WHO TOPPLED GADDAFI --- 'THE WEST' OR THE JEWS?

WHO TOPPLED GADDAFI --- 'THE WEST' OR THE JEWS?

According to following report appearing in Israeli newspaper, two French Jews, Sarkozy and Bernard-Henri Levy collaborated to wage war on Libya under 'convenient' and contrived pretext of saving civilian lives, and ended up accomplishing their mission to assassinate Gaddafi and take over Libya as a new western colony.

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai

--------http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/week-s-end/how-i-liberated-libya-1.401754


Sat, December 17, 2011 Kislev 21, 5772

• Published 08:14 16.12.11
• Latest update 08:14 16.12.11

'How I liberated Libya'

In his new book, Bernard-Henri Levy describes the revolution in Libya as the first European war of the 21st century, and recounts conversations in which he worked to convince Sarkozy to deploy forces there. A conversation with the philosopher who insists that he'd never vote for the French president and that he hates war.

 

By Sefy Hendler
PARIS - Saturday, March 5, conversation with Sarkozy:
'I am in Benghazi, Mr. President.' 

	Bernard-Henri Levy in Misrata.
	Photo by: Marc Roussel

'Ah,' he replies as though nothing were more natural than to hear me calling from Benghazi. 'How are things progressing? How are you?'
'I have something important to tell you. I just met the Massouds of Libya.'

'Who?'

'Massoud [named for Ahmad Shah Massoud, the Afghan anti-Taliban leader who was murdered on the eve of the 9/11 terror attacks], the Libyan Massouds, the opposition to Gadhafi, I saw them founding ...'

The connection is lost"

- Bernard-Henri Levy, "La guerre sans l'aimer" ("War Without Loving Her," Editions Grasset, 2011 ).
 
Nine months have passed since that conversation, which may have been the moment that spurred President Nicolas Sarkozy to meet with the Libyan rebels, and opened the way to French military intervention from the other side of the Mediterranean. 

Bernard-Henri Levy suggests that our own conversation take place a few hundred meters from the Elysee palace, in the bar of a swanky hotel.

With his signature white shirt and black velvet jacket, plugged in as usual to his Blackberry, Levy appears to be as comfortable in Paris as in Benghazi. He shuttled quite a bit between the two continents in recent months, and notched up one of the most impressive achievements in his career as "a socially engaged intellectual": removing a bloodthirsty dictator. The smartphone being used at this moment to conduct an ordinary conversation served, according to Levy, on March 21 to transmit precise coordinates for a bombardment - and, several months later, to receive a list of targets that had to be attacked right before the final battle for Tripoli.

The philosopher-journalist was never a pacifist, but still, he was risking a great deal when he dragged himself and his country into a war.

"First and foremost there was the physical danger. That doesn't matter. Then the danger to your reputation, that is even more important - your name. The third danger, which is even greater, was via-a-vis the world. War is life and death. Living and dying. Do you prevent more deaths than you cause? Do you cause the world to be better or worse? That is the real risk, and I was aware of it from the first moment. This haunted me throughout the conflict," he says.

In his new book he concedes that it is strange for an intellectual to receive "congratulations" the moment a war breaks out. Did the contact with fighters at the front, with arms dealers who sought him out, and with pilots en route to battle cause him to feel any pangs of conscience, we ask.

"When I bring the delegation from Misrata" - referring to a city outside Tripoli - "to the Elysee, I know full well that I am bringing them so they will be given offensive weapons to end this war. And they got the weapons. When, even before that, in April, I bring General Younes to Paris [Abdel Fattah Younes, commander of the rebel forces, murdered in late July], I am not bringing him on a tourist trip. I am bringing him to enable the opening of a new front." Levy pauses for a moment and contemplates what he has just said, before adding, "to end the war."

"These are just sentences. Reality is of course more terrible ... Nevertheless I thought - and this thought was never refuted - that it was the right thing to do for the Libyan citizenry, for regional peace and for the world I will leave to my children."

Inside the Elysee

The fascinating book he published a few weeks ago portrays the story of the conflict as the first European war of the 21st century: 

France and Britain leading a force fighting a member of the Arab League. Levy describes how he persuaded President Nicolas Sarkozy to embark on the adventure that cost Muammar Gadhafi his life. This is a riveting glimpse behind the scenes in today's corridors of power - lists of weapons, the nighttime meetings at the palace, the months of dithering, Gadhafi's attempts to save himself, and finally Tripoli's fall and the liberation of Libya.

Because he does not officially "belong" to the Elysee, Levy allows himself to relate in minute detail his conversations with the president; in them, Sarkozy reveals his opinions of the world's top leaders. The things he says are frequently far from flattering. The Americans? "Oddly soft." Merkel? "Pathetic," in her caution. Berlusconi? "Asks himself if he has a brain left." Papandreou? "Throws too many wrenches into the works. You can't ... sabotage [the operation] when you're not even on deck." And the Turks? "Good thing I blocked them" (during the debate over possible entry to the European Union ). Levy even describes Sarkozy's reaction when, on July 20, a rebel delegation that came to the Elysee offered to assassinate Gadhafi: "I do not want to turn him into a martyr, and in addition to that, I am not a murderer!"

According to Levy, the president nonetheless went on to say that, if Gadhafi were to be "killed in a confrontation, that is another matter. I think it would be a mistake, but it would not be any of my business." The Libyan leader was executed during a "confrontation" three months later.

The president did not call you and say: Bernard, you are going too far?

"He called me up to say that he was happy the book came out, because he enjoyed reading it, and that he had absolutely nothing to say regarding the accuracy of the verbatim conversations."

Levy, who repeats more than once that he did not and will not vote for Sarkozy, has become the intellectual most identified with the right-wing president. Does this new closeness bother him?

"I contributed to entering this war not because of my closeness to Sarkozy ... We have barely spoken since he was elected in 2007. There is a president in France today who miraculously got on the same page as me very quickly. But that does not mean I am close to him. I was closer to Mitterrand, really close. To Chirac I was close at a certain point. To Sarkozy, not really. We've had serious disagreements, suspicions. I am less close to him than to others, and that is what makes this story so strange. With him it succeeded, whereas with the others [Mitterrand in Bosnia and Chirac in Afghanistan] it failed."

There were some in France who saw the Libyan adventure involving the philosopher and the president as something that profited them both, and not only the Libyan people. For his part, Sarkozy was in need of an intellectual "aura."

Naturally, Levy's new book has also drawn fire. "Not that much," he says, trying not to grin. The sharpest barb was hurled in the daily Le Monde (on whose board of directors he sits ), by a writer who claimed that Levy's attempt to take credit for France's declaration of war is baseless, because preparations for a military intervention in Libya had begun even before he telephoned Sarkozy.

"The train left the station," as it were, just before the philosopher climbed aboard? "That is the only detail in dispute," Levy says. His thick skin apparently permits him to ignore such criticism and bask in facts on the ground: Gadhafi is gone, France won.

The mistake

One occasion on which Levy suffered a pretty resounding failure was his attempt to bring about a rapprochement between the new Libya and Jerusalem, by conveying an unofficial message to the Israeli authorities from the rebel council in Libya.

In the book he describes these events in detail. At the end of May he received a call from one of his contacts in Libya, who asked him to tell "your Israeli friends" that "Libya will not be hostile toward them."

Levy takes off for Israel the next day and manages to complete his "assignment": On June 2 he met Benjamin Netanyahu, with whom he jointly drafted a statement saying that "the State of Israel hopes that when a new government will arise in Libya, it will advance peace and security for all peoples of the entire region." The statement was issued after a meeting between the Israeli premier and French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe. In the meantime, news of the message Levy delivered from the Libyans became public, causing an uproar in the Arab world. The Libyans were forced into a vehement denial - and Levy realized he had made a mistake.

"How could I have erred like that?" he asks, before answering himself: "It was difficult for me to imagine that contact with Israel must remain confidential. I was in a state of euphoria over the feasibility of normal ties perhaps some day between Israel and another Arab country. I didn't think it was such a problem," he says sadly.

And beyond this highly significant episode, is Israel not right to be suspicious of the Arab Spring?

"Certainly. I too am suspicious. I have no intention of accepting, of adopting, everything this 'spring' brings. I maintain my critical sense. And when there is a possibility of talking to some of the key players, there is nothing preventing us from telling them what we think. I will give you an example: In the days after Abdel Jalil spoke about sharia [Mustafa Abdel Jalil, head of the rebel National Transitional Council talked about Libya adopting Islamic law], his remarks prompted a storm all over the world. I telephoned people with whom I have contact inside the council to strongly recommend that the government not include Islamists. I'm not claiming that this is what led to there not being any radical Islamists in the new government, but the reality is that there aren't."

Still, we ask, from an Israeli viewpoint, wasn't the situation better off with Bashar Assad; with Hosni Mubarak, who honored the peace treaty; with Gadhafi, who financed global terrorism but was at least the devil we knew? Maybe the fast track has now opened and radical Islam will come to power in various countries?

Levy strongly protests the assumption that the Arab dictators were strategically convenient for Israel, but makes an even more fundamental point: "We have no choice. It is not the role of democracy in general and of Israel in particular to decide whether the dictator should disappear or not. It is the people that are supposed to decide that. The only choice before Israel is to hunker down in a stance of refusal - a position that would bind its fate with that of the dictators, or to express sympathy in principle for the budding signs of democracy and liberty. I, as a friend of Israel, prefer the view that says: Maybe it will end badly but we'll extend it credit for now, we won't shut the door on it. We won't rule out in advance that the friends of human rights will also be able to triumph in the Arab world."

Maybe Israel is afraid of losing its brand name "the only democracy in the Middle East"? Maybe that scares us?

"I don't dare imagine that: Israel hanging on to the monopoly over democracy like Moliere's miser holding onto his treasure chest. I don't want to believe that. And if that is nonetheless the case, then it is an absurd calculation. After all, there is nothing keeping a people from overthrowing the tyrant ruler. We have no influence over it, and hence we can choose between sticking to the old order or saying welcome to the new world. To make Israel's security dependent upon a world order that any sensible being knows is breathing its final breaths, merely in hope that it will hold on for another few months - that is suicide!" Levy bellows.

"Congratulate the people that oust the tyrant, keep your eyes open, and prepare for the best case as for the worst. And if it is the worst, say so clearly. And on that day it will be necessary to say that whoever did not shut the door in advance must regrettably acknowledge the fact that the battle for democracy has given rise, temporarily, to an undemocratic order. We're not there yet. We'll see."

The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the victory of the Islamists in Tunisia, sharia in Libya - are we not headed already in that direction, to the worst case of all? Don't you see in this a sign that the war you supported was justified but the result is bad?

"I see in it a sign that these people [the Islamist movements], who were the most oppressed and the most organized, won a temporary victory. At the same time I am not convinced they will withstand the test of government and that the people won't replace them with the same speed at which they brought them to power."

Lieberman at the bar

Levy's book is full of bizarre anecdotes and encounters - about Al-Qaida men in the desert, about an emissary of Saif al-Islam Gadhafi who tracks Levy down to a fancy hotel in Provence to negotiate a possible compromise, and even about a meeting with the Israeli foreign minister at the bar of the luxurious Hotel Raphael in Paris. "It was the first time I had met him," Levy admits.

Even before that, Avigdor Lieberman's image troubled Levy. One night last winter, with the members of the rebel Libyan leadership beside him, Levy telephoned me to ask whether the rumors that Israel's foreign minister did not want Gadhafi to fall were true, and wondered on behalf of his Libyan friends whether there were ties between people close to Lieberman and Gadhafi's son Saif al-Islam. 

I referred Levy to an investigative report in Haaretz by Gidi Weitz about Martin Schlaff, the Austrian businessman and friend of the Israeli foreign minister. Among other things, Weitz wrote about Schlaff's close ties with Saif al-Islam.

In the book Levy recounts the meeting with Lieberman, this past March 26. According to Levy, it was Lieberman who asked to see him. "He matches what I thought about him - the physiognomy of a nightclub bouncer," he writes. But "aside from that he is intelligent. That is the surprise, I find him more intelligent, more eloquent, than I had thought."

Most of their conversation concerned Israel's reaction to the Arab Spring. Lieberman, according to Levy's book, declared that Israel must not abandon its allies, it must not show even the slightest weakness, and it must not come across as naive. "There is an internal logic to these arguments," Levy concedes, even though "I think they are poor."

Their conversation carried on into the night. Here is how Levy describes the scene in the book: "He sips one whiskey after another. As the hours pass, he looks no longer like a bouncer at the entrance to a bar, but rather as one of its stalwarts who doesn't want to go to bed. The more he drinks, the looser his tongue gets ... The truth is that this man is scared. This man who tells me that he is afraid of being thought of as afraid is in fact terrified himself. The fat face with the simple expressions, the drunken gaze, the enormous and exhausted body, the noisy exhalation - it all seems to me like a cry for help. The bar empties and the hours go by and his voice, which at the beginning of the evening sounded like a minister's voice, no longer deceives, and it wavers a bit. I discover something I know well, thousands of years old: Israel's dramatic fear. And vis-a-vis this fear, I am afraid, there is nothing to be done."

Harsh words. Does Levy regret putting them into print? "The portrait can seem cruel; in my eyes it is not. My conclusion is that he represents the deep fear of Judaism in general and of Israel in particular. A stance of pessimism and utter hopelessness. The idea is that Israel is in every case the target of rivalries that cannot be eradicated, and that all that can be hoped for is to buy a little time. His position is that of one who is under siege. He is afraid, afraid. It is more than a political line: It is a metaphysical line. His position was painful for me. Israel is strong after all. My attitude to Judaism is based on the idea that you must not be a victim. That we will not be the victim anymore. That we have the possibility of being proactive. That is why every time I meet Netanyahu, I tell him these things."

Have you lost faith in Netanyahu?

"No. He could still surprise."

You are the only one who still believes that, I tell Levy. The only surprise that people in Israel think he is capable of would be to attack Iran. And he nods as though he has heard this before. "No one believed that Sarkozy would make the unexpected and bold decision to attack Libya. And he did it. That is the mystery of people, and politicians also have a mysterious part. I do not despair of anyone except the fascists." And he encountered those too in Libya.

As one who insists on not concealing his Jewish identity, the fact of Levy being engaged in the field sometimes created a jarring note in a country that is accustomed to Israel-bashing that frequently spills over into overt anti-Semitism. Such was the case in Benghazi when he saw an anti-Semitic cartoon scrawled on the city walls: Gadhafi with a Star of David on his forehead.

Did this bother you a lot?

"I got them to erase it ... and perhaps a few more. But on that day there was a certain office in the Benghazi municipality that understood that this was beyond the acceptable, that it is taboo, like in France. The law does not prevent people from being anti-Semitic. 

I gave up long ago on trying to prevent people from being anti-Semitic. You have to explain to them that in the current power ratio, such behavior is not recommended. And it was the same thing here: The people from Benghazi understood that day that it is forbidden to have anti-Semitic graffiti on the beachfront promenade ... There may be in other places, I don't know. But along the boardwalk there is no longer such graffiti."

Threats and a bodyguard

The formal interview comes to an end, but our conversation continues as we take an evening stroll down Paris streets strung with Christmas lights. A bodyguard, simultaneously discreet and tough looking, keeps at a distance of three meters. Levy has received threats, and has good reason to think that there are people who want him dead: Gadhafi loyalists as well as Assad loyalists, for example. 

Does the fact that war seeps into his pampered life in Paris annoy him? "I would prefer not to go around with a bodyguard, of course," he says. "But I've come to terms with it, in the hope that it will not go on for too long."

You do know that if anyone thinks that it is easier to stay in power without Bernard-Henri Levy, they will not hesitate to hurt you?

"I have been in these situations several times in my life already. During the Bosnia war. And also three winters ago [when a Moroccan terrorist was captured in Belgium with a list of targets that was topped by Levy]. I am not a fatalist, and I have the will and the intention of living for a long time to come."

Take note, Bashar Assad.

	Volume 28 - Issue 23 :: Nov. 05-18, 2011 INDIA'S NATIONAL MAGAZINE from the publishers of THE HINDU • Contents
	COVER STORY Libya recolonised AIJAZ AHMAD Libya is the first country that the Euro-American consortium has invaded exclusively on the pretext of human rights violations. IVAN SEKRETAREV/AP On the outskirts of Tripoli, a residential building reduced to rubble in a NATO airstrike on June 19. Even the most conservative estimates suggest that the war in Libya has led to the loss of at least 50,000 lives, mostly at the hands of NATO's bombers and local allies. FROM Kabul in October 2001 to Tripoli in October 2011, a decade of unremitting planetary warfare has seen countries devastated and capitals occupied over a vast swathe of territory from the Hindu Kush to the northern end of Africa's Mediterranean coast. Within the Arab world, this ultra-imperialist offensive of Euro-American predators may yet move on to Syria as well – and beyond that to Iran at some future date. For now, in any case, the occupation of Libya by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation's (NATO) clients and corporations marks the vanquishing of the spirit of rebellion that was ignited in neighbouring Tunisia and Egypt earlier this year and has been under attack ever since. For much of Africa, though, this may yet be merely a beginning of a new conquest by the Euro-American consortium that may ravage the continent even more ferociously than did the famous “Scramble for Africa” that was sanctified in Berlin at the end of the 19th century. Humanitarian interventionism Afghanistan was invaded in the name of “War on Terror” plus human rights. Iraq was invaded in the name of “War on Terror” plus nuclear non-proliferation plus human rights. Libya is the first country that has been invaded almost exclusively in the name of human rights. In the very early days of hostilities in Libya, President Barack Obama said dramatically that if NATO had waited “one more day, Benghazi could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world”. His senior aides claimed that the imminent “massacre” could have led to the death of one lakh people, and this is what got repeated ad nauseum on U.S. television channels as well as in all the halls of power where the option of human rights interventionism got discussed with a view to obtaining a United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolution. This was a bare-faced lie, very much in the mould of the lie about Iraq's purported nuclear weapons that was brandished around by Obama's predecessor, President George Bush Jr. It was on the basis of such disinformation that Resolutions 1970 and 1973 were passed in the Security Council, invoking the dubious principle of the “responsibility to protect”, which was inserted into the duties of the U.N. as late as 2005, after the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were already afoot. This was the time when the Bush administration was openly claiming in international fora, including at the U.N. itself, that (a) in this Age of Terror the U.S. reserved the right of pre-emptive military attack against any state that the U.S. considered a threat to its national security, and that (b) in the conditions of the “War on Terror” many aspects of the Geneva Conventions were no longer applicable. This discourse of the right to pre-emptive invasion was then supplemented by the discourse of the benign nature of the empire itself, in the shape of human rights interventionism. The claim now was that the “international community” – as defined by Euro-American powers – had the right to intervene in the internal affairs of any sovereign country if “massacre” or “genocide” was imminent. The NATO bombings in Libya that began in the third week of March were the first that had ever been authorised by the Security Council in its entire history on this dubious principle of human rights interventionism. Nicolas Sarkozy, the French President, was in his own way quite right when he asserted in the early hours of March 25: “It's a historic moment… what is happening in Libya is creating jurisprudence… it is a major turning point in the foreign policy of France, Europe, and the world” (emphasis added). No credible evidence has ever emerged to support Obama's claim that a massacre (of up to 100,000) was imminent in Benghazi, and no massacres ensued in the rebellious cities and towns that Qaddafi's troops did occupy in the earlier stages of the fighting. On the contrary, there is incontrovertible evidence of massacres at the hands of NATO's mercenaries. Neighbouring countries, such as Niger, Mali and Chad, have reported the eviction of some three lakh black African residents from Libya as NATO's local allies and clients rolled on towards Tripoli under the devastating shield of NATO's own 40,000-plus bombings over large parts of Libya. Together with these mass evictions of workers and refugees from neighbouring countries – whom the Qaddafi regime had welcomed to make up for labour shortages in an expanding economy – there are also credible reports of lynchings and massacres of black Libyans themselves. The scale of these depredations is yet undetermined but it is already clear that upwards of 50,000 have died as a result of the war unleashed by NATO with the collusion of the Security Council, and half a million or more have been rendered homeless, mostly at the hands of NATO-armed “rebels” who have now been appointed as the new government of the country. Neither the Security Council nor NATO commanders nor, indeed, President Obama – the first black President in the history of the U.S. and himself the son of a Kenyan father – has seen it fit to take up the “responsibility to protect” these hapless people, most of them black Africans, even though several heads of African states have protested, including the very pro-U.S. President of Nigeria. One of the most pernicious aspects of the liberal discourse of human rights in our time is that this doctrine is utilised in country after country to justify imperialist interventionism in the affairs of the sovereign countries of the tricontinent in direct violation not only of the United Nations Charter and the Westphalian order of nation-states as such but, even more fundamentally, of the very spirit and practices of the anti-colonial movements that fought to dismantle the colonial empires of yesteryear. The right to independent nationhood is inseparable from the right to choose one's own government without foreign interference. In virtually every country of Latin America over the past half a century, peoples have fought against the most brutal kinds of dictatorship but without ever asking for a foreign intervention. For three simple reasons: (1) it is only the people themselves, in their collectivity, who have the right to change their government; (2) it would be hard to find a dictator, including Qaddafi and Saddam Hussein, who has not colluded with imperialism at one point or another; and (3) a military intervention is always, without exception, the intervention of the strong against the weak – always, without exception, in pursuit of the interests of those who intervene. Given this basic principle, the issue of Qaddafi's dictatorial rule is just as irrelevant today as was the nature of Saddam Hussein's rule in the past; and as irrelevant as would be the dictatorial temper of Bashar al-Asad in Syria or Mahmoud Ahmedinejad in Iran in case of invasions yet to come. We shall come to the paradoxical character of the Qaddafi regime, and it cannot be anyone's case that Qaddafi was some sort of liberal democrat. It needs to be said, though, that he was no more dictatorial than most rulers of Africa and the Arab world, most notably the friends of the West in Saudi Arabia and the whole complex of various emirates in the Gulf. His authoritarianism was indeed ferocious. However, if matters are viewed from the perspective of the well-being of the Libyan people, we shall also have to concede that Qaddafi built the most advanced welfare state in Africa – just as Iraq was the most advanced welfare state in the Arab East, Saddam's authoritarianism notwithstanding. Dismantling of the welfare state – and privatisation and corporatisation of the national assets – is in fact the filthy underbelly of this human rights imperialism. If human rights were even remotely the issue in such interventionism, Saudi Arabia would be the logical first target. And, why should there not be a NATO occupation of Israel, immediately, for protecting the human rights of the Palestinian people and the implementation of numerous Security Council resolutions? In reality, the great crusade for human rights and democracy in Libya was conducted by NATO with the aid of, among others, personnel from Qatar and the Emirates, just as NATO's own Islamists in Turkey have joined hands with Saudi Arabia in providing weapons to the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies in Syria against the Assad regime in the name of democracy and human rights. Empire goes where oil is The Security Council resolution that authorised NATO's “humanitarian intervention” in Libya was well reflected in a secret proposal to the French government by the National Transitional Council (NTC) in the early days of the “rebellion”, which offered to France 35 per cent of Libya's gross national oil production “in exchange”, in the words of the proposal, for “total and permanent” French support for the NTC. The French government, of course, denied it when the French newspaper Liberation published the communication. This coyness of the conspirators was not to last long. On October 21, less than 24 hours after the announcement of Qaddafi's assassination, Britain's new Defence Minister, Philip Hammond, announced that the United Kingdom had presented to the NTC a “request” for a licence to drill for oil. He then added: “Libya is a relatively wealthy country with oil reserves, and I expect there will be opportunities for British and other companies to get involved in the reconstruction of Libya…. I would expect British companies, even British sales directors, [to be] packing their suitcases and looking to get out to Libya and take part in the reconstruction of that country as soon as they can.” As the U.S. Ambassador, Gene Cretz, unfurled the flag over the American Embassy in Tripoli, at its reopening ceremony on September 22, he was equally upbeat: “We know that oil is the jewel in the crown of Libyan natural resources, but even in Qaddafi's time they were starting from A to Z in terms of building infrastructure and other things. If we can get American companies here on a fairly big scale, which we will try to do everything we can to do that, then this will redound to improve the situation in the United States with respect to our own jobs.” Referring to the Italian oil company, the Foreign Minister of Italy, Franco Frattini, added his own gleeful chime to this triumphalist chorus: “Eni will play a No.1 role in the future.” Qatar, whose overt and covert contribution to the NATO offensive was very considerable indeed, is already handing oil sales in eastern Libya and will also be entering the distribution of the spoils of war from a position of strength. The New York Times noted: “Libya's provisional government has already said it is eager to welcome Western businesses (and)… would even give its Western backers some ‘priority' in access to Libyan business.” That was accurate. “We don't have a problem with Western countries like Italians, French and U.K. companies,” Abdeljalil Mayouf, a spokesman for the NTC-controlled oil company, Agogco, was quoted by Reuters as saying, “but we may have some political issues with Russia, China and Brazil.” Libya's 46 billion barrels of oil make it home to Africa's largest proven deposit of conventional crude, though Nigeria and Angola dispute this Libyan pre-eminence. Before the civil war began in earnest in February, Libya was pumping about 1.6 million barrels a day, most of which went to southern Europe, whose refineries were tailored to refine Libya's light, high-quality crude. By contrast, Saudi crude is heavier and unsuitable for many of those refineries, while Libya's geographical proximity also makes it much more attractive. Almost 70 per cent of Libya's oil went to four countries, Spain, Germany, France and Italy, even before the NATO war, and oil-producing regions were of course the first to be secured as NATO started bombing its way to victory. The oil industry's biggest players, meanwhile, are ready to reclaim their old concessions and get new ones. The vast Ghadames and Sirte basins, largely off limits to foreign oil companies since Qaddafi came to power 42 years ago, are now expected to be privatised and opened to foreign corporations. The same applies to Libya's offshore oil and gas resources. The loss of political sovereignty thus leads necessarily to great curtailment of economic sovereignty as well. AFP/HANDOUT THE PRODUCTION FACILITIES of a German oil firm in the Libyan desert near the oasis of Jakhira, which was shut in February following the violence. Almost 70 per cent of Libya's oil went to four countries - Spain, Germany, France and Italy - even before the NATO bombings, during which the oil-producing regions were the first to be secured. African Union vs “The international Community” At a meeting between the two parties on June 15 this year, some three months after NATO initiated its aerial bombings of Libya, the High Level Ad hoc Committee of the African Union (A.U.) handed over to the Security Council a letter spelling out the A.U. position on the Libyan crisis. Now, even after the fall of Tripoli and the assassination of Qaddafi, the contents of that communication are worth re-visiting if we wish to assess the great gap of perceptions and prescriptions, on issues of interventionism, between nation-states of the tricontinent on the one hand, and, on the other hand, those institutions of “the international community” whose task it is to justify Euro-American interventionism. We shall first offer a series of quotations from that key document: 1. “Whatever the genesis of the intervention by NATO in Libya, the A.U. called for dialogue before the U.N. Resolutions 1970 and 1973 and after those resolutions. Ignoring the A.U. for three months and going on with the bombings of the sacred land of Africa has been high-handed, arrogant and provocative.” 2. “An attack on Libya or any other member of the African Union without express agreement by the A.U. is a dangerous provocation… sovereignty has been a tool of emancipation of the peoples of Africa who are beginning to chart transformational paths for most of the African countries after centuries of predation by the slave trade, colonialism and neocolonialism. Careless assaults on the sovereignty of African countries are, therefore, tantamount to inflicting fresh wounds on the destiny of the African peoples.” 3. “Fighting between government troops and armed insurrectionists is not genocide. It is civil war…. It is wrong to characterise every violence as genocide or imminent genocide so as to use it as a pretext for the undermining of the sovereignty of states.” 4. “The U.N. should not take sides in a civil war. The U.N. should promote dialogue…. The demand by some countries that Col. Muammar Qaddafi must go first before the dialogue is incorrect. Whether Qaddafi goes or stays is a matter for the Libyan people to decide. It is particularly wrong when the demand for Gaddafi's departure is made by outsiders…. Qaddafi accepted dialogue when the A.U. mediation committee visited Tripoli on April 10, 2011. Any war activities after that have been provocation for Africa. It is an unnecessary war. It must stop…. The story that the rebels cannot engage in dialogue unless Qaddafi goes away does not convince us. If they do not want dialogue, then, let them fight their war with Qaddafi without NATO bombing…. The externally sponsored groups neglect dialogue and building internal consensus and, instead, concentrate on winning external patrons.” It goes without saying that the A.U. is by no means a conglomeration of radicals; it is a conservative grouping of state governments, most of whom are, in one way or another, allied with the West; many of the heads of states participating in A.U. proceedings at any given time are venal, corrupt, authoritarian or worse. That is, however, no more relevant than the personal venality of Sarkozy or Silvio Berlusconi or any other Western leader. The point, rather, is that the A.U.'s is the only united voice through which African states speak and that the principles and points of fact raised here are unexceptionable. The very first point is that the Security Council, NATO or any other conglomeration of states and institutions simply have no right to represent themselves as “the international community” when what they say and do is opposed by the united voice of the African state system. The second point is that the issue of state sovereignty is posed in Africa and Asia not only in European, Westphalian terms, but, far more sensitively and explosively, in the perspective of the recently won and still very fragile independence of states after a long history of colonial predation. Further, the A.U. letter rejects the position – enunciated by Obama, his NATO allies and the Security Council – that there was any genocide or imminent genocide in Libya. Rather, it speaks strictly of a “civil war” between “government troops and armed insurrectionists”, calls upon the U.N. not to take sides in the “civil war” and goes on then to contemptuously dismiss the “externally sponsored groups” and their “demands” that are designed for “winning external patrons”. The most important practical point in any case is that Qaddafi had accepted the principle of negotiation and arbitration by the A.U. as early as April 10, after which the A.U. quite rightly demanded that NATO stop its military mission and the U.N. concentrate on facilitating negotiations under A.U. auspices. A significant section of the letter laid out an elaborate plan for negotiations, for policing of violence inside Libya by an A.U. brigade as had been done in Burundi, and for conflict resolution processes using the principles of “provisional immunity” during the peace negotiations, and for the establishment of truth and reconciliation bodies for reconciliation after peace has been re-established. None of it was heeded, precisely because the voice of reason had come from the weak, while the will for intervention and regime change had come from self-appointed masters of the universe. Civilisation and the ecstasy of conquest In the moment of victory, President Obama was relatively more measured in his words than many other Western leaders. The fall of Libya to 40,000-plus NATO bombings was proof, he said, that “we are seeing the strength of the American leadership across the world”. And he was not entirely mistaken in taking the credit. The Security Council resolution that authorised NATO operations would have been inconceivable without the coercive powers of the U.S. Obama's cavalier condoning of assassination and extra-judicial execution, as displayed to the world in the cases of Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki among others, was part of the implicit licence to kill the unarmed Qaddafi as well. Less than 48 hours before Qaddafi was actually assassinated, Hillary Clinton, the U.S. Secretary of State, was on a triumphant visit to Tripoli, the Libyan capital now occupied by NATO and its local clients, and said unambiguously: “We hope he [Qaddafi] can be captured or killed soon.” Incitement to murder could hardly be couched in words more stark. This issue of an authorised assassination should detain us somewhat, for it does impinge upon the imperial duplicity of the human rights discourse. Details of Qaddafi's death and burial are still unclear. We do know that the town of Sirte, to which he had retreated during the siege of Tripoli, was devastated by hundreds of aerial bombings by NATO with the single-minded intent to kill him and those close to him. We also know that he was leaving Sirte in a convoy when the convoy too was bombed; the French claimed that it was their Rafale fighter jet that disabled his vehicle; the Americans claimed that it was the work of one of their Predators. The main point is that he was captured alive and unarmed by NATO's mercenaries on the ground, kicked around, beaten and killed. Considering how many American, French, British, Qatari and other special forces have been there, commanding the Libyan “rebels”, it is significant that the body of the dead man was never taken away from the milling “rebels”. Christof Heyns, the U.N. Special Rapporteur, seems to be clear on this point: “The Geneva Conventions are very clear that when prisoners are taken they may not be executed wilfully and if that was the case then we are dealing with a war crime, something that should be tried.” The complication, however, is that the Western alliance had previously announced an award of $20 million to anyone who kills (or helps kill/capture) Qaddafi. So, here is a test for Western values: should the man who killed Qaddafi be tried in a court of law? Should he be awarded $20 million and celebrated as a hero? Or should he be allowed to slip out of the grip of the law, history and public memory – and settled, with a handsome settlement, in Miami, southern California or a villa on the Rhine? Qaddafi's own tribe issued this statement: “We call on the U.N., the Organisation of the Islamic Conference and Amnesty International to force the [National] Transitional Council to hand over the martyrs' bodies to our tribe in Sirte and to allow them to perform their burial ceremony in accordance with Islamic customs and rules.” But there was no such luck! NATO's mercenaries displayed Qaddafi's body, along with that of his son Mutassim, naked to the waist, in freezers in a meat store in Misrata, inviting souvenir photographs. Human rights imperialism seems to be inventing a brand new entertainment industry: that of necrophilic tourism. Be that as it may. President Obama is right in claiming that the event proved “the strength of American leadership”. U.S. Special Forces and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) teams were on the ground since before the beginning of the rebellion and made sure that those who were destined to be NATO's mercenary army on the ground were armed from the start; they were then joined by their French and British counterparts and backed by armed groups from Qatar, the Emirates and the like. Bombings were left largely to the Franco-British component of NATO but much of the high electronics and infrastructural nitty-gritty was handled by the U.S. forces: collecting electronic intelligence and smashing the Libyan anti-aircraft systems, for example, and blockading the coast. NATO warplanes used U.S. bases for refuelling and these bases supplied munitions when their European counterparts ran low. In an important sense, the military operation in Libya was a highly successful experiment in an assault coordinated between AFRICOM – the U.S. Command for the control of Africa – and its European partners. If President Obama was cryptic, his icy Vice President, Joe Biden, was precise: “In this case, America spent $2 billion and didn't lose a single life. This is more of the prescription for how to deal with the world as we go forward than it has been in the past.” By “life”, Biden obviously means American life, considering that even the most conservative estimates suggest that the war in Libya has led to the loss of at least 50,000 lives, mostly at the hands of NATO bombers and their local allies. More broadly, what is at issue is a U.S. objective, first conceived during the Vietnam War, to develop an “automated battlefield” with technologies so advanced that wars may be won and entire countries conquered without any significant ground deployment. Across the Atlantic, that same idea was invoked by people like Paddy Ashdown, who once served for four years as E.U. High Representative in Bosnia-Herzegovina, who said that from now on the West should adopt the “Libyan model” of intervention rather than the “Iraqi model” of massive invasion. This kind of hard-boiled Anglo-Saxon pragmatism can easily be translated by an ambitious politician like Nicolas Sarkozy, the current French President, into the sophistries of a high-minded Gallic discourse on history and civilisation. Pierre Lévy, a former editor of L'Humanité, recently recalled a passage from a speech Sarkozy delivered in 2007 in which he glorified “the shattered dream of Charlemagne and of the Holy Roman Empire, the Crusades, the great schism between Eastern and Western Christianity, the fallen glory of Louis XIV and Napoleon…” and then went on to declare that “Europe is today the only force capable of carrying forward a project of civilisation.” This claim to a unique civilisational mission then led quickly to an ambition to conquer: “I want to be the President of a France which will bring the Mediterranean into the process of its reunification after 12 centuries of division and painful conflicts…. America and China have already begun the conquest of Africa. How long will Europe wait to build the Africa of tomorrow? While Europe hesitates, others advance.” Lévy then goes on to quote Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a senior leader of the Socialist Party (much in the news recently for alleged sexual misdemeanours), who matched Sarkozy's bombast with his own desire for a Europe stretching “from the cold ice of the Arctic in the North to the hot sands of the Sahara in the South (…) and that Europe, I believe, if it continues to exist, will have reconstituted the Mediterranean as an internal sea, and will have re-conquered the space that the Romans, or Napoleon more recently, attempted to consolidate.” In this world view, then, NATO is seen as having inherited a mission from the Roman Empire and the Napoleonic conquests, which then involves the “re-conquest” of North Africa. It was, after all, only about 50 years ago that France finally relinquished its claim that Algeria was not a foreign colony but an “outlying province” of France itself. What is very striking in any case is how closely the rhetoric of “civilisation” is woven into the rhetoric of “conquest” and even “re-conquest.” Obama, Africa and the Imperial Project Poor little “Olde Europe”! Even in its wildest civilisational ravings, all it can imagine is the re-conquest of its colonial empire in North Africa. By contrast, the U.S. knows how to get directly to the point. In the second week of October, when the war against Libya had been won but Qaddafi yet not assassinated, President Obama announced: “I have authorised a small number of combat-equipped U.S. forces to deploy to central Africa to provide assistance to regional forces…. On October 12, the initial team of U.S. military personnel with appropriate combat equipment deployed to Uganda. During the next month, additional forces will deploy…. These forces will act as advisers to partner forces that have the goal of removing from the battlefield Joseph Kony and other senior leadership of the LRA [Lord's Resistance Army]…. Subject to the approval of each respective host nation, elements of these U.S. forces will deploy into Uganda, South Sudan, the Central African Republic, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.” So, in the wake of the Libyan conquest, U.S. troops are to be immediately deployed to countries across the middle of Africa, in four countries and in cooperation with regimes that have hideous records of dictatorship and human rights abuses, not the least on the part of Uganda's “President-for-life”, Yoweri Museveni. Obama justified this newly minted “humanitarian mission” in Uganda in the name of eliminating the LRA. This is odd. The LRA has actually been around for almost a quarter century and has never been weaker than it is today. Why, suddenly, such an operation across a huge part of Africa? Paul Craig Roberts, a former Under Secretary of State for Treasury under President Ronald Reagan (and thus not a left-winger by a long shot), put the matter succinctly: “With Libya conquered, AFRICOM will start on the other African countries where China has energy and mineral investments…. Whereas China brings Africa investment and gifts of infrastructure, Washington sends troops, bombs and military bases.” Even this recent deployment may be just the tip of an oncoming iceberg. For many years now, the U.S. has been building up a special Command for Africa, the AFRICOM, in tandem with CENTCOM that is responsible for operations in the Middle East (West Asia). As part of this imperial mission in Africa, the U.S. is actively engaged in training the militaries of Mali, Chad, Niger, Benin, Botswana, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Gabon, Zambia, Uganda, Senegal, Mozambique, Ghana, Malawi and Mauritania. Together with other NATO countries, the U.S. has staged numerous military exercises in Africa with the ostensible purpose of preparing contingency plans for “protecting energy supplies” in the Niger delta and the Gulf of Guinea. Aside from Libya, major oil producers in the region include Angola, Nigeria, Cameroon, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Chad and Mauritania. All these, and many others besides, are to be “protected” – pretty much on the “Libyan model” if need be. This is not the place to go into details. Suffice it to say that the fall of Libya is likely to serve as the first major step in the offensive to capture Africa's plentiful natural resources. In the fullness of time, as multiple insurgencies and bloodlettings are let loose across the continent, we are likely to see the erection of many new bases for the AFRICOM-NATO combine, very much on the model of Iraq and Afghanistan. The objective is not only to reserve African resources for the Euro-American imperium as much as possible but also to deny those resources to China, which gets about one third of its oil from Africa – Angola and Sudan in particular – in addition to important materials like platinum, copper, timber and iron ore. Some 75 Chinese companies were working in Libya with 36,000 personnel, not so much in the oil sector as in infrastructural development projects; and China accounted for about 11 per cent of Libya's pre-war exports. It evacuated its personnel and complained that NATO had unilaterally changed the U.N. resolution from protecting civilians to regime change. The U.S. would like to see this eviction of China from Libya to become permanent and for such evictions to be repeated across Africa. Will that happen? Too soon to tell. The U.S. has the military might and the impatient arrogance of a declining superpower, but China is the one that has the cash and the almost glacial patience of a rising economic power. A confrontation is on, and it will take decades to settle. Conclusion Major issues pertaining to the significance of the Libya war have not been addressed here: the meaning of all this for the so-called “Arab Spring”; the nature of the fallen Qaddafi regime; the likely composition of the emerging dispensation; the social disintegration and multiple internal conflicts that are now likely to ensue; the destabilisation and the prospect of multiple civil wars across the Sahel region caused by the war on Libya; and so on. Other contributors to this issue of Frontline may clarify these issues, or this author may return to them in a future contribution. So, let me conclude this piece by noting that Qaddafi did leave a brief will, and it is important that we recall some of his last words: “Let the free people of the world know that we could have bargained over and sold out our cause in return for a personally 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.” That is true. Friendly African countries had offered him safe sanctuaries, while some European countries would have preferred to have him as a neutralised client rather than a celebrated martyr in (at least parts of) Libya. Offers were indeed made. Given the choices, he preferred to die. In that brief will, he also expressed a simple wish: “Should I be killed, I would like to be buried, according to Muslim rituals, in the clothes I was wearing at the time of my death and my body unwashed, in the cemetery of Sirte, next to my family and relatives. I would like that my family, especially women and children, be treated well after my death.” In Islamic custom, the stipulation that the body be washed and wrapped in a fresh shroud is lifted in the case of martyrs. Right or wrong, Qaddafi did think of his own impending death as martyrdom. We may not think so, but many others probably will. Qaddafi was quite largely a buffoon, in many ways brutish, more so as he grew older and more egomaniacal, but not everyone is going to forget that he also had a visionary side to him and built for his people the most advanced welfare state on the continent. His is a contradictory legacy. We have described earlier in this piece what the winners did to his corpse. Not just the members of his own family or his tribesmen, but many, many others might not so easily forget all that.

The killing of Qadhafi - HINDU Editorial + Comments by Ghulam Muhammed

COMMENTS POSTED on Hindu Editorial: Killing Qadhafi ---

 The West and with them the captive world audience are shedding crocodile tears on the killing of Gaddafi, while nobody can deny that the Western powers had left no stone unturned to see that Qaddafi if eliminated. They had been at it for a long time. So why now such a shock and change of tune. The real reason as some analysts have pointed out is the fate of 160 billion dollars that the West got frozen through UN sanctions and if they had caught Qaddafi alive, it would have made their job easier to get hold of that treasure by torturing and/or making deal with imprisoned Qaddafi. With his death, their urgent plans to inject money into the fast deteriorating situation in Eurozone, have gone awry. The new National Transitional Council, has shown no willingness to even pay for the war efforts that the West has invested in their bombing raids. So now all of a sudden the West has found sympathy for the assassinated Qaddafi. Who said, you cannot fool all the people all the times.

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/article2559752.ece

The killing of Qadhafi

The violent death of Col. Muammar Qadhafi is the worst possible beginning for a new Libya where 42 years of dictatorial and whimsical rule by a strongman are supposed to make way for democratic structures. The exact circumstances in which Col. Qadhafi was killed are unclear. It is known that NATO bombed a convoy in which he was trying to flee a blockade of his hometown Sirte by forces allied to the National Transitional Council government. He might have been wounded in the bombing; subsequent video footage shows him asking for mercy from his captors. The NTC, which took power after over-running the Qadhafi regime two months ago with NATO's assistance, has said he was shot in crossfire between its forces and his loyalists. But reports from the ground suggest he was executed in cold blood. Libya has failed its first democratic test, with vengeance and bloodlust triumphing over due process, the rule of law, and justice. NATO is deeply complicit in this. The role of western powers, especially the United Kingdom, France, and the United States, through this sorry saga of violent regime change reiterates the question that has been asked ever since NATO began bombing Libya, ostensibly as a “humanitarian intervention” authorised by the United Nations Security Council: does the West want democracy in Libya or just any friendly regime that will give it access to the country's oil? It is disappointing that India, which opposed external intervention in Libya, has expressed no concern at Qadhafi's violent end.

Muammar Qadhafi will certainly not be mourned as a great leader of his people. His rule did bring about positive changes for his country, notably in health, education, and infrastructure development. In contrast to other Arab states, it also gave Libyans a consciousness about their oil wealth as a national resource. But he was a ruthless dictator, and his regime was infamous for crushing dissent by imprisoning, torturing, and killing a large number of political opponents. Qadhafi's Libya was also associated with deadly terrorist acts in Europe, including the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am plane over Lockerbie in Scotland, for which the world imposed sanctions on the country. It was only after 9/11 that both the West and Qadhafi saw opportunities in compromise: after condemning Osama bin Laden, he gave up Libya's nuclear programme and surrendered two suspects in the Lockerbie bombing, in return for a lifting of international sanctions. With Qadhafi gone, the NTC will no doubt move to cement its hold on power. But if it genuinely wants to set Libya on the right path, it would do well to begin by conducting an honest and impartial investigation into Qadhafi's killing.

Keywords: Libya, Muammar Qadhafi, political crisis, death, Qadhafi killing, National Transitional Council government

Hijacking the Arab revolution - By AIJAZ ZAKA SYED | ARAB NEWS

http://arabnews.com/opinion/columns/article338090.ece

 

 

By AIJAZ ZAKA SYED | ARAB NEWS

Hijacking the Arab revolution

SO it has come down to this. After Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, Libya now finds itself in the line of fire of the Coalition of the Willing.

Of course, unlike Afghanistan and Iraq, the West is not fighting “Islamist terrorism” in Libya or is on the quest of the holy grail called Weapons of Mass Destruction. The mission now is to “save lives” and take out the monster that just refuses to fade away like the other friendly, neighborhood dictators in Tunisia and Egypt.

He must hang on in there like a bad dream, an evil spell over Libya. Those who thought Muammar Qaddafi would soon follow his fellow travelers into the sunset were clearly mistaken. The demented author of the Green Book seems to sincerely believe he’s God’s gift not just to the people of Libya but to the whole of humankind. But then Col. Qaddafi, distinctly delusional that he is, isn’t the only one to live in this make-believe world.

There are many out there who have persuaded themselves their leadership is crucial to the survival of their people and their departure would bring on the end of the world. Such is the power of delusions of grandeur. You tend to believe you are at the center of universe.

Those larger than life statues, from Baghdad to Benghazi, are not the celebration of a monstrous ego but the manifestation of a perennial insecurity of the powerful. They have to constantly reassure themselves about their own power.

Some of the biggest and most obscene tributes to human vanity are found in Muslim lands. Islam came to banish all man-made idols and we have replaced them with men who view themselves as divine. They worship themselves and expect their people to do so. Qaddafi is not the only one to believe in his immortality and his right to rule Libya forever. He must kill his people, if need be as he has been doing all these years, to govern them.

There are others out there who have convinced themselves that if they deprive their people of their noble leadership, they will all perish and go to hell. Après moi le déluge, After me the deluge!

After four decades of absolute power, Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen believes his people are not still “ready” to govern themselves or determine what’s good or bad for them. ‘I am prepared to step down,’ he reasons, ‘provided people of Yemen prove they have a capable leadership to take over from me.’ Touche!

Bashar Assad of Syria, who and his father between themselves have ruled Syria for nearly half a century, doesn’t fit the description of a tyrant. He insists he and his people are “on the same page.” There’s no problem whatsoever.

What about those angry demonstrations? And why are the Syrian troops firing on peaceful protesters?

Of course, it’s the doing of “conspirators and outsiders,” you know. There’s no trouble in the Baathist paradise of Syria. In fact, a Syrian government spokesperson told CNN’s Hala Gorani with a straight face, President Assad himself has wanted to introduce “reforms” since he took over from his father 11 years ago. Then why hasn’t he? What are we waiting for? End times or another crusader coalition?

Truth be told, whether it is Libya or Syria or numerous other Arab republics, they have all suppressed, abused and persecuted their people for decades — or the lifetime of a tyrant. In addition to perpetual abuse of power and all-pervasive corruption, they all have one thing in common. They’ve all repressed popular democratic movements that turn to Islam for guidance and inspiration, rather than dance to the tunes of London and Washington. And they have all done this with the blessings of Western champions of democracy and freedom.

In Egypt, both Hasan Al Banna, the legendary founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, and his successor Sayyid Qutb were assassinated by the powers that be, not to mention the thousands of its activists who were incarcerated and tortured for years for believing in a better world. From Gamal Nasser to Anwar Sadat to Hosni Mubarak, the most admired grass-roots movement in the Arab world has remained banned and suppressed for half a century.

This is the same story all across the Arab world. From Egypt and Yemen to Syria and from Algeria and Tunisia to Libya, the Islamists have been hunted like animals for decades. In 1982, Syrian forces massacred thousands in the city of Hama in a crackdown on Ikhwan. The memories of Hama massacre are still fresh.

And who could forget how Algeria’s veteran revolutionaries dealt with the Islamic Salvation Front when it swept the first ever multi-party democratic elections in 1991-‘92? The regime not just annulled the historic vote and the verdict it threw up, it unleashed a reign of terror against the Islamists for daring to take the democratic path to change. Nearly 300,000 lives perished in the subsequent civil war whose wounds are yet to heal.

History repeated itself when Hamas wrested power from the corrupt and clueless elites of Fatah in 2006. The Palestinians are still paying the price for this cardinal sin, locked away as they are in the largest prison on the planet.

All this of course wouldn’t have been possible without the active support and cooperation of our Western masters. Even as they have endlessly sung hosannas to the deity of democracy, they have aided and abetted their ever obliging allies to crush and destroy those foolish enough to believe in their rhetoric. Indeed, if the Middle East is still stuck with tyranny in 21st century and men in khaki rule forever, you know who to thank for.

So it’s rather touching to see Uncle Sam and his cohorts come around cheering on the juggernaut of change that is on the march in the Middle East. The folks who are still working with a racist and terrorist regime to wipe out an entire nation in its own land have no shame in pontificating about a people’s right to choose their destiny.

Those who have protected and pampered the Mubaraks and Ben Alis all these years see no irony in coming forward to claim credit for the tide that has turned the Arab world around. Talk of hunting with hares and running with hounds! Some Western pundits even have the cheek to thank the “Cowboy Crusader,” who gave us Afghanistan and Iraq and sent more than a million people to their death, for the Arab revolt.

Is there no limit to Western hypocrisy and duplicity? Why do they think they can fool all the people all the time? Don’t they see the writing on the wall? The tide has turned in the Middle East and Western powers will ignore it at their own peril. For those who have the courage to throw out their corrupt despots are capable of confronting their masters too.

A whopping majority in the Muslim world has no sympathy for Qaddafi whatsoever. They are waiting for his imminent fall and will celebrate his exit — and of others like him — just as they rejoiced over the departure of Ben Ali and Mubarak. But they aren’t going to welcome Janus-faced friends of their tormentors either. So expect no roses in Tripoli Mr. Obama and Mr. Sarkozy and Mr. Cameron!

— Aijaz Zaka Syed is a widely published columnist based in the Gulf. Write to him at aijaz.syed@hotmail.com

 -------------

My Impressions of Libya and Some Afterthoughts - By Waheeduddin Ahmed, Ph.D

From: ahmed.waheeduddin@gmail.com
To: ahmed.waheeduddin@gmail.com
Sent: 3/1/2011 3:39:48 P.M. Eastern Standard Time
Subj: My impressions of Libya and some afterthoughts

My Impressions of Libya and Some Afterthoughts  

By Waheeduddin Ahmed, Ph.D

I went to Libya in the early Seventies. Having obtained a Ph.D. from the University of London two years previously, I received a telegram from the University of Libya in Tripoli (now Al Fateh University) to come and teach there. After arriving in Libya, I was told that I was to teach industrial chemistry to the B.Sc. students. This was a surprise since my training was not in that area. 

However, I designed a course in a week or so which was available before the semester started and hoped to do the best. Soon thereafter, the October War (the Yaum Kippur War) started. Although Libya was not involved in the war, there was much excitement on the campus. Qadhafi was complaining in his speeches that he was not consulted --- Obviously, Sadat, nor any other Arab leader had trusted him. However, I saw many battle tanks with Algerian markings moving along the main highway towards Egypt but before the Boumediene's forces could reach the battle front, the war was over as Nixon had sent Apache helicopters with antitank weaponry directly to the war theatre from the American bases in Italy and Sharon had found a gap in the Egyptian positions to pour in troops at the rear of the Egyptian lines and had destroyed the missile batteries which were vital to the air defense. The Egyptian professors on the campus told me that defeat was staring Egypt in its face. So much for the war Euphoria! We did settle down to teaching chemistry after the war was over.

As a person teaching industrial chemistry, I had an opportunity to see some of the country's industrial infrastructure first hand, as I took students on visits to industries as a part of the curriculum. I found that at least in those days the infrastructure was feeble and scanty and mostly manned by foreign workers. What was hindering progress was obviously a shortage of skilled manpower. Many decades have passed since but what is obvious is that even allowing for sanctions, the country is, as yet, far from becoming a Malaysia, a Singapore or even a Dubai or Qatar. The country's cash reserves are enormous but the lack of opulence among the common people is strikingly clear. I must admit that I have soft corners for this planned egalitarianism but the hazards of one man’s whims have had their effect as we shall see later, which could put this idealism in disrepute.

I saw Qadhafi only once during my stay. It was when he came to supervise elections of one of the “ people’s committees” (lajnat-al-Shabia) in the university. The jamaheer (democracies) idea had a striking similarity with the soviets and the Chinese communes, which were hybridized with Qadhafi’s own brand of Islamism --- Literature from the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China was banned in Libya and was made inaccessible to the people for comparison. We knew about Mao Tsetung’s Cultural Revolution, his Red Guards and the Red Book. Amid this cultural turmoil in the world Qadhafi’s own Green Book took shape and a bizarre cult of personality ensued. More about this later:

When Qadhafi and his associates staged the coup against King Idris, he had attracted attention from much of the Muslim population of the world because of his youth, his charisma and the fact that his rhetoric included reference to Islam in the governance of the country, in marked contrast to the prevailing secular and socialist ideologies in most Arab countries, notably in Algeria, Egypt, Syria and Iraq. However, the mask soon came off when during my stay there the Muslim Brotherhood members were persecuted and crushed. Some of the University students at that time became victims of this persecution.

In the following years, Qadhafi became the supreme leader, the law giver, the jurist, the mujtahid, commander-in-chief of the armed forces and everything else one could possibly think of. He dismantled the traditional military structure and gave the task of defense to people’s committees, whose unprofessionalism soon became fatal as was evident when those responsible for manning missile batteries proved to be incompetent in even defending Qadhafi’s abode against an air raid ordered by President Reagan. He modified the Islamic calendar, which is in use in Libya and nowhere else. He effaced the influence of Ulama and Fuqaha as he envisaged himself to be the sole interpreter of the Sharia. He saw no need for the Qur’anic interpreters, as in his words “Qur’an was revealed in plain Arabic” and therefore Arabs did not need intermediaries between them and God. He considered no other source beside Qur’an to be valid. Next in importance was the Green Book (three volumes), written by him, without any partnership, which encompassed the constitutional framework of the government, the law, judicial exegeses, the penal code, philosophical anecdotes and everything else on earth. His own wisdom became sacrosanct, unrivalled even by Confucius. So as a result of his systematic destruction of all traditional institutions, at present there is no social, military and religious infrastructure in Libya to be relied upon in the aftermath of the overthrow of his regime.

All this would have been considered maverick and scholarly, if one could not notice in his eyes clear signs of a disturbed personality. His behavior ranges from idiosyncratic to psychotic. He reminds me of the Fatimid khalifa Al-Hakim, who showed signs of psychosis and was run out from Cairo by the populace.

It is natural for us to be skeptical when the West demonizes a Muslim leader. He automatically gets the benefit of our doubt but in this case evidence against him is abundant. He forced Wahdah (unification), first on Egypt then on Tunisia.

When the Arab countries did not show any interest, he turned towards Sub-Saharan Africa and wanted to lead her in a United States of Africa. That dream also did not materialize. He tried to purchase an atom bomb from China. Spurned by Zhou En-Lai, he turned towards Pakistan. When Pakistan too said no, he became very bitter. He ordered Egyptian navy during the period of unification, to sink the luxury ocean liner QE2, full of American tourists, in the Mediterranean. The naval commander would not do it without referring to Sadat. There were reports that he asked Nasser permission to shoot King Husain in an Arab summit conference in Cairo. It is also a known fact that he sent assassins to kill King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. The blowing up of the Pan Am flight over Lockerbie in Scotland is another example of bizarre behavior. Then all of a sudden he metamorphosed from Mr. Hyde to Dr. Jekyll and became from enemy number one to the best friend of the West, meeting with Condoleezza Rice and embracing Gordon Brown, Sarkozy and Berlusconi.

We need no further evidence to conclude that autocracy, whether benevolent or tyrannical, is something we must not tolerate in the Muslim world. It will certainly be inimical to human development.

My experience of the Libyan people is that they are very sweet, friendly and full of promise. They deserve a better leadership. However, there is a real danger now that the upheaval in the Arab countries may once again provide entries to Trojan Horses --- I am not talking about Islamists --- and usher in another era of exploitation. The Revolutions must be on their guard against such hazards.

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