WND column: Everyone knows that the NATO led attack on Libya in 2011 produced a failed state, the Libyan 150 billion state funds looted, millions of displaced persons, a refugee epidemic that threatens to destabilize Europe and a Libya under Islamist rule.
And massive Islamist racism against the black Libyans, such as the Tawhargha tribe in Libya, who since 2011 have faced unbearable struggles, violent killings and massive looting of Libyan state funds, writes historian and author, Hanne Nabintu Herland her regular commentary at World Net Daily, one of America’s largest conservative networks.
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Photo taken from one of the demonstrations in support of Muammar Gaddafi, July 2011, as Tripoli rightfully feared NATO attacks. These demonstrations were not reported on in Western media. Photo: YouTube.
Under the leadership of militia war lords such as Abdelhakim Belhadj (LIFG jihadi fighter, friend of Osama bin laden in Afghanistan and hailed as “hero” by John McCain) has produced a horrifying regime. The Western backed Libya is permeated by terror, random kidnappings, gruesome rapes, the most morbid form of torture – all viewable and permitted on Arabic Facebook and YouTube – and the practice of allowing civilians to spend years in prison without a trial.
Libyans are pleading for the UN, US, Amnesty, Human Rights Watch to react, to no avail. There is just a deafening silence in the West.
Humanitarian pleas, also from the UN, implore the West to take responsibility for the destruction instigated in 2011. The United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) steadily expresses ‘‘strong condemnation of the violence, intimidation and obstruction to the work of Libya’s sovereign institutions by militiamen”.
The Secretary-General of the UN agency for International Cooperation, Eya Essif, addresses the racism against black Libyans, the Tawhargha. We have all heard about the slavery.
War crimes openly take place in areas controlled by militias affiliated to the internationally recognized Presidential Council in Tripoli. A UN report says that armed groups are guilty of a wide range of abuses. The wide abuse has long been addressed. Also by The Supreme Council of the Libyan Tribes, pointing out that many children have been left in these prisons since 2011 and up to today.
Hillary Clinton with friends in Libya. After the nation collapsed, Al Qaida groups came to power, one of them the leader of the Al Qaida linked Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, Abdelhakim Belhadj, who was later hailed as a “hero” by John McCain. Photo: Foreign Policy.
We are way beyond the 2016 UK House of Commons report which documented the media lies when the war broke out in February, 2011. Muammar Gaddafi was not “attacking his own people” or performing some sort of “genocide”. Libya was, in fact, Africa’s richest country, a middle income socialist state, 95 % literacy, free education for both men and women, with a massive Libyan Investment Fund waiting to be looted.
The Wikileaked Hillary Clinton email and other documents have shown that the assault on Libya it was not out of care for the civilians, rather the opposite: In search for the Libyan wealth and to stop the Pan African plan to skip the dollar for the Gold Dinar.
“Killings and torture are being committed by all sides in Libya, according to a UN report,” wrote the BBC back in 2016. “Human rights violations are carried out by armed groups. Victims include detainees, journalists and human rights activists.” Since then, no improvements have been carried out.
Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (al Qaida in Libya), leader, Abdelhakim Belhadj, photographed in Libya with Western allies in 2011. He became Tripolis military governor after the war, and AL Qaida flags were seen waving over the court buildings. Photo: Getty.
The militia leaders regularly overrule the Libyan courts and dictate the outcome of lawsuits, taking advantage of the lawlessness. This was recently seen in the Ain Zara A prison in Tripoli, where 45 young men are now awaiting the death penalty.
According to sources on the ground, the notorious war lord, Ghnewa Kikli is allegedly responsible for pushing the courts to place the death penalty on the men. The families protest in this video. The EU said the death sentence, issued by the Criminal Chamber of the Tripoli Court of Appeal, “was worrying”.
There are now pleas for the ICC courts to indite Haitam Al Tajouri and the militia leader in questionregarding the 45 condemned men, Ghnewa al Kikli, as well as Tripoli’s notorious war lord Hashim Bishir, Osama Al Jwilli and Al Raouff Kara. The aim is to stop the militia rule of terror in Libya.
Libyans are nostalgic of the Gaddafi era. Many who at the time did not support Gaddafi, now do after watching the Libyan state fall apart. His son, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi is hailed as a the leader chosen by the Libyan tribes, but so far the West has not allowed al-Islam Gaddafis candidature.
Reports on the ground state that there are at least 30 000 prisoners in Libya, most of them former supporters of Gaddafi, that are incarcerated without law and order, and many in prison since 2011. There are women as old as 80 years, and children as young as 15. One of Gaddafi’s sons, Saadi el-Gaddafi is still in prison even if the courts acquitted him.
Hannibal Gaddafi is still incarcerated in Lebanon, Gaddafi’s wife, Safia Farkash and daugher, Aisha Gaddafistill unable to use their frozen bank accounts or to travel. Since when was it a crime to be a president’s wife? Or daughter? Why is the family still being punished?
President Trump recently addressed the issue with the Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte. Let us hope we may soon see an end to the Libyan misery.
British Prime Minister Cameron, leader of the Transitional Council in Libya, Abdul Jalil and then French President, Sarkozy hand in hand in 2011. The French philosopher who was central in helping Sarkozy at the time, Bernard Henri-Levy, is seen behind the French President. Photo: Libya24, 2011.
Hillary Emails Reveal True Motive for Libya Intervention
Newly disclosed emails show that Libya’s plan to create a gold-backed currency to compete with the euro and dollar was a motive for NATO’s intervention.
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The New Year’s Eve release of over 3,000 new Hillary Clinton emails from the State Department has CNN abuzz over gossipy text messages, the “who gets to ride with Hillary” selection process set up by her staff, and how a “cute” Hillary photo fared on Facebook.
But historians of the 2011 NATO war in Libya will be sure to notice a few of the truly explosive confirmations contained in the new emails: admissions of rebel war crimes, special ops trainers inside Libya from nearly the start of protests, Al Qaeda embedded in the U.S. backed opposition, Western nations jockeying for access to Libyan oil, the nefarious origins of the absurd Viagra mass rape claim, and concern over Gaddafi’s gold and silver reserves threatening European currency.
Hillary’s Death Squads
A March 27, 2011, intelligence brief [archived here] on Libya, sent by long time close adviser to the Clintons and Hillary’s unofficial intelligence gatherer, Sidney Blumenthal, contains clear evidence of war crimes on the part of NATO-backed rebels. Citing a rebel commander source “speaking in strict confidence” Blumenthal reports to Hillary [emphasis mine]:
Under attack from allied Air and Naval forces, the Libyan Army troops have begun to desert to the rebel side in increasing numbers. The rebels are making an effort to greet these troops as fellow Libyans, in an effort to encourage additional defections.
(Source Comment: Speaking in strict confidence, one rebel commander stated that his troops continue to summarily execute all foreign mercenaries captured in the fighting…).
While the illegality of extra-judicial killings is easy to recognize (groups engaged in such are conventionally termed “death squads”), the sinister reality behind the “foreign mercenaries” reference might not be as immediately evident to most.
While over the decades Gaddafi was known to make use of European and other international security and infrastructural contractors, there is no evidence to suggest that these were targeted by the Libyan rebels.
There is, however, ample documentation by journalists, academics, and human rights groups demonstrating that black Libyan civilians and sub-Saharan contract workers, a population favored by Gaddafi in his pro-African Union policies, were targets of “racial cleansing” by rebels who saw black Libyans as tied closely with the regime.[1]
Black Libyans were commonly branded as “foreign
mercenaries” by the rebel opposition for their perceived general loyalty to Gaddafi as a community and subjected to torture, executions, and their towns “liberated” by ethnic cleansing. This is demonstrated in the most well-documented example of Tawergha, an entire town of 30,000 black and “dark-skinned” Libyans which vanished by August 2011 after its takeover by NATO-backed NTC Misratan brigades.
These attacks were well-known as late as 2012 and often filmed, as this report from The Telegraph confirms:
It appears that Clinton was getting personally briefed on the battlefield crimes of her beloved anti-Gaddafi fighters long before some of the worst of these genocidal crimes took place.
Al-Qaeda and Western Special Forces Inside Libya
The same intelligence email from Sydney Blumenthal also confirms what has become a well-known theme of Western supported insurgencies in the Middle East: the contradiction of special forces training militias that are simultaneously suspected of links to Al Qaeda.
Blumenthal relates that “an extremely sensitive source” confirmed that British, French, and Egyptian special operations units were training Libyan militants along the Egyptian-Libyan border, as well as in Benghazi suburbs.
While analysts have long speculated as to the “when and where” of Western ground troop presence in the Libyan War, this email serves as definitive proof that special forces were on the ground only within a month of the earliest protests which broke out in the middle to end of February 2011 in Benghazi.
By March 27 of what was commonly assumed a simple “popular uprising” external special operatives were already “overseeing the transfer of weapons and supplies to the rebels” including “a seemingly endless supply of AK47 assault rifles and ammunition.”
Yet only a few paragraphs after this admission, caution is voiced about the very militias these Western special forces were training because of concern that, “radical/terrorist groups such as the Libyan Fighting Groups and Al Qa’ida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) are infiltrating the NLC and its military command.”
The Threat of Libya’s Oil and Gold to French Interests
Though the French-proposed U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973 claimed the no-fly zone implemented over Libya was to protect civilians, an April 2011 email [archived here] sent to Hillary with the subject line “France’s client and Qaddafi’s gold” tells of less noble ambitions.
The email identifies French President Nicholas Sarkozy as leading the attack on Libya with five specific purposes in mind: to obtain Libyan oil, ensure French influence in the region, increase Sarkozy’s reputation domestically, assert French military power, and to prevent Gaddafi’s influence in what is considered “Francophone Africa.”
Most astounding is the lengthy section delineating the huge threat that Gaddafi’s gold and silver reserves, estimated at “143 tons of gold, and a similar amount in silver,” posed to the French franc (CFA) circulating as a prime African currency. In place of the noble sounding “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) doctrine fed to the public, there is this “confidential” explanation of what was really driving the war [emphasis mine]:
This gold was accumulated prior to the current rebellion and was intended to be used to establish a pan-African currency based on the Libyan golden Dinar. This plan was designed to provide the Francophone African Countries with an alternative to the French franc (CFA).
(Source Comment: According to knowledgeable individuals this quantity of gold and silver is valued at more than $7 billion. French intelligence officers discovered this plan shortly after the current rebellion began, and this was one of the factors that influenced President Nicolas Sarkozy’s decision to commit France to the attack on Libya.)
Though this internal email aims to summarize the motivating factors driving France’s (and by implication NATO’s) intervention in Libya, it is interesting to note that saving civilian lives is conspicuously absent from the briefing.
Instead, the great fear reported is that Libya might lead North Africa into a high degree of economic independence with a new pan-African currency.
French intelligence “discovered” a Libyan initiative to freely compete with European currency through a local alternative, and this had to be subverted through military aggression.
The Ease of Floating Crude Propaganda
Early in the Libyan conflict Secretary of State Clinton formally accused Gaddafi and his army of using mass rape as a tool of war. Though numerous international organizations, like Amnesty International, quickly debunked these claims, the charges were uncritically echoed by Western politicians and major media.
It seemed no matter how bizarre the conspiracy theory, as long as it painted Gaddafi and his supporters as monsters, and so long as it served the cause of prolonged military action in Libya, it was deemed credible by network news.
Two foremost examples are referenced in the latest batch of emails: the sensational claim that Gaddafi issued Viagra to his troops for mass rape, and the claim that bodies were “staged” by the Libyan government at NATO bombing sites to give the appearance of the Western coalition bombing civilians.
In a late March 2011 email [WikiLeaks copy here], Blumenthal confesses to Hillary that,
I communicated more than a week ago on this story—Qaddafi placing bodies to create PR stunts about supposed civilian casualties as a result of Allied bombing—though underlining it was a rumor. But now, as you know, Robert gates gives credence to it. (See story below.)
Sources now say, again rumor (that is, this information comes from the rebel side and is unconfirmed independently by Western intelligence), that Qaddafi has adopted a rape policy and has even distributed Viagra to troops. The incident at the Tripoli press conference involving a woman claiming to be raped is likely to be part of a much larger outrage. Will seek further confirmation.
Not only did Defense Secretary Robert Gates promote his bizarre “staged bodies” theory on CBS News’ “Face The Nation,” but the even stranger Viagra rape fiction made international headlines as U.S. Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice made a formal charge against Libya in front of the UN Security Council.
What this new email confirms is that not only was the State Department aware of the spurious nature of what Blumenthal calls “rumors” originating solely with the rebels, but did nothing to stop false information from rising to top officials who then gave them “credence.”
It appears, furthermore, that the Viagra mass rape hoax likely originated with Sidney Blumenthal himself.
Note
[1] The most comprehensive and well-documented study of the plight of black Libyans is contained in Slouching Towards Sirte: NATO’s War on Libya and Africa (publ. 2012, Baraka Books) by Maximilian Forte, Professor Anthropology and Sociology at Concordia University in Montréal, Québec.
This article was originally published at the Levant Report and has been used here with permission.
