This reflection first appeared in
Cuba’s Granma daily newspaper.
In contrast with what is happening in
Egypt and Tunisia, Libya occupies the first spot on the Human
Development Index for Africa and it has the highest life expectancy
on the continent. Education and health receive special attention from
the State. The cultural level of its population is without a doubt
the highest. Its problems are of a different sort. The population
wasn’t lacking food and essential social services. The country
needed an abundant foreign labor force to carry out ambitious plans
for production and social development.
For that reason, it provided jobs for
hundreds of thousands of workers from Egypt, Tunisia, China and other
countries. It had enormous incomes and reserves in convertible
currencies deposited in the banks of the wealthy countries from which
they acquired consumer goods and even sophisticated weapons that were
supplied exactly by the same countries that today want to invade it
in the name of human rights.
The colossal campaign of lies,
unleashed by the mass media, resulted in great confusion in world
public opinion. Some time will go by before we can reconstruct what
has really happened in Libya, and we can separate the true facts from
the false ones that have been spread.
Serious and prestigious broadcasting
companies such as Telesur saw themselves with the obligation to send
reporters and cameramen to the activities of one group and those on
the opposing side, so that they could inform about what was really
happening.
Communications were blocked, honest
diplomatic officials were risking their lives going through
neighborhoods and observing activities, day and night, in order to
inform about what was going on. The empire and its main allies used
the most sophisticated media to divulge information about the events,
among which one had to deduce the shreds of the truth.
Without any doubt, the faces of the
young people who were protesting in Benghazi, men, and women wearing
the veil or without the veil, were expressing genuine indignation.
One is able to see the influence that
the tribal component still exercises on that Arab country, despite
the Muslim faith that 95 percent of its population sincerely shares.
Imperialism and NATO—seriously
concerned by the revolutionary wave unleashed in the Arab world,
where a large part of the oil is generated that sustains the consumer
economy of the developed and rich countries—could not help but take
advantage of the internal conflict arising in Libya so that they
could promote military intervention. The statements made by the
United States administration right from the first instant were
categorical in that sense.
The circumstances could not be more
propitious. In the November elections, the Republican right-wing
struck a resounding blow on President Obama, an expert in rhetoric.
The fascist “mission accomplished”
group, now backed ideologically by the extremists of the Tea Party,
reduced the possibilities of the current president to a merely
decorative role in which even his health program and the dubious
economic recovery were in danger as a result of the budget deficit
and the uncontrollable growth of the public debt which were breaking
all historical records.
In spite of the flood of lies and the
confusion that was created, the United States could not drag China
and the Russian Federation to the approval by the Security Council
for a military intervention in Libya, even though it managed to
obtain, however, in the Human Rights Council, approval of the
objectives it was seeking at that moment. In regards to a military
intervention, the Secretary of State stated in words that admit not
the slightest doubt: “no option is being ruled out.”
The real fact is that Libya is now
wrapped up in a civil war, as we had foreseen, and the United Nations
could do nothing to avoid it, other than its own Secretary General
sprinkling the fire with a goodly dose of fuel.
The problem that perhaps the actors
were not imagining is that the very leaders of the rebellion were
bursting into the complicated matter declaring that they were
rejecting all foreign military intervention.
Various news agencies informed that
Abdelhafiz Ghoga, spokesperson for the Committee of the Revolution
stated on Monday the 28th that “‘The rest of Libya shall be
liberated by the Libyan people.’
“‘We are counting on the army to
liberate Tripoli’ assured Ghoga during the announcement of the
formation of a ‘National Council’ to represent the cities of the
country in the hands of the insurrection.
“‘What we want is intelligence
information, but in no case that our sovereignty is affected in the
air, on land or on the seas’, he added during an encounter with
journalists in this city located 1000 kilometers to the east of
Tripoli.
“The intransigence of the people
responsible for the opposition on national sovereignty was reflecting
the opinion being spontaneously manifested by many Libyan citizens to
the international press in Benghazi”, informed a dispatch of the
AFP agency this past Monday.
That same day, a political sciences
professor at the University of Benghazi, Abeir Imneina, stated:
“There is very strong national feeling in Libya.
“‘Furthermore, the example of Iraq
strikes fear in the Arab world as a whole,’ she underlined, in
reference to the American invasion of 2003 that was supposed to bring
democracy to that country and then, by contagion, to the region as a
whole, a hypothesis totally belied by the facts.”
The professor goes on:
“‘We know what happened in Iraq,
it’s that it is fully unstable and we really don’t want to follow
the same path. We don’t want the Americans to come to have to go
crying to Gaddafi’, this expert continued.
“But according to Abeir Imneina,
‘there also exists the feeling that this is our revolution, and
that it is we who have to make it.’”
A few hours after this dispatch was
printed, two of the main press bodies of the United States, the New
York Times and Washington Post, hastened to offer new versions on the
subject; the DPA agency informs on this on the following day, March
1: “The Libyan opposition could request that the West bomb from the
air strategic positions of the forces loyal to President Moammar
Gaddafi, the United States press informed today.”
“The subject is being discussed
inside the Libyan Revolutionary Council, the New York Times and the
Washington Post specified in their online versions.
“The New York Times’ notes that
these discussions reveal the growing frustration of the rebel leaders
in the face of the possibility that Gaddafi should retake power.
“In the event that air actions are
carried out within the United Nations framework, these would not
imply international intervention, explained the council’s
spokesperson, quoted by the New York Times.
“The council is made up of lawyers,
academics, judges and prominent members of Libyan society.”
The dispatch states:
“The Washington Post quoted rebels
acknowledging that, without Western backing, combat with the forces
loyal to Gaddafi could last a long time and cost many human lives.”
It is noteworthy that in that regard,
not one single worker, peasant or builder is mentioned, not anyone
related to material production or any young student or combatant
among those who take part in the demonstrations. Why the effort to
present the rebels as prominent members of society demanding bombing
by the United States and NATO in order to kill Libyans?
Some day we shall know the truth,
through persons such as the political sciences professor from the
University of Benghazi who, with such eloquence, tells of the
terrible experience that killed, destroyed homes, left millions of
persons in Iraq without jobs or forced them to emigrate.
Today on Wednesday, the March 2, the
EFE Agency presents the well-known rebel spokesperson making
statements that, in my opinion, affirm and at the same time
contradict those made on Monday: “Benghazi (Libya), March 2. The
rebel Libyan leadership today asked the UN Security Council to launch
an air attack ‘against the mercenaries’ of the Muamar el Gaddafi
regime.
“‘Our Army cannot launch attacks
against the mercenaries, due to their defensive role’, stated the
spokesperson for the rebels, Abdelhafiz Ghoga, at a press conference
in Benghazi.
“‘A strategic air attack is
different from a foreign intervention which we reject’, emphasized
the spokesperson for the opposition forces which at all times have
shown themselves to be against a foreign military intervention in the
Libyan conflict.”
Which one of the many imperialist wars
would this look like?
The one in Spain in 1936? Mussolini’s
against Ethiopia in 1935? George W. Bush’s against Iraq in the year
2003 or any other of the dozens of wars promoted by the United States
against the peoples of the Americas—from the invasion of Mexico in
1846 to the invasion of the Falkland Islands in 1982?
Without excluding, of course, the
mercenary invasion of the Bay of Pigs, the dirty war and the blockade
of our Homeland throughout 50 years that will have another
anniversary next April 16.
In all those wars, like that of Vietnam
which cost millions of lives, the most cynical justifications and
measures prevailed.
For anyone harboring any doubts, about
the inevitable military intervention that shall occur in Libya, the
AP news agency, which I consider to be well-informed, headlined a
cable printed today which stated: “The NATO countries are drawing
up a contingency plan taking as its model the flight exclusion zones
established over the Balkans in the 1990s, in the event that the
international community decides to impose an air embargo over Libya,
diplomats said.”
Further on it concludes: “Officials,
who were not able to give their names due to the delicate nature of
the matter, indicated that the opinions being observed start with the
flight exclusion zone that the western military alliance imposed over
Bosnia in 1993 that had the mandate of the Security Council, and with
the NATO bombing in Kosovo in 1999 THAT DID NOT HAVE IT.”
Fidel Castro Ruz
March 2, 2011
8:19 p.m.
