GADDAFI’S TIME HAS RUN OUT

Mar 21, 2011 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Colonel Muammar Gaddafi was for many decades an international pariah. During the years when he was believed to have been openly supporting terrorist attacks on civilian targets, such as the Lockerbie Bombing, he was treated as a political outcast by the West.
After the Lockerbie bombing, the West demanded that he hand over suspects to them and imposed sanctions on his country. He has always been defiant but he is also calculative and eventually he handed over the two suspects, one of whom was found guilty and the other freed.
Given the gravity of the crime, that man found guilty was never expected again to see sunlight. But in a dramatic development, the convict was released on humanitarian grounds in what many observers saw as a deal made by the Libyans to the West, one that would have allowed these countries to secure lucrative oil deals in Libya. The pariah was coming in from the Cold.
The man who was once detested globally suddenly found favor with the West. In 2004, Tony Blair, the then Prime Minister of Britain traveled to Libya to meet with the Libyan leader and no doubt to give his nation a head start in lucrative investments in the Libyan petroleum sector. Gordon Browne the man that succeeded Blair also met with Gaddafi, the man who, prior to him opening up his country’s petroleum sector to western investment, was spurned by Western leaders.
It is these carrots that Gaddafi offered that allowed him to emerge from his pariah status. Britain has substantial investments in Libya and does the United States whose President, Barack Obama met Gaddafi at a G 8 summit and they even shared a meal with him at the same table.
The greatest irony is however the French President. The man whose country sealed major defense deals with the Libyans and who in 2004 said that he wanted Libya to return to the concert of nations, was the first leader a few weeks ago to give official recognition to a group of ragged rebels without any significant control of Libyan territory and who were about to be routed.
The West no longer needs Gaddafi. They however need his oil and the money that it will bring. As such, the very countries which were responsible for bringing him out of international isolation have now seen a way to increase their interests in that country. Instead of courting Gaddafi as they did in the past, they are now bombing his country to shreds under the pretext of offering humanitarian assistance to that country.
The same west which turned their backs on the genocide in Rwanda and Burundi in which over a million persons were slaughtered, now want to be seen as saviours of humanity. All they are interested in is Libya’s oil and for regime change to spread in the Arab World.
The President of Venezuela has described the military action now taking place in the West as a pulverization of international law. International law should not be dragged into the equation. If Gaddafi was accused of using excessive force against persons armed to the teeth, and not innocent protestors, then what is the west doing under the pretext of enforcing a no fly zone? Is it not of excessive force, resulting in civilian causalities, what the West is doing? Why do you need to bomb Gaddafi military locations in order to enforce a no- fly zone.
There was always a diplomatic option. President Chavez offered to mediate a deal but the West was not interested in a settlement. They were interested in regime change and so they got their friends in the Arab League to scuttle any chances of a negotiated settlement by calling for a no- fly zone and the Russian and the Chinese abstained from voting because they did not wish to be seen as being an obstacle to what is being described as a humanitarian intervention. Both do not have substantial investments in Libya which, days before the crucial Security Council vote, had invited India, China and Russia to invest in that country, no doubt hoping to woo their support in order to prevent the resolution for a no- fly zone from being passed.
The no- fly zone was passed and the bombing raids have begun as part of implementing all necessary measures to enforce the embargo on the skies and to cause further losses to the rebels in the east of Libya. It is interesting that the West should be concerned about Libya’s use of force against armed civilians and not be concerned that foreign powers have sent troops into Bahrain to help quell a rebellion by unarmed civilians.
The West however has the support of those friendly nations in the Arab World and can exploit them as they feel. With Gaddafi, it was different. His removal will provide traction for their real target, Iraq, and of course will allow them now unrestrained access to Libya’s oil. After all, the liberators have to be repaid.

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