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Daily News Analysis

Neo-colonialism’s devastation of Libya

Crescent International

Libya could be turned into a PR tool for western interventionism.

Instead, it offers a salutary lesson in why Muslim societies should not resort to inviting western interference in their internal political, social, and economic affairs.

Libya has a small but relatively educated population and possesses the world’s most desired natural resource in abundance.

From a strictly econometric perspective, over the past 10 years, Libya could have been an economic and political success story, but it is anything but.

The German regime-funded media outlet, Deutsche Welle (DW), attempted on May 25 to paint a somewhat rosy picture of Libya post-NATO aggression.

It focussed on the superficial optimistic developments of the last two years.

In its report DW stated that “new roads, public parks and expansive reconstruction — Libya has recently seen an influx of cash from oil sales, and locals are hopeful. But all the economic progress also has a dark side.”

The so-called economic “progress” means that Libya is simply a gas station for western economies with no real manufacturing or knowledge-based industries.

This is not due to its own policy failures.

Thanks to western military aggression, it was subjected to previously unknown level of destruction of a country that once had a relatively good functioning system.

There was no poverty in the country, people had access to education, free healthcare system and housing as well as generous government payments upon getting married.

All this has been destroyed.

Today, Libya does not have good prospects of becoming a significant oil supplier for western economies.

Gerald Kepes, President of Competitive Energy Strategies, wrote in al-monitor last February that “Libya’s oil production is unlikely to reach 2 million barrels per day ever again.

Even if one accepts the western narrative that it is all the fault of the late autocratic ruler Muammar Qaddafi, this narrative does not absolve the west of its criminal responsibility.

NATO regimes had no problem doing business with Qaddafi, when he was looting Libya, parking his assets in western banks and killing Libyans who dared to oppose him.

Western regimes even supplied him with the technology to spy on his people.

At the political level, Libya is in even worse shape than it is economically.

The CIA asset and warlord Khalifa Haftar has destroyed all chances of establishing an even rudimentary functioning governing system in Libya.

Apart from being backed by pro-western regional autocracies, this brutal warlord is also backed by the regional menace Israel.

Haftar’s parallel reign outside the control of the internationally-recognized government in Tripoli continues to remain a political time bomb.

This is likely to continue to play a very destabilizing role in Libya in the foreseeable future and even after Haftar is gone from the scene.

Turkiye’s initial involvement to stop the warlord offered a glimmer of hope that Ankara would push for a proper functioning system and decrease the role of militias in the country.

Ankara’s involvement, however, seems to have been purely Machiavellian in nature.

Although some naïve Muslims see in Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan an Islamic statesman, Libya is another example which reflects his opportunism and lack of principles.

Being a relatively strong Muslim state, Turkiye could have turned the socio-political situation in Libya and facilitated a genuine local political process minus the warlords and other pro-western elements.

Instead, Erdogan seems to have used his intervention in Libya simply as a bargaining chip in his dealings with western regimes and their Persian Gulf proxies.

In the foreseeable future even if Libya manages to break out of the western-imposed chaos, it will require clearing its socio-political landscape from western proxies first.

This will automatically mean more disturbances and conflict.

A relatively well-run country with a soundly- managed economy was destroyed because the west would not allow Qaddafi to help the people of Africa to break out of the stranglehold of western regimes and their rapacious multinationals.


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