Empires Strike Hard, Nations Die Hard: Behind the Libyan Fake Revolution and the Re-colonization of Africa
TRANSCEND MEMBERS, 10 Oct 2011
Raïs Neza Boneza – TRANSCEND Media Service
After six months of fierce bombings on Libya by NATO and their TNC cronies; the mainstream media is painting the conflict as a natural consequence of the previous disillusioned revolution in North Africa. Under the Umbrella of humanitarian interventions, the media of wars have failed to mention the decaying capital economic system as one of the consequences of the conflict.
No empire can survive besides existing self-sustained and independent nations such us Libya. The strategy has been to dismantle free nations by war if necessary, or through the imposition of different financial deregulations to finance the empires’ own internal deficit. In this case, the axis France- United Kingdom- United States recruited and relied on few disenfranchised Qaddafi’s opponents, elements from Al-Qaeda ( some brought directly from Guantanamo) and among them militia of Prince Bandar Bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia.
The NATO-led intervention in Libya is the outcome of a decade-long plan by the US and its allies to reshape the Middle East and Africa. John Bolton, former US ambassador to the UN, revealed that wish in 2002; the completion of the project was materialized in November last year with France super-heading the invasion.
The shadow of civil war over Libya predicts the feared partition of the country: Cyrenaica (Benghazi region) and Tripolitania (Tripoli region). It is not the first attempt to cut and divide this nation. In 1949, after WWII, at Potsdam (Brandenburg, Germany) western allies adopted the Bevin-Sforza Plan, which proposed the following:
To dissolve Eritrea by sharing it between Sudan and Ethiopia Imperial, to put Somalia under the administration of its former colonial power (Italy) indefinitely, and “endelig” to divide Libya into three parts:
Cyrenaica, Fezzan and Tripoli against the wishes of the majority of Libyans, with the territories placed under a shared jurisdiction of Italy, France, and Britain. John Dulles, then U.S. Secretary of State, said: “The annexation of Eritrea to Ethiopia is necessary to protect U.S. interests in the Red Sea.”
On May 17 1949, after fearless protests by Haitian UN ambassador Senator Emile St-lot voted “no” to the approval of the resolution, against the advice of the then Haitian President Estime. His vote blocked the implementation of the Bevin-Sforza Plan and prevented the partition of Libya. The consequences of the Libyan war under the pretext of democratization and humanitarianism lay the foundation for a concrete yet intangible re-colonization of Africa.
Two other specific aims are behind the conflict: The recovery of the west economies by the predation of Africa’s wealth in order to regain lost political legitimacy to their public opinions, and the control of scarce natural resources to face the rise of emerging powers such as China and Brazil
Predatory Wars for economic recovery
The 2008 financial and economic crisis affected severely the US and Europe. To avoid the system’s financial meltdown and an economic crisis like in 1929, these governments funded private banks with public funds defrauding their own populations. By rescuing banks and corporations from bankruptcy, their internal debts soared with the transfer of private debts to the public debts.
Alone, the United States has around 14 trillion dollars in debt. France, Britain and Italy each have about 2 trillion dollars in public debts, while the 46 sub-Saharan African countries have in total less than $ 400 billion in public debts. These governments in crisis resort to borrowing or to taxation to finance their public spending. Faced with such dramatic situation, the favored scenario for the axis US-Britain-France is economic recovery by war. History shows us how the economic crisis of 1929 plunged Europe in a deep recession and the way the crisis was drawn out through the Second World War.
War seems to be the remedy for the recovery of the gluttony appetite of the heavily indebted military-economic global complex. The Armies are marching and flying in search of wealth to maintain an unsustainable capital system. The scrambles for Africa, in this case Libya, are easy prey. The wars in Africa are neo-mercantilist conquests as their aim is the gain of wealth by any means.
With such an organization as AFRICOM (US Africa Command), which probably will open a base in Benghazi, the race for raw and strategic materials is on. Africa has been a breeding ground for decades for predatory wars. The D.R.Congo continues to pay the price. Huge corporations have funded proxy-wars with the only aim of looting the mineral wealth of this former Belgian colony. Despite UN reports and resolutions, no tangible actions have been taken against those who fuelled the armed conflict in the first place, inter alia, the multinational corporations. The history seems to repeat itself. Accumulation by dispossession is a common trend for the capitalist economy.
However, recent history teaches us that plundering other people’s resources is not the only way for development. Countries like China, India, Germany and Brazil grow economically without depending on colonies or waging war against other nations that possess natural resources. But through fair trade and acquisition of science, not war, that these nations prosper. To create false wars in Africa and the world in the hope to oxygenate their economic apnea will only worsen the decline of the capitalist empire that took off in 1884 during the famous Berlin Conference.
Libya under Gaddafi was far from perfect, but we need to question the legitimacy to bomb Libyan children by France, Britain, the United States, Italy, Norway, Denmark and Poland.
On March 19, 2003 President George W .Bush bombed Iraq almost to the Stone Age under the pretext of exporting democracy. Eight years later, March 2011, French President Sarkozy launches his missiles against Libya under the same pretext. US President Obama, 2009 Nobel Peace laureate, justifying the use of cruise missiles, said it was to drive the Libyan dictator from power and bring democracy again. Is the Geneva Convention limited only to its Canton? Is the ICC (International Criminal Court) only for Africa? Again, from the slave trade to its abolition, and from colonialism to “independence;” an equivalent of Nuremberg Tribunal or even a Truth and Reconciliation Commission never been organized. Is the liquidation of humanity by the west a great business? Is one part of humanity less human?
“Democracy building” in Libya, we are told, requires extensive bombing of an entire country, under NATO’s Responsibility to Protect” (R2P). To say that we kill Libyans for their own good is deceitful.
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Rais Neza Boneza, is a free-lance writer/researcher and the TRANSCEND Convener for Africa.
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 10 Oct 2011.
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Thank you for sharing this important and too often ignored context of the NATO bombing in Libya. As Fr. Roy Bourgeois of the School of the Americas Watch has stated repeatedly, “You can’t bring democracy through the barrel of a gun.”
Interesting to note that it was the Haitian UN ambassador in 1949 who blocked implementation of the Western allies’ plan to partition Libya.