May 1, 2011
The International Coalition (NATO) smells blood in Libya and is going for it. NATO has just killed four unarmed, innocent members of the Gaddafi family.
Twenty-nine-year-old Saif al-Arab Gaddafi (Gaddafi's son studying in Germany but home to spend time with his family) and three children (Gaddafi's grandchildren) were murdered in a bombing operation by NATO which destroyed their residential villa. The BBC reported that the Libyan leader and his wife were also there but unhurt.
This latest action by NATO has twisted its mission in Libya out of all reasonable proportions and given clear indications that it is now playing its final trump-card in the game plan for regime change in Libya.
They want to kill Gaddafi and help the rebels move on to take control of Tripoli. Then, they can be installed in office to serve their master's purposes.
By its latest callous action, NATO has set the stage for more nasty developments in Libya and casts a huge slur over the United Nations' integrity. Why will NATO kill innocent civilians even though its mission in Libya is to protect such people? It is the paradox that undergirds the wicked agenda of NATO.
Those of us who continue to criticize the West for its involvement in the Libyan crisis do so not because we support Gaddafi's long hold on power, repressive rule, or choice of brute force to suppress opposition to his dictatorship. We do so because we feel that the West's own method for solving the problem is wayward.
The West's ill-thought-out method is problematic and can be understood clearly within the context of the fuzzy mandate with which the International Coalition entered the conflict, using the UN Security Council's Resolution 1973 as the fount of legitimacy.
That Resolution overtly stresses the need for the International Coalition to take actions necessary for protecting civilians, which is in and by itself an ambiguous open-ended mandate that the West is taking undue advantage of to overstretch its operations.
It is now covering areas that shouldn't have been touched had that Resolution been properly defined and circumscribed within the ambit of common sense and good judgement (allowing for diplomacy and political means to resolve the crisis).
As the Resolution is framed and currently being implemented, it has no clear-cut ceiling to determine how far the West can go in doing what it thinks will allow it to function.
That is why the West has continued to destroy infrastructure that it defines as part of the arsenal that Gaddafi has for “command and control” purposes even though such installations are national assets and not Gaddafi's personal property.
The thousands of sorties launched in that bid have reduced many of those installations to rubble and killed Libyans whose lives no one in the International Coalition regards as worth the bother.
The International Coalition has taken undue advantage of the murky nature of the Resolution to extend its operations in a manner that suggests that it can act with impunity for as long as it chooses. The Libyan crisis has, thus, assumed ugly dimensions as a result of the frontline role that the International Coalition is playing.
By its direct attacks on anything pro-Gaddafi, NATO has taken over the battle on behalf of the rebels.The line separating NATO (or the International Coalition) from the Benghazi rebels is now so blurred as to make it very difficult to know who exactly is the Libyan protesters being defended under Resolution 1973.
Insights given into the perspective from which the International Coalition is approaching the Libyan crisis indicate that the conflict is not indeed a “protest” by opponents of Gaddafi but a “war,” as some United States high-ranking military spokesmen framed it recently.
Why an uprising begun by opponents of Gaddafi should now be framed as “war” by outside forces should beat the imagination of every sane peace-loving person.
Thus framed, the conflict has now been turned into a full-fledged war that NATO is fighting on behalf of the rebels. We must be reminded that the rebels are confined to Benghazi, Tobruk, Bregga, Ajdabiya, and other settlements in the East, where they feel safe because no pro-Gaddafi forces have launched any attack on them in those strongholds.
To the West, however, Misrata has been a battle-ground for some time now as a result of the presence of the rebel fighters and the pro-Gaddafi forces in that area. Some parts of the mountainous areas close to the Tunisian border have also seen some fighting between the Tuaregs and pro-Gaddafi forces, which has spilled over into Tunisia and incurred the anger of that country.
I hope that this spilling over will not rope Tunisia into the Libyan conflict, after all. Otherwise, the situation will definitely worsen.
In this situation, the rebel forces are limited and can't advance to divest control over Tripoli, Sirte, and the other settlements in the West from Gaddafi. Knowing very well that the rebels are limited in this sense, NATO has chosen to take the lead to launch attacks there preparatory to leading the rebel forces' onslaught in those areas.
What NATO is doing does subvert the terms of the Resolution 1973, especially because of the extent to which it has carried its operations.
Right from the beginning, some of us chose not to believe all the claims that the International Coalition was making and using as its justification for entering the Libyan conflict.
Here are some of the issues and why they couldn't persuade us that the International Coalition was set to help solve the Libyan crisis in any meaningful manner apart from flexing military muscles and causing more trouble there:
1. The initial reason for launching the military operation was grounded on “humanitarian” grounds but the US-led International Coalition immediately began devastating military installations and arsenal as a prelude to enforcing the “no-fly zone” mandate. From the intensity of the devastation, one could tell that the International Coalition had ulterior motives;
2. The decision to provide material and financial support to the rebels as well as the holding of meetings to determine a blueprint for Libya without the involvement of the Gaddafi government—which suggests that the International Coalition had a premeditated plan and was only using such overt hob-nobbing sessions to massage the international community's feelings and win support for any action it takes against Gaddafi;
3. The oft-denied accusation that regime change is the ultimate goal of the International Coalition but which is not supported by evidence from the International Coalition's actions. Leaders of countries constituting this Coalition had already insisted that “Gaddafi must go,” which verifies claims of regime change;
4. Recognition for the Benghazi-based rebel Transitional National Council by France, Italy, and Qatar, which confirms suspicions of a regime change as the International Coalition's firm objective for entering the Libyan conflict;
5. Despite initial hesitation to provide the rebels all the support they need to prosecute their anti-Gaddafi agenda, the International Coalition has now openly begun equipping them and organizing them into a military force to cope with the fire-power of the pro-Gaddafi elements.
Qatar has already lifted and sold oil from rebel-controlled areas in exchange for weapons to reinforce the rebels' arsenal.
6. Additionally, Britain, France, and Italy have sent a team of “experienced military officers” to Benghazi to organize the rebels and provide them the expertise they need to face up to Gaddafi. The US has also begun covert operations through the CIA and provided the accoutrements needed for intelligence work in aid of the rebels.
From all these instances, there is no gainsaying the fact that the International Coalition is bent on achieving its objective of regime change, no matter what critics of its presence and operations in Libya say. They will do so no matter how much damage they cause to human life and infrastructure.
They will do so regardless of sensible suggestions from well-meaning people (including the Head of the Catholic Church, Pope Benedict XVI) and institutions (the African Union) or the Libyan government itself through its appeal for ceasefire, which have been roundly rejected by the rebels and their backers in the International Coalition).
They will do so because they know no other means (including diplomatic and political solutions) apart from the unconscionable military option that they have chosen. To them, might—not common sense or tact—must be right.
That is why they are exceeding the mandate given them by UN Resolution 1973 to kill innocent civilians. That is why they will close their eyes and minds to the fact that those they have killed in Libya are part of the very civilian population that the UN Resolution 1973 mandates them to protect.
That is why they will continue to indulge in this kind of selective sabotage to create overwhelming panic in areas of Libya still in the hands of Gaddafi in the hope that they will flush him out or kill him as their solution to the crisis.
The West is bent on doing everything it deems possible to eliminate Gaddafi—which he himself knows and has accepted (as he disclosed in his television appearance yesterday). It is not interested in solving the problems beyond eliminating Gaddafi. What will happen in the post-Gaddafi Libya is not the West's concern. All it wants to do is to eliminate Gaddafi on behalf of the Benghazi rebels.
Every sane observer of the Libyan crisis can tell that the problems that confront Libya go beyond the Gaddafi factor. A genuine effort to solve these problems demands that tact be used; but that is not what the International Coalition is interested in.
By choosing to launch this frontal attack on everything perceived as pro-Gaddafi, the West is deepening the crisis, not working to resolve it. And now that they have begun killing members of the Gaddafi family, they are setting despicable standards that no one should approve as part of conflict resolution strategies.
I can predict that now that they've targeted the Gaddafi family and killed the innocent and three of Gaddafi's grandchildren, the West has descended into the gutter and must be ashamed for infringing the very Resolution that legitimizes its actions in Libya.
The blood of these innocent civilians is on the hands of the UN Secretary-General and the leaders of countries that ganged up to approve Resolution 1973.
Now that they've chosen this cause and tasted blood, they will not relent until they shed more blood. Like blood hounds on the prowl, they will know no limit until they soak themselves in the blood of innocent civilians in the areas that they attack.
Then, dripping with their blood, they will be satisfied enough to roam the globe, leaving ugly traces wherever they pass as a reminder of their brute strength, and looking for others to destroy.
That's what the West knows and that's how it prosecutes agenda to serve its own interests. They are still soaked with the blood of all the Africans that they tortured and exploited to build up their own systems. These are the humanitarians the world knows. These are the gatekeepers of our globe. Shame!!
No comments:
Post a Comment