by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya and Julien Teil
introduction by Cynthia McKinney
October 6, 2011
from
GlobalResearch Website
|
Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya
is a Sociologist and Research Associate of the Centre for Research
on Globalization (CRG), Montréal. He specializes on the Middle East
and Central Asia. He was on the ground in Libya for over two months
and was also a Special Correspondent for Flashpoints, which is a
program based in Berkeley, California. Nazemroaya has been releasing
these articles about Libya in conjunction with aired discussions
with Cynthia McKinney on Freedom Now, a show aired on KPFK, Los
Angeles, California.
Julien Teil is a videographer and investigative documentary
film maker from France. He was also recently in Libya for about one
month. |
Introduction -
"Operation Gladio" Then and Now...
I will begin with the scandal of
Operation Gladio that climaxed in the murder of former
Italian Prime Minister, Aldo Moro, who on the day of his kidnapping, was
to announce an Italian coalition government that would include the
Italian Communist Party.
Leader of the Christian Democratic Party at that time, Francesco Cossiga,
admits in the 1992 BBC Timewatch documentary about Operation Gladio,
that he chose to “sacrifice” Moro “for the good of the Republic.” Not
unlike the targeted assassinations that the U.S. government engages in
around the world, where someone extrajudicially makes decisions on who
lives and who dies. In the three-part documentary, Cossiga states that
the decision caused his hair to turn white.
Operation Gladio is the ugly real-life tale of the U.S. government’s
decision to hire members of the state security apparatus of various
European countries, and in collaboration with recruited community
allies, wreak terror on innocent citizens by blowing up train stations,
shooting customers in grocery stores, and even killing police officers
in order to convince populations in Europe to give up their rights in
exchange for certain security measures and enhanced state power.
Yes, Operation Gladio, along with
Operation Northwoods and U.S. policy
toward Libya, shows us that the United States is willing to create
terror groups in order to justify a fight against terrorists! Sadly,
this has become the modus operandi of our government in Afghanistan and
Pakistan, Europe and Africa. And the U.S. government after 9/11/01 has
become like a “Gladio laboratory” of state policies that rip the U.S.
Bill of Rights to shreds and lie to the public.
The beginning of the end of Operation Gladio occurred when the existence
of the U.S. program was revealed. Characteristically, instead of
stopping such insanity, the Europeans joined in creating multiple other
“Operation Gladios.”
Placed in this context, Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya’s
second installment in a four-part series reveals how U.S. policy in
Libya falls right in line with U.S. actions in the past. In my opinion,
Libya will not be the last location for such illegal activities unless
we stop our government.
Along with French videographer Julien Teil, Nazemroaya weaves the
incredible-but-true scenario of U.S. finance of alleged terrorists,
wanted by Interpol, who became the chief protagonists in the NATO
genocide currently unfolding in Libya.
Cynthia McKinney
1 October 2011.
Note: Cynthia McKinney is a
former U.S. Congresswoman who served in two different Georgia federal
districts in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1993 to 2003 and
from 2005 to 2007 as a member of the U.S. Democratic Party.
She was also the U.S. Green Party
presidential candidate in 2008. While in the U.S. Congress she served in
the U.S. Banking and Finance Committee, the U.S. National Security
Committee (later renamed the U.S. Armed Services Committee), and the
U.S. Foreign Affairs Committee (later renamed the U.S. International
Relations Committee).
She also served in the U.S.
International Relations subcommittee on International Operations and
Human Rights. McKinney has conducted two fact-finding missions in Libya
and also recently finished a nationwide speaking tour in the United
States sponsored by the ANSWER Coalition about the NATO bombing campaign
in Libya.
Order from Chaos?
A repeat of the disorder and pandemonium generated inside Afghanistan is in
the works for the continent of Africa.
The United States, with the help of Britain, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia,
created the brutal Taliban and then eventually waged war on its Taliban
allies. Similarly, across Africa, the United States and its allies are
creating a new series of future enemies to fight, but after initially
working with them or using them to sow the seeds of chaos in Africa.
Washington has literally been helping fund insurgencies and regime change
projects in Africa. “Human rights” and “democratization” are also being used
as a smokescreen for colonialism and war.
So-called human rights and humanitarian organizations are now partners in
this imperialist project directed against Africa.
France and Israel - Is
Washington Outsourcing its Dirty Work in Africa?
Africa is just one international front for an expanding system of empire.
The mechanisms of a real global system of empire
are at work in this regard. Washington is acting through NATO and its allies
in Africa. Each one of Washington’s allies and satellites has a specific
role to play in this global system of empire.
-
Tel Aviv has played a very active role
on the African continent. Israel was a major supporter of South
Africa under the apartheid regime.
-
Tel Aviv also helped smuggle arms into
Sudan and East Africa to balkanize that sizeable African nation
while contributing to the destabilization of East Africa.
-
The Israelis have been very active in
Kenya and Uganda.
-
Israel has been present wherever there
were conflicts, including those pertaining to blood diamonds.
-
Israel is now working with Washington to
establish total hegemony over the African continent.
-
Tel Aviv is actively involved - through
its business ties and intelligence operations - in securing the
contacts and agreements required by Washington for the extension of
its interests in Africa.
One of Washington’s major objectives is to
disrupt the development of Chinese influence in Africa. Israel and Israeli
think-tanks have also played a major role in shaping the U.S. geo-stratagem
in Africa.
France, as a former colonial master and a declining power, on the other
hand, has traditionally been a rival and competitor of Washington on the
African continent.
With the rise of the influence of non-traditional powers in Africa, such as
the People’s Republic of China, both Washington and Paris envisaged ways of
cooperating. On the broader global stage this is also evident. Both the U.S.
and several of the major powers in the European Union consider China and
other emerging global powers as a threat. They have decided to end their
rivalries and work together.
Thus, a consensus between Washington and the E.U. unfolded, leading to some forms of political integration.
This consensus may have also been manufactured by growing U.S. influence in
E.U. capitals. Whatever the case, it has been boosted since the beginning of
Nicolas Sarkozy’s presidency in 2007.
President Sarkozy also wasted no time in pushing for the reintegration of
the French military command structure within NATO. The consequence of this
action has led to the subordination of the French military to the Pentagon.
In 1966, President Charles de Gaulle pulled French forces out of NATO and
removed France from the military command structures of NATO as a means of
maintaining French independence. Nicolas Sarkozy has reversed all of this.
In 2009, Sarkozy ordered that France rejoin the integrated military command
structure of NATO. In 2010, he also signed an accord to start amalgamating
the British and French militaries.
On the African continent, Paris has a special place or niche in the U.S.
system of global empire.
This role is that of a regional gendarme in North
Africa, West Africa, Central Africa, and all the countries that were former
French colonies. France’s special role, in other words, is due to its
history and the existing, albeit declining, position of France in Africa,
specifically through the “Françafrique.”
The Union of the Mediterranean, which Sarkozy
officially launched, is one example of these French interests in North
Africa.
The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) has also been working through
France’s International Federation of Human Rights (Fédération internationale
des ligues des droits de l’Homme, FIDH).
The FIDH is well established in Africa. The NED
has essentially outsourced its work to manipulate and control African
governments, movements, societies, and states to the FIDH.
It was the FIDH and the affiliated Libyan League
for Human Rights (LLHR) that helped orchestrate the various pretexts for the
NATO war against Libya, endorsed by the United Nations Security Council
through unsubstantiated and false claims.
The National Endowment
for Democracy
...and its Partnership with the International Federation
of Human Rights in Africa
Following the 2007 election of Nicolas Sarkozy as the leader of the French
Republic, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) started to
develop a real partnership with the National Endowment for Democracy.
Both organizations are also partners within the
World Movement for Democracy. Carl Gershman, the president of the NED, even
went to France in December 2009 to meet with the FIDH to deepen
collaboration between the two organizations and to discuss Africa. [1]
He also met individuals who are are considered as pro-Israeli lobbyists in
France.
The partnerships between the FIDH and the NED are mostly based in Africa and
the intersecting Arab World. These partnerships operate in a zone that
covers countries like Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast), Niger, and the Democratic
Republic of Congo.
North Africa, which includes Libya and Algeria, has been a specific area of
focus for the FIDH, where Washington, Paris, and NATO clearly have major
ambitions.
The FIDH, which is directly implicated in launching the war on Libya, has
also received direct funding, in the form of grants, from the National
Endowment for Democracy for its programs in Africa. In 2010, a NED grant of
$140,186 (U.S.) was one of the latest amounts given to the FIDH for its work
in Africa. [2]
The NED was also one of the first signatories,
along with the Libyan League for Human Rights (LLHR) and U.N. Watch,
demanding international intervention against the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya.
[3]
AFRICOM and the
Post-9/11 Road Towards Conquering Africa
In 2002, the Pentagon started major operations aimed at controlling Africa
militarily.
This was in the form of the Pan-Sahel
Initiative, which was launched by the U.S. European Command (EUCOM) and U.S.
Central Command (CENTCOM). Under the banner of this project, the U.S.
military would train troops from Mali, Chad, Mauritania, and Niger.
The
plans to establish the Pan-Sahel Initiative, however, date back to 2001,
when the initiative for Africa was actually launched after the tragic events
of September 11, 2001 (9/11).
Washington was clearly planning military action in Africa, which already
included at least three countries (Libya, Somalia, and Sudan) identified as
enemy targets to be attacked by the Pentagon and the White House according
to General Wesley Clark.
Jacques Chirac, the President of France at the time, tried to offer
resistance to the U.S. push into Africa by reinvigorating Germany’s role in
Africa as a means of supporting France. In 2007, the Franco-African summit
even opened its doors to German participation for the first time. [4]
Yet,
Angela Merkel had different ideas about the direction and position that the
Franco-German partnership should take in regards to Washington.
Since 2001, the momentum towards creating U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) had
started. AFRICOM, however, was officially authorized in December 2006 and
the decision to create it was announced several short months later in
February 2007. It was in 2007 that AFRICOM was established.
It is important to note that this momentum also received Israeli
encouragement, because of Israeli interests in Africa. The Institute for
Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (IASPS), for example, was one of
the Israeli organizations supporting the creation of AFRICOM.
On the basis of the Pan-Sahel Initiative, the Trans-Saharan Counterterrorism
Initiative (TSCTI) was launched by the Pentagon in 2005 under the command of
CENTCOM.
Mali, Chad, Mauritania, and Niger were now
joined by Algeria, Mauritania, Morocco, Senegal, Nigeria, and Tunisia in the
ring of African military cooperation with the Pentagon.
Later, the Trans-Saharan Counterterrorism
Initiative would be transferred to the command of AFRICOM on October 1,
2008, which is when AFRICOM would be activated.
The Sahel and Sahara
The U.S. Clearly Adopts France’s Old Colonial Projects in
Africa
“Fighting terrorism” and executing “humanitarian missions” are just façades
or smokescreens for Washington and its allies.
While the stated goals of the Pentagon are to fight terrorism in Africa, the
real aims of Washington are to restructure Africa and to establish a
neo-colonial order. In this regard, Washington has actually adopted the old
colonial projects of France in Africa.
This also includes the U.S., British, Italian,
and French initiative to divide Libya after 1943 as well as the unilateral
French initiative to redraw North Africa. In this scheme, the U.S. and its
cohorts plan on creating ethnic wars and sectarian hatred between the
Berbers, the Arabs, and others in North Africa.
The map used by Washington for combating terrorism under the Pan-Sahel
Initiative says a lot.
The range or area of activity for the terrorists,
within the borders of,
-
Algeria
-
Libya
-
Niger
-
Chad
-
Mali
-
Mauritania,
...according to Washington’s designation, is very similar to the boundaries or
borders of the colonial territorial entity which France attempted to sustain
in Africa in 1957.
Paris had planned to prop up this African entity in the
western central Sahara as a French department (province) directly tied to
France, along with coastal Algeria.
This French colonial entity in the Sahara was named the Common Organization
of the Saharan Regions (Organisation commune des regions sahariennes, OCRS).
It comprised the inner boundaries of the Sahel and Saharan countries of
Mali, Niger, Chad, and Algeria. The French goal was to collect and bind all
the resource-rich territories of these countries into this one central
entity, the OCR, for French control and extraction.
The resources in this area include oil, gas, and
uranium. Yet, the resistance movements in Africa, and specifically the
Algerian struggle for independence, dealt Paris a hard blow. France had to
give up its quest and finally dissolve the OCRS in 1962, because of Algerian
independence and the anti-colonial stance in Africa.
Because of the push towards independence in
Africa, France was finally cut off from the inland area in the Sahara that
it wished to control.
Washington clearly had this energy-rich and resource-rich area in mind when
it drew the areas of Africa that need to be cleansed of alleged terrorist
cells and gangs. The French Institute of Foreign Relations (Institut
français des relations internationals, IFRI) has even openly discussed this
tie between the terrorists and energy-rich areas in a March 2011 report.
[5]
It is also in this context that the amalgamation
of Franco-German and Anglo-American interests and companies has allowed
France to become an integrated part of the U.S. system of global empire with
common interests.
Regime Change in Libya
and the National Endowment for Democracy
A Nexus of Terrorism and Human Rights
Since 2001, the U.S. has falsely presented itself as a champion against
terrorism.
The Trans-Saharan Counterterrorism Initiative (TSCTI),
which opened the doors for AFRICOM in Africa, was justified as necessary by
Washington to fight organizations like the Salafist Group for Preaching and
Combat (GSPC) in Algeria and the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) in
Libya.
Yet, Washington is cooperating and using these
very same groups in Libya, along with the National Front for the Salvation
of Libya and
the Muslim Brotherhood, as foot soldiers
and proxies.
Moreover, many of the key Libyan individuals that are members
of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) are members of these groups
and have also been part of conferences and longstanding plans pushing for
regime change in Libya.
One of the key meetings for establishing what would become the current
Transitional Council in Libya took place in 1994 when the Center for
Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) organized a conference with Ashur
Shamis and Aly (Ali) Abuzakuuk. The 1994 conference’s title was
“Post-Qaddafi Libya: The Prospect and the Promise.”
In 2005 another conference with Shamis Ashur
would be held in the British capital of London that would build on the idea
of regime change in Libya. [6]
So who are these Libyan opposition figures? A series of questions must be
asked. Are their tie to Washington new or old? Who do the associate with?
Also, have they had longstanding support or not?
Ashur Shamis is one of the founding members of the National Front for the
Salvation of Libya, which in 1981 was founded in Sudan. He has been wanted
by Interpol and the Libyan police for years. [7]
Ahsur is also listed as someone who has been a
director in the National Endowment for Democracy in the Libyan Human and
Political Development Forum. He is also the editor of the Akhbar webpage,
which was registered under Akhbar Cultural Limited and tied to the NED. He
has also participated in recent key conferences for regime change in
Tripoli.
This includes the conference in London held by
Chatham House in 2011, which discussed NATO plans for the invasion of
Tripoli. [8]
Like Ashur, Aly Abuzaakouk is also a member of the National Front for the
Salvation of Libya and tied to the National Endowment for Democracy. He was
one of the key participants and attendees at the roundtable held for the
2011 Democracy Awards by the NED. [9]
Like Ashur, he is also wanted by Interpol and
serves as a director at the Libyan Human and Political Development Forum.
[10]
There is also Noman Benotman, a former leader and founder of the
Libyan
Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) and a wanted terrorist.
He is presented as a
former terrorist.
Benotman conveniently left the Libyan Islamic Fighting
Group in the wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001. Benotman is not only
a National Endowment for Democracy (NED) director in the Libyan Human and
Political Development Forum, he is also tied to the news network Al Jazeera.
Not only have these three men lived in Britain without any problems while
they were wanted by Interpol and sought because of their ties to terrorism
or, in the case of Abuzaakouk, drug-related crimes and forgery, but they
also received grants from the United States.
They received U.S. grants which formalized their
affiliation to various NED sponsored organizations, which have supported the
regime change agenda in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya. This regime change
agenda has also been supported by MI6 and the CIA.
Moreover, the legal documents that have been filed by the NED regarding
these individuals have been deliberately and illegally tampered with. One
key individual’s identity has been hidden in the list of NED directors.
Thus, legal documents have been fraudulently
filled out to hide an individual’s identity under the alias of “Beata
Wozniak.” Even Wozniak’s birthday is invalid, appearing as January 1, 1
(01/01/0001). She is an person who has been on the board of all these NED
organizations.
She is listed as a director and secretary of
Akbar, Transparency Libya Limited, and several British companies.
The “Long War” Enters
Africa - The Gate into Africa has been Opened
The fanning of terrorism in Africa is part of a deliberate strategy used by
the U.S. and its allies, including NATO.
The strategy consists in "opening the door to
the African continent" by expanding the so-called “Global War on Terror.”
The latter provides a justification to the U.S. objective of expanding its
military presence in the African continent. It was also used as a pretext to
create the Pentagon’s AFRICOM.
US Africa Command (AFRICOM) is meant to “manage Africa” on Washington’s
behalf.
It consists in creating an African version of
NATO with a view to carrying out the occupation of Africa. In this regard,
the U.S. and its allies have already established a budget to fight the very
terrorist organizations which they have created and supported (including
with military aid and weapons) across the map of Africa from Somalia, Sudan,
Libya, and Mali to Mauritania, Niger, Algeria, and Nigeria.
The terrorists not only fight for America on the ground, they also liase
with Washington and act as front-men through so-called human rights
organizations which have a mandate to "promote democracy".
On the ground these same individuals and organizations are used to
destabilize their respective countries. They are also supported
internationally by Washington to actively work towards for regime change and
military intervention in the name of human rights and democracy.
Libya is a clear case in point.
NOTES
[1]
National Endowment for Democracy, “NED Strengths
Democracy Ties with France,” March 16, 2010
[2]
National Endowment for Democracy, “Africa Regional,”
August 2011
[3]
United Nations Watch et al., “Urgent Appeal to
Stop Atrocities in Libya: Sent by 70 NGOs to the US, EU, and UN,”
February 21, 2011
[4]
Ministry of European and Foreign Affairs (France),
“XXIVème sommet Afrique-France,” February 2007
[5]
Etienne de Durand, “Francs-tireurs et Centurions.
Les ambiguïtés de l’héritage contre-insurrectionnel français,” Institut
français des relations internationals, March 2011
[6]
The National Conference of the Libyan Opposition,
“The National Accord: The National Conference of the Libyan Opposition,
London, 26th June 2005,” 2005.
[7]
Interpol Wanted Notice for Ashour Al-Shamis
[8]
Foreign and Commonwealth Office (U.K.), “Chatam
House event: the future of Libya,” June 2011
[9]
National Democracy for Democracy, “2011 Democracy
Award Biographies,” June 2011
[10]
Interpol Wanted Notice for Ali Ramadan Abu Za Kouk
