March 25, 2011
Asia Times

Libya Endgame: Divide, Rule And Get The Oil

by Pepe Escobar

Without cutting through the fog of war it's impossible to understand what's really going on in Libya.

Odyssey Dawn is only happening because the 22-member Arab League voted to impose a no-fly zone over Libya. The Arab League - routinely dismissed in Western capitals as irrelevant before this decision - is little else than an instrument of the House of Saud's foreign policy.

Its "decision" was propelled by Washington's promise to protect the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) kings/sheikhs/oligarchs from the democratic aspirations of their own subjects - who are yearning for the same democratic rights as their "cousins" in eastern Libya.

This is exactly the same GCC, posing for Saudi Arabia that invaded Bahrain to help the Sunni al-Khalifa dynasty to crush the pro-democracy movement. The GCC gang is considered by the West as "our" bastards, while Colonel Muammar Gaddafi - according to the Western narrative - is a terrorist who went to rehab and is now a thug.

The GCC comprises stalwart egalitarians Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It was the GCC that first voted for a no-fly zone; then top dog Saudi Arabia twisted arms/promised bribes to extract an Arab League endorsement (Syria and Algeria, for instance, were seriously against it).

For the opportunist Arab League secretary-general Amr Moussa, who is already running for the presidency of Egypt, this was a great deal; he took his marching orders from Riyadh while at the same time polishing his CV with Washington.

For Saudi Arabia this was a great deal; the perfect chance for King Abdullah to get rid of Gaddafi (the bad blood between both since 2002 is legendary), and the perfect chance for the House of Saud to lend a hand to a bewildered Washington.

Odyssey Dawn has no inbuilt endgame. US President Barack Obama has made it clear numerous times that his endgame means "Gaddafi must go". This is called "regime change". Or, in the new two-pronged Obama doctrine, "US outreach" (directed towards opponents of "evil regimes"). Not-so-evil regimes, as in Bahrain or Yemen, are encouraged towards "regime alteration".

The problem is "regime change" is not mandated by UN Resolution 1973.

Odyssey Dawn is the first African war of the latest Pentagon overseas military command, Africom. Soon it will turn into the first African war of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Although sold as a "limited mission", Odyssey Dawn - as in just imposing and maintaining a no-fly zone - will cost at least $15 billion a year. . . .

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Enver Masud, "A Clash Between Justice and Greed," The Wisdom Fund, October 26, 2004

Enver Masud, "Iraq: Divide and Rule, 'Ethnic Cleansing Works'," The Wisdom Fund, October 10, 2006

VIDEO: "This is a memo that describes how we're going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran."--"Gen Wesley Clark," democracynow.org, March 2, 2007

"Libyan Opposition Spurns Calls for Foreign 'Help': US, Europe Salivate Over Libyan Oil," The Wisdom Fund, February 26, 2011

Enver Masud, "Libya Oil Grab Disguised As Humanitarian Assistance," The Wisdom Fund, March 8, 2011

Enver Masud, "Revealed: America's Hidden Hand Behind The UN Resolution For A No-fly Zone Over Libya," The Wisdom Fund, March 19, 2011

Eric Margolis, "A New Crusade," ericmargolis.com, March 21, 2011

VIDEO (3:40): Rep. Ed Markey: "'We're in Libya because of oil'," MSNBC, March 21, 2011

Enver Masud, "LIBYA TALKING POINTS," The Wisdom Fund, April 1, 2011

[After two weeks of imperialist attack, Libya is being mangled by al Qaeda terrorists, civil war, NATO air raids, cruise missiles, Predator drones, and C-130 gunships - all made possible by the CIA-backed al Qaeda rebels of Cyrenaica. US, British, French, and Dutch commandos have taken leadership of the rebel forces, and are arming them with modern weapons in flagrant violation of the arms embargo specified in UN Security Council resolution 1973.--Webster G. Tarpley, "Al Qaeda: Pawns of CIA Insurrection from Libya to Yemen," tarpley.net, April 3, 2011]

[The Euro-American attack on Libya has nothing to do with protecting anyone; only the terminally naive believe such nonsense. It is the west's response to popular uprisings in strategic, resource-rich regions of the world and the beginning of a war of attrition against the new imperial rival, China.--John Pilger, "Westminster warriors untouched by Libya's suffering and bloodshed," newstatesman.com, April 8, 2011]

[In 1960 the British and US oil majors controlled most of the production outside the communist world. The national companies of producer countries have replaced them.--Jean-Pierre Sereni, "Why the Oil Companies Decided Qaddafi Has to Go," Le Monde Diplomatique, April 8, 2011]

[You can kill five million people and we'll politely look away; but take away the property of rich people, and we get really angry.

For the first time in more than 60 years, Western control over the world's biggest pots of oil was being rocked by a series of revolutions our governments couldn't control. The most plausible explanation is that this is a way of asserting raw Western power, and trying to arrange the fallout in our favour. But if you are still convinced our governments are acting for humanitarian reasons, I've got a round-trip plane ticket for you to some rubble in Pakistan and Congo. The people there would love to hear your argument.--Johann Hari, "We're not being told the truth on Libya," Independent, April 8, 2011]

Mahmood Mamdani, "Libya after the NATO invasion: There can be no quick fix for a Libya caught between a loose-cannon despot and an opportunistic Western intervention," Independent, April 9, 2011

Chris McGreal, Harriet Sherwood, Ian Traynor and Nicholas Watt, "Libyan revolutionary council rejects African Union's peace initiative: Rebels say deal is unacceptable because it does not require Gaddafi to step down," Independent, April 11, 2011

[It's no surprise UN resolution 1973 reveals itself to be a farce - as much as the manufactured Libyan "revolution", which has essentially orchestrated by French intelligence, British MI6 and the US Central Intelligence Agency since Gaddafi's former chief of protocol, Nuri Mesmari, defected to Paris in October 2010.--Pepe Escobar, "Mission regime change," atimes.com, April 20, 2011]

[The Middle East and North Africa turned out to be the leitmotif of Yang's talks in Moscow with his host Sergei Lavrov. Russia and China decided to work together in addressing the issues arising out of the upheaval in the Middle East and North Africa. Lavrov said: "We have agreed to coordinate our actions using the abilities of both states in order to assist the earliest stabilization and prevention of the further negative unpredictable consequences there."

Lavrov said Russia and China had the "identical position" that "every nation should determine its future independently without outside interference". Presumably, the two countries are now agreed on a common position to oppose any move by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to conduct a ground operation in Libya.--M K Bhadrakumar, "Russia and China challenge NATO," atimes.com, May 10, 2011]

Julian Borger and Martin Chulov, "Al-Jazeera footage captures 'western troops on the ground' in Libya," Guardian, May 30, 2011

Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa al-Omrani, "Experts Fear Israeli Design to Balkanise Arab States," Inter Press Service, June 18, 2011

Kim Sengupta, "Nato strikes at Libya's oil in bid to oust Gaddafi," Independent, July 8, 2011