Dissonance #1

Author(s): 

French war on Libya: a dissonant point of view (Alexandre Latsa)

So the job is finally done, Libya is now a free country.  The tyrant who oppressed his people, who were seeking democracy and freedom, has been neutralized. The Libyans are now free and will soon have the right to choose between Coca-cola and Pepsi, Mercedes and Audi, or between McDonalds and Burger King. Basically, what they were looking for like any other people on the planet. At least this is the same story we have been told a decade ago during the war on Afghanistan. As in 1999 in Serbia, in 2001 in Afghanistan or in 2004 in Iraq, the Western military intervention was in defiance of all rules of law, justice and morality. The western crusade was once again non-religious but clearly ideological and geopolitical and its goal is clear: the destruction of all the states which are either non-aligned or do not meet western standards, especially those found guilty of maintaining close relations with the main competitors of the western domination, that is to say mostly of course China and Russia.

Mohamar Kaddafi is dead and will not have had the "honor" of Slobodan Milosevic, be arrested alive, and die “accidentally” before the end of a rigged trial, in a court without legal basis. No, Mohamar Kaddafi was captured by his opponents who were able at this moment to show to the world how democrat they were by simply lynching him like a dog, while the scene was captured on mobile phone and delivered later to the whole planet. We also know that a black manhunt is going on in Libya. Such behaviors are quite far from the so-called aspirations to freedom attributed to Libyan rebels and supposedly similar to their counterparts in Tunisia or Egypt for example. It is also hard to believe to a “revolution for freedom” since we now know that the so called rebels were for 80% radical Islamists, most of them from the Muslims’ Brotherhood, and were supported by 5.000 soldiers from Qatar, and thousands of mercenaries from Afghanistan, recruited by the CIA. 

They are many reasons to believe that the real civil war in Libya will now begin.

Islamists and organized mafia groups that now dominate the country have already announced the introduction of the Sharia and of the polygamy. Libyans and especially Libyan women might forever say thank you to France. France played a key role in this military operation. The French decision to declare war to Libya seemed totally irrational. Mohamar Gaddafi was in full redemption during the last years and even offered his assistance to President Bush in the war against Al-Qaida that followed the 09/11. At the end of 2004, the French President Jacques Chirac met Kaddafi in Libya, erasing all the previous cases between the two countries. He asserted that the dark page of terrorism was over and that Kaddafi was frequentable. "Libya has renounced to all behaviors which it was previously accused of, by the international community," added the spokesman for the French President after this meeting. In 2005, Libyan emissaries contacted the Chief of Staff of the French Minister of Interior, which was headed by Nicolas Sarkozy. The Libyans wanted to establish a serious cooperation with France in all areas of security, especially against growing radical Islam. The French secret services have then established very deeps links with their Libyan counterparts, probably as close as the ones existing between the MI6 and the CIA and of which the American media have revealed the alarming extent.

In late 2007, newly elected Nicolas Sarkozy naturally expected to become the main interlocutor to Libya in Europe. The Libyan leader agreed to make his first visit in a western country, France, in exchange of involving France to solve the Bulgarian nurses’ case, despite the fact that Germany and Italy, the main trading partners of Libya at the time, were already heavily involved in this issue. It is finally the French President’s wife who went in Lybia to free the nurses, during a pathetic and ridiculous marketing operation. We now know that France has paid a high price for this operation, more than 450 million euro. But for Nicolas Sarkozy this is important symbol. The Libyan delegation was received in December 2007 in France with a total of 400 people including 40 Amazons to ensure Kaddafi’s safety. Kaddafi was able to pitch his tent within the garden of the Elysee Palace and enjoy his return within the international community. During the meetings, Kaddafi simply humiliated the French President by justifying terrorism as a weapon of the poor, and this despite the terrorist attack on the UTA flight 772 that killed 156 passengers including 54 French in 1989. Kaddafi also blamed Western superpowers for often violating international legitimacy, international law and the United Nations. Being interviewed by the French press, the Libyan leader ensured that Nicolas Sarkozy never mentioned the problem of human rights in Libya.  But Nicolas Sarkozy had other projects in mind. First of all he was at the time obsessed with the Union for the Mediterranean, his project in which he intended to involve Libya. But also, he had plans to sell to Libya some French technology, including nuclear power plant and warplanes, for an amount of more than 10 billions dollars. We know what happened: French companies were softly kept out of the Libyan market.

The outbreak of war, however, is not only due to Sarkozy. Another man in France played a key role in this operation: Bernard Henri Levy, one of the most influent and Atlanticist intellectual of the country. Bernard Henri Levy is famous in France for having been a fervent supporter of Alija Izetbegovic, Bosnian leader, during the war in Yugoslavia. He then supported the military interventions in Serbia, Afghanistan and Iraq. As early as March 2011, Bernard Henri Levy went to Libya, where the insurrection had begun, and then met with Mustapha Abdeljalil, Head of the Libyan National Transitional Council. The same day, he had a phone conversation with President Sarkozy, proposing him to meet the "Libyan Massoud." 10th of March 2011, a meeting took place in Paris with the President Nicolas Sarkozy, Bernard Henri Levy and three representatives of the Libyan National Transitional Council. During the meeting the President explained them the plan he had concocted with Bernard Henri Levy: an official and international acknowledgement of the National Transitional Council, and a military intervention against Kaddafi’s regime. Two hours later, while the Libyan rebels were already announcing to the main stream media their meeting with the French President, the French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe was in Brussels and was apparently not aware of anything yet. For the first time, a major politic decision was taken by an outsider to the French government. In his latest book, “War without loving it”, Bernard Henri Levy related how important the early French military assistance to the Libyan rebels was, including mass weapons or instructors. For the record, after the attack against Dagestan by Shamil Bassaïev in 1999, Bernard Henri Levy strongly recommended the Western countries to acknowledge the authority of Maskhadov in Chechnya, in order to upset Putin’s Russia, a regime he qualified of half Nazi, half Stalinist.

On the French domestic level, the takeover of the Atlanticist ideology has increased since the election of Nicolas Sarkozy in 2007 which was followed by the purge of most of the Gaullists and the reintegration of the country inside NATO. This realignment led directly to the situation that the country faces today, with globalist advisors dictating to France its foreign policy. Facing strong loss of popularity a few months before the elections, Nicolas Sarkozy probably also thought that a victorious military operation abroad would increase its popularity. This is hard to say but he is probably more popular at the time among the rebels in Benghazi’s suburbs that within the French people. 

On the international scene, this military intervention must be seen as part of a larger restructuration in the Middle East, following the speech made by G.W. Bush in 2003 at the very neoconservative American Enterprise Institute, where he presented his "project for a Greater Middle East". Nicolas Sarkozy explained on the contrary that France’s reintegration inside NATO allowed the country to command this operation and make it a success. He added that it is also due to the defense agreement with Britain from last fall that France and Britain have led the whole war almost without the U.S., and that it is a "victory for Europe." Despite the strong reservations from Germans and Russians and despite the fact that France achieved an American geopolitical goal, from the French President’s point of view, the collaboration with UK inside NATO is a victory for Europe. He could not have made it clearer.

Today, France is definitely far from the position that it should have, that is to say be an independent and sovereign continental country and a western pillar of a Paris-Berlin-Moscow axis.But while the American restructuration continues in the Arabic world, all eyes are now set on Syria.