The Big Gaddafi has barely left the building - the Bab-al-Aziziyah compound
- and the Western vultures are already circling overhead; the scramble is on
to seize the "big prize" - Libya's oil and gas wealth.
Libya is as much a pawn in a serious ideological, geopolitical, geo-economic
and geostrategic chessboard as a pedestrian morality play sold as a TV
reality show; idealistic "rebels" win against Public Enemy Number One. Once
the public enemy was Saddam Hussein, then it was Osama bin Laden, today is
Muammar Gaddafi, tomorrow is President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, one day it
will be Iran's President Mahmud Ahmadinejad. The enemy is never the ultra
reactionary House of Saud.
How NATO won the war
The spectacular reappearing act of Gaddafi's son Saif al-Gaddafi
notwithstanding, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has virtually
won the Libyan civil war (or "kinetic military activity", according to the
White House). The masses of "Libyan people" were spectators at best, or bit
part actors in the form of a few thousand "rebels" carrying kalashnikovs.
The top billing was R2P ("responsibility to protect"). From the beginning
R2P, manned by France and Britain and backed by the US, magically turned
into regime change. That led to the unsung stars in this production being
Western and monarchical Arab "advisers", as in "contractors" or
"mercenaries".
NATO started winning the war by launching Operation Siren at Iftar - the
break of the Ramadan fast - last Saturday evening, Libya time. "Siren" was
the codename for an invasion of Tripoli. That was NATO's final - and
desperate - power play, after the chaotic "rebels" had gone nowhere after
five months of fighting Gaddafi's forces.
Until then, NATO's plan A was to try to kill Gaddafi. What R2P cheerleaders
- left and right - had dubbed "steady NATO attrition" boiled down to praying
for three outcomes; Gaddafi killed, Gaddafi surrenders, Gaddafi flees.
Not that any of this prevented NATO bombs from falling in private homes,
universities, hospitals or even close to the Foreign Ministry. Everything -
and everyone - was a target.
"Siren" featured a colorful casting of "NATO rebels", Islamist fanatics,
gullible embedded journalists, TV-friendly mobs, and Cyrenaica youth
manipulated by opportunist Gaddafi regime defectors eyeing fat checks by oil
giants Total and BP. . . .
The new Iraq?
Yet to believe that NATO would win the war and let the "rebels" control
power is a joke. Reuters has already reported that a "bridging force" of
around 1,000 soldiers from Qatar, the Emirates and Jordan will arrive in
Tripoli to act as police. And the Pentagon is already spinning that the US
military will be on the ground to "help to secure the weapons". A nice touch
that already implies who's going to be really in charge; the "humanitarian"
neo-colonialists plus their Arab minions. . . .
[Today, the Washington Post reported unrest in Libya which the Libyans
believe is led by a Col. Khalifa Haftar based in the U.S. On May 17, 1991
the Washington Times reported that three hundred and fifty Libyans would
arrive soon in the United States. . . . the Libyans who arrived in the U.S.
in 1991 . . . were trained by our CIA to topple President Ghaddafi.
--Enver Masud, "Libya: Who's Terrorizing
Whom," The Wisdom Fund, March 26, 1996]
2010 HDI Rankings: Norway 1, United States 4, France 14, Italy 23,
UAE 32, Bahrain 39, Libya 53, Saudi Arabi 55, Iran 70, South Africa
73, Jordan 82, Egypt 101, Indonesia 108, India 119, Afghanistan 155--"Human
Development Index," undp.org
Having pushed for a no-fly zone over Libya, what's CSIDs Masmoudi doing
in Tunis? "Letter to President
Obama about Libya," Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy
(CSID), March 14, 2011
[Earlier in the rebellion, military command was fiercely contested
between General Younes and Colonel Khalifa
Heftar, a hero of the Libya-Chad war who had lived in the US for 20
years. Colonel Haftar lost that tussle, but he can now stake his claim to
leadership.--Shashank Joshi, "Younes's assassination could
trigger tribal warfare," Independent, July 30, 2011]
[Their group is made up of members of a popular uprising; tribal factions;
an Islamic group with ties to Al Qaeda; a political and military group with
alleged ties to the CIA; and a group of former Gadhafi ministers, academics
and businessmen. . . .
The group also has a military wing called the Libyan National Army. It
was formed in 1988 by Khalifa Haftar and
was backed by the CIA--Debra Black, "A who's who of the
Libyan revolution," thestar.com, August 22, 2011]
[It was the leading Nato states that championed and funded the Transitional
National Council - including members with longstanding CIA and MI6 links -
and officials from Nato states who drew up the stabilisation plan now being
implemented on the ground.--Seumas Milne, "Libya's imperial hijacking is a threat
to the Arab revolution," Guardian, August 24, 2011]
[So the winners in the oil bonanza are already designated: NATO
members plus Arab monarchies. Among the companies involved, British
Petroleum (BP), France's Total and the Qatar national oil company.--Pepe
Escobar, "Disaster
capitalism swoops over Libya," atimes.com, August 25, 2011]
[There is no cause to doubt that, for whatever reason, the support of the
people of Sirte for Gadaffi is genuine. That this means they deserve to be
pounded into submission is less obvious to me.--Craig Murray, "Sirte - the Apotheosis of 'Liberal
Intervention'," craigmurray.org, August 26, 2011]
[The most damning of these cables memorializes an August 2009 meeting
between Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and his son and national security
adviser, Muatassim, with US Republican Senators John McCain (Arizona),
Lindsey Graham (South Carolina), Susan Collins (Maine) and Connecticut
"independent" Joe Lieberman. . . .
In the meeting held just two years ago, however, McCain took the lead in
currying favor with the Gaddafis. According to the embassy cable, he
"assured" them that "the United States wanted to provide Libya with the
equipment it needs for its security" and "pledged to see what he could do to
move things forward in Congress." . . .
In the end, they seized upon the upheavals in the region and the anti-
Gaddafi protests in Libya as the opportunity to launch a war to establish
outright semi-colonial control over the energy-rich country and rid
themselves of an ally who was never seen as fully reliable or predictable
and upset his patrons with demands for better deals with big oil, closer
ties with Russia and China and the threat of replacing the euro and dollar
with a "gold dinar."--Bill Van Auken, "WikiLeaks
cables expose Washington's close ties to Gaddafi," Global Research,
August 27, 2011]
[Four years ago, the US set up a new "command and control centre" for the
military subjugation of the Africa, called AFRICOM. The problem for the US
was that no African country wanted to host them; indeed, until very
recently, Africa was unique in being the only continent in the world without
a US military base. And this fact is in no small part, thanks to the efforts
of the Libyan government.--Dan Glazebrook, "AFRICOM and the Neo-Colonialists: NATO's War on
Libya is an Attack on African Development," counterpunch.org,
September 6, 2011]
[They told journalists what they needed to know: that Gaddafi was about to
commit "genocide", of which there was no evidence, unlike the abundant
evidence of "rebel" massacres of black African workers falsely accused of
being mercenaries. European bankers' secret transfer of the Central Bank of
Libya from Tripoli to "rebel" Benghazi by European bankers in order to
control the country's oil billions was an epic heist of little
interest.--John Pilger, "Hail to the True Victors of Rupert's Revolution,"
johnpilger.com, September 8, 2011]
[A young French film-maker, Julien Teil, has filmed a remarkable interview
in which the secretary general of the Libyan League for Human Rights,
Slimane Bouchuiguir, candidly admits that he had "no proof" of the
allegations he made before the U.N. Human Rights Commission which led to
immediate expulsion of the official Libyan representative and from there to
U.N. Resolutions authorizing what turned into the NATO war of regime change.
Indeed, no proof has ever been produced of the "bombing of Libyan
civilians" denounced by Al Jazeera, the television channel financed by the
Emir of Qatar, who has emerged with a large share of Libyan oil business
from the "liberation war" in which Qatar participated.--Diana Johnstone,
"As the 'Humanitarian Warriors' Gloat... Here's the Key
Question in the Libyan War," Guardian, October 26, 2011]
["Qatar is weakening Libya," says an NTC member who requested anonymity
because he was speaking about a sensitive topic. "In funding the Islamists,
they are upsetting the balance of politics and making it difficult for us to
move forward. They need to stop their meddling." Senior military officials
sidelined by Qatar's cronies are just as blunt. "If aid comes through the
front door, we like Qatar," says General Khalifa Hiftar. "But if it comes
through the window to certain people . . . bypassing official channels, we
don't want Qatar."--Ian Black, "Why Libyans Have Fallen Out of Love with Qatar,"
time.com, January 2, 2012]
[ . . . the recognition extended by foreign powers to the NTC was far in
advance of the extent to which Libyans, even many of those in the forefront
of the battle to oust Gaddafi, were willing to accept its lead.--Tony Karon,
"In Post-Gaddafi Libya, Freedom is
Messy - and Getting Messier," time.com, January 4, 2012]
[Libyans have won the right to live in fear, as they have won the
freedom to be ruled by countless armed despots each engaged in torture,
abductions, and persecution of minorities. In spite of what seems like an
unstoppable momentum towards greater strife and social disintegration,
romantic imperialists in the West still insist on speaking in the most
unwarranted terms of the "street revolution," that has "brought freedom and
hope to millions of people here" . . .
Once independent, wealthy, and powerfully defiant, today Libyan resources
are almost being given away to foreign powers --Maximilian forte, "The New
Libya," counterpunch.org, February 19, 2013]
[human beings are being sold for as little as $400 in "liberated" Libya . . .
clear warnings were issued starting in early 2011 that Libya's black as well as migrant
population would be the first to fall victim at the hands of the Islamist Libyan rebels
that NATO's war empowered.--Tyler Durden, "Libya's Slave Auctions And African Genocide: What Hillary
Knew," zerohedge.com, November 15, 2017]