Tuesday, April 26, 2011

NATO, No Fly Zone for Syria, Yemen, Bahrain?

NATO, No Fly Zone for Syria, Yemen, Bahrain?
Written by Paul I. Adujie


500 peaceful protesters have been murdered by forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Syria is using tanks and heavy weapons to crackdown on peaceful protester and this is egregious and should be condemned by all lovers of democracy and freedoms.

This murderous and brutal political repression in Syria have been widely reported. And yet, NATO and France, Britain, America and their Arab enablers are pretending to be completely oblivious of the sameness and the identical nature of the humanitarian crises in Syria, Yemen as in Libya.

France led Britain, the US and NATO to invade Libya and engage in the overthrow of Libya’s longtime dictator and tyrant, Col. Moammar Gaddaffi with whom they need to settle scores. Western nations are at the onset of a process which they hope, culminates in the departure of Gaddaffi in a Regime Change plan.

Meanwhile, despite these regime change plans, weapons supplies to the rebels and all, by France, Britain, the US and NATO, these nations have ostentatiously and laboriously argued and insisted that their direct intervention in Libya was predicated upon the probability of humanitarian catastrophe which was ensuing or about to unfold

It is the case now, and it has been the case, that Syrian forces are mowing down Syrian citizens like flies. Syrian forces are using armored vehicles and other heavy military weapons, including tanks and assortments of personnel carriers.

In March, we point that France, Britain, the US and NATO are engaged in selfish and self-serving intervention in Libya.

Libya; Why Not Yemen, Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia etc
http://adujie-writings.blogspot.com/2011/03/libya-why-not-yemen-tunisia-egypt.html

We argued that the intervention were hypocritical and a double standard, given the fact that similar uprisings were unfolding in several North African and Middle Eastern nations. These other protests or political upheaval have been peaceful and without violence splinters in the coalitions of opposition to dictatorships in Tunisia, then Egypt, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia etc

Libyan opposition, or Libyan rebels, quite unlike the others in North Africa and the Middle East, were armed in their confrontation with Col. Gaddaffi and his paramilitary led by his sons

Col. Gaddaffi is reported to have over $40 billion investments in Italy. Gaddaffi also entered a multilateral agreement with Italy and other European nations, to act as a gatekeeper and bulwark against African migrants using North Africa as gateway to Europe. Gaddaffi’s favors to Europeans also included elaborate oil contracts. Gaddaffi in effect, enjoyed cozy relationships with Europeans and the Americans, a short while before the political uprising and unfolding civil war in Libya

Col. Gaddaffi is reported to also have over $33billion dollars cash money in America. All this, despite the fact that Gaddaffi has for decades been persona non grata in Europe and America, where he was labeled a madman and a terrorist. Gaddaffi was hated and derided, by western nations, perhaps deservedly so.

But how does anyone explain the oil contract deals with Libya by western nations? How does anyone explain the presence of billions of dollars of Libyan money, looted by Gaddaffi and his clan, accepted by these same western nations, with knowledge that Libyan citizens are being deprived of their money for national development?

How does anyone explain the fleeting, fluid and ever-shifting western nations’ policy on Gaddaffi-Libya?
Why should anyone now believe these same western nations, which have for decades lampooned Gaddaffi as a deranged buffoon, dictator, tyrant-totalitarian, while the same western nations have been acting as his bankers and partners in huge oil contract deals, including, oil contract deals in which Britain bargained away a Libyan jailed for terrorism rightly or wrongly, all in order to secure oil deals for British Petroleum.

And the United States similarly bargained and released a Libyan who was hitherto detained in Guantanamo on allegation of terrorism? France, Britain, the United States, Italy, western nations have been contradictory and duplicitous in their pronouncements and actions regarding Gaddaffi and Libya

The more we look, the clearer it clearly becomes, that the predicate for the intervention in Libya is not some starry-eyed altruistic and benevolence by France, Britain, the US through NATO.

Otherwise, there would have been the same or similar response to Syria, as Syria has openly engaged and embarked on deadly crackdown against unarmed peaceful protesters in Deraa, Homs and elsewhere in Syria and these deadly crackdown are similarly occurring in Yemen and Bahrain etc

There are additional proofs beyond doubt, to the effect that the intervention in Libya by NATO members was not, is not, motivated or predicated on humanitarianism.

Anyone who may have accepted this boldface propaganda and hypocrisy by western nations and their NATO, must do a rethink.

This is so because, at the present time, France, Italy and other European nations are now loudly and intensely resisting any attempts by refugees from Tunisia, Libya etc into their nations, ostensibly to prevent these refugees from disrupting the constipated order and settled lives inside Europe.

But wait! France, Britain and NATO were just arguing that their direct intervention in Libya was motivated and predicated upon preventing humanitarian catastrophes in Libya, by was of deaths, dislocations, brutalities visited on Libyans as a result of the contests for political power between Gaddaffi and the rebels?

The entire world, particularly those who may have swallowed the propaganda and disinformation messaging by western nations, should now be asking France, Italy and other European nations, why on earth, they are rejecting refugees from Libya?

Refugees or dislocations are part of the humanitarian crises are an outgrowth of the violent revolution going on in Libyan with ringing endorsement by France, Britain, the US, hence the NATO bombing intervention!

Furthermore, it is arguably more cost efficient, and cost effective, to care for, and look after refugees than to squander billions of dollars by way of NATO air bombardments in countless sorties! Bombardments which kills and maims, degrading structures and social amenities for Libyan lives.

Europeans are now barring refugees from Libya from entering France, Italy and other European nations, these Libyan refugees, are the same Libyan civilians, with propaganda value, Libyan civilians who are supposed to have been the rationale and formed the fulcrum of military intervention by NATO in Libya!

This singular act of barring the refugees from entries into Europe are clear indicators of the real motivation and foundation of intervention in Libya by western nations through NATO, it is not about the people of Libya, whether in Benghazi or in Tripoli and in-between! It is a hoax! France and Italy etc have the inalienable right to determine their immigration policies and with particular reference to these refugees from North Africa, but, why spend so much money to bomb structures in Libya to oblivion, and neglect the urgent care for the refugees?

The care for or neglect of these refugees are real litmus test for these western nations and their intervention in Libya, the published neglect of the refugees is putting a lie to the propaganda and claims of humanitarianism as the very foundation and predicate for NATO intervention in Libya!

It is now abundantly clear why France, Britain, the United States, the Arab League, the Gulf Council, through NATO, have not felt the need to intervene in Syria despite the fact that President Assad have used heavy military weapons, including armored cars, to murder peaceful protesters indiscriminately and most brutally!

Intervention in Libya by western nations through NATO, is clearly for their own purpose. The intervention in Libya is quite clearly selective. Otherwise, there are plenty reasons with implications for extreme and dire humanitarian catastrophes which have existed and persists in Somalia, Darfur Sudan, Congo and more recently, in Yemen, Syria, Bahrain etc

The intervention in Libya by western nations through their military organ, NATO, is clearly determined by what western nations often refer to as their vital national and strategic interests. And this so called vital interests, are often measured in metric tons of hydrocarbons and geo-strategic locations and the impacts as such, on geopolitical order of things and world order so-called!

Somalia has had and retained her failed nation-state for about twenty years, with attendant deaths and dislocations in the millions, but Somalia has no crude oil or gold and diamond, there are no spoils to be had upon intervention and thereafter, and the Cold War has since ended, and as such, Somalia is seen by western nation as having no geo-strategic importance currently.

In Darfur Sudan, President George W. Bush called the conflict, death and dislocations there, what it was, genocide, but, heck, President Bashir of Sudan had crude oil to dangle and that singular possession of prized hydrocarbon absolves dictator Bashir of Sudan of responsibility for genocide and ethnic cleansing and so, there were no NATO No-Fly-Zone for Sudan

It is not difficult to decipher the real reason for intervention in Libya by western nations’ NATO, even as these western nations continue to squabble amongst themselves for the spoils of their war of choice, the spoils of a would be post Gaddaffi Libya.

It is now public knowledge that many Central Intelligence Agency or CIA operatives are now the eyes and ears on the ground in Libya for the US and NATO; it is now also public knowledge, that President Nicholas Sarkozy of France have been hobnobbing with Libyan rebels.

Britain’s Prime Minister, David Cameron is similarly romancing with the rebels in Libya, who are seeking the ouster of Gaddaffi and his clan. And, a good number of western nations have already heightened the profile for the Libyan rebels in both political, diplomatic and commercial sense… oil contract deals are already being signed through Qatar as proxy for Libya and interested parties western nations!

And suddenly, Qatar is the epitome of democracy, freedom and liberty, with an agile national Air Force partnering with western nations’ NATO intervention in Libya? Qatar will be the proxy, the conduit and the nation which will be the funnel, in and out, oil from Libya and weapons, arms and ammunitions from western nations into Libya.

NATO’s intervention in Libya already looks like a deadlock, a stalemate and a deadly impasse wrapped in internecine intractable civil war. Col. Gaddaffi is surprisingly correct in his forecast or prediction, that a civil war would unfold in Libya, it is indeed unfolding!

Western nations are in the slippery slope of what in all probabilities would be a debacle and quagmire in Libya for them. As a matter of fact, discordant and cacophonous voices are already coalescing, calling the intervention in Libya mission creep or endless spiral to the bottom. The military intervention in Libya may turn out to be another lesson for western nations and their permanent double standards, hypocrisies and shortsightedness which prefers expediency over well thought out, reasoned and robust long term policy towards Africa and the Middle East.

Propaganda, plain and simple! It is propaganda and obfuscation and camouflage for western nations and NATO to pretend that the invading and intervening in Libya was warranted by their feigned concerns for humanitarian conditions brought about by Gaddaffi’s scotched earth policy of extermination which he had pronounced against armed rebellion by rebels against him.

Clearly, were concerns for humanitarian catastrophes or disasters were the determinant or deciding factor for intervention in Libya by France, Britain, the US and their military coalition apparatus NATO, it follows that, a No-Fly-Zone and direct intervention would have since taken place in Somalia, Darfur Sudan, the Congo, Palestine etc.

Israel killed 1400 Palestinians in January 2009 and The Goldstone Report makes this abundantly clear! The Goldstone Report and Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch, actually went as far as accusing Israel of War Crimes in the war in Gaza!

Why does the world look the other way in the view of these glaring, exceedingly glaring double standards, hypocrisies and selective interventions, say, in Libya and Ivory Coast?

A No-Fly-Zone and direct military intervention is now overdue, particularly in the face of hundred of Syrians murdered a few days ago by President Assad’s forces, ditto President Saleh murderous parades in Yemen, and similar direct intervention would have taken place against the tyrants in Bahrain.

There is clearly no difference in the state-sponsored heinous murders being perpetrated against innocent, unarmed civilians in Syria and Yemen etc, merely because these peaceful protesters demand democracy, political and economic reforms and freedoms to which we all aspire

The world should and must stand in defense, in support and protection for all those who seek democracy, due process, the rule of law worldwide.

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