Documents reveal Gadhafi ties with U.S. government

Scan page 4

Documents show that the Bush and Obama administrations were intent on developing firm “military to military” ties with the Libyan regime of Col. Muammar Gadhafi. This was revealed in transcripts of diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks on Aug. 24. In addition, Human Rights Watch has released copies of papers found in Libya’s office of External Security in Tripoli, which disclose ties between that agency and the CIA and British intelligence. Photos of the documents were given to the U.S. media.

A memo sent from the U.S. embassy in Tripoli in early 2009, released by WikiLeaks, stated that the U.S. views Libya as “a strong partner on counterterrorism,” though it cautioned that “the Libyans remain wary of initiatives that put foreign military or intelligence assets too close to their borders.” Nevertheless, the documents indicate, Washington hoped to integrate Libya into AFRICOM, its military front that would rely on U.S. troops and bases in Africa.

The Wikileaks documents also reveal that in meetings with Muammar Gadhafi and his son Muatassim, U.S. Senator John McCain assured them that he would support their requests to purchase weapons from the 4 Socialist Action SEPTEMBER 2011 United States, and that he “pledged to see what he could do to move things forward in Congress.”

Human Rights Watch has released a 2004 memo it found in Tripoli that was written by top CIA official Stephen Kappes to Libya’s then intelligence chief, Moussa Koussa. Kappes wrote in hopes of establishing closer relations, stating, “Libya’s cooperation on WMD and other issues, as well as our nascent intelligence cooperation mean that now is the right moment to move ahead.”

Some of the Tripoli papers open a window onto the practice of rendition, in which the U.S. sent prisoners to other countries for interrogation—including countries known for using torture. “We are eager to work with you in the questioning of the terrorist we recently rendered to your country,” Mr. Kappes wrote in the memo to Koussa, adding that he would like to send two additional agents to Libya to question the suspect directly.

It must be noted that none of the released documents demonstrate that the United States had any concerns at all about violations of human rights in Gadhafi’s Libya. — MICHAEL SCHREIBER The Times article states: “There are growing hints of rivalry among the various brigades over who deserves credit for liberating the city and the influence it might bring. And attempts to name a military leader to unify the bands of fighters have instead exposed divisions within the rebel leadership, along regional lines but also between secularists and Islamists.

“They were all signs, one influential member of the council said, that point to a continuing ‘power vacuum’ in the civilian leadership of the Libyan capital. But the jockeying for power also illustrates the challenge a new provisional government will face in trying to unify Libya’s fractious political landscape.” The imperialist overlords are far from certain that their initial TNC choices are reliable in this task. As in Iraq and Afghanistan, Libya has long been divided along fractious tribal and religious lines as well as warring bourgeois factions.

A 70-page plan obtained and published by the London Times embarrassed the imperial invaders when it described their preparations for the long-term pacification of Libya. The Times wrote: “The plans are highly reliant on the defection of parts of the Gaddafi security apparatus to the rebels after his overthrow. This is likely to prove not only risky, but controversial, with (continued on page 5)

Scan page 5

Socialist Action SEPTEMBER 2011 5 ... Libya ‘victory’

(continued from page 4) many rebel fighters determined to sweep away all vestiges of the regime.

“The document includes proposals for a 10,00015,000 strong ‘Tripoli task force,’ resourced and supported by the United Arab Emirates (UAE), to take over the Libyan capital, secure key sites and arrest high-level Gaddafi supporters….” (See the reference below to the UAE’s Blackwater mercenary death squads.)

“The blueprint contains plans for about 5000 police officers now serving in units not ideologically committed to the Gaddafi regime to be transferred immediately to the interim government’s forces to prevent a security vacuum. The documents claim that the rebel groups in Tripoli and surrounding areas have 8660 supporters, including 3255 in the Gaddafi army.”

As expected, the TNC and imperialist spokespersons everywhere promise “democratic” elections within eight months—the same kind of elections that brought to power the various corrupt puppet regimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. Any notion of excluding Gadhafi supporters entirely, as the Bush administration “mistakenly” did in its Iraq “de-Baathification” program (removal of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party supporters from all key posts in the government and army), is said to be absent in the projected Libya scenario.

It is more than ironic that today’s more “enlightened” occupiers seek to first physically destroy Gadhafi’s resisting bureaucrats, generals, and soldiers and then reconstitute a new government with at least a portion of the old. Compliant Gadhafi supporters are expected to share power in a coalition government to supposedly avoid the kind of schisms that continue to plague Iraq and Afghanistan. Undoubtedly, today’s “nation builders” have no intention of including representatives of the mass of Libya’s working class, other than as window dressing.

But imperialism’s prevaricating diplomats nevertheless seek to paste a democratic facade on these delicate matters. Said French foreign minister Alain Juppé, “It’s up to the Libyans and the Libyans alone to build a new Libya, which will be a democratic Libya.” (!) Mention of Libya four times in a single sentence certainly sends a message. Had Juppé said instead, “It’s up to the imperialists and the imperialists alone to build a neo-colonial Libya, which will be an autocratic Libya,” he would have been closer to the truth.

What rapidly emerged six months ago, in February 2011, was a patched together TNC, replete with a core of defecting Gadhafi military and diplomatic officials and an array of Western capitalist-connected, Libyan lawyers and “human rights” advocates largely operating to advance the interests of the major NATO-affiliated invaders. From the earliest announcement of this government-in-waiting, now recognized by some 57 nations and counting, not a single TNC voice has been heard to indicate anything other than full support to and collaboration with the imperialist-orchestrated invasion, not to mention pledged support for peaceful negotiations between potentially competing forces as to who will get what in the post-Gadhafi Libya.

Some of the TNC’s components are already registering disagreements, as with the recent demonstration of 500 Misrata residents who mobilized and formally petitioned to protest the inclusion of top Gadhafi officals in the new “government.” The TNC’s top leaders, however, have been thoroughly briefed by imperialism’s presently silent advisers to the effect that the new “government” must begin with the “inclusion” of a broad range of forces to avoid future degeneration as was the case with Iraq.

The TNC’s central leaders have included:

Moises Samran / NY Times • Mahmoud Jibril, present head of the new “government” and, until his early-on defection, head of Libya’s National Economic Development Board. Jabril has spent most of his time in Europe, rounding up support for his imperialist-created regime. He studied at the University of Pittsburgh and served as an asset manager to the wife of the Emir of Qatar.

• Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, chair of the TNC and Minister of Justice under Gadhafi until he resigned to protest the attacks on students and other protesters.

• Gen. Abdul Fattah Younis, the TNC’s top military commander, Libya’s interior minister, a French intelligence asset and a personal friend of Gadhafi before defecting. Younis was likely killed by the TNC’s Muslim Brotherhood faction, also included in the new “government.”

• Ali-al-Essawi, former Gadhafi cabinet official and ambassador, thought to be involved in Gen. Younis’ murder.

• Khalifa Hifter, senior commander of TNC troops, who had been living in exile in the U.S. Hifter appointed himself the TNC’s military commander, replacing his rival, Younis.

• Abdel Hafidh Ghogi, a Benghazi-based human rights attorney.

• Fathi Terbil, youth representative on the TNC and a human rights attorney, whose arrest by Gadhafi security forces is said to have sparked the rebellion.

Most of these “leaders” are hardened Gadhafi bureaucrats, military strongmen who defected from the Gadhafi government, or Libyans in exile who have collaborated with U.S. officials. A few youthful “human rights” activists may have been added to the mix to lend it a liberal cast.

Of the TNC’s 31 members only 13 were formally announced, supposedly due to security reasons. With the TNC’s relocation to Tripoli in late August, the number has been expanded to 40 and is expected to rise to 80. This self-appointed body of essentially Libya’s elite has no connection with any mass political organization of Libya’s working masses; to the extent that these groups exist at all, they are largely in embryonic form.

Whatever self-organization was evidenced in the earliest days of the mass protest was essentially spontaneous and created to organize the distribution of food and the coordination of vital services as Gadhafi’s forces bombarded Benghazi. We have yet to see any indication that these organizational forms gave rise to or were based on independent political forces aiming at developing a program to advance the interests of the masses. Nor is there evidence that they took on the task of consolidating an alternative to the leading bourgeois and pro-imperialist forces, which fully understood the need to rush to the “leadership” of the mass movement.

Given the political void among the anti-Gadhafi forces, the TNC was quickly recognized as the nation’s “legal” government by France and Italy—with the United States, briefly considering the feasibility of a greater military and political role, following suit soon afterwards. The Europeans’ and Americans’ public pretensions of “protecting civilians” from Gadhafi’s forces rapidly gave way to their real objectives—“regime change” pure and simple. The order of the day was Gadhafi’s removal. Inter-imperialist negotiations as to the role and weight of Libya’s future overseers were temporarily set aside.

The U.S./NATO intervention and massive bombing were qualitatively intensified while TNC forces were prepared to take Tripoli. Some 30 percent of all sorties were scheduled for the last five days. The “rebels” were further aided by massive supplies provided by the imperialist-backed military governments in Egypt and Tunisia. The Qatari government served as the overt organizer and trainer of the Tripoli Brigade, which led the assault, undoubtedly with assistance of the Qatar-based Blackwater mercenary death-squad (Above) Amphibious assault ship USS Kearsharge in Suez Canal on March 2, on the way to the coast of Libya. (Left) Pro-Gadhafi supporters at government rally in Tripoli, July 28.

forces, financed by the U.S. and based in Qatar.

The Aug. 19 Washington Post reported: “‘For months, we have been gathering information in Tripoli and shipping weapons, money and men to the capital,’ said Abu Oweis, the founder and deputy commander of the Qatari-trained Tripoli brigade. ‘We are completely ready to take over,’ he added. ‘All people there will be very happy.’”

“The brigade’s temporary headquarters, a school building near the city of Zintan on the vast plateau of the Nafusa Mountains, was stocked with ammunition during a visit on Thursday. Commanders worked on laptops and used satellite phones as recruits assembled their weapons.

“Oweis said his troops would arrest ‘over a hundred’ high-profile Gaddafi loyalists designated as criminals and potential troublemakers by the rebels’ Transitional National Council, which for now is based in the city of Benghazi in eastern Libya.

“The rebel leaders succeeded in quickly gaining diplomatic recognition from countries around the world, including the United States. International support, in which Qatar and the United Arab Emirates play a key role, has given the rebels access to frozen assets that once belonged to Gaddafi, as well as weapons deliveries from abroad.

“Cargo planes from the United Arab Emirates could be seen in Benghazi’s airport Monday, and rebels have turned a slab of highway in the western mountains into a provisional airstrip where they regularly receive cash and automatic weapons from representatives of the Transitional National Council.”

The Washington Post report neglected to mention that Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, with virtually no armies of their own, rely on U.S.-financed Blackwater mercenary death-squad armies to defend their regimes against “domestic unrest.” Mercenaries of the Blackwater type constitute nearly half of the U.S. fighting forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, the largest U.S. deployment of privatized military forces in history. Whatever pretensions the Obama administration offers to indicate the withdrawal of some troops from Iraq and Afghanistan are more than compensated for by the massive mercenary forces it maintains in these countries.

The May 15 New York Times, in a front-page article entitled “Secret Desert Force Set up By Blackwater Founder,” asserted, “The force is intended to conduct special operations missions inside and outside the country, defend oil pipelines and skyscrapers from terrorist attacks and put down internal revolts, the documents show. Such troops could be deployed if the Emirates faced unrest in their crowded labor camps or were challenged by pro-democracy protests like those sweeping the Arab world this year” (emphasis added).

An Aug. 25 Washington Post article by Spencer Ackerman entitled “Tiny Qatar Flexes Big Muscles in Libya” similarly noted: “If the Persian Gulf nation has any defense profile at all, it’s mostly for hosting the giant al-Udeid air base, a major transit point for U.S. troops and material heading to Iraq and Afghanistan. But despite having very few men under arms, Qatar not only helped keep Moammar Gadhafi’s planes grounded, it helped turn the ragtag Libyan rebels into a real fighting force—and even, according to one well-placed source, played a key role in getting them into Tripoli.”

The Aug. 23 New York Times told the same story: The “rebels” received “steady supplies of weapons, fuel, medicine and food from British, French and Qatari troops” as well as “an escalated bombing campaign by American jets and Predator drones.” The Times added, “Hundreds of rebels took part in secret military training in Qatar.” None of these corporate media reports dared to explicitly state that Blackwater forces—that is, U.S.-financed mercenary death squads, as are routinely deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq—were en(continued on page 10) AP

Scan page 6

Gali Tibbon / AFP / Getty Images (Left) Sign in Hebrew reads, “People before Profits!” in Aug. 9 protest march to prime minister’s house in Jerusalem. hummus and fava beans. What is happening here is true coexistence, when Arabs and Jews march together shoulder to shoulder calling for social justice and peace. We’ve had it. Bibi, go home … go and don’t come back … good-bye and good riddance.” Ha’aretz reports many red flags in the crowd in Haifa.

Opinion polls show overwhelming support for the protests in Israel; however, we have to address the limitations of this movement. It is made up almost entirely of Israeli Jews. In the early weeks only a few Palestinian-Israelis participated. The movement itself reflects an alliance of “left” reformist forces and rightwing settlers.

There has been a conscious decision not to raise demands relating to the occupation or the Palestine question. Early on, some protesters set up a “1948” tent in Tel Aviv for discussion of the issue, but rightist settlers attacked the tent organizers. The movement has failed to directly address the way a society built on Zionism by its very structure enforces dispossession and discrimination, and requires the constant enlistment of Jewish workers in an anti-Palestinian hegemony.

As in the days of Jim Crow in the U.S. or apartheid in South Africa, struggles for economic justice for people only from the dominant ethnic group are inevitably