Libya is a
small country of just over 6 million people but it possesses the largest
oil reserves in all of Africa. The oil produced there is especially
coveted because of its particularly high quality.
The Air Force
of the United States along with Britain and France has carried out 7,459
bombing attacks since March 19. Britain, France and the United States
sent special operation ground forces and commando units to direct the
military operations of the so-called rebel fighters – it is a NATO- led
army in the field.
The troops may
be disaffected Libyans but the operation is under the control and
direction of NATO commanders and western commando units who serve as
“advisors.” Their new weapons and billions in funds come from the U.S.
and other NATO powers that froze and seized Libya’s assets in Western
banks. Their only military successes outside of Benghazi, in the far
east of the country, have been exclusively based on the coordinated air
and ground operations of the imperialist NATO military forces.
In military
terms, Libya’s resistance to NATO is of David and Goliath proportions.
U.S. military spending alone is more than ten times greater than Libya’s
entire annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP) which was $74.2 billion in
2010, according to the CIA’s World Fact Book.
In recent
weeks, the NATO military operations used surveillance-collecting drones,
satellites, mounting aerial attacks and covert commando units to
decapitate Libya’s military and political leadership and its command and
control capabilities. Global economic sanctions meant that the country
was suddenly deprived of income and secure access to goods and services
needed to sustain a civilian economy over a long period.
“The
cumulative effect [of NATO’s coordinated air and ground operation] not
only destroyed Libya’s military infrastructure but also greatly
diminished the ability of Colonel Gaddafi’s commanders to control forces, leaving even
committed fighting units unable to move, resupply or coordinate
operations,” reports the New York Times in a celebratory article on
August 22.
A False Pretext
The United
States, United Kingdom, France, and Italy targeted the Libyan government
for overthrow or “regime change” not because these governments were
worried about protecting civilians or to bring about a more democratic
form of governance in Libya.
If that were
the real motivation of the NATO powers, they could start the bombing of
Saudi Arabia right away. There are no elections in Saudi Arabia. The
monarchy does not even allow women to drive cars. By law, women must be
fully covered in public or they will go to prison. Protests are rare in
Saudi Arabia because any dissent is met with imprisonment, torture and
execution.
The Saudi
monarchy is protected by U.S. imperialism because it is part of an
undeclared but real U.S. sphere of influence and it is the largest
producer of oil in the world. The U.S. attitude toward the Saudi
monarchy was put succinctly by Ronald Reagan in 1981, when he said that
the U.S. government “will not permit” revolution in Saudi Arabia such as
the 1979 Iranian revolution that removed the U.S. client regime of the
Shah. Reagan’s message was clear: the Pentagon and CIA’s military forces
would be used decisively to destroy any democratic movement against the
rule of the Saudi royal family.
Reagan’s
explicit statement in 1981 has in fact been the policy of every
successive U.S. administration, including the current one.
Libya and Imperialism
Libya, unlike
Saudi Arabia, did have a revolution against its monarchy. As a result of
the 1969 revolution led by Muammar Gaddafi, Libya was no longer in the
sphere of influence of any imperialist country.
Libya had once
been an impoverished colony of Italy living under the boot heel of the
fascist Mussolini. After the Allied victory in World War II, control of
the country was formally transferred to the United Nations and Libya
became independent in 1951 with authority vested in the monarch King
Idris.
But in actuality, Libya was controlled by the United States and Britain until the 1969 revolution.
One of the
first acts of the 1969 revolution was to eliminate the vestiges of
colonialism and foreign control. Not only were oil fields nationalized
but Gaddafi eliminated foreign military bases inside the country.
In March of
1970, the Gaddafi government shut down two important British military
bases in Tobruk and El Adem. He then became the Pentagon’s enemy when he
evicted the U.S. Wheelus Air Force Base near Tripoli that had been
operated by the United States since 1945. Before the British military
took control in 1943, the facility was a base operated by the Italians
under Mussolini.
Wheelus had
been an important Strategic Air Command (SAC) base during the Cold War,
housing B-52 bombers and other front-line Pentagon aircrafts that
targeted the Soviet Union.
Once under Libyan control, the Gaddafi government allowed Soviet military planes to access the airfield.
In 1986, the
Pentagon heavily bombed the base at the same time it bombed downtown
Tripoli in an effort to assassinate Gaddafi. That effort failed but his
2-year-old daughter died along with scores of other civilians.
The Character of the Gaddafi Regime
The political,
social and class orientation of the Libyan regime has gone through
several stages in the last four decades. The government and ruling
establishment reflected contradictory class, social, religious and
regional antagonisms. The fact that the leadership of the NATO-led
National Transition Council is comprised of top officials of the Gaddafi
government, who broke with the regime and allied themselves with NATO,
is emblematic of the decades-long instability within the Libyan
establishment.
These inherent
contradictions were exacerbated by pressures applied to Libya from the
outside. The U.S. imposed far-reaching economic sanctions on Libya in
the 1980s. The largest western corporations were barred from doing
business with Libya and the country was denied access to credit from
western banks.
In its foreign
policy, Libya gave significant financial and military support to
national liberation struggles, including in Palestine, Southern Africa,
Ireland and elsewhere.
Because of Libya’s economic policies, living standards for the population had jumped dramatically after 1969.
Having a small population and substantial income from its oil
production, augmented with the Gaddafi regime’s far-reaching policy of
social benefits, created a huge advance in the social and economic
status for the population. Libya was still a class society with rich and
poor, and gaps between urban and rural living standards, but illiteracy
was basically wiped out, while education and health care were free and
extensively accessible. By 2010, the per capita income in Libya was near
the highest in Africa at $14,000 and life expectancy rose to over 77
years, according to the CIA’s World Fact Book.
Gaddafi’s
political orientation explicitly rejected communism and capitalism. He
created an ideology called the “Third International Theory,” which was
an eclectic mix of Islamic, Arab nationalist and socialist ideas and
programs. In 1977, Libya was renamed the Great Socialist People’s Libyan
Arab Jamahiriya. A great deal of industry, including oil, was
nationalized and the government provided an expansive social insurance
program or what is called a welfare state policy akin to some features
prevalent in the Soviet Union and some West European capitalist
countries.
But Libya was
not a workers’ state or a “socialist government” to use the popular if
not scientific use of the term “socialist.” The revolution was not a
workers and peasant rebellion against the capitalist class per se. Libya
remained a class society although class differentiation may have been
somewhat obscured beneath the existence of revolutionary committees and
the radical, populist rhetoric that emanated from the regime.
As in many
developing, formerly colonized countries, state ownership of property
was not “socialist” but rather a necessary fortification of an
under-developed capitalist class. State property in Iraq, Libya and
other such post-colonial regimes was designed to facilitate the social
and economic growth of a new capitalist ruling class that was initially
too weak, too deprived of capital and too cut off from international
credit to compete on its own terms with the dominant sectors of world
monopoly capitalism. The nascent capitalist classes in such developing
economies promoted state-owned property, under their control, in order
to intersect with Western banks and transnational corporations and
create more favorable terms for global trade and investment.
The collapse
of the Soviet Union and the “socialist bloc” governments of central and
Eastern Europe in 1989-91 deprived Libya of an economic and military
counter-weight to the United States, and the Libyan government’s
domestic economic and foreign policy shifted towards accommodation with
the West.
In the 1990s
some sectors of the Libyan economic establishment and the Gaddafi-led
government favored privatization, cutting back on social programs and
subsidies and integration into western European markets.
The earlier
populism of the regime incrementally gave way to the adoption of
neo-liberal policies. This was, however, a long process.
In 2004, the
George W. Bush administration ended sanctions on Libya. Western oil
companies and banks and other corporations initiated huge direct
investments in Libya and trade with Libyan enterprises.
There was also
a growth of unemployment in Libya and in cutbacks in social spending,
leading to further inequality between rich and poor and class
polarization.
But Gaddafi
himself was still considered a thorn in the side of the imperialist
powers. They want absolute puppets, not simply partners, in their plans
for exploitation. The Wikileaks release of State Department cables
between 2007 and 2010 show that the United states and western oil
companies were condemning Gaddafi for what they called “resource
nationalism.” Gaddafi even threatened to re-nationalize western oil
companies’ property unless Libya was granted a larger share of the
revenue for their projects.
As an article
in today’s New York Times Business section said honestly: “Colonel
Qaddafi proved to be a problematic partner for the international oil
companies, frequently raising fees and taxes and making other demands. A
new government with close ties to NATO may be an easier partner for
Western nations to deal with.”
Even the most
recent CIA Fact Book publication on Libya, written before the armed
revolt championed by NATO, complained of the measured tempo of
pro-market reforms in Libya: “Libya faces a long road ahead in
liberalizing the socialist-oriented economy, but initial steps—
including applying for WTO membership, reducing some subsidies, and
announcing plans for privatization—are laying the groundwork for a
transition to a more market-based economy.” (CIA World Fact Book)
The beginning
of the armed revolt on February 23 by disaffected members of the Libyan
military and political establishment provided the opportunity for the
U.S. imperialists, in league with their French and British counterparts,
to militarily overthrow the Libyan government and replace it with a
client or stooge regime.
Of course, in
the revolt were workers and young people who had many legitimate
grievances against the Libyan government. But what is critical in an
armed struggle for state power is not the composition of the
rank-and-file soldiers, but the class character and political
orientation of the leadership.
Character of the National Transition Council
The National
Transitional Council (NTC) constituted itself as the leadership of the
uprising in Benghazi, Libya’s second largest city. The central leader is
Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, who was Libya’s Minister of Justice until his
defection at the start of the uprising. He was one of a significant
number of Western-oriented and neoliberal officials from Libya’s
government, diplomatic corps and military ranks who joined the
opposition in the days immediately after the start of the revolt.
As soon as it
was established, the NTC began issuing calls for imperialist
intervention. These appeals became increasing panicky as it became clear
that, contrary to early predictions that the Gaddafi-led government
would collapse in a matter of days, it was the “rebels” who faced
imminent defeat in the civil war. In fact, it was only due to the
U.S./NATO bombing campaign, initiated with great hurry on March 19 that
the rebellion did not collapse.
The last five
months of war have erased any doubt about the pro-imperialist character
of the NTC. One striking episode took place on April 22, when Senator
John McCain made a “surprise” trip to Benghazi. A huge banner was
unveiled to greet him with an American flag printed on it and the words:
“United States of America – You have a new ally in North Africa.”
Similar to the
military relationship between the NATO and Libyan “rebel” armed forces,
the NTC is entirely dependent on and subordinated to the U.S., French,
British and Italian imperialist governments.
If the
Pentagon, CIA, and Wall Street succeed in installing a client regime in
Tripoli it will accelerate and embolden the imperialist threats and
intervention against other independent governments such as Syria and
Venezuela. In each case we will see a similar process unfold, including
the demonization of the leadership of the targeted countries so as to
silence or mute a militant anti-war response to the aggression of the
war-makers.
We in the ANSWER Coalition invite all those who share this perspective to join with us, to mobilize, and to unmask the colonial agenda that hides under the slogan of “humanitarian intervention.”
