Libya in the crosshairs

ON THE SOUTHERN outskirts of Benghazi, soldiers loyal to Qaddafi killed in what residents said was a French air strike. - FINBARR O'REILLY/REUTERS

As expected, the United States-led NATO goes far beyond what the United Nations Security Council has mandated.

THE imposition of a no-fly zone over Libya when government forces were on the verge of taking over Benghazi has prolonged the tribal war that has engulfed the northern African nation. The United States-led forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) have, as expected, gone far beyond what the United Nations Security Council has prescribed. Their aerial attacks and covert ground activities are now focussed entirely on regime change.

Among the first targets to be attacked was the residential compound of Muammar Qaddafi. British Foreign Secretary Liam Fox told the media that it was acceptable for the Libyan leader to be targeted for liquidation provided there was not too much collateral damage. In the meantime, Libyan tanks and armoury moving from Tripoli to Benghazi were taken out in a turkey shoot, reminiscent of the carnage of retreating Iraqi soldiers by the U.S. Air Force after a ceasefire was announced, during the first Gulf War. After the Security Council passed the resolution, the Libyan government announced a ceasefire and its tanks had started retreating to their bases. This, however, did not prevent NATO planes from targeting them.

On the first day of the attacks, the U.S. gunships fired 110 Tomahawk missiles, each costing a million dollars. U.S. B-2 bombers also dropped forty-five 1,000 -kg bombs in the first 24 hours. These massive bombs and the cruise missiles launched by the British and French forces contained depleted uranium warheads. The U.S.-led wars in Yugoslavia and Iraq have provided evidence of the long-term harmful effects of depleted uranium on local populations. The European Parliament has repeatedly called for a moratorium on the use of weapons containing depleted uranium, but France and Britain have rejected calls for a ban.

The bombings allowed the ragtag rebel army, now being trained by the British and the French, to break out of Benghazi once again and take over key oil-producing centres. NATO planes and missiles are also targeting Sirte, Qaddafi's hometown, to facilitate the rebel advance. The residents of Sirte are known to be fiercely loyal to Qaddafi.

A counter-attack by government forces in late March put the rebels in reverse gear and they scampered back to their Benghazi redoubt. Gen. Carter F. Ham, chief of the Africa Command (AFRICOM) of the U.S., who is in overall charge of the NATO operations, admitted in the last week of March that only Western air power had prevented the defeat of the Benghazi rebels. Western air power is now focussed solely on the Libyan military.

The NATO has no pretensions that this war is about protecting civilian lives. In fact, in March end Western media reports confirmed that more than a hundred civilians had been killed in the bombings. Interestingly, after the bombardment started, there have not been any anti-Qaddafi demonstrations outside Tripoli, an indication perhaps that the crude, colonial-style intervention of the West has once again united the Libyan people.

Evidence is now emerging that those who took part in the violent uprising in Benghazi in late February had the covert backing of Western intelligence agencies. The Obama administration admitted that Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operatives helped the rebels for weeks. Saudi Arabia and Israel were among the countries that supplied arms to the rebels at the behest of the U.S. In the last week of March, the Provincial National Council (PNC), the Benghazi-based group leading the Western-backed attempts to overthrow the Qaddafi government, announced that the commander of the rebel forces was a long-time CIA asset. Khalifa Heftir, a former senior Libyan army officer, had defected to the U.S. in the early 1990s. The Washington Post described Heftir as a leader of a Contra-style group based in the U.S., called the Libyan National Army. The Contra terror group was financed by the Reagan administration in the 1980s to destabilise the Sandinista government in Nicaragua.

According to the book Manipulations Africaine , published by Le Monde Diplomatique, Heftir and many anti-Qaddafi military officials, who had defected following the war in Chad in the late 1980s, were later relocated in the U.S. by the CIA. The main anti-government group, the National Front for the Salvation of Libya, has been financed by the house of Saud, the CIA and the French.

The interim transitional national council propped up by the West consists of notorious Libyan characters who have been in the pay of various governments. They have over the years been trying to overthrow the Libyan government. The interim council has now been allowed access to the Libyan government's funds frozen in February by the West. This also means the rebels have to pay for the military campaign the West has launched on their behalf. It is clear that the goal of the U.S. is to replace Qaddafi with a more pliant authoritarian ruler. But with credible reports emerging that Al Qaeda members played an important role in the Benghazi event, some senior Pentagon officials have started having doubts about the civil war they have helped engineer.

U.S. Admiral James Stavridis admitted to the presence of Al Qaeda elements in the Libyan uprising. A senior Al Qaeda leader, Anwar al-Awlaki, has written that the events in Libya and other Arab countries have been a moment of elation for the mujahideen. He wrote that the West seems to be unaware of the upsurge of mujahideen activity in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Yemen, Arabia, Algeria and Morocco.

The Algerian Foreign Ministry has warned that the unfolding events in Libya could be considered as an extra chance given to terrorists. The statement went on to warn that an earthquake is going to be created by the abundance of weapons in the region, that will not only affect the Libyans but all neighbouring countries, and in particular Algeria.

The President of neighbouring Chad, Idris Deby, has said Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has taken advantage of the situation and pillaged sophisticated weaponry, including surface-to-air missiles, from the Libyan army arsenal. This is very serious. AQIM is becoming a genuine army, the best-equipped in the region, Deby said. But many experts on the region say AQIM's growing clout will give NATO countries an additional excuse to put military boots on the ground to strengthen their stranglehold on the hydrocarbon sector in the region.

American officials were aware from the outset that the conflict in Libya was essentially a tribal one and was different from the democratic upheavals going on in other parts of the Arab world. The uprising in Benghazi started with the hanging of six policemen by the rebels. Whatever the outcome, many American analysts believe that tribal passions have been aroused once again as the eastern part of the country battles the western part.

Though command of the Libyan war has officially been passed over from the U.S. to NATO, Washington still calls the shots. The majority of the bombing missions are carried out by the U.S. Air Force and Navy. President Barack Obama, in a speech delivered on March 28, explained the blueprint he had in mind for Libya. We will deny the regime arms, cut off its supply of cash, assist the opposition and assist the other nations to hasten the day Qaddafi leaves power.

U.S. troops in Libya

The message to Qaddafi is that he should stop defending himself and allow the NATO-backed rebels to march into Tripoli. With Qaddafi showing no such inclination, Obama upped the ante by announcing that Washington was considering arming the rebel fighters. Although Obama promised that there would be no U.S. boots on the ground in Libya, there were indications of covert U.S. military activity. A U.S. pilot who bailed out of his F-15 before it crashed in Libyan territory was rescued evidently by U.S. servicemen positioned on the ground.

Defence Secretary Robert Gates, however, insists that the U.S. will not be sending in troops. He told the U.S. Congress on March 31 that the tasks of training and assisting rebel forces should be left to other countries. He specifically stated that no U.S. troops would be deployed in Libya as long as he was in charge of the Pentagon.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister David Cameron made their own separate threats to the Libyan government. In a joint letter, they demanded that Qaddafi give up power immediately. At the same time, they urged officials loyal to him to defect. Libyan Foreign Minister Moussa Koussa is among the growing list of senior officials who have left the government. Moussa was a long-serving intelligence chief and had played a key role in bringing about Qaddafi's rapprochement with the West.

The French and the British have their sights on lucrative oil contracts and multi-billion-dollar defence deals. The French government was particularly upset when Qaddafi did not opt for French Rafale fighter jets and nuclear power stations despite being received with full state honours at the Elysee Palace after he was welcomed back into the Western fold. Three of the top military officials who accompanied Qaddafi on that visit to France defected to the opposition in Benghazi when the uprising began.

The French and the British at one point seemed determined to get rid of Qaddafi all by themselves so as to deny the other Western powers lucrative contracts in the client state they hoped to create. France was the first country to recognise the rump rebel government in Benghazi as the only representative of the Libyan people. This recognition violated all established diplomatic norms. Arab diplomats say it was equivalent to a declaration of war against a sovereign country as France sought to replace a legitimate government. The French have arrived at an Opium Wars' formula with Qaddafi's Libya being punished for not buying Rafale jets and Areva nuclear plants, said a diplomat from the region.

But despite the best efforts of Sarkozy and Cameron, the mysterious rebel group that emerged overnight in Benghazi was on the verge of a humiliating defeat. That was when United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973 was conjured up and NATO's Operation Enduring Dawn was launched with the U.S., instead of the French, calling the shots. Only 12 NATO members are participating in this war; Germany, the most influential European NATO member, has opted out.

Syria next?

The Obama administration's signal that it is willing to intervene militarily in the domestic affairs of Arab countries has encouraged the opposition in countries like Syria to resort to violence. Syria is among the few countries in the region that have refused to follow the dictates of the West. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said recently that the U.S. was preparing to intervene in Syria using the same strategy as in Libya.

The supposedly peaceful movements have already begun, and then there will be some deaths and then they'll accuse the Syrian President of killing his people. Later the Yankees come and bomb the people in order to save them. Imagine that, said Chavez. Syria is already in Washington's firing line as some civilians have been killed during the violent protests in the town of Daraa.

The U.S. Defence Secretary said recently that there were only three repressive regimes in the region Libya, Iran and Syria. As far as Yemen, Bahrain, Oman and Saudi Arabia are concerned, the West has put its blinkers on. Syria has been a prime candidate for regime change since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. Despite the destabilisation efforts, Syria has emerged stronger. The independent foreign policy followed by Damascus has never been to the liking of Washington and its allies.

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro said the events in Libya were a lesson for other countries. They speak of democracy and human rights, but until yesterday they flattered Qaddafi; they were really courting the oil, he said. Venezuela's stand on Libya is strongly supported by the majority of the Latin American countries. Fidel Castro questioned the very rationale for the existence of the U.N. Security Council and said the NATO military force serves only to show the waste and chaos generated by capitalism. Resolution 1973, authorising the no-fly zone over Libya, has officially allowed NATO to become a part of the U.N. air force.

A senior Arab diplomat based in New Delhi said that if the real concern of the NATO countries was to fulfil the Security Council resolution on protecting innocent lives, then they should have first supported the sending of a neutral observer mission to Libya. There was no proof that the Libyan government was slaughtering civilians. If such claims were true, graphic pictures would have hogged the international media headlines.

Slaughter by rebels

On the other hand, it was the rebel forces that were indulging in crimes against humanity. The German newspaper Frankfurter Alegemeine Zeitung reported in the third week of March that the rebels had conducted pogrom-like slaughters of black African workers. A Turkish factory manager told the BBC that more than 70 of his employees from Chad were killed in cold blood by the rebel forces.

Air strikes, bombing and cruise missiles are not aimed at protecting civilians but to destroy military targets, which inevitably leads to civilian deaths. As in Afghanistan and Iraq, the West will put civilian deaths under the category of collateral damage. This in effect means the right to kill citizens of the Third World in order to protect them, the diplomat said.

Obama's Libya speech in the end of March only highlighted the inherent hypocrisy of Western policy. Washington and its allies stood aside and watched as the Kingdom of Bahrain invited an occupation force from neighbouring Saudi Arabia and crushed the peaceful pro-democracy movement. The Bahrain government imposed a state of emergency and used brutal force to clear the Pearl Roundabout where the demonstrators had assembled. Then they took the extreme step of preventing the injured people from being taken to hospitals.

Another regional ally of the U.S., Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, held on to power despite widespread incidents of security forces opening fire on unarmed protesters. In the third week of March, more than 50 people were reported killed when snipers opened fire on a procession.

In Ivory Coast, because of violence perpetuated by an illegal government, 100,000 people were forced to flee their homes in the capital, Abidjan. Late last year, the Security Council had demanded that Laurent Gbagbo, who had lost an internationally supervised election, hand over power. But the West, led by Washington, chose not to intervene.

For that matter the governments of the U.S., France and other Western countries have bolstered genocidal regimes in the past. Guatemala, El Salvador, Zaire and Indonesia under Suharto are some examples. Many observers note that at the most about a thousand Libyans were killed during the uprising. More than 1,400 Palestinians were killed during Israel's Operation Cast Lead against Gaza two years ago. The U.S., France and the U.K. worked overtime to see that Israel went unpunished for its blatant disregard of international law and killing of innocents.

The African Union (A.U.), Russia, China, India and Brazil have all issued strong statements criticising NATO's conduct of the war and expressed their rejection of any form of foreign intervention in Libya. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has been among the more vocal world leaders in criticising the neocolonial intervention, comparing it with the medieval crusades launched by the Europeans against the Muslim world. Chinese President Hu Jintao upbraided the French President for exceeding the mandate of the UNSC in Libya and resorting to force, when the two met in Beijing in the last week of March. But Russia and China could have aborted the Libyan tragedy by casting their veto in the Security Council when the resolution was voted upon.

Former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio da Silva endorsed the Brazilian government's critical position on the issue and even went a step further in his criticism of the U.S. intervention. These invasions only happen because the U.N. is weak, he said. If we had 21st century representation in the UNSC, instead of sending a plane to drop bombs the U.N. would have sent its Secretary-General to negotiate.

Every government was aware that the creation of a no-fly zone would lead to an escalation of the conflict and more civilian casualties. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon did not bother to issue a statement against the killing of civilians or the violation of the UNSC resolution by the NATO forces. Instead, he issued a bland statement in late March saying that military campaign would continue until Libya ends its hostilities with rebels.

The Libyan government has accepted all the peace offers starting with the one made by Hugo Chavez at the end of February as well as the A.U. offer to mediate. Before NATO opened its military campaign, the Libyan government had even announced a unilateral ceasefire. To add insult to injury, the U.N. Secretary-General has appointed former Jordanian Foreign Minister Abdul Illah al-Khatib as his special envoy to Libya. Jordan is among the handful of Arab countries that have supported the NATO military action against Libya. However, only Qatar, so far, has joined NATO's air war against Libya. It was the first Arab country to recognise the rebels in Benghazi as the legitimate government. In return, the rebels quickly authorised Qatar to market the oil produced in the areas they control.

In Libya, the West used the fig leaf provided by the Arab League first to establish a no-fly zone and then to go on a no-holds-barred military enterprise to dislodge a government. Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa first endorsed the no-fly zone and then plaintively said that NATO had exceeded its mandate. What has happened in Libya differs from the goal of imposing a no-fly zone, and what we want is the protection of civilians and not the bombing of other civilians, he said.

Many Arab intellectuals and writers have questioned the locus standi of the Arab League to intervene on issues relating to democracy and human rights. Of the 22 members of the Arab League, eight are monarchies and most of the other members are authoritarian governments aligned to the West. Algeria and Syria voted against creating a no-fly zone and warned against the consequences. At the Arab League summit, which allegedly called for the establishment of a no-fly zone, only 11 member-states were represented when the issue came up for voting. Of them, five were the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, which had already called for the establishment of a no-fly zone. In reality, only nine Arab League members voted for the no-fly zone. But the tattered fig leaf was enough for NATO to launch its assault on a nation of fewer than five million people.

A.U. opposition

NATO and the UNSC paid little attention to the unanimous A.U. opposition to the war. African leaders remember many instances in the past when the armies of the West, under various pretexts, bombed many African countries, including Egypt, Congo, Somalia, Chad and Ivory Coast. The goal was always the same control of the continent's riches.

Cuban leader Fidel Castro, in his latest article, has written that it is for the first time a country has been subjected to such a brutal attack by a militaristic organisation which has thousands of fighter bombers, more than a hundred nuclear-powered submarines and sufficient arsenal to destroy the planet many times over. Castro has expressed the hope that Qaddafi, with whom I do not share my political or religious views, will fight to his last breath as he has promised, together with the Libyan people. Only then NATO and its criminal projects will sink into the mire of shame, he wrote.

A victory over Qaddafi will give the Western powers more muscle in their twin goals of negating the genuine pro-democracy movements in the Arabian peninsula and at the same time ousting governments that have been inimical to their long-term strategic interests in the region.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the media at a regional summit in Teheran in late March that the U.S. went on repeating its mistakes despite the clear lessons that the people of Iraq and Afghanistan had taught it. Whenever it is appropriate, the U.S. and its allies stand with despotic rulers and when necessary they sacrifice them to ensure their own interests, he said. The Iranian leader said the West under various pretexts bombed innocent civilians and destroyed the infrastructure of other countries to dominate them. There is no love lost between Qaddafi and the Iranian government. Qaddafi had helped Saddam Hussein during the eight-year Iran-Iraq war. But after the open military intervention by the U.S., Iran has cause to be alarmed.

The West tried to instigate a colour revolution in Iran two years ago but failed miserably. If large-scale protests break out again in Iran, Washington and its allies could invoke the Libya precedent and convince the UNSC to impose a no-fly zone; Iran is already under stringent U.N.-mandated sanctions.

There is an ongoing effort by the Saudis and other Sunni monarchies to blame Iran for the pro-democracy tide, especially in Bahrain. A senior official from one of the monarchies told this correspondent that there was no question of allowing full-fledged democracy, saying that a multiparty system would lead to Shia domination. In Bahrain, 60-70 per cent of the population is Shia. In eastern Saudi Arabia, where much of the oil is, the majority is Shia. In Kuwait, Shias constitute about a quarter of the population. Genuine democracy, they realise, will also mean the demise of the authoritarian monarchies.

Saudi Arabia was very upset when the Obama administration okayed the ouster of Hosni Mubarak. The kingdom's rulers were already angry with Washington for allowing the Shia majority to exercise power in neighbouring Iraq.

But the Saudis were more than happy when the U.S. moved militarily against Qaddafi. Qaddafi's Nasserite pan-Arab republican ideology did not jell with the conservative monarchs of the region. Qaddafi had a much-publicised public falling out with King Abdullah at the Arab League summit some years ago. Qaddafi had accused the Saudis of promoting U.S. and Western interests in the region to the detriment of the Arabs. The King did not allow Qaddafi to complete his speech and the Libyan leader staged a walkout.

Qaddafi had anyway turned his back on the Arab League and instead invested politically and financially in the A.U. To his credit, he has backed most of the progressive revolutionary movements on the continent. He has invested the profits from Libyan oil generously in building the infrastructure of several sub-Saharan African countries. If there is a regime change in Libya, the money from Libyan oil and gas will flow straight into Western banks and defence contractors.

NATO saw to it that a Committee of Heads of State mandated by the A.U. to find a solution to the crisis did not land in Libya. At an A.U. meeting held in Addis Ababa to discuss the crisis, those representing the Benghazi rebel council did not bother to show up. African governments expressed the hope that the U.N. would allow the A.U. to play a key role in defusing the Libyan crisis in accordance with the U.N. Charter, which has key provisions relating to the role of regional organisations in the resolution of crises and conflicts.

But, as the events in March showed, it is not going to be a cakewalk for NATO. Libya has a glorious history of fighting colonial forces. Led by the legendary Omar Mukhtar, more than a 100,000 Libyans sacrificed their lives in the struggle against Italian colonial rule.