Post-Gadhafi Libya: Naked Neo-Imperialism

By Nile Bowie
BlacklistedNews.com
 
The Daylight Robbery of Libyan Resources

While the unconcealed hypocrisy that led to the emergence of a new Libya fades from the public consciousness, the governments of the West are beginning to reap the profits of their investments. Under a mandate to protect civilians, these allied forces armed radical factions of Islamist fighters and showered white phosphorus tipped ordnanceonto densely populated residential areas. While sponsoring politicians equated the Libyan rebels to heroic advocates of western democracy fighting for freedom, these men committed racially motivated beheadings and executions of migrant workers from sub-Saharan Africa and filled mass graves with the corpses of their fellow countrymen, Gaddafi loyalists.

Before being sodomized with a combat knife and extra judicially assassinatedby foreign funded rebel fighters, Muammar Gadhafi oversaw one of Africa’s most prosperous nations. With an annual economic growth of 10% andextensive programs for social welfare, public healthcare and education, Libya was viewed as a place of relative opportunity with numerous jobs for migrant workers from neighboring countries in the region. Gadhafi advocated the creation of an African Union with it’s own Central Bank and Monetary Fund and a Gold Dinar currency, a move that would directly threaten the financial oligarchy of the Franco-Anglo-American powers that funded his demise.

In the crumbling ruins of the new Libya under hardline Sharia law, the abduction and subsequent atrocities against former Gadhafi loyalists are commonplace. As the revolutionary vigor dies down, the seeds of civil war between tribal lines of the armed rebel factions may foment at any moment. It is upon this unstable foundation that an economic protectorate is being born. In exchange for being brought to power, representatives from Libya’s National Transition Council (NTC) have recently visited their former colonial administrators in London to begin awarding contracts to insidious corporate entities who will be commissioned to rebuild the country's bombarded infrastructure.

The disingenuous Franco-Anglo-American architects of post-Gadhafi Libya are now being given free reign to economically exploit the country they helped devastate.  Irrespective of the moral and ethical consequences of their plunder, the colonial administration’s investment of $500 million USD to oust Gadhafi will result in a projected yield of $300 billion USD over a ten-year period. As shares rise for Shell and British Petroleum, staff members of the UK Department for Trade and Investment have begun to establish themselves in Libya. In exchange for French warplanes over the skies of Tripoli, the NTC allegedly promised to grant 35% of its oil contracts to the French oil conglomerate, Total, a corrupted corporate body complicit in the use of forced labor during it’s pipeline operations in Myanmar. Much to the denial of the French Government, the company has been approved to begin onshore oil extraction in the upcoming year.

While places such as Sirte sit in ruin, opportunist American businessmen scour for building contracts. Richard Peters, a construction firm owner whose company is also involved in rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan after the subsequent US-led occupations has advocated the construction of golf courses and a Disney Land, suggesting that the Libyan people could really do with a little entertainment. On a recent trip to Libya, John Laughland from the Institute for Democracy and Cooperation reported that the NTC was fully aware that the Libyan assets frozen in western banks would be unfrozen and redistributed to the nations originally responsible for orchestrating the NATO bombardment. As an economic client state masquerading as a liberated nation, the new Libyan regime owes its entire sovereignty and legitimacy to colonial European powers responsible for fomenting anarchy and civil war within their country.

It is interesting to note that the NTC declined business opportunities to countries opposed to the way NATO interpreted its mandate, such as Germany, China and Russia. Several billion dollars worth of construction and arms contracts between Russia and Gadhafi’s government are now contested and subject to revaluation. In 2010, China was the recipient of 11% of Libya’s oil exports and maintained approximately 30,000 workers in Libya throughChina’s National Petroleum Corporation. It remains unclear if these nations will be able to fully reclaim their business interests in the country.

While corporate opportunists talk of developing Libya to become the next Dubai, cases of political executions and atrocities against Gadhafi loyalists are a non-issue to the NTC and major media outlets of the West. NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen proclaims, “Our military forces prevented a massacre and saved countless lives”, upon the recent discovery of three hundred alleged Gaddafi supporters who were executed with their hands bound. Tragically, the Libyan people themselves fail to recognize that their country has been usurped. Abdullah Naker of the Tripoli Revolutionists Council recently released the following statement, “We've seen many examples in the past when peoples' revolutions were stolen and we are very clear that our struggle is far from over. Gadhafi may still come back – in some other shape or form – and in that case, we will have to take up our weapons and defend our revolution.” Unfortunately, Naker’s proverbial Gadhafi has already returned… and he’s wearing a five thousand dollar business suit.