NADHANI MLIOKUWA MNADHANI GADDAF NI MUUAJI, SASA MNAAMINI WAMAREKANI NA ULAYA MAGHARIBI NDIO HATARI ZAIDI KWA MAISHA YA WALIBYA.
'Gaddafi cared about Libyan people'
Sun May 15, 2011 4:29PM
Interview with Edward Corrigan, journalist and political commentator, London
NATO warplanes have been carrying out airstrikes in Libya for the past two months as part of a UN mandate to protect the Libyan civilians.
Last Friday, NATO targeted a civilian center in the key Libyan city of Brega, where at least 16 people were killed and 40 others wounded.
According to the residents, most of the
victims were Muslim clerics who had gathered for a religious ceremony.
In order to
get some insight on the developments in Libya, Press TV has conducted an interview with Edward Corrigan, journalist and political commentator from London. What follows is the transcript of the interview.
Press TV:
Edward Corrigan, if you remember, March 19 was the day when the United States launched the first strike on Libya. Supposedly it was going to help the revolutionaries expand and move to the capital Tripoli. Interestingly that has not occurred. As a matter of fact, at one point the revolutionaries themselves were making more advancement prior to the NATO operation. What do you think has happened?
Edward Corrigan: Well, I think that
Gaddafi has a loyal army and the people have appreciated what he has done for them, at least some of the people have [also appreciated what he has done for them]. He has provided the oil resources for free education, free healthcare, expansion in housing.
He has used the resources of the state not exclusively but largely for the benefit of the Libyan people and he has also used the resources of the state to help the African Union help African countries get out of the control of the United States and also the European states.
I think he does have a loyal following and he of course has expressed the voice of a lot of Arabs and a lot of Libyans with regard to independence for the Arabs, support for the Palestinians opposition to American intervention into the Middle East and of course Gaddafi has been very critical of a lot of the feudal regimes in the Arab world and pointing out the hypocrisy that is involved in there.
He has done other things too like trying to move away from using the US dollar or the Euro for oil purchases and he has made some other advancements with regard to being independent of the bank of Libya and using resources in ways that are not in the same interest of a lot of the American and Western powers and the World Bank. As a result, he does have a loyal following because he has been subjected to tremendous pressure right now …
Press TV:
I am glad you mentioned pressure. Pressure from whom? By looking at NATO, what are we looking at? We are pretty much looking at 5 nations who are implementing this mandate of the Security Council, aren't we? Why is it that it is restricted to these 5 nations? I mean at the same time -- at least on the surface -- it is just them and not any countries from Africa. I mean we are just getting some token actions by the United Arabs Emirates, I think, that is contributing some warplanes from other countries. So when we talk about pressure it is just about 5 nations, isn't it?
Edward Corrigan: Well, you are talking about the United States. You are talking about Britain. You are talking about France. You are talking about Italy. These are the most powerful military advanced nations in the world, pretty well in the West. You know, the Russians and the Chinese are certainly up there and they are not involved, in fact, they were very critical of the attacks but this is tremendous when they want power.
The CIA has put a lot of money into the rebels. Their substantive leaders lived for 20 years in the United States in the CIA assets. They sort of cobble together a mishmash of the opposition groups.
Some of them are former Gaddafi loyalists who are probably acting in what they perceived as the self interest that you have got Jihadist people who are Islamic extremists that people are affiliated with the al-Qaeda which is against what the Americans substantively want and there may be a few Libyan loyalists hanging around there and they are pretty well extinct I think.
So it is not a cohesive movement with a leader. I do not think it was spontaneous. It was sort of promoted by the Americans and in my view I think the Americans were surprised by the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt and Bahrain but I think now they are trying to use that sort of an Arab spring as an opportunity to put pressure and to call for the regime change in Libya and also in Syria and perhaps even Algeria.
These countries, at least
Algeria and Libya, have a lot of oil resources which are of interest to the West and they want to control that. Libya's banking policy was clearly posing a threat to some of the major banking interests and the World Bank and the American control of a lot of financial markets.
Press TV:
Right, they do want to release that about USD 30 billion, I believe, in the trip that he made as the revolutionary leader from the TNC. Let us look at the way the sorties are being exercised. It is very interesting you have CIA operatives and I am sure you are well aware that some say MI6 also that are underground there but we had this NATO airstrike in which I am going to ask your reaction to it, Edward, in which 11 Imams were killed. These are clerics that were reportedly killed in this airstrike, 50 others wounded, 5 of them in critical condition.
Aside from obviously this being a consequence of the airstrikes, what was interesting to me is that one of the TNC representatives was at a news conference with an Imam in which he said -- not the TNC representative but the Imam -- that they are going to take revenge for their brothers who died.
Now, what I am curious about the role that the TNC has within Libya vis-à-vis the relationship that the West has with them, in particular, of course we can talk about the UK, the US but the countries that recognize Libya like France, Italy and Qatar to be part of them. Can you explain the dichotomy there, the way that the mechanics are working on their relationship?
Edward Corrigan: Well, the
Americans and the Western powers just want to overthrow Libya. They do not really care how they do and who they use to cut back the independence. Once they get rid of Gaddafi, and then they can manipulate the regime and put in their own people and certainly try to bring it under their control. They are quite prepared to work with anybody but the attack on the Imams, I think, was a mistake.
I think they really do not know what they are doing. I think they are bombing a lot of people, killing a lot of civilians. They say that they are going to keep fighting until Gaddafi stops killing civilians but it is the NATO forces that are doing the bombing, using drones, providing the weapons and I do not really think they care about people in Libya being killed.
All these Imams, for them this is a collateral damage but it is quite obviously an inflamed opinion and polarize a large portion of the Muslim population against the NATO intervention and I think
most Libyans have realized that this is not in Libya's interest. It is in the interest of the West. They want to get rid of Gaddafi. They want to put in a puppet. They want to establish a client regime. So the internal dynamics I think are simply opportunism.
The Americans in the past have used al-Qaeda against the Russians. The Americans helped create al-Qaeda. MI6 and the CIA were involved with training and providing them with weapons. In Kosovo they wanted to use it to get to Russia and Chechnya. They even were talking about using the Muslim fundamentalist to cause trouble in China.
So it is entirely opportunistic on their part and they are prepared to use.
They(Americans) have also tried to establish a Sunni militia, a sort of model of al-Qaeda in Lebanon, to sort of counterbalance Hezbollah. So they are looking very short term in preparing to do almost anything but that is really concerning the media in long term interest. It is a short term. How do we destabilize Libya? How do we get rid of Gaddafi, and then bring them out of the chaos? I assume they are going to try to have some sort of control and they have got their people in place and the leading person is in fact the CIA asset. I think it is opportunistic and you know it is creating problems.
The Americans are bombing people and I am sure we are not getting near enough information about the actual civilian casualties that we are saying, not as soon as Gaddafi stops killing civilians. You know,
it is the Western intervention. This is almost like a concoctive invented uprising against Gaddafi. I think there was some discontent but nothing to the degree that would probably bring them in about to an uprising. Of course, the
Saudis hate Gaddafi because he was attacking them and criticizing them, the same with the UAE and Qatar and a few of other feudal regimes that are supporting the Americans and have also pushed to do that sort of phony resolutions at the Arab League which was attacking Gaddafi.
The feudal regimes, I think, are desperate. They are afraid of this liberalization, the so-called Arab spring. But in Bahrain there was the sort of regime that Saudis are putting their troops and that the Saudis are very much afraid of the same problem. There are feudal regimes that probably have got one of the worst human rights records of any country in the world and it is very authoritarian and it also lacks legitimacy with the vast majority of the Arabs in the Arabian Peninsula.
source:
PressTV - 'Gaddafi cared about Libyan people'
