When History pronounces its verdict upon Colonel Gaddafi, it will have a bewildering assortment of comments about him to choose from. One US President (Ronald Reagan, 1986) described him as "flaky" (ie, mad), while others have described him as "..a great guy believing in God" (Mohammed al-Fayed). Private Eye recently pointed out that in 2009, the UK sent an SAS team to train the Libyan armed forces. The Foreign Office (FO) said that this was: "...ongoing co-operation with Libya in the field of defence". Two years later, the government sent SAS teams to rescue UK citizens from what the FO calls: "...human rights violations by the Libyan authorities".
All this, of course, is as a result of trying to win the Colonel over to "our" side. This is the man whose regime supplied the IRA with arms, blew up an aircraft over Scotland and whose embassy staff shot dead a London policewoman in broad daylight. All pretty sickening, really.
Anyway, now it looks as if the UK and other countries are riding to the rescue of the Libyan rebels. While the concern of western governments for the fate of the Libyan people may be seen (not least by themselves) as commendable, one does wonder why no such military support has been given to the people of Zimbabwe. It is also remarkable that no support, moral or material, has been given to the protesting people of Bahrain, Syria or Yemen.
One TV pundit said today that Al-Qaeda has been strangely quiet throughout the recent events in the Middle East. I do not find it strange. I'm no expert, but I believe that Al-Qaeda will be watching the Libyan situation very carefully. They are probably waiting for the victory of one side or the other. When the outcome is decided, they will join in - on the side of the losers. If Gaddafi loses, he has said that he is prepared to ally with Al-Qaeda; if he wins, they will exploit the bitterness and anger of the anti-Gaddafi rebels against the West, who will be seen as having abandoned them.
Gaddafi has been panned for saying that Al-Qaeda is behind the Libyan Uprising, but there are some facts here that are worth considering. It is not generally known, but Libya was the first country to ask for an Interpol arrest warrant to arrest Osama Bin Laden - in 1998. Yet, according to Mark Curtis in "Secret Affairs", US and UK intelligence "buried the arrest warrant". It seems that this was because MI6 had been involved in a failed plot to assassinate Gaddafi with an Al-Qaeda affiliate group called the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group. Five months after the arrest warrant was issued, Al-Qaeda bombed US embassies in Africa.
Posterity, like John Osborne and Oasis, will look back in anger - and much disgust.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I'm not sure we know the truth of the Lockerbie massacre, but in general what you have written simply goes to show the duplicity and self-serving nature of Western governments. We support, trade with, arm to the teeth and train the armed forces of these autocrats as long as they don't dirty our backyards, and provide the oil we want. Zimbabwe has no oil, so there's no interest in overthrowing the leader of a country that is nowadays of little interest to us. So all of our rhetoric and acting as the world's policeman simply means we protect our own interests, which is just another way of saying "might is right", a modern version of the old gunboat diplomacy. I'd have marginally less contempt for our leaders if they were honest about their motives.
ReplyDeleteI don't know about posterity - there's a lot of people now looking at what's going on with disgust.