Libyan people’s great victory against Gadaffi’s dictatorship has been helping the working class of other countries to get to know better their own governments.
Here in Britain, Tony Blair, from the Labor Party, who used to make speeches defending democracy and human rights when he was prime minister from 1997 to 2007, has recently been unmasked by a bombshell revelation: his secret relationship with the Libyan dictator Muhamar Gadaffi.
There is no news on the fact that the bourgeois and imperialist governments keep close relationship with dictators. However it exceeds all limits when it is crystal clear that Tony Blair and Gadaffi’s relationship involved close cooperation to violate Libyan people’s human rights and to massacre the opposition against a government who claimed to be anti-imperialist.
This month a major British newspaper, The Independent (September 4th), made surprising revelations about the relationship between England and Gaddafi; these revelations drop to the ground any argument of Gaddafi supporters who try to show him as anti-imperialist. The newspaper published documents found by the Organization of the UN Human Rights in MoussaKoussi’s office. MoussaKoussi was the head of the espionage in Tripoli, which proves that England, through the MI6 (Secret Service), and the U.S. through the CIA, worked in partnership with Gadaffi to suppress the opposition to the Libyan dictatorial regime. Among other revelations, the documents show that England, under Blair’s government, helped capture one leader of the opposition to Gadaffi’s regime before sending him back to Libya, where he was brutally tortured.
One hand washes the other
“London involvement in the capture of Abdel-Hakim Belhaj, military commander of the rebel forces in Tripoli is revealed in a letter written by a MI6 officer. In it, he reminds Koussi that it was the England’s intelligence service who led the capture of Mr. Belhaj when he was the leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, before he was sent back to the Libyan government”, said the newspaper. Belhaj’s“confession of guilt” would have been obtained by a “progressive interrogation technique”. Belhaj revealed he had been tortured during interrogation. The official of MI6 wrote: “This was the least we could do for you and for Libya to demonstrate the close relationship we have built during recent years”.
So close was the relationship between the two governments that several European agencies of intelligence used MI6’s services in order to also capture Libyan people suspected of ‘terrorism’ in their countries. The Secret Service Bureau of Sweden, Italy and Germany counted on the help of the British agency and its connection to Tripoli for these actions. One indication of the friendly relations between the British intelligence and its Libyan partners are the letters exchanged between London and Tripoli, all headed by the phrases “Greetings from MI6” and “Greetings from SIS.”
Although the documents reveal information of the time that Tony Blair was in government, there is evidence that there are also relations between England and some members of the new Libyan government, the Transitional National Council (TNC).
The documents also reveal that the British security agencies used to provide details about the lives of Gadaffi opponents in exile, including phone numbers. Ismail Kamoka was one of the “spied” people. He was released in 2004 by the British justice, because he was not considered a threat to England national security.
Was Gadaffi anti-imperialist?
Here in England many militants and leftist groups that claim to be “Marxists” have unleashed a veritable flood of criticism at the Libyan people for overthrowing the “anti-imperialist” Gadaffi “with the help of imperialism”. They make a chorus with Chavez and Castro, saying that the imperialism wanted to overthrow Gadaffi in order to get hold of the oil under Libyan soil and therefore thepeople ought to defend him against this aggression.
However, the documents currently released reveal the kind of “anti-imperialist” Gadaffi was; it was an anti-imperialism in words but pro-imperialism in deeds. Close collaboration between his regime and the imperialist governments has again been confirmed by the documents found in Tripoli; that the imperialist intelligence services were doing the dirty work, out of Libya, i.e. to identify, to spy and to arrest those who were fighting against Gadaffi, and then, gave them back to the dictator so that he would torture them in his sinister prisons. If something was missing proof, nothing is missing now.
Now it is time to ask: if Gadaffi was really anti-imperialist, how couldsomeone explain the reason of this collaboration which has been happening since 2002, when the CIA and the MI6 began an active engagement with Libyan intelligence agents to suppress the sources of opposition in the country?
Facts are facts
Those who currently defend Gadaffi say he was the victim of an imperialist assault and therefore it is the revolutionaries’ duty to defend him.
However, the facts prove the opposite. There was no imperialist initiative to attack Gadaffi, who was supported up to the limit, becausethere was a deal between them, that is to say, the imperialism and Gadaffi had agreed to repress the opposition together, as now the documents have shown.
The protests that ended up by overthrowing the 42-year-old dictatorship became stronger since February 2011. The arrest of a Human Rights activist in Benghazi on the 15th of February was the last straw, giving rise to a wave of protests across the country, igniting a population already tired and ready to explode. Gadaffi’s violent reaction against protesters with well-trained troops by Britain and old weapons bought from the USSR and other countries, including Brazil, as well as chemical weapons, provoked the spread of the protests which had been fueled by the revolution in Egypt and Tunisia. What pushed the Libyan people to Revolution was Gadaffi himself, a bloody dictator who closed the door to any opposition movement, who had been delivering the oil to the imperialism without any benefits for the population, submerged in poor living conditions.
The facts are clear. The imperialist intervention came after the protests had spread and the rebels threatened to occupy the oil wells. Despite all repression, Gadaffi failed to control an insurgency that grew increasingly strong. In face of Gadaffi’s failure to guarantee stability, the imperialist powers intervened in order to stop the mass movement and ensure the continuity of the oil spoil in Libya, through a bourgeois government headed by the TNC–Transitional National Council.
Another accusation against the rebels is that they are not honest revolutionary fighters, who give their lives to overthrow Libyan dictatorship. They would be imperialist agents infiltrated among the people, armed by the imperialism aiming at Gadaffi’s overthrow, and thus open the way for imperialist control of the country. The OTAN intervention in Libya, in an attempt to control the uprising of the masses, actually gives room for this type of interpretation, because it turns the whole process highly contradictory.
But this is an easy interpretation because it is mechanical. Imperialism, on many occasions, used this expedient of arming mercenaries to achieve their goals. It’s possible that in Libya it has also occurred, but if we coolly analyze the facts, it is clear that if this occurred it was not the determining factor. Most rebels do not comprise a complete regular army, as it would be expected if it was prepared by imperialism. Instead of helmets, boots, bomb-protection uniforms, there are people without any kind of protection on their heads, without shoes or slippers and wearing tattered clothes. Nothing like the mercenary soldiers of an imperialist army! As to the weapons, they were pulled out of the dictatorship itself, thanks to the fact that the rebels managed to invade many military weaponwarehouses to get hold of rifles and machine guns.
However, all these accusations against the rebels do not have any support in reality. If they were agents of imperialism, it would be hard to believe in their ability to contaminate an entire country.
If Gadaffi’s government was a democratic one and not a bloody dictatorship, if it was a government which guaranteed good living conditions for the population, and not a corrupt and spoiler government, it would be hard to believe that some mercenaries would be capable of carrying out an insurgency that involved all the people with such a force that faced a far more equipped army and led this government down.
As for Gadaffi, yes, there is irrefutable evidence of his connection with the imperialism in its attempts to quell the masses at any cost to continue in power. That is why it is of high importance the documents revealed by the UN Human Rights Organization and published by The Independent, showing the dangerous liaisons between Gadaffi, Britain and the United States to keep the spoliation of Libyan people.
British workers now have a reason for not to believe in the lies of the Labour Party and they should require an immediate public retraction of the party leaders, who must be punished for having collaborated with the arrest, torture and death of many Libyan opposing activists. They also have more reason to continue fighting against Cameron’s Conservative government, which continues bombing Libya and seeks to impose its policy through the new government of the TNC, as well as to disarm the people’s committees of Libya. The workers at Britain must now show their full support to the struggle of the Libyan people for freedom, demanding the British government the immediate deactivation of the MI6 secret services and the full opening of its archives.
