From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Fri Sep 16 2011 - 17:18:09 EDT
Global NATO and the recolonisation of Africa
Lessons from the Libyan intervention
Horace Campbell
2011-09-16, Issue <http://www.pambazuka.org/en/issue/547> 547
<http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/76300>
http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/76300
If there was any uncertainty about the real mission of the United States,
France, Britain and other members of NATO in Libya, these doubts were
clarified with the nature of the military campaign against the people of
Libya,’ writes Horace Campell.
If there was any uncertainty about the real mission of the United States,
France, Britain and other members of NATO in Libya, these doubts were
clarified with the nature of the military campaign against the people of
Libya that had been orchestrated under the mandate of the United Nations
Security Council. It was a new kind of war, using third party forces in
order to silence the global peace forces who were opposed to further
military intervention. A robust propaganda and disinformation campaign by
the corporate media covered up the real content of what was happening.
The economic crisis inside the Eurozone was too deep, however, and some of
the members of NATO were hesitant about this recolonisation of Africa.
France was desperate to get in on the act of intensifying the exploitation
of African resources. France had not been a big player in Libya (a former
colony of Italy) which until recently was Africa’s fourth-largest oil
producer, and possessing one of the continent’s largest oil reserves of some
44 billion barrels – more than Nigeria or Algeria. France was also aware
that Libya sits on the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer, an immensely vast
underground sea of fresh water. The government of Libya had invested US$25
billion in the <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Manmade_River> Great
Man-made River Project, a complex 4,000km long water pipeline buried beneath
the desert that could transport two million cubic metres of water a day
The energetic activities of Nicolas Sarkozy in guiding the military
intervention took centre stage, while the US military could claim to ‘lead
from behind.’ When France called a celebratory conference of ambassadors to
rally them for the new imperial vision, Mr Sarkozy said Libya proved ‘a
strong contrast’ to past European weakness, and justified his decision to
integrate France into NATO’s military command in 2009. The nature of this
war organised from the air with proxy armies and private military
contractors showed the way for dictatorships like Qatar and Saudi Arabia to
fight for ‘democracy.’
This intervention clarified for many African military forces that their
alliance with the United States and France will not spare them when it is in
the interest of the NATO forces to dispense with former allies. Muammar
Gaddafi had enabled the imperial forces by financing their governments,
purchasing junk as weaponry and cooperating with their intelligence
agencies. The news about the cooperation of Gaddafi with British and US
intelligence services along with their collaboration in relation to
‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ (translated as torture), the exchange of
information and the secret transfers of opponents and ‘terror’ suspects
should clarify to all that Muammar Gaddafi was no anti-imperialist. More
damaging has been the most recent news of the regime’s collaboration with
human traffickers to use African immigrants as political football in his
conflict with Europe. When the rebels were at the gates of Tripoli, the
Gaddafi government worked with human traffickers to release African migrants
who wanted to go to Europe. Hundreds left Libya then and drowned in the
Mediterranean Sea. (See ‘
<http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/gaddafi-planned-to-flood-eur
ope-with-migrants-as-final-revenge-2354322.html> Gaddafi planned to flood
Europe with migrants as final revenge’).
But the crux of the matter of the relationship between Africa and Libya can
now be seen in the killing of Africans in Libya on the grounds that they
were and are mercenaries. These racist actions by the so-called ‘rebels’
were reported from the start of this ‘humanitarian’ intervention but at the
point when these hodge-podge forces entered Tripoli, there was fresh
evidence of the wanton killings of black Africans. Africans who escaped the
pogroms reported the killings and this information had been in the public
domain for months. Now it seems the world is paying attention after Amnesty
International put out a report that Africans are being killed in racist
attacks. So pronounced have been these racist killings that liberal organs
such as the New York Times had to write an editorial on the killings. There
has been no word from the United States or the information section of the
AFRICOM. Though there have been with small stories in the British press,
when British prime minister David Cameron, French president Nicolas Sarkozy
and other NATO celebrants made their flying victory visit to Libya, they
were silent on these racist attacks against black Africans as they shuttled
between Tripoli and Benghazi trying to iron out how to cut French oil
companies into the restructuring of the oil industry in Libya.
The African Union has condemned the racist attacks and maintained that
political negotiations are still necessary. Jean Ping, chairperson of the
Commission of the African Union, decried the attacks on black Africans and
reiterated the reasons why the African Union wanted to see an inclusive
government in Libya. Jean Ping declared, the ‘Blacks are being killed.
Blacks are having their throats slit. Blacks are accused of being
mercenaries. Do you think it's normal in a country that's a third black that
blacks are confused with mercenaries?’
Ping continued, ‘There are mercenaries in Libya, many of them are black, but
there are not only blacks and not all blacks there are mercenaries.
Sometimes, when they are white, they call them “technical advisors”.’
This reminder, that Libya is in Africa and that a third of the country is
black is for those forces who are celebrating the success of a NATO mission
to protect Africans which has ended up killing Africans. Africans do not
consider the NATO mission a success. In fact, this has been a disaster for
peace and reconstruction in Africa. The Russians and Chinese do not consider
this operation a success but the leaders of Africa and the leaders of the
BRICS societies have awoken too late to the new form of imperial
intervention using Global NATO.
The one positive impact of this new imperial adventure is to send alarm
bells among all of the military forces in Africa aligned to the West. The
other impact is to alert the popular forces to the reality that governments
with big armies are literally ‘paper tigers.’ Proper organising, political
education, and disciplined activity by the working people can shift the
international balance of power and rid Africa of other long serving despots.
There is a new scramble for Africa and the progressive forces will have to
learn the lessons from the new multilateral imperial interventions that are
now being planned by Global NATO.
GLOBAL NATO AND THE INTERVENTION IN LIBYA
The history of NATO and the history of Libya are intertwined in many ways.
It was two years after the formation of the North American Treaty
Organization that Libya became independent in 1951. However, for the
Europeans the strategic importance of Libya during the Second World War and
the memory of the siege of Tobruk were too fresh in their minds for NATO to
give up Libya entirely. The compromise was that NATO and the US would
maintain a military presence. The US established a base called Wheelus Air
Base in Libya. This base was called a ‘Little America’ until the US was
asked to leave after Gaddafi seized power in 1969. The US had been scheming
to get back into Libya since then. For a short while Gaddafi was supported
as an anti-communist stalwart, but later he became a useful nuisance
shifting as friend and foe over the years. As the US fabricated the myth of
al Qaeda in the Maghreb, cooperation was extended to this leader but Gaddafi
was opposed to the establishment of US and French military bases in Africa.
Now we are informed through the military gossip sheet Stars and Stripes that
NATO is considering the establishment of an air squadron in Africa to assist
African governments. This is how it was reported in ‘Stars and Stripes’ (29
August 2011).
‘While not formally assigned to AFRICOM, the squadron has been formed to
conduct missions primarily in Africa, with a focus on building the air
mobility capacity of African militaries.’
The next question that was posed by peace activists was whether this was a
prelude for the building of another AFRICOM and NATO facility in Africa.
NATO had been formed as an alliance ostensibly to defend Western Europe
against the Soviet Union. Charles De Gaulle had pulled France out of this
alliance in 1966 after it became clear that this military alliance was
dominated by the USA and Britain (supporting their military industries).
Usually, when an alliance is formed for a specific purpose such as halting
the spread of communism, that alliance is folded when the mission is
complete. Hence, after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, it was expected
that the mission of NATO would be scaled down.
Instead, NATO has expanded seeking to encircle Russia by expanding its
membership to include former members of the Warsaw Pact countries. For over
79 days NATO bombed Kosovo in 1999 as it gave itself a new mission to expand
US military power right up to the doorstep of Moscow. Gingerly, NATO
expanded under President Clinton from 12 members to 16, then to 19, then to
26 by 2004, and by 2009 to 28 members. Despite vocal opposition from Russia,
the discussion of expanding NATO proceeded to develop the idea of Global
NATO.
After Charles De Gaulle had left NATO in 1966, Nicolas Sarkozy rejoined in
2009. France had been working within Europe to challenge the dollar and the
US on a global scale but after the reactions about ‘freedom fries’ during
the Iraq war, French military planners retreated and decided to throw their
lot in with the crusaders in Washington. This new posture towards the
crusaders and neoconservatives in the USA was also a nod to the growing
strength of the Jean-Marie le Pen and the National Front type organisations
in France and Europe.
Using the War on Terror and the wars in Afghanistan as the justification,
the rationale of the militarists for a global role of NATO began to take
shape and the idea of NATO was debated in military journals. One of the
writers on this concept was Ivo Daalder, the US ambassador to NATO. This was
an ambassador who had understood the long history of financial and military
cooperation between the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United
States. In an era when capital was truly transnational, and the hedge fund
managers and oil companies had no loyalty to a particular country,
international capitalists wanted a new military force, mobile and well
equipped for the new scramble for African resources.
In one such musing by the new defence specialists is the thinking that, ‘The
concept of a Global NATO is used above all in connection with two leitmotifs
– on the one hand the idea of the alliance becoming a global strategic actor
(functional globalization) and on the other the notion of a NATO whose
membership is in principle global (institutional globalization). The two
dimensions can, however, scarcely be separated from one another but instead
are intertwined.’
This discussion under the idea of the ‘institutional globalization of NATO’
maintained that the security threats to capitalism were global and that NATO
should consider itself as a ‘concert of democracies’ keeping order
internationally. Within these journals the idea was floated that NATO should
be expanded to include Australia, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea and
possibly Brazil.
After encircling Russia the clear posture was for the encirclement of China.
The rationale was simply that the ‘operational level of NATO is the entire
globe.’ In 2002, NATO had declared, ‘to carry out the full range of its
missions, NATO must be able to field forces that can move quickly to
wherever they are needed, sustain operations over distance and time, and
achieve their objectives.’
Despite these lofty positions of the strategic planners, NATO was bogged
down in Afghanistan. The prolonged crisis of capitalism inside the Western
world meant that citizens had no appetite for an expanded imperial role,
until Gaddafi gave NATO the excuse to seek to operationalise the idea of
Global NATO by promising to kill the citizens of Benghazi who he called rats
and vermin.
ENTER SARKOZY – THE NEW SAVIOUR OF NATO
After the embarrassment of the support for the genocidaires in Rwanda in
1994, the French military establishment had taken a low profile and sought
to gain respectability for its military interventions in Africa by seeking
international mandates. For over forty years France had intervened
militarily in Africa, because Africa was central to its entire military
strategy. Without the wealth of Africa, France would be a minor power with
as much influence as Austria. French imperialism was particularly aggressive
in Africa. When the United States decided to compete with France by
establishing the Africa Crisis Response Initiative (a precursor to the US
Africa Command), France objected. Soon, the French understood the hegemonic
intentions of Rumsfeld and Cheney so the French cooperated in operations in
the Democratic Republic of the Congo, all the while seething that Rwanda had
left the umbrella of francophonie. By the time of the establishment of the
US Africa Command, France was cooperating fully with the United States while
stepping up its cultural and commercial presence in Africa.
One golden opportunity for France to put the image of defenders of
genocidaires behind them came in Cote D ‘Ivorie when France sought a UN
mandate to maintain its military forces in that country, a force that had
occupied that African country for 40 years. In 2011, Laurent Gbagbo became
another enabler of overt French intervention by his intransigence over
vacating the presidency. Sarkozy eagerly went in to ‘restore democracy.’
As the self-declared gendarme of Europe, France was taken aback by the
uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt in January. The French offered support for
the leader of Tunisia, Ben Ali but the removal was too swift and soon after
the Egyptian revolution changed the military balance in world politics. NATO
panicked and Sarkozy took the initiative to mobilise for the intervention in
Libya when Gaddafi gave the Europeans the opening by his wild statements.
The Egyptian revolution had far reaching consequences for Israel and for
Europe. The Libyan intervention served many purposes, gaining more unlimited
access to oil and water in Libya while standing poised to stab the Egyptian
revolution in the back.
For decades, France had mooted the idea of a Mediterranean Union to extend
the power of France in North Africa. France had worked closely with the
monarchy in Morocco to block the independence of Western Sahara and coveted
the wealth of the region. More importantly, French oil companies had been
left behind after Gaddafi opened up the petroleum sector of Libya for
western firms. Italian, British and US oil majors were competing with
Russian, Chinese, Indian and Turkish interests. German industrial and
financial power was stronger in Libya than French. Sarkozy wanted to change
all of that when faced with the most serious banking crisis in France.
When the February 17 uprisings erupted in Libya, French intelligence was
alert and Sarkozy mobilised the British and later the US Africa Command to
intervene using the UN formulation of Responsibility to Protect, under the
cover of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973. China, Russia
and Brazil acted irresponsibly, by either abstaining in the vote or
sanctioning the vote with their silence. South Africa and Nigeria (under
heavy pressure from the Obama White House) voted for the resolution to
establish a no-fly zone. South Africa later backtracked opposing the bombing
of Libya claiming that the NATO forces had gone beyond the mandate of the UN
Security Council Resolution. Better late than never, the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs of South Africa maintained a principled position and led the
position that the roadmap of the African Union was the only way forward for
a resolution of the internal political problems in Libya. But France and
Britain were salivating over a re-division of the oil resources of Libya.
This intervention was under the umbrella of the UN and so this was another
foray of Global NATO. Yet, most NATO members understood the reasons for
Sarkozy’s energy. Of the 28 members of NATO, the majority refused to
participate in this attack. The Prime Minister of Poland declared that the
attack on Libya was for oil. There were only eight members (Belgium, Canada,
Denmark, France, Italy, Norway, Spain, UK and the United States) that
participated in this operation (called United Protector). The members could
not even agree on a command structure so the US put up the Africa Command as
the Front and called their operation, Operation Odyssey Dawn. The French
called their action, Opération Harmattan. The British called their
involvement Operation Ellamy while the Canadians termed theirs, Operation
Mobile.
The Germans understood the double-dealing of Nicolas Sarkozy and Germany
even pulled its crews out of NATO support aircraft. Turkey was opposed to
the NATO operation and the dysfunction of this operation became evident
after one month. Recriminations started between these ‘partners’ with some
members claiming that others were not pulling their weight. Space does not
allow for a full examination of the thousands of sorties of NATO in Libya
after seven months. The full day-to-day roster of their military and naval
operations to oust Gaddafi is in the public domain on the internet. African
popular leaders can read the day-to-day strategic operations to see the full
weakness of NATO. The Chinese have written on the dysfunction of NATO and
one writer An Huihou wrote that the operation in Libya was ‘Not a real
success for NATO.’ This Chinese writer called for negotiations but the
Chinese political leadership publicly support the roadmap of the African
Union. More importantly, while the Chinese pulled their citizens out of
Libya, there was not even a word of protest from China over the killing of
Africans in Africa when the imperial forces were using a UN mandate called
Responsibility to Protect. In order to pacify the Chinese leadership, the
energetic Sarkozy had a flying visit to Beijing, promising that Chinese
contracts would be honoured.
We will have to revisit this aspect of the war at another moment, but for
this submission it is important to understand the new forms of intervention.
A NEW KIND OF IMPERIAL INTERVENTION
It must be stated that the mobilisation of the international peace forces
against NATO has always been a consideration for the planning of Operation
United Protector. It is now time to place the opposition to militarism with
clear focus on the private military corporations who act outside of the law.
Inside the United States, the then Defense Secretary, Robert Gates told West
Point cadets in March that, ‘In my opinion, any future defense secretary who
advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or
into the Middle East or Africa should have his head examined’. The Pentagon
was afraid of being bogged down and although the peace movement had the
Obama administration on the defensive, some sections this movement did not
distance itself from Gaddafi while they condemned the killing of innocent
civilians by NATO jets.
European workers, faced with the double dip recession where the banks were
calling on the governments to impose austerity measures, were lukewarm
toward the Libyan operation, so the invaders had to find a novel way for
intervening. This intervention then took the form of bombings by NATO, on
the ground special forces from the French and British commandos with air and
ground support from Qatar.
On 4 September 2011, the New York Times reported the coordination in this
way, ‘The United States provided intelligence, refueling and more precision
bombing than Paris or London want to acknowledge. Inevitably, then, NATO air
power and technology, combined with British, French and Qatari “trainers”
working “secretly” with the rebels on the ground, have defeated the forces
of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.’ Other newspaper accounts reported that ‘former
soldiers from an elite British commando unit, the Special Air Service, and
other private contractors from Western countries were on the ground in the
Libyan city of Misrata.’
The Guardian in England said contractors were helping NATO identify possible
targets in the heavily contested city and passing this information, as well
as information about the movements of Gaddafi’s forces, to a NATO command
centre in Naples, Italy. The newspaper reported that ‘a group of six armed
Westerners had been filmed by the Al Jazeera TV network talking to rebels in
Misrata; the men fled after realizing they were being filmed.’
Initially, the United States Africa Command took credit for the NATO
operations in Libya, but when it seemed as if the entire operation was
bogged down, there were efforts to bring in Special Forces and private
security personnel using Qatar as the front and paymaster. Indeed, the use
of fronts such as the Emir of Qatar pointed to a new form of global
militarism. Blackwater, (now called Xe) the US private military firm for
hire, had moved to establish its headquarters in the Emirates, specifically
Abu Dhabi. In a detailed article in the New York Times entitled, ‘Blackwater
World Wide’, we were given one window into the various front companies of
Blackwater and the integrated nature of the CIA/Blackwater operations. We
were then told that Blackwater did not want to recruit Muslims because
Muslims would be reluctant to kill other Muslims. When the rebels entered
Tripoli, the same talking heads in Washington that were opposed to the
intervention were now praising this new kind of cooperation between the US
military and Global NATO
Future researchers on the ‘special operators on the ground’ in Libya will be
able to list the names of the Private Military Contractors who were involved
in this war. When the leaders of the National Transitional Council needed
money to pay the private contractors and to bribe regional leaders, the
Global Nato diplomats promptly called for the unfreezing of the assets of
Libya, even while the African Union was protesting the killing of black
Africans.
LESSONS FOR PROGRESSIVE AFRICANS
In less than three weeks, the General Assembly of the United Nations will
meet and the leaders of Global NATO will seek to silence the members of the
African Union. The African Union has been lobbying the Group of 77 as they
seek to bring to the attention of the world the reality that the UN Security
Council mandate of responsibility to protect did not extend to black
Africans. Even at this late moment, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in South
Africa is correct to stick to the call for the African Union roadmap.
Experience elsewhere in Burundi and Uganda after wars of intervention showed
that it is only the long-term and pedantic work for peace that can end the
fighting. There must be negotiations with an international peacekeeping
force that excludes the eight NATO countries that violated the mandate of
the Security Council. The National Transitional Council is deeply divided
and negotiations will be needed so that they do not kill each other as they
already started to do when they killed Abdel-Fattah Younis, the general who
had defected from Gaddafi to the Benghazi side. It is only a matter of time
before it becomes clear how Abdelhakim Belhadj (sometimes written Belhaj) of
the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), graduated from detention at
Guantanamo Bay to be one of the ‘rebel’ leaders and leader of the Tripoli
Military Council. Anyone who followed the US destabilisation of Somalia can
understand how those who are one day called the worst terrorists are the
next day the best allies of the USA.
Ultimately, it is not in the interests of Global NATO for the fighting to
end in Libya insofar as the lack of clarity on the future of the Egyptian
revolution will require imperial forces to stab the revolution in the back.
This is where Qatar and Saudi Arabia have proven their use for the western
‘concert of democracies.’ Qatar in Libya and Saudi Arabia in Bahrain have
shown the world that the intervention of the West was not for humanitarian
reasons.
Muammar Gaddafi had enabled the imperial intervention by his close
collaboration with their intelligence agencies. These intelligence forces
used their closeness to fight and remove his family from power after 42
years. During the initial stages of the integrated Qatar/special
forces/private military contractors assault on Tripoli, the spokesperson for
Gaddafi boasted that the regime had 65,000 armed personnel ready to defend
Tripoli. Yet, when the Special Forces of NATO and Qatar showed up in
Tripoli, the Gaddafi forces were nowhere to be seen. This is because the
‘paramilitary forces of Libya under Gaddafi were better at internal
repression than in dealing with foreign threats. Libya had a number of
paramilitary forces and security services. They acted as a means of
controlling the power of the regular military and providing Gaddafi and his
family with security.’ Gaddafi was a leader with billions of dollars who did
not know how to buy weapons and maintain them. Thus when a real war emerged,
Gaddafi who had been spending about a billion dollars per year on weapons
was full of bluster but had no real army. Western military analysts had
studied Gaddafi very closely and had told anyone who wanted to read that,
‘Libya had to keep many of its aircraft and over 1000 of its tanks in
storage. Its other army equipment purchases require far more manpower than
its small active army and low quality reserves can provide. Its overall
ration of weapons to manpower is absurd, and Libya has compounded its
problems by buying a wide diversity of equipment types that make it all but
impossible to create an effective training and support base.’
The same military analysts who were writing on the absurdity of the military
planning and arms purchases of Gaddafi came from countries that were
competing to sell Gaddafi new weapons. Today we are told that the National
Transitional Council needs new weapons.
In another offering it will be necessary to fully examine the lessons of the
NATO intervention for the African freedom struggle. It will be necessary,
then, to sum up the Gaddafi role in Africa and the African Union. Until that
time, it is sufficient to say that the operations of Global NATO has
awakened many leaders to the reality of the ways in which third parties and
private military forces will be used to invade Africa. Even the former
president of Nigeria, Olusegun Obasanjo has had to speak out forcefully
against NATO in Libya. While these leaders are speaking, the rank and file
in Africa are paying attention to the fact that France, Britain and the USA
will go to all lengths to invade Africa in the new scramble for resources.
General Carter Ham of AFRICOM has already travelled to Nigeria to enact the
drama on the stage that had been set up by former US ambassador to Nigeria,
John Campbell who predicted that Nigeria will break up within 16 years.
General Carter Ham urged partnership between the government of Nigeria and
AFRICOM knowing full well that such a partnership would be to fulfil the
wishes of those who do not want to see the unity and peace of Nigeria and
Africa.
China, Russia, Brazil and India will have to make a choice. They will either
be integrated into the spoils of the current scramble for land, oil water
and seeds or will join with the people of Africa to democratise the United
Nations and support the forces of peace and reconstruction. China has sent
one signal by becoming the principal paymaster for Europe becoming the
stopgap for the crisis in the Eurozone.
Africans may believe in Ubuntu but they will never forget. The day will
arise when the idea of Responsibility to Protect will be used by a
democratised United Nations.
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