[D66] Former colonial powers send military “advisers” to Libya

[Henk Elegeert]

Oto,

Ok, jij je zin: dan sturen 'we' nu Fidel erheen, die heeft nu immers toch
zijn handen vrij .. :)

Henk Elegeert



2011/4/21 Antid Oto <aorta at home.nl>

> Former colonial powers send military “advisers” to Libya
> 21 April 2011
>
> Following Britain’s lead, France and Italy announced Wednesday that they
> too
> will be sending military “advisers” to anti-Gaddafi forces in Libya,
> bringing
> the three former colonial powers back into the region they once ruled.
>
> Like their counterparts in London, representatives of the French and
> Italian
> governments insisted that the sole purpose of deploying military officers
> to
> Libya was to fulfill the mandate of United Nations Resolution 1973
> authorizing a
> no-fly zone over the North African country as well as “all necessary
> measures”
> to protect civilians.
>
> This is a patent and increasingly farcical lie that only underscores the
> hypocritical role played by the UN in the entire Libyan affair. Three
> European
> powers, backed by the United States, are intervening in an ongoing civil
> war
> with the stated aim of bringing about “regime change”, i.e., installing a
> more
> pliant puppet government that will secure their strategic and profit
> interests
> in Libya and the broader region.
>
> Significantly, both France and Italy had rejected sending military
> contingents
> into Libya up until Tuesday, when Foreign Secretary William Hague announced
> Britain was sending “advisers.”
>
> On the same day, French Foreign Minister Alan Juppe had told reporters, “I
> remain absolutely opposed to a deployment of troops on the ground,” and
> stressed
> that such a deployment would not be allowed under the UN resolution, which
> includes a clause formally barring the occupation of Libya by foreign
> forces.
>
> Yet on Wednesday, a spokeswoman for the French Foreign Ministry announced,
> “France has placed a small number of liaison officers alongside our special
> envoy to Benghazi who are carrying out a liaison mission with the TNC
> (Transitional National Council).” She insisted that this “mission”
> consisted of
> giving the TNC “essentially technical, logistical and organization advice
> to
> reinforce the protection of civilians and the distribution of humanitarian
> and
> medical aid.”
>
> This explanation echoed that of Hague, who insisted that sending British
> military advisers to Benghazi had nothing to do with “training fighting
> forces
> or arming them or equipping them,” but merely helping the so-called rebels
> to
> “organize themselves to protect civilian life.” He added, “It’s not boots
> on the
> ground; it’s not fighting forces; these are not people to fight on the
> battlefield. These are people to advise on organization.”
>
> The British daily Independent described one of these organization
> specialists as
> “one of the most battle-hardened commanders in the British Army, with
> extensive
> experience of combat in Afghanistan,” saying he would be one of team of
> “armed
> British troops” being dispatched to Libya. If these are not “boots on the
> ground,” then perhaps these trained killers have been supplied with
> alternative
> footwear.
>
> Italian Defense Minister Ignazio La Rossa announced Italy’s decision to
> deploy
> army personnel in Libya. Just a day earlier, Italy’s Chief of Staff,
> General
> Biagio Abrate, stressed that there had been no request for Italian troops
> and
> that the conditions did not exist inside Libya for such a deployment.
>
> La Rossa appeared to be somewhat “off-message,” failing to insist on the
> wholly
> humanitarian character of the advisers’ mission. “There is a clear
> understanding
> that the rebels have to be trained,” he said. “Italy is ready to send the
> same
> number of military staff as Britain to be instructors in Italy.”
>
> The Italian minister’s statement makes clear the reason for the abrupt
> reversal
> of position by both Paris and Rome. Neither were going to be outdone by the
> British in a scramble for control of Libya and its rich oil and gas
> resources.
> This competition for the “spoils” of the war in Libya will inevitably drive
> its
> further escalation.
>
> The decision by the three European powers to send military advisers to
> Libya
> comes precisely one month after the US, Britain and France launched the war
> of
> aggression against the country. Warplanes from the three nations initiated
> a
> continuous campaign of aerial bombardments that NATO generals claim has
> wiped
> out at least one-third of Libya’s military, presumably killing thousands of
> soldiers.
>
> Despite the destruction and bloodletting, however, the air war has failed
> to
> dislodge the government of Muammar Gaddafi and has proved inadequate in
> securing
> any advance by the ”rebels” who the imperialist powers are supporting.
>
> Now these powers have determined that “advisers” must be dispatched to
> train and
> direct the operations of an armed insurgency that they played no small role
> in
> instigating. As in the American experience in Vietnam, the logical next
> step is
> sending in large numbers of combat troops.
>
> Plans are well underway for this next escalation. The European Union has
> drawn
> up plans to send 1,000 troops into the port city of Misrata “to secure sea
> and
> land corridors inside the country,” as an EU spokesman put it. According to
> the
> British Guardian, this invasion force “would not be engaged in a combat
> role but
> would be authorised to fight if they or their humanitarian wards were
> threatened.”
>
> The escalating intervention by the major European powers has immense
> historical
> significance. For the first time since World War II, Italian troops are
> being
> sent into Libya, a territory that Italy first invaded 100 years ago. Today
> they
> go in the name of “humanitarianism”. A century ago, Italy justified its
> invasion
> of what were then the Ottoman provinces of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica in
> the
> name of its “civilizing” mission.
>
> For the Libyan people, this invasion produced a tragedy of genocidal
> proportions. Between the onset of Italian colonization and the routing of
> Italy’s army in World War II, 42 years later, fully one half of Libya’s
> population was murdered, starved to death or driven into exile.
>
> Resistance to Italian rule was met with systematic aerial bombardment—for
> the
> first time anywhere in the world—of the civilian population. Caravans,
> villages
> and even livestock were destroyed from the air by the Italian military,
> which
> also employed poison gas.
>
> The fascist regime of Benito Mussolini saw Libya as a “population colony”,
> along
> the same lines as its ally, Nazi Germany, viewed the territories to its
> east as
> “living room” for the German people. And it utilized similar methods. In
> 1930,
> 100,000 people, mostly from nomadic tribes, were herded into concentration
> camps, where at least half of them died. A year later, the Italians
> captured the
> leader of the anti-colonial resistance, Omar Mukhtar, and hung him before
> an
> assembled crowed of 20,000.
>
> Italy’s record of fascist colonialism, however, was little different in its
> effect from the “democratic” variety practiced by France and Britain. In
> neighboring Algeria, which France ruled from 1830 to the Evian agreement of
> 1962, colonialism was similarly brutal and indeed, near genocidal, in its
> suppression of any resistance by the population.
>
> On May 8, 1945, known as VE Day, for Victory in Europe, as crowds in Europe
> and
> American celebrated the defeat of Hitler’s regime, French forces in Algeria
> carried out atrocities that rivaled those of the Nazis. Popular
> demonstrations
> by Algerians calling for independence were met with massacres that claimed
> the
> lives of tens of thousands. Algeria’s post-colonial government estimated
> that a
> total of 1.5 million Algerians were killed during the long struggle for
> independence.
>
> And Britain, which divided the region up with France in the Sykes-Picot
> agreement of 1916 and subjugated Libya’s neighbor, Egypt, for 70 years, has
> a
> similar record of tyranny, torture and wholesale killing throughout the
> Middle
> East and Africa. In Kenya, it herded some 320,000 Kikuyu into concentration
> camps, where thousands were killed and tortured. And it employed similar
> methods
> in its dirty war against the independence movement in Aden until it was
> forced
> out in 1967.
>
> This is the real record of Libya’s would-be “liberators,” who claim to be
> motivated purely by humanitarian sympathy and concern for civilian life.
>
> They see in the Libyan intervention an opportunity for reasserting their
> power
> in the region that they once ruled so brutally and a means of countering
> the
> revolutionary upsurge of Arab masses.
>
> For the past decade, US imperialism has employed its military superiority
> in an
> attempt to counter its protracted economic decline, asserting its hegemony
> by
> means of armed intervention over the oil-rich regions of the Persian Gulf
> and
> the Caspian Basin.
>
> Under the impact of the crisis that has gripped global capitalism since the
> financial crash of 2008, Washington’s erstwhile European allies are being
> driven
> onto the same path of imperialist militarism abroad, while carrying out
> unrelenting attacks on the working class at home.
>
> The scramble for Libya, like the scramble for Africa that preceded the
> First
> World War, is preparing the way for inter-imperialist conflicts that lead
> to
> global conflagration. Once again, the crisis of world capitalism threatens
> mankind with a catastrophe that can be prevented only through the
> revolutionary
> struggle of the international working class for socialism.
>
> Bill Van Auken
>
> http://wsws.org/articles/2011/apr2011/pers-a21.shtml
> _______________________________________________
> D66 mailing list
> D66 at tuxtown.net
> http://www.tuxtown.net/mailman/listinfo/d66
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.tuxtown.net/pipermail/d66/attachments/20110421/c280eb94/attachment-0001.html>