A new Western crusade: this time against Libya

By Zafar Bangash

The West’s attack on Libya is yet another crusade launched against a Muslim country on the pretext of protecting its people. Pope Urban II would be pleased to learn that his disciples are still marching on as good “Christian soldiers” against another group of “heathens” in the Muslim world nearly a thousand years after his sermon on Mount Clermont. Colonel Muammar Qaddafi does not have to be our favourite tyrant but like Saddam Husain of Iraq, he has enjoyed Western support for decades. Western multinationals salivate at the prospect of consuming his sweet crude. Now they can have their belly full.

Interestingly, too, the UN Security Council was pressed into service to pass a resolution (#1973), imposing a “no-fly zone” over Libya on March 17, ostensibly to “protect” the Libyan people. Twenty years ago, a similar no-fly zone was imposed on Iraq but without even the formality of going through the motion of a Security Council resolution. An estimated 1.5 million Iraqis were killed as a result of sanctions and the Western-imposed no fly zone. On May 12, 1996, when Leslie Stahl of CBS 60 Minutes program asked Madeleine Albright, then US ambassador to the UN, whether the death of 560,000 children was worth the price for ousting Saddam from power, the latter, without hesitation, said it was! Would it be any different in Libya?

Let us look at the lineup of countries attacking Libya: the US, Britain, France, Italy and Canada. Italy repudiated its friendship treaty with Libya and US President Barack Obama said Qaddafi had lost his legitimacy. Did Qaddafi ever have legitimacy; if yes, when and how did he lose it? If not, why were the same Western powers eager to deal with him before the recent troubles? Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair had visited Qaddafi in his tent in March 2004. The Libyan dictator also received former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in 2008. Qaddafi famously referred to her as “that black woman.” French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi both hosted Qaddafi in their capitals a few months before the uprisings started in the Middle East. So what has changed to make Qaddafi the bad boy of the Middle East again so quickly?

True, like Saddam, Qaddafi has had a rocky relationship with the West. From being the West’s darling to mad dog and then back into their good books, he has been through many ups and downs. Qaddafi’s current pariah status has nothing to do with the West’s argument of “humanitarian intervention” to save Libyan lives. Since when have Western rulers become concerned about the plight of Libyans or Muslims? If they do not care for the lives of their own friends — look at how the children of poor families are being sacrificed in Afghanistan and Iraq — why should they care about Libyans?

We need to understand what is afoot in Libya. Despite claims to the contrary, Western troops are already operating on the ground in Libya under the cover of “protecting” Western diplomats but actually providing training to the rebels. Even with the deeply flawed no-fly resolution that does not authorize attacks on Libyan ground forces or armored columns such as tanks, that is precisely what Western bombers are doing. This is creeping occupation of Libya as the world’s attention is diverted to the nuclear disaster in Japan. What might be the reason for the latest Western crusade?

Libyan oil, much coveted by the West because of its low sulphur content, has already been mentioned. Similarly, the US has frozen about $32 billion in Libyan assets under Executive Order 13566. Libya’s frozen assets represent a significant portion of its wealth, according to the Washington Post (March 23, 2011). “In 2009, Libya had a gross domestic product of $62 billion; its sovereign wealth fund is estimated at $40 billion and its central bank reserves at $110 billion. The European Union has added the central bank, the wealth fund and three other Libyan institutions to its sanctions — two weeks after the US action [of February 25],” according to the Post. Britain, not to be left behind, has seized more than $19 billion in Libyan assets.” The looting of Libya has begun in earnest by thieves that have honed their robbing skills over centuries.

Neither Qaddafi nor a successor regime — whatever its shape or color — will ever see this money again. Americans have a habit of stealing others’ wealth, whether by freezing their assets or robbing them through direct invasion and occupation. The US froze $40 billion of Iranian assets in 1980 and barring a few million the rest have been usurped. The Saudis have invested more than one trillion dollars in the US economy. They, too, are not likely to see any of this, especially given the precarious state of the US economy.

But the West’s crusade has another, more sinister purpose. Libya will serve as a beach-head for Western penetration into sub-Saharan Africa that is rich in minerals. Chad, Niger and Sudan have vast mineral deposits that the West covets. This also fits into the election of Obama as president of the United States in 2008. With a black man in the white house, the people of Africa as well as African Americans at home would not be too concerned if the US were to attack and occupy parts of Africa. After all, nobody would accuse Obama of racism. The American establishment has had it all neatly figured out.

A hint to the permanence of Western military intervention was given by US Defence Secretary Robert Gates when he said there was no definite answer about the duration of the Libyan campaign. But he did reveal what was afoot. “Let’s just call a spade a spade,” he said in what a no-fly zone over Libya would entail. “A no-fly zone begins with an attack on Libya to destroy air defences. That’s the way you do a no-fly zone.” A closer look at what Gates said reveals that there is no end in sight. Let us also recall the statement of Dick Cheney, former US vice president about the “war on terror”. He said it may last 50 to 100 years. We can now begin to get a glimpse into the thinking of Western policy-makers.

Wars necessarily create humanitarian crises. There are already nearly 100,000 refugees trying to flee Libya. These include Egyptians, Tunisians, Algerians and citizens of sub-Saharan African countries as well as poor Bangladeshis, Indians and Pakistanis. The West would use their plight as a pretext to send in “humanitarian” aid and workers. Then their “protection” would be used as a pretext for sending in large numbers of ground troops. Libya would once again be colonized directly.

We can see also that while the no-fly zone resolution was authorized by the UN Security Council, the military operations have been taken over by France and Britain and placed under NATO command. Thus, NATO powers have, once again, set themselves up as “authoritative judges of the world common good.”

Libyans clamoring for Western support to help them topple Qaddafi will rue that day when they wake up. Foreign intervention has never brought liberation to any people. Horace Campbell, Professor of African American studies and political science at Syracuse University and currently working on a book on AFRICOM has said: “US involvement in the Libyan bombing is being turned into a public relations ploy for AFRICOM (US Africa Command). AFRICOM is fundamentally a front for US military contractors like Dyncorp, MPRI and KBR operating in Africa. US military planners who benefit from the revolving door of privatization of warfare are delighted by the opportunity to give AFRICOM credibility under the facade of the Libyan intervention. No African country has agreed to let AFRICOM onto the continent. It has 1,500 people operating out of Stuttgart, Germany. If Libya is indeed partitioned, that new state could provide a base for AFRICOM.”

Libyans must wake up before they end up in even worse shape than they are under Qaddafi, however bad he may be. There are better ways to seek liberation than foreign help. It always comes with long strings attached and ends up enslaving rather than freeing people.

Blessed are the revolutionaries (for they are the peacemakers)

by Abu Dharr


This solar month — the Persian Bahman and the Gregorian February — marks 32 years since the culmination of the Islamic spirit of change that swept away the decrepit regime of the great grandson of Cyrus the great, his majesty, the now six-foot under, king-of-kings Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. It was one of those rare moments in history when a tyrant felt the volcanic wrath of his own people and realized that its lava was decomposing his autocracy. May he dwell with his fellow tyrants in the bowels of the netherworld.


And into the land of Iran came the Imam of our time, Imam Khomeini. Those were truly epic days that swept the Islamic and oppressed areas of the world with an unforgettable euphoria borne of centuries of hope and generations of sacrifices. And just when Imam Khomeini was putting an Islamic form of government into order all hell broke loose: the Zionist cabal and its imperialist enablers gave marching orders to the Iraqi regime to declare war against the newborn Islamic leadership and populace in Iran. The Iraqi regime would, on behalf of the USA and Israel bear the brunt of the military onus of the war. The Arabian petro-rich sheikhdoms would carry the financial burden of the war against Islamic Iran, while most of the rest of the nation-states in Arabdom would chip in their psychological and informational “talents” to augment this combined war-effort against the Islamic Republic that was still virtually in its cradle.

Skipping the details of those eight years of the combined regional and international policies and strategies against the Islamic Republic in Iran the war ended without a clear winner or loser as far as official records reflect. The Islamic side of that war resulted in nearly one million martyrs and disabled war veterans. Casualties on the anti-Islamic side were comparable. The total cost of the war was tremendous, mind-boggling, and prohibitive. But what began to happen after the war ended was in itself mysterious and miraculous. The regime in Iraq that launched the fatal war — on orders and with incentives from its masters in Washington and by-extension Tel Aviv — was to become the enemy of all its hitherto supporters, financiers, and enablers.



In a move that can only be described by the word “divine entrapment” the blood soaked politicians in Baghdad decided to annex Kuwait. From here on the fury and wrath of Arabian brothers (al-ashiqqa’ al-‘arab), who barely a few months earlier were embracing and kissing the Iraqi dictator, became his mortal enemies. This too was with the blessings of American imperialists and Israeli Zionists.

-The Shah
At the beginning of 1991, the Iraqi regime that had been artificially inflated into a southern European nation-state as a reward for its war of aggression against Islamic Iran was now cut back to its original size — just another failing Arabian nation-state. And for the coming decade the Iraqi regime would become the cause of a nightmarish national hemorrhage that bled the Iraqi population into the final act that commenced in March 2003. During all these nationalist years of Ba‘thi rule, the Zionist-American plan was to defeat the Islamic Republic in Iran, first by an all-out military attack in 1980. When that failed, they tried to bleed the Islamic Republic of Iran by a thousand economic cuts. And we can only say that it is the care of Providence that saw the Islamic Republic through all those years of war-making and hate-mongering.




And as the regional world around the Islamic Republic was falling apart, the sons of the Islamic Revolution, the followers of the Imam, and the revolutionaries of no compromise were working on building up their hard won Islamic State. A new generation of young and dedicated Muslims was hard at work — behind the scenes — on putting together an independent infrastructure that does not rely on a world, which showed its true colors during the infant years of the Islamic Revolution. Thus, the Islamic State was building itself from scratch, while Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the other toadies of imperialist Washington and Zionist Tel Aviv were slugging it out verbally and militarily.

While the Arabian sheikhs were spending much money and time under their bedsheets in the red district areas of London, Bangkok, and Paris, the Islamic ‘ulama’ in Islamic Iran were concentrating on putting their internal house together. The Islamic leadership in Iran can be proud of itself (in an innocent way of course) of their accomplishments. They now have a heavy industry base; they developed their own military industry. They have made major strides in many fields of every kind of technology. They have become exporters of civilian and military products. They don’t have their wealth tied up in capitalist and Zionist financial institutions.

Truly speaking, after three decades, the Islamic leadership in Iran has succeeded in “coming of age.” They have advanced so much that the talk of the town now in America, Europe, and their Zionist enclave is what they call Iran going nuclear. The steady progress of the dedicated and silent workers throughout the past three decades in Islamic Iran has brought the Zionist skeleton out of the Israeli closet, and their political language now is stuck on “what to do with Iran”. From time to time the Zionist cowards threaten a military strike against Iran… And with words of silence they intimate that such a war would have consequences that defy all their social models and war scenarios. Such a war of aggression by Zionist wimps will definitely redo the map of the whole area with the likelihood that the Zionist regime will experience its Samson’s moment.

I speak not to the crybabies — the western pussycats who want the nightlife of the Shah’s days to come back to Iran and who find self-fulfillment in imitating all things Western, but to the guarded revolutionaries and the hard-working and anonymous sons of the revolution who, even though they may not know it, have scared the daylights out of the Zionist-imperialist duo. Their toil and productive work throughout the last three decades is driving a wedge between Washington and Tel Aviv. To be more precise, the cracks are beginning to show in the military and political establishments inside the Zionist beast. Even the foreign minister from Tel Aviv, Avigdor Lieberman, known for his racist ranting, shows caution when it comes to unleashing an Israeli war against Islamic Iran because he knows the aftermath will be devastating to the Yahudi national interest.

Why do you think the Zionists are afraid of Islamic Iran? Because they know that Iran is not Saudi Arabia; Iran is not Egypt; and Iran is not any of their minions. If war breaks out, the Zionist house will go up in fire with tens of thousands of missiles landing everywhere in their enclave. Urban centers will burn and strategic areas will be in flames. The Lod International Airport, knowing the way Israelis conduct war, will become a legitimate target. Their ports will become military targets in Haifa and Yafa. The Zionists may think of turning to their best kept secret: the neighboring rulers in Egypt and Jordan, among others, for air and sea access to the outside world. This will only hasten the simmering revolutions in these adjacent countries. One study by the Saban think tank in Washington, DC puts the number of Israeli casualties if such a war breaks out, at around 800,000.


Add to the gradual erosion of the Israeli racist state the growing polarization between secular and religious Jews. And throw into the mix the prejudice and counter-prejudice represented by Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews having two separate Rabbinical authorities that represent them. Many young Israelis do not want to serve in the armed forces either because they are secular and liberal and do not understand why their regime is stretching the Israeli nation-state into other people’s territories (i.e., where the Palestinians live in the West Bank and Ghazzah), or because they are religious Jews and cannot in good faith fight for a Zionist state that does not represent the Torahic teachings. Score one for them. The previous president of Israel, Moshe Katzav (an Iranian Jew, of all ethnicities) was recently found guilty of rape. Now how does that fit in anyone’s mind — a biblical Israel whose president is a fornicator?!

Another very important development that is beginning to sink into the commercial and corporate mind of the Euro-Americans is “at what cost Israel”. At the end of the day it is the money and the profits that run the political show at both ends of the Atlantic. And if Israel is becoming a serious economic liability and the loss of business in the Muslim world far outweighs the petty gains coming from a puny Israel, then the simple mercantile and investment conclusion would be “to hell with Israel”. These words are not yet uttered in public. They are said behind closed doors. It is only a matter of time before they become official policy. That is of course if the sneaky Israelis do not come up with a spectacular dangerous undertaking à la 9/11.

Whatever happens in the near future, you the sons of the Islamic Revolution with your Islamic Leader today and with all the martyrs who gave their lives — not for nationalism or sectarianism — have moved regional and world politics into its current position. Keep up the good work and feel secure that the Almighty will remain on your side as long as you remain on His. “And it is due upon us to support the committed Muslims” (30:47).