Libya’s Shadow

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Vijay Prashad is professor of international studies at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., and author of at least 14 books on world affairs. This article is based on a portion of the presentation that Prashad gave on March 25 at the United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC) conference in Stamford, Conn. Prashad’s book published last month, “Arab Spring, Libyan Winter” (AK Press) includes material that expands on the themes of this article.

Reports by independent Arab human rights organizations and the UN Human Rights Council (published March 2) document the human rights violations in Libya since February 2011. They show us that it was indeed the case that the Qaddafi regime conducted crimes against humanity and, when the war began, war crimes.

But what the UN report also shows us is that the regime was not conducting genocide. That word was casually thrown around in February and March, egging on to war a public worried about what people in the Obama administration began to call a “Srebrenica on steroids” (referring to the Bosnian town where a massacre was committed in July 1995).

It is also the case, as the reports show, that the rebels committed both crimes against humanity and war crimes, with no prospect of any prosecutions of these fighters who are now allies of the states that are members of NATO.

There will be no formal investigation into the ethnic cleansing of the town of Tawerga, where tens of thousands of dark-skinned Libyans have been removed by a section of the rebels who go under the name of “the brigade for purging slave and black skin.” There has been little outrage about the making of this “ghost town,” as Andrew Gilligan called it in the London Telegraph (August 2011). The human rights regime has been applied unevenly: against the enemies of NATO, but not against its allies.

What is most startling about the UN report is what it reveals about the role of NATO. The report asks for an investigation of NATO’s potential war crimes, but is snubbed by the military alliance, whose lawyer, Peter Olsen, wrote in February of this year to the UN Commission “that, in the event the Commission elects to include a discussion of NATO actions in Libya, its report clearly states that NATO did not deliberately target civilians and did not commit war crimes in Libya.” In other words, it is impossible for NATO to commit war crimes. NATO, unlike the Libyans, is too civilized to be guilty of any such violations. It is, therefore, above investigation.

The scandal here is that NATO, a military alliance, refuses any civilian oversight of its actions. It operated under a UN mandate (Security Council Resolution 1973) and yet refuses to allow a UN evaluation of its actions. NATO, in other words, operates as a rogue military entity, outside the bounds of the prejudices of democratic society. It is precisely because NATO refuses an evaluation that the UN Security Council will not allow another NATO-like military intervention.

As I show in my new book, NATO’s intervention into ... May 20 protest (continued from page 1: “Inside Socialist Action”)

unpopular, and Afghan troops will hardly be able to take over military responsibilities from the U.S. occupiers anytime soon. But the European governments, beset by economic crisis, are finding strong grassroots opposition to their continued participation in the Afghan morass.

President-elect François Hollande of France has stated that his country’s troops would be withdrawn at the end of this year. Accordingly, both President Obama and NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen have scheduled appointments with Hollande before the NATO summit in order to try to draw him back in the fold on the Afghanistan question. Hollande, for his part, has noted that he would “not make things difficult for Barack Obama.” In a May 7 news conference, he praised Obama on foreign policy and said that he also saw potential areas of agreement with Obama on economic issues.

Europe’s economic difficulties provide the background for both the NATO and the G8 meetings. There are more and more signs that the euro zone as a whole is falling into a new recession; unemployment in Western Europe is at its highest point in over a decade. Britain has recently joined half a dozen other European nations in entering a double-dip recession (two successive quarters of negative growth).

Government austerity policies have served to augment the economic slowdowns and unemployment throughout Europe. France’s President-elect Hollande has tried to allay anxieties over the renewed crisis with talk of restoring government “growth” policies—subsidies to boost production, a slight expansion of the social safety net, and higher taxes on the wealthy. But Libya had motives far from those of the concerns of human rights and protection of civilians. If civilians were the first priority, the NATO states would welcome an investigation into the many allegations of civilian deaths because of NATO bombardment (Chris Chivers and Eric Schmitt’s lone report in The New York Times, Dec. 17, bears the headline, “In Strikes on Libya by NATO, an Unspoken Civilian Toll”). But they do not.

If protection of civilians was not the main war aim, what was it? Certainly access to the sweet oil of Libya was one motivation. Another was political. The Arab Spring was an indictment of Western-backed dictators (from Tunisia’s Ben Ali to Egypt’s Mubarak onward, and most threateningly to the Gulf monarchies). The Libyan campaign was an attempt by the West to insinuate NATO as an agent for Good and not as a bulwark for Dictatorships. Protection of civilians fell low on the totem of NATO’s operation. The politics were far more important than the human rights.

A U.S. military study conducted by the Joint and Coalition Operational Analysis division of the Joint Staff J7 shows that the U.S. bore the burden of the Libyan war, he appears to be on a collision course with other EU leaders over his plan to renegotiate the bloc’s fiscal pact. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has warned that reopening talks on the pact, endorsed by 25 EU governments in March, would be impossible. These are some of the inter-imperialist tensions that the G8 meeting will have to sort out, which also carry over into NATO.

The G8 and NATO summits will also explore, of course, the interests of the imperialist countries in increasing their exploitation of Africa and other areas of the neo-colonial world—and how they might share the booty. Accordingly, the heads of state of four African states—Ghana, Benin, Tanzania, and Ethiopia—have been invited to sit as guests at the G8 Camp David meeting.

One item on the agenda will be “food security” concerns, which will no doubt involve wrangling over how to best allow Western countries to dump their subsidized food surpluses into African countries that have seen their own agricultural resources remolded for the purpose of mono-crop cultivation for export.

In contrast to the wheeling and dealing of the imperialists will be the People’s Summit in Chicago. People who are opposed to the pro-war and anti-people policies of the corporate rich are invited to take part in their own conference, on Saturday and Sunday, May 12-13—one week before the May 20 mass march. There will be large plenary sessions as well as more than 40 workshops to provide everyone the opportunity to engage in dialogue about the pressing issues facing the world.

Speakers will include Malalai Joya, former Afghan member of parliament and internationally renowned opponent of NATO’s occupation of Afghanistan; the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Rainbow/PUSH coalition; Reiner Braun, International Coordinating Committee of the European No to NATO network; Kathy Kelly, Voices Jonathan Sunderman / U.S. Navy (Above) USS Barry launches Tomahawk missile toward the coast of Libya on March 19, 2011.

behind the NATO shield. The same study indicates that the U.S. war planners at the African Command “were unsure as to whether ‘regime change’ was an intended option, or whether operations were to be focused solely on protecting civilian life and providing humanitarian assistance to the refugees.”

The UN mandate was for the latter, but the confusion allowed the U.S. and NATO to pursue expanded war aims. This allowed NATO military force to bombard cities, including Tripoli in May and June of last year (as Simon Denyer of the Washington Post put it from Tripoli in early June, “silence in Tripoli after day-long NATO bombardment”). This inflation of the mandate also gives pause to the UN, whose failure to fully evaluate who ran the military operation and how targets were chosen based on the various mandates means that they are reluctant to go into another such mission that gives NATO carte blanche.

Libya is the shadow that hangs over Syria. n for Creative Nonviolence; death row prisoner Mumia Abu Jamal via speakerphone; Malik Mujahid, Muslim Peace Coalition; Medea Benjamin, Code Pink; and Col. Ann Wright (ret.), antiwar activist.

All Out to Chicago! No to NATO and War! n Hunger in Bahrain, Palestine Knowing the shaky ground on which it stands, the Bahraini regime continues its intransigent repression against all opposition, including continued ignoring of pleas by supporters of leading dissident Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja for his release.

Al-Khawaja has been on hunger strike since Feb.

8, and his family reported in early May that he was being force-fed through an IV. The opposition mounted protests against the Formula One Grand Prix auto race held in Bahrain on April 22.

Meanwhile, 1000 Palestinian political prisoners launched a hunger strike on April 17, Palestinian Prisoners’ Day. By press time their number had swelled to 2000. The prisoners are demanding an end to isolation and solitary confinement, administrative detention/imprisonment without charge, and access to family visits, education, and media. Several strikers have been without food for over two months, the point at which death could come at any moment.

Israel’s government has responded to the strike with brutal retaliation, including further repressive measures against the prisoners as well as beatings and arrests of protesting supporters outside the prisons. For information on how to support the prisoners, see samidoun.ca.

— ANDREW POLLACK Socialist Action may 2012 5