US Sacrificed Aid Agencies That Help Children To Kill Bin Laden

If you ever had any doubt that the hunt to locate and then kill Osama bin Laden was about anything other than vengeance and demonstrating to the world that Captain USA always gets his man, this latest revelation ought to dispel that. First, it was revealed by the UK Guardian newspaper in July that the CIA used a phoney-NGO vaccination program inside Pakistan to locate bin Laden, the prelude to his execution by US Special Forces. The collateral damage of that ploy are now becoming clear with a major aid agency, Save the Children, being forced to shut down operations inside Pakistan because of suspicion of the involvement of NGOs in the illegal assassination.

Furious aid workers say the CIA's reckless use of aid work as a cover by spy agencies has threatened the safety of genuine aid workers and endangered multimillion-pound programmes to help Pakistan's poor.
Save the Children has 2,000 employees in Pakistan and assisted 7 million people in 2010, half of whom where caught in massive floods while the remainder benefited from long-term development programmes.After the security threat in late July, those activities slowed or juddered to a halt.

Now, there are all sorts of critiques one can make about the role of NGOs in the developing world but it is clear that the callous use of the cover provided by western aid agencies working in Pakistan to carry out a revenge mission of more than dubious legality, which would definitely have an impact on the lives of thousands of children, is not only obscene but a true testament of America's arrogance an inhumanity. After nearly a decade of firing missiles from unmanned aerial vehicles into rural and isolated villages, in order to smash a movement whose roots lie in the desire for liberation from imperialism, it is hardly surprising that they would put the work of thousands of aid workers at risk without nary a thought nor a word of apology afterward.

Of course, all of this was so infuriatingly unnecessary. Having created bin Laden with money and weapons and political support for promoting the move conservative forms of resistance to the Soviet invasion, the Americans subsequently left Afghanistan to tear itself apart as former mujahideen fought over who would rule the poverty-stricken, war torn country. Certainly those warlords were corrupt and brutal but the real problem was that the US only cared about defeating their enemy, the Soviet Union, and not about providing the kind of development resources that would have reduced the kind of scarcity - particularly after the withdrawal of military and financial aid during the resistance - that causes civil wars when combined with heavily armed populations.

If that disillusionment in his former masters wasn't enough, the US war against Iraq in 1991 provided the final proof to bin Laden that the US was no friend of Muslims - unless they were immediately useful (a point worth remembering these days in Libya). It was America's abandonment of Afghanistan after it had served its purpose and its brutal war against Iraq - waged from the Muslim holy land of Saudi Arabia - that created bin Laden the enemy of America. But even this needn't have ended up in the massacre of 9/11, the subsequent war in Afghanistan and the present, dangerous deterioration in relations between the US and Pakistan. After bin Laden declared his jihad against the USA and had organized the first attacks on the US - on US embassies in three countries in 1998 and on the USS Cole, a destroyer anchored off of Yemen in 2000 - the Taliban offered both before and after 9/11 to give up bin Laden for trial but the USA wasn't interested in any sort of negotiations or anything short of absolute surrender.

Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil, Taliban’s last foreign minister, told Al Jazeera in an exclusive interview that his government had made several proposals to the United States to present the al-Qaeda leader, considered the mastermind of the 2001 attacks, for trial for his involvement in plots targeting US facilities during the 1990s.
"Even before the [9/11] attacks, our Islamic Emirate had tried through various proposals to resolve the Osama issue. One such proposal was to set up a three-nation court, or something under the supervision of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference [OIC]," Muttawakil said.
"But the US showed no interest in it. They kept demanding we hand him over, but we had no relations with the US, no agreement of any sort. They did not recognise our government."

And once 9/11 had taken place, war was needed to restore American prestige, even if it ended up killing many dozens of times the number of innocent people as died in the World Trade Center (and, while the war against Iraq clearly had no relation whatsoever to 9/11 it caused the premature deaths of perhaps a million people, compared to the 3,000 who died in New York City). This latest atrocity in the interest of America's imperial prestige, at a time of declining American power, will only add fuel to the fire of anti-Americanism and weaken their position in Pakistan and beyond.

Pakistan: When Thieves Fall Out

As Neil Sedaka once crooned "breaking up is hard to do", especially when you're a superpower who needs the help of an unstable and corrupt government to have any chance of defeating an insurgency. It looks like the USA is just beginning to figure out what an ugly break-up between a couple of nuclear powers looks like. And it looks a lot like a high school romance: first there was the infatuation, the gifts, the wooing. But soon big-boy USA was neglecting the needs of its blushing girlfriend, firing missiles into her yard and killing family members in such big numbers that her family - already suspicious of USA's intentions - grew to hate USA, no matter how much money he gave them. Of course, Obama, the "peace candidate" has accelerated the decline in their relationship by ramping up the air strikes inside Pakistan's borders. The unauthorized cross-border raid by US special forces to kill unarmed Osama bin Laden was perhaps the last straw in their dysfunctional relationship. But, like all romances, it doesn't end at the break-up. There's all sorts of entanglements that need to be sorted out and the former lovers need to do some public name-calling of each other, throw around accusations, all that good stuff.

More seriously, it can only be the absolute arrogance of the US empire and its representatives that prevented them from seeing this coming from a mile away. When 9/11 happened back in 2001 the Taliban had already offered to turn over Osama bin Laden for trial - a pledge they repeated after the attacks on New York and Washington. But Bush was determined to wage a war to restore America's honour and the fear-effect - basically sending the message that if you mess with America you will pay the ultimate price. But to wage the War on Terror required regional allies - for resupplying troops, air fields, etc - to strategic and logistical access to land-locked Afghanistan. Problem was that the Taliban were proxies for Pakistan as part of its desire to limit the influence of India upon Pakistan's neighbours. There was also a deep element of Islamism inside Pakistan's ISI (not dissimilar to the Christian fundamentalism at the top of the US military, actually). All of this was well known by anyone who had done any research on the region as presumably the president's military and national security advisors would have done. At the time Pakistan was being governed by a military dictatorship under General Musharraf, which was trying to reduce the power of the Islamists and make the deeply corrupt Pakistani political system less dysfunctional. It was also open to US bribery to turn their backs on the Taliban.

But the US wasn't happy with just overthrowing the Taliban and weren't interested in dealing sensitively with the complex and precarious situation within Pakistan. They were on a crusading mission to crush not just the Taliban but Talibanism - the ideology (which they had helped to create, along with the Saudis, during the war against Soviet involvement in Afghanistan). To do that required crossing the arbitrary and porous Pakistani border into the Pashtun tribal areas where links with Afghanistan were still strong. This unrelenting disrespect for Pakistani sovereignty helped to bring down Musharraf and has kept the present kleptocratic regime in a state of permanent instability. The US - and to some extent Pakistan - may have been able to kill hundreds of guerillas but their actions have helped to create thousands more. And it has made the Islamist elements in the ISI more, not less, amenable to US power in the region. With each insult to Pakistani sovereignty the hostile elements within the ISI - perhaps the whole leadership - have become more emboldened to help the people America was attacking. After all, these guerillas were Pakistanis, fighting for Pakistani honour and would strengthen Pakistan's strategic interests in Afghanistan where Afghan President Hamid Karzai has long made clear his own hostility to Pakistan's role in his country.

All of which brings us back to the US now openly acknowledging that their former high priced partner in the war on terror is, in fact, using American aid to attack American interests. Oops. That's as embarrassing as your girlfriend driving the car you bought her for her birthday through your livingroom window. Only, in this case, the car also had a bomb in it. America - and its allies, like Canada - have only themselves to blame for this debacle. Ten years after going into Afghanistan to extend the power of the American empire into the post-Soviet imperial vacuum, they are weaker, more beleaguered, and have less regional influence than ever before. With the active hostility of Pakistan America and NATO can only lose in Afghanistan. The results of that growing hostility are now on clear display - the attack on the US embassy, the assassination of the chief peace negotiator, former Afghan president Berhanuddin Rabbani. The head of the CIA may try to pretend that these two bold attacks were "a sign of the Taliban's weakness" but it's not likely that anybody besides Fox News will believe him. The NATO intervention can no longer even keep key Afghan government officials safe. Not a great record after ten years of "successes".

Libya's Rebels: Yesterday We Tortured Them, Today We Arm Them

There's no doubt that NATO, primarily the UK, France and the US, inserted themselves into the Libyan uprising as a means of gaining control over the course of the Arab Spring. In the case of France, it's clear that expanding the control of Libya's oil - most notably at the expense of Italy - was also part of the reason for Sarkozy's newfound enthusiasm for democracy when only a few weeks earlier he was rather more enthusiastic for keeping the Tunisian dictator in power. Reasserting hegemony in Africa also played no small part in the Libyan adventure.

Nonetheless it is always important to keep in mind that when imperialist powers insert themselves into an insurgency - particularly against a recent ally like Gaddafi - they are at risk of not only unleashing forces that they cannot control but of being exposed for what they really are: double-dealing hypocrites.

To be honest, it doesn't appear to me likely that there will be open resistance to the overall imperial agenda as it is expressed through the new government that is coming into being, led by the NTC. The oil contracts have been signed, the backroom deals have been struck - and NATO's deeply penetrating role in the war against Gaddafi has ensured that the rebel soldiers are dependent upon them for military success of any sort. Over the coming weeks the most likely scenario is that the rebel volunteers will be demobilized or incorporated into the national military. That military and most of the governmental apparatus will remain essentially unchanged from the Gaddafi regime - the police who kept order in Tripoli under Gaddafi will be the same police who keep order under the NTC. The generals who ran the Gaddafi military will run the NTC military. And economic and social policy will be guided by people like Mahmoud Jibril, who was the head of the Gaddafi agency charged with the responsibility of selling off state assets, probably to mostly foreign buyers or other former-Gaddafi officials.

That said, I would be glad to be mistaken. There is a reason why one of the NTC's first acts is to demobilize the rebel soldiers and to clear them out of the capital. People fought for freedom and will be less likely to accept Gaddafi-ism without Gaddafi if they have guns and are organized into fighting units. And with the armed phase of Gaddafi's overthrow all but passed, it is still possible that the remnants of the revolutionary councils that dominated the early phase of the insurgency will re-emerge to challenge the NTC's policy of business-as-usual minus the Brother Leader and some of the more odious aspects of a police state.

But in the initial days it's good to see that, at the very least, some of the duplicity of the United States and Britain are being revealed. The discovery of documents in the Interior Ministry building that show the level of cooperation between the CIA and the Gaddafi regime are something of an embarrassment. As is the fact that the new commander of Tripoli was a victim of CIA torture and the extraordinary rendition program that sent him back to Libya for several years of brutal incarceration. Abdul Hakim Belhaj, a former commander of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group has been undergoing something of a renovation, with a fluff piece in the New York Times, which I covered the other day. He may be claiming that he is now grateful for the support of NATO and the USA - but he hasn't forgotten what was done to him and some reporters have cottoned on to this.

The result is that the British spy agency MI6 is now exposed as having cooperated - perhaps illegally - with the American rendition program and facilitated torture. In some ways nobody ought to be surprised by this but the fact that it is coming out in public at a moment when the UK is jockeying for fat reconstruction and oil contracts is sweet. These revelations are undermining one of the domestic goals of the intervention in Libya - to rehabilitate the idea of humanitarian intervention by demonstrating that the UK, USA and NATO really do have good intentions, even if sometimes they get the details wrong. Let's hope that the revelations keep on coming. There is a sweet irony in the possibility that the countries of NATO will be more fully exposed as having aided Gaddafi in crushing the revolt that they ended up opportunistically supporting.

MI6 knew I was tortured, says Libyan rebel | World news | The Guardian

Turkey's Snub & The Decline of Israel

Israeli blunder: Turkish ship Mavi Marmara as it's being attacked by Israeli
commandos during attempt by flotilla to deliver aid to the Gaza Strip.

It was just over 20 years ago that I first became politically active around the first war against Iraq by Bush Sr. It was all so new and I felt like my eyes were being opened to history and politics in so many profound ways that I have many indelible memories from this time. One of them is just how outside of the mainstream it was to criticize Israel. Of course, even by then, Israel had suffered some blows to its previously unassailable - and self-promoted - image as the plucky little democracy, the only one amongst a sea of Arab dictatorships. The war against Lebanon with its attendant brutalities, particularly the massacre at the Sabra & Shatila refugee camp by Israeli allied Christian fascists against unarmed Palestinians as Israeli troops watched on, had given the world a hint at just how brutal a regime it was. But it was still the case that even wearing a "Free Palestine" pin - as I did - was controversial. I remember being in the men's room on campus and was cornered by a Zionist who demanded to know why I wanted to drive the Jews into the sea. Later that year the York Arab Student's Federation attempted to hold a day in celebration of Palestine liberation and it almost led to a riot as Zionists showed up with massive Israeli flags that they used to try and prevent students from seeing the pro-Palestinian displays.

Those days are gone and Israel has only itself to thank for its growing isolation and the increase in awareness of Israel's viciousness. The 2006 war in Lebanon - and their effective defeat. The war against a semi-starved Gaza population in 2008. The refusal to stop the illegal settlements or end the blockade of the Gaza Strip has undermined Israel's attempts to portray itself as a bastion of moderation in a sea of extremism. None of that would have been possible, of course, without the struggles of Palestinians themselves, who have refused to lie down and die or vacate their ancestral lands no matter the punishment and humiliations meted out by Israel. And the international allies of the Palestinians have admirably carried the struggle abroad, in particular building and promoting the cause of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions [BDS] against Israel. At first BDS seemed like a hopeless cause - and I admit to having been skeptical about its potential, perhaps because of my memories of toilet harassments from university. But bit by bit the idea of BDS has taken hold as has the label of Apartheid, taken from the racist system of segregation maintained formerly in South Africa.

That isn't to say that Israel doesn't still have its supporters - particularly at the level of the US government. Israel is a key strategic partner and facilitator for American imperialism in the Middle East. It isn't for nothing that the US gives the largest share of its "foreign aid" budget to Israel, along with special access and deals on the most high tech military equipment. Israel is America's watchdog in the Middle East. But even in the face of bellicose pro-Israel propaganda and intimidation of pro-Palestinian activists, the arguments have gained ground to the point that Israel's supporters are increasingly forced to fight a rearguard action. It has become less about trying to prove that the Palestinians aren't terrorists by genetic or cultural disposition, as it once was, and more about proving that Israel is, in fact, a form of Apartheid regime. Witness the battle in Toronto about the participation of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid in the Pride Parade. Of course this campaign against Pride by Mammoliti, Ford and every other bigot on council was as much about attacking gay & lesbian rights as Palestine. But they tried - and failed - to target it on the basis of the Israeli Apartheid label, giving the argument publicity. The city's discrimination officer found that labeling a country as racist was not discriminatory towards an ethnic group.

In the Middle East itself, the solidarity campaigns to bring aid to the Gaza Strip - in part as a means to expose the brutality and illegality of the blockade have also helped to isolate Israel. Last year's flotilla to Gaza, which was attacked in international waters by Israel commandos who shot first and asked questions later, has turned out to have been a significant breaking point in terms of its isolation. The international optics of Israel killing nine unarmed human rights activists was bad enough but their repeated refusals to apologize to Turkey for killing Turkish citizens has become a foreign policy disaster.

This has only added to the ideological crisis that was created by the vicious and hypocritical invasion of Gaza at the end of 2008. At the time I suggested that this war was a symbol of Israel's weakness, not its strength, particularly after the defeat in Lebanon in 2006. Israel was spoiling for a fight to prove that it could still be the neighbourhood bully - by picking on the weakest kid on the block. But the effect - aside from failing to destroy Hamas - was only to make it harder for regional allies like Egypt and Turkey to justify their continued ties when the whole world turned away from Israel in disgust. And, I argued in January 2009, this war's brutal and vicious character could lead to some major knock on effects throughout the region.

But even in the unlikely event that Israel is able to achieve a "total victory" there is still the growing danger that the Arab anger this present brutality has unleashed will destroy the American empire's already shaky hegemony in the Middle East...
If these regimes begin to collapse - and Egypt's is the one to watch - it will signal the collapse of four decades of work to create a compliant network of pro-American regimes, with Egypt as the jewel in the crown. America's rulers, already frustrated with Israel's failure in Lebanon to weaken Iran, may begin to raise graver doubts about the utility of Israel's Iron Wall strategy.

As it happens, Egypt's dictatorship did fall in rapid succession after revolution in Tunisia, leading to a season of upheaval throughout North Africa and the Middle East. Libya, while a mixed result because of the involvement of western imperialism, marks the fall of another dictator, which could inspire the movement in Syria. Upheaval seems to be returning to Bahrain after the Saudi monarchy tried to help the Bahraini monarchy crush the revolution. All of this upheaval, combined with the rapid economic growth of Turkey alongside a process of reform that has weakened the power of the Turkish military, has elevated that country's role in the Middle East. The immensely popular, moderate Islamism of the Justice & Development Party led by Tayyip Erdogan has sought increasingly to assert its own interests and authority as a leading Muslim power of significance.

Israel's political leadership is now paying the price for the inability of Israeli political institutions and political thinking to switch gears. With growing international isolation - and economic unrest at home - the Israeli leadership is a one note song: repress, expand the settlements, refuse responsibility, refuse negotiations, repress. It's clear that this strategy has reached the limits of its effectiveness. It was one thing for groups of activists to challenge Israel's policies but now a major regional power - Turkey - has all but broken diplomatic ties with Israel and has announced that it is taking Israel to the International Court of Justice to challenge the Gaza blockade. Besides being a major own goal for Israel, it marks a new stage in its decline.

Turkey no longer needs Israel as it once did and feels confident enough to suspend its military ties with the country. Erdogan will travel to Egypt later this month and, perhaps, even visit the Gaza Strip in a further slap in the face to Israel. Just as America and NATO have attempted to insert themselves into the Arab revolutionary process, in order to direct it towards neo-liberalism and western strategic advantage, primarily against China and Russia, so Turkey is also inserting itself into the process. But Turkey, as a Muslim democracy in the Middle East, has far more credibility amongst the regional population. After all, they weren't spending billions to prop up the recently overthrown dictators, unlike the NATO powers. This move by Turkey is a brilliant tactical move to raise its prestige yet further as a regional leader. One only wonders if Turkey will sideline Israel in importance for any empire that wants to have sway in the Middle East. If it does, if Israel's importance as a bagman for western imperialism becomes redundant, its decline will be accelerated. The voices in American ruling class circles who already have been raising doubts about the usefulness of Israel - like Walt & Mearsheimer - will become louder and more confident. Israel may soon discover that it is, in fact, the tail and not the dog, and a very expensive tail indeed.

Turkey to take Israel to ICJ - Middle East - Al Jazeera English

Libya: France Gets Oil Contracts, Arab Dictatorships Get To Back Slap

Yesterday saw the "Friends of Libya" carve-up conference in Paris where everyone sought to get in on the reconstruction and oil contract action. Besides the announcement that $15 billion in frozen Gaddafi funds would be released to the National Transition Council, there was also the spectacle of speeches by all and sundry congratulating themselves on a job well done. This sort of grandstanding is, of course, de rigeur, at such international conferences but it takes on a particular irony here. For instance, the Kuwaiti foreign minister, Sheikh Dr. Mohammed Sabah Al-Salem Al-Sabah, that is, a member of the al-Sabah family monarchy that rules Kuwait with an iron fist, announced without a hint of irony:

"Libya will see a new era featuring security, stability, and respect for rights, freedoms and equality," the Kuwaiti official told participants at the meeting. "I would like to seize this opportunity to pay tribute to the sons of Libya who sacrificed themselves in defense of the liberty and dignity of their homeland," he added.

No doubt Kuwait will now introduce democracy, equality for women and the large immigrant workforce that have no civil rights. And since world leaders had shown up to pile the lies on the conference floor like horseshit outside a barn, French President Nikolas Sarkozy couldn't bear to miss the opportunity to throw his own excrement on the heap:

"We have aligned with the Arab people in their aspiration for freedom."

Aligned with the Arab people? Really? Sarkozy and the French government were loyal to the Tunisian dictator Ben Ali right up until the end. And, like the Americans, they denied that the Egyptians wanted to overthrow their own dictator - or, in the case of the US vice president, denied that Mubarak was even a dictator.

Then there is the great Arabian memory hole known as Bahrain and Yemen. It is as though the democracy movements in those countries don't exist - even as the Bahraini monarchy continues persecuting the Shia majority, arresting activists, and  killing children. In fact, there were major demonstrations and street battles with the Bahrain police force going on at the same time as the conference, which was attended by representatives of the Bahraini monarchy. The king even paid tribute "to the Libyan people":

"Our stance stems from Bahrain's commitment to Libya's independence, territorial integrity, regional security in addition to ensuring the security of its people so that it could assume its role as an active member of the international community and its Arab and regional environment," he said.

At least he didn't have the audacity to use words like freedom and liberty, unlike the Kuwaiti foreign minister. However, not a single world leader, including the leaders of the Libyan provisional government, the NTC, drew a connection between Libya and Bahrain. Perhaps that has something to do with the agreements and meetings that have already taken place between the NTC and the Gulf monarchies.

And Yemen only makes it on the radar of the US media these days when the US military celebrates another unmanned drone attack on "al Qaeda" rebels in the desert. In case you had any doubts about the reason for this blood-soaked hypocrisy, you just have to follow the money.

Hours before the Paris bash, French daily Liberation published on its website a letter written only 17 days after UN Resolution 1973. In the letter, the TNC ratifies an agreement ceding no less than 35% of Libya's total crude oil production to France in exchange of Sarko's "humanitarian" support.
The letter is addressed to the office of the emir of Qatar (the go-between for the TNC and France from the beginning) - with a copy to then-Arab League secretary general, Amr Moussa. The letterhead is supplied by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Libya.

On one level this isn't too surprising. The NTC has used bribery pretty much from the start to win military backing for the rebellion, stating that countries which supported them would win contracts. Those that didn't - not so much. Sorry, China, Russia and Africa.

Of course one hopes that the true aspirations of the Libyan people to overthrow an extremely repressive dictator are realized. But there is a difference between hope and delusion and attempts to paint political differences between the NTC and, for instance, the rebel commanders in Tripoli have proven to be empty. Evidence for this couldn't be clearer from the fluff piece in today's New York Times about the military commander of Tripoli, Abdulhekim Belhaj. Belhaj is a longstanding Islamist who led the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group and spent time in Gaddafi's jail - after being sent back to Libya under the USA's extraordinary rendition program. Here he suffered torture for years before finally signing a recantation. Belhaj is quoted as claiming that he never had any association with al Qaeda.

“We focused on Libya and Libya only,” he said. “Our goal was to help our people. We didn’t participate in or support any action outside of Libya. We never had any link with Al Qaeda, and that could never be. We had a different agenda; global fighting was not our goal.”

Except that his statements don't appear to square with the history of LIFG and his own role within it:

After the Taliban took power in Kabul in 1996, the LIFG kept two training camps in Afghanistan; one of them, 30 kilometers north of Kabul - run by Abu Yahya - was strictly for al-Qaeda-linked jihadis. After 9/11, Belhaj moved to Pakistan and also to Iraq, where he befriended none other than ultra-nasty Abu Musab al-Zarqawi ...
Crucially, still in 2007, then al-Qaeda's number two, Zawahiri, officially announced the merger between the LIFG and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Mahgreb (AQIM). So, for all practical purposes, since then, LIFG/AQIM have been one and the same - and Belhaj was/is its emir. In 2007, LIFG was calling for a jihad against Gaddafi but also against the US and assorted Western "infidels".

What's interesting about this isn't so much that Belhaj was an Islamist - a lot of government opponents in the Middle East and North Africa, fighting against secular nationalist regimes, were Islamist guerillas. What is interesting is the attempt to cover up his history, assert his fidelity to western-approved goals - "Now this man... is a grateful ally of the United States and NATO." - and to downplay his importance in the storming of Tripoli - "“He was nothing, nothing. He arrived at the last moment..." - even though he was elected by the rebel fighters themselves as the commander of Tripoli. Not likely if he just wandered into town the day before last.

Besides demonstrating the levels of dishonesty in the NTC, in the service of the propaganda needs of their NATO backers, it also suggests that even rank and file leaders like Belhaj accept the general program of the NTC. That doesn't necessarily mean there won't be resistance to the neo-liberal program of the NTC that is emerging - or to the fact that no elections for the presidency are planned for 20 months, with elections to a constituent assembly to rewrite the constitution in eight months. But when pre-eminent rebel leaders like Belhaj are saying that their intention is to dissolve their rebel militas as soon as possible and submit to the command of the NTC, this begs the question of what mechanisms will exist to organize and mobilize any opposition.

Did NATO Kill The Libyan Revolution?

What do you say when a dictator is overthrown and the news shows pictures of people celebrating? That's easy, right? You feel good that the world is a slightly better place. But, then, what do you say if the dictator wasn't fundamentally defeated by those people - at least not alone - for all of their courage they needed the help of outsiders? You'd still probably feel like the defeat of a dictator was a good thing. However, what if those outsiders had a long and odious history of propping up dictators, invading countries and setting up repressive regimes, exploiting weaker nations and even crushing calls for democracy in their own backyard? You'd probably start to raise questions about why such people would help the struggle for democracy since they haven't demonstrated much interest in it themselves. It might lead you to ask what their real intentions were. If you thought about it a little more, it might also lead you to ask the question of who asked such dubious characters to enter the fray in the first place. These would all be legitimate questions and the answers wouldn't always be easy or uncomplicated but they have to be asked.

 All of which brings us back to Libya. There is a wide array of opinions that exists on the left - from the NDP, which supported the NATO intervention to those, like the Centre for Research on Globalization, which view Gaddafi in a positive light, as a liberator and the insurgency as a NATO plot top to bottom. Then there are those who acknowledge that having NATO involved is not ideal but argue that the overthrow of Gaddafi still constitutes a progressive revolution and contend that the role of NATO was not as important as some would suggest. Lastly, there are those, like myself, who argue that indeed the insurgency that shook Libya beginning February 17 was a very real, very grassroots revolt against a dictatorship; that it was part of the broader Arab Spring, which had seen dictators fall on Libya's eastern and western borders, Egypt and Tunisia, respectively. That uprising spread rapidly:

This was a mass popular uprising involving millions of people. Areas liberated from the regime put under popular control all the functions of the state, including prisons, the police and courts. Councils organised the distribution of food according to need, opened TV and radio stations, and issued revolutionary newspapers. Popular committees took over key installations such as electricity stations, the ports and other utilities. All the major liberated cities and towns are run by these revolutionary councils

However, Gaddafi's regime was able to move quickly to push back against the revolt, purging dissident elements from the army and the state with brutal swiftness. What's more, the sheer brutality of the Gaddafi regime in suppressing dissent and preventing the formation of any independent civil society, unions, etc. meant that there were no pre-existing networks of resistance that existed. Everything had to be made up from scratch. Except those networks of former regime officials who had come over to the revolution along with some military commander with their troops.

In the face of the forward rush of the revolution, the grassroots revolutionaries could have the upper hand in energy and sheer numbers. But when the dash westwards by Benghazi's young and disorganized revolutionaries was halted and then pushed back, it was the organization of former regime officials and military officers who had the experience to hold things together. They gained the upper hand in the National Transitional Council (NTC), which brought together representatives from across the country. And while the initial political inclinations of the revolution were decidedly anti-imperialist - with a giant banner in liberated Benghazi demanding no foreign intervention - when the revolution was put on the back foot, the former regime officials, people like Mahmoud Jibril and Mustafa Jalil, looked not to spreading and deepening the revolution to accelerate the continuing disintegration of the Libyan state but to a no-fly zone and air strikes as well as international recognition. In one sense, one can hardly blame them, the revolution was truly under siege but calling in NATO and the Gulf monarchies would have it's own price, which became clear right away.

On March 10 France recognized the NTC. On the same day, the NTC announced that it would respect all of the oil contracts. The next day Cameron & Sarkozy released a joint statement calling for a no-fly zone. The day after that the Arab League - under pressure from Saudi Arabia, which had reached a deal with the US to back a no-fly zone in Libya in return for the US turning a blind eye to its counter-revolutionary invasion of Bahrain - made the same call. On March 17 a UN resolution passed, paving the way for intervention.  It's also worth noting that the Qatari monarchy - which bans political parties, unions, etc - recognized the NTC on March 27, the day after the NTC signed an oil contract with them.

Qatar's recognition of the rebel council comes just a day after a senior rebel official said that Qatar Petroleum had agreed to market crude oil produced from east Libyan oil fields no longer under the control of Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader... Manouchehr Takin, from the Centre of Global Energy Studies, told Al Jazeera that the deal, if confirmed, would be "a landmine, legally speaking". "Is this council representing the Libyan people? Only two countries have accepted that. Whether we like it or not, the Tripoli government, by the United Nations, is [still] the legitimate and sovereign government," he said.

There was also infighting going on within NATO as countries fought over the potentially significant spoils of Libya's oil fields. Italy in particular was outraged when France tried to circumvent NATO entirely and itself lead the air war against Gaddafi. The reason was clear enough - ENI is a major Italian company and is the largest foreign presence in the Libyan oil fields. Italy thus accused France of wanting to get in on the action:

Meanwhile the head of the Italian Senate's defence affairs committee, Gianpiero Cantoni, said the original French anti-NATO stance was motivated by a desire to secure oil contracts with a future Libyan government.

Eventually, by mid-April NATO seemed to have gotten its act together and was stepping up air attacks, in particular around Misurata to break Gaddafi's siege and then to provide air support for the rebel advance out of the city. Meanwhile, in the Nafusa mountains, the French were air dropping weapons and the rebels were receiving intensive training.

The Tripoli Brigade, as they called themselves, had trained for four months in Libya’s western mountains with French, American and Qatari special forces for this moment.

The article continues with a detailed description of events leading up to Operation Mermaid Dawn, NATO's name for the assault on Tripoli.

With Nato drones overhead, beaming real-time images of the ground in front of them, rebels advanced in the wake of more bombing raids. Jets were called in by special forces, acting as forward air controllers, to attack Gadaffi’s tanks and command centres. Rebels fed back information using satellite phones supplied by Britain and France, bringing more bombs down on ammunition stores and communications facilities.
Members of the Special Reconnaissance Regiment, experts in covert intelligence gathering, were part of the 30-strong British special forces team. They linked with their French counterparts at Zuwaytinah, the command headquarters for the eastern front, 90 miles southwest of Benghazi.
The French troops are believed to be members of the Commandement des Opérations Spéciales (COS), which draws from the elite parachute regiments of the French army.
In the air Nato sharpened its information gathering by deploying RAF Sentinel aircraft which can use radar imagery to track the smallest vehicle from 100 miles away. They overflew the battle zones, mapping the positions of Gadaffi forces.

The article goes on to describe how rebels inside of Tripoli aided the assault by studiously targeting snipers on the tops of buildings and, on the day of the assault, sneaking up on them with butcher knives and meat cleavers. The overall picture that emerges is not one that fits neatly into a narrative that paints the rebels as NATO pawns - as those who support Gaddafi have suggested. But it is also clear that it was NATO that was setting the terms of the progress of the war and of the final assault on Tripoli. This hierarchy continues in the soon to be launched assault on Sirte - NATO planes are bombing Gaddafi installations, tanks and artillery pieces to "soften up" the enemy while rebel troops assemble ready to attack when the enemy is too weak to resist much. But NATO and the rebels are fighting for different things.

One of the interesting things about the rebel fighters on the ground and the NTC is the role of Islamists in the fighting forces. At present the military commander of Tripoli is a long standing jihadi named Abdelhakim Belhaj who was a leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group and who fought against the Soviets as a mujahideen in the 1980s. He was associated with al Qaeda though eventually broke with them. He was arrested by the Americans at one point and sent back to Libya under the extraordinary rendition program, jailed and tortured - reportedly under the supervision of the CIA. In 2010 Belhaj and his comrades signed a book length recantation of their beliefs in order to be released from prison by Saif al-Islam in a public relations exercise to demonstrate Libya's ability to rehabilitate Islamist terrorists. It is men like Belhaj with extensive experience and training in guerilla warfare who are now leading rebel fighters.

However, the dominant forces inside the rebel political leadership are the former regime elements. The president and prime minister of the provisional government are formerly high-ranking officials in the Gaddafi regime. Mahmoud Jibril, the prime minister, was responsible for privatizing Libyan state assets as the head of the National Economic Development Board. Mustafa Jalil was the Minister of Justice.

Some of those who believe that the overthrow of Gaddafi constitutes a revolution against the Gaddafi regime and a continuation of the Arab Spring point to these sorts of disjunctures between the NTC and other factions within the rebels, whether between the military and political leadership, or between the Misurata leadership council and the NTC, to point out that the spirit of the revolution is still alive. That is undoubtedly true. People didn't fight and die because they wanted to help NATO countries strengthen their hold over Libyan oil, or to gain control of the Arab Spring or to strengthen their strategic position in Africa. But to say this is entirely to miss the bigger point that the forces at work and their agendas are more powerful than the relatively dispersed, guerilla type networks of rebels. What's more these are not large forces. The Tripoli Brigade that stormed the capital only has 1,300 soldiers. The actual fighting force of the rebels is unclear with different numbers on different Wikileaks pages but the fact that the storming of Tripoli involved perhaps as few as 4,000 rebel soldiers gives an indication of its size.

 To think that such a tiny force - even if we add untrained volunteers to boost the numbers - could stand against NATO, which had just decimated the trained and well armed military force of the Libyan government is sheer foolishness. But it wouldn't even have to come to this extreme solution. The tiny military force lacks the national political capabilities that are controlled by the NTC as a result of their alliance with NATO and, now the growing financial power of the provisional government. Already, the UN, UK, France, Spain, the US and some Gulf monarchies are releasing billions of dollars in previously frozen Gaddafi funds to the NTC. And in a powerful symbol of the nature of the relationship, the first tranche of money was flown to Libya in a British fighter jet. The Canadian government, which froze aid to Palestine after Hamas was democratically elected in the Gaza Strip, is also looking to release money to the NTC as soon as possible. Meanwhile, eager to help the NTC spend all their newfound money, a conference for "Friends of Libya" will be held today in Paris. What is the purpose of the conference?

While officials are adamant Thursday is about securing political stability in Libya and doing things differently than in Iraq, French companies are planning a trade mission to get a head start on reconstruction contracts.
As well as big prospects for developing oil drilling, the end of the six-month conflict will open up big opportunities for infrastructure, construction, electric power, telecoms, water and tourism companies who are keen to challenge the privileged position enjoyed by Italian firms under Gaddafi's long rule.
The NTC has said those who took a lead role in backing their revolt will be rewarded.

I have discussed previously how China might react to being shut out of Libya. China has been pushing very aggressively into Africa and its competitive investment model has sidelined older big powers like the USA. There is no doubt that NATO's intervention into Libya is about pushing back against China - and China has made clear that it too will push back to defend its interests. This holds the danger of militarizing the new scramble for Africa, leading to more wars and more dictators, not less.

What's more, perhaps one of the most important political impacts of NATO's involvement was the conservatizing influence it has had on the politics of the struggle. In the early days there were reports of rebels undermining the state by radicalizing it - reaching out to conscript soldiers to join the uprising, setting up revolutionary councils, engaging in mass action, etc. But with the retreat of the revolution and the growing power of conservative elements in the NTC, this changed opening the door to reactionary politics, like the anti-black African racist killings by rebels that have emerged.

The dominance of relatively conservative elites and the absence of countervailing pressures skewed the politics of the rebellion. We hear of "the masses", and "solidarity". But masses can be addressed on many grounds – some reactionary. There are also many bases for solidarity – some exclusionary. The scapegoating of black workers makes sense from the perspective of elites. For them, Libya was not a society divided on class lines from which many of them had profited. It was united against a usurper inhabiting an alien compound and surviving through foreign power. Instead, the more success Gaddafi had in stabilising his regime, the more the explanation for this relied on the claim that "Gaddafi is killing us with his Africans ".
A further, unavoidable twist is the alliance with Nato. The February revolt involved hundreds of thousands of people across Libya. By early March the movement was in retreat, overseas special forces were entering Libya, and senior figures in the rebellion called for external intervention. Initially isolated, they gained credibility as Gaddafi gained ground. As a result, the initiative passed from a very large popular base to a relatively small number of armed fighters under the direction of the NTC and Nato. It was the rebel army that subsequently took the lead in persecuting black workers.

There is about to be a big scramble for contracts and Jibril, a professional neo-liberal, is likely to continue the process of privatizing state assets. If there is a rapid move to a shock doctrine model of "reconstruction" workers in Libya could see a precipitous drop in their living standards - up till now one of the highest on the continent. The exact nature of the political settlement is unclear as different factions jostle for power and influence. It's still early days. The influence of the Islamist militias has already been recognized in the draft constitution, which defines sharia as the principle source of legislation. Of course, that can mean almost anything depending on interpretation. What will be key is the balance of forces.

In Egypt, where the Mubarak military structure maintained its control, they have resisted all moves towards democratization beyond the most superficial. However, the revolution in Egypt was never derailed by the intervention of imperialism and was led from the bottom up, drawing upon a decade or more of growing activism in labour and civil society. In Libya, the more revolutionary elements were sidelined once NATO became involved. They now face not only their own version of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces - in the form of the NTC and NATO - they do so with a much weaker alternative source of leadership, a lack of civil society organizations, labour unions, etc. If the NTC feels confident to put a recent Gaddafi lackey in charge of Tripoli within hours of setting up shop and with the militias still armed, what will it do once they are disarmed and demobilized or integrated into a national army?

There is a reason why the touchstone for politicians about what not to repeat is Iraq. What bothers them is not the invasion and killing of hundreds of thousands. No, they realized what a mistake it was to dismantle the Ba'athist state. As much as possible the Gaddafi state structure will be preserved. NATO intervened in part precisely to prevent the Libyan revolution from radicalizing and establishing an organizational basis for that radicalization. They don't want any more Tunisias or Egypts were the labour insurgencies continuing to push forward the revolution after the dictator's face has been removed from billboards and airports. NATO - and the Gulf Cooperation Council - wants regimes it can do business with, regimes that are loyal and, if necessary, regimes that will put their own populations in place. In the coming days, the NTC will move as quickly as possible to achieve the goal of a stable, business friendly nation. And don't be surprised if that includes a western military presence.

Goodbye Gaddafi, Hello NATO

There will be much celebrating across Libya over the next several days even as the mop-up operations get under way. Of course, there's no guarantee that this will be over for a while. It's hard to know what kind of resistance to the rebel victory will remain - amongst regime elements and Libyan tribes that weren't allied with the rebels. But for the moment there seems to be euphoria and you can't really begrudge Libyans that excitement - their dictator has just been overthrown.

But who will replace him? That is the question that now burns in Libya. All indications are that the National Transition Council led by Mahmoud Jabril - a CIA man - will have the support of NATO in consolidating a new Libya regime. As a pre-condition to winning the military support of NATO and political recognition by NATO countries and their allies, the TNC has already agreed to maintain the central policies that had previously endeared Gaddafi to the US and Europe. Oil contracts will all be respected (though I wonder about those of China and, to a lesser extent Russia), as will treaties that make Libya the immigration gendarme of northern Africa, keeping Africans from fleeing poverty and war.

Some will want to turn the enthusiasm for the deposing of Gaddafi into a picture of revolution and liberation - a further deepening of the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions. But this is to miss some fundamentally different dynamics. Ben Ali in Tunisia and Mubarak in Egypt were supported by imperialism until the end. Now, of course, the US is in favour of democracy in Egypt - or rather, supports the Egyptian military council that runs the country in the name of future democracy (while jailing pro-democracy activists, trade unionists, and others). In Libya, a section of the ruling class - ironically, the one most aligned with Gaddafi's son Saif al-Islam - broke from the regime early. No doubt this was rooted in the more fractious and regionalized Libyan context, whereas in Egypt tribalism plays almost no part in politics. But it mean that before the revolution could establish independent organizations the initiative was seized by opportunists, Gaddafi insiders and, ultimately, CIA/NATO bagmen.

The independent initiative of the early days was snuffed out as the revolution was subordinated to the command structures of the TNC and, in the west, those of Misurata. Even here some on the left have tried to suggest that the rivalry between Tripolitania-based Misurata and Cyrenaica-based Benghazi has some political basis, that perhaps the Misurata leadership have asserted their independence from the TNC based upon some principled opposition to imperialism or cronyism. But this is without any evidence. It is more likely part of the emerging dynamic of regional and tribal power-brokering. Certainly, the leadership in Misurata were happy to accept NATO advisors and air support. There were no complaints about the conditions imposed by NATO.

All of this means that the likely course of action now will be that a NATO-brokered agreement, using the carrot of frozen Gaddafi funds and market access along with the stick of being excluded, will establish a unified state under the control of a national unity government of various groups. If they don't fall out - as has already been happening to a certain extent, evidenced by the assassination of rebel military commander Younis - they will turn their attention to disarming the irregular militias or incorporating them into the military command structure. The norms of daily life will be resumed as quickly as possible and the state structure - minus some of the authoritarian police apparatus, which is not an insignificant thing - will remain largely intact. The TNC will continue the program of privatizations that Gaddafi had already started and will probably move to implement a more even distribution of resources across the country (Cyrenaica suffered discrimination in this regard under Gaddafi). I expect that the US military will quietly move their African Command (Africom) from West Germany to Libya now that they have a regime that is in their debt. That is an advance for imperialism. It will also increase tensions with China on the continent where it was making gains at the expense of the USA and NATO countries. I imagine that this will impact the ways in which China engages with African governments, encouraging them to strengthen the military component to counter any temptation by the west to displace China through proxies.

Will there be deeper changes - a truly free press, trade union rights, freedom of assembly and the right to form political parties? Some concessions will be expected by the population, for certain. But all of the political training and experience of the TNC & Misurata council has been in the authoritarian practices of the old Libyan regime (or of the CIA). The only guarantee will be if the Libyan people's enthusiasm for the overthrow of Gaddafi finds expression in independent organizations and mobilizations - little evidence of which presently exists. In Iraq the overthrow of Hussein has not won many of the democratic rights noted above - protesters are shot and killed, independent trade unions are outlawed, there are secret police and political prisoners aplenty. It would be naive to think that the Libyan ruling class is any nicer or that NATO has changed its stripes.

Of course, one hopes that the revolutionary councils and initiative of the early days re-emerges. But NATO and the TNC will be doing everything in their power to ensure that this doesn't happen - and they now have the initiative.

Pockets of resistance as rebels claim Tripoli - Africa - Al Jazeera English

Afghanistan In Disarray? Blame Iran Even If It's B.S.

I'm sure it's just a coincidence that at the end of a bad month for the client regime in Afghanistan and the NATO colonial project in general, that the US made the discovery that Iran was supporting al Qaeda and needed to announce it. I also believe other really stupid things like Ethical Oil and that Ezra Levant is a charming, decent human being.

I won't pretend that the Iranian regime isn't a disgusting, repressive semi-dictatorship that kills and imprisons dissidents. And I won't pretend that, like any capitalist state that seeks to project regional power, that it is above unprincipled maneuverings and manipulations. However, I have serious doubts that the Iranian regime is supporting al Qaeda to any great extent. First off, al Qaeda probably doesn't need it. They have gotten much more support in the past from Saudi Arabia and, to this day, from elements inside the Pakistani intelligence apparatus - the ISI. Osama bin Laden wasn't living in Pakistan for a decade without at least some of the authorities knowing about it - do you think it was just an oversight that the Americans didn't tell the Pakistanis before they staged the raid that killed him? It was precisely because the ISI and the military are increasingly unreliable allies.

What's more, al Qaeda despises the Shia sect of Islam, which is the dominant strand in Iran. To al Qaeda they are apostates and worse even than the Americans. Iran supports other Shia movements - like Hezbollah and the Shia dominated Syrian regime. In neighbouring Iraq, where Shia are also the majority, the al Qaeda grouping has staged numerous terror attacks on Shia pilgrims and worshippers, killing perhaps thousands. These guys are mortal enemies.

Is Iran supporting some elements of the insurgency in Afghanistan? Possibly, even probably. After all, America is in Afghanistan, in part, to encircle and contain Iran (as well as China). They would be a foolish state indeed if they didn't try to undermine the strategy of their enemy - just as America did to the Soviets thirty years ago. So what is the evidence offered? Some disputed conjectures about the conditions under which Iran holds al Qaeda "operatives" and bin Laden relatives who are in Iran.

Since 2001, Iran has appeared a somewhat reluctant host for senior al-Qaeda operatives who fled there after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, keeping them under tight restrictions. After an initial period of co-operation with the West, Iran now seems to be a more comfortable haven even if it remains on the edge of al-Qaeda’s orbit.
Western officials point to the release earlier this year of an Iranian diplomat who was held for 15 months after being kidnapped by gunmen in Pakistan.
In negotiations for the diplomat’s freedom, they say Iran promised better conditions for dozens of people close to Osama bin Laden who were being held under tight security. These included some of the terror chief’s children and the network’s most senior military strategist, Saif al-Adel.
Still, the life of the al-Qaeda-linked exiles in Iran continues to be very much a blind spot for Western intelligence agencies. Few firm details have emerged, such as how much Iran limits their movements and contacts.

In other words - there is no evidence of anything except that, from the sounds of it, some al Qaeda people live under house arrest with no contact to other militants. If there was any contact, the Americans would be trumpeting it from the roof tops. No, no, this is nothing more than hand-waving to demonstrate the problems in Afghanistan originate with EVIIILLL Iran, that America has it in hand, and to distract from the deteriorating situation in America's other war.

U.S. accuses Iran of ‘secret deal’ that gives money, recruits to al-Qaeda - The Globe and Mail

Taliban Makes Itself Popular By Killing NATO-Backed Crooks

I'm sure there will be paeans of praise for the now late mayor of Kandahar, particularly in the North American median. The Globe & Mail, for instance, suggests that Mayor Ghulam Haidar Hamidi was a reformer who was trying to root out corruption. However, it seems that local Afghans didn't feel the same, and saw him as someone who was aiding the bulldozing of local homes built without permission of the corrupt, gangster ridden authorities. As the article in the Guardian notes:

At the time of his assassination Hamidi's office was surrounded by around 100 protesters, furious at the municipality's destruction of houses built illegally on government land in recent days in the Loy Wala area of Kandahar.
One protester, Hajji Lal Mohammad, said the mayor had sparked outrage in the community where the houses were destroyed, apparently killing two children.
"They destroyed 200 houses and two children were killed," he said. "When I saw the bulldozers I also wanted to kill the mayor."

Hamidi was mooted as a possible replacement for President Karzai's half-brother - a notorious gangster and drug dealer himself - and this will add to the sense of a power vacuum in the volatile south. The Taliban may be authoritarian and deeply conservative but they are playing it smarter and smarter as this unwinnable war continues into its second decade. They have targeted the corrupt figures backed by the American puppet regime who are widely unpopular amongst the local, poverty-ridden population. This has helped them to grow in strength and numbers, while the Karzai regime has grown more despised even as his extended family grows wealthy from the NATO war economy. They seem to have also wised up to employing military tactics that reduce civilian casualties while making the biggest impact on local power brokers.

The death of Hamidi will raise further concerns about whether military gains by the US military in the Kandahar region, particularly in districts adjoining the city, will be undermined by the remorseless killing of top public figures.
The death comes weeks after the killing in their homes of two powerful politicians in the south: Ahmed Wali Karzai and Jan Mohammad Khan, an ally of the Karzai family and a key figure in neighbouring Uruzgan province. In April, Kandahar's police chief was killed by a suicide bomber who entered police headquarters.
A recent UN report said "targeted killings" had increased in the first half of 2011 from an already high level. Assassination attempts had caused 43 injuries and 190 deaths – a 5% increase on the same period in 2010.
"Every death piles on top of the other and leads to a sense of demoralisation, that nobody is safe," said Martine van Bijlert, co-director of the Afghanistan Analysts Network.

This latest assassination will only deepen the sense that America and NATO are heading on an accelerated path towards defeat. Therein lies the only hope for Afghanistan.

The Disaster That Is Afghanistan

This week's slaying of Ahmad Wali Karzai, brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai and a warlord/mobster with extensive power in Southern Afghanistan is a reminder that NATO and the Americans haven't got the situation in Afghanistan under control. Not by half. That they needed to rely upon a man with money in drugs, corruption, influence peddling and god knows what else, is a sign of just how weak are the institutions that NATO has created in that country ten years after invading it. It's also a graphic demonstration of the fact that no collaborator is safe from the reach of the Taliban.

The killing comes on top of the rather embarrassing collapse of the Kabul Bank as a result of illegal and ill-founded loands to politically connected insiders. None of this should surprise anyone. The foundation for NATO's "nation-building" efforts was to re-empower the warlords thrown out by the Taliban. It wasn't about working with oppositionists who had fought the Taliban and whose main concern was democracy and human rights. It was always about stability and a compliant regime as a means to contain both Iran to the west and China to the east - with the added bonus of access to some important natural resources from gas to lithium deposits throughout the region. But relying upon the old system of cronyism and warlordism has led to a system of.... cronyism and warlordism, plus a lot of US dollars to build military infrastructure, etc. As the Globe & Mail article suggests, the real power doesn't lie with the nominally democratic official government - nominally because few can run for office who aren't pre-approved by local strongmen and governors are appointed by the president and his cabinet, again, not because of their popular support generally but because they are affiliated with a warlord or are themselves a regional strongman.

Mr. Karzai was the go-to man for any business deal, argument or intercession with the government in Kabul. It made him a parallel, and ultimately more important, centre of power that local elected officials and the appointed provincial governor.

Nothing could make this more clear than the fact that the choices for replacement of the younger Karzai as a regional strongman and intermediary for the Americans are President Karzai's other brothers or passing along the mantle of power broker to a mob boss from another family.

One possibility is that President Karzai could replace the provincial governor, Tooryalai Wesa, with a strongman who combines good local tribal connections with a willingness to enforce his will with a private militia.
One name that came up repeatedly after the assassination was that of Gul Agha Sherzai, a native of Kandahar and its former provincial governor, who has also been linked for years to the narcotics business.

For NATO it's going to be business as usual, in the sense of operating with the same basic principles of influence peddling and warlordism. What is also clear is that this modus operandi isn't going to work over the medium to long term. This is especially the case as US arrogance creates a deepening rift with Pakistan - a country with the experience, proximity and resources to make life get much more difficult in Afghanistan for NATO.

Ten years and thousands of dead later, it feels like Afghanistan is still back in 1987, just two years before the Soviets withdrew, leaving behind a weak and despised regime that was overthrown three years after that. The lessons of this monstrous time machine are also the same now as they were back then: foreign regimes need to get out of Afghanistan, provide aid to clean up the mess we've created, and stop using the country as a chess piece in global power games. Finally, it is unlikely that any stable nation will be able to emerge in the context of borders drawn by imperialist powers that reflect the old division of Central Asia between Britain and the Tsarist Russian Empire. On the one hand the Pashtuns of the south are divided by the Durand Line that puts most of their fellow Pashtuns inside of Pakistan, with many families still divided by this false border. And, in the north, with ethnic Uzbeks, Tajiks, and Kazakhs divided by an arbitrary line that separates them from Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. This is certainly not a call for partition but for full and proper self-determination for the peoples of the region to determine the shape of their countries and their form of government - free of external impositions and pressure. Until there is recompense, rebuilding and true political freedom, Afghanistan will be doomed to repeat the same drama over and over.

Afghan President’s brother’s slaying creates vast power vacuum - The Globe and Mail

Libyan Rebels Are NATO Patsies For A New Great Game In Africa

Today: UK PM Cameron with Mustafa Abdul Jalil,
head of rebel TNC & former Gaddafi Justice Minister

In the first days following the pro-democracy demonstrations and then uprising in Libya, it would have taken a hard heart indeed to not support the revolt. While Muammar Gaddafi might once, in distant memory, have been able to claim some sort of fidelity to anti-imperialism and to the social development of Libya, those days were long gone. His regime was now taking money from Europe to act as its southern gendarme against illegal African immigration to Europe and was an enthusiastic partner in the War on Terror. It's no accident that arch-war monger, former British PM Tony Blair, was announced by Gaddafi's son to be a $1 million+ per year consultant to the regime. The domestic economic policies of the regime were increasingly neo-liberal and his son - and likely heir to the leadership of Libya - Saif al-Islam was the Libyan version of Gamal Mubarak - a designer suit wearing playboy and enthusiastic privatizer. The Libya regime was now just one more western supported petro-dictatorship in the Arab world.

What's more, that revolt was obviously part of the wave of revolts sweeping the Arab world and that had already toppled Ben Ali in Tunisia and Mubarak in Egypt. In Bahrain it looked like the pro-democracy movement was on the verge of victory. In Yemen it was well on its way. There were even stirrings in Syria and large protests in Iraq.

But things have changed a lot in the last four months.

The revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia continue to deepen, with strike waves and the explosive growth of independent unions in Egypt. In Syria, the revolt against Assad continues unabated and, impossibly, grows even in the face of terrible repression. In Yemen, President Salah clings to power - though for what reason is unclear since all but his family have abandoned him - driving the country to the brink of civil war. In Bahrain, with US blessing, the Saudi military helped to crush the pro-democracy movement in a wave of repression and purges that continues.

And in Libya we've passed the 100 day mark since NATO started it's "humanitarian bombing" mission to "protect civilians." What has become clear is that while the revolt was rooted in the real and legitimate discontent of the Libyan people, that movement was quickly corralled and contained by forces with another agenda. Opportunists from the Libyan regime, senior figures who had happily gone along with the torture and repression of dissidents, suddenly "joined" the movement, forming the Transitional National Council. The popular elements, including the local committees that sprang up in the heat of the revolt were pushed aside. The struggle against the Gaddafi regime was transformed from a social struggle against a repressive neo-liberal dictatorship, to a military struggle between two factions of the regime.

Yesterday: Former UK PM Tony Blair with Gaddafi

No longer was it about an uprising and about winning rank and file soldiers to support the revolt and break with Gaddafi - a pattern that marked the early stages of the revolt. It now became about defeating Gaddafi-controlled troops in a military contest in order to elevate the former regime figures to the leadership - with policies that differed little from Saif the "reformer". But Gaddafi and his allies still controlled two-thirds of the country geographically, a significant amount of popular support and two-thirds of the state infrastructure, meaning that the former regime figures were outgunned and outmanned. With no apparent political strategy to deepen the revolt, they ended up in the arms of NATO, begging for the alliance's military support.

But the support of NATO, Europe and the USA comes at a heavy price. That price is clear - the first thing that was demanded of the TNC was that they agree to respect the oil contracts signed by the Gaddafi regime, including its terms. It is also likely that it will mean accepting a US base on Libyan soil - the US African Command (Africom) has been refused by every African country and so is stationed in Germany. This is a strategically important beach-head for the Americans, who feel increasingly squeezed by the Chinese, who are making substantial inroads into Africa - ironically, by spending money on infrastructure that was accumulated by selling Chinese goods to America and Europe (paid for with debt that is held by the Chinese). Prior to the revolt against Gaddafi, there were more than 30,000 Chinese workers and specialists in Libya attached to the sizeable Chinese oil investments. An article in The Globe & Mail last November gives a flavour of China's push into Africa:

On Monday, Chinese Vice-President Xi Jinping finished a two-day visit to Botswana in which he signed financing deals worth millions in infrastructure and energy development. Two days earlier, he’d made major deals in oil-rich Angola. On Wednesday in Ethiopia, Chinese private and state investors opened a $27-million leather-goods factory that will employ 500 Ethiopians; the same investment fund is also building cement plants and an airport hotel nearby. On Thursday, Sudan, which imports 80 per cent of its food, announced plans to quintuple its current wheat cultivation with backing from Chinese and Persian Gulf investors, increasing its acres under cultivation by 25 per cent a year for a decade.

And this is not an atypical week. The Chinese claim to have more than $1.5-billion invested in Africa now, up from $210-million; they employ at least 300,000 Africans in their own countries (and, increasingly, import African workers to the cities of the Pearl River Delta) and have built 60,000 kilometres of roads and 3.5 million kilowatts worth of power stations there – far more than any other country. Last year, China replaced the United States as the largest trading partner of South Africa, the continent’s biggest economy, and annual China-Africa trade topped $100-billion for the first time this year.

Russian interests are also under threat in the region as the US, UK and the EU jockey to make the maximum gains from the upheaval of the Arab Spring. It's no surprise that Russia has opposed intervention, not from any principled anti-imperialism - as the Chechnyans and Georgians could attest - but rather out of the fear of losing their toehold in the region, mediated through America's enemies (i.e. those countries whose policies aren't subordinate to America's interests) like Syria and Iran.

What is going on in Libya now must be seen in this light - as a hijacked revolution that now plays its part in a new Great Game between imperial powers jockeying for position in Africa and the Middle East, primarily China and Russia vs NATO & the USA. Not only is this game a dangerous one that could exacerbate tensions between the imperial powers, none of whom is likely to look kindly on the loss of infrastructure and capital investments, strategic relationships, etc. It is also a threat to the whole process of democratic revolution throughout the Arab world.

On the other hand, if NATO loses in Libya, it will be a massive blow to the ability of the alliance to project power beyond Europe's borders. The recent criticisms by outgoing US Defence Chief Gates makes clear that there are already tensions and frustrations within the alliance as a result of the unwinnable NATO war in Afghanistan. Defeat in Libya will be another nail in the coffin of one of the pre-eminent tools of the United States to spread its empire, alongside its junior European partner. It will also be a defeat for the Gulf Cooperation Council, led by the repressive Saudi regime, who have thrown in their lot with the emerging project to use the upheaval to reconfigure relations in the region - defeating thorns in the side like Syria's Assad (who is a Shi'ite and who supports Hezbollah, a Shi'ite movement) and the bombastic Gaddafi, who has offended the Gulf emirs more than once with his anti-colonial rhetoric.

Chances are there will be no "good" solution forthcoming in the short-term. Probably NATO will attempt to save face by declaring a limited victory via establishing the partition of Libya between Cyrenaica in the east and Tripolitania in the west. Cyrenaica will, of course, be a NATO client regime "protected" by the permanent presence of NATO/US troops and military forces. A victory by Gaddafi is also unlikely to bring democracy to the Libyan people. The real hope lies with the further deepening of the Tunisian revolution on Libya's western border and the Egyptian revolution on the eastern border.

In the meantime, the best bad outcome is for a defeat for NATO, which is a much bigger threat to world peace and democracy than Gaddafi has ever been. NATO is waging war in Afghanistan, to guarantee a strategic advantage against China on its western border and to encircle Iran to the west of Afghanistan. NATO countries led the war against Iraq - predominantly the US and UK, of course. The UK was the first country to rush into the Middle East after the Egyptian revolution to hawk more weapons to frightened dictatorships. The US, of course, is deployed in more than 150 countries around the world. The Libyans, at present, are not deployed anywhere outside of Libya and under Gaddafi were involved in or initiated three wars since 1977 - two of those were ostensibly anti-colonial: against a French neo-colonial regime in Chad and the other a protest against the Egyptian dictatorship's peace treaty with Israel. This is not at all to justify Libyan military interventions - let alone its corrupt and oppressive social and economic policies - but to make clear that Gaddafi's regime are not even in the same league as the US/NATO and, with a population of 6 million, can't even be described as a regional imperialist country.

France confirms arming Libyan rebels - Africa - Al Jazeera English

Is It The End Of NATO?

I suggested the other day that NATO was basically a zombie and that they had already lost - at least in terms of intended political consequences - the war in Libya. It hadn't occurred to me that within a few days there would be infighting, including between core European members of the alliance. Yet that's exactly what we're seeing. Amr Moussa, former head of the Arab League and a big proponent of the original operation is quoted in today's Guardian newspaper as calling for an immediate ceasefire. Moussa is angling for a kick at the Egyptian presidency this year or next and the optics just don't look very good of European fighter jets dropping bombs on an Arab country.

More seriously, Italy is now calling for an immediate ceasefire, while France is calling for an intensification. Italy - along with Germany - has the biggest European economic presence inside Libya. With it looking very unlikely that NATO will be able to oust Gaddafi, those two countries stand the most to lose if Libya retaliates by seizing the property of companies from belligerent countries. Italy has major oil investments in Libya.

If Italy's call for a ceasefire is picked up again by Germany, this could easily create an unstoppable momentum towards a solution that leaves the country looking exactly like it did before NATO came in and blew the hell out of the place - except that Gaddafi's hand has likely been strengthened by his ability to pose as an anti-imperialist. And if NATO leaves Libya with its tail between its legs, this will be the second in a row failure on the battlefield, after Afghanistan. The latter war is looking increasingly like it is starting to wind-down and that a settlement of some sort will be reached with the Taliban, allowing them into government or giving them control of part of the south of the country (according to commentary on Asia Times Online, this was the American proposal, which the Taliban rejected).

NATO has no pretensions of being like the UN, some kind of world parliament (where the big powers get a veto). It is solely a military alliance. But if the military alliance couldn't whup the widely despised dictator of a developing country with a population of six million; and if it can't subdue a ragtag insurgency led by a poorly armed and mostly illiterate guerilla army - then what the hell kind of military alliance is it? Not one that is of any use to America, I'm guessing. Already, departing Defence Secretary Gates has questioned the value of NATO. Look for some tedious soul-searching in the coming months. With the likely default in Greece - potentially a fatal blow to the euro - the discrediting of another venerable European institution is the last thing the ruling classes of Europe need.

Libya deaths trigger rift over NATO campaign - Africa - Al Jazeera English

NATO Has Already Lost In Libya

I'm certainly not one to believe that imperialist agendas, hideous in life, won't rise zombie-like from the grave. The present air war by NATO to oust Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi is proof enough of that. The failure of NATO in Afghanistan, after ten years, to defeat the ragtag guerilla forces of the Taliban was surely more than enough proof that the cold war alliance was both American sock-puppet and a paper tiger. Heck, even the outgoing US Defence Secretary thinks so, saying that NATO has a "dim, if not dismal" future in his final policy speech.

And, yet, NATO managed to rouse its sickly self to attack Libya. First of all, if anyone has any illusions that NATO has any interest in Arab democracy, I would point to the fact that the west has supported every dictator in the region, no matter how brutal. They continue to support the Saudi monarchy that is so repressive it can't even bring itself to let women drive cars. The US gave Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak close to $3 billion every single year - not for economic aid or food or to help build schools - but directly to the security apparatus that beat and tortured any democratic movements that dared to show their face in public.

No, the only reason that NATO is in Libya is the attempt to get ahead of the wave of revolutions, the redirect and control them with an eye to turning to the advantage of the US and its allies. They saw the upheavals in unreliable allies like Libya and ostensible enemies like Syria as an opportunity to replace those regimes with ones that would be more pliant to western wishes and corporate control - as well as to opening space for Israel, widely despised as a colonial usurper, oppressor and racist state. Meantime, they have bent their efforts to sparing as much of the dictatorships that are America's consistent allies, like Bahrain and, up to the last minute, Yemen.

Libya's embattled uprising seemed a perfect opportunity, with memories of the demonization of Gaddafi still strong in the western mind from the 80s and early 90s. And the uprising's "official" organs very quickly came to be dominated by regime defectors who, only the day before, were happily repressing the Libya people as part of the Gaddafi regime. This domination was ensured with air support from the west and money from the Gulf dictatorships, including the enlightened despotism in Qatar.

And yet, this attempt to subvert the revolutions through military intervention is already a dismal failure. Even if, some months from now, Gaddafi is defeated and the Transitional National Council takes power with NATO and the Gulf Cooperation Council's blessing, what movement in the middle east is going to want the kind of "help" that has been visited upon Libya. It will take years of rebuilding to repair the infrastructure destroyed by NATO bombs. And people will look to Tunisia and Egypt and see revolutions that proceeded without having to disintegrate into civil war. Even in Yemen, where Saleh has held on most tenaciously, the destruction and death has been at a much more modest level than in Libya.

The proof of this wariness is clear from Syria where the opposition movement has been clear that it has no interest in NATO "help" in overthrowing Assad. In fact, while Assad is no less entrenched than Gaddafi and civil society no less truncated by the dictatorship, the tenacity and bravery of the movement is clearly eroding the regime and its military apparatus bit by bit. And the movement isn't under the control of opportunist former regime figures but, rather, local coordinating committees that have real popular support and participation.

It's likely true, as commentators like Pepe Escobar have argued, that the Saudi regime is funnelling money to friendly Sunni groups in Syria to strengthen the hand of sectarian opposition to the Allawite (Shia) Assad's control of Syria. But this is not the driving nor dominant force in the Syrian movement that is marked by slogans calling for inter-faith, regional and ethnic solidarity.

The result is that NATO faces a lose-lose situation in Libya. The possibility of appearing as an attractive alternative for the restive populations of North Africa and the Middle East has been dissipated by the failure to win a clear and quick victory in Libya. NATO's political credibility has also been undermined by the murderous and repressive actions of Israel against the Palestinian Arab population over which it rules with carte blanche by the Americans. And, yet, if NATO pulls out of Libya it will face an even bigger defeat than the one ever looming in Afghanistan: Libya is closer to Italy than Toronto is to Buffalo, New York. If NATO can't win a war in its own backyard what good is it? This will be compounded if the Syrians overthrow their regime without "help" from NATO.

With the Egyptian revolt spreading to Greece and Spain, it's quite possible that the debacle in Libya will turn what western leaders thought was an opportunity into further crisis. And that is good news for the Arab people of the Middle East and the cause of democracy.

Defiant Gaddafi vows to defeat NATO - Africa - Al Jazeera English

Canada Wikileaks Releases: Tories & Liberals Lie All The Time

Lies on wheels: Harper on "Arctic sovereignty"... and everything else

Our government lies to us, they do it constantly and they do it without blinking. That's the only conclusion that can be drawn from the revelations contained in the U.S. diplomatic memos leaked by Wikileaks in April and May.

During the election campaign it was easy to overlook these nuggets of insight into how our government works - and how it is thought of by U.S. diplomats and state department officials. But it's a good lesson is in what we ought to expect from both the Liberals and the Tories.

Revealed in these memos is the honest truth about the fact that back in 2003, on the same day that Chretien was accepting kudos for supposedly refusing to join the US invasion of Iraq, the highest level Canadian officials were meeting with their U.S. counterparts. They were offering Canadian military assistance in whatever "discreet" way was possible.

As the briefing note describes the message coming from the Liberals:

"Following the meeting, political director Jim Wright emphasized that, despite public statements that the Canadian assets in the Straits of Hormuz will remain in the region exclusively to support Enduring Freedom, they will also be available to provide escort services in the Straits and will otherwise be discreetly useful to the military effort.

"The two ships in the Straits now are being augmented by two more en route, and there are patrol and supply aircraft in the U.A.E. [United Arab Emirates] which are also prepared to 'be useful.'"

And the double-dealing methods of the Liberals were inherited gleefully by the Stephen Harper Conservatives. Harper made a name for himself as the defender of the Canadian Arctic, promising increased defence spending to maintain Canadian interests. This chest-thumping is part of a wider "cold war" in the Arctic in response to the fact that climate change is creating the potential to not only access massive suspected reserves of oil but also the possible Northwest Passage from Europe to Asia, dreamed of at least since John Cabot made an effort to find it in 1497. Control of the passage would be of massive strategic and commercial value.

But while Harper talked big, he has done little, a fact that didn't go unnoticed to U.S. Ambassador at the time, David Jacobson. He joked that while Harper said "the issue has never been more important to our country... one could paraphrase to state 'the North has never been more important to our party" since it helped the Tories win the 2006 election. However, while Harper talked big in public, he did nothing in private leading a diplomatic memo to state:

"That the PM's public stance on the Arctic may not reflect his private, perhaps more pragmatic, priorities, however, was evident in the fact that during several hours together with Ambassador Jacobson on January 7 and 8, which featured wide-ranging conversations, the PM did not once mention the Arctic."

And in a move strongly reminiscent of Jean Chretien's on Iraq, Harper has worked behind the scenes to try and find a way to extend the mission in Afghanistan beyond the promised end date of 2011. The documents state that as far back as March, 2009 the Tories were "putting all options back on the table" with regards to extending the mission. A senior advisor to Harper, in a meeting with U.S. officials asked for patience while "public rhetoric" caught up with reality.

And, during a meeting with NATO chief, General Rasmussen, in January 2010, Harper promised to consider the option of keeping troops on, only noting that America's withdrawal was "unhelpful" to him making the case for extension. He also noted that they needed to "manage" the public message and, from Harper's perspective deal with the political difficulties generated by the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan. By the end of 2010 Harper had agreed to extend the "non-combat" mission, though there will still be Canadian soldiers on the ground.

Lastly, the Wikileaks memos note that Harper did an "about face" on the question of an elected senate. The Tories and before them the Reform Party have had a strong position of support for senate reform, to make the body elected. Yet, even though the Tories have been in power for five years they have made no moves to implement this platform. In fact, the first thing that Harper did upon receiving a majority in the recent election was to appoint three Conservatives who lost to the Senate. Back in 2008, a U.S. diplomat noted wryly:

"[The appointment of 18 senators is] a major about-face for a PM and a party that long campaigned for an elected upper chamber. The cost of the eighteen new senators also conflicts with political messaging about the need for official belt tightening."

What all this reveals is that from the point of view of the Wikileaks memos, the Tories and the Liberals are harder and harder to tell apart. In fact, with the revelation that CSIS continues to secretly and illegally deliver the names of "terror suspects" to U.S. authorities - a process exposed by the plight of Maher Arar - it is clear that our elected politicians are in good company in engaging in dirty politics, unaccountability and a lack of transparency.