Killed Because They Are Black - The Racist Rebels of "Free" Libya

The terrified man is hung upside down as a mob chant abuse at him, many filming his torture on mobile phone cameras. After some time, a man steps forward and begins to hack off the prisoner's head, the mob cheering as his blood spurts to the ground. It is the latest of many videos to come out of war-torn Libya showing people brutally killed, homes destroyed and refugees expelled. Misery and death seem ubiquitous.

But the air forces of the coalition of western countries - France and Britain at their head, with an allegedly reluctant USA following up - were nowhere to be seen in their mission to protect civilians.

Why not? Simply because the people carrying out the lynch mob executions and torture are our allies, the so-called Libyan freedom fighters based in Benghazi to whom President Sarkozy and Premier Cameron have pledged apparently unending support. On so many levels, our intervention, originally sold as a very limited no-fly zone, has become a full-on support to a coup d'etat against the secular Gaddafi regime by a coalition of regionalists, tribal leaders and religious zealots. Within these groups, there is now also an increasingly racist streak, with Arab supremacists targeting Libyans descended from the black African slaves of previous centuries, as well as black African migrant workers.

Black Africans are targetted indiscriminately by rebels

Because of their slave history, just as blacks in America were denied rights for decades by the white majority, black Libyans have traditionally occupied the place of an underclass in Libya. Gaddafi's regime, violent though it has often been, did much to alleviate their position and oppose the traditional marginalising of blacks. Now, with the east of the country "liberated", this seems to be changing. Under the ruse that Gaddaffi has flown in black African mercenaries from the sub-Sahara, black people throughout Libya are being indiscriminately  targeted in their droves to be beaten, robbed and murdered by the rebels.

Britain's support for the rebel National Transitional Council has deepened continuously since the UN resolution permitting action to protect civilians was approved, both financially and militarily. Whilst the Gaddafi regime appears to have exaggerated some of the strikes by the West, it is very much the case that western intervention has gone far beyond its original claimed intent and the remit granted by the UN.

Yet throughout all this, the NTC appears to be far from the champion of democracy it is made out to be - it contains many former political leaders from the Gaddafi regime, as well as many military men - seven former regime generals were paraded before the cameras today as the latest defectors. Islamic fundamentalists from  the National Conference for the Libyan Opposition are also prominently involved - and as posted earlier, it was demonstrations they called to commemorate the Danish cartoons of Prophet Mahommed that sparked off the revolt against Gaddaffi's secular regime.

Ever since the Chavez Initiative back in April, the Gaddaffi regime has repeatedly offered to accept an internationally monitored ceasefire, an offer repeated last weekend during the visit of President Zuma of South Africa. Although this would, presumably, be the best means of ensuring the protection of civilians which is meant to be the purpose of western intervention, the rebel council has repeatedly refused to even consider a ceasefire and rejects out of hand the idea of peace negotiations with Gaddaffi. And this refusal is repeatedly accepted, indulged and even rewarded by the West, which has announced ever more powerful weapons and, in spite of our alleged age of austerity, financial support to the Benghazi junta. Attack helicopters are in the process of being deployed, and al-Jazeera has run footage of what appears to be European ground troops liaising with Libyan rebels - a flagrant breach of the UN resolution.

What is playing out here is an alarming example of rightwing revenge - Cameron and Sarkozy come from conservative traditions that have always detested the Gaddafi regime, recalling its sympathising back in the 1970s and 1980s with the Soviet bloc. That is why they have intervened so unquestioningly in support of his opponents while ignoring the brutality of the Bahrain regime (still enjoying the welcome of David Cameron when its Crown Prince visited the UK the week before last). Undoubtedly, they are also salivating at the prospect of the ill-gotten gains to be made by western corporations if the large state sector was to be privatised post-Gaddafi - in France's case making up for missing out in the huge public assets sell-off to American, British and even Israeli companies in post-Saddam Iraq.

As before, in the warped name of warped democracy, Britain is bunking down with some distinctly odd bedfellows. And the people who suffer are those driven from their homes and lynched by "free Libya" rebel mobs, for no reason other than because they are black. Where is the West's intervention to protect them? Or are they just the wrong sort, or wrong colour, of civilians in this very uncivil war?


The Evidence

Video of African Workers Hiding Out in Benghazi from Racist Mob Violence

The Ugly Face of the Benghazi "Liberation" - Racism against Black Africans

More links (warning; extremely graphic)-  Rebel lynch mob murders black African   
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRM-OH1cQQE&feature=related

- Nigerian migrant civilian worker killed by rebels
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQHBq8-xyLs&feature=related

Bloody Oil

So, in one sense it is not news. Ask anyone why the West gets involved in overseas wars and the answer nine times out of ten is "oil". The public know this, and somehow cynically accept it, bemoaning the fact, but often simultaneously setting it to one side, perhaps in the hope that, while it is necessary for the sake of our current carbon fuel-dependent societies, it can't really be that bad. Can it?

Well, yes it is, and worse. We heard earlier this year, Tony Blair's sanctimonious defence of his toadying up to George Bush over the bloody war in Iraq, shifting from his original claims about weapons of mass destruction to defending the objective of regime change, allegedly because this would be good for the Iraqi people. The tens of thousands of deaths, the millions of refugees and the immense damage to infrastructure caused by his activities were all apparently worth it on these grounds.

And this week, we have found out for certain just exactly who all this mayhem was for.

The "Independent" newspaper in the UK published a series of emails showing how in the months up to the Iraq invasion - when Blair was publically insisting that war might still be avoided - BP and other oil companies were busy petitioning the UK Government for a slice of the anticipated post-war bonanza. They even went so far as to claim that if the Iraqi oil fields were privatised (rather than kept in the hands of the new supposedly democratic government to hel rebuild the country) this would represent an apparent reward for the UK's support of the American invasion.

So now we know, our troops were there to kill and be killed so that, in return, BP, a big multinational company with a deeply tarnished history of involvement in killings and corruption in the Middle East, could get a reward.

And it duly has. Unreported, unfocused on by the complicit western media, the Iraqi state was dismantled following the war. Its assets were sold off to foreign companies and individuals - many of them Israelis - and among these BP benefited with good deals on acquiring huge stakes in large tracts of the rich Iraqi oilfields. Even where they don't own the fields, the oil companies make a killing, extracting oil at less than $1.15 per barrel and selling them on at over one hundred times (or, put another way, 10,000%) that cost. They were by no means the only oil company involved, and the American government was even more generous to its friends, such as Halliburton and Blackwater, in doling out Iraqi money, largely unaudited and unaccounted for. But Blair's sickening insistence that he acted out of pure motives and a desire to do the right thing finally stand exposed as nothing more than a squalid deal with big corporations - both of the oil and non-oil varieties.

And what of now, in Libya? Again and again in recent weeks, the Gaddafi regime has been portrayed as somehow uniquely brutal among Middle Eastern despots and so deserving of unique treatment by the West. Even although Gaddafi's government has now offered an internationally monitored ceasefire and elections for the leadership of the country run by the UN, the mysterious coalition of rebels continue to receive unqualified western aid in spite of rejecting the offer. We are indefinitely underwriting a bloody war with allies of dubious provenance even although the other side have accepted more than the original demands of the United Nations.

Why? It could be for oil - but with just 2% of the world's reserves, while rich, Libya does not represent to carbon cornucopia that Iraq offered. And BP was already well-ensconced with the Gaddafi regime, so regime change could potentially disturb rather than assist their exploitation of the country's richest natural resource (although, of course, any Middle Eastern war is handy for oil companies in facilitating a rise in prices at the pumps - entirely unnecessary and unjustifiable, but easily sold to an unsuspecting public).

Libya offers other delights for western companies, however, just as Iraq did but other states like Bahrain and Egypt did not. Both Saddam and Gaddafi, for all their brutal faults, came from socialist backgrounds. Acquiring power was not purely about self-aggrandisement, though both men clearly revelled in it. It was also about using the state for the benefit of the citizens, however totalitarian in their control of their citizens they sought to be. Consequently, both Iraq and Libya under their respective tyrants had large public sectors and enjoyed some of the best education, health and welfare systems in the world - all free of charge. And, of course, all hanging like ripe fruit to fall into the bags of privatising privateers when the American juggernaut crashed into town.

Under the neoliberal philosophy that continues to inform American and British foreign policy, "freedom" is not at the end of the day expressed via the ballot box or by the mass of citizens. When they talk of freedom, it is in  fact about free markets - about private enterprise and the supposed freedom to buy and sell, accumulate, speculate and profit. Hence, under this philosophy, oil as a bounty for blood is more than acceptable - indeed, it is necessary, it is the whole purpose of the exercise. And not just oil - just as whole segments of Iraqi public services have been auctioned off to western-owned interests, so Libya now holds the same tempting prospect.

It is for this reason that so much of the opposition to the West in the Arab world stems from a religious starting point. Although castigated in the West as wild-eyed bearded ones lusting for blood and vengeance for ancient slight, groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Hizbollah in the Lebanon are widely supported by their people because they are grounded in ethics and principles diametrically opposed to the corrupt regimes such as Mubarak's sponsored and sustained by the West (the USA for example, paid for Mubarak's brutal security services for most of his rule).

Old Friends - The British Queen & The Blood-soaked Emir of Bahrain

It is also why the West is so deeply distrusted in the Arab world - every time Arab people have agitated for freedom, they have been opposed by dictators whose strings have been pulled very firmly either by western governments or by western oil companies or, more often than not, by both. The brutal regime in Bahrain is probably the epitome of this, but in the West, it is exempted from the fate of the Libyan regime. Bahrain is sanitized by the approval of its regime by the British monarchy and the repeated visits by members of the Royal Family (who invited the ruler of Bahrain to kate and William's Big Day just hours after the massacre of 45 protesters on the streets of his capital city), - and besides, we already own everything there anyway; there is nothing left to sell.

But in Benghazi...never mind the crosshairs; its dollars that are in western sights.

No Flying Into Oblivion

The United Nations "No Fly Zone" has today seen rather a lot of flying by the planes and missiles of the western allies, unsurprisingly bombing Libyan Government airforce and radar installations, but more controversially bombing military columns to create a defensive cordon around the rebel held city of Benghazi and last night bombing the Government compound in Tripoli in spite of the hundreds of civilians camped around its walls. For those of us who supported, tentatively, a "No Fly Zone" when it was repeatedly called for by the rebels and after increasingly bloodthirsty threats from the regime, the instant escalation to significantly greater military involvement than a "no-fly-zone" raises grave concerns as to what the endgame is going to be. This is especially the case when the rebel faction has made clear it is not willing under any circumstances to consider a negotiated settlement, which rather suggests we might be there a very long time indeed. 

Armed intervention, unless you are a pacifist, needs always to be a very final option in a handful of cases. And yet, genuinely humanitarian interventions are few and far between. The Bosnian intervention came three years too late to save tens of thousands of innocent Bosniac civilians - 90% of them Muslims; and although the Kosovan intervention did undoubtedly prevent a repeat massacre, the wide range of targets hit in civilian areas hinted at darker motives than purely protecting civilians. By contrast, the wars more enthusiastically waged in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the secret war against Iran, have somewhat more questionable motives. Ones rooted in self-serving business interests and where humanitarian concerns, including democracy, are very far removed from the real priorities of securing profitable energy resources for our oil-addicted world.

What then of Libya? What is the motive here? Given that we gladly did business with Libya in spite of previous bloody massacres of sometimes hundreds of opponents, humanitarian concerns have not been the top of the West's agenda in this relationship for a very long time. So what is the real driver now?

Oil again seems obvious, except for the fact that Libya's dictator Muammar al-Qaddafi has pretty happily engaged with western oil companies since the great rapprochement of 2004. If anything, the oil industry would be perfectly happy for him to stay - any new regime, especially a democratic one, would be likely to disturb their modus vivendi in a country where oil extraction is about as cheap and profitable as anywhere in the world.

Our man in Tripoli

Former British Premier, Tony Blair, has come under criticism for his visit to Qaddafi back in 2004, when Libya was allowed to open up to international trade after years of sanctions. In recent weeks, Coalition politicians in Britain have been queuing up to denounce him; yet their wisdom is somewhat one of hindsight. Take a look back at their words at the time and, while some were hesitant, nearly all of them supported Blair's move:

"The potential prize of helping Libya in from the cold makes Mr Blair's risk worth taking,"- Menzies Campbell, Lib Dem Foreign spokesman, 2004

Conservative leader at the time, Michael Howard, condemned Blair's visit only because he felt it was at too high a level. He supported the overall process of re-engagement.

Infamously, current Lib Dem leader and Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, worked for p.r. firm GJW during the 1990s, when it was hired by Qaddafi to improve the Libyan regime's image.

The truth is that Qaddafi is one side of the capitalist coin that governs our world. Many on the Left have been seduced for years by his eclectic and self-serving adoption of supposedly progressive causes. Yet all the  while, he has ruled with a brutal iron fist at home and cavorted at every chance with the oil companies and international businessmen who have made him personally a very rich man indeed.

What has happened is this - Qaddafi has not been strong enough to crush the revolt quickly enough; had he suppressed the rebels in a few days then, as Bahrain is doing now, no matter how savage his retribution, after 18 months of purdah, he would have been welcomed back to his corporate family. As it is, he has taken too long to reassert himself and so has outlived his usefulness - Capital abhors a vacuum and so he must go. Hence the intervention has quickly become far more than a No Fly Zone. With the Chavez Peace Initiative ignored by the West and any and all prospects of a negotiated settlement compehensively rejected by the Libyan rebels, the agenda is clearly now one of regime change.

Strange as it may seem, but at least for the last decade, Qaddafi has been the West's creature - perhaps more obviously an untamed Frankenstein than the royals in the Gulf that Cameron gently admonishes for their civilian massacres - but our creature nevertheless. Just last year Britain sold £200 millions of "crowd control" equipment to him and the SAS trained his elite guard on surveillance techniques, while the French provided him with a wide range of military support.

That is why the West has in truth been reluctant to do what it is doing - until now. Qaddafi and Big Oil have profited very nicely from their mutual dealings. How annoying that the Libyan people have spoiled and confused things so terribly by getting in the way of this most symbiotic of relationships. They deserve better than this bastard of a twin-headed hydra that has buried itself deep in their troubled land. Sadly, whatever the outcome, just as Iraq is slipping back into dictatorship and Afghans are governed by a western-sponsored kleptocracy, it seems unlikely that they will get it.

From 2009: