NATO member-states
that scripted the takeover of Tripoli by rebel forces make a mad
scramble for profits in post-Qaddafi Libya.
MUAMMAR QADDAFI, WHO was dislodged after 42 years at the helm in Libya. A March 8, 2011 photograph.
THE “fall” of the Libyan capital Tripoli to the rebel forces
fighting under the cover of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation's
(NATO) bombs and missiles has signalled the disintegration of yet
another sovereign country. If the mayhem and butchery currently being
witnessed in Tripoli are any indication, then Libya is all set to follow
Afghanistan and Iraq into chaos and anarchy. Tripoli has been
experiencing a wave of looting and destruction similar to the one
witnessed in Baghdad, the Iraqi capital, after its occupation by the
United States.
The NATO intervention in Libya was done on grounds more spurious than
those cited in the cases of Afghanistan and Iraq. It was allegedly
engineered to stop the massacre of civilians in Benghazi. The NATO
forces used the now-ousted Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi's threat to use
force in Benghazi, after law and order had completely broken down in
the city, as an excuse to interfere in the North African country.
After the rebels and their NATO military advisers marched into
Tripoli on August 21, the capital has been without essential supplies,
including drinking water and electricity. Places of worship, including
the oldest Greek Orthodox Church in North Africa, have been ransacked.
Hundreds of bodies have been left rotting on the streets and in
hospitals. Hospitals have been bereft of essential equipment and
medicines. The rebel forces have gone on a looting spree while NATO
helicopters and planes continued attacking pro-government holdouts in
the capital until late August. As of September 2, the Benghazi-based
National Transitional Council (NTC), which has been recognised by the
West, has not found it safe to shift to the capital.
Many of Tripoli's residents preferred to flee when the Berber
fighters from the country's western mountains, armed by Qatar and
trained by NATO Special Forces, swooped down on the capital. Massive
NATO bombardment of Libyan army positions had cleared the road to the
capital for them. There were only small crowds welcoming the so-called
liberators when they entered Tripoli. The fault lines that existed
between Benghazi, the former capital under the deposed king, and Tripoli
are widening. The assassination on July 28 of Abdel Fatah Younis, the
NTC's top commander, by rogue rebel fighters highlighted the disunity
among the forces that seek to fill the vacuum left by the
larger-than-life persona of the “Brother Leader”, Qaddafi.
Radical Islamists, many of them owing allegiance to Al Qaeda, were in
the forefront of the six-month-long NATO-supervised fight to overthrow
the government of Libya. Abdelhakim Belhadj, the founder of the Libyan
Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), an Al Qaeda affiliate, led the fighting
in Tripoli and openly talked about the key role his group was playing in
the ongoing war. Belhadj, who was on America's wanted list after 9/11,
was caught in Malaysia in 2003 and subjected to “extraordinary
rendition” and torture by the U.S. in a secret Bangkok prison. The U.S.
deported him to Libya in 2004, where he was promptly incarcerated.
In a fit of magnanimity, Qaddafi had released Belhadj along with 211
“terrorists”, most of them veterans of the jehad in Afghanistan and
Iraq. The move to release them was the brainwave of Qaddafi's son Saif
al Islam, who wanted to democratise Libyan politics; his efforts were
applauded by the West. Belhadj and all those released had signed a
document pledging their allegiance to the Libyan government. At the
first opportunity, they turned the government and, that too, under the
tutelage of NATO. Jehadis from Libya constituted the largest segment of
foreign fighters for Al Qaeda in Iraq. Belhadj and his militia have also
announced that they will settle for nothing less than “Sharia law” in a
post-Qaddafi Libya. His group is also suspected to have been behind the
assassination of Abdel Fatah Younis, a close associate of Qaddafi's,
who had defected to the rebel camp.
Libyan rebel fighters drive towards the Zawiyah oil refinery in the strategic coastal town of Zawiyah on August 17.
Manhunt for Qaddafi
Qaddafi, who was in power for 42 years, has repeatedly vowed not to
surrender and to die fighting for his homeland. Speaking from an
undisclosed location on September 1, to mark the anniversary of the
military coup that toppled the pro-Western monarchy of King Idris,
Qaddafi said that there was no question of surrendering and called on
NATO and the United Nations to stop interfering in the internal affairs
of Libya. He squarely blamed the international community for plunging
the country into a civil war. “Imperialism is hated by the Libyan
people. Who can accept it? All the people will fight against
imperialism,” he said. He urged the Libyan people to be prepared for a
“long fight”.
He had warned the international community before the war started that
NATO military intervention would turn Libya into another Somalia.
NATO forces are supervising a manhunt for the Libyan leader and are
orchestrating the push to capture Sirte – Qaddafi's hometown and the
heartland of his tribe, the Gaddafiffas. Many of the tribes, especially
in the South, continue to swear loyalty to the government. Qaddafi's
wife and three of his children had taken refuge in Algeria in the last
week of August.
QADDAFI'S SONS SAADI AND (BELOW) SAIFAL ISLAM.
The Algerian government said that the temporary asylum was given
on humanitarian grounds and that the group would soon move to a third
country. The NTC described the Algerian government's gesture as a
“warlike” move and demanded the immediate return of Qaddafi's family
members to face trial. One of Qaddafi's sons, Saif al Arab, and two of
his grandchildren were killed in a NATO attack on his residence in May.
The rebels repeatedly claimed that they had either killed or captured
Qaddafi's two sons who were most politically active, Saif al Islam and
Qamis.
Even after the capture of Tripoli, NATO continued with its
“humanitarian” bombing. It pounded civilian centres like Sirte, which
are still under the control of the Libyan government forces, making a
mockery of the U.N. Security Council resolution that allowed a “no-fly
zone” over the country on the pretext of protecting the civilian
populace. The compassion that was shown to Benghazi is not being shown
to the hapless citizens of Sirte, who are now being bombed and blockaded
by NATO and it local allies.
British newspapers have given details about the extensive deployment
of British and Qatari special forces in the assault of Sirte. NATO had
given the rebels an “air force”, tilting the military balance
irrevocably against the Libyan government at the outset of the war six
months ago. NATO bombings after the fall of Tripoli, according to
reports, have killed more than 1,000 civilians in Sirte alone in the
last week of August.
The “no-fly zone” saw to it that the Libyan air force, navy and most
of the heavy weaponry were either destroyed or made unusable. The
British and French soldiers on the ground had trained and supervised the
ragtag militias that were formed and provided them with military
leadership. Aerial bombardment on a large scale coupled with targeted
assassinations by NATO removed the serious military obstacles along the
road to Tripoli. In early August, NATO bombs hit a housing complex,
killing more than 70 civilians. There were several attempts to target
Qaddafi personally. It was one such attempt that killed his son and
grandsons.
The African Union (A.U.), formerly the OAU, or Organisation of
African Unity, and many leading countries in the world have not
recognised the rump government that NATO seeks to put in place in
Tripoli. Only 40 countries have recognised the NTC, which consists of
former close associates of Qaddafi's, Western intelligence assets and
Islamists, as of early September. The A.U. issued a statement in the
last week of August calling for the setting up of an “inclusive
transitional government” that would include representatives from the
previous government. The A.U. had repeatedly called for peaceful
negotiations to end the fighting ever since the NATO-instigated war
started. South African President Jacob Zuma said the A.U. would never
recognise the NTC as the legitimate government as long as fighting
continued in Libya. The A.U. had also expressed its deep anguish at the
killings and continuing abuse of black workers by the NATO-backed
rebels. Hundreds of them were unjustifiably called mercenaries and
lynched. It happened when the war began and has continued as the rebels
move on to Sirte.
Thousands of Tuareg tribesmen, who are Libyan citizens, were forcibly
pushed into neighbouring Algeria in late August. The Tuaregs and other
dark-skinned compatriots belonging to tribes living in areas bordering
Mali, Sudan and Niger had been accused by rebels of siding with Qaddafi.
The Algerian government had to give asylum to the Tuaregs who were
unjustly expelled from their country as their kinsmen are settled along
the common border. Qaddafi has said that a majority of the tribes
support him and that they are now “fully armed”. Governments in the
region, such as Algeria's, however fear that much of the sophisticated
arms looted in Tripoli and elsewhere will end up in the hands of Al
Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQM), which started staging bigger attacks
in the past few months.
Qaddafi, it should not be forgotten, was one of the architects of the
reconstituted A.U. and was also the loudest proponent of African unity
and integration. President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela said that his
government would recognise only a government led by Qaddafi. “Without
doubt, we're facing imperial madness,” Chavez said after the fall of
Tripoli. He once again accused the U.S. and European countries of
fomenting internal conflict to seize control of the country's oil
riches. “Getting the dogs to fight. Arming here, arming there, and later
bombing the country,” Chavez said. “This destroys international law and
takes the world to the Stone Age.”
CIVILIANS EVACUATE AS rebels try to flush out forces loyal to Qaddafi in Tripoli on August 26.
Virtual protectorate
A U.N. document leaked on August 30 has revealed that the U.N.
already had a blueprint to turn Libya into a virtual protectorate. The
10-page document details plans for the deployment of foreign forces
(read peacekeepers) in the country “to contribute to confidence-building
and implementing agreed military tasks”. Among the tasks is the
stabilisation of the Libyan capital, which would need more “robust
military assistance”. The document envisages a continuing role for NATO.
“The Security Council's ‘protection of civilians mandate' implemented
by NATO forces does not end with the fall of the Gaddafi government, and
there, NATO would continue to have some responsibilities,” the document
stated. The game plan is now to deploy officially NATO ground troops in
Libya.
The Ugandan-born academic Mahmoud Mamdani perceptively noted in a
recent article that in the past decade Western powers had used two
institutions – the U.N. Security Council and the International Criminal
Court (ICC) – to selectively intervene in third countries. “The Security
Council identifies states guilty of committing ‘crimes against
humanity' and sanctions interventions as part of the ‘responsibility to
protect civilians',” he wrote.
“Western countries, ‘armed to the teeth' are then allowed to
intervene militarily, without being accountable to anyone. The ICC,
meanwhile, in tandem ‘targets the leaders of the states in question for
criminal investigation and prosecution',” wrote Mamdani.
Spoils of war
Meanwhile, the major NATO member-states that participated in the
Libyan war are engaged in reaping the financial rewards for their
efforts even before the casualty figures of innocent civilians killed in
the war come in. The Western media is full of reports about the mad
rush for profits in a post-Qaddafi Libya. The news agency Reuters
reported that the establishment of a new government in the country would
“herald a bonanza for Western companies and investors”. Libya has the
largest proven reserves of oil on the African continent, estimated at
around 46 billion barrels. The rebels who are poised to take over power
have said that they have “political problems” with countries such as
Russia, China and Brazil and have strongly suggested that they will
dishonour old contracts and sign deals with Italian, French and British
companies. Britain and France had to dig deep inside their pockets to
finance the costly bombing campaign to dislodge Qaddafi from Tripoli.
Now they are openly demanding returns in the form of lucrative oil and
defence deals.
India, too, is worried that its small stake in Libya will be
jeopardised by the new developments. Oil India Ltd (OIL) had bagged a
contract to explore for oil along with Sonatrach, the Algerian
state-owned oil company. India, like Algeria, is yet to recognise the
NTC as the legitimate Libyan government. Algerian diplomats said that
Algeria and the A.U. would extend recognition after a cohesive
government was set up in Tripoli. India has already offered to help with
relief and reconstruction in Libya.
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