The War on the Islamic State and the Struggle for Hegemony and Resources in the Greater Middle East

President Obama chose the 13th anniversary of 9/11 to make the speech on degrading and destroying ISIL The aim is to exploit the media refracted outrage at the beheading of two US journalists the better to advance 'public diplomacy' preparing America for the long war for control over strategic resources.

NATO has become an organisation crucially concerned with energy security in the post-Cold War world. he pretence, of course, in its public diplomacy is that this is an additional auxiliary ambition as opposed to one which is bound to be core to it as an organisation protecting the power and wealth of western states.

IS is a threat primarily to the security of oil producing zones south of Baghdad and the Kurdish regions as well as to Turkey. Turkey, a NATO member, was at the forefront of arming, training and forwarding Sunni militants into Syria to overthrow Assad along with the US's regional partners and the CIA.

The 'game plan' is to try to 'degrade' IS, build up the Sunni militant forces capable of being controlled by Turkey and the Syria National Council. Then to Assad's government could be removed the better to check Iran, forestall a Shi'ite gas pipeline to the Eastern Mediterranean and Russian's interests.

Russia is feared because it has been active in backing Assad so as to gain the access to the gas reserves off the Syrian coast in the Levant Basin which was discovered in 2010. The Syrian National Council opposes that and so do France and Britain which want Eastern Mediterranean gas to be amenable to western control.

The US is focused on upholding the interests of the European powers in the Eastern Mediterranean. The Levant Basin offers the EU and Turkey the opportunity to find an alternative sources of gas to Russia and a chaotic war ravaged Libya after the NATO backed war ended up creating a failed state.

The Libyan military intervention of 2011 was a war designed to back Qatar's regional strategy of empowering "moderate" Sunni forces and democracy the better to secure oil and gas supplies against the encroaching influence of and energy hungry and rapidly industrialising China.

Unfortunately, Libya collapsed into further resource conflict over who controls the oil which has been sharpened by a proxy war between forces all aligned with the US. Qatar backs militant Islamists. UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt back ex-Gaddafi militias. Supplies of energy from Libya are not secure.

The conflict in Eastern Ukraine has made the search for energy diversification more urgent. The strategy of backing the overthrow of President Yanukovych and so better controlling the oil and gas flow from the, Black Sea the Caspian region and Central Asia backfired when it triggered off ethnic tension.

Putin was able to exploit the fears in the Russian speaking east to pursue a similar policy to that which Turkey pursued in Syria two years before in giving covert support to rebels in regions close to its border areas and so interfering in the internal politics of a sovereign state on the Turkish model.

Just as Russia was able to ignore the case for territorial integrity and sovereignty in Ukraine where resources interests and geopolitical interests were at stake when it annexed Crimea, so too is the US prepared to ignore those arguments over sovereignty when it comes to Syria.

Neither Assad IS nor Islamic State is considered legitimate by the US and the "international core coalition"   ( i.e NATO powers ) and so the existence of IS as a transnational terror threat could also provide an opportunity for the west to reshape Syria in accordance with its energy security needs.

Regime change in Syria would mean there would be less Russian influence over the geopolitical struggle for power in the Eastern Mediterranean. Turkey could not afford to antagonise Russia directly as it depends on it for energy and Russia sought to keep it so by developing Israeli's Tamar gas reserves.

By keeping Syria under Assad and thus maintaining the unity of the Shi'ite crescent from southern Iraq through to Syria and hence southern Lebanon where Hizbollah is dominant, Russia could prevent the realisation of a Israel-Turkish pipeline and help ship Israeli LNG towards lucrative East Asian markets.

So Israel and Russia have aligned closer. When the Syria conflict broke out, the US was pulling out of Iraq and Obama refocused the US towards Asia ( "The Pivot to Asia" ) Netanyahu despises Obama and distrusts Britain and France for moving too close to Qatar upon which they depend more and more for LNG.

Israel showed sensitivity towards Russian concerns over the Caucasus during the 2008 Russo-Gerorgian War, suspending arms supplies to Georgia, and made no criticism of Russia's annexation of Crimea because of the influence of Russian Jews in Israel and the fact Tel Aviv has designs on Gaza's offshore gas reserves.

The other reason for Israel's closer relations with Russia is that it has no interest in Assad being removed only for the Muslim Brotherhood to come to power in Damascus. Turkey and Qatar's regional policy includes recognising and backing Hamas in Gaza and potentially hampering Israel's exploitation of the offshore gas.

Assad, moreover, has largely protected the border with Israel in the Golan Heights. A Syria embroiled in conflict and neither dominated by Sunni forces or the Shia would suit Israel because it diverts Hizbollah into war with Sunni Arabs and serves to divide Hamas from Hizbollah while Israel develops the gas fields.

With ISIS, the US had to refocus on Syria and Iraq once more because it would not want either Russia or Iran to take advantage of the collapse of a Sunni Arab alternative to Assad the better to advance its strategies for the region, not least the possibility of a 'Sunni' Qatari-Turkey gas pipeline.

Erdogan's neo-Ottoman strategy is about recreating Turkey as an east-west gas hub rather as Ukraine would have been, one other reason Ankara was not outwardly hostile towards Putin's annexation of the Crimea as it upgrades the importance and status of Turkey in relation to the western powers.

Those who regard the causes of the growth of IS and its consequences as the only calculation in Washington's response to what Obama calls "ISIL' ( meaning 'threat to the Levant' ) are simply ignoring the wider geopolitical context the pathological power struggles over energy that begat the Islamic State.

The chaos that IS emerged out of was the product of a regional proxy war between Turkey and Qatar, which backed Sunni militias wanting Assad to go no matter what the risks would be, Saudi Arabia, which backed rival jihadists opposed to the Muslim Brotherhood, and Iran's backing Assad and the Shia.

Blair's Speech and the New Great Game.

Tony Blair's speech, as with everything this man utters, is a carefully calibrated public diplomacy missive better called a propaganda offensive. The timing is instructive; Blair is upgrading his profile in the Middle East because the crisis in Ukraine is set to lead to EU states searching for alternative energy sources.

It was interesting that Blair claimed the Ukraine Crisis would distract attention away from the Middle East. And why his fellow strategist and sinister operative John McTernan is 'on message' to explain just what Blair meant to those who could regard him as an important critic of Western foreign policy.

As is standard with propaganda, words and meaning must be prized apart from their conventional uses

'Libya and Syria are at the heart of Blair's argument: action started by this government but left incomplete. The passage on Syria is a direct attack on Cameron and Nick Clegg, and their inaction'.

Firstly, the Coalition government were not 'inactive' over Syria. They continually called for Assad 'to go'. Sarkozy set up the Friends of Syria group in Istanbul in 2012 to create a unified opposition with the intention of ousting Assad and installing a client state.

Secondly, Britain and France in particular were highly active in agitating for a missile strike on Syria, far more so even than a more energy independent 'post shale revolution 'USA. Their main client in the Middle East is Qatar which is in rivalry to build a pipeline from the South Pars gasfield which it shares with Iran.

Britain and France have increasingly sought to diversify the gas supply away from dependence upon Russia. One reason why Qatar's copious production of liquefied natural gas is a lucrative opportunity whereby its petrodollars from selling it get invested in the London and Paris property market and arms.

'Not a defence of liberal intervention, but a scrupulous account of the costs of doing nothing – particularly where the coalition has called for regime change. And, typically, looking at the bigger picture. The Middle East matters.. It matters because of oil and gas and our economic dependence on them'.

That statement matters. Essentially, with Russia and the US in a dangerous stand off over Ukraine, like Syria another pipeline transit route between east and west, Blair is trying to revive the idea that democratising the Middle East could provide EU states with better energy security.

Yet 'liberal intervention' was what was on offer when NATO facilitated the victory over the Gaddafi regime in Libya and what was on offer with the West's humanitarian concern over the East Ghouta gas attack in Syria. The reason no action was taken in Syria was increased concern over Al Qaida's presence.

The Libyan intervention made a bad situation worse. It enabled Gadaffi to be removed only for immediate ( and highly predictable ) squabbles over Libya's oil production capacity to divide the rebels ensuring another failed attempt at regime change backfired.

Now jihadists from Libya are known to have gone to Syria. The danger is, should Egypt fall into increased chaos, that the entire Maghreb could become a zone of carnage and bloodshed. Al Qaida affiliates are already operating in the Sinai Peninsula and fighting the Egyptian military.

As in Syria, the reality in Egypt was that the US and US tacitly accepted a military coup, even if the Muslim Brotherhood's bungling policies and attempts at institutional takeover has divided Egypt and led it even further towards economic and political collapse.

The Western Powers need to stop pretending that they can control events in the Middle East. Energy security has to be attained by decisive policies to move away from the great car economy and to find alternatives to oil and gas as well as dealing cautiously with Russia over Ukraine.

Blair's understanding on the Middle East is both simplistic and deranged. But his siren calls for radical and decisive action and drawing up of cosmic battle lines between Good and Evil remain potentially lethal if politicians and the media hail it as delivering a solution to an a looming energy security crisis.

Libya: The Failure of the Last Western Military Intervention.

As President Obama attempts to work with Congress to get a unity of purpose behind military intervention in Syria with only France being a willing ally so far, the last military intervention back in 2011 has proved to be a complete failure and offers a lesson.

Patrick Cockburn's brilliant special report in The Independent shows Libya has moved towards becoming a failed state.

'As world attention focused on the coup in Egypt and the poison gas attack in Syria over the past two months, Libya has plunged unnoticed into its worst political and economic crisis since the defeat of Gaddafi two years ago. Government authority is disintegrating in all parts of the country putting in doubt claims by American, British and French politicians that Nato’s military action in Libya in 2011 was an outstanding example of a successful foreign military intervention which should be repeated in Syria.

In an escalating crisis little regarded hitherto outside the oil markets, output of Libya’s prized high-quality crude oil has plunged from 1.4 million barrels a day earlier this year to just 160,000 barrels a day now. Despite threats to use military force to retake the oil ports, the government in Tripoli has been unable to move effectively against striking guards and mutinous military units that are linked to secessionist forces in the east of the country.

Libyans are increasingly at the mercy of militias which act outside the law. Popular protests against militiamen have been met with gunfire; 31 demonstrators were shot dead and many others wounded as they protested outside the barracks of “the Libyan Shield Brigade” in the eastern capital Benghazi in June.

Though the Nato intervention against Gaddafi was justified as a humanitarian response to the threat that Gaddafi’s tanks would slaughter dissidents in Benghazi, the international community has ignored the escalating violence. The foreign media, which once filled the hotels of Benghazi and Tripoli, have likewise paid little attention to the near collapse of the central government.

The strikers in the eastern region Cyrenaica, which contains most of Libya’s oil, are part of a broader movement seeking more autonomy and blaming the government for spending oil revenues in the west of the country.

For the rest read it here.

Crisis in Egypt: From Libya to Sinai and Syria.

News of Mubarak's imminent release looks likely to inflame a highly volatile mood in Egypt. It comes after the army's clearance of two Cairo protest camps last week, which sparked bloodshed in which at least 900 people have been killed and unprecedented polarisation..'

The prospect of Hosni Mubarak making a comeback is yet another blow to the hope of a 'political' solution being found by EU statesmen and envoys as they mill around in Brussels and utter vacuous statements about an "urgent review" of the $5 billion they give in aid.

The Egyptian military is large self financing from having over a third of the the economy of Egypt under its control. Having said that, the 2011 revolt against Mubarak empowered the military whose top generals had come to resent Mubarak's nepotism.

The real problem is the potential for destabilisation in the Sinai Peninsula after 26 policemen were shot dead. One reason the US is wary of going against the Egyptian military in spite of the coup and the attempt to eliminate the Muslim Brotherhood is that there is no other force that can ensure security there.

The Egyptian army knew that if they were to launch a military campaign against the Muslim Brotherhood, as part of its remit of 'counter terrorism' that the US has supported, the upsurge in jihadism would only serve to make them even more indispensible to external powers.

The threat to the border with Israel, and Saudi Arabia which is just across the Gulf of Aquaba, can only escalate if there was protracted violence in Egypt. Many unemployed angry young men who supported the Muslim Brotherhood will be tempted to turn to join terrorist groups.

The security of Sinai has been deteriorating since Britain and France helped insurgents in Libya overthrow Colonel Gaddafi in 2012. Weapons have been smuggled in to Sinai from Libya where jihadists have retained their arms and are irate at the way Western backed elites grabbed the oil pie for themselves.

Since 2012 Libya has been in a state of chaos. 30,000 have died since the West's military intervention ended. Many battle hardened jihadists moved to Syria after the collapse of the Gaddafi regime and will be spoiling for a fight in Egypt. Bedouin tribesmen are also hostile to the Egyptian state.

The chaos in Egypt emboldened jihadists to try and cause problems on the border from the outset of the coup. On July 4 2013 militants in the Mazar area blew up a gas pipeline to Jordan and Israel. On July 7 another bomb attack happened near El-Arish in North Sinai.

This upsurge of jihadist violence happened before the Egyptian military upped the ante and started clearing the street camps and mowing down Muslim Brotherhood protesters. The Izzadeen al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, is already protesting for Morsi.

Historically, Hamas is an ideological offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. But it is isolated not just by the coup in Egypt, which sends the signal that only armed resistance is needed, but also by the fact that Iran cut off its funding after it broke off from Hizbollah.

The Syrian Civil War caused the old unity against Israel between Hamas and Hizbollah to fracture on sectarian lines. Feeling threatened , Hamas has condemned the massacre in Egypt and the Egyptian military could potentially react with violence to attacks coming from Gaza.

Within the Gaza Strip, there are already divisions about whether to stay in or out of conflict with Egypt and possibly, by extension, Israel. The air strike in Rafah on August 9 against militants has led to conjecture it was an Egyptian helicopter attack or Israeli drone strike.

The spectre of a joint Egyptian-Israeli action in Sinai is one clearly wanted by Al Qaida affiliated fanatics such as Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis (Supporters of Jerusalem), has already led to retaliatory rocket attacks on Eilat in southern Israel.

A BBC report three hours ago underscored the terrifying prospect of a regionwide conflagration, ( Sinai attacks: Dark omen for Egypt?)

'American officials are also worried that the generals might respond to an aid cut-off by suspending security co-operation or even allowing conditions in Sinai to worsen. That, in turn, might inflame Gaza and jeopardise the peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians, recently resumed after considerable American diplomatic effort.

Instability in Sinai has also resulted in repeated attacks on gas pipelines to Jordan, putting pressure on the fragile economy of a key American ally.

Sinai may be a dark omen of things to come in Egypt.

If the government acts on its threat to ban the Brotherhood, then the group's more radical and violent Islamist counterparts, including those in Sinai, will have a surfeit of recruits.

State repression of the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1950 and 1960s drove it underground and was instrumental in shaping the ideology of the modern, international jihad. The present leader of al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, was a young member of the Brotherhood who moved from Islamism to jihad in that period.

Today, that process would have the added advantages of social media, weak states like Libya on Egypt's border, and the context of flourishing al-Qaeda affiliates in places like Yemen and Syria.

 The situation in Egypt has the hallmarks of a serious global crisis. If the Sinai Peninsula becomes haven for terrorists, attacks on the Suez Canal and on oil and gas pipelines could cause potential disruption to oil supplies to Europe and the US as well as the import and export of global cargo.

Should Egypt founder deeper into violence, the chaos could spread even into Saudi Arabia creating an oil price shock and the global economy to go into meltdown. The entire framework of international relations could change dramatically and dangerously.

One Year On: Chaos in Libya

With news of civilians being massacred in Bani Walid in Libya, there has been a resounding silence on human rights abuses and lawless militias. This is despite the intervention being justified by the USA, France and UK governments on 'humanitarian' grounds.

 

Vijay Prashad has written an interest article in The Hindu on the current situation in Libya a year on,

 

'Hanging over the Libyan security situation is the lack of accountability for war crimes during the February-October revolution of 2011. On May 2, 2012, the Libyan National Transitional Council granted blanket amnesty to those who committed crimes during the revolution, including murder and forced displacement. Law 38 (On Some Procedures for the Transitional Period) essentially allowed the militias the confidence of impunity. It emboldened them to disregard the war crimes conducted last year, and to consider that their actions in the present will also be similarly forgiven. The danger of “victor’s justice” is that it creates a political grammar that affects the new terrain, allowing the militias institutional support for their lawless behaviour.

Rights report on militias

A new report from Human Rights Watch (Death of a Dictator: Bloody Vengeance in Sirte, October 2012) details how the main Misrata-based militias (al-Nimer, Tiger Brigade, al-Isnad, Support Brigade, al-Fahad, Jaguar Brigade, al-Asad, Lion Brigade, al-Qasba, Citadel Brigade and Ussoud al-Walid, the Lions of the Valley Brigade) not only conducted extrajudicial assassinations of Muammar Qadhafi and his son Mutassim, but also killed over 66 prisoners in the Mahari hotel in Sirte on October 20, 2011. Two NATO air strikes had already killed about 103 members of Qadhafi’s convoy (many of them wounded patients from the Ibn Sina hospital, trying to flee the scene of the battle). Cellphone images and photographs, as well as interviews with survivors, showed the investigators that the dead were killed in custody. Human Rights Watch’s investigation is clear that war crimes had been committed at Sirte. The Misrata chief prosecutor balked at an inquiry, saying that it would be too “dangerous” to “carry out an investigation in Sirte at the time,” a situation that seems unchanged.

 

The Misrata militias are particularly prone to lawlessness. They are accused of the forcible displacement of the 30,000 dark-skinned residents of the town of Tawergha, and in the cellphone images from Sirte, their members routinely use racist epithets (“black snake,” for example) against their prisoners. There has been little attempt to resettle Tawergha.

 

The Misrata militia has laid siege to the city of Bani Walid, where there has been less enthusiasm for the new Libya, and whose citizens have been accused of kidnapping and killing Omar Bin Shaaban, a 22-year-old Misratan credited with the murder of Qadhafi. Misrata’s militias are acting with the authority of the government, which passed Resolution 7 on September 25 to allow them to go in and capture those who killed Bin Shaaban. The militias are not constrained to simply go and arrest the accused. They want to subdue Bani Walid. As Mohammed el-Gandus, a spokesperson for the militias put it, “If we win this fight, Libya will finally be free.”

 

The atmosphere of impunity does not only shroud the activities of the militias. The passage of Resolution 7 and Law 38 demonstrate that the Libyan government has not taken the regime of human rights seriously. The International Criminal Court (ICC), so eager to enter the conflict in February 2011, has also taken a back seat. U.N. Security Council Resolution 1970 gives the ICC jurisdiction over the Libyan theatre at least during the conflict phase; it has utterly failed to honour these obligations. Furthermore, NATO entered the Libyan conflict to protect civilians in the name of the human rights regime. Nevertheless, NATO and the Atlantic powers have refused to allow any evaluation of their use of firepower against Libya with resulting civilian casualties whose numbers are unaccountable (as I showed in “When Protector Turned Killer,” The Hindu, June 11, 2012). NATO’s casualties include the dead in Sirte. Its drones struck the convoy, leaving them at the will of the Misrata militias'.

The Schizoid Realpolitik of The British National Security State.

The Gibson Enquiry will prove merely be another cover up of the scale of the collusion between the British government under Tony Blair and Foreign Secretary Milliband and the CIA and Gaddafi regime in the use of torture as part of the "war on terror". Hence this,

Kim Howells, former Labour foreign minister and chairman of the intelligence and security committee (ISC) of MPs and peers tasked with monitoring the activities of MI5 and MI6, told the BBC he was "absolutely satisfied there was no involvement in the illegal rendition of detainees".

Obviously, there was no "involvement" in that government ministers were not directly involved in the transporting of detainees to places where they were tortured, as this is what the CIA, in fact, did. That does not mean MI6 were not involved in supporting that policy all along and 'knew nothing' or ministers did not too.

The Orwellian nature of this growing "national security state" more generally is clear. MI6 exists not so much to protect British citizens from terrorism but to play a dirty covert war in which the 'war on terror" could be used as a pretext to advance British geopolitical interests and control over oil.

For a start there is the issue of whether Abdul Hakim Belhaj, leader of the Islamist Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) was ever aligned to Al Qaida plots in Britain and the USA or whether he was merely an enemy of Gaddafi that the British government was committed to buttressing.

It is an absurdity that in 2009 the British security services were involved in having the SAS train Gaddafi's troops to counter the very Islamists who now in 2011 are rebranded as heroic rebels fighting tyranny and whose military contribution to toppling Gaddafi was backed by Britain.

This either means that the LIFG were not a particular threat after 2004 when Blair affected a rapprochement with Gaddafi in order to advance BP's interests there and sell arms, or that they were and somehow have had a change of heart and are committed to democracy in Libya.

Interestingly at the beginning of 2009, the then Foreign Secretary David Miliband proclaimed the 'war on terror' was no longer a useful phrase and just months later the SAS were sent in to help combat the Islamists who are now supposed to be allies in the war against Gaddafi's dictatorship (with it's history of supporting terror).

Belhadj was not part of Al Qaida's brand of' global jihad but connected only to Islamists in Afghanistan whose ideology is more akin to the Taliban alongside which he fought with until capture by the US ( after previously having been part of the mujahadeen in the 1980 against the Soviet Union ).

So Belhadj went from ally of the US and Britain against the Communists to the enemy under the Taliban during the 'war of terror' and has become an asset once more now that he was willing to aid the removal of Gaddafi and is a major leader of the military council of the NTC.

Such shoddy realpolitik by the US and UK and the collusion in dirty tactics shows the only consistency in Anglo-US geopolitical interests concerning oil and gas supplies in a way that is both ruthless and ineffective in ensuring British security.

Even weirder is the fact that Belhadj, who is already treated with suspicion by the other NTC rebels, owes his life, when released from death row in 2010, to none other than-Saif Gaddafi. The dictator's son, who disappeared as Tripoli fell, then re-emerged proclaiming his radical Islamist credentials.

The liberals will escape or be killed...We will do it together... Libya will look like Saudi Arabia, like Iran. So what?”

If the transition fails to be effective, then the radical Islamists being frozen out of the process might have no reason not to ally with remnant Gaddafi forces. Unless, the West starts to reduce dependence upon oil and the US/UK stop playing these power games, the result will always be blowback.

And this is what is supposed to be known as the operations of British "intelligence".

Britain's "Ethical Foreign Policy" In Libya.

More information about the Britain's dealings with Gaddafi under Tony Blair has emerged into the public domain today.

'Secret files have been unearthed by The Independent in Tripoli that reveal the astonishingly close links that existed between British and American governments and Muammar Gaddafi.

The documents chart how prisoners were offered to the Libyans for brutal interrogation by the Tripoli regime under the highly controversial "rendition" programme, and also how details of exiled opponents of the Libyan dictator in the UK were passed on to the regime by MI6'.

So there it is. Britain's ethical foreign policy under Tony Blair-supporting dictatorship when it's strong enough to survive, colluding with CIA rendition and torture, oil deals for BP, giving information to Gaddafi about Libyan dissidents in Britain to enhance the oil interests.

Despite British Foreign Secretary William Hague's attempts to distance himself from the machinations of the New Labour government's involvement, even though the opposition then did not challenge this collusion with Gaddafi, the fact is that there is obvious continuity. As The Independent reports,

The revelations by The Independent will lead to questions about whether Mr Koussa, who has long been accused of human rights abuses, was allowed to escape because he held a 'smoking gun'. The official is known to have copied and taken away dozens of files with him when he left Libya.

When Koussa defected to Britain in April 2 2011, Hague made statements that he could be put on trial as demanded by the NTC. However, Koussa then left Britain soon after he had 'defected' again to Qatar by April 15.

Obviously, Koussa had no reason to return as he had been conveniently removed from a European Union sanctions list, This gave someone involved in torture free access to financial assets held in European banks. Not wanting him to reveal the truth of Britain and other states collusion with Gaddafi could have been part of that.

As the Independent article implies, the reason could have been to avoid bad "public diplomacy" about Britain's collusion with Gaddafi in the "war on terror".

The Tripoli regime was a highly useful partner in the 'rendition' process under which prisoners were sent by the US for 'enhanced interrogation', a euphemism, say human rights groups, for torture.

One US administration document, marked secret, says "Our service is in a position to deliver Shaykh Musa to your physical custody similar to what we have done with other senior LIFG (Libyan Islamic Fighting Group) members in the past. We respectfully request an expression of interest from your service regarding taking custody of Musa".
The British too were dealing with the Libyans about opposition activists, passing on information to the regime. This was taking place despite the fact that Colonel Gaddafi's agents had assassinated opponents in the campaign to eliminate so-called "stray dogs" abroad, including the streets of London. The murders had, at the time, led to protests and condemnation by the UK government.

The supposed pragmatism in now trying to remove Gaddafi is more akin to the schizoid realpolitik of the sort Orwell lampooned in 1984.

Consistently until 2009 when Milliband opined that the 'war on terror' was a name to be dropped, Afghanistan was put forth as part of that. Long after 2004 when Gaddafi thought that he might be next for 'regime change' after Iraq and moved towards the West by cancelling a non-existent WMD programme.

The notion that the Arab Spring in Libya means that there is a possibility of a liberal democratic alternative to either secular dictatorship or Islamist dictatorship remains dubious.

Indeed, the Islamist Abdel-Hakim Belhaj who two years before in 2009 was the leader of the enemy, associated with Al Qaida, and who had been tortured by the CIA, as part of the 'war on terror 'now pops back up in 2011 as an important part of the NTC. So the SAS armed jihadists to finish of Gaddafi when two years before they were aiding him to combat them.

With the potential for breakdown of authority and a humanitarian crisis can it be seriously suggested that the Islamists will not try to stage a power grab ? Or that they won't turn against the West, as their ideology is similar to that of the Taliban ? The idea of a liberal secular democracy emerging to order is a fantasy.

The idea that governments can just change tack overnight almost and install pliant or friendly pro-Western governments is simply not realistic. There is no history of democracy in Libya. Outside a small circle of academics and city based liberals, it is the Islamists and nationalists who dominate.

If the NATO intervention was so pragmatic and founded on "enlightened self interest" how is it going to "pragmatically" extricate itself from a descent into further civil war and conflict if a stable government cannot be formed ? The cliched soundbite about "no boots on the ground" has already proved false, as evidenced by the presence of the SAS from the outset of the conflict.

Libya as a Resource War.

Terry Macalister reports in The Guardian today on the issue of Libya ( So, was this a war for oil ? September 2 2011 ),

The Libyan conflict has been a war about oil if not "for" oil. The country's economy is almost totally dependent on hydrocarbons and a key objective for the transitional government will be to get the wells up and running again as soon as possible.

The British and French, meanwhile, are worried about future energy supplies. They are already pushing and shoving over who should get what of the energy proceeds before the political dust has even settled in Tripoli (just as BP and Shell are once again sitting pretty in Iraq following western military intervention there).

The UK government has been working hand in glove with parts of the oil industry to bring about regime change in Libya. London crude trader, Vitol, held meetings with international development minister Alan Duncan (a former consultant to the firm) and played a key role in keeping the rebels well-supplied with petrol while others tried to starve Muammar Gaddafi's troops of fuel. Was this a practical operation to
undermine Gaddafi's military logistics or a potent symbol that western politics and oil are so closely intermeshed that the agendas of both are indistinguishable?

....The British have not been so public about their expectations but we know that BP has already held talks with the new opposition leaders and are preparing to re-enter the country. Clearly, the role of Vitol, never mind the RAF jets, will require some recognition in the new Libya that emerges – at least in the eyes of the UK political and oil establishment.

A good and far more informative article about what is at stake with regards Libya. However this is a little questionable,

The Libyan conflict has been a war about oil if not "for" oil.

This is mere semantics. The intervention by France, Britain and the USA is not "all about oil" as no conflict is strictly about one thing. Yet it is a key objective of the "intervention" to secure oil supply from Libya in a way that was hardly guaranteed when Gaddafi lost de facto control of Libya.

Western powers could not see one of the largest supplies of high grade oil with little sulphur content that is used in numerous household consumer goods and for energy fall into limbo or fuel a conflict that could have led to regional instability if forces hostile to the West gained control over it.

Intervention in Libya is not about oil if it is seen as only about corporate profits, though that to will be a beneficial spin off. Primarly it is about diversification of supplies in a world of growing oil demand and diminishing global supplies. If one state collapses, there must be other oil reserves always on tap.

Given that many oil producing states have authoritarian regimes or dictatorships and ethnic and sectarian problems, the need to control ever more supplies of oil is now the main driving force of geopolitics in the 21st century. Any discussion that fails to mention oil is footling irrelevance.

Those in the West wanting to understand the importance of fossil fuels need only read the business section of newspapers and online editions of newspapers from other nations. Then the reason for Afghanistan too becomes clear: the construction of the TAPI pipeline.

Such interventions are often rationalised as "enlightened self interest". In fact, the new epoch of history unfolding now in the two decades since the end of the Cold War is more obviously one of resource wars and the New Great Game for control of supplies of oil and gas.

The problem is that this frightens many people so they refuse to face these facts. They want to believe in liberal intervention without seeing that the impact of such foreign policies can often make the conflicts they seek to solve even more entrenched.

Libya could develop into another Iraq fairly quickly. Gaddafi can still cause a humanitarian crisis from the south in the Fezzan by curring off the water to Tripoli. As in Iraq, the chaos could lead to the NTC failing to restore order in Libya and it's authority will not be recognised.

Should that occur, the West will be in a terrible quandary: it has to face the situation of having invested colossal sums of money in aiding the anti-Gaddafi forces and a lack of stability as bad and destructive as when Gaddafi threatened to cause bloodshed in Benghazi.

Unless Western states deeply technology to find alternatives to overdependence upon oil and governments stop such absurdities as low budget airlines, then the blowback will be increased migration, terrorist threats and decivilisation.

A dilemma that could be considered as a consumer choice.

The important point about thee interventions is that they have proved ineffective. Afghanistan, Iraq and now Libya are resource wars. The previous two have proved futile. The abstract arguments about 'humanitarian intervention' ignore the fact that moral crusades founder when the reality on the ground intrudes.

Wherever there are resouces such as oil at stake the conflict to control them breeds corruption, greed, and ethnic and tribal enmities with that state, not least in lands where it barely functions as such. Statesmen in the West need to start reading Hobbes again instead of clinging to utopian liberal internationalism.

The amount of money spent on weapons and military reactions to securing energy supplies would be better spent in thinking of national survival through a total strategy that involves reduction of dependence upon fossil fuels as a national emergency.

The idea of a continued toxic growth utopia is flawed progressive thinking. The need with forthcoming resource shortages should be to protect and survive and oil cannot be squandered as if the relatively low cost of petrol in the West means there is no conflicting need here with the high prices oil producers need.

The burgeoning populations in Arab Muslim nations mean that such control over their oil, and forcing up prices to diversify their economies, clashes with the need for the senescent low birth consumer utopias of the West to have lower oil prices to make consumers happy and re-elect politicians.

Remember that the oil tanker drivers who blockaded the ports and went on strike in 2000 nearly brought down Blair's government. The strikers were supported by most Britons who demand low prices for oil whilst not realising that Iraq was a necessary consequence of their high octane lifestyles.

It was that which led Blair to support the US invasion of Iraq and support a realignment with Gaddafi soon after. Again as Iraq's supply failed to increase after it fell into anarchy, Gaddafi was courted to make up the shortfall. That is demonstrated by the news just today that MI6 collaborated with Gaddafi.

That wars in the 21st are for resources is obvious. The question is this : what are we going to do about it ?

Oil Price, Secure Supplies and Libya's Impact

That the centrality of oil in the economies of Europe and the USA is shown in the reactions of the oil market to news that indicated the importance of the NATO intervention in getting Libyan oil flowing again. The shortfall in Libyan oil production was made up by the other OPEC nations increasing their supply.

Data produced by the journal United Explorations ( Oil Price and the Effect of the Libya War August 29 2011 ),

'The conflict in Libya started in protests against Gadafi’s regime in the eastern port city of Benghazi, and spread to Zintan, al Bayda and Quba. Since then, the oil price evolved from US$99 to a maximum of US$120.91 in April 28. A 21% oil price increase might seem big, but in fact it is huge.

Taking into account that the daily supply from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries’ 12 members rose to 30.05 million barrels a day in July from 29.94 million in June, it means that the acquisition cost of OPEC’s daily oil production (responsible for 40% of world’s oil production) increased over US$657 million in just a couple of months. But as Gaddafi’s regime is closer to an end the oil price is having a small rest, with a 5% fall in August'

The NATO support for anti-Gaddafi forces was more concerned with stabilising Libya, one of the closet main suppliers of oil to European nations, and part of the geopolitical struggle for diversification. So that when one regime is destabilised, then others can step in to up production of this black engine blood of developed Western consumer economies.

Even so, at a time when the economies of the USA and Europe are faltering on the brink of a double dip recession, lower oil prices are a main objective of Western governments if economic growth is to be stimulated and "consumer confidence" and spending resumed to pre-2008 levels.

The impact of lower oil prices was cited as important In US News ( End of Libyan War Could Mean Lower Oil Prices August 22 2011 ) this was reported,

The turmoil in Libya greatly disrupted that country's substantial oil production and exports. Before the country's civil war erupted in February, Libya produced 1.6 million barrels of oil per day and exported 2 percent of global oil supplies. The conflict curtailed that supply by more than 90 percent. But with rebel forces apparently on their way to seizing control of Tripoli, the civil war appears to be in its final throes.

That could mean a boost to the U.S. economy in the form of new consumer spending. According to the American Automobile Association, gasoline is currently more than 85 cents per gallon more expensive than it was one year ago. For a person buying 10 gallons of gasoline per week, that is more than $440 extra spent on gasoline over the course of a year. A decrease in prices could significantly free up money for other parts of the U.S. economy.

Again, in the short term, lower prices alone will not regenerate economic activity. In the longer term they are an essential prerequisite of continued Western consumer activity and of global economic growth. The danger of the collapse of a leading oil producing state, as seems possible in any state in the Arab World at this moment, only further the quest for diverse supplies.

By use of military force and covert operations to be rid of regimes that oppose Western oil interests in ways that could prove this addiction to cheap petrol to be a rather lethal one.

The Fezzan: "A Bulwark of the Gaddafi Regime"

This somewhat flipant cartoon by Phil Disley has the hour glass in the wrong hand. It is, in fact, Gaddafi and his clan that have control over the time it will take for the NTC to establish a functioning state that can ensure the supply of water from the large reserves in the Fezzan that flows to Tripoli.

The Fezzan is still under Gaddafi's control. So too is his large grand project of bringing freshwater to the cities on the coast of Libya, one of his main infrastructural projects that he termed "The Eighth Wonder of the World". Gaddafi's power base remains strong in the south in his ancestral tribal city of Sabha.

Gaddafi's stated willingness to negotiate is not based only on his last attempt to ensure his legacy in bequeathing bloodshed as the cartoon here indicates. Nor is it a symptom of his time of killing in the civil war running out compared with the blood on the hands of the insurgent factions.
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As John Simpson of the BBC reported the water supply to Tripoli has been cut off and it will be very difficult for the NTC to avert a humanitarian catastrophe in the hot weather conditions. This is most likely part of Gaddafi's last gambit to cause chaos and thwart the NATO backed 'transition'.

As Martin L Lewis wrote ( Libya's Fezzan, A Bulwark of the Gaddafi Regime ),

'As of March 1, 2011, Fezzan remained firmly under the control of the Gaddafi regime, with no indication of rebel activity in any of its cities or towns. The region’s loyalty to Gadaffi is linked to its relative isolation, as well as to the development funds that have been lavished upon it. But parts of Fezzan have also been singled out as bulwarks of the regime. Gaddafi attended secondary school in Sabha, the metropolis of the region (population 130,000). Many members of his own tribe, the Qaddadfa, subsequently relocated to the city, even though the tribe is based on the north coast. Sabha also supports a Libyan air base, which was linked to the country’s discontinued nuclear program, and has been used for rocket testing. The city is noted for its numerous migrants from sub-Saharan Africa, whose presence has been encouraged by Gaddafi and whose future in the country may be jeopardized by a regime change'.
That situation has not changed since and is as significant as the NTC rebels taking Tripoli, a city less firmly under Gaddafi's control that either he or the West liked to think. The violence meted out to black Sub-Saharan Africans,who are collectively seen as 'pro-Gaddafi', could well exacerbate existing ethnic tensions.

Gaddafi seems to be written off as a joke now that his regime has crumbled. Yet the dictator is no idiot. He's a cunning tactician who retains a number of cards up his sleeve. Destroying Tripoli's water supply in the desert regions south of the urban areas is one such guerrilla tactic this "leader of the Bedouins" could yet perform.

Libya: A Template for Future Resource Wars.

The fact that Gaddafi's forces have retreated in to the Fezzan to the south of the two northern coastal provinces of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica now under nominal NTC control and have cut of the water supply to Tripoli is in line with the way more wars are set to be pathological struggles over ever scarcer resources.

Gaddafi's last gambit is to cause a humanitarian crisis by controlling water supplies from the south in order to sabotage the new government.

An EU Times piece in March 2011 spelt out the stakes now being played for drawing on an WSJ that states,

...that a Global Resource War has now begun between the East and West, with the Middle East being the “first battleground”, specifically the vast oil and water resources belonging to Libya.

The distinguished American Professor and Human Rights Watch board member Michael T. Klare first coined the term “resource wars” in his 2001 book “Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict” wherein he warned that our World was on the cusp of a century of warfare over access to the dwindling supplies of oil and fresh water every Nation needs, but there is not enough of to go around.

....British Defense Secretary John Reid who, likewise, in 2006 warned that Global weather changes and dwindling natural resources were combining to increase the likelihood of violent conflict over land, water and energy.

Most important to note about Reid’s 2006 warning was that it came at a time that the United States was securing its own energy future by taking the vast oil wealth of Iraq in covert partnership with Iran, but since that time has been moving away from its traditional European and Middle Eastern allies as it further retrenches into its own hemisphere.

Being left out in the cold, so to speak, with America’s retrenchment, the British, under their former Prime Minister Tony Blair, began actively courting Libya dictator Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi, in 2007, allowing the release of Abdel Baset Ali al-Megrahi, a former Libyan intelligence agent and the only man convicted in the Lockerbie Bombing, in exchange for oil drilling rights for British Petroleum (BP).

The New York Times News Service further reported about this “deal” between Blair and el-Qaddafi: “A senior British official, Sir Gus O’Donnell, formally acknowledged that BP had lobbied the British government in pursuit of its oil interests and the British government, in turn, resolved to “do all it could to facilitate an appeal by the Libyans to the Scottish government” for Mr. Megrahi’s release.”

Not just to Libya’s oil were the British after either, as in the early 1980’s, drilling teams in this North African Nations southern parts discovered one of the largest water systems in the World in four major underground basins, these being the Kufra basin, the Sirt basin, the Morzuk basin and the Hamada basin.

In order to utilize this massive underground water wealth the Libyan’s began construction of the “Great Man-Made River”, which aside from being the largest water transport project ever undertaken on our Planet has, also, been described as the “Eighth Wonder of the World.”

In late August, 1991, “turned on the tap” of their Great Man-Made River in a ceremony attended by nearly all Middle Eastern leaders, including former Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak who encouraged his countrymen to “go to Libya” to begin growing food for the entire region.

Important for the reader to note about Libya’s Great Man-Made River is that with a population of barely 6.4 million people, the food resources being grown since the early 1990’s (estimated that by 2012 could feed 50 million) could only be done so with the importation of over 1 million migrant workers, many of whom the UN now reports are either trapped or now fleeing.

Most important of these migrant workers were the nearly 40,000 Chinese who were saved by their Nation’s “epic evacuation” and who were working on vastly improving Libya’s ability to market grains and fresh foods to Asia and various other projects, and by far posed the West’s biggest threat to their “claim” over Libya’s vast oil and water wealth.

Unfortunately for el-Qaddafi, however, was that instead of cementing firm defense relations with either Russia or China he became a “ripened plum” ready to be picked off by the West....

So, with the Middle East now seeing its greatest turmoil since the early part of last century when the Arab people began throwing off the yoke of colonial repression, and with Libya being the “main prize” because of its vast oil and water wealth, it was no wonder that the new British Prime Minister, David Cameron, became the first Western leader to visit Egypt, a visit that was quickly followed by Egyptian Special Forces troops storming into Libya to aid the rebels.

Those Egyptian Special Forces troops were then quickly followed into Libya by British Special Air Services (SAS) troops and MI6 agents who arrived “in the dead of night, armed with weapons, maps and explosives while dressed in plain black clothing”, but “not to worry” said the British, “they were just looking for hotel rooms”.

The Scramble for Libya's Oil Wealth.

Here's some excerpts from brilliant article from journalist Rachel Shabi for Al Jazeera ( NATO nations set to reap spoils of Libya war 25 August 2011 )

It looks like the more telling news on Libya has migrated to the business pages. With jubilant reporting of Gaddafi's imminent downfall seizing headlines, it's the financial pages that have the clinical analysis. So, for instance, it is in this section that the Independent reports a "dash for profit in the post-war Libya carve up".

Similarly, Reuters, under the headline, "Investors eye promise, pitfalls in post-Gaddafi Libya" noted that a new government in that country could "herald a bonanza for Western companies and investors".

Before Tripoli has completely fallen, before Gaddafi and his supporters have stepped down and before the blood dries on the bodies that have yet to be counted, Western powers are already eyeing up what they view us just rewards for the intervention.

There are no more illusions over how far NATO forces exceeded the UN security resolution that mandated its campaign. For months, NATO officials insisted it was operating within brief - an air campaign, designed to protect civilians under threat of attack. But now it is described as an "open secret" that NATO countries were operating undercover, on the ground.

Add to that the reluctance to broker a negotiated exit, the practice of advising, arming and training the rebels, and the spearheading of an escalation in violence and it looks like NATO's job morphed from protecting civilians to regime change.

.....Gaddafi's demise is welcome; the courage of Libyans who fought his regime is staggering and only a stone would fail to be moved by their celebration of freedom now.

But it does not negate those factors to point out that NATO countries have not previously seemed bothered by the bloodiness of this dictator's 42-year-rule - or that the striking feature of the West's relationship to the Middle East has been its cynical alliances with repressive rulers, propped up to shut down their populations while opening up resources to foreign access.

It is exactly this track record - of being a corrosive influence and a self-interested broker - that has made Middle Eastern countries wary of any Western intervention in the tide of revolutions now sweeping the region.

Libyan rebels asked for help, but were wary of what was viewed as a necessary alliance with Western forces. It does the flow of Arab uprisings a disservice to now glorify NATO's mission. A liberal intervention for humanitarian ends may be the comfortable hook; but securing assets and resources, as usual, is the real goal.

Libya and Black Africa.

Adekeye Adebajo looks at the neglected black African dimension to Gaddafi's rule ( Gaddafi: The man who would be king of Africa, The Guardian August 26 2011 ),

...while Gaddafi became increasingly isolated in his bid to lead Africa, his status as an international pariah appeared to have ended with the unilateral dismantling of his weapons of mass destruction programme in 2003. He subsequently co-operated with European governments to deter African migrants seeking to reach Europe. Salivating western leaders from Italy, Britain and the US (now among Nato countries seeking to topple his regime) queued up outside his tent in Tripoli to sign lucrative oil contracts

Colonel Gaddafi's pan-African pose was about realpolitik, of course, no less than Mandela's embracing of the dictator who bestowed one of South Africa’s highest honours, the Order of Good Hope, on Gaddafi in 1997. For all the cynicism of Western states, no state conferred such a distinction.

The "anti-imperialist" propaganda and attempt to portray himself a "King of Kings" was a ploy to shore up support amongst the sub Saharan migrants that entered Libya and the support Gaddafi has with Africans has provided him with a rival sore of support in the poorest third southern province of Fezzan.

It might have been better for Adebayo to focus more on that fact than make snipes at the West given that the pan-Africanist ideology Gaddafi espoused could lead to an ethnic revanchism against black Africans in Libya that exists irrespective of the machinations of "Western imperialists".

There is a history of Arab racism against blacks in Libya that has resulted in such violence as was visited upon Ghanian migrant workers back in 2000, leaving 135 dead, a year after Mandela conferred the South Africa's on Gaddafi who likewise maintained prestige in South Africa akin to Fidel Castro.

Both Castro and Gaddafi supported the ANC in the struggle against Apartheid. As Mandela said “Those who say I should not be here are without morals. This man helped us at a time when we were all alone, when those who say we should not come here were helping the enemy.”

Such anti-imperialist rhetoric ignored the fact the growing ethnic enmity that has resulted now in blacks being seen as all mercenaries shoring up Gaddafi's regime, something that , of course, he was aiming at back to the time of the publication of the Green Book when he mused,

Now comes the black race's turn to prevail. The black race is now in a very backward social situation. But such backwardness helps to bring about numerical superiority of the blacks because their low standard of living has protected them from getting to know the means and ways of birth control and family planning.

Also their backward social traditions are a reason why there is no limit to marriage, leading to their unlimited growth, while the population of otherraces has decreased because of birth control, restrictions on marriage and continuous occupation in work, unlike the blacks who are sluggish in a climate which is always hot.

The removal of Gaddafi and the transition period could lead to much brutality against blacks who defended them against what he termed "hidden hostile hands" that wanted to destroy his Pan-African "ideals". Many black migrants hoping to get to Tripoli also aimed eventually at entering the EU.

In turn, a good number of black African supported Gaddafi. In conditions of chaos where there are squabbles about how gets control over Libya's oil assets, the black minority could well think it has no reason other than to support Gaddafi or anti-NTC forces.

This history of enmity between Arabs and Blacks dates back to the slave trade and has origins independent of the West. So it is hardly credible to see other states in Africa as having absolved themselves for having supported Gaddafi as though it was only the West that played cynical realpolitik.

The Oil Scramble and Divvying Up the Spoils of War.

The announcement today of an official NTC government in Tripoli by the Minister for Finance and Oil, Ali Tarhouni ( a University of Washington in Seattle economics professor ) has been accompanied by promises that the West will be favoured for its support for anti-Gaddafi insurgents.

In the West, Tarhouni is said to be favoured as a future leader of Libya.He has already indicated that existing contracts will be honoured, the endgame is for those nations that explicitly backed the 'rebels' to get a larger slice of the drilling rights and concessions.

As a CNN report confirms (Oil companies ready to jockey for position in new Libya, August 26 2011),

However unpredictable the current situation, European oil companies are gearing up for battle. The major players from there before the uprising began were Italy's Eni, Total of France and Repsol. British giant BP is also trying to get a larger slice of Libyan exploration projects. It concluded a $900 million deal with the Gadhafi regime three years ago to explore for gas. Other players include OMV of Austria and Marathon. China, through its state-owned CNPC, had begun exploring off the Libyan coast to help feed its insatiable appetite for Africa's mineral wealth but recently terminated several contracts because of the unrest.

Libya is the site for a scramble for resources as oil and gas that is set to become more pathological during the course of the 21st century. across the globe from Africa, to the Middle East and Central Asia. Whether Libya's NTC will be able to acheive what was not in Iraq is by no means certain.

What is dangerous would be the sort of shock therapt approach to privatising Libya's oil companies far too quickly so that the NTC presides over squabbling and a widening of ethnic and tribal divisions, not least as Islamist militants played a role in overthrowing Gaddafi.

Whilst the NTC is seeking reconciliation with some in Gaddafi's regime plus investment from the West to a tune of $2.5 dollars to rebuild Libya and prevent the state apparatus crumbling, if Gaddafi is not quickly defeated, then the resulting instability could lead to discontent.

Not least if the emigres in the NTC fail to ensure transparency in the privatisation deals and Western nations put short term greed and the need for 'fast track' oil production at the expense of a process of breaking up the stranglehold Gaddafi's cronies have over the state LNOC.

The need to get Libya's high quality crude oil flowing again is important not only to the reconstruction of the Libyan economy after six months of conflict but also to the Western states reeling from the prospect of a double dip recession and a need for falling petrol prices.

The question is whether Tarhouni is the man to carry out these refoms successfully without the kind of catastrophic doctrinnaire approach taken after 2003 by Chalabi. Tarhouni has been in exile since 1973 and has been described by an academic colleague as "fundamentally American".

Tarhouni, like almost all of the NTC hails from Benghazi, the capital of the former Ottoman and then Italian colony of Cyrenaica, which only became united with Tripolitania and Fezzam to make the new libyan state in 1951.

Tripoli was stormed primarly, however, by Western Libyans with a great deal of help from forces aided and guided by the CIA, MI6 and both French and British special forces, a covert operation that has helped flood Libya with angry young men with access to arms.

This includes those in the east in areas like Dernah whose defences have been led by Abdelkarim al-Hasadi of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group who previously had been a jihadist arrested by US forces in Afghanistan in 2002, and now claims he opposes Taliban style theocratic regimes.

The absurdity of empowering Islamist jihadi warriors after having previous backed Gaddafi after 2003 for renouncing non existent WMDs in return for Western oil companies investments and repressing Al Qaida elements is stark. So much for the 'war on terror' against 'jihadists now.

The very SAS that was used to train Gaddafi's forces to fight against jihadists based on their experience in Afghanistan as recent as 2009 was just two years later being used to train militias with jihadist tendencies in places such as Misrata.

The NTC will need to act rapidly if those with guns as part of independent militias as opposed to organised rebel forces more under their control are not tempted to turn their weapons on them should their tribal leaders be excluded from the benefit of Libya's oil privatisation by Tarhouni.

Britain's Covert Support for Anti-Gaddafi Insurgents ( The "rebels" )

The nature of Britain's covert support for the Lbya insurgent rebels fighting Gaddafi's regime. With the onset of a new epoch of resource wars, this manner of bringing about "regime change" now seems to offer the template for such operation.

The Independent ran this report, ( Rebels claim the victory – but did the Brits win it? August 23 2011 ).

Since 19 March – when the Royal Navy launched cruise missiles on Libyan air-defence targets, followed the next day by attacks by Royal Air Force Tornado jets – Britain has placed itself in the front ranks of Western powers enforcing the United Nations resolution protecting civilians from Colonel Gaddafi's forces and simultaneously pursuing the Brother Leader's removal from power.

While the Ministry of Defence has been diligent in providing daily updates on the progress of "Operation Ellamy", the British codename for its £250m part in the Nato campaign in Libya, a quieter London-sponsored offensive has been taking place on the ground for six months, involving an army of diplomats, spooks, military advisers and former members of the special forces.

One British intelligence operative in the Nafusa Mountains had previously been deployed elsewhere in Libya, including the besieged city of Misrata, part of attempts by London to influence events in Libya beyond the activities of warplanes and naval vessels.

It is a clandestine operation that got off to a spectacularly inauspicious start in March when seven SAS soldiers and an MI6 officer were detained by militia members outside the rebel stronghold of Benghazi, during a botched mission to make contact with anti-Gaddafi leaders. Since then, the British auxiliary efforts have been conducted more clandestinely.

A British diplomatic source said: "From quite an early stage there has been a view that Gaddafi's stranglehold would only be broken if there were practical measures on the ground as well as the air campaign. We are not talking legions of SAS crawling through the undergrowth. What we are talking about is offering expertise, diplomatic support and allowing others to be helpful."

The "others" in question are the small groups of former special forces operatives, many with British accents, working for private security firms who have been seen regularly by reporters in the vanguard of the rebels' haphazard journey from Benghazi towards Tripoli.

These small detachments of Caucasian males, equipped with sunglasses, 4x4 vehicles and locally acquired weaponry, do not welcome prying eyes, not least because their presence threatened to give credence to the Gaddafi regime's claims that the rebel assault was being directed by Western fifth-columnists.

Amid frustration and even disdain in British and Allied circles about the ragtag nature of much of the Libyan rebel army – whose reputation as fair-weather fighters proved to be literal in April when two days of rainfall halted their offensive – London has been content for the Benghazi-based National Transitional Council to use funds to buy in ex-SAS men and others with a British military background to help train and advise anti-Gaddafi forces.

The Independent understands that the contracts for the security companies, often signed in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, have involved funds provided by Western countries to the NTC, although much of the money has come from previously frozen regime bank accounts and assets.

The coalition, including Britain, France and Italy, has also funded high-tech equipment used by rebel fighters to communicate their position to Nato commanders as they plot the air strikes that have helped to tilt the balance against Colonel Gaddafi's demoralised military forces. Since March, British forces have destroyed 890 targets in Libya, including 180 tanks or armoured vehicles and 395 buildings.

But it is arguably in the arena of post-conflict planning that the British have been most active. In the wake of last month's decision by London to recognise the NTC as the de facto government of Libya, expelling pro-Gaddafi diplomats in London, the UK mission to Benghazi is now the second largest in North Africa.

Diplomats have been engaged in drawing up a blueprint for a post-Gaddafi Libya, including humanitarian aid, help with policing, governance and reform of the military. The prize of being seen as a "friend" in a stable, oil-rich Libya is considerable.

The Parallel between Iraq and Libya-Robert Fisk.

The parallels between Libya and Iraq are not, as yet, that direct. Yet according to Robert Fisk, correspondent for The Independent, this could change rather quickly as he writes here ( History repeats itself, with mistakes of Iraq rehearsed afresh. With Gaddafi at large, a guerrilla war eroding the new powers is inevitable August 25 2011 ).

Doomed always to fight the last war, we are recommitting the same old sin in Libya.

Muammar Gaddafi vanishes after promising to fight to the death. Isn't that just what Saddam Hussein did? And of course, when Saddam disappeared and US troops suffered the very first losses from the Iraqi insurgency in 2003, we were told – by the US proconsul Paul Bremer, the generals, diplomats and the decaying television "experts" – that the gunmen of the resistance were "die-hards", "dead-enders" who didn't realise that the war was over.

The West's real fear – right now, and this could change overnight – should be the possibility that the author of the Green Book has made it safely through to his old stomping ground in Sirte, where tribal loyalty might prove stronger than fear of a Nato-backed Libyan force.

Sirte, where Gaddafi, at the very start of his dictatorship, turned the region's oil fields into the first big up-for-grabs international dividend for foreign investors after his 1969 revolution, is no Tikrit. It is the site of his first big African Union conference, scarcely 16 miles from the place of his own birth, a city and region that benefited hugely from his 41-year rule. Strabo, the Greek geographer, described how the dots of desert settlements due south of Sirte made Libya into a leopard skin. Gaddafi must have liked the metaphor. Almost 2,000 years later, Sirte was pretty much the hinge between the two Italian colonies of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica.

And in Sirte the "rebels" were defeated by the "loyalists" in this year's six-month war; we shall soon, no doubt, have to swap these preposterous labels – when those who support the pro-Western Transitional National Council will have to be called loyalists, and pro-Gaddafi rebels turn into the "terrorists" who may attack our new Western-friendly Libyan administration. Either way, Sirte, whose inhabitants are now supposedly negotiating with Gaddafi's enemies, may soon be among the most interesting cities in Libya.

Human Rights in Libya and Britain.

In Michel Houellebecq's novel Platform the world weary narrator Michel Renault says that when considering the bombing by NATO of Kosovo, as part of a campaign for human rights, that he thinks the term human rights is based on irony. It is not difficult to see why many are becoming cynical every time the word is used

The idea that human rights can be enshrined in a 'fast track' manner through war and 'liberal intervention' is seen as idealistic. A selfless moral crusade that seamlessly binds a truly enlightened domestic policy with a foreign policy agenda no less.

The bland deputy PM of Britain, "Nick" Clegg, has had an article in The Guardian published that may even well have been actually written by him, that neverthesless asserts this,

'Libya stands on the brink of a new future, one that holds out the promise of democracy and freedom after 40 years of oppression. One of the most important tasks facing the interim government is the prevention of reprisals.

That is why David Cameron and I have urged the National Transitional Council to exercise restraint and respect for human rights.

...something strange has happened in recent years: while governments have continued the call for greater rights abroad, they have belittled the relevance of rights at home'.
Something strange has indeed occurred.

The harsh truth is that the invasion and intervention in lands valued for their potential in supplying oil and gas tends to conflict with the notion that the human right to infinitely consume the world's resources is easily reconciliable with the promotion of liberal democracy.

The curtailment of civil liberties under New Labour was bound together with Anti-Terrorist legislation and absurdities such as the bill to introduce 'incitement to religious hatred' as a form of criminal activity in fear of some supposed monolithic 'the Muslim Community' feeling victimised.

This followed increased tensions over the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and the groundswell of opinion, hardly restricted to British Muslims, that these wars for resources that had as their aim the control of ever scarcer supplies of oil and gas.

These resources are essential to underpin the infinite growth utopia that liberal progressives consider the way to integrate citizens living in a "globalised world", benefitting the consumers of lands as Britain no less than those lands from which thousands of displaced migrants are intent on claiming asylum in. As compensation.

Western Europe is dominated by hubristic politicians and a substantial public opinion that is motivated by a combination of the continued greed for increased comfort and material luxury and the guilt that comes from governments intervening in resource rich lands to acheive this. This indicates a civilisation heading for disintegration and decline..

European nations as part of the EU are considered a power bloc based on a liberal vision different to that of the global hegemon across the Atlantic that in reality provides most of the finance and military hardware to fight the resource wars that the USA considers necessary for its national interests.

The difference between the EU and the USA is that the latter happens to be across the Atlantic and not the Mediterranean. So the conflict and potential for chaos in Libya will affect the EU far more than the USA. But the intervention in Libya is connected inherently to Iraq and Afghanistan-control of fossil fuels.

This means that investment in alternatives to petrol fuelled consumerism is more important to maintain world peace than sententious hypocritical grandstanding upon human rights that would be far better promoted by the committment to a civilisation not based on profligate oil based consumption.

Else the coming future is going to resemble something akin to the dystopia portrayed in the film Children of Men. Where relations between and within states are pared down to pathological hatreds over who retains what in material terms and human rights become 'our right' to survive against the 'barbarians at the gate'.

An "Iron Mountain" of Arms in Afghanistan. A Mound of Corpses.

The strategy of arming those to fight for Western geopolitical interests and, it has been hoped, to promote democracy in strategically valuable lands, is a common thread that links the struggle in Libya with that in Afghanistan.

Michael Breen opines, courtesy of The Guardian,

In the continuing struggle for Afghanistan's future, Nato hopes that a massive transfer of weapons and equipment will finally tip the balance in its favour. Over the next eight months, Afghanistan's security forces look forward to receiving a series of arms shipments worth $2.7bn that Nato planners have dubbed the "iron mountain".

This is what is termed termed Afghanistanisation . The idea is to reduce NATO deaths in regions such as Helmland, through which the TAPI pipeline will run, by getting the Afghans to do the work of securing this grand project that will subsequently accrue large transit fees for Kabul to complete 'nation building'.

The omission of any consideration of this central key geopolitical stategy of NATO in Afghanistan, whether it is thought that it is a good or bad idea, is a derleliction of duty amongst journalists in free democratic nations.

The news in the media in those nations directly concerned with the TAPI pipeline regularly mention its importance. The Guardian should deal with the centrality of the TAPI pipeline if it is to remain a source of objective journalism and discussion in Britain.

The reason billions are pouring into Afghanistan were set out clearly by Hillary Clinton.

CentralAsia newswire reports, this,

Thursday, July 21, 2011 - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Tuesday promoted the planned Turkmenistan-to-India natural gas pipeline while in the Indian capital New Delhi, but did not speak about the proposed ‘peace’ pipeline from Iran to India, The Hindu news agency noted Thursday.

Participating countries should continue with efforts to lay the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline “both for improved energy security in the subcontinent and the relatively clean energy natural gas that it would provide,” Clinton told an energy security meeting.

Iran and Pakistan announced plans to begin work on laying the Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) pipeline before the end of this year. Iran has already completed 679 miles of pipeline on its territory, according to Pakistan’s petroleum and natural resources minister.

Washington sees its policy of containing the Tehran government as a way of stabilizing Iraq and Afghanistan, as it blames Iran for the uptick in violence in both states.

Clinton also encouraged Asian countries to work together on creating a new Silk Road of transnational networks of transit and economic connections to boost development in the volatile region.

"That means building more rail lines, highways, energy infrastructure, like the proposed (natural gas) pipeline to run from Turkmenistan, through Afghanistan, through Pakistan into India," the United Press International (UPI) news agency reported Clinton as saying.

There ought really to be a real and sensible discussion of this. Unless the political classes in the West regard the children, .i.e the public, to be too uninformed to even consider why 379 British troops have been killed there, as well as thousands of Afghan villagers.