The Libyan War
Crime
By Israel Shamir
The chief prosecutor of the
International Criminal Court announced on Thursday that
he would soon stand before the United Nations and report
on alleged Libyan war crimes. We can only hope that his
brief will include the latest war crime, the murder of
Qaddafi’s family, his son and three grandchildren, and
the assassination attempt on the life of the Libyan
leader on May Day, 2011. Cameron, Sarkozy, the NATO
field commanders and the Danish air crew should all be
indicted for this crime.
UNSC Resolution 1970 is not a licence
to commit mass murder. The resolution simply established
a no-fly zone; it was designed to stem the violence, not
turn Tripoli into a killing field. This is a clear case
of coldly calculated targeted murder, as ruthless and
brutal as any other form of political assassination. The
date of the operation was known well beforehand, and had
already been openly discussed in late April by the
Russian Secret Service SVR (External Intelligence
Service). On April 29th, a Russian netzine
published an
article by Kirill Svetitsky who quoted an anonymous
source within SVR:
There will be an attempt to kill
Muammar Qaddafi on or before May 2. The governments of
France, Britain and the US decided on it for the warfare
in Libya does not proceed well for the anti-Libyan
alliance: the regular army has substantial gains;
Bedouin tribes entered the fight on the government’s
side; in Benghazi, a “second front” was opened by the
armed local militias who are tired of rebels’ presence,
their incessant fights and robberies.
But the main reason for the timing is
that the Italian parliament plans to discuss Italy’s
involvement in Libyan campaign on May 3. Until now,
decisions were taken by Berlusconi, but there are strong
differences of opinion within the government coalition
regarding the Libyan war, and they will probably bring
the government down on May 3, and Italy will effectively
leave the anti-Libyan alliance. It is likely to have a
domino effect. For this reason leaders of the UK, the US
and France decided to eliminate Qaddafi not later than
May 2d, before the session of the Italian parliament on
May 3d.
Unlike many Internet predictions,
this one turned out to be timely and exact. On May 1st,
the US, France and the UK made a failed attempt on the
life of Muammar Qaddafi, although they did succeed in
killing his son and three grandchildren. Such unusual
operative foreknowledge implies that Western leaders had
advised the Russians of the planned attack, and that the
SVR had then leaked the plans.
The attack itself imitated the
Israeli technique of “targeted killings”. The Israeli
Air Force is
famous for dropping a one-ton (1800 pounds) bomb on
a Gazan house in an attempt to liquidate Salah Shehadeh,
a Hamas leader, in 2002. As “collateral damage” 13
civilians, mostly women and children, were killed and
many others injured. Among the dead were Shehadeh's wife
Layla and his 15-year-old daughter Iman, who happened to
be with him in the house at the time. This act of mass
murder was publicly described as “a war crime”, and
Israeli military personnel were later indicted in Spain
and the UK.
If God does not punish Las Vegas
then he owes an apology to Sodom,
quipped Jay Leno. Likewise, if the initiators of the
Qaddafi assassination attempt are not called to justice,
then Europe owes an apology to the Israeli military.
This brutal assassination attempt
should open the eyes of those in Europe and the US who
still believe that this war is ‘just’, or at least
‘justifiable’. The true reasons behind Western
neocolonial interventions in the Middle East now stand
revealed to all. One small example: the same source in
Russian Intelligence also leaked a
document, a letter from Libyan rebel leaders
promising France 35% of all Libyan oil. So much for
humanitarian reasons!
It appears more and more that the
whole Libyan affair was done up with smoke and mirrors.
Initially the Benghazi Uprising was nothing more than a
small local riot; the rebellion was unknown in other
cities. Soon, however, the government was destabilized
by Al-Jazeera, as the popular Arab network broadcast the
“news” that Muammar Qaddafi and his sons had fled the
country for Venezuela and that his black mercenaries
were about to unleash another holocaust on hapless
Libyans. Al-Jazeera’s lies have proven to be more
damaging even than NATO’s bombs; they have fought
Qaddafi tooth and nail, from the first rebel yell to the
last foul scene of murder. Even today, while the bodies
of Qaddafi’s family were spread before Libyan churchmen,
al-Jazeera continued to broadcast denials from Benghazi.
Stephen Lendman correctly notes that “Jazeera has
become a more efficient propaganda machine against the
Arab minds than the BBC ever was”. The uprising was led
by Guantanamo detainees like
Abu Sufian Hamuda bin Kumu. Perhaps they should be
put onto the next flight back to the USA: thanks, but
no thanks.
The Libyan campaign deserves to end
like its predecessor the Suez campaign – with the
embarrassing withdrawal of NATO forces, and the sooner
the better. Enough is enough! Let the Libyans solve
their differences themselves.
Syria après Libya?
Even as Libya settles into the
typical intervention quagmire, developments in Syria are
starting to heat up. While Russian President Medvedev
did manage to override his own Foreign Office and
Putin’s government, pulling off an abstention during the
UNSC vote on the Libyan intervention, there is not the
slightest chance for a similar trick regarding Syria.
Syria has a Russian naval base in Tartus, practically
the only base Russia has managed to keep out of the many
Soviet bases lost, from Cuba to Vietnam. Moreover, Syria
has a large Orthodox Christian community that openly
supports President Bashar el Assad and is plainly
nervous about the possible success of the Dera’a
uprising. They believe the rebels are Salafist
anti-Christian fanatics armed by the Saudis. Russia has
always been the traditional protector of the Christian
Orthodox in the Middle East, and is not likely to renege
on its responsibilities towards these communities.
The Syrian Christian view of the
protesters was expressed by the Latin Patriarch of
Antioch: “…
some groups whose main objective is
to provoke a violent response from the government are
infiltrating the protests that originally grew from
social and economic problems. Tension is stoked to the
point of gaining the international community’s
condemnation. There are criminals involved in the
protest; there is a massive introduction of weapons in
the country to provoke a confrontation... Sure, there
are young, frustrated people, but many say that among
them are criminals and even fundamentalist Muslims who
cry for jihad. I think the tactics of a phony war are
being used against Syria.”
It’s likely that Russia will defend
Syria even if its government decides to crush the
rioters with an iron fist, just as Hafez el Assad
quelled the 1982 Hama revolt. There is a realpolitik
basis for this unconditional support: Bahrain is the
base of the US Fifth fleet, and that’s why Bahrain’s
rulers were allowed to suppress their “freedom seekers”;
Syria is the main base for the Russian Mediterranean
fleet and Russia intends to keep it that way. But there
is an additional reason as well: the Syrians and their
Russian friends believe that the riots are instigated by
foreign agencies: Saudis, Americans, Israelis. They
point out that the border town of Dera’a (besides being
the place where Lawrence of Arabia was flogged and
abused, by his own account in the Seven Pillars of
Wisdom) is a hotbed for militant Islamic radicalism
of the al Qaeda variety, and is located close to the
Jordanian city of Ramtha, another safe-house for Muslim
radicals heavily infiltrated by the Israeli secret
services.
A conspiracy theory? Perhaps, but it
is a theory confirmed by the conspirators themselves.
President Bashar el Assad was offered a
deal by the US Under Secretary of Defense for Policy
Michèle Flournoy: break your ties with Hezbullah and
Iran, and we will end the riots. Mostafa Zein of the
knowledgeable Dar al Hayyat
summed it up like this:
The United States has drafted a
roadmap for the Syrian regime, so that it may emerge
from its worsening crisis, suggesting that it holds the
magic key to make the protesters leave the streets.
Flournoy said: “Syria must distance itself from Iran and
join the Gulf states, as well as move forward in the
peace process with Israel”… The Syrian regime considers
such a roadmap to be a “conspiracy” targeting it from
within, after the failure of pressure on it from abroad.
As in the case of Qaddafi, the Syrian
leader is not totally blameless. But, like Qaddafi,
Bashar el Assad can make things better by trusting in
the Syrian people, namely:
§
By giving more freedom
to the Syrian people and less to his Mukhabarat,
the Internal Secret Service;
§
By correcting an unjust
distribution of wealth and government positions between
the religious and ethnic communities of Syria (the
minorities – Jews, Alawites, and Christians – have it
too good at the expense of the Sunni majority);
§
By allowing political
activity beyond the moribund Baath party;
§
By making peace with
Muslim believers;
§
By permitting economic
and social mobility and allowing elites to fail.
These goals can be obtained without
catastrophic cataclysms and so they should. Granted, the
Syrians have become bored with their staple diet of rice
and beans; they want more variety. However, this desire
must be achieved without destroying the country.
Syria is needed for the Middle East:
it is the centerpiece of Mashreq, the Fertile
Crescent, the only state in the region not subdued by
the US and Israel. It is the defender of Hezbullah and
an important partner of Iran. Syria is the home of Hamas
émigrés, home to hundreds of thousands of Palestinian
and Iraqi refugees. Syria is the last refuge for the
non-American Arab world. It is precious, and should be
saved.
In Israel, there are two schools
regarding Syria development: the conservatives and the
adventurers. The conservatives say: we lived for a
long time alongside the Assads, and it was safe; let us
keep it this way. The adventurers say: let us
undo Syria, break it to pieces, destroy Hezbollah,
eliminate Iran’s forward base and make the world safe
for a generation. Alarmingly, Netanyahu is
developing more and more connections to adventurers. He
may even try to attack Lebanon, thinking that Assad has
his hands too full to get involved. However, such an
attack might tempt Bashar el Assad to externalize his
political problem by meeting their challenge. He may
decide it is better to die a martyr in a war with the
Zionist enemy than suffer the fate of Saddam and
Qaddafi. David Hirst, the best British expert on the
Middle East, prophesied about this war in his recent
(2010) book Beware of Small States. This war may
become a turning point for the Middle East, with
far-reaching repercussions, including destruction of
Israel.
There is a way out: let Turkey don
the Ottoman mantle and guide the Middle East to safety.
With Russian, Iranian and Chinese support, Turkey will
be able to reassert its influence over its former
provinces torn away by French and British armies in
1917. Regional problems should be solved regionally,
without Western interference.
Edited by Paul Bennett