30.03.2011
No defence of Benghazi
Gerry Downing of 'Socialist Fight' believes the anti-Gaddafi rebellion is totally reactionary
Eddie Ford’s article ‘Imperialism out, down with the Gaddafi regime’, makes a number of serious political errors and omissions (Weekly Worker March 24).
The most important ones are to fail to take into account: (1) Libya’s history of struggle against colonialism and imperialism; (2) the tribal nature of its society; (3) the nature of the leadership of the Libyan rebels; (4) the role of the working class in the struggle; (5) the role of al-Qa’eda in Libya; and (6) to light-mindedly assume that this was just a continuation of the ‘Arab revolution’ or ‘Arab spring’ begun in Tunisia and then developed in Egypt and throughout the region. I will take these points in order.
1. In the course of the struggle against imperialism Libya suffered the genocide of up to 50% of its population by Italian colonialism in the 1920s and early 30s. Italian ‘pacification’ after the execution of Omar Mukhtar, a Senussi sheikh, in 1931 resulted in 30,000 Libyan troops fighting for Italy in World War II. Post-war saw the reinstallation of king Idris, the emir of Cyrenaica (capital Benghazi) under the Italians, who had fled to Egypt after Mussolini took power in Italy in 1922. He marshalled big numbers from Cyrenaica to fight for the Allies during the war.
Gaddafi deposed him in 1969 and nationalised the oil companies in 1970. He redistributed wealth to Libyans, so that it is still the most egalitarian country in Africa, with the highest GDP per capita. Gaddafi has adopted far more pro-imperialist policies since 2006, privatising and allowing the penetration of finance capital, which has resulted in 20% unemployment. He has always been a brutal dictator, justifiably so against pro-imperialist elements, who are often funded by the US, British and French intelligence secret services; unjustifiably against liberals and the working class. Strikes and trade unions are illegal and all opposition from the left is crushed.
2. Gaddafi has worked since 1969 to balance between the different tribes in Libya. The biggest tribe, the Warfallah, were reported to be backing the rebels, but now back Gaddafi. His own tribe, the Gaddafa, is allied with the far larger Megarha tribe. The Tarhuna tribe is supporting the regime. Of significance also is the religion of the eastern region. It is dominated by the Senussi, a Muslim political-religious order. King Idris was the grandson of the founder of this Senussi Muslim sufi order, to which Omar Mukhtar also belonged.
3. The rebel leaders are an alliance of former ministers in Gaddafi’s regime; CIA-sponsored and -funded, pro-imperialist opportunists; monarchists; and al-Qa’eda Islamists. This could easily have been discovered by every leftist by simple Googling - these reactionaries have not hidden their politics from anyone apart from the most politically naive. To political idiots they stood for ‘freedom, justice and democracy’ - don’t we all?
4. In Egypt and Tunisia the working class played and will play a significant, politically independent role. In the end Mubarak had to go when the strike wave intensified to such an extent that Obama instructed the military to order him to go - the sleeping giant was bestirring itself and might fully awake. So now it is necessary to secure the chains again by banning strikes in Egypt.
Matters were totally different in Libya. Stories of Gaddafi’s black mercenaries hid the appalling slaughter of black workers carried out by our rebels. Again a simple Google would have revealed the lies behind the propaganda. According to the Somaliland Press on March 27, “In east Libya, an African hunt began, as towns and cities began to fall under the control of Libyan rebels, mobs and gangs. They started to detain, insult, rape and even execute black immigrants, students and refugees. In the past two weeks, more than 100 Africans from various Sub-Saharan states are believed to have been killed by Libyan rebels and their supporters” (somalilandpress.com).
And a comment on that article by ‘farhanodow’: “Libya insurgents shouldn’t be supported because we see who they are and what they believe. They are pure racists who hate black Africans and yet they want our support. Most Arab people like Saudi Arabia treat Africans as sub-human, but the Libyan rebels are purely racist. They should go to hell, not get any assistance from African countries ... all black African should be against these racist rebels.”
A Somalian bus driver friend tells me his cousin, an engineer in the oilfields, was murdered by the rebels, and the rest of the family - his wife and two children - are missing, also believed murdered. “Gaddafi is a bastard,” he says, “but these people must be defeated. I have no hesitation supporting Gaddafi against them.” This is a common African sentiment. Is it really necessary now to make the point that the working class could not possibly make a progressive contribution to this uprising in these circumstances?
5. There are many reports on the involvement of al-Qa’eda cells in Libya and there are numerous sources testifying to their attempts to assassinate Gaddafi. According to Martin Bright, home affairs editor of The Observer, “British intelligence paid large sums of money to an al-Qa’eda cell in Libya in a doomed attempt to assassinate colonel Gaddafi in 1996 ... The latest claims of MI6 involvement with Libya’s fearsome Islamic Fighting Group, which is connected to one of bin Laden’s trusted lieutenants, will be embarrassing to the government, which described similar claims by renegade MI5 officer David Shayler as ‘pure fantasy’.
“... the MI6 officers involved in the alleged plot were Richard Bartlett, who has previously only been known under the codename PT16 and had overall responsibility for the operation; and David Watson, codename PT16B. As Shayler’s opposite number in MI6, Watson was responsible for running a Libyan agent, ‘Tunworth’, who was providing information from within the cell. According to Shayler, MI6 passed £100,000 to the al-Qaeda plotters” (November 10 2002).
Imperialism, in the shape of the CIA, is hedging its bets in Libya today. The Transitional National Council is losing credibility and the fundamentalists are gaining within the ranks of the rebels. According to Michel Chossudovsky, “the Central Intelligence Agency, using Pakistan’s ISI as a go-between, played a key role in training the Mujahedin. In turn, the CIA-sponsored guerrilla training was integrated with the teachings of Islam. The madrasahs were set up by Wahabi fundamentalists financed out of Saudi Arabia.” There were a substantial number of Libyan jihadists in Afghanistan in those years and when they returned to Libya as the Islamic Fighting Group they retained their CIA connections, as Shayler and The Observer have proved.
This is now being put to good use, as the following extract from Stratfor, the self-styled “global intelligence” website, tells us:
“Outside Benghazi’s courthouse, these multiple Islamist groups have proved assiduous in asserting their presence. The Muslim Brothers, Libya’s oldest political party, established by Egyptian émigrés fleeing Nasser’s repression in the 1950s, appears to be the best organised. Hitherto an elitist group concentrated in Libyan academe, it is rapidly acquiring a grassroots reach through the mosques, a newly acquired forum the liberals lack. Scrapping their previous reformist agenda, the Brothers now preach revolution and an anti-Gaddafi jihad ... Within days, the academics outside the courthouse were outnumbered by would-be mujahedin staging prayers, fi sabil Allah (in the path of god), for the fight against the colonel.
“‘We control the street and the fighting at the front,’ says Juma Muhammad, one of hundreds of former Abu Salim inmates helping to rally the crowds behind the Islamists. ‘We’re with the people; the Council is not.’ In open-air prayers and graffiti, they repetitively denounce Gaddafi - not least because of his bushy curls - as an unbeliever, a Mossad agent and a Jew. Another Abu Salim inmate notes that two rebel fighters killed in the first battle for the oil port of Ra’s Lanouf were Libyan veterans of the Afghan jihad, as is a 41-year-old rebel commander” (‘Jihadist opportunities in Libya’, February 24).
6. Now these are the political, social and religious orientations of the rebels which led every imperialist nation, every reactionary state in the Gulf and the Arab League (22 nations, nine of the 11 who attended, with Syria and Algeria opposed) to support the rebels and the no-fly-zone war on Libya. Why were the forces of global reaction so politically acute as to identify their political allies immediately and give them every assistance from day one, whereas our ‘leftists’ thought there was a revolutionary soul contained within the reactionary shell (if they ever thought about it at all)? Like in Kronstadt in 1921 the logic of the rebels’ stance, their history (revolts against Gaddafi in this region began in 1971), as well as religious and tribal differences, made them playthings for imperialist intervention. Such opposition as existed was quickly drowned out.
The WRP/News Line was wrong to say, “Victory to Gaddafi”, but not nearly as wrong as Eddie Ford’s “Down with the Gaddafi regime” slogan. At least they were on the right side of the class struggle internationally. Any principled revolutionist would have taken a united front stance with Gaddafi, not only against the imperialist open assault, but also against imperialism’s internal agents. As for the humanitarian claptrap about Gaddafi shooting his own people and the “Victory to the Libyan people” slogan some have promoted, are the Libyan people who support Gaddafi non-people - ‘guilty civilians’ whose deaths are simply collateral damage? And should we not have known the vast amount of lying propaganda emanating from the rebels and the capitalist mass media was just that? It was not too difficult a task to Google the likes of Somaliland Press, for instance.
Defeat the forces of imperialism! No support for Mahmoud Jibril and the Interim Transitional National Council! Defeat imperialist intervention! No to an imperialist proxy regime!