Al-Ahram
February 13, 2014
NATO’s war on Libya
A new book calls Western aims and NATO actions during the Libyan conflict into question, writes Edward S. Herman
Maximilian Forte’s book on the Libyan War Slouching towards Sirte is another powerful (and hence marginalised) study of the imperial powers in violent action, with painful results. While the War was supported by the UN, the international media, various NGOs and a significant body of liberals and leftists who had persuaded themselves that this was a humanitarian enterprise, Forte shows compellingly that it wasn’t the least bit humanitarian, either in the intentions of its principals (the United States, France and Great Britain) or in its results.
As in earlier cases of “humanitarian intervention” the Libyan programme rested intellectually and ideologically on a set of supposedly justifying events and threats that were fabricated, selective and/or otherwise misleading, but which were quickly institutionalised within the Western propaganda system.
The key elements in the war-on-Libya model were the alleged threat that Gaddafi was about to massacre large numbers of civilians (in early 2011), his supposed use of mercenaries imported from the south (black Africans) to do his dirty work, and his dictatorial rule. The first of these provided the core rationale for UN Security Council Resolution 1973, passed on March 17, 2011, which authorised member states “to take all necessary measures… to protect civilians and civilian-populated areas under threat of attack in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, including Benghazi, while excluding a foreign occupation force in any form.”
The resolution’s fraudulently benign and limited character was shown by the exclusion of an occupation force, as presumably any actions under it would be limited to aircraft and missile operations “protecting civilians.” Its deep bias is shown by its attributing the threat to civilians solely to Libyan government forces, not to the rebels as well, who turned out to greatly surpass the government forces as civilian killers, and with a racist twist.
As Forte spells out in detail, the imperial powers violated the resolution from day one and clearly never intended to abide by its words. The resolution called for the “immediate establishment of a cease-fire and a complete end to violence” and “the need to intensify efforts to find a solution to the crisis” and to facilitate “a dialogue to lead to the political reforms necessary to find a peaceful and sustainable solution.” Both Gaddafi and the African Union called for a cease-fire and dialogue, but the rebels and imperial powers were not interested, and the bombing to “protect civilians” began within two days of the war-sanctioning resolution without the slightest move towards obtaining a cease-fire or starting negotiations.
Forte shows that it was clear from the start that the imperial powers were using civilian protection as a fig leaf for their real objective, which was regime change and the removal of Gaddafi, with substantial evidence existing to show that his later death was also part of the programme and was carried out with US participation. The war that followed was one in which the imperial powers worked in close collaboration with the rebel forces, serving as their air arm, but also providing them with arms, training and propaganda support. The imperial powers and the UAE, also had hundreds of operatives on the ground in Libya, training the rebels and giving them intelligence and other forms of support, hence violating resolution 1973’s prohibition of an occupation force “in any form”.
Forte shows that the factual base for Gaddafi’s alleged threat to civilians – his treatment of protesters in mid-February 2011 – was more than dubious. The claimed striking at protesters by aerial attacks and the Viagra-based rape surge were straightforward pieces of disinformation, and the number killed was small – 24 protesters in the three days of February 15-17, according to the international rights group Human Rights Watch – fewer than the number of alleged “black mercenaries” executed by the rebels in Derna in mid-February (50), and fewer than the early protester deaths in Tunis or Egypt that elicited no Security Council effort to “protect civilians”.
There were claims of several thousand killed in February 2011, but Forte shows that this also was disinformation supplied by the rebels and their allies, but swallowed by many Western officials, media and other gullible elements. That the actual evidence would induce such an urgent and massive response by the NATO powers is implausible, and the rush to arms demands a different rationale than protecting civilians in a small North African state. Forte provides it, compellingly: US President Barack Obama and company were seizing this window of opportunity for regime change.
Forte demonstrates throughout his book that from the beginning of this regime-change war the bombing powers did not confine themselves to protecting civilians, but instead were very often targeting civilians. He shows that, as in Pakistan, they used “double-tapping”, or lagged bombings that were sure civilian killers. They also bombed military vehicles, troops and living quarters that were not attacking or threatening civilians. They bombed ferociously anywhere their intelligence sources indicated that Gaddafi might be present. Forte also shows that the rebels were merciless in brutalising and slaughtering people viewed as Gaddafi supporters, and in the substantial parts of the country where Gaddafi was supported the rebels’ air-force (i.e. NATO) was regularly called upon to bomb, and it did so, ruthlessly.
The essence of the War:Forte’s title, Slouching towards Sirte, and his front cover, which shows devastated civilian apartment buildings in that city, focus attention on the essence of the NATO-rebel war. Sirte was Gaddafi’s headquarters, and its populace and army remnants resisted the rebel advance for months, so it was eventually bombed into submission, with a large number of civilians being either killed or injured. Forte notes that when NATO finally caught up with Gaddafi and bombed and decimated the small entourage that was with him on the outskirts of Sirte, this was justified by NATO because this group could still “threaten civilians”! This was a town that had to be destroyed in order to save it – for the rebels – these, Forte saying (citing Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and UN and other observers), executing substantial numbers of captured Gaddafi supporters. The town was a major scene of war crimes. The civilians in Sirte needed protection – from NATO and the rebels.
Resolution 1973 explicitly mentions Benghazi as a massacre-threatened town, but Forte points out that no document or witness ever turned up either during or after the War that indicated a Gaddafi plan to attack Benghazi, let alone engage in a civilian slaughter. Furthermore, Forte notes that “the only massacre to have occurred anywhere near [Benghazi] was the massacre of innocent black African migrant workers and black Libyans falsely accused of being ‘mercenaries’.”
The rebels and their air force smashed a stream of towns in eastern Libya, killing and turning into refugees many thousands of civilians. The destruction of Sirte, similar to what resolution 1973 and the “international community” claimed to fear for Benghazi, and the lynching of Gaddafi, elicited no “grave concern” over “systematic violations of human rights,” or a call for any Chapter 7 of the United Nations Charter response from the western establishment. So, in this Kafkaesque world the rebels and NATO behaved just as the “international community” claimed Gaddafi would behave, and the civilian casualties that resulted from the rebel-NATO combination vastly exceeded anything done by Gaddafi’s forces, or any probable civilian deaths that would have resulted if NATO had stayed away.
This conclusion is strengthened by the fact that the rebels from the beginning pursued a race war. Forte stresses the importance of rebel actions for the hatred flowing from the rebels to Gaddafi forces and those deemed to be his supporters, whom the rebels took to include anybody with a black skin. Many thousands of black Africans were picked up by rebel forces, accused without the slightest proof of being mercenaries, and often executed. Among the many cases that Forte describes is that of a hospital that was destroyed, with dozens of its black patients being massacred. The largely black population of the sizable town of Tawargha was entirely expelled by the rebels.
This racism predates the 2011-2012 War and resulted in part from Gaddafi’s policies towards other African states, his relatively liberal treatment of black immigrants, and his inadequate counter-racist educational and economic-social policies that would alleviate distress at home. But Gaddafi was not a racist, whereas large numbers of the rebel forces (the “democratic opposition” in western propaganda) were, and their successes, with NATO’s help, allowed them to act as a lynch mob in many places.
The racist character of the War was reflected in the frequent focus on the “black mercenaries” allegedly imported and used by Gaddafi. This was reiterated time and again by the rebels and their supporters and propagandists. Forte shows that this claim was not merely inflated, it was also a lie. There were no black mercenaries brought in by Gaddafi. But the claim of the threat posed by his alleged resort to “mercenaries” (read black mercenaries) was repeated by western officials, among them US representatives Susan Rice and Hillary Clinton, and the mainstream media, and they even found their way into resolution 1973 (“deploring the continuing use of mercenaries by the Libyan authorities”). The charge was reiterated often by the rebels in justifying their systematic abuse of black Africans during the War.
Note that for a western target there are “mercenaries” whereas for big-time killers there are “contractors.” We may note also that while the word “genocide” was often used to describe Gaddafi’s threat to the rebels and their supporters, in fact the only facet of this conflict in which a special ethnic group was targeted for mistreatment and removal, and on a large scale, was the rebel focus on the treatment of black Africans. This point has, of course, escaped western commentators on human rights.
There was another important race element involved in the Libyan War and regime change. Gaddafi was a devoted supporter of the idea of African independence, unity and escape from western domination. He was a central figure in the African Union, served as its chairman, and called repeatedly for the establishment of a United States of Africa and for African lending and judicial authorities that could free Africa from subservience to the IMF, the World Bank and international justice. He also invested substantial sums in African institutions, including schools, hospitals, mosques and hotels.
Forte shows that this Africanist thrust troubled US and other western powers, which were often frustrated by Gaddafi’s unwillingness to help western investors and saw him as threatening western plans to advance their military-political-economic position in Africa. Thus, regime change in Libya and Gaddafi’s removal dealt a major blow to African unity and breathed new life into AFRICOM (the US military command in the region) and the West’s power in the scramble for control and access in this resource-rich but fragmented and militarily weak continent.
UN subservience in the War:The performance of the UN and the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Libyan War and regime-change programme also displayed once again their subservience to the imperial powers and their facilitation of Western aggression and war crimes. These imperial powers succeeded in getting resolution 1973 passed, even though it was loaded with bias and hysterical claims of threats to civilians, and crucially gave them the authority to commit mayhem and create another failed state.
The Chinese and the Russians foolishly signed on to this resolution, apparently not realising that its “protecting civilians” thrust was a cover that would be immediately violated and that they were contributing to their own ouster from Africa. As the evidence rapidly accumulated that the imperial powers were killing directly and facilitating the rebel killings of civilians and were carrying out and supporting serious war crimes, although these were sometimes recorded by UN personnel on the ground in Libya there was no UN response or constraint imposed.
The reliable UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon found NATO and rebel behaviour beyond reproach, and the UN Human Rights Council removed the Libyan government’s representative based on a report from a human rights group affiliated with the Libyan rebels without requiring evidence or allowing Libya to reply. Ban Ki-moon allowed rebel representatives to replace those of the Libyan government, again without a hearing and in violation of UN rules.
The ICC’s performance was even more dismal, with head Luis Moreno-Ocampo rushing to indict Gaddafi without even bothering with an investigation and swallowing the claims of “black mercenaries” being imported and his supplying Viagra to encourage a rape programme. Although resolution 1973 does call for the ICC to prosecute anyone “responsible for or complicit in attacks targeting the civilian population, including aerial as well as naval attacks,” it should not surprise us that there was no trace of ICC enforcement against NATO or rebel officials.
Human rights groups also did poorly, with both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International welcoming the NATO intervention, although both eventually put out reports calling attention to NATO and rebel abuses. But these reports were weak and hardly balanced. And in contrast with their very early support of intervention, the groups failed to call for action against imperial and rebel war crimes. Forte cites compelling evidence that the early figure of 6,000 Gaddafi government killings, which was influential in shaping UN action and media opinion, was passed along by the rebels and swallowed by the mainstream media with no independent confirmation required.
Forte has a very good account of how effectively the pro-rebel side manufactured claims of civilian abuses via Web sites and Twitter posts far distant from Libya (such as in London, Geneva and Cairo), while regularly stating that these claims were “confirmed” by unnamed “witnesses.” These, plus direct rebel and imperial official claims and a remarkable will-to-believe, helped create a fearsome image of Gaddafi’s misbehaviour and threats. Once again the propaganda system did its job of demonisation and hysteria stimulation, with the effects possibly exceeding those in Serbia (concentration and rape camps) and Iraq (“weapons of mass destruction”).
A substantial chunk of the western left once again succumbed to this propaganda, sometimes reluctantly agreeing that bombing to protect civilians was justified, but being remarkably silent in the face of the growing evidence of the bombing of civilians and the de facto race war and war of aggression for regime change.
Forte points out that the facts of a race war and a war of aggression against an important African state were clearly recognised by Africans at the time. There was a sharp divide, with African leaders, journals and academics assailing the NATO war and western elites applauding it. Africans were very conscious of the fact that the UN and NATO powers had simply ignored the African Union, preferring to deal with the Arab monarchies and the rebels. Forte cites the leaders of South Africa, Liberia, Nigeria, Uganda, and other African countries, all of whom are strong in their positive, even if sometimes qualified, views of Gaddafi and his role and outraged at this new spurt of western intervention in Africa, which they often call “re-colonisation.”
Forte also has several pages on the close relationship between former South African leader Nelson Mandela and Gaddafi, the former being indebted to him because of his steadfast support in the years when the African National Congress was dubbed a “terrorist organisation” by the imperial powers.
Forte also stresses throughout his book how strongly opposed Gaddafi was to Al-Qaeda and Islamist extremism. He fought these movements at home and sought to interest US officials in their threat. It is one of many ironies that Al-Qaeda and Islamist extremism, firmly embedded in the rebel ranks, were provided with an air force by NATO that ushered them into power. They are now a force that is helping to stoke the chaos in “liberated” Libya. But this chaos, like the civilians killed and injured by NATO and its allies, only hurts the victims, not the real villains in Washington, London and Paris.
The writer is an economist and media analyst specialising in corporate and regulatory issues.
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