NATO Defies Africa By Intensifying Bombardment Of Libya
At African Union Headquarters in Addis Abeba, African leaders recently once again demanded that NATO stop its bombardment on Libya, and yet again the West disregarded the call and has in fact been intensifying its war against the Libyan Jamahiriya.
The African Union had called for an immediate cessation at the outset of the NATO countries bombing of Libya in March, which was also snubbed by the United Nations Security Council which contradicted the African organization which embraces 52 African states.
Only Morocco is not a member of the African Union, with its king having opted to join the far-away Gulf Cooperation Council in order to provide a surrounding of Libya, by the alliance of Arab dictatorial states against the Libyan democratic government.
All North African states with the exception of Libya are part of a NATO contact group, and the Arabian Gulf dictatorships are friendly to NATO, whilst the African Union has refused the military U.S. Africa Command AFRICOM to have any headquarters in Africa.
The African leaders met on May 25-26 to find a solution to Libya’s crisis following three months of rebellion that have seen former colonial powers Britain, France, Italy and other European states along with the United States leading an all-white nations onslaught against Africa's wealthiest nation, Libya.
While the African leaders have said only a political solution will resolve the country’s problems and want NATO to cease its operations, they remain thus far powerless in the face of Western powers which are unfazed and have vowed to see Qaddafi, Libya's popular proponent of The Green Book, eliminated.
In essence, the African leaders’ demand for a ceasefire is of no consequence as the western powers have so far simply ignored it as with previous African Union decisions, in the same way the French intervened militarily to remove former Cote d’Ivoire president Laurent Gbagbo by force, despite African opposition to any foreign military intervention.
Advisers to the African Union have told Mathaba that the way for African governments to take a stand, would be to withdraw all cooperation and membership of the African Union and of each African state from the United Nations.
The African countries and its umbrella AU are within their rights and international law, as well as natural justice to do so, they point out, given that the African Union has not been given a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, with veto powers, and the UN has allowed its own Security Council resolutions to be violated.
The advisers have told Mathaba that even though these resolutions were drafted by the US, Britain and France, the UN itself is powerless to take action against those same countries, and Russia and China have also been unwilling to step on US toes, in defence of attacks on an African sovereign state.
The African Union has many powers to defeat the onslaught against Africa which has started against Libya, with some previous success stories being examples to follow, they say, especially the breaking of previous UN resolutions against Libya that were deemed to be unjust after many years of refusal by the western powers to negotiate a solution.
The advisers referred to the African defeat of the last long UN Sanctions and No-Fly Zone imposed on Libya after Africa held that Libya had cooperated fully in the Lockerbie trial and investigation, and African leaders from a number of African states flew in their aircraft to Tripoli in defiance of the UN resolutions.
At the time the event was not covered by the news media networks of the NATO countries, but the British and US governments quickly responded by lifting the sanctions and no fly zone, rather than have it openly violated, as they could "not afford to go and bomb a number of African countries into submission."
Others point out the success of Nigeria in its diplomatic tit-for-tat with Britain, in response to the treatment of Nigerians applying for visas to Britain and the British embassy in Lagos.
When Nigeria responded by raising the prices of visas to Nigeria for British businessmen and making applicants or their secretaries queue outside the Nigerian embassy in London for days on end in the rain, Britain quickly relented and improved its visa processing in Lagos.
The advisers quoted these examples and others saying that all that is required is for the African Union to start taking some pro-active action and long-term planning on handling the western colonial powers, in order to prevent a return to the slavery of the continent.
This year, largely with Libyan money, Africans had planned to set up an African National Bank, under the control of the governments and not any private interests, with headquarters in Lagos, as well an African Monetary fund to be based in Yaounde, Cameroon and an African Investment Bank based in Sirte, Libya, with a capital of at least $US 42,000 million.
The United States has confiscated the Libyan contribution of $32,000 million, thus making it impossible for the project to continue. Mathaba has learned from informed sources that the western powers had requested that some of their nationals be allowed to sit on the boards of the African Monetary Fund but that they had been turned down, and told that this was an African institution for Africans only.
Libya had also been advocating for the use of gold as currency for payment of oil and other African resources and goods in international trade, which would set Africa at an advantage or at least a fair trade rather than reliance upon foreign paper money which is printed overseas and is rapidly losing value.
Ivory Coast's former president-elect Ggagbo had also indicated his government would print its own currency and ditch the CFA Franc, printed in France and issued by the French bank for most of its former colonies in Africa. The French then sent in their military forces to remove him from power, after elections that were contested.
The British Prime Minister on Thursday authorized the use of helicopters in Libya, again in total disregard to the African Union position of absolutely no foreign military on African soil to be involved in the Libyan conflict.
Sky News reported Friday morning that the British Apache helicopters would be deployed over Libya in the following 24 hours to boost the campaign in support of the Libyan National Army, the CIA-funded and US-trained military wing of the Transitional National Council which is seeking to overthrow the Libyan government with the help of Al-Qaida and other opposition groups supported by NATO.
The British Prime Minister also confirmed that French helicopters would also be deployed to Libya, as NATO forces seek to be more accurate in dealing with ground targets, and they may also deploy A-10 aircraft which are geared to close support of ground forces.
The NATO presence in Africa, the economic sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe and the support for new governments in Tunisia and Egypt – to mention a few cases – show that the West wants to pave the way for a re-entry into Africa, which they call the Operation Odyssey Dawn - effectively a "return" to Africa.
With the G8 - largely ignored by media in its current meetings - offering Arab countries “in transition to democracy” at least 12 billion pounds (nearly 20 billion U.S. dollars) in aid, loans and debt relief, the Libyan conflict is likely to continue as rebels are spurred by the prospect of a financial bailout if they win the war.
Britain is immersed in the conflict and the “fledgling democracies” in the Arab world and has also pledged to set aside 110 million pounds (about 181 million U.S. dollars) “over the next four years to foster democracy and economic growth in Tunisia and Egypt as part of a wider international package to show support for the Arab spring.”
Speaking Thursday on the opening day of the G8 summit of leading economies in France, the British Prime Minister Cameron argued that if Britain did not help the fledgling democracies of North Africa, the result would be poisonous extremism and waves of illegal immigration into the United Kingdom.
However, analysts point out that the strongest bastion against extremism was exactly the direct participatory democracy "Jamahiriya" government of Libya, founded by Qaddafi, since 1977, and which the NATO alliance is now attempting to overthrow by force, with the very aid of those extremists.
The G8 group of the world’s most industrialized nations, with the exception of Russia, is generally agreed on the course of action against Qaddafi and is determined to see him either killed or leave Libya, despite that he has no position within the government, while backing Arab “democratic transitions” that follow the western-prescribed "multi party" electoral system.
As NATO continues with its bombardment on Libya and ignoring the AU’s demands, African leaders find themselves stuck with a resolution they cannot enforce, and the only option would be to take some actions such as retaliation or boycotts.
The rebels fighting the Libyan Jamahiriya government have rejected the latest overtures for a ceasefire by Libyan Prime Minister Baghdadi al-Mahmoudi, Secretary of the General People's Congress, demanding that the only way forward would be "Qaddafi’s exit".
The AU may now be pinning hopes on South African President Jacob Zuma, who is scheduled to head other African leaders to Libya in Monday, May 30th, to find a roadmap for a peaceful resolution to the conflict following an earlier unsuccessful trip in April.
What will remain critical, however, is how Zuma and his High Level Panel for the Resolution of the Conflict in Libya will engage NATO following their meetings in Tripoli.
http://www.mathaba.net/news/libya 
