons. God forbid, let them live as they wish. But some things do appear excessive to us.
They claim now that children can play five or six gender roles. I cannot even say exactly what genders these are, I have no notion. Let everyone be happy, we have no problem with that. But this must not be allowed to overshadow the culture, traditions and traditional family values of millions of people making up the core population.
Lionel Barber: Does that include – this is very important, like you say – the end of this liberal idea, because – what else did you say – uncontrolled immigration, open borders, definitely, as you say, diversity as an organizing principle in society? What else do you think is just finished over in terms of the liberal idea? And would you say – if I could just add – that religion therefore must play an important role in terms of national culture and cohesiveness?
Vladimir Putin: It should play its current role.It [religion] cannot be pushed out of this cultural space. We should not abuse anything.
Russia is an Orthodox Christian nation, and there have always been problems between Orthodox Christianity and the Catholic world. This is exactly why I will now say a few words about Catholics. Are there any problems there? Yes, there are, but they cannot be over-exaggerated and used for destroying the Roman Catholic Church itself. This is what cannot be done.
Sometimes, I get the feeling that these liberal circles are beginning to use certain elements and problems of the Catholic Church as a tool for destroying the Church itself. This is what I consider to be incorrect and dangerous.
All right, have we forgotten that all of us live in a world based on Biblical values? Even atheists and everyone else live in this world. We do not have to think about this every day, attend church and pray, thereby showing that we are devout Christians or Muslims or Jews. However, deep inside, there must be some fundamental human rules and moral values. In this sense, traditional values are more stable and more important for millions of people than this liberal idea, which, in my opinion, is really ceasing to exist.
Lionel Barber: So religion, religion is not the opium of the masses?
Vladimir Putin: No, it is not. But I get the impression that you are detached from religion because it is already 12.45 am Moscow Time, and you continue to torture me. As we say here, there is no fear of God in you, is there? (Laughter)
Lionel Barber: This is history. I have waited a long time for this. I have got one last question. And thank you for your – go on please.
Vladimir Putin: Please, go ahead.
Henry Foy: Mr President, would you say – I was reflecting on what you just said: some of the themes you were referring to would echo in people such as Steve Bannon, and Mr Trump himself, and the groups in Europe who have come to power. Do you think if the end of the liberal idea is over, is now the time of the ‘illiberals’? And do you see more and more allies growing around the world to your way of seeing the human existence at the moment?
Vladimir Putin: You know, it seems to me that purely liberal or purely traditional ideas have never existed. Probably, they did once exist in the history of humankind, but everything very quickly ends in a deadlock if there is no diversity. Everything starts to become extreme one way or another.
Various ideas and various opinions should have a chance to exist and manifest themselves, but at the same time interests of the general public, those millions of people and their lives, should never be forgotten. This is something that should not be overlooked.
Then, it seems to me, we would be able to avoid major political upheavals and troubles. This applies to the liberal idea as well. It does not mean (I think, this is ceasing to be a dominating factor) that it must be immediately destroyed. This point of view, this position should also be treated with respect.
They cannot simply dictate anything to anyone just like they have been attempting to do over the recent decades. Diktat can be seen everywhere: both in the media and in real life. It is deemed unbecoming even to mention some topics. But why?
For this reason, I am not a fan of quickly shutting, tying, closing, disbanding everything, arresting everybody or dispersing everybody. Of course, not. The liberal idea cannot be destroyed either; it has the right to exist and it should even be supported in some things. But you should not think that it has the right to be the absolute dominating factor. That is the point.
Please.
Lionel Barber: You really are on the same page as Donald Trump. Mr President, you have been in power for almost 20 years.
Vladimir Putin: For eighteen years.
Lionel Barber: You have seen many world leaders. Who do you most admire?
Vladimir Putin: Peter the Great.
Lionel Barber: But he is dead.
Vladimir Putin: He will live as long as his cause is alive just as the cause of each of us. (Laughter). We will live until our cause is alive.
If you mean any present-day leaders from different countries and states, of the persons that I could communicate with, I was most seriously impressed by former President of France Mr Chirac. He is a true intellectual, a real professor, a very level-headed man as well as very interesting. When he was President, he had his own opinion on every issue, he knew how to defend it and he always respected his partners’ opinions.
In modern-day history, taking a broader view, there are many good and very interesting people.
Lionel Barber: Peter the Great, the creator of the Greater Russia. Need I say any more? My last question, Mr President. Great leaders always prepare succession. Lee Kuan Yew prepared succession. So please share with us what would the process be by which your successor will be chosen.
Vladimir Putin: I can tell you without exaggeration that I have always been thinking about this, since 2000. The situation changes and certain demands on people change, too. In the end, and I will say this without theatrics or exaggeration, in the end the decision must be made by the people of Russia. No matter what and how the current leader does, no matter who or how he represents, it is the voter that has the final word, the citizen of the Russian Federation.
Lionel Barber: So the choice will be approved by the Russian people in a vote? Or through the Duma?
Vladimir Putin: Why through the Duma? By means of direct secret ballot, universal direct secret ballot. Of course, it is different from what you have in Great Britain. We are a democratic country. (Laughter)
In your country, one leader has left, and the second leader, who is for all intents and purposes the top figure in the state, is not elected by a direct vote of the people, but by the ruling party.
It is different in Russia, as we are a democratic country. If our top officials leave for some reason, because they want to retire from politics like Boris Yeltsin, or because their term ends, we hold an election through universal direct secret ballot.
The same will happen in this case. Of course, the current leader always supports someone, and this support can be substantive if the person supported has the respect and trust of the people, but in the end, the choice is always made by the Russian people.
Lionel Barber: I cannot resist pointing out that you did take over as president before the election.
Vladimir Putin: Yes, this is true. So what? I was acting president, and in order to be elected and become the head of state, I had to take part in an election, which I did.
I am grateful to the Russian people for their trust back then, and after that, in the following elections. It is a great honour to be the leader of Russia.
Lionel Barber: Mr President, thank you for spending time with the Financial Times in Moscow, in the Kremlin.
Vladimir Putin: Thank you for your interest in the events in Russia and your interest in what Russia thinks about the current international affairs. And thank you for our interesting conversation today. I believe it was really interesting.
As of 30 April, the LNA controlled 1259800 square kilometres of territory (equal to 77.58% of the surface of Libya, including 6.5% of the Tuariq Council area), the Tebus controlled 260989 square kilometres (16.07%) and the GNA 103081 square kilometres (6.35%).
On May 2, the LNA interrupted the supply lines between Sadiyah and Aziziya, while advancing on Aziziya from Hira and Qasarat.
On May 3, the barracks of the 166th Brigade of the Libyan National Army near Sabha was attacked, causing nine deaths. The attack on the Sabha training camp was the work of ISIL terrorists, who murdered eight soldiers, beheading one, as they already did in Buabat al-Faha, Baraq Shati and Darna. The action was a demonstration of the links between GNA and Islamist terrorism.
Numerous terrorists were treated in the Italian camp hospital of Misurata, according to the Media Centre of the al-Qarama Operative Centre of the LNA:
“We have received confirmed intelligence information on the Italian camp hospital in Misurata which treats numerous terrorists fighting alongside the Muslim Brotherhood and the militias”; listing the terrorists treated in the Italian hospital of Misurata:
Muhamad Abdalqani, known as Abu Zubayr, of ISIL Asad Qudayr al-Shami known as Abu Qatada, of Bayt al-Maqdis Abdalwahab Mahmud al-Asali, of Bayt al-Maqdis Abu al-Layth, of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb Hasan Abdalwadud, known as Abu Sayaf, of ISIL Ayman Tahar al-Isqandarani, known as Abu Fatima, of ISIL in Algeria Abdulah Hasan al-Iraqi, of ISIL in Algeria Said al-Mashgul, known as Abu al-Bara, of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb Ibrahim Ataf Qudayr, known as Abu al-Dahma, al-Murabitin Army terrorist organisation
The statement confirmed the arrest of terrorists from the Egyptian organisation Hisham Ashmawi arrested in Darna. “We know that the Italian forces have assigned this field hospital to fight terrorism and not to support it”, concluded the statement of the Operations Room al-Qarama.
On May 5, the LNA advanced in the Qahali quarter, freeing the al-Naq petrol station, and liberated Sabiah and Suq al-Sabat, arriving on the southern outskirts of Suani.
On May 7, the LNA shot down a GNA Mirage F-1, taken off from Misurata, on al-Hirah, south of Tripoli, capturing its pilot.
On May 10, the LNA advanced on Tuisha and clashed with the GNA west of Sabiah.
Meanwhile, a leader of Jabhat al-Nusra, a terrorist organization, arrived in Libya from Syria to join the Islamist militias of the GNA that were fighting against the Libyan National Army (LNA) in Tripoli. Nusret Imamovic was a Bosnian who studied Islamic Sharia in Sarajevo. He had been fighting for Jabhat al-Nusrah in Syria since 2012, and resided in Azaz, Governorate of Aleppo, before Syrian forces freed the area.
On May 11, the LNA recaptured the Zahra Bridge.
On 13 May, the Tobruq Parliament voted on the law defining the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist group. An LNA airstrike destroyed the headquarters of the al-Faruq brigade in al-Zuiya, west of Tripoli, eliminating a leader of the ISIL, Safwan al-Jabar.
On the 14th of May, the LNA shot down a UAV of Turkish manufacture, belonging to the GNA of Misurata, at the air base of al-Jufra.
On May 16, the Saqa units of the LNA entered Tripoli from the south. Qalifa Haftar met in Rome with council president Giuseppe Conte, who called for a ceasefire.
On May 17, Fathi al-Majbri, Vice President of the Presidency Council of the Government of the National Accord, accused Fayaz al-Saraj of using his powers for personal gain, of the failure of the political process and of the outbreak of war in Tripoli. Al-Majbri declared that al-Saraj was obsessed with power and willing to do anything to stay in power;
“What civil status are you talking about while violating the simple principles of government administration? Fayaz al-Sarraj manages the country with the de facto authority of outlaw militias. Al-Saraj has allied himself with extremist groups and today they are the backbone of the forces fighting against the Libyan army”.
Meanwhile the GNA admitted that it had lost Sabratha and Surman, stating “that the two municipalities were now taking orders from the parallel government in the eastern region”, in other words, the interim government of Bayda led by Abdullah al-Thani. GNA’s Ministry of Local Government said Surman supported what he described as “aggression against Tripoli”. U.S. public relations firm Mercury signed a $2 million a year contract with Fayaz al-Saraj to spread favourable propaganda through the Wall Street Journal, including an article on May 9 asking President Donald Trump to support al-Saraj rather than Field Marshal Qalifa Haftar.
On May 18, the Islamist factions of the government of Fayaz al-Saraj received Bulgarian MG-M1 machine guns and ammunition, delivered to the GNA from Turkey along with at least 40 BMC Kirpi II and Vuran armored ammunition, disembarked from the Amazon cargo ship, in Misurata, to repel the operations of the Libyan National Army in Tripoli. Kirpi armored vehicles are produced by the Turkish company BMC in Samsun. The BMC was sold in 2014 to the Committee for the Industry of the Armed Forces of Qatar by Turkish businessman Ethem Sançak, a member of the governing body of the Justice and Development Party of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. BMC manufactures the new Turkish tank Altay, whose deliveries began in December 2018, and in March 2019 Qatar ordered 100 of them. In January 2019, Turkey and Qatar opened a military engine plant in Karasu, northwest Turkey.
On May 20, the LNA captured the transport base of Tripoli, advancing towards Qalat Qafar and Nasr.
On May 21, the head of the Tarhuna Salah al-Fanidi council declared at a meeting of commanders and tribal leaders in Sidi Sayah that the Tarhuna, Bani Walid, Warshafana and Nuahi al-Arbah tribes supported the Libyan National Army in operations in Tripoli.
On 22 May, the LNA freed the Walid district of Tripoli.
On May 24, the LNA freed Ramlah and advanced to Ayn Zara.
On May 25, the Libyan National Army (LNA) advanced south and east of Tripoli with the support of the Libyan Air Force.
On May 28, the LNA advanced in the Walid district while the GNA reoccupied the transport field. Egyptian Intelligence Director (GIS) Abas Qamal visited Libya and met Qalifa Haftar. Fayaz al-Saraj visited Malta.
On 29 May, 1 Dassault Falcon 900EX (I-OUNI) from the Italian secret service took off from Tripoli.
On 30 May, Qalifa Haftar visited Moscow.
On May 31, the head of the LNA’s al-Qarama information office, Qalid al-Mahjub, confirmed the arrival of 12 Turkish military instructors at Misurata.
On June 3, the LNA repelled the attack by the GNA forces on the international airport of Tripoli, after two days of combat and the elimination of 31 GNA fighters, the arrest of dozens more and the destruction of many of their military vehicles and artillery pieces. ISIL detonated two car bombs in Darna, killing and injuring 19 people. The LNA repelled the ISIL attack on checkpoint 400 in al-Fuqaha, al-Jufra region. Salah al-Raqi, GNA undersecretary in the Ministry of Housing and head of the Islamist militia Fursan Janzour, was eliminated in clashes with LNA forces in Tripoli.
On June 4, 18 GNA militiamen were eliminated in clashes at al-Tuysha, south-west of Tripoli Airport.
On June 7, the LNA destroyed military aircraft at the Mitiga airport occupied by the GNA, including at least one Turkish armed drone.
On June 8, the LNA freed the Tuayshah, Ramalah and Tariq bin Ziyad area by advancing on Suani, south of the airport, and Walid.
On June 10, GNA forces withdrew from the Ayn Zara – Fuzi Al-Mansuri line in Tripoli.
On June 13, a GNA L-39ZA aircraft was shot down at al-Dafniyah, 200 km south-east of Tripoli, as it flew to the Misurata air base.
On June 20, the LNA repelled the GNA attack on Tripoli International Airport.
On June 21, a GNA unit, Battalion al-Uburm, moved to the LNA.
On June 24, the GNA forces were repelled by the LNA at al-Tuaisha, south-west of Tripoli International Airport, attacking on two axes: the airport road from Dakla and the Qazirmah area.
On June 26, the LNA entered Qaryan and eliminated 11 GNA fighters, but after a surprise attack by the GNA forces, the LNA decided to withdraw from the city 100 km south of Tripoli. The LNA repelled a GNA raid on al-Quasim and Abu Shiba, northwest of Qaryan.
On June 26, the Libyan National Army handed over captured U.S. mercenary to U.S. officials. Jamie Sponaugle was a mercenary pilot captured after his plane was shot down during the fighting in Tripoli, he had received orders from the GNA to destroy Libyan infrastructure. The GNA, with Turkish, Italian and French support, launched a major attack south of Tripoli, occupying Hira, Buqaylan, Quasim and Wadi Shaybah.
On 27 June, LNA Major Muhamad Ahmad al-Targi fell in combat in al-Quasim, north of Qaryan. As the LNA withdrew from Qaryan after the attack launched by the GNA.
On June 28, a Lockheed Martin C-130J of the Italian Air Force departing from the base of Pisa San Giusto landed in Misurata, with supplies for the Italian military hospital in Misurata.
On June 28, LNA repelled the attack on al-Sabia, 40 km south of Tripoli, advancing on al-Aziya. After leaving Qaryan, the LNA command moved to Tarhuna. Meanwhile, Qalifa Haftar also arrived in Tarhuna, 60km southeast of Tripoli. Following the aggression of Qaryan, where 28 wounded in the hospital were killed by the Islamists of Fayaz Saraj.
On 29 June, the General Command of the Libyan National Army declared:
“While the forces of the Libyan National Army are fighting terrorism on Libyan territory, terrorists in our country have had Turkish logistical support for years. In recent days it has evolved into direct Turkish intervention using war planes, transporting mercenaries and sending ships loaded with weapons, ammunition and armoured vehicles to support terrorism in Libya. Therefore, the General Command of the Libyan National Army ordered the Air Force to target Turkish ships and boats within Libyan territorial waters.
The Interim Government must expel all Turkish companies operating in Libya and end their operations on all projects on Libyan territory, boycotting Turkish industries and products and stopping civilian flights to and from Turkey at Libyan airports in response to this Turkish terrorist attack. Turkish drones had bombed several locations at the airport south of Tripoli, in support of the Islamist militias of Fayaz al-Saraj in Tripoli”.
The week before, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan admitted that his government had provided arms, ammunition and military support to the al-Saraj gangs.
Qalid al-Mahjub, spokesman for the Tripoli Operations Room of the Libyan National Army (LNA), stated that there was a Turkish Operations Room leading the Islamist groups of the Fayaz al-Saraj government in battle, composed of numerous Turkish army officers, who trained the al-Saraj Islamist militias during battles against the Libyan National Army in the southern districts of Tripoli. Al-Mahjub declared that the Turkish Operations Room was located in the Mitiga airport in the centre of Tripoli, and that they also used Turkish drones taking off from the Air College of Misurata, under mercenary command.
On June 30, an LNA air attack on the Mitiga international airport destroyed 1 Turkish UAV while taking off. The Libyan National Army arrested several Turkish citizens, engaged in sabotage and subversion operations and in coordinating Ankara’s military support to the Islamist government of Tripoli. The detainees were General-Major Güksel Kahya, Deputy Minister of Defence of Turkey, General-Major Irfan Ozsert, Head of Military Intelligence and Secretary General of the Turkish General Staff, General-Major Levent Ergond, responsible for the operations of the Turkish armed forces abroad, Rear Admiral Gersoy Zaipanar, Brigadier General Ilkay Altyndach and Brigadier General Selcuk Yavuz, responsible for the actions of the special forces on the Syrian border.
Levent Ergon was sentenced for illegal activities to 13 years in prison, but was released by the Erdogan government, which then appointed him in charge of the operations of the Turkish armed forces.
Ilkay Altyndach was imprisoned for disseminating secret documents, but was released by Erdogan and in 2018 promoted to brigadier general.
Rear Admiral Gersoy Zaipanar was sentenced and sentenced to 16 years in prison for conspiracy, but was released by Erdogan.
Brigadier General Selcuk Yavuz led an offensive in Syria with the special units he directed.
According to the Turkish journalist Abdullah Bozkurt, “such people would be Erdogan’s neo-nationalist dream team for dirty operations abroad. They are all indebted to Erdogan and therefore happy to carry out any sordid action, such as supporting Islamist groups to use them as agents of influence… it is clear that they were engaged in military and intelligence operations in Libya”.
The Ministry of Defence of Benghazi declared that Turkey was the sanctuary of terrorists sought by the Libyan National Army.
On July 1, the GNA militia leader Ahrar Libya, Isam Qatus, was eliminated in the clashes in Laft. He was appointed NTC ambassador to Niger in 2014.
GNA L-39 planes launched by Misurata bombed Tarhuna, 65 km south-east of Tripoli.
Fayaz al-Saraj flew to Italy to meet the Minister of the Interior Matteo Salvini in Milan. Saraj asked for a “reserved” meeting to obtain more military aid from the Italian government in favour of GNA.
GNA sources stated that “the government of Tripoli greatly appreciates the role and position of Italy, but at this point calls for a greater effort to consolidate the political role of a Libyan government recognized by the United Nations. We have asked for weapons, we have asked for intelligence, medical support, and at least stronger, more evident, more open political support”.
On July 2, the LNA Air Force bombarded 30 GNA targets at al-Azizya, Swani and Tajura. At least 90 GNA fighters were eliminated.
Libyan National Army leader General Haftar ordered his forces to attack Turkish ships and companies that he accused of helping the internationally recognized Government of National Accord, as well as to arrest Turkish citizens in the country, which is nothing short of an effort to trick Turkey into overextending itself by provoking it into “mission creep” so that it ends up trapped in the Libyan quagmire.
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The Libyan Civil War might be entering a new phase if the forces led by Libyan National Army (LNA) leader General Haftar do good on their leader’s threats to attack Turkish ships and companies that he accused of helping the internationally recognized Government of National Accord (GNA), a well as to arrest Turkish citizens in the country. The popular warlord has already succeeded in capturing most of the country with the notable exception being the capital of Tripoli, which has only held out as long as it has supposedly because of Turkish support.
The Libyan Civil War was directly caused by NATO’s 2011 War on Libya and the subsequent scramble for influence in the energy-rich and geostrategically positioned North African state, with Turkey playing a leading role in the latter because the de-facto Muslim Brotherhood-led country envisions restoring its Ottoman-era empire through the establishment of ideologically allied governments in this vast trans-continental space. The GNA is comprised of Muslim Brotherhood fighters and their offshoots who came to power after 2011, which is why Erdogan supports them so strongly and has a stake in their continued leadership of the country, something that Haftar is adamantly opposed to because he sees his countrymen’s collaboration with Turkey as treasonous.
The LNA leader is now threatening to impose serious physical costs to Turkey’s unofficial intervention in the Libyan Civil War, hoping that this will either compel it to retreat or counterproductively dig in through “mission creep” and risk overextending itself in what has become a regional proxy war between secular and Islamist forces backed by the UAE/Egypt/France and Turkey/Qatar/Libya respectively. Nevertheless, Erdogan’s ego, his ambition for regional influence, and the domestic political pressure that he’s under after the latest mayoral election rerun in Istanbul are responsible for Turkey’s vow to retaliate against the Libyan warlord.
Should Turkey suffer highly publicized losses at the hands of Haftar’s forces, then it might embolden the country’s Cypriot, Greek, Kurdish separatist, and Syrian enemies in its immediate neighborhood if they interpret those developments as a sign of weakness proving that the Turkish military is just a “paper tiger” incapable of properly defending its interests and/or defeating its first conventional military adversary in decades. Erdogan is therefore in a classic dilemma since he’s damned if he retreats but equally damned if he doesn’t and ends up being humiliated by Haftar. It’ll remain to be seen what ultimately happens, but Turkey is in a very tricky position nowadays and needs to be careful that it doesn’t get trapped in the Libyan quagmire.
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This article was originally published on Eurasia Future.
Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
The original source of this article is Global Research
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Tuesday that the United Arab Emirates [UAE] is trying to “turn into another ‘Israel’” by spending billions of dollars on importing weapons.
In an exclusive interview with Al-Araby TV on Tuesday, Zarif rebuked the excessive arms imports of certain regional countries, saying, “The United Arab Emirates is spending billions of dollars on armaments and wants to be a second ‘Israel’ in the region,” Press TV reported.
“Three countries in the region believe they can maintain their security through their relations with the United States,” Zarif said.
However, he added, they are wrong to think they can import their security from America because these weapons will be used to achieve the goals of the ‘Israeli’ regime.
According to Press TV, studies show the UAE has increased its arms imports by 63% between 2012 and 2016. Its military expenditures are projected to grow to $31.8 billion by 2021 from $23.6 billion in 2016.
The country has led an increasingly interventionist foreign policy in hot spots like Libya, Syria and, most recently, Yemen.
Saudi Arabia, UAE, and a number of their allies launched a devastating campaign against Yemen in March 2015, with the goal of bringing the government of former Yemeni president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi back to power and crushing the Ansarullah revolutionary movement.
Thousands of Yemenis have lost their lives since the Saudi-led aggression. The war has also taken a heavy toll on the country’s infrastructure, destroying hospitals, schools, and factories. The UN says over 24 million Yemenis are in dire need of humanitarian aid, including 10 million suffering from extreme levels of hunger.
Below is the second half and conclusion of “Afghanistan, the Forgotten Proxy War”. While the previous sections examined the economic roots of imperialism, as well as the historical context of the Cold War within which to situate the Mujahideen, the following explores the anatomy of proxy warfare and media disinformation campaigns which were at the heart of destabilizing Afghanistan. These were also a large part of why there was little to no opposition to the Mujahideen from the Western ‘left’, whose continued dysfunctionality cannot be talked about without discussing Zbigniew Brzezinski. We also take a look at what led to the Soviet Union’s demise and how that significantly affected the former Democratic Republic of Afghanistan and many other parts of the world. The United States has been at war in Afghanistan for four decades now, and it will reach its 40th year on July 3, 2019.
The original “moderate rebel”
One of the key players in the anti-Soviet, U.S.-led regime change project against Afghanistan was Osama bin Laden, a Saudi-born millionaire who came from a wealthy, powerful family that owns a Saudi construction company and has had close ties to the Saudi royal family. Before becoming known as America’s “boogeyman”, Osama bin Laden was put in charge of fundraising for the Mujahideen insurgents, creating numerous charities and foundations in the process and working in coordination with Saudi intelligence (who acted as liaisons between the fighters and the CIA). Journalist Robert Fisk even gave bin Laden a glowing review, calling him a “peace warrior” and a philanthropist in a 1993 report for the Independent. Bin Laden also provided recruitment for the Mujahideen and is believed to have also received security training from the CIA. And in 1989, the same year that Soviet troops withdrew, he founded the terrorist organization Al Qaeda with a number of fighters he had recruited to the Mujahideen. Although the PDPA had already been overthrown, and the Soviet Union was dissolved, he still maintained his relationship with the CIA and NATO, working with them from the mid-to-late 1990s to provide support for the secessionist Bosnian paramilitaries and the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in the destruction and dismantling of Yugoslavia.
The United States would eventually turn Bin Laden into a scapegoat after the 2001 terrorist attacks, while still maintaining ties to his family and providing arms, training, and funding to Al Qaeda and its affiliates (rebranded as “moderate rebels” by the Western media) in its more recent regime change project against Syria, which started in 2011. The Mujahideen not only gave birth to Al Qaeda, but it would set a precedent for the United States’ regime-change operations in later years against the anti-imperialist governments of Libya and Syria.
Reagan entertains Mujahideen fighters in the White House.
With the end to the cycle of World Wars (for the time being, at least), it has become increasingly common for the United States to use local paramilitaries, terrorist groups, and/or the armed forces of comprador regimes to fight against nations targeted by U.S. capital interests. Why the use of proxy forces? They are, as Whitney Webb describes, “a politically safe tool for projecting the U.S.’ geopolitical will abroad.”
Using proxy warfare as a kind of power projection tool is, first and foremost, cost-effective, since paid local mercenaries or terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda will bear the burden of combat and casualties rather than American troops in places like Libya and Syria. For example, it costs much less to pay local paramilitaries, gangs, crime syndicates, terrorist groups, and other reactionary forces to perform the same military operations as U.S. troops. Additionally, with the advent of nuclear weapons it became much more perilous for global superpowers to come into direct combat with one another — if the Soviet Union and the United States had done so, there existed the threat of “mutually assured destruction”, the strong possibility of instantaneous and catastrophic damage to the populations and the economic and living standards of both sides, something neither side was willing to risk, even if it was U.S. imperialism’s ultimate goal to destroy the Soviet Union.
And so, the U.S. was willing to use any other means necessary to weaken the Soviet Union and safeguard its profits, which included eliminating the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan even if it had neither the intent nor the means of launching a military offensive on American soil. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union had the means of producing a considerably large supply of modern weapons, including nuclear deterrents, to counter the credible threat posed by the United States. To strike the Soviet Union with nuclear missiles would have been a great challenge for the United States, since it would have resulted in overwhelming retaliation by the Soviet Union. To maneuver this problem, to assure the destruction of the Soviet Union while protecting the U.S. from similar destruction, the CIA relied on more unconventional methods not previously thought of as being part of traditional warfare, such as funding proxy forces while wielding economic and cultural influence over the American domestic sphere and the international scene.
Furthermore, proxy warfare enables control of public opinion, thus allowing the U.S. government to escape public scrutiny and questions about legal authorization for war. With opposition from the general public essentially under control, consent for U.S.-led wars does not need to be obtained, especially when the U.S. military is running them from “behind the scenes” and its involvement looks less obvious. Indeed, the protests against the war on Vietnam in the United States and other Western countries saw mass turnouts.
And while the U.S.-led aggression in Vietnam did involve proxy warfare to a lesser degree, it was still mostly fought with American “boots-on-the-ground”, much like the 2001 renewed U.S.-led aggression against Afghanistan and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In contrast, the U.S. assault on Afghanistan that began in 1979 saw little to no protest. The Mujahideen even garnered support from large portions of the Western left who joined the chorus of voices in the Western mainstream media in demonizing the PDPA — a relentless imperialist propaganda campaign that would be repeated in later years during the U.S. wars on Libya and Syria, with the difference being that social media had not yet gained prominence at the time of the initial assault on Afghanistan. This leads to the next question: why recruit some of the most reactionary social forces abroad, many of whom represent complete backwardness?
In Afghanistan, such forces proved useful in the mission to topple the modernizing government of the PDPA, especially when their anti-modernity aspirations intersected with U.S. foreign policy; these ultra-conservative forces continue to be deployed by the United States today. In fact, the long war on Afghanistan shares many striking similarities with the long war on Syria, with the common theme of U.S. imperialism collaborating with violent Sunni extremists to topple the secular, nationalist and anti-imperialist governments of these two former ‘Soviet bloc’ countries. And much like the PDPA, the current and long-time government of the Ba’ath Arab Socialist Party in Syria has made many strides towards achieving national liberation and economic development, which have included: taking land from aristocratic families (a majority of whom were Sunni Muslims while Shia Muslims, but especially Alawites, traditionally belonged to the lower classes and were treated as second class citizens in pre-Ba’athist Syria) and redistributing and nationalizing it, making use of Syria’s oil and gas reserves to modernize the country and benefit its population, and upholding women’s rights as an important part of the Ba’athist pillars.
Some of these aristocratic landlords, just like their Afghan counterparts, would react violently and join the Muslim Brotherhood who, with CIA-backing, carried out acts of terrorism and other atrocities in Hama as they made a failed attempt to topple the government of Hafez al Assad in 1982.
The connection between the two is further solidified by the fact that it was the Mujahideen from which Al Qaeda emerged; both are inspired by Wahhabist ideology, and one of their chief financiers is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (as well as Israel, a regional imperial power and a key ally of the United States). In either case, these Wahhabi-inspired forces were vehemently opposed to modernization and development, and would much rather keep large sections of the population impoverished, as they sought to replace the PDPA and the Ba’athists with Sunni fundamentalist, anti-Shia, theological autocracies — Saudi-style regimes, in other words.
These reactionary forces are useful tools in the CIA’s anti-communist projects and destabilization campaigns against independent nationalist governments, considering that the groups’ anti-modernity stance is a motivating factor in their efforts to sabotage economic development, which is conducive to ensuring a favourable climate for U.S. capital interests. It also helps that these groups already saw the nationalist governments of the PDPA and the Syrian Ba’ath party as their ‘archenemy’, and would thus fight them to the death and resort to acts of terrorism against the respective civilian populations.
Zbigniew Brzezinski stated in a 1998 interview with Le Nouvel Observateur in response to the following question:
Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic fundamentalism, having given arms and advice to future terrorists?
[Brzezinski]: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?
Once again, he makes it clear that the religious extremism of the Mujahideen fighters was not an issue for Washington because the real political value lay in eliminating the PDPA and putting an end to Soviet influence in the Greater Middle East, which would give the U.S. the opportunity to easily access and steal the country’s wealth. And in order to justify the U.S. imperialist intervention in Afghanistan, as well as to obscure the true nature of the Mujahideen fighters, the intervention needed to be accompanied by a rigorous mass media campaign. The Reagan administration — knowing full well that American mainstream media has international influence — continued the war that the Carter administration started and saw it as an opportunity to “step up” its domestic propaganda war, considering that the American general public was still largely critical of the Vietnam War at the time.
As part of the aggressive imperialist propaganda campaign, anyone who dared to publicly criticize the Mujahideen was subjected to character assassination and was pejoratively labelled a “Stalinist” or a “Soviet apologist”, which are akin to labels such as “Russian agent” or “Assadist” being used as insults today against those who speak out against the U.S.-backed terrorism in Syria. There were also careful rebranding strategies made specifically for Osama bin Laden and the Mujahideen mercenaries, who were hailed as “revolutionary freedom fighters” and given a romantic, exoticized “holy warrior” makeover in Western media; hence the title of this section. The Mujahideen mercenaries were even given a dedication title card at the end of the Hollywood movie Rambo III which read, “This film is dedicated to the brave Mujahideen fighters of Afghanistan”; the film itself added to the constructed romantic image as it portrayed the Mujahideen fighters as heroes, while the Soviet Union and the PDPA were portrayed as the cartoonish villains. The Rambo film franchise is well known for its depiction of the Vietnamese as “savages” and as the aggressors in the U.S. war on Vietnam, which is a blatant reversal of the truth.
The Hollywood blockbuster franchise would be used to make the Mujahideen more palatable to Western audiences, as this unabashed, blatantly anti-Soviet propaganda for U.S. imperialism attracted millions of viewers with one of the largest movie marketing campaigns of the time. Although formulaic, the films are easily consumable because they appeal to emotion and, as Michael Parenti states in Dirty Truths, “The entertainment industry does not merely give the people what they want: it is busy shaping those wants,” (p. 111). Rambo III may not have been critically acclaimed, but it was still the second most commercially successful film in the Rambo series, grossing a total of $189,015,611 at the box office. Producing war propaganda films is nothing new and has been a long staple of the Hollywood industry, which serves capitalist and imperialist interests. But, since the blockbuster movie is one of the most widely available and distributed forms of media, repackaging the Mujahideen into a popular film franchise was easily one of the best ways (albeit cynical) to justify the war, maintaining the American constructed narrative and reinforcing the demonization campaign against Soviet Russia and the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. Now, outside of the cinema, CBS News went as far as to air fake battle footage meant to help perpetuate the myth that the Mujahideen mercenaries were “freedom fighters”; American journalists Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, although decidedly biased against the Soviet Union and its allies, documented this ruse in which the news channel participated. In terms of proxy warfare, these were just some of the ways used to distract from the fact that it was a U.S.-led war.
The dedication title card as it originally appeared at the end of the film Rambo III.
In Afghanistan, proxy forces provided a convenient cover because they drew attention away from the fact that U.S. imperialism was the root cause of the conflict. The insurgents also helped to demonize the targets of U.S. foreign policy, the PDPA and the Soviet Union, all the while doing the majority of the physical combat in place of the American military. In general, drawing attention away from the fact that it has been the United States “pulling the strings” all along, using proxy forces helps Washington to maintain plausible deniability in regard to its relationship with such groups. If any one of these insurgents becomes a liability, as what had happened with the Taliban, they can just as easily be disposed of and replaced by more competent patsies, while U.S. foreign policy goes unquestioned. Criminal gangs and paramilitary forces are thus ideal and convenient tools for U.S. foreign policy. With the rule of warlords and the instability (namely damage to infrastructure, de-industrialization, and societal collapse) that followed after the toppling of the PDPA, Afghanistan’s standard of living dropped rapidly, leading to forced mass migrations and making the country all the more vulnerable to a more direct U.S. military intervention — which eventually did happen in 2001.
Zbigniew Brzezinski: godfather of colour revolutions and proxy wars, architect of the Mujahideen
The late Brzezinski was a key figure in U.S. foreign policy and a highly influential figure in the Council on Foreign Relations. Although the Polish-American diplomat and political scientist was no longer the National Security Advisor under Ronald Reagan’s presidency, he still continued to play a prominent role in enforcing U.S. foreign policy goals in upholding Washington’s global monopoly. The liberal Cold War ideologue’s signature strategy consisted of using the CIA to destabilize and force regime-change onto countries whose governments actively resisted against Washington. Such is the legacy of Brzezinski, whose strategy of funding the most reactionary anti-government forces to foment chaos and instability while promoting them as “freedom fighters” is now a longstanding staple of U.S. imperialism.
How were the aggressive propaganda campaigns which promoted the Mujahideen mercenaries as “freedom fighters” able to garner support for the aggression against the former Democratic Republic of Afghanistan from so many on the Western left who had previously opposed the war on Vietnam? It was the through the CIA’s use of ‘soft-power’ schemes, because leftist opinion also needed to be controlled and manipulated in the process of carrying out U.S. foreign and public policy. Brzezinski mastered the art of targeting intelligentsia and impressionable young people in order to make them supportive of U.S. foreign policy, misleading a significant number of people into supporting U.S.-led wars.
The CIA invested money into programs that used university campus, anti-Soviet “radical leftist activists” and academics (as well as artists and writers) to help spread imperialist propaganda dressed up in vaguely “leftist”-sounding language and given a more “hip”, “humanitarian”, “social justice”, “free thinker” appeal. Western, but especially American, academia has since continued to teach the post-modernist “oppression theory” or “privilege theory” to students, which is anti-Marxist and anti-scientific at its core. More importantly, this post-modernist infiltration was meant to distract from class struggle, to help divert any form of solidarity away from anti-imperialist struggles, and to foster virulent animosity towards the Soviet Union among students and anyone with ‘leftist’ leanings. Hence the phenomenon of identity politics that continues to plague the Western left today, whose strength was effectively neutered by the 1970s. Not only that, but as Gowans mentions in his book, Patriots, Traitors and Empires: The Story of Korea’s Struggle for Freedom:
“U.S. universities recruit talented individuals from abroad, instill in them the U.S. imperialist ideology and values, and equip them with academic credentials which conduce to their landing important political positions at home. In this way, U.S. imperial goals indirectly structure the political decision-making of other countries.” (pp. 52-53)
And so we have agencies and think-tanks such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) which has scholarly appeal and actively interferes in elections abroad — namely, in countries that are targets of U.S. foreign policy. Founded in 1983 by Reagan and directed by the CIA, the agency also assists in mobilizing coups and paid “dissidents” in U.S.-led regime change projects, such as the 2002 failed attempt against Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, as well as helping to create aggressive media campaigns that demonize targeted nations. Another instance of this “soft power” tactic of mobilizing U.S.-backed “dissidents” in targeted nations are the number of Sunni Islamic fundamentalist madrassas (schools) sponsored by the CIA and set up by Wahhabi missionaries from Saudi Arabia in Afghanistan — which started to appear in increasing numbers during the 1980s, reaching over 39,000 during the decade. Afghanistan’s public education institutions were largely secular prior to the fall of Kabul in 1992; these madrassas were the direct, ideological and intellectual antitheses to the existing institutions of education. The madrassas acted as centres for cult-like brainwashing and were essentially CIA covert psychological operations (psy-ops) intended to inspire divisiveness and demobilize younger generations of Afghans in the face of imperial onslaught so that they would not unite with the wider PDPA-led nationalist resistance to imperialism.
The NED’s founding members were comprised of Cold War ideologues which included Brzezinski himself, as well as Trotskyists who provided an endless supply of slurs against the Soviet Union. It was chiefly under this agency, and with direction provided by Brzezinski, that America produced artists, “activists”, academics, and writers who presented themselves as “radical leftists” and slandered the Soviet Union and countries that were aligned with it — which was all part of the process of toppling them and subjugating them to U.S. free market fundamentalism. With Brzezinski having mastered the art of encouraging postmodernism and identity politics among the Western left in order to weaken it, the United States not only had military and economic might on its side but also highly sophisticated ideological instruments to help give it the upper hand in propaganda wars.
These “soft power” schemes are highly effective in masking the brutality of U.S. imperialism, as well as concealing the exploitation of impoverished nations. Marketing the Mujahideen mercenaries as “peace warriors” while demonizing the PDPA and referring to the Soviet assistance as an “invasion” or “aggression” marked the beginning of the regular use of “humanitarian” pretexts for imperialist interventions. The Cold War era onslaught against Afghanistan can thus be seen as the template for the NATO-led regime change projects against Yugoslavia, Libya, and Syria, which not only involved the use of U.S.-backed proxy forces but also “humanitarian” pretexts being presented in the aggressive propaganda campaigns against the targeted countries. It was not until 2002, however, that then-American UN representative Samantha Powers, as well as several U.S.-allied representatives, would push the United Nations to officially adopt the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) doctrine into the Charter — which was in direct contradiction to the law that recognizes the violation of a nation’s sovereignty as a crime. The R2P doctrine was born out of the illegal 78-day NATO air-bombing of Yugoslavia from March 24 to June 10, 1999. And although plans to dismantle Yugoslavia go as far back as 1984, it was not until much of the 1990s that NATO would begin openly intervening — with more naked aggression — starting with the funding and support for secessionist paramilitary forces in Bosnia between 1994-1995. It then sealed the 1999 destruction of Yugoslavia with with the balkanization of the Serbian province of Kosovo. In addition to the use of terrorist and paramilitary groups as proxy forces which received CIA-training and funding, another key feature of this “humanitarian” intervention was the ongoing demonization campaigns against the Serbs, who were at the centre of a vicious Western media propaganda war. Some of the most egregious parts of these demonization campaigns — which were tantamount to slander and libel — were the claims that the Serbs were “committing genocide” against ethnic Albanians. The NATO bombing campaign was illegal since it was given no UN Security Council approval or support.
Once again, Brzezinski was not the National Security Advisor during the U.S.-led campaign against Yugoslavia. However, he still continued to wield influence as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a private organization and Wall Street think tank. The Council on Foreign Relations is intertwined with highly influential NGOs who are essentially propaganda mouthpieces for U.S. foreign policy, such as Human Rights Watch, which has fabricated stories of atrocities allegedly committed by countries targeted by U.S. imperialism. Clearly, unmitigated U.S. imperial aggression did not end with the destruction of the former Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, nor with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The post-Cold War years were a continuation of U.S. imperialism’s scramble for more spheres of influence and global domination; it was also a scramble for what was left of the former ‘Soviet bloc’ and Warsaw Pact. The dismantling of Yugoslavia was, figuratively speaking, the ‘final nail in the coffin’ of whatever ‘Soviet influence’ was left in Eastern Europe.
The demise of the Soviet Union and the “Afghan trap” question
Image on the right: Left to right: former Afghan President Babrak Karmal, and former Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. Karmal took office at around the same time (December 1979) the PDPA requested that Moscow intervene to assist the besieged Afghanistan.
The sabotage and subsequent dissolution of the Soviet Union meant that only one global hegemon remained, and that was the United States. Up until 1989, the Soviet Union had been the barrier that was keeping the United States from launching a more robust military intervention in Afghanistan, as well as in Central and West Asia. While pulling out did not immediately cause the defeat of Kabul as the PDPA government forces continued to struggle for another three years, Mikhail Gorbachev’s decision to withdraw Soviet troops arguably had a detrimental impact on Afghanistan for many years to come. Although there was no Soviet military assistance in the last three years of Najibullah’s presidency, Afghanistan continued to receive aid from the USSR, and some Soviet military advisers (however limited in their capacity) still remained; despite the extreme difficulties, and combined with the nation’s still-relatively high morale, this did at least help to keep the government from being overthrown immediately. This defied U.S. expectations as the CIA and the George H.W. Bush administration had believed that the government of Najibullah would fall as soon as Soviet troops were withdrawn. But what really hurt the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan’s army was when the Soviet Union was dismantled in 1991; almost as soon as the dissolution happened and Boris Yeltsin (with U.S. backing) took over as Russia’s president, the aid stopped coming and the government forces became unable to hold out for much longer. The U.S. aggression was left unchecked, and to this day Afghanistan has not seen geopolitical stability and has since been a largely impoverished ‘failed state’, serving as a training ground for terrorist groups such as ISIS and Al Qaeda. It continues to be an anarchic battleground between rival warlords which include the ousted Taliban and the U.S. puppet government that replaced them.
But, as was already mentioned above, the “Afghan trap” did not, in and of itself, cause the dismantling of the Soviet Union. In that same interview with Le Nouvel Observateur, Brzezinski had this to say in response to the question about setting the “trap”:
Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?
[Brzezinski]: It isn’t quite that. We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.
Likewise with Cuba and Syria, the USSR had a well-established alliance with the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, one of mutual aid and partnership. Answering Kabul’s explicit request for assistance was a deliberate and conscious choice made by Moscow, and it just so happened that the majority of Afghans welcomed it. For any errors that Leonid Brezhnev, the General Secretary at the time, may have made (which do deserve a fair amount of criticism, but are not the focus of this article), the 1979 decision to intervene on behalf of Afghanistan against U.S. imperialism was not one of them. It is true that both the Soviet and the U.S. interventions were military interventions, but the key difference is that the U.S. was backing reactionary forces for the purposes of establishing colonial domination and was in clear violation of Afghan sovereignty. Consider, too, that Afghanistan had only deposed of its king in 1973, just six years before the conflict began. The country may have moved quickly to industrialize and modernize, but it wasn’t much time to fully develop its military defenses by 1979.
Image below: Mikhail Gorbachev accepts the Nobel Peace Prize from George H.W. Bush on October 15, 1990. Many Russians saw this gesture as a betrayal, while the West celebrated it, because he was being awarded for his capitulation to U.S. imperialism in foreign and economic policy.
Other than that, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the Soviet Union imploded due to an accumulating number of factors: namely, the gradual steps that U.S. foreign policy had taken over the years to cripple the Soviet economy, especially after the deaths of Brezhnev and Yuri Andropov. How Gorbachev responded during the U.S.-led onslaught against Afghanistan certainly helped to exacerbate the conditions that led to the dissolution. After the deaths of Brezhnev and Andropov, the Soviet Union’s economy became disorganized and was being liberalized during much of the 1980s. Not only that, but the Reagan administration escalated the arms race, which intensified after they had scrapped the ‘detente’ that was previously made in the mid-1970s. Even prior to Reagan’s hardline, bombastic rhetoric and escalation against the USSR, the Soviet Union was already beginning to show signs of strain from the arms race during the late-1970s. However, in spite of the economic strains, during the height of the war the organized joint operations between the Soviet army and the Afghan army saw a significant amount of success in pushing back against the Mujahideen with many of the jihadist leaders either being killed or fleeing to Pakistan. Therefore, it is erroneous to say that intervening in Afghanistan on behalf of the Afghan people “did the Soviet Union in.”
In a misguided and ultimately failed attempt to spur economic growth rates, Gorbachev moved to end the Cold War by withdrawing military support from allies and pledging cooperation with the United States who promised “peace”. When he embraced Neoliberalism and allowed for the USSR to be opened to the U.S.-dominated world capitalist economy, the Soviet economy imploded and the effects were felt by its allies. It was a capitulation to U.S. imperialism, in other words; and it led to disastrous results not only in Afghanistan, but in several other countries as well. These include: the destruction of Yugoslavia, both wars on Iraq, and the 2011 NATO invasion of Libya. Also, Warsaw Pact members in Eastern Europe were no longer able to effectively fight back against U.S.-backed colour revolutions; some of them would eventually be absorbed as NATO members, such as Czechoslovakia which was dissolved and divided into two states: the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Without Soviet Russia to keep it in check, the United States was able to launch an unrestrained series of aggressions for nearly two decades. Because of his decision to withdraw from the arms race altogether, in a vain attempt to transform the Soviet Union into a social democracy akin to those of the Nordic countries, Gorbachev had deprived the Russian army of combat effectiveness by making significant cuts to its defense budget, which is partly why they were forced to evacuate. Not only that, but these diplomatic and military concessions with the United States gave them no benefit in return, hence the economic crisis in Russia during the Yeltsin years. Suffice to say, the Gorbachev-Yeltsin years are not remembered fondly in Russia and many regard Gorbachev as a traitor and Western agent who helped to bring the Soviet Union to its collapse. In more recent years, efforts are being made to assess the actions taken by Gorbachev with regards to Afghanistan; this includes going against and revising the resolution put forth by him which suggested that the USSR intervention was “shameful”.
In short, Afghanistan did not cause the Soviet Union’s demise even if it required large military spending. More accurately: it was Gorbachev’s impulsive decision to quickly discard the planned economy in favour of a market economy in order to appease the United States, who made the false promise that NATO would not expand eastward. If there was a real “trap”, it was this and Gorbachev played right into the hands of U.S. imperialism; and so, the Soviet Union received its devastating blow from the United States in the end — not from a small, minor nation such as Afghanistan which continues to suffer the most from the effects of these past events. For many years, but especially since the end of WWII, the United States made ceaseless efforts to undermine the USSR, adding stress upon stress onto its economy, in addition to the psychological warfare waged through the anti-Soviet propaganda and military threats against it and its allies. Despite any advances made in the past, the Soviet Union’s economy was still not as large as that of the United States. And so, in order to keep pace with NATO, the Soviet Union did not have much of a choice but to spend a large percentage of its GDP on its military and on helping to defend its allies, which included national liberation movements in the Third World, because of the very real and significant threat that U.S. imperialism posed. If it had not spent any money militarily, its demise would most likely have happened much sooner. But eventually, these mounting efforts by U.S. imperialism created a circumstance where its leadership under Gorbachev made a lapse in judgment, reacting impulsively and carelessly rather than acting with resilience in spite of the onslaught.
It should also be taken into account that WWII had a profound impact on Soviet leadership — from Joseph Stalin to Gorbachev — because even though the Red Army was victorious in defeating the Nazis, the widespread destruction had still placed the Soviet economy under an incredible amount of stress and it needed time to recover. Meanwhile, the convenient geographical location of the United States kept it from suffering the same casualties and infrastructural damage seen across Europe and Asia as a result of the Second World War, which enabled its economy to recover much faster and gave it enough time to eventually develop the U.S. Dollar as the international currency and assert dominance over the world economy. Plus, the U.S. had accumulated two-thirds of the world’s gold reserves by 1944 to help back the Dollar; and even if it lost a large amount of the gold, it would still be able to maintain Dollar supremacy by developing the fiat system to back the currency. Because of the destruction seen during WWII, it is understandable that the Soviet Union wanted to avoid another world war, which is why it also made several attempts at achieving some kind of diplomacy with the United States (before Gorbachev outright capitulated). At the same time, it also understood that maintaining its military defenses was important because of the threat of a nuclear war from the United States, which would be much more catastrophic than the Nazis’ military assaults against the Soviet Union since Hitler did not have a nuclear arsenal. This was part of a feat that U.S. imperialism was able to accomplish that ultimately overshadowed British, French, German, and Japanese imperialism, which Brzezinski reveals in his book, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives: an unparalleled military establishment that, by far, had the most effective global reach which allowed the U.S. to “project forces over long distances”, helping it to assert its global domination and impose its “political will”. And what makes the American Empire distinct from the Japanese Empire, British Empire, and other European empires is that one of the bases for its ideology is the socially constructed international hierarchy of nations, and not races as was the case with the other aforementioned empires. This constructed international hierarchy of nations is more effective because it means not only greater expansionism, but also the greater ability to exercise global primacy and supremacy. More specific to Central Asia and the Middle East, the Wahhabist and Salafist groups propped up by the CIA were always intended to nurture sectarianism and discord in order to counter a mass, broad-based united front of nations against imperialism — an example of divide-and-conquer, which is an age-old tradition of empire, except this time with Neoliberal characteristics.
Therefore, the Mujahideen against Afghanistan should not be thought of simply as “the Afghan trap”, but rather as the U.S. subjugation and plundering of West and Central Asia and an important milestone (albeit a cynical one) in shaping its foreign policy with regards to the region for many years to come. If one thing has remained a constant in U.S. foreign policy towards West and Central Asia, it is its strategic partnership with the oil autocracy of Saudi Arabia, which acts as the United States’ steward in safeguarding the profits of American petroleum corporations and actively assists Western powers in crushing secular Arab and Central Asian nationalist resistance against imperialism. The Saudi monarchy would again be called on by the U.S. government in 2011 in Syria to assist in the repeated formula of funding and arming so-called “moderate rebels” in the efforts to destabilize the country. Once again, the ultimate goal in this more recent imperial venture is to contain Russia.
Cold War 2.0? American Supremacy marches on
The present-day anti-Russia hysteria is reminiscent of the anti-Soviet propaganda of the Cold War era; while anti-communism is not the central theme today, one thing remains the same: the fact that the U.S. Empire is (once again) facing a formidable challenge to its position in the world. After the Yeltsin years were over, and under Vladimir Putin, Russia’s economy eventually recovered and moved towards a more dirigiste economy; and on top of that, it moved away from the NATO fold, which triggered the old antagonistic relationship with the United States. Russia has also decided to follow the global trend of taking the step towards reducing reliance on the U.S. dollar, which is no doubt a source of annoyance to the U.S. capitalist class. It seems that a third world war in the near future is becoming more likely as the U.S. inches closer to a direct military confrontation against Russia and, more recently, China. History does appear to be repeating itself. When the government of Bashar al Assad called on Moscow for assistance in fighting against the NATO-backed terrorists, it certainly was reminiscent of when the PDPA had done the same many years before. Thus far, the Syrian Arab Republic has continued to withstand the destabilization efforts carried out by the Al Qaeda-affiliated terrorist groups and Kurdish militias at the behest of the United States, and has not collapsed as Libya, Yugoslavia, and Afghanistan did.
But what often gets overlooked is the repeated Brzezinskist formula of funding highly reactionary forces and promoting them as “revolutionaries” to Western audiences in order to fight governments that defy the global dictatorship of the United States and refuse to allow the West to exploit their natural resources and labour power. As Karl Marx once said, “Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.” Such a phenomenon is no accident or a mere mistake. The geopolitical instability that followed after the overthrow of the PDPA ensures that no sound, united, and formidable opposition against U.S. imperialism will emerge for an indefinite number of years; and it seems that Libya, where the Brzezinskist-style of regime change also saw success and which is now a hotbed for the slave trade, is on the same path as Afghanistan. This is all a part of what Lenin calls moribund capitalism when he discussed the economic essence of imperialism; and by that, he meant that imperialism carries the contradictions of capitalism to the extreme limit. American global monopoly had grown out of U.S. foreign policy, and it should go without saying that the American Empire cannot tolerate losing its Dollar Supremacy, especially when the global rate of profit is falling. And if too many nations reject U.S. efforts to infiltrate their markets and force foreign finance capital exports onto their economies in order to gain a monopoly over the resources, as well as to exploit the labour of their working people, it would surely spell a sharp decline in American Dollar hegemony. The fact that the United States was willing to go as far as to back mercenaries to attack the former Democratic Republic of Afghanistan and fight the Soviet Union, as well as to spend billions of dollars on a highly elaborate but effective propaganda campaign, shows a sign of desperation of the American Empire in maintaining its global hegemony.
Since the end of World War II the United States has been, and is by and large still, the overwhelming world-dominating power. It is true that the American Empire is in decline, in light of increasing trends towards “de-Dollarization,” as well as the rise of China and Russia which pose as challenges to U.S. interests. Naturally, Washington will desperately try to cling on to its number one position in the world by accelerating the growth of its global monopolies — whether it is through placing wholly unnecessary tariffs against competitors such as China, or threatening to completely cut Venezuelan and Iranian oil out of the global market — even if it means an increasing drive towards World War III. The current global economic order which Washington elites have been instrumental in shaping over the past several decades reflects the interests of the global capitalist class to such an extent that the working class is threatened with yet another world war despite the unimaginable carnage witnessed during the first two.
When we look back at these historical events to help make sense of the present, we see how powerful mass media can be and how it is used as a tool of U.S. foreign policy to manipulate and control public opinion. Foreign policy is about the economic relationships between countries. Key to understanding how U.S. imperialism functions is in its foreign policy and how it carries it out — which adds up to plundering from relatively small or poorer nations more than a share of wealth and resources that can be normally produced in common commercial exchanges, forcing them to be indebted; and if any of them resist, then they will almost certainly be subjected to military threats.
With the great wealth that allowed it to build a military that can “project forces over long distances,” the United States is in a unique position in history, to say the least. However, as we have seen above, the now four decade-long war on Afghanistan was not only fought on a military front considering the psy-ops and the propaganda involved. If anything, the Soviet Union lost on the propaganda front in the end.
From Afghanistan we learn not only of the origins of Al Qaeda, to which the boom in the opioid-addiction epidemic has ties, or why today we have the phenomenon of an anti-Russia Western “left” that parrots imperialist propaganda and seems very eager to see that piece of Cold War history repeat itself in Syria. We also learn that we cannot de-link the events of the 2001 direct U.S. military intervention in Afghanistan and what followed from those of 1979; Afghanistan’s colonial-feudal past, its break from that with the 1978 Saur Revolution, and the U.S.-led Mujahideen are all as much of a part of its history (and the Greater Middle East, by extension) as the events of 2001. It cannot be stressed enough that it is those historical conditions, particularly as they relate to U.S. foreign policy, that helped to shape the ongoing conflict today.
Obviously, we cannot undo the past. It is not in the interests of the working class anywhere, in the Global South or in the Global North, to see a third world war happen, as such a war would have catastrophic consequences for everyone — in fact, it could potentially destroy all of humanity. Building a new and revitalized anti-war movement in the imperialist nations is a given, but it also requires a more sophisticated understanding of U.S. foreign policy. Without historical context, Western mass media will continue to go unchallenged, weaning audiences on a steady diet of “moderate rebels” propaganda and effectively silencing the victims of imperialism. It is necessary to unite workers across the whole world according to their shared interests in order to effectively fight and defeat imperialism and to establish a just, egalitarian, and sustainable world under socialism. Teaching the working class everywhere the real history of such conflicts as the one in Afghanistan is an important part of developing the revolutionary consciousness necessary to build a strong global revolutionary movement against imperialism.
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Originally published by LLCO.org on March 30, 2019. For the full-length article and bibliography, click here.
The true extent of the fall-out from the Libya war is remarkable: it has spurred terrorism in Europe, Syria, North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa
Eight years on from Nato’s war in Libya in 2011, as the country enters a new phase in its conflict, I have taken stock of the number of countries to which terrorism has spread as a direct product of that war.
The number is at least 14. The legacy of David Cameron’s, Nicolas Sarkozy’s and Barack Obama’s overthrow of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has been gruesomely felt by Europeans and Africans.
Yet holding these leaders accountable for their decision to go to war is as distant as ever.
Ungoverned space
The 2011 conflict, in which Nato worked alongside Islamist forces on the ground to remove Gaddafi, produced an ungoverned space in Libya and a country awash with weapons, ideal for terrorist groups to thrive.
But it was Syria that suffered first.
After civil war broke out there in early 2011, at the same time as in Libya, the latter became a facilitation and training hub for around 3,000 fighters on their way to Syria, many of whom joined al-Qaeda affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State-affiliated Katibat al-Battar al-Libi (KBL), which was founded by militants from Libya.
In Libya itself, a rebranding of existing al-Qaeda-linked groups in the north-eastern area of Derna produced Islamic State’s first official branch in the country in mid-2014, incorporating members of the KBL.
During 2015, IS Libya conducted car bombings and beheadings and established territorial control and governance over parts of Derna and Benghazi in the east and Sabratha in the west. It also became the sole governing body in the north-central city of Sirte, with as many as 5,000 fighters occupying the city.
By late 2016, IS in Libya was forced out of these areas, largely due to US air strikes, but withdrew to the desert areas south of Sirte, continuing low-level attacks.
In the last two years, the group has re-emerged as a formidable insurgent force and is again waging high-profile attacks on state institutions and conducting regular hit-and-run operations in the southwestern desert.
Last September, UN Special Representative to Libya Ghassan Salametold the UN Security Council that the IS “presence and operations in Libya are only spreading”.
Terror in Europe
After the fall of Gaddafi, IS Libya established training camps near Sabratha which are linked to a series of terrorist attacks and plots.
“Most of the blood spilled in Europe in the more spectacular attacks, using guns and bombs, really all began at the time when Katibat al-Battar went back to Libya,” Cameron Colquhoun, a former counterterrorism analyst for Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters, told The New York Times.
“That is where the threat trajectory to Europe began – when these men returned to Libya and had breathing space.”
Salman Abedi, who blew up 22 people at a pop concert in Manchester in 2017, met with members of the Katibat al-Battar al-Libi, a faction of IS, several times in Sabratha, where he was probably trained.
Other members of the KBL wereAbdelhamid Abaaoud, the ringleader of the 2015 Paris attacks on the Bataclan nightclub and sports stadium, which killed 130 people, and the militants involved in the Verviers plot to attack Belgium in 2015.
The perpetrator of the 2016 Berlin truck attack, which left 12 people dead, also had contacts with Libyans linked to IS.
So too in Italy, where terrorist activity has been linked to IS Libya, with several individuals based in Italy involved in the attack on the Bardo museum in Tunis in 2015, which killed 22 people.
Libya’s neighbours
Tunisia suffered its deadliest terrorist attack in 2015 when a 23-year-old Tunisian armed with a machine gun mowed down 38 tourists, mainly Britons, at a beach hotel in the resort of Port El Kantaoui.
The perpetrator was reportedly an adherent of IS and, like Salman Abedi, had been trained in the camp complex at Sabratha from where the attack was staged.
Libya’s eastern neighbour, Egypt, has also been struck by terrorism emanating from the country. IS officials in Libya have been linked to, and may have directed, the activities of Wilayat Sinai, the terrorist group formerly known as Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, which has carried out several deadly attacks in Egypt.
Egypt conducted air strikes against militant camps in Libya in 2015, 2016 and again in 2017, the latter following the killing of 29 Coptic Christians near Cairo.
Into the Sahel
But Libya has also become a hub for jihadist networks stretching south into the Sahel. Libya’s 2011 uprising opened a flow of weapons into northern Mali, which helped revive an ethno-tribal conflict that had been brewing since the 1960s.
By 2012, local allies of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) had taken control of day-to-day governance in the northern Mali towns of Gao, Kidal and Timbuktu.
After France intervened in Mali, the ongoing lack of governance in Libya precipitated several groups to relocate their operational centres to Libya, including both AQIM and its offshoot, Al-Mourabitoun, from where these groups could acquire weapons more easily.
With Libya as its rear base, Al-Mourabitoun under its leaderMokhtar Belmokhtarwas behind the attack on the Amenas hydrocarbon complex in eastern Algeria in January 2013, which left 40 foreign workers dead; the gun attack on the Radisson Blu hotel in Bamako, Mali in November 2015, which killed 22 people; and for the attack on Hotel Splendid in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, which killed 20 people in January 2016.
The fall-out from Libya spreads even wider, however. By 2016, US officials reported signs that Nigeria’s Boko Haram jihadists, responsible for numerous gruesome attacks and kidnappings, were sending fighters to join IS in Libya, and that there was increased cooperation between the two groups.
The International Crisis Group notes that it was the arrival of weapons and expertise from Libya and the Sahel that enabled Boko Haram to fashion the insurgency that plagues north-western Nigeria today.
There have even been claims that Boko Haram answers to IS commanders in Libya.
In addition to these 14 countries, fighters from several other states have joined IS militants in Libya in recent years. Indeed, it is estimated that almost 80 percent of IS membership in Libya is non-Libyan, including from countries such as Kenya, Chad, Senegal and Sudan.
These foreign fighters are potentially available to return to their own countries after receiving training.
The true extent of the fall-out from the Libya war is remarkable: it has spurred terrorism in Europe, Syria, North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa. Islamic State, although now nearly defeated in Syria and Iraq, is far from dead.
Indeed, while Western leaders seek to defeat terrorism militarily in some places, their disastrous foreign policy choices have stimulated it in others.
Mark Curtis is a historian and analyst of UK foreign policy and international development and the author of six books, the latest being an updated edition of Secret Affairs: Britain’s Collusion with Radical Islam.
الجيوش العربية «تعود مجدّداً» لإدارة السياسة وذلك بعد أكثر من نصف قرن من التمويه بواجهات قيادية مدنية من أصول عسكرية. فرجعت قرقعة السلاح وألبسة الكاكي والبلاغات رقم «1» المتواصلة.
لماذا هذه العودة إلى العلنيّة ومن دون وسيط؟
للتذكير فقط فإنّ معظم الجيوش في المنطقة العربية قلّصت في المرحلة الماضية من أدوارها السياسية المباشرة، لكنها احتفظت بدور الداعم للأنظمة والمشرفة على تحوّل بعض جنرالاتها، قيادات مدنية ببدلات وربطات عنق من ماركات فرنسية معطرة.
لذلك فإنّ سيطرة الجيوش في أربعة بلدان عربية على السلطات السياسية فيها مثير للريبة، خصوصاً أنّ مساحاتها تزيد عن ستة ملايين كيلومتر مربع وسكانها نحو مئتين مليون نسمة مع مواقع استراتيجية هامة.
اللافت أنّ هذه العودة تتقاطع مع ثلاثة أحداث مستجدة: اندحار الإرهاب القاعدي الداعشي ذي الأصول الوهابية، ثانياً تراجع النفوذ الأميركي في سورية والعراق، وثالثاً تشكل حراك شعبي كبير وضاغط، نجح بإسقاط رئاسة بوتفليقة في الجزائر والبشير في السودان، دافعاً ليبيا نحو حرب بين بقايا جيشها بقيادة السراج. والمثير أنّ الرئيس المصري عبد الفتاح السيسي الذي وصل إلى السلطة بانقلاب نفّذه الجيش المصري في 3 أيام التقى مؤخراً بالرئيس الأميركي دونالد ترامب، وعاد ليعدّل الدستور بما يسمح للرئيس السيسي بالبقاء في ولايات رئاسية متعددة لغاية 2030 كمدني يحكم بواسطة الجيش.
للمزيد من التوضيح، فإنّ انتفاضات شعبية جزائرية بدأت قبل أشهر عدة احتجاجاً على التدهور الاقتصادي المريع الذي أصاب البلاد بحكم وهميّ من رئيس مُصاب بجلطات دماغية منذ 2013 أفقدته الحركة والإدراك. مشكلاً واجهة لحكم من رجال الأعمال وقادة الجيش، فتحرّك الجيش عندما شعر أنّ الحراك كبير وثابت وذاهب نحو إسقاط النظام. وبحركة احتوائية انقلب الجيش على بوتفليقة مسرحيّاً معلناً تسلم السلطة انتقالياً لمدة عامين وذلك لإعادة «بناء المؤسسات الدستورية والاقتصادية وتسليمها للمدنيين»، كما زعم.
لكن الوضع الآن يدفع نحو صدام بين قيادة جيش متمسكة بالسلطة وبين حراك شعبي يرفض دور الجيش في السياسة، ما يُنذر بصدامات مرتقبة.
هذا ما حدث أيضاً في السودان التي تمكّن حراكها من إقصاء الرئيس عمر البشير، لكن قيادة الجيش سارعت بحركة مسرحية احتوائية الى اعتقال البشير وتسلّم السلطة… وهي الآن في نزاع مع حراك شعبي لم يترك الميادين مُصرّاً على حقه في إدارة السلطة السياسية.
أما في ليبيا، فالمعارك مستمرّة وسط «بازار» سياسي دولي تتنافس فيه قوى كبرى وأوروبية وإقليمية وعربية.
فمما تتكوّن هذه الجيوش؟
تتألف الجيوش العربية من طابقين: القيادة في صفوف الضباط وهم أبناء طبقات وسطى تمكّنوا بنظام الترفيع العسكري من إدراك مواقع قيادية، جرى استخدامها كثيراً في التفاعلات السياسية، حتى أصبحت تشارك كثيراً في إنتاج قراراتها.
أما الأنفار منهم فهم أبناء الأرياف الذين يشكلون جسماً وطنياً فعلياً ويمثلون كلّ التعدّدية العرقية والطائفية والقومية الموجودة في بلدانها.. هذه الشرائح هي الوحيدة التي تعبّر عن سمات أوطانها بشكل كامل، لكنها تصبح رهينة القيادة العليا المسيّسة أو التي تعمل لخدمة الطبقات السياسية ورجال الأعمال.
أما لجهة الحراكات الشعبية فإنها هامة جداً، إنما في الجزء الأول من انتفاضتها.. والتي تنبثق من أسباب اقتصادية تتقاطع مع دوافع سياسية. لكن المشكلة في أبناء هذه الحراكات أنّها تندمج في ما بينها مؤقتاً، لأنها تعود بعد انتصارها ومراوحتها إلى انقساماتها الأساسية من العرقية والطائفية والفئوية.
أما لماذا تفعل ذلك فلأنّ حركة الاندماج الوطني التاريخية الضرورية لم تحصل بين أبناء المكوّنات المتناقضة لإعادة صهرهم وبناء مواطن قابل لأن يتخلى عن طوائفه وعرقه لمصلحة وطنه.
للتنويه، فإنّ الدول المدنية التاريخية قامت فور انتصار حركاتها الشعبية التاريخية بدمج داخلي على أسس ثلاثة، العدالة السياسية والاقتصادية والاجتماعية، أيّ المساواة في الحقوق السياسية وفتح المناصب لكلّ الناس، وتوزيع المال العام على المكوّنات الاجتماعية، بعدل ومن دون تحيّز لقبيلة أو عرق أو دين، أما اجتماعياً فللمواطن الحق في الانتماء إلى الدين الذي يريده إنما من دون أن يستعمله في السياسة.. حتى أنّ الزواج هو إلزامي فقط في «البلديّة».
لقد استلزم تطبيق هذه العدالات قرناً ونصف قرن حتى لم يعُد الفرنسي يعرف مَن هو الكاثوليكي ومَن هو الأرثوذكسي. ولم يعد المواطن الأميركي يعرف مَن هو الكاثوليكي أو الإنجيلي، ومَن هو من ذوي الأصول الفرنسية او الانجلوساكسونية أو من نتاج سلالات بيضاء روسية ويونانية أو أخرى.
وهذا احتاج إلى أقلّ من قرن حتى أدركت أوروبا وأميركا وأوستراليا مرحلة الدمج لعصبيات مختلفة جرى توحيدها بالسياسة والاقتصاد والاجتماع.
الخوف إذاً موجود في العلاقات التبعية بين قيادات الجيوش والسياسات الخارجية السعودية ـ الإمارات ـ الأميركيون ـ الفرنسيون ـ البريطانيون… بالإضافة إلى ارتباطات قياداتها برجال الأعمال، وكما انّ توقيت تحركها يكشف أنها محاولة لمنع تأسيس دول مدنية او تأمين اندماج يعزز من قوة الأوطان.
فهل تمنع الجيوش إعادة بناء بلدانها؟ إنّ توقيت عودتها مشبوه، خصوصاً في حركة مواكبته لاندحار الإرهاب وتقلص الهيمنة الأميركية، فهل بإمكان الجيوش التعويض على المشاريع الأميركية الخاسرة؟
يبدو انّ الحشود تتقدّم نحو استكمال أدوارها، إنما بعد اضطرابات مرتقبة قد يكون بمقدورها ان تفرض على الجيوش التراجع التدريجي والعودة إلى الثكنات وإنهاء محاولاتها للسيطرة على الدور السياسي، لذلك فإنّ المنطقة العربية تسرع نحو اضطرابات من نوع جديد، لكنها لن تكون أكثر سوءاً من الإرهاب الذي ضرب المنطقة في العقد الأخير.
Five British Prime Ministers, some of them renowned war criminals, united yesterday in a call to build a Holocaust Memorial in proximity to Parliament. “A sacred, national mission,” is how Theresa May described the idea and for once, I totally agree with this tragic, sad woman. I would take it further: don’t just build a holocaust shrine in Westminster, make our parliament into a Holocaust monument. We don’t really need a House of Commons; as things stand, we better get direct orders from our true rulers in Tel Aviv.
But there is a deeper ethical rationale that justifies the erection of a holocaust memorial instead of our dysfunctional parliament. Every political commentator in Britain knows by now that the more that Jewish pressure groups terrorise the kingdom, its human rights campaigners, its artists, writers and poets, the more Brits become aware of the crimes of Zionism, Israel and their ruthless Lobby. The more British politicians join Parliamentary friends of Israel clubs, the less Brits trust their political system. The more Holocaust indoctrination is shoved down our throats, the more suspicious Brits become of the manner in which history is told.
Mrs May said: “By putting our National Holocaust Memorial and Education Centre next to our Parliament, we make a solemn and eternal promise that Britain will never forget what happened in the Holocaust.” Is that true Mrs. May? Do you really mean what you say? Will our Holocaust memorial bring to light the embarrassing fact that Britain made it very difficult for Jewish refugees to seek a safe haven in the Kingdom or in other parts of the empire? In 1937, as the rate of Jewish refugees looking to immigrate to Britain increased, the British government created stricter standards for those whom they would admit. One was that refugees had to have ₤50 deposited in an overseas bank, but in Germany it was against the law to possess foreign currency. If this was not enough to stop Jewish immigration from Germany, the British government limited the number of immigrants in 1938 and 1939. Practically speaking, the British Government turned its back on German and Austrian Jews.
The PM vowed that “in the face of despicable Holocaust denial, this memorial will stand to preserve the truth forever.
” I am here to tell you with confidence that the British Holocaust memorial will act intensively to conceal British complicity in the destruction of European Jewry.
Mrs May was joined by all the living former prime ministers: David Cameron, Gordon Brown, Tony Blair and Sir John Major. With the exception of Sir John Major, all our living PMs are involved in a lot of death and carnage. While Blair and Brown led this kingdom to a disastrous criminal war in Iraq that led to millions of casualties, it was Cameron who managed to pull this country into a chain of disasters in Libya, Syria and beyond.
Tony Blair whom third of the British people see as a war criminal said in his message that “Antisemitism and hate did not end in 1945. Unfortunately today some of this poison is back from the political fringe to parts of the political mainstream.” Blair was probably referring to his own party that struggles to disown the criminal past he himself inflicted on it. But the truth of the matter is that Antisemitism didn’t die in 1945, certainly not in Britain. The post-war Labour Government went out of its way to make the lives of Jewish holocaust survivors impossible. In Zionist history, British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin (Labour) is remembered as one of the bitterest enemies of the Jewish people. This senior Labour politician had opposed removing the limiting of Jewish immigration to Palestine. Is this Zionist chronicle of Labour anti-Jewish politics going to be explored in the Holocaust monument?
It doesn’t take a genius to gather why Blair and Brown are so enthusiastic about a museum that Chronicles Nazi crimes rather than a proper and timely institute that would explore their own crimes in Iraq. It is pretty clear why David Cameron prefers to divert attention from his own blunders in Syria and Libya. But it goes further. Britain and the Empire have a long list of crimes against humanity to account for: slavery, concentration camps in the Boer war, the partitioning of India, the destruction of Palestine, famines in Ireland and Bengal. Millions of innocent people lost their lives due to the crimes of the empire, yet our ethically compromised Prime Ministers are committed to the commemoration of crimes that were committed by another people. Is this the ethical message we are supposed to pass to the next generations? Is zero self-reflection a new British value?
I have learned that Jeremy Corbyn, the person who according to the polls is destined to become our next PM, is not at all different from his predecessors. Corbyn, who at a certain point claimed to care for the many, is now subscribing to the primacy of Jewish suffering. Corbyn was quick to announce that he also would “strongly support permanent commemoration, including a national memorial, alongside extra investment in educational programmes.” I guess that supporting a Holocaust memorial is an entry ticket to 10 Downing Street.
There is a good reason to believe that our entire political class has migrated to Egypt by now, without exception they all live in a state of denial.
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– يتشابه كثيراً وضع الإمارة التي صنعها النائب السابق وليد جنبلاط لزعامته، مع الإمارة التي تبوأ أمير قطر حمد بن ثاني قيادة الربيع العربي عبرها. فكل من الأميرين والإمارتين بلغ مراتب من الأدوار والأحجام تفيض عن مقدراته الحقيقية بفائض قوة افتراضي، وفّرته لأمير قطر ثلاثية ثروة الغاز وقناة الجزيرة ومكانته الأخوانية، ومعها شجاعة المغامرة طلباً للأدوار الكبيرة، ووفّرته لجنبلاط ثلاثية الجغرافيا والديمغرافيا والقدرة على التموضع بانقلابات سريعة دون مساءلة أو محاسبة. فمن جهة وضعية الجبل اللبناني الجغرافية في الحروب من حمانا إلى خلدة وإمساكه بطريقي بيروت دمشق وبيروت الجنوب، ومن جهة ثانية التطهير الديمغرافي الذي فرضه على الجبل وأمسك به على أساسه، ومن جهة ثالثة توظيفه لهذه وتلك في التغييرات الكبرى في الإقليم كمستثمر مغامر أو مقامر قادر على الانسحاب وتبديل موقعه قبل نهاية المباراة.
– راهن الأميران على شراكة غير معلنة في الحرب على سورية، ووضع كل منهما في هذه المقامرة كل الرصيد، «صولد وأكثر»، وخسرا، فأعلن أمير قطر الاعتزال كي ينقذ ما تبقى من الإمارة لولده من بعده، ولو على حجم أصغر، وواصل الأمير اللبناني لعبة الرهانات متطلعاً لاستعادة الإمارة رغم تغير الأزمان.
– يدرك وليد جنبلاط أنه خسر الحرب، ويدرك أن لا حرب مقبلة يسرج لها خيله في مغامرة جديدة، ويدرك أن تسويات كثيرة تجري تحت الطاولات ووراء الكواليس لا تشبه الكلام التصعيدي الذي يملأ الإعلام، وهو ممن يعلمون ماذا يجري في الحرب في ليبيا ومكانتها في التصادم الروسي الأميركي سابقاً والتفاهم الروسي الأميركي راهناً. ويعلم أن سقف العقوبات على إيران هو عدم التشدّد فيها لبلوغها حد استفزاز إيران لحرب في الخليج، وعدم التراخي فيها لبلوغها حد تمكين إيران وحلفائها من شنّ حرب على «إسرائيل»، ويدرك أن لا مفاعيل فعلية تقلق أحداً مما يقول أو ما قد يفعل، لكنه يحاول تكرار لعبة تنغيص احتفالات النصر، كما قال لسيمور هيرش قبل سنوات، لمقايضتها بالحصول على أفضل الممكن، بعدما جرّبها بعد حرب تموز 2006 وأنتجت له مصالحات جدّدت الدور، فيرفع السقوف إعلاناً للاستعداد للمقايضة، لكنه يتجاهل أن مكانة الجغرافيا تغيّرت وأن الديمغرافيا لن تبقى إلى الأبد مع تحولات في العلاقات الطائفية نحو التوازن، وأن لا تغييرات كبرى يستثمر عليها بمغامرة جديدة.
– يدرك جنبلاط أنه لم تكن هناك ثورة مدنية في سورية تعرّضت لمؤامرة كما زعم قبل أيام، قائلاً إن التطرف قد جلب من الخارج لصالح هزيمة هذه الثورة، فهو يعلم ماهية قادة مَن سمّاهم بالثوار في سورية، وهو مَن دعا مبكراً وعلناً لتتويج جبهة النصرة ممثلاً شرعياً للشعب السوري. وهو يعرف أنها فرع رسمي لتنظيم القاعدة، وهو مَن دعا لتسمية جبال القلمون بـ «النصرة لاند» ومنحها خصوصية عسكرية تشبه وضع منطقة العرقوب في السبعينيات يوم تسميتها بـ «فتح لاند». ويدرك أن المغامرة والمقامرة التي خاضها هذه المرة لم تكن تعني أبناء الطائفة التي أرادها وقوداً لمراهنته، على عكس حرب الجبل قبل عقود، خصوصاً سعيه المحموم هذه المرة لتوريط السوريين من أبناء طائفته لجعل منطقة السويداء مشروع إمارة بحماية إسرائيلية ومال سعودي، وقد وعدها بضمانات من جبهة النصرة، كما يدرك أن زعامته في الثمانينيات قامت على قضية، ولا زعامة بلا قضية. والقضية كانت يومها أنه جزء من جبهة تقودها سورية لإسقاط نتائج الغزو الإسرائيلي للبنان وفي طليعتها إخراج المارينز وإسقاط اتفاق السابع عشر من أيار، وأنه قام بتحويل رصيده في هذه المواجهة إلى تهجير للمسيحيين وجعل الجبل بقوة الجغرافيا والديمغرافيا أداة لابتزاز حلفائه الذين صنعوا له فرصة الزعامة، وأن هزيمة مشروعه في السويداء تتزامن مع نهاية مفاعيل نصره الذي حوّله طائفياً في الجبل. والأهم هو ما يعلمه جنبلاط أن أي تلويح بلعبة شارع بوجه حزب الله لاستدراجه للتفاوض ستجعله يجد نفسه في المواجهة مع حركة أمل، بدلاً من حزب الله، ورئيسها آخر ملاذ لجنبلاط. وقد باتت هذه العلاقة عبئاً على رئيس حركة أمل لا يتحمّل منها المزيد، خصوصاً بعد الكلام عن مزارع شبعا.
– كلام جنبلاط عن مزارع شبعا معروض للبيع، لكنه لن يجد مَن يشتريه، فلا واشنطن ولا تل أبيب قادرتان على التصرف بالبضاعة، ولا المقاومة قلقة من قانون العرض والطلب، ومعادلة السين سين التي عاش عليها جنبلاط بما تعنيه من تفاهم سوري سعودي يتمتع ضمنه بمكانة مميّزة ذهبت إلى غير رجعة، وبديلها مأزوم. فالسين سين الجديدة، هي السويداء سبلين، أي الزعامة والمال، فالسويداء ورقته الخاسرة لحرب الزعامة وسبلين مورده المالي لحماية الزعامة ولو على حساب البيئة، والذي لأجله يقاتل المنافسة المفترضة على مبيعات الإسمنت للسوق الواعدة في سورية، تحوّلا معاً سين وسين، من رهانات ربح إلى رهانات خاسرة.
– عندما علم أمير قطر بالخسارة المحققة ذهب إلى الرئيس التركي وطلب إليه رعاية ولده الأمير الصغير وتنحّى، ويستطيع جنبلاط أن يجد من يذهب إليه ليفعل شيئاً مشابهاً، لأن الطرق الأخرى لا تبدو سالكة. فاللعبة كما يبدو قد انتهت، أو شارفت على النهاية، ولا أدوار افتراضية في تسوياتها، وفي الجبل زعيم سابق هو كميل شمعون وصل إلى رئاسة لبنان وزعامته بلغت في الشرق مكاناً وفي العالم مكانة، لكنه لم يفعل المناسب في الوقت المناسب ففقد أبناؤه من بعده كل زعامة، والزعماء هم الذين يتقنون فن الخسارة وليس التصرّف بالربح فقط.
April 19, 2019 “Information Clearing House” –The Libyan National Army (LNA) troops of General Hafter attack the militias which support the UN recognized government in Tripoli from the south. The LNA still lacks forces for a larger break through. Several objects at the front changed hands several times. There are bloody skirmishes but no big fights. Those are still to come.
Analysts believe that Haftar over-estimates the strength of his LNA.
They say the controversial field marshal, who backs an administration rival to the GNA based in eastern Libya, was counting on a quick collapse of Tripoli militias.
But pro-GNA reinforcements from around Tripoli rushed to assist in driving back his forces.
It was never clear if Hafter really hoped that a lightning attack on Tripoli would achieve a fast victory, or if his sudden move was intended to rally support from outside. He is now certainly getting such support and that will be to his decisive advantage in the longer play.
Hafter has open support from France, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Russia. The Trump administration is not interested to step into the mess. Hafter is an old CIA asset and if he takes control there is a good chance that the U.S. will have influence over him. As long as Libyan oil flows and keeps the global oil price down Trump will be happy. Russia is trying to stay in the background to not give the anti-Russian forces in Washington an excuse to intervene.
The Muslim Brothers, supported by Turkey and Qatar, are still in play in Misrata but have otherwise lost their influence on the ground.
Since then the Wall Street Journalreported that Saudi Arabia pledged tens of millions of dollars to support Hafter’s move on Tripoli. During the last week Hafter visited President Sisi of Egypt.
Europe is disunited over the issue. Italy wants to keep its influence in its former colony Libya and its historical position in the Libyan oil industry. It is also concerned about a new wave of refugees. It supports the government in Tripoli. France is supporting Hafter with an eye on taking over some oil business. It is also concerned about Islamist activities in former French colonies west and south of Libya. With Italy and France in a clinch, the European Union only issued a weak statement that called for a stop of fighting without naming any side.
Concern over the militias which support the Tripoli government increased too. They not as harmless as many seem to have thought:
A week after an aspiring strongman launched a surprise attack on the Libyan capital, an assortment of criminal gangs and extremists are rushing into the fight against him, raising new questions for the United States and other Western powers that have condemned his attack.
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But an increasingly unsavory cast has joined the coalition against him, including a group closely tied to a militia sanctioned as a terrorist organization by the United States and the United Nations; an extremist warlord sanctioned for undermining Libya’s stability; and other militia leaders sanctioned for migrant trafficking. That mix so alarms Western powers that some may deem General Hifter the lesser evil.
Yesterday the U.S., which had said little when Hafter launched his assault on Tripoli, came out of the closet:
The United States and Russia both said Thursday they could not support a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for a cease-fire in Libya at this time, diplomats said, as mortar bombs crashed down on a suburb of the Libyan capital, Tripoli.
Russia objects to the British-drafted resolution blaming eastern Libyan commander Khalifa Haftar for the latest flare-up in violence when his Libyan National Army (LNA) advanced to the outskirts of Tripoli earlier this month, diplomats said.
The United States gave no reason for its position on the draft resolution …
President Donald Trump spoke on Monday with a Libyan strongman whose forces are advancing on the nation’s capital, the White House said, in a move that may undermine support for the country’s internationally recognized government.
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Trump discussed “ongoing counterterrorism efforts and the need to achieve peace and stability in Libya” with Haftar, White House Deputy Press Secretary Hogan Gidley said in a statement. Gidley called Haftar by the title “field marshal.”
“The president recognized Field Marshal Haftar’s significant role in fighting terrorism and securing Libya’s oil resources, and the two discussed a shared vision for Libya’s transition to a stable, democratic political system,” Gidley said.
The key point for Trump is the oil price. His administration put sanctions on sales of Iranian and Venezuelan oil. Since the beginning of the year crude oil prices rallied from the low $50 per barrel to over $70 per barrel. Trump plans to reduce waivers he gave to some of the countries that continue to buy Iranian oil. That would further decrease Iran’s output. Any additional disruption of Libya’s oil production would increase the oil price and harm the U.S. economy. It would thereby make Trump’s plan for total sanctions on Iranian oil impossible.
Hafter controls most of Libya’s oil supplies. With open backing from the U.S., Russia and France, support from the military in Egypt, and with enough Saudi cash to finance his army, he surely has all the needed support to sustain a longer fight.
His next move will likely be against the small air force the Misrata gangs assembled. The U.S. might give him a helping hand in that. Hafter could then close down the airspace for flights from Turkey and Qatar. That would cut into the resupply Misrata and Tripoli need for a longer fight.
Those who say that “there is no military solution” to the situation in Libya will likely be proven wrong. Hafter has all he needs to win the fight.
This article was originally published by “Moon Of Alabama” –
