The Sarkozy-Obama Epic African Adventure: Killing Gaddafi and Arresting Africa’s élan vital, M. Frindéthié

Rendezvous with History

 

In their common quest for exceptionalism, Sarkozy and Obama had a rendez–vous with History. They both needed to perform political acts of grandeur; the former to recapture a lost Napoleonic paradise, and the latter to belong, to acquire approval by the American electors after years of marginalization as unfit for the American presidency characterized by hubris and jingoism. They both needed to perform acts of exceptionality. Tunisia was a warm-up session, a prelude to Sarkozy and Obama’s epic African adventure. An event had started in Tunisia that was quickly termed the “Arab Spring,” and to which leaders of the so-called “free world” needed to quickly anchor themselves; an event that they even needed to recuperate. For, indeed, at the beginning, Sarkozy was not onboard with the so-called “Arab Spring.” Nevertheless, by some remarkable acrobatics, the French president succeeded in inaugurating himself the champion of “democracy” in the Arab world, and, dans la foulée, dragged the exceptionalism-lacking-American-president-in-need-of-recognition into some of the world’s biggest international frauds.

On December 17, 2010, after trying unsuccessfully to recover his confiscated fruit cart from the Tunisian police, Tarek Bouzizi, a young Tunisian fruits vendor, set himself on fire and died two weeks later. Tarek’s hopelessness and anger, symptomatic of the condition of so many Tunisian youths living in poverty and under the repressive system of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, spontaneously ignited a protest that grew larger the more brutally the Tunisian authorities tried to squash it. Seeing his good friend Ben Ali in difficulty, Sarkozy offered to send him a force to crush the protest. The President of the “country of human rights” had found no other solution to the Tunisian crisis than to offer more repression to the Tunisian people. At the French Assemblée Nationale, the members of the French Socialist and Communist Parties displayed a feigned vexation at Sarkozy’s “lack of good judgment”. They knew however that it was the rule of the game to openly protest the policy of the opposing party; which in reality they would rehearse as soon as they would be in position to govern.

French politicians are groomed to wallow in war, violence and corruption. In recent memory, no French President has left office without some sort of international scandal. It is one measure of French exceptionalism. In 1979, President Giscard d’Estaing had gone to war against Central African Emperor Jean-Bedel Bokassa to hide a personal diamond deal gone public. François Mitterrand had his moment of affirmation of French exceptionalism in Rwanda. Mitterrand sent the Hutu army 500 French paratroopers and 150 military advisers. In 1992, Mitterrand directly helped the Hutus slaughter the Tutsis in Rwanda. And it was a French military authority that confessed it: “It is true that in February 1992 we were very hard. We use the occasion to test some experimental weapons, some light mountain tanks and some combat helicopters equipped with a dozen rockets on each side.”1 After Mitterrand, Jacques Chirac had two moments of exceptionalism; the first when in 1997, in his effort to help oil giant Elf (now Total) recapture some lost dividends from the fiscally hostile Congolese government of Lissouba, he decided to return Dictator Sassou Nguesso to power, sending the latter scores of military advisers with 25 tons of military materials to help him massacre Lissouba’s supporters and finally take over power. Chirac’s second moment of exceptionality came when in 2004 he ordered French soldiers in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, to shoot and kill unarmed Ivorians protesting French political interference in their country.2 Sarkozy had hardly started. He would be exceptional, too, like all his predecessors. He had been carrying on Chirac’s war in Côte d’Ivoire, but thus far, Chirac’s Ivorian heritage had not brought him moments of grandeur yet. Sarkozy needed to diversify; he needed to distribute his eggs in several baskets.

For the time being, Sarkozy’s open support to Ben Ali looked a lot like a big gaffe. By all indications, Ben Ali was about to fall; and Sarkozy needed to perform some winning acrobatic to save face and re-position the “country of human rights” on the right side of history. So, when on January 14, 2011 Ben Ali finally fled Tunisia, Sarkozy, who three weeks earlier had offered to help him repress the Tunisian revolution, had this to say: « France’s policy is based on two unbroken principles: Non-interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign state and the support of democracy and freedom …. For several weeks now the Tunisian people have been expressing their aspiration for democracy. France, which has enduring ties of friendship with Tunisia, is determined to be by its sides.” Sarkozy’s Tunisia policy was a failure. But if carried on, the “Arab Spring” could still help restore France’s exceptionalism. The most important thing was to learn one’s lesson and to be henceforth positioned to “the right side”; to know when to drop one’s friends and make new ones.

In France, the center-right government of Sarkozy, aided by a “philosopher of war,” Bernard Henry Levy, was fanning the flames of confrontation in the Arab world. Sarkozy had philosophical support to go to war; even against a president that months earlier he had called his “brother”.3 Duplicity, which is one of the organizing principles of French exceptionalism, was actuated by Sarkozy when, in order to save himself from a brewing scandal, the French President launched into a war against Gaddafi; a war which Obama, too eager to shed the label of “weak president”, perhaps not-so-naively, supported and heavily partook in.4 After Tunisia, a rendezvous with the “Arab Spring” was in the making for all “democracy lovers” in the world; which Obama would rather not miss. Sarko, who was now an expert in detecting the direction of the wind, was going to help Obama perform acts of exceptionalism.

To Kill Gaddafi and, with Him, Africa’s élan vital

On October 19, 2011, Gaddafi was captured alive by a frenzied Allah-vociferating mob of Libyan “revolutionaries” a few minutes after NATO fighter jets had shelled his 50-car convoy and cut short his escape from his home town of Sirte. Found hidden in a sewage culvert, Gaddafi was dragged out, then shot and killed execution style by the throng. One of his executioners, a bearded-man in full combat apparel, admitted that Gaddafi was captured alive and killed moments later. Right on the scene of the murder, he animatedly said to a TV reporter: “We caught him and we shot him … one guy shot him.” That mysterious “one guy” that shot Gaddafi, a report by French weekly Le Canard Enchaîné and several investigations will later reveal, was an infiltrated French secret service assassin, who had taken advantage of the tumult created by Gaddafi’s capture to approach the Libyan leader close enough to shoot him on orders of NATO, and Nicolas Sarkozy particularly. According to Le Canard Enchaîné, neither Obama nor Sarkozy wanted Gaddafi to emerge alive from the bombings of Libya. Gaddafi knew too much, and given a chance to speak, he could reveal some very damaging facts about his relations with some Western leaders. The weekly’s version refutes NATO’s account that “Gaddafi was trying to escape Sirte in a convoy, when French and American drones fired on his convoy, leaving him wounded. NTC [Libyan National Transitional Council] forces later captured and killed Gaddafi.” Le Canard Enchaîné reported, instead, that on October 19, 2011, few hours before Gaddafi’s convoy was shelled in Sirte, a colonel at the Pentagon had called a leader of the French Military Intelligence, which was tasked with chasing after the Libyan leader, and had told him that “Gaddafi has fallen into the trap, the US drones have located him in a district of Sirte and it became impossible for him to escape the grip of his chasers.” The US Chief told the French Leader: “Leaving Gaddafi alive will turn him into a nuclear bomb.”5

This story was substantiated in 2012 by Mahmoud Jibril, interim Prime Minister of Libya after the fall of Gaddafi, who told Egyptian TV that “it was a foreign agent who mixed with the revolutionary brigades to kill Gaddafi.” Rami El Obeidi, the former head of foreign relations for the Libyan transitional council, admitted that he was aware that Gaddafi was being stalked through his satellite communication system as he spoke with President Bashar Al-Assad of Syria. The NATO assassin knew where Gaddafi was at all times and chose the right moment to eliminate him.6 The United Nations’ call for an investigation to elucidate the circumstances of the Libyan leader’s death was merely a melodramatic contortion, especially when it is demonstrated that the UN have never been able to lead any investigation to fair conclusion; especially when everything indicates that the UN, this outpost of the Euro-American imperial power, were in on the kill. Why was Gaddafi such a threat to the Euro-American imperial power, and what is the origin of Sarkozy’s vendetta against Gaddafi?

In 1988, Gaddafi was accused of sponsoring the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, that caused the deaths of 270 passengers and crewmembers. As a punishment, the Libyan Guide was shunned by the Euro-American coalition. However, on May 15, 2007, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced the removal of Colonel Gaddafi from the US terror list and the resumption of regular diplomatic relations with Libya for, said she, “the excellent cooperation Libya has provided to the United States and other members of the international community in response to common global threats faced by the civilized world since September 11, 2001.”7 Even before the U.S.’s decision, European leaders were busy courting Gaddafi, who, according to a British diplomat in Libya, had “way more cash than he knew what to do with it.” On March 25, 2004, Tony Blair had tea under a tent in the Libyan Desert with Gaddafi. There, as he was negotiating a $1.2 billion gas exploitation contract for BP as well as important sales of British missiles and air defense systems, Blair expressed a deep-felt relief in the Euro-American leadership: “It’s good to be here at last after so many months.”8 Soon after Rice’s announcement, relieved Euro-American leaders were in Libya wooing Gaddafi. The Libyan Guide’s huge cash reserve had no black powder scent on it, and Europe was in dire need of economic resurgence. Between 2008 and 2010, Tony Blair visited Libya four times, doing business with Gaddafi’s son Saif el-Islam Gaddafi and with Mohammed Layas, Head of the LIA (Libyan Investment Authority) on behalf of JP Morgan.9 Gaddafi had supposedly made amends in the form of surrendering two suspected Libyans to be tried at The Hague for their role in the bombing of Pan Am 103, surrendering his Weapons of Mass Destruction Program, severing ties with terrorists organizations, accepting responsibility for the Pan Am 103 bombing, and paying $2.7 billion in compensation to the victims of the bombing. Having been hailed back into the “Concert of Nations,” Gaddafi undertook to tour world capitals.

In December 2007, Gaddafi was greeted in Paris by Sarkozy with the highest honors. Nothing was refused him. He was even allowed to set up tent at the Elysée. On that occasion, high level exclusive discussions were had between France and Libya for a deal that would guarantee France the supply of military equipment to Libya. In July 2010, an important French delegation in Tripoli had been negotiating the signature of several lucrative military armament contracts with Libyan authorities for two weeks. Gaddafi was poised to purchase from Dassault Aviation, Thales, MBDA, and CMN 14 Rafale fighter jets, important communication materials, some radars, and a modern naval fleet. This was potentially a 4.5 billion-euro market, a huge oxygen tank for the struggling French economy hit by the global economic crisis.

Built in the mid-1980s, the French Rafale, a fighter jet with dubious performance, had never been sold outside of France before Gaddafi’s prospective purchase. If Gaddafi’s acquisitions materialized, it could be a confidence booster for the Rafale, and other markets could open up for France’s military aviation industry, especially as Brazil and India were waiting to see how Libya would rate its new acquisitions. The deal with Gaddafi went bust and, in a domino effect, Brazil acquired Gripen jets from Swedish Saab, instead, and India gave itself more time to shop around.10 Sarkozy, who had hoped to be the French president that would finally sell a Rafale, was disheartened and humiliated, especially after so much drumbeat around a possible first sale of the Rafale in more than 23 years, and the ensuing scorns and ridicules he harvested at home. Gaddafi was going to pay for making a fool of Sarkozy’s Napoleonic ego. In a twinkling of an eye, the good client of a few weeks earlier turned out to be a dictator. On March 13, 2011, at the Elysée, Sarkozy greeted the first Libyan opposition government in exile and pledged his country’s support to Gaddafi’s opposition.

A month earlier, social protests by Libyans demanding better living conditions and a more democratic system had put Colonel Gaddafi at odds with the opposition in Libya. The protesters had become armed militias attacking Libyan army outposts, and Gaddafi ordered his police to respond with disproportionate force. This was opportune: by violently cracking down on the protests, Gaddafi had handed the West a priceless occasion to rehash its worn-out sentence–“killing his own people,” as opposed to killing other peoples, as is customary for Western powers—and an invaluable pretext to do away with him. On February 26, 2011, a French-sponsored resolution (Resolution 1970-2011) was voted by the United Nations Security Council to refer Gaddafi to the International Criminal Court, to impose an arm embargo on Libya, to inflict a travel ban on Gaddafi, his relatives and his associates, and to freeze Libya’s economic assets on member states’ territories to be purportedly used at a later time for the Libyan people or to be used by member states for “justified extraordinary expenses”. Resolution 1970-2011 also set up a committee to monitor the sanctions imposed on the Libyan government. The sanctions did little to inhibit Gaddafi’s crackdown on the protests, and France, through its Foreign Minister Alain Juppé, introduced another resolution (Resolution 1973-2011) on March 17, 2011, which was successfully voted on by the UN Security Council to establish a no-fly-zone over Libyan territory. Following Sarkozy’s previous call for Gaddafi to resign, with Resolution 1973-2011, the Security Council officially affirmed the illegitimacy of Gaddafi’s government.11

Upon the adoption of Resolution 1973-2011, Juppé sententiously spoke of the right of the Libyan people to “breathe the fresh air of democracy” and of the international community’s responsibility to “help the people of [Libya] build a new future.” Mark Lyall Grant, the United Kingdom’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, urged NATO and the Arab League on behalf of the United Kingdom to act fast in order to free the Libyan people from a government that has “lost legitimacy.” For Peter Witting of Germany, it was important to send Gaddafi and his associates the message that “their time [was] over and that they must relinquish power immediately.” For U.S Ambassador to the United Nations Suzan Rice, the saintly Security Council had “responded to the Libyan people’s cry for help.”12 On March 16, 2011, when Euronews asked Gaddafi’s eldest son about his response to France’s, and especially Sarkozy’s ardor to intervene in Libya, Saif-al-Islam Gaddafi accused Sarkozy of hypocrisy and asked that the French President return $50 million of Libyan money allegedly given him by his father to finance his 2007 presidential campaign. Saif threatened to publish proof of the not-so-legal transaction.

First of all, Sarkozy must return the money he received from Libya to finance his electoral campaign. We did finance his campaign, and we do have proofs of that. We are ready to reveal everything. The first thing we want this clown to do is to return this money to the Libyan people. We gave him this money because we expected him to work in favor of the Libyan people, but he has deceived us. Return our money. We have all the details, the bank accounts, the documents, the transfer operations. We will reveal everything soon.13

First, denied by Sarkozy and dismissed by the French as a desperate move by the son of a cornered dictator, Saif’s allegations were confirmed on October 25, 2011, by former Libyan Prime Minister Baghdadi Ali-al Mamoudi in a Tunisian court. Subsequent investigations by French judges revealed a few disturbing elements, but no smoking gun; and key Libyan witnesses that had much to lose by confirming Saif’s story, took the safe road and refuted it. The story of Gaddafi’s money into Sarkozy’s campaign gained traction again when in a documentary aired in 2013 and in 2014 by France Télévisions Gaddafi’s former interpreter, Moftah Missouri, confirmed that the Libyan leader told him personally that Sarkozy had received from him $20 million; a revelation that in April 2013 prompted a French judge to order that Sarkozy’s personal phone, along with those of two of his former ministers, Brice Hortefeux and Claude Gueant, be tapped. The surveillance of Sarkozy’s phone conversations did reveal at least that he was concerned enough to try to obstruct the investigations against him, when, on the very days of the two incriminating broadcasts, he phoned Patrick Calvar, the Director of Internal Intelligence Office to inquire whether Calvar was still loyal to him and whether he intended to subpoena Gaddafi’s interpreter. Gaddafi used to tape all his communications and archive them. Coincidentally, all records of Gaddafi’s conversations have disappeared with the NATO bombing of Tripoli. A French investigation team still hopes to recover them as they seem to be at this point the only material evidences likely to explain the former French President’s relations with the fallen Libyan Leader.14

In any case, after March 16, 2011, Sarkozy’s enthusiasm to go to war against Gaddafi became obsessional. It all took a personal coloration. It was no longer “for humanitarian purpose” that Sarkozy was going to war; it was more for the purpose of saving his political career. If proven—and Sarkozy’s attempts at obstructing justice indicated that he was not as clean as he had claimed to be—Saif’s allegations could sink his public and personal lives. A French president before him had fallen upon evidence of corruption, and Sarkozy would not be another disgraced French president. Upon the Saif’s threat to release the evidence that his father had financed Sarkozy’s political campaign in a quid pro quo arrangement, Sarkozy’s agitations turned epileptic. The French president wasted no time to lobby his peers’ support at the UN in favor of an airstrike against Gaddafi. So, hardly had UN Resolution 1973-2011 been voted when the French air force was out pounding Gaddafi’s positions, apparently to prevent the Libyan leader from massacring his own people. Since we know that France has really never cared about Africans’ lives, since we know that France has always abided by de Gaulle’s dearest maxim that “France has no friends but only interests,” Sarkozy’s alacrity to “save African lives” by attacking Gaddafi under whose feet, just a few months ago he unfurled the red carpet, rang suspect.15

Could it be that through his precipitous airstrike, Sarkozy was, among other hidden motives, trying to cover up some embarrassing evidence? Just like his predecessor Valerie Giscard d’Estaing in Central Africa? The Euro-American power’s purported intention to save lives and insure the pursuit of democracy in Libya was a fallacy. The West’s true impulses for wanting the Libyan leader out of the picture resided elsewhere. The motivations were personal, economic, and geopolitical. Gaddafi was working for the betterment of the African continent, and as such, against the continuation of the Euro-American dominance in Africa. As noted Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, “at the center of the US philosophy is only one thing: ‘We are number one and everybody else has to respect that’ … the United States wants all the same to dominate the world and cannot merely be a first among equals.”16 As we shall see, in Africa, Gaddafi was the only head of state who, not only could undermine this American hegemonic proclivity, but also had the political will and the social and economic program as well as the financial means to shift the world center of influence from North to South.

Africa is one of the most resourceful continents in terms of geological and agricultural riches. However, the elites of Africa are also the most impressionable. Elsewhere, we have treated of the African elites’ seduction with an idea of globalization whose principal theorem is to make the black continent the perpetual camel of the world and the transporter—as opposed to transformer—of Africa’s riches to the “First world”.17 Gaddafi had understood that in order to emerge as a political and economic power to be contended with, Africa would have to dis-alienate itself, mentally and materially. The elites of post-colonial Africa—most of whom are direct products or progeny of the yields of the colonial school and of the colonial church of mental estrangement that taught them to hate themselves and love everything Occidental—will need to come out of their stupor and break the spell of maintenance and perpetuation of the ideology of Western dominance. Gaddafi’s proud posture, his proposed re-articulation of Africa’s social lives around African values, was meant to outfit the African elites with a sense of worth and reverse their mental dependence on the West. Materially, Gaddafi was placing African nations in the necessary conditions for them to reject Western countries’ poisoned gifts of aid and loans. Gaddafi’s active Pan-Africanism was outfitting several Sub-Saharan African countries with economic infrastructures that could free them from their abusive rapports with the West, and especially France. Nearly all the Sub-Saharan African countries benefited from Gaddafi’s generous Community of Sahel-Saharan States Investment Bank lodged in Tripoli. In every African country, Gaddafi’s financial footprints were noticeable at every level of development, from tourism to heavy industry.

Of course, while leading African nations to develop their own investment systems and emancipate themselves from their manipulative “friendship” with the Euro-American world, Gaddafi had his own dream of becoming the Fundamental Leader in Africa. On August 28, 2008, in Benghazi, Gaddafi was inaugurated “King of kings” at a ceremony that he orchestrated, and which gathered more than 200 African traditional kings and chiefs as well as some African mayors. Another accolade for Gaddafi, who just a year earlier was a pariah on world stage! This was all it took for French newspapers to turn apoplectic and belittle all those who took part in the crowning ceremony. Gaddafi, L’Express wrote, “was accompanied by seven African ‘kings’ in traditional costume covered in shiny metal.”18 Notice the disdainful quotations around “kings”. Notice the contemptible mention of, not gold, but “shining metal”. In other words, These African kings were not kings in the real sense of the term. They were not kings like would be the King of Spain, the Queen of Denmark, or the Queen of England. And these pseudo-kings, who wanted to pass for “real” kings, were bedecked in “shining metal”. In other words, Africa, the continent of gold and diamonds, which for the last 600 years has been pillaged by the Euro-American swashbucklers, could only afford “shining metals” for its not-so-kings. Perhaps L’Express is right, in that Africa’s precious metals are to be found in the coffers of the Euro-American banks. Still, what baseness! What a discharge of uncontrolled abhorrence!

It was not just the Euro-American imperialist power that was afraid of Gaddafi’s geopolitical positioning. In Africa, too, a certain African elite infected with the poison of self-hatred saw Gaddafi as a threat to its power; a power that it has held thanks to its allegiance to rapacious Occident’s neo-colonial program. Many of Gaddafi’s African peers, though they did glean from his bountiful reserve of petrodollars, secretly loathed him. It is even remarkable that it was the African heads of state whose countries benefited the most from Gaddafi’s not-so-disinterested kindness—lets us admit it—that failed to come to his defense when he needed them most. It is remarkable that they even supported the West’s assault on Libya. And yet, they had more to gain with Gaddafi’s presence than with his absence. Gaddafi, at least, was investing in Africa, which could not be said of most of his African peers nor of the Euro-American powers that usually give with one hand and take back ten-fold with the other. The African leaders who have benefited from Gaddafi’s generous donations to later turn on him were simply still under the spell of the slave mentality that caused the house Negro to prefer the comfortable bondage in the Master’s House to the uncertain future in liberty. The mentally enslaved African leaders enjoyed little dictatorial powers the Euro-American coalition afforded them under bondage and secretly loathed Gaddafi, whom they perceived as a threat to their privileges. The West, in its assassination of Gaddafi, was going to make use of this brotherly suspicion.

The imperial powers of Europe and America cannot stomach the idea of a unified and competitive Africa. The Euro-American powers cannot envision, with serenity, an Africa that emerges to become a serious alternative to them on world stage. China had placed them on unstable grounds. India was threatening to shove them to the margin of indispensability. Should Africa rise undisturbed, they could become totally irrelevant. Of all the African leaders capable of putting Greedy West out of business in Africa, Gaddafi’s was the most formidable. Gaddafi believed that African states should make it their mid-term objective to leave the Bretton Woods institutions, these insatiable organizations that have thriven by cultivating misery in Africa. Gaddafi was on his way to enfranchising Africa from the international usurers that the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are in reality.

In “Les vraies raisons de la guerre en Libye,” Jean-Paul Pougala enumerates some of the grievances that the West had against Gaddafi, which are some of the real motives of the Euro-American war against the Libyan President. The West had never forgiven Gaddafi for freeing Africa from its stifling information tutelage by offering the continent its first Regional African Satellite Communication Organization (RASCOM) in 2006. Before RASCOM, as notes so perceptibly Pougala, calling from and to Africa was the costlier communication in the world. For this service, Europe would bill Africa $500 million per year. If Africa wanted its own satellite in order to circumvent this hefty annual tab from Europe, the continent would have to come up with $400 million. Gaddafi disbursed ¾ of the money needed so that Africa would not have to borrow it from the gluttonous lenders of international finance, the rest coming from the African Development Bank and the West African Development Bank. Another one of Gaddafi’s ventures was to contribute to the creation of three African banks, precisely a $42 billion African Monetary Fund to correct the rapacious activities of the IMF in Africa, and which would be headquartered in Yaoundé, Cameroun, an African Central Bank, headquartered in Abuja, Nigeria, and an African Investments Bank, headquartered in Sirte, Libya.19 These were Gaddafi’s biggest projects for Africa. His militant economic Pan-Africanism was a threat to the West’s hegemonic intentions in Africa. The development of these financial institutions, as Celestin Bedzigui pointed out, would have accelerated African countries’ enfranchisement from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, both instruments of the Euro-American maintenance of Africa into debts and in a perpetual state of backwardness, and would have brought the end of the CFA franc, the currency that 14 former French colonies are forced to use. Furthermore, Gaddafi’s economic influence on the world stage was growing at a proportion that could not be to the liking of the Euro-American imperial power: “The combination of water and oil has given Libya a sound economic platform. Ideally placed as the ‘Gateway to Africa’, Libya [was] in good position to play an increasingly influential role in the global economy.”20

In fact, in the 1950s, oil exploration in the Libyan southern desert had unexpectedly uncovered a huge basin of fresh water about 40,000 years old. If exploited, the aquifer could supply Libyans with fresh water for the next 200 years. Furthermore, its exploitation could be considerably less expensive than desalinating seawater or importing overpriced water from Europe as was the case. With the technical know-how of South Korea, Turkey, Germany, Japan, the Philippines, and the United Kingdom, in 1984, Gaddafi injected $25 billion of Libyan oil money in what his fellow countrymen proudly coined “the eighth wonder of the world,” a system of underground pipelines to bring much needed fossil water from the desert to the Libyan people. Gaddafi’s Pharaonic “Great Man-Made River Project”, as Libyans noted was a turning point: “The water changed lives. For the first time in our history there was water in the tap for washing, shaving, showering … the quality of life is better now, and it’s impacting the whole country;”21 and, indeed, it was. Thanks to the GMMRP, 130,000 hectares of land were irrigated to make new farms; lands were distributed to small farmer to grow produce and supply the local markets, large farms were established to produce export crops, such as wheat, oat, and barley. For Europe, the GMMRP not only meant that Libya would no longer rely on its costly water market, but it also meant that Libya was henceforth targeting the European markets and becoming a formidable economic force to reckon with. This was more than the Euro-American imperial power could stomach. Gaddafi, the arrogant leader from Africa who could dared to dictate his economic rules to the Euro-American power, had to be stopped.

Besides killing any hope of Africa’s economic independence by eliminating Gaddafi, the West, like a throng of predatory Vikings, had its eyes on the huge riches to loot in the ensuing chaos of a war against Gaddafi. Libya was a huge reservoir of oil and gas, for which Europe also has a voracious appetite. Furthermore, the estimated $150 billion Libyan foreign investment portfolio, which was managed by the Libyan Investment Authority (LIA) had cash-stricken West green with envy. Just before the military raid on Libya, the Euro-American ruling circles looted these funds in the greatest act of piracy. They were helped by Mohamed Layas, the representative of the Libyan Investment Authority, who, in a January 20 diplomatic correspondence published by WikiLeaks, informed the US Ambassador in Tripoli that LIA had deposited $32 billion in US banks. Five weeks later, on 28 February, the US Treasury reportedly « froze » these assets. This money which, according to US official constituted the « the largest sum of money ever blocked in the United States, » Washington declared, would be safeguarded « in trust for the future of Libya. » In reality, the money was used to revitalize the debt-stricken sinking US economy. A few days later, the European Union, too, “froze” 45 billion euros of Libyan funds, apparently for the same purpose.22

For Sarkozy, besides looting Gaddafi’s country, would it not be even better to resuscitate France’s economy by selling a few of the country’s unwanted Rafale fighter jets? For, after all, one of the main reasons why the Rafale has remained unsold is that, contrary to the Mirages fighter jets that became popular after Israel tested them during the six-day war, the Rafale’s trumpeted technological prowess had never been verified on the battle field. So, Libya was also to be the testing ground for the clientless French jets. Thoughtless French troops had spilled the beans of Sarkozy’s macabre plans in Libya. Indeed, whoever had seen the news on French TF1 on March 25, 2011, and had decided to go back to the same site the following day to review the coverage of the war in Libya would notice one thing: The news video reportage on French airplane carrier Charles de Gaulle has been shortened. The embarrassing portion of the reporting, where a careless French soldier stated as-a-matter-factually that the airstrike on Gaddafi’s army offered great opportunities to test new military equipment and to train new pilots was edited out of the tape. The order to amend the news footage came certainly from the Elysée, as it is a fact that the French media is one of the most policed media in the world despite statements to the contrary. The French military sorties against Gaddafi were hoped to make France’s target weapon buyers, India and Brazil, take notice of the Rafale’s firing power. Testing new weapons in Africa in order to recruit new buyers has long been part of France’s marketing campaign. Mitterrand had done it in Rwanda. Creating havoc in Africa as a means to augment the French economy is a fashionable strategy among France’s social engineers.

In its exceptional barbarism, the Euro-American imperial power has in fact destroyed the countries it purportedly came to save. As James Petras and Robin Eastman-Abaya note, like in Iraq where the West’s intervention has resulted in “well over a million civilian deaths, four million refugees and the systematic destruction of a complex society and its infrastructure, including its water supplies and sewage treatment, irrigation, electricity grid, factories, not to mention research centers, schools, historical archives, museums and Iraq’s extensive social welfare system,” in Libya, in the early days of the raid, the bombing had caused the total destruction of civilian infrastructures, of airports and roads and seaports, of communication centers, the flight of scores of multinational corporations, and the mass migration of hundreds of thousands of people from Asia, the Middle East, and Sub-Saharan Africa.23 The most lasting damage done to Libya by the Euro-American power has been the foreclosure of the country’s prospects for democracy and development. The Euro-American power has killed the future of Libya; the Euro-American power has ensured that Libya should never again be a threat to its hegemony in Africa; the Euro-American power has made sure that Libya should never get back onto

the rails of democracy, by transforming into a thousand tiny chaotic spaces, each controlled by a warlord and his army of thugs, a country that, despite some political imperfections, invested oil money into one of the largest civil engineering venture in the world, in order to bring to his people, from miles underneath the scorching desert sand, through a 4000-kilometer network of pipelines, potable water, a most fundamental human right.

In July 2011, [the Euro-American power] not only bombed the Great Man-Made River water supply pipeline near Brega, but also destroyed the factory that produces the pipes to repair it, claiming in justification that it was used as “a military storage facility” and that “rockets were launched from there”. Six of the facility’s security guards were killed in the NATO attack, and the water supply for the 70 percent of the population who depend on the piped supply for personal use and for irrigation has been compromised with this damage to Libya’s vital infrastructure.24

The Euro-American power’s attack on Libya was a grave breach of the Libyans’ human rights, if only for the destruction of Gaddafi’s water project. But there was more than that. Schools, hospitals, personal properties acquired by thousands of Libyans over many years, jobs vital to families’ subsistence, and the serenity of the Libyans were destroyed.

Gaddafi’s execution after his capture and the fact that his body was put on display in a circus-like carnival in Misurata for old and very young to taunt were indications of the true genealogical spirit of the Libyan new found “democracy” under the saintly aegis of Europe and America. The signatories of the Libyan “democracy” had just revealed the measure of their “independence”. It was couched in human rights abuse and lawlessness. Intellectual honesty demands that we ask ourselves whether a democracy that has lynching at its very core is a sustainable democracy. Is it not rather the fact that the moral urgency of such a democracy is already thwarted by its very performativity? After wishing for and ordering the assassination of Gaddafi, the Euro-American operatives came out exhibiting their sense of exceptional ethics. Yes, they do kill. But theirs are clean killings, sanitized killings, and not the indecorous and undignified butchery offered the world by “these Arabs”, one could read in their declarations of outrage. For Andrew Mitchell, the International Development Secretary,

[the circumstance of Gaddafi’s murder] was clearly a very confusing moment and I would have preferred that he had faced justice either in a Libyan court or in the International Criminal Court in The Hague, but it is difficult for us in Britain to put ourselves into the position of the soldiers and those who were involved in the capture of Gaddafi and I think the best accounts were those that have come from the Libyans themselves.25

For Phillip Hammond, the British Defense Secretary, “it’s certainly not the way we [civilized people] do things, it’s not the way we would have liked it to have happened … The fledgling Libyan government will understand that its reputation in the international community is a little bit stained by what happened.” To which one is tempted to ask: What of the reputation of the Euro-American power that has commissioned the total destruction of Libya, the murdering of thousands of innocent Libyans, and the assassination of Gaddafi, all under the false pretense of saving Libyan lives and building a democratic society in Libya?

Today, Libya is burning; Iraq is burning; Egypt is burning; Syria is burning. Imperialist West is scurrying away from the crime scenes. The United States, Great Britain, and France have packed their belongings, closed their embassies, and fled from the furnace they have helped ignite. The Occidental proclivity to rush into a foreign country, take it to the brink of collapse and backwardness, and then, when things become unbearable, run away and blame the autochthonous populations for not being up to the principles of “democracy and civilization” will always amaze decency. All the social engineers in the West who had theorized the erection of superlative societies with the fall of Saddam, Gaddafi, Mubarak, and Bashar are spinning a new story, erasing and rewriting pages of the “History Book” which they have become expert at falsifying. Will imperialist West once, just once, concede that being endowed with a high degree of gluttony and destructive drive does not necessarily give one the primacy of human intelligence? Will imperialist West admit its responsibility in this long, distressing Arab tragedy at play before our eyes, which, hitherto, in its precipitous self-congratulatory gesture, it had baptized “the Arab Spring” and which has turned out to be a very long winter?

A Most Profitable Partnership

Obama was right to be elated and proud when he declared that “all of this was done without putting a single US troop on the ground.” Of course, the operation had cost America at least $2 billion according to Vice-President Joe Biden; but this was small change compared to what was spent in other wars. Furthermore, America had gained at least $32 billion of Libyan money. This was a profitable war for the Euro-American coalition. Indeed, on this April 3, 2011, exactly seventeen days after France has battled at the United Nations to have UN Resolution 1973-2011 authorizing war on Gaddafi adopted, a letter signed by the Libyan National Transitional Council and destined to the Emir of Qatar, and a copy of which was obtained by French paper Libération, indicated that French oil exploration companies, of which Total is the leader, had played an important role in effecting the Euro-American war in Libya: The Libyan CNT had guaranteed France an additional 542,000 barrels of oil per day in Libya for its support to topple Gaddafi, on top of the 1,550,000 barrels it was exploiting before the beginning of the West’s offensive on the Libyan people. As the leadership of the CNT promised, “Regarding the agreement on oil signed with France in exchange for recognition of our Council,” the letter stated, “… as the legitimate representative of Libya, we have delegated the brother Mahmoud [Shammam, Minister in charge of media at the CNT] to sign this agreement assigning 35 percent of total crude oil to the French in exchange for full and ongoing support to our Council.”26 The chaos that ensued the Euro-American shelling of Libya and the assassination of Gaddafi, the fact that Libya is now a lawless state divided into four unruly zones (Benghazi, Sirte, Tripoli, and Pheasant) does not inconvenience Total the least. Despite the chaos—and some critics would suggest that it is precisely thanks to the chaos—Total continues to thrive in Libya, undisturbed.27 In fact, as remarks Ivorian economist Tiémélé,

In spite of the official clamors and agitations cynically advocating defense of democratic values and respect for human rights worldwide, the presence and activities of TOTAL and other major Western oil companies in Libya eventually convince us of the hypocrisy of the Western leaders, for whom, in fact, only their petty interests matter … Here lies the answer to all these wars conveniently promoted over the recent decade in countries with the largest oil reserves (Iraq, Libya, Syria, threats against Iran, and Sudan then South Sudan, Ivory Coast, Mali, Central African Republic, Chechnya and Asian countries of the former USSR, the threat of war against Russia itself, instability in Nigeria with the sect Boko Haram, etc.).28