The killing of Gaddafi 10 years in the past has resulted within the demise of the nation of Libya and the destruction of its folks

Muammar Gaddafi led his nation to turn into the wealthiest in all of Africa. A decade after his demise, it’s riven by tribalism, terrorism and slavery, all as a result of the West couldn’t enable an Arab chief to succeed.

There was by no means actually an ‘Arab Spring’ in Libya the way in which there was in Egypt or Tunisia. Protests have been a lot smaller, and as time went on to indicate, the most important gamers turned out to be extremist teams and overseas actors, every attempting to get a slice of the nation.

NATO’s bombing of Libya and help for rebels in search of to overthrow Gaddafi had little to do with wanting the nation to prosper. Beneath the guise of ‘human rights’ and ‘democracy’, the Western army alliance helped homicide one of many Arab world’s most outstanding leaders as a way to steal Libya’s assets and defend Western hegemony. Afterward, as a part of Operation Timber Sycamore, the CIA would discover extra utility in Gaddafi’s ousting: funnelling Libya’s stockpiles of weapons and ammunition over to Syria to arm Al-Qaeda and different jihadist teams.

Seldom mentioned within the information anymore, Libya has turn into a shadow of its former self, ravaged by 10 years of conflict and chaos. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and the opposite conflict criminals who orchestrated its destruction don’t need you to understand how badly it’s doing.

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From thriving nation to ‘failed state’

Recognized for his extravagance, Gaddafi boasted a safety element of feminine bodyguards, lavish outfits, and lengthy, dramatic speeches. He additionally reworked Libya from one of many poorest international locations on Earth right into a wealthy, self-sufficient state, all whereas managing a tribal society in a rustic house to the biggest oil reserves in Africa.

Throughout his 42 years in energy, he elevated the nation’s literacy fee from 25% to 88%. Libyans loved free healthcare, free schooling, and a excessive lifestyle. Primary requirements equivalent to electrical energy and gasoline have been low cost, and the nation was assured a powerful social security web and welfare packages.

Libya is 90% desert. Gaddafi sought to offer recent water to all Libyans for consumption and agriculture – an endeavor during which he succeeded. He constructed the world’s largest irrigation challenge, the ‘Nice Man-Made River’ within the 1980s. Boasting the world’s largest pipe community, it supplies 70% of all of the recent water in Libya. Gaddafi referred to as it the “Eighth Surprise of the World”. Costing over $ 25 billion, the challenge was fully self-financed, with none loans or credit from overseas banks. Libya had grown to be a really rich nation and had no exterior debt.

NATO bombed the Nice Man-Made River in July 2011, destroying key civilian infrastructure: a conflict crime. 

The United Nations’ Human Growth Index supplies a abstract measure of well being, schooling and revenue. In 2010, Libya was ranked primary in Africa, and 53rd out of 189 international locations and territories. As we speak, its rating has sunk from 53rd to 105th worldwide.

After the NATO-backed ‘revolution’, Libya has none of those good issues anymore. There are fixed energy cuts. The healthcare system has collapsed. There isn’t any infrastructure. The usual of residing has plummeted, and after 10 years, Libya doesn’t actually have a functioning central authorities.

In March this yr, a authorities of nationwide unity was fashioned, after a ceasefire brokered in October 2020. Whereas it has largely held till now, and elections are scheduled for December, infighting persists, and whether or not something comes of this course of stays to be seen.

As an alternative of an abundance of water, gold and oil in a thriving nation with nice infrastructure, Libya now has open slave-trade markets. Smugglers and human traffickers reap the benefits of migrants and refugees passing via to Europe, promoting them off into bondage. Rival tribes and political factions battle over oil and different valuable assets, decided to grab energy for themselves. In the meantime, pockets of Islamic State (IS, previously ISIS), Al-Qaeda and different jihadist fighters lurk within the shadows, plaguing the war-torn nation and its neighbors – teams who wouldn’t have dared set up a presence in Gaddafi’s Libya.

As soon as a affluent nation, since his fall, it has been taken over by terrorists, opportunists and thieves, and has plunged into chaos. That is what has turn into of Libya these final 10 years. That is what NATO created. 

One in every of Gaddafi’s finest speeches was in 2008 in Damascus, at a gathering of the Arab League. Rebuking the violent invasion of Iraq, he provided Arab leaders a stark reminder of what befell Saddam Hussein, whom the US as soon as thought-about an ally in opposition to Iran.

“A whole Arab management was executed by hanging, but we sit on the sidelines. Why? Any one among you is perhaps subsequent.”

Chuckling at his phrases, different Arab leaders would have achieved effectively to take heed of Gaddafi’s warning, for, certainly, the US would come for Syria and Libya subsequent. And simply three years later, Gaddafi himself could be brutally killed by the hands of NATO-backed rebels.

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Anti-imperialist, pan-Arabist and pan-African: Why Gaddafi needed to fall

The late Libyan chief supported independence and nationwide liberation actions proper the world over, together with teams such because the Palestine Liberation Group, the Irish Republican Military, the Black Panther Get together, and plenty of extra. Within the 1970s, he tried to merge Libya with Egypt and Syria to type a unified Arab state. In 2009, he proposed that African nations undertake a single foreign money: the gold dinar. The Libyan Central Financial institution, which was 100% state-owned, had reserves of 144 tons of gold that he supposed to make use of for this goal. Gaddafi proposed that African international locations purchase and promote their assets solely on this new pan-African foreign money. This could allow them to transition away from the US greenback and the Central Africa (CFA) franc – a colonial foreign money utilized in 14 international locations and managed fully by France.

This was Gaddafi’s largest sin. In wanting African nations to undertake a single foreign money, to manage their very own assets and have true independence, he posed a risk to Western financial hegemony, so he needed to go.

Western governments have been effectively conscious of this plan. A take a look at the emails of then-US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, present discussions round Gaddafi’s gold reserves and his plans for a single foreign money. It grew to become clear to the West that African international locations switching away from the US greenback or CFA franc, and controlling their very own foreign money and financial coverage, would undermine American and French affect over Africa. It could weaken the Western monopoly over African assets and the worldwide banking system, rendering neo-colonial establishments such because the Worldwide Financial Fund much less efficient in manipulating growing nations. 

Not that we would have liked additional affirmation; however written clearly in these emails was proof that this plan to offer a substitute for the CFA franc “was one of many elements that influenced President Nicolas Sarkozy’s choice to commit France to the assault on Libya.”

Sarkozy determined to bomb Libya as a result of he knew full effectively that West African and Central African international locations abandoning the CFA franc would minimise France’s sphere of affect over its ‘former’ African colonies and fulfil its “want to realize a higher share of Libya oil manufacturing” – that’s, plunder Libya’s wealth.

Gaddafi foresaw this in 2011, when he mentioned, “There’s a conspiracy to manage Libyan oil and to manage Libyan land, to colonize Libya as soon as once more.”

All this can be a stark reminder that NATO couldn’t care much less about protestors and the ‘Arab Spring’. Claims of “respect for democracy” have been merely a canopy story to guard Western pursuits and steal Libya’s assets, leaving the nation in chaos and crawling with terrorists, identical to Iraq and Syria.

Nothing might be extra emblematic of how evil all the affair is, than Hillary Clinton actually leaping for pleasure on listening to of Gaddafi’s demise, after he was brutally sodomized, lynched and executed by NATO-backed rebels. “We got here, we noticed, he died,” she mentioned. 

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Killed for his success

Gaddafi was all the time a thorn within the aspect of Western colonial pursuits. His best ‘crime’ was wanting actual independence, threatening US and French financial hegemony, and the worldwide banking system.

Now folks take a look at Libya and label it a ‘failed state’, however Gaddafi’s Libya was not a failed state. It was Africa’s wealthiest and most affluent nation – a thriving, flourishing state till the West intentionally destroyed it in 2011.

Apologists for Western imperialism love dismissing the achievements of different international locations and labelling their leaders dictators, however the fact is, Libya was significantly better off underneath Gaddafi. It had oil, gold, water and useful resource independence.

Historical past is plagued by African, Arab and Latin leaders, killed by america, for daring to make their international locations higher and in search of to problem Western hegemony. Gaddafi is not any exception.

There may be nothing the West hates greater than an Arab chief who opposes imperialism, Zionism and needs his nation, and different Arab and African international locations, to be self-sufficient. That’s the reason NATO murdered Gaddafi.

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