WAR IN LIBYA: THE USA IS STRIKING CHINA WITH ITS FRENCH PROXY?
Mass-media promotion of French role in a Libyan conflict may happen to be a dangerous and faulty game. Experts believe that Sarkozy acted as an American puppet, which used France as their cat’s paw. Primary U.S. goal in support of the Libyan military conflict is their wish to hinder Chinese involvement into the economics of an African continent. Washington tries to prevent further Chinese development, using its military and strategic advantage and restraining Chinese access to the natural and energetic resources of the region: Beijing invested loads of money into energetic complex of Cyrenaica, reckoning to use these sources for their energetic needs.
Here’s a full text of the French report regarding Libya, posted at the request of our dear readers
Members of the expert delegation, who visited Libya at the initiative CIRET-AVT and CF2R were surprised by the artificial character of the “people’s revolution” that happened in the country.
Here’s a “Grad” complex in the middle of the field. That’s the way rebels fight.
Apart from the rest, authors of the report claim that the TNC discredits itself with active “propaganda”, which mostly consists of systematic exaggeration and disinformation about “criminal deeds” of Gaddafi’s army, for example, overstating the number of peaceful civilians that “Sarkozy saved”.
No one complained of money problems, since the insurgents benefit from significant financial and humanitarian aid. But the most important for the TNC is political recognition. The visit of Senator McCain, on the 22nd April, and his intervention in the international media counted for much with them. Hezbollah and Hamas also adopted a stance in favor of the insurgency and proposed sending instructor and arms.
On the 10th March 2011, France was the first country to recognize the TNC as the only “legitimate representative of the Libyan people”. This decision by Sarkozy caused astonishment in his European partners. Here are the possible reasons for this:
— French diplomats wanted to retake the diplomatic initiative. They had a feeling of having been overtaken by events in the winter of 2011 in Tunisia and Egypt.
— The games of internal politics. To start a military operation abroad in the year of a presidential election is not an innocent act. From the perspective of 2012 a victory against a long vilified Arab dictator could only be helpful and reinforce the status of military commander for the president, whose popularity is historically weak
— The French President made this risky decision at a time when his main advisor, Claude Gueant, expert on Libya, left the Elysee for the ministry of the Interior, and when Bernard Bajolet, the national coordinator of intelligence, a recognized expert on the Arab world, left his position to become ambassador in Kabul.
The leaders of the TNC claimed that the French president had saved “a million lives” French flags are hung everywhere and sold in kiosks. In Derna those we met said there had been an increase in the enrollment in French courses at the university.
According to the authors of the report, mass-media hype about the French role in a Libyan conflict may happen to be a dangerous and faulty game. Experts believe that Sarkozy acted as an American puppet, which used France as their cat’s paw. All the more, costs of this operation are purely transcendental according to the French taxpayers: every day France spends five times more money in Libya than in Afghanistan. Then go the calculations:
The flight time per fuel hours of the Rafale is in the order of €13.000 and that of the Mirage 2000 is €11.000. The aircraft depart from French bases and have six hours flight time to Libya and back. The minister for Defense, Gerard Longuet, indicated at the end of April to the deputies that 11 ‘SCALP’ cruise missiles had been fired at Libya. According to a parliamentary document, the price of this missile is as high as €850.000 each. Eleven missiles represent therefore €9.35 million. According to our information from the specialist press, the cost of the first two weeks of intervention was greater than €30 million. The final cost will depend on the length of the operation, but it’s already clear that this engagement will weigh heavily on the defense budget, already greatly restricted. As is usual the overrun of the original budget will oblige the use of investment credits which will affect the Defense budget for years in the future
In the meanwhile, international expert claim that it’s not a secret that NATO country-member, supporting the idea of military interference and the interim government, pursue their own interest.
Thus, the real aim of the operation in Libya was not only oil nor revenge. It is primarily against the Chinese penetration on the African continent where Beijing seeks to develop its access to energy sources. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently published a report which explains that the era of the USA is near its end and the American economy will be surpassed by China during the next five years. Washington is trying to stop this development of the Chinese economy, by limiting its access to natural energy resources which are indispensible to its growth. Beijing invested loads of money into energetic complex of Cyrenaica, reckoning to use these sources for their energetic needs. Now, due to the Libyan events, Chinese enterprises will lose millions of dollar. The engagement or the reservations of the European states is equally tied to their economic interests. Italy which has for a long time had good relations with Libya, due to its colonial past, and Germany, are the two main beneficiaries of Libyan oil, and have made significant investments in this country, which is also a market for their exports. However France and the UK have not been able to conclude good contracts with Gaddafi. So they did not hesitate to get involved and take sides with the insurgents so as to overthrow the regime in Tripoli. The last, but not least, country interested in the conflict is Egypt. It has never accepted the joining of Cyrenaica and its oil reserves to Tripoli, after the independence of Libya, proclaimed in 1951. On the occasion of an attempt to overthrow Gaddafi in 1991, Washington apparently promised Cairo that Cyrenaica would be given to them. The revue of interested parties would be incomplete without mentioning Israel, concerned in the first place at the destabilization of regional regimes that it has spent many decades managing to keep in balance, and by the rise of Islamism.
What is on display in the environment of Eastern Libya is clearly marked by fundamentalism; the many completely veiled women, the men wearing beards, giving the impression of Iran and the ayatollahs. It is worth noting that the Muslim Brotherhood in Libya is traditionally implanted into the East of the country. Above all, after more than two decades the Cyrenaica, and more particularly the Djebel Akhdar, is the zone of refuge for the LIFG, which the UN Security Council placed to a blacklist of terrorist organizations. From 1995, under the leadership of Abu Abdallah Saddik, its historic leader, the LIFG, launched itself into the jihad against the regime of Tripoli. A large number of its militants retuned to Libya to overthrow Gaddafi and to substitute a radical Islamic state. In November 2007 the LIFG declared itself affiliated officially to Al Qaeda, which brought the Libyan jihadists into the operations against the Americans in Iraq. The security services were able to uncover a plot to kill the Guide in 1996. They then launched a fight without mercy against the LIFG, and, something unthinkable until then, a close cooperation was established between the Western intelligence services to fight together against Al Qaida. This made Gaddafi an enemy to be attacked by the organization created by Bin Laden; the number two of Al Qaeda, Ayman Al Zawahiri, listed the Libyan leader as his target last year. Report also cites Saleh Abi Mohammed, in charge of media, of the Maghreb branch of Al Qaeda, who recently gave an interview to the Saudi paper Al Hayyat published in London. He confirmed that his organization has established “emirates” in Benghazi, Al Bayda, Al Marj, Shihat and Derna. “We are mostly present in Derna, where sheik Abdul Hakim our emir has formed — near our brothers an Islamic council to govern the town under Shariah law.” Saleh Abi Mohammed also confirmed that the terrorist organization recently acquired arms, “to protect our fighters and defend the banner of Islam”. Thus, Libyan conflict makes a risk factor for the entire Maghreb region.
A report presented in 2007 to the West Point military academy revealed that Cyrenaica, the epicenter of the revolution against Gaddafi, was one of the main areas of recruitment for Islamic fighters in Iraq. Documents seized in 2007 by American forces in Iraq contained a list of six hundred fighters who were members of Al Qaeda, of whom 112 were Libyans, and the majority came from Cyrenaica. The most astonishing revelation of the West Point study was that the region between Benghazi and Tobruk, passing via Derna, has one of the greatest concentrations of terrorists in the world, with a fighter going to Iraq for every 1.000 to 1.500 inhabitants. Another characteristic of the Libyan contribution is the high proportion of kamikaze/ suicide bombers in its ranks. Libyan jihadists are more likely to commit suicide bombings (85%) than other nationalities (56%). These figures are alarming.
The Leader of the Libyan rebels, Hakim al Hasidi, one of the heads of LIFG trained in the camps of Afghanistan declared that the Jihadists who fought against the allied troops in Iraq are today fighting against the Gaddafi regime. They count a thousand men under their command; Al Hasidi today is a member of the TNC in Derna, responsible for security in the East of the Cyrenaica. He operates under the orders of General Abdul Fatah Younis, ex minister of the Interior under Gaddafi. These facts are confirmed by the American Admiral Stavridis, Supreme Commander of Allies Forces of NATO in Europe; “dozens of ex fighters from the LIFG are participating with the rebels to overthrow Gaddafi.”
The members of the TNC, such as Achour Bourachid, originally from Derna, do not bother too much about the presence of fundamentalists at the heart of the revolution:
“We are all Muslims, we are in the national liberation phase, it is not the time to look at our differences; we will start to worry when they start causing trouble...”
Moreover Abdul Haim Al-Hasidi insisted that the fighters “were all good Muslims and not terrorists and they are fighting against the invader”, more disturbingly he adds:
“Contrary to what Gaddafi says, I was not part of Al Qaeda, but it the situation of instability goes on, I won’t hesitate to use them.”
Admiral Stavridis echoed this in front of the US Senate. He acknowledged tactfully that the US intelligence had detected ’certain signs of terrorist activity amongst the groups of rebels’. That is alarming but is not surprising since the LIFG is the main pillar of the armed insurgency. Then the report refers to the following facts:
— Abdul Hakim Al – Hasidi was to leave Benghazi mid April to go to Misrata by boat, filled with weapons, and ‘twenty five well trained men’.
— Abdelmomen Al Madhouni alias Mustapha Al Zawi, Orwam or also Ibn Al Ward member of Al Qaeda since 1990’s, was apparently killed in the fighting in Brega; he was on the Interpol wanted list.
— Ismail Sallabi, another member of the LIFG, was training 200 fundamentalists in the barracks of Benghazi the 7th April, helped by about twenty experts from Qatar.
Thus Libya is the only country, where the Arab Spring resulted in the ongoing civil war, threatening with a separation of the country and the all-increasing risk of establishment of Islamist regime. It means that if the TNC seizes total control over Cyrenaica or entire Libya, it will mean radical Islamization of the country. Therefore, Western interference with the Libyan conflict causes more problems than it solves. NATO intervention threatens to destabilize an entire North Africa, Middle East and, perhaps, contribute to the creation of a new hotbed of radical Islam or an outright terrorism in Cyrenaica.
That’s how the report is concluded:
“Last but not least, it is necessary to ask the question regarding the legitimacy of an action which risks “deposing” a government, in the name of “sainted democracy”, and in doing so forgets that those principles of democracy belong to the people and not to those from other countries. The international community is not a super state which can overthrow governments as it pleases and moreover do so in the name of the principles it purports to uphold but, by its own actions, clearly does not respect. Furthermore in doing so, it is clearly attributing guilt to the parties according to their oil resources and not their crimes, real or imaged.”
Report appeared at that stage of the “Fight for Libya”, when the West started to sober up, comprehending that the black-and-white picture that prevailed in the beginning of the Libyan campaign was not entirely true. Perhaps, Gaddafi is not that much of a monster (even given all his oddities) and the opposition is not that “white and fluffy” as it was convenient to think just a few months ago. Silvio Berlusconi was the first leader of “anti-Libyan coalition”, who changed his mind. On the 7th of July this year he suddenly stated that he objected the military interference from the very beginning and is forced to obey to the decision of the Italian parliament now. Given the fact that the parliamentarian majority in Italy belongs to Berlusconi’s party People of Freedom, we can hardly believe it, but the trend is obvious. Today no analyst is even trying to predict how this battle ends. There are plenty of options — from breaking country into two or three pieces to the victory of Islamists or democrats of the Western kind. It seems that not a single option will be brought to life in its entirety. We don’t know, what happens to Libya. Until now, no one ever thought what will happen to the West after the Libyan war, although it is out of question that having burnt its fingers once again, Western society will draw some conclusions. The only thing is clear: neither Libya, nor West will ever be the same as before the start of this battle.
Female battalion of Colonel Gaddafi’s Army
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