Libya ‘chose’ freedom, now it has slavery

The destruction of Libya by at the behest of the the and France was a crime, one dripping in the cant and hypocrisy of Western ideologues for whom the world with all its complexities is reduced to a giant chessboard upon which countries such as Libya have long been mere pieces to be moved around and changed at their pleasure and in their interests — interests which are inimical to the people of the countries they deem ripe for regime change.

to befall the country has been compounded to the point where it is hard to conceive of it ever being able to recover — and certainly not anywhere near its former status as a high development country, as the UN labelled Libya 2010 a year prior to the ‘revolution’.

Back in 2011 it was simply inconceivable that the UK, the US and France would ignore the lessons of Iraq, just nine years previously in 2003.

Yet ignore them they did, highlighting their rapacious obsession with maintaining hegemony over a region that sits atop an ocean of oil, despite the human cost and legacy of disaster and chaos which this particular obsession has wrought.

When former UK prime minister David Cameron descended on Benghazi in eastern Libya in the summer of 2011, basking in the glory of the country’s victorious ‘revolution’ in the company of his French counterpart Nicolas Sarkozy, he did so imbued with the belief he had succeeded in establishing his legacy as a leader on the global stage. Like Blair before him, he’d won his war and now was intent on partaking of its political and geopolitical spoils.

Cameron told the crowd: “Your city was an inspiration to the world, as you threw off a dictator and chose freedom.”

Pondering the former UK prime minister’s fatuous boast, I am reminded of a conversation I had recently with the driver of a cab taking me home to my apartment in Edinburgh, Scotland.

During our exchange he informed me that he was originally from Libya, before going on to reveal that he was forced to flee the country after his family were massacred by Cameron’s freedom-loving revolutionaries in 2011.

In Libya, prior to the “revolution” and NATO’s air campaign, he’d been a petroleum engineer with a PhD. Now he was working 10 hours a day driving a cab in Scotland in the middle of winter.

The destruction of Libya by NATO at the behest of the UK, the US and France was a crime, one dripping in the cant and hypocrisy of Western ideologues for whom the world with all its complexities is reduced to a giant chessboard upon which countries such as Libya have long been mere pieces to be moved around and changed at their pleasure and in their interests — interests which are inimical to the people of the countries they deem ripe for regime change.

The word extremist is perhaps overused in our lexicon, but it is entirely appropriate when describing the prowar neo-con lobby that exerts inordinate influence on Western foreign policy.

We are talking a class of rich, privileged and expensively educated men and women who are bent on purifying the world in the name of democracy.

The end result has been a litany of countries destabilised and turned upside down with the lives of their citizens completely upended in the process. — Counterpunch. certain countries that think that a “free and fair” or credible election is one that the opposition wins.

It is to be hoped that it was a superficial stance and one that served the purpose of withholding legitimacy to any government led by Cde Mugabe. Which was vexatious, of course. It reminds one of a conversation The Herald’s Political Editor had a couple months back in Johannesburg, South Africa, with International Crisis Group’s Piers Pigou.

Pigou does not believe that Zimbabwe is capable of holding credible elections and hence the outcome is of questionable legitimacy.

However, all major indications and studies now show that the opposition in the country, weak, divided, broke and led by an ailing Morgan Tsvangirai, would lose any election to Zanu-PF — just like major pollsters and think tanks predicted in 2013.

Cde Mugabe, leading a mass and constantly mobilising Zanu-PF, would have easily won elections in 2018.

Why, then, would the so-called international community withhold endorsement of legitimacy of the people’s choice?

With President Mnangagwa now set to take Cde Mugabe’s place on the ballot paper, the result will not be any different.

What is critical, though, will be to win over the detractors by leading a credible process that hopefully gives Zimbabwe a new lease of life.

And President Mnanagwa is right to seek that opportunity at the earliest possible time.