African Economics: A look into Libya and why the NATO horror story of the assassination of Muammar Gaddafi was so tragic.
- realeconomist@counterculture
- Mar 13, 2023
- 24 min read
Updated: Jan 20
'NATO is the most violent, aggressive alliance in the world' - Noam Chomsky
'We came, we saw, he died!" - Hilary Clinton (celebrating NATO's involvement in the death of Gaddafi)
Key Points -
Gaddafi brought Libya from poverty and being one of the poorest nations in Africa, to be the most educated and arguably economically the strongest nation in all of Africa.
Gaddafi was a contradiction - he was the most democratic and popular of dictators. He was a leading advocate for women's rights, as well as for education, housing, health and many other civil rights which he gave Libyans, showing his humanitarian side. Yet during his reign the public saw public executions and he was allegedly involved in various acts of terrorism.
When compared with similar African countries and other dictators, Gaddafi shines as one of the greatest African leaders in history.
Gaddafi was murdered for wanting to introduce an African Currency and for being overly protectionist and nationalistic to NATO's eyes.
The interesting, powerful and tragic dictator - Muammar Gaddafi
Muammar Gaddafi was no doubt a dictator since he held rule (as a chairman principally) for forty-two years of Libya without permitting elections and opposition having taken over in what was a bloodless coup d’état the country from the rule of the dismal Sanusiyya dynasty (which had followed Libya’s liberation from the even harsher Italian colonialists). The Sanusiyya dynasty was a monarchy with King Idris I in charge, that by and large promoted British economic and military interests in order to keep power, and Libya was a nation with extreme poverty. For instance, only 250,000 inhabitants in Libya could read and write before Gaddafi freed Libya from the dynastic rulers, and Libya was considered one of the poorest countries in all of Africa despite having oil.
Gaddafi loathed pretty much all the mechanisms of modern democracy - parliaments, parties and voters, since he claimed it produced only power-struggles and was overly tribal. This also meant independent trade unions, and other civil organizations were strictly prohibited. And yet, despite being a dictator, he is probably one of the most interesting and real leaders in modern-history, certainly in Africa and in many ways he was proven right. Libya benefited massively from a hard ruler, suffering from far fewer power-struggles in comparison with other oil-rich but war-torn African nations. He was the man who had led a country from being one of the poorest in the whole of the continent to the very richest, without invading or colonizing any neighboring country.
The question is why on earth then was he specifically targeted by NATO and killed by NATO-backed rebels? Was there any justification since the achievements of NATO were nothing but destruction? These questions are so important given it is now pretty much established that without NATO intervention, the rebellion would have otherwise been squashed by Gaddafi, just like how all previous attempts to dethrone him had only failed.
Looking with hindsight, it is clear that the NATO-supported rebellion created the chain of events which would bring a country which had been become under Gaddafi's leadership the highest African ranked country in development in accordance with the United Nation's Human Development Index to end up falling completely back to being shambolic economy with mass open slave markets on the streets and far greater violence and danger for civilians and visitors alike, even dozens of years after the dismantling of Gaddafi's political empire and his assassination. In fact, one expert reported at one point that in Libya ‘less people lived below the poverty line than in the Netherlands’. So who actually was Gaddafi and what was his real legacy – which clearly is not the one portrayed by the mainstream media?
As always, it's important to look at both sides of the coin, as Gaddafi ultimately lost and the victors will paint a very distorted picture of truth, but they surely are likely not be always completely wrong, though in this case their side upon examination appears particularly weak.
The dark side of Gaddafi
Let's not hide the obvious - Gaddafi was an assassin, a ruthless power-controller and even reputedly a political terrorist (albeit this he denied and so was Mandela). The public executions of dissenters to his regime are there for all to see - just look up Shaheed Sadiq Shwehd’s execution for example, though it was far more common for Gaddafi's political enemies to be imprisoned. This was how he maintained such control, through fear created by publicly broadcasted executions. Gaddafi was linked with 1986 West Berlin discotheque bombing (to which the US under Reagan retaliated by bombing Libya back and perhaps killed one of Gaddafi's youngest children), as well as with the Munich Massacre of Israeli Athletes, though neither is proven.
Further, Gaddafi can be considered partially antisemitic as he had expelled Jewish communities from Libya, as well as racist since he oversaw an exodus of the Italian community in revenge for the Italian occupation. It's easy to gauge his firm character because instead of calling it 'Liberation day', under Gaddafi Libyans celebrated 'The Day of Revenge' annually. Gaddafi stated himself he was completely against terrorism and denied any involvement with the terrorist acts that he was linked with financially supporting. He did not consider himself a terrorist but a freedom fighter and in an interview with Australian journalist George Negus he described how he saw the al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden as 'a terrorist group and we (Libya) totally disagree with them.'
However, it is even rumored that Gaddafi ordered killings of Libyans living in foreign soil who were ruining his international reputation. The only thing for sure though was that his behavior was not soft and though, not a particularly extreme Muslim, he sadly did buckle under pressure from his people's most extreme Muslim demands, such as when he finally instituted aspect la of the sharia law in 1994 which included flogging LGBT people, to prevent a challenge to his regime on the basis of religious principles. It is also reputed that Gaddafi himself tried to prohibit capital punishment but couldn't as the People's Congresses, which he had set up, wanted to maintain the death penalty and so he had to let it happen. Likewise, Gaddafi reputedly never could replace classic schools with homeschooling due to the People’s Congresses rejecting his ideas. In this sense, his dictatorship was actually paradoxically very democratic.
The insightful side of Muammar Gaddafi
To begin understanding Muammar Gaddafi's very good side, it is worth knowing what he himself stood for and publicly advocated, by looking at his own 1975 political book ‘The Green Book’.
Gaddafi was completely anti-classist and he comes up with a compelling argument why affiliating with any political party for its supposed representation of a social-class was to him a complete waste of time (at least in the long run) as class structures are naturally created by society and can’t be defeated politically, as communism due to its failure, really has shown. He wrote insightfully that -
'Any class which inherits a society also inherits its characteristics. If the working class, for example, subdues all other classes of a particular society, it then becomes its only heir and forms its material and social base. The heir acquires the traits of those from whom it inherits, though this may not be evident all at once. With the passage of time, characteristics of the other eliminated classes will emerge within the ranks of the working class itself. The members of the new society will assume the attitudes and perspectives appropriate to their newly evolved characteristics. Thus, the working class will develop a separate society possessing all of the contradictions of the old society.
In the first stage, the material standard and importance of the members become unequal. Thereafter, groups emerge which automatically become classes that are the same as the classes that were eliminated. Thus, the struggle for domination of the society begins again. Each group of people, each faction, and each new class will all vie to become the instrument of government… . Any society which undergoes a class conflict may at one time have been a one-class society but, through evolution, inevitably becomes a multi-class society. This is especially interesting today, as we are living in a one-ruling technology class society today.
He was equally completely nationalistic, people-oriented and anti-colonialist, writing that 'the nation is also a social structure whose bond is nationalism...When political structure and social reality are congruent, as in the case of the nation-state, it lasts and does not change. If a change is forced by external colonialism or internal collapse, it reappears under the banner of national struggle, national revival or national unity. When a political structure embraces more than one nation, its map will be torn up by each nation, gaining independence under the banner of its respective nationhood. Thus, the maps of the empires which the world has witnessed have been torn up because they were composed of a number of nations. When every nation clings strongly to its national identity and seeks independence, political empires are torn up and their components revert to their social origins.' It's no wonder that a colonialist and one world-esque organisation like NATO despised Gaddafi, he was so strictly pro-national sovereignty.
Above all, it's important to know Gaddafi walked the walk. If you look up on the internet, even with today’s censorship, you should be able to find videos of him driving through the streets in Libya being unanimously celebrated, with next to no security or protection, in a style completely unseen in the West. He was actually one of the most loved patriots of his age.
Moreover, in his political-book, Gaddafi stressed the principles of freedom, education and treating women and children humanely, writing - 'Children should be raised by their mothers in a family where the true principles of motherhood, fatherhood and comradeship of brothers and sisters prevail, and not in an institution resembling a poultry farm… Even poultry, like the rest of the members of the animal kingdom, need motherhood as a natural phase. Meat from mechanized poultry farms is not tasty and may not be nourishing because the chicks are not naturally bred and are not raised in the protective shade of natural motherhood… As for children who have neither family nor shelter, society is their guardian, and only for them, should society establish nurseries and related institutions… Any attempt to take children away from their mothers is coercion, oppression and dictatorship… If the woman is forced to abandon her natural role regarding conception and maternity, she falls victim to coercion and tyranny. A woman who needs work that renders her unable to perform her natural function is not free and is compelled to work by need, and “in need, freedom is latent”...Men and women must perform, not abandon, the roles for which they are created… All societies today look upon women as little more than commodities. The East regards her as a commodity to be bought and sold, while the West does not recognize her femininity...For children to find themselves under adult working conditions is unjust and dictatorial. It is equally unjust and dictatorial for women to find themselves under the working conditions of men'. It's quite startling how the greatest feminist leader in all of Africa was painted as a social terrorist.
Gaddafi further wrote that 'freedom means that every human being gets proper education which qualifies him or her for the work which suits him or her. Dictatorship means that human beings are taught that which is not suitable for them, and are forced to do unsuitable work.
Work which is appropriate to men is not necessarily appropriate to women, and knowledge that is proper for children does not necessarily suit adults. There is no difference in human rights between man and woman, the child and the adult, but there is no absolute identity between them as regards their duties… society should provide all types of education, giving people the chance to choose freely any subjects they wish to learn. This requires a sufficient number of schools for all types of education…
Knowledge is a natural right of every human being of which no one has the right to deprive him or her under any pretext, except in a case where a person does something which deprives him or her of that right. Ignorance will come to an end when everything is presented as it actually is and when knowledge about everything is available to each person in the manner that suits him or her…
Once more he completely backed up his words with actions and successful political policy. Gaddafi brought the literacy rate of Libyan’s to roughly 90%, made the life expectancy a staggering 74.5 years, and brought about internationally acclaimed greater gender equality, in complete contrast to many other oil-rich Arab states such as Saudi Arabia. Gaddafi was directly praised by the United Nations Human Rights Council as in Libya, under his rule, women were given rights in education, work (including income), marriage and to property. When he took power few Libyan women went to university but before his death more than half of students in Libyan universities were women, for example. Once again, the idea that this man was an evil repressive terrorist seems completely insane.
Gaddafi showed himself to be incredibly prescient regarding issues which are happening even today, decades after his death. On the 14th August 2009, Gaddafi stated '“NATO is trying today to drag the former Soviet republics under its control, this can only be described as a real threat to Russia, during my visit to Ukraine, I was convinced that there are serious problems between the two countries. One of these problems is the Ukrainian leadership’s attempts to join NATO.' That same year, Gaddafi added that NATO’s expansion, and its attempt to welcome Eastern European countries as members is a ‘dangerous provocation, and an attempt to encircle and subjugate Russia. This is a country that cannot be easily besieged and defeated, as proven throughout history.’ It turned out he was spot on, as in February 2022 Putin invaded Ukraine on the grounds that he was provoked by the preliminary steps made by Zelensky to have Ukraine fully join NATO.
Moreover, he was I believe incredibly accurate and prescient regarding the other major conflict happening today between Israel and Palestine raging today, stating in the same George Negus interview where he denied being a terrorist, that 'if they wanted to end the violence and war between them and if they wanted Jews and Palestinians to live in peace… Jews and Palestinians… then they should consider this solution. One democratic state, free from weapons of mass destruction, and with the return of the Palestinian refugees...Four million displaced Palestinians must return, and the land will be for all of them, Palestinians and Israelis. What is the difference between what was said about throwing Jews into the sea and throwing Palestinians into the desert? It is the same thing.'
The issue is clear in my eyes, that he was spot on. Before the Jewish community was exiled by Christian Romans, Jews were tolerated in Palestine under Muslim rule and even made a majority in Jerusalem. The Quran, was written in this time, and the notion of Palestine didn't even exist, hence the word Palestine was never mentioned. The Quran when mentioning the area called it the Holy Land to the Palestines (who were Jews) and demanded that they mustn't leave, stating - “O my people, enter the Holy Land which Allah has assigned to you and do not turn back [from fighting in Allah 's cause] and [thus] become losers'. The Quran mentioned 'Bani Israel' meaning the children of Israel not children of Palestine and even spoke directly of the necessity of peace in this region - 'That is why We ordained for the Children of Israel that whoever takes a life—unless as a punishment for murder or mischief in the land—it will be as if they killed all of humanity; and whoever saves a life, it will be as if they saved all of humanity. Although our messengers already came to them with clear proofs, many of them still transgressed afterwards through the land.' As a Muslim religious war it therefore makes no sense but to ignore history would be equally as cruel. The fact is Muslim Palestinians had been living in that land for thousands of years, and never should have been forced out of land having lived there thousands of years because of foreign powers helping the Jewish community following the holocaust after World War 2. That is undeniable.
Hence the need for both sides to lose, and for one-state. Yet as Gaddafi highlights, the one state solution has been completely ignored and instead war raged, largely since both groups are equally intolerant of each other. Israeli leaders bully Palestinians with wealth, weapons and military aggression, whilst Palestinians were even worse than Israelis when demanding total exile of Jewish individuals from Palestine, when at least in Israel some Palestinians are permitted to live. It's become farcical politically as gay pride support Palestine when in Palestine gay people are flogged - once more people are getting nonsensically divided and tribal.
Gaddafi's international reputation
Gaddafi though totally despised by the West being called the 'Mad Dog of the Middle East ' and a 'terrorist', was loved in Africa by almost all other respectable leaders, such as the likes of Nelson Mandela. Mandela was criticised by the West for both visiting him in Libya and inviting him to South Africa but publicly rejected that criticism stating at various times Gaddafi was his friend and US intervention in Libya was unjust.
He said 'my foreign policy is determined by the past. The relations I have had with (a) country is based on the contributions they have made to our struggle' and that 'no country can claim to be the policeman of the world and no state can dictate to another what it should do. Those that yesterday were friends of our enemies have the gall today to tell me not to visit my brother Gaddafi. They are advising us to be ungrateful and forget our friends of the past' .
Mandela even asked 'How can they (the West) have the arrogance to dictate to us who our friends should be?' . He gently stated 'I have also invited Brother Leader Gaddafi to this country. And I do that because our moral authority dictates that we should not abandon those who helped us in the darkest hour in the history of this country. Not only did the Libyans support us in return, they gave us the resources for us to conduct our struggle, and to win. And those South Africans and Westerners who have berated me for being loyal to our friends, can literally go and jump into a pool.'
In the end, the west got their wish and Gaddafi was killed, actually sodomised with a bayonet and he reputedly last screamed 'Haram alaikum!' - "It's a sin what you are doing!".
Libya's economy – Understanding African Oil
Oil kindles extraordinary emotions and hopes, since oil is above all a great temptation. It is the temptation of ease, wealth, strength, fortune, power… Oil creates the illusion of a completely changed life, life without work, life for free. Oil is a resource that anesthetizes thought, blurs vision, corrupts. People from poor countries go around thinking: God, if only we had oil! The concept of oil expresses perfectly the eternal human dream of wealth achieved through lucky accident, through a kiss of fortune and not by sweat, anguish, hard work. In this sense oil is a fairy tale and, like every fairy tale, it is a bit of a lie. It does not replace thinking or wisdom. - Ryszard Kapuscinski
It is hard to say that Gadaffi as an expert on foreign policy, didn't hit the nail on the head regarding almost all of the modern conflicts that the world faces even today, decades after his death. Sadly like always, he was totally ignored by the Western media. But moving on from foreign policy, it was in economics that Gaddafi really stood out as Africa's greatest economic leader by a large margin during his time and actually one of the smartest leaders to have ruled a country.
During Gaddafi’s reign, Libya had a classic oil-dominated economy and a novel dictator-styled yet socialist economy. For instance, strict anti-usury (interest) law were imposed to give people interest-free loans, and the state-owned Special Credit Institutions provided the majority of loans in the economy replacing private financial free markets and banks. Oil, and to some extent gas, at points represented two-thirds of the country’s GDP, and well over 90 percent of export revenues, and therefore, equally well over 90 percent of government revenues.
This makes it sound like managing Libya's economy should have been a piece of cake, but that would be an incredibly wrong and foolish statement to make. Only look at Libya's oil-rich neighbors - Nigeria, Angola, Gabon, Congo Republic, São Tomé and Príncipe and Equatorial Guinea and then it becomes impossible to under-estimate Gaddafi's ruling. All these countries were similarly oil-rich, but were devastated by oil and how their African leaders managed it. There was no civil war during Gaddafi's reign, whilst 'one famous study found that states dependent on oil and minerals face a 23 percent chance of civil war in any five-year period, while those with no natural resource exports face only a 0.5 percent chance'.
The glamour of oil led to wars, severe corruption, foreign exploitation and for their leaders to near totally disregard all other parts of their economies. If you want to look further than Africa, just look at Venezuela – and the truth becomes even clearer. It is like night and day, oil in economies that aren't developed like Norway is more often a curse to the inhabitants that reside within the country than a blessing, and Gadaffi was the best manager of it out of all poorer nations.
Nicholas Shaxson's book 'Poisoned Wells' makes this adamantly clear. Shaxson writes -'between 1970, when the oil boom started, and 2000, while Nigeria earned more than S350 billion from its oil, the poverty rate rose from 35 percent to 70 percent, as incomes steadily grew more unequal and as the economy shrank.' In short, poverty rates almost doubled in the larger Nigeria.
The situation in Libya couldn’t have been any more different as Gaddafi debatably lifted more from poverty than any other world leader whilst he was in charge. First and foremost, everything was made more affordable by the government who could support the public thanks to oil revenues– his government subsided health (offering free healthcare), education (again free and with great success as aforementioned), electricity (again free), housing (with interest free loans to completely wipe out a classist rent-economy), fuel and basic foodstuff. Gas prices for instance were a third cheapest in the whole world with the price of petrol around ‘$0.14 per liter’, whilst ‘4 loaves of bread cost just $0.15’. Gaddafi invested heavily in agriculture and most Libyans (at times over 80% of total employment) were employed by the state. The minimum wage was significantly raised. Meanwhile, oil firms ‘were pressed to hire Libyan managers, finance people, and human resources directors.’ Gaddafi was in particularly praised for the construction of the Great Man-Made River (GMMR) which could transport ‘almost 2.5 million cubic meters of water daily (covering) a distance of up to 1,600 kilometers (and which) provided 80% of all freshwater used in Libya’, as well as supporting the extensive ‘irrigational farming in the country.’
Compare Gaddafi’s results in Libya to Gabon as well where Shaxson writes a short 2007 summary - ‘life expectancy at birth in Gabon is just 54 years… One Gabonese child in seven is malnourished, and over 60 percent of Gabonese live below the poverty line. For most of its post-1970s history, barring the latest oil boom, Gabon’s economic growth was negative. Before 1970, 40 percent of Gabonese lived in towns or cities. Today, three billion barrels of oil production later, over 80 percent do, the highest in the developing world after Djibouti, Libya, and Saudi Arabia. Agriculture is on its knees, and manufactured exports make up only a fiftieth of all foreign sales’.
Gabon, like Libya, was ruled by a charismatic dictator throughout her oil-boom for an almost identical time (over 40 years) – Omar Bongo. However, the differences between the two dictators are like chalk and cheese. Where Gaddafi hated foreign interference and was generous to Libyans with oil revenue, Omar Bongo held the strongest alliance with France, especially through a network of powerful Freemasons. He even named Gabon’s second biggest city Franceville, and exploited Gabon’s oil reserves through tax havens to get rich stealing from his people (owning multiple properties across the world), whilst serving French interests at every opportunity. Bongo welcomed too other foreign oil firms to exploit Gabon as well, such as American ones. Writer Pierre Pean described Gabon as ‘an outgrowth of the French state; an extreme case of neocolonialism, verging on the caricature. . . . The roles are split, under the guise of noninterference. . . . Africans deal with tribal quarrels while the French look after serious things, namely exploiting the natural riches.’
Shaxson shows exactly what Bongo was all about writing -‘Bongo became a flamboyant big spender. At an Organization of African Unity summit in Libreville in 1977, during the oil boom, half the national budget was spent on impressing visiting presidents, who got an honor guard with red velvet capes and gold swords.’ Moreover, to illustrate how French Gabon became Shaxson recounted his own experience in Gabon- describing how the country ‘served French exporters a bonanza: for decades after independence, typically two-thirds of Gabon’s imports have flowed from France, compared to just a hundredth from its African neighbors. In a big supermarket in the oil town of Port-Gentil, I found no African produce at all. Instead, the shelves creaked with French milk from Choisy-le-Roi, French quail terrine, French duck conflict, French televisions and videos, and racks of French wine.’
By contrast, Gaddafi first major economic actions were to shut down the American and British military bases in Libya after their presence for over ten years and to nationalise Western oil companies, such as British Petroleum (BP), and create a National Oil Corporation (NOC). He demanded that foreign oil companies in Libya share a higher proportion of revenue with Libya and threatened to shut off production if oil companies refused re-negotiations for contracts, even saying ‘people who have lived without oil for 5,000 years can live without it again for a few years to attain their legitimate rights’. As a result of his strength Libya was the first developing country that secured a majority share of revenue from oil production.
Gaddafi was wise. Small countries such as 'São Tomé and Príncipe' showed whenever possible foreign corporations would completely rip off African countries. As Shaxson writes ‘Mobil got rights of first refusal on all of the 22 huge offshore licenses then being offered by Sao Tome—effectively the country’s entire potential oil zone, plus options to take areas outside the zone if they wanted that, too—in exchange for a signature bonus of just $5 million—peanuts in industry terms—and if Mobil discovered oil, they would get 100 percent of profits for Mobil (after just 7 percent royalties) for an operation producing up to 50,000 barrels per day, 90 percent for up to 100,000 barrels per day, and so on.’
What happened in Gabon? Well it was proven a lot of corruption - The Elf scandal centered upon the French International Bank of Africa (FIBA) which was set up by a governor of France in 1975 and was overseen by Andre Tarallo and whose partners ’included Elf, Bongo, his children and senior Gabonese officials as shareholders’ . FIBA whirled Elf’s cash through tax havens resulting in African leaders receiving ‘20 to 60 cents of each barrel that Elf produced in their countries; other flows went to the intelligence services for covert operations’.
In Angola, as war raged throughout their oil boom killing hundreds of thousands and creating desperate poverty (with heavy American, Chinese, Cuban, French, Russian etc. involvement throughout) as a result of a giant power struggle, Shaxson writes ‘in late 1993, inflation was boiling at an annual rate of nearly 2,000 percent. As the value of the kwanza collapsed, salaries stayed still in kwanza terms, so people got poorer’. Sadly the wealthiest elite in Angola with connections took only advantage of the wild-west inflation, since they were ‘allowed to use the official rate, which meant that you could buy goods at subsidized prices’. Inflation was so high, that those with connections even were heard of ‘buying round-the-world air tickets for the price of a case of beer’. President Jose Eduardo dos Santos used oil revenue to fuel his side of the war with numerous oil-for-arms deals, and it was clear the people weren’t represented by either him or his principle opponents: Jonas Savimbi’s Western-backed rebel National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) and the Soviet backed Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA). The Angolan power-struggle, worsened by the prospect of get-rich quick oil resources, shows that even though imposed by fear, Gaddafi had a very powerful point in quashing ruthlessly all rebellions and sources of rebellions and in preventing power-struggles through strict ‘dictatorship’ in Libya. A 2013 IMF Country Report on Libya show that Gaddafi was very good at keeping inflation rates stable and perfectly low, reporting ‘inflation was moderate throughout 2000-10, averaging below 3 percent per year. There was a jump in inflation in 2008 as international food prices—Libya imports about 75 percent of its food requirements—rose significantly. But as food prices moderated, inflation in 2009 settled back to its original path. On the inflation front, Libya outperformed other MENA (Middle East and North African) oil exporters where average annual inflation was close to 7 percent.’
After Equatorial Guinea became independent a cruel fanatic named Macias Nguema rose to power and Shaxson writes 'killed 40,000 people—a tenth of the population—including 21 of his cabinet ministers. He had people crucified on the airport road to show visiting diplomats; being a journalist was a capital offense... At Christmas in 1975, he had 150 prisoners executed in the stadium, as a band played “Those Were the Days.” Toward the end of his rule, Amnesty International called Equatorial Guinea “an immense field of torture, from which the only exit is the cemetery”... El Pais called the government “a group of individuals whose only ideology is institutionalized pillage (and) 'Britain’s Sunday Times was calling Equatorial Guinea “the wickedest place on earth”'
NATO left that man well alone and Mobil (now Exxon Mobil) ruthlessly exploited the country's oil fields drawing up contracts that the World Bank admitted were 'excessively generous to the operator' with Equatorial Guinea receiving just 13% share for what was the largest oilfield in sub-Saharan Africa according IMF figures. How a dictator like Macias Nguema could be left alone and Gaddifi publicly shamed shows exactly how backwards evil organisations like NATO are. It was hardly like Libya's economy was failing - 'In 2010 growth exceeded 10% and .GDP per person increased by 8.5%.' NATO's intervention in Libya was essentially a crime against humanity as it is clear NATO does not have standards.
Like Angola, Congo-Brazzaville suffered from various conflicts and like Gabon was dominated by French interests in oil, particularly by Elf but also by the American Oxy. Despite having plentiful oil reserves, the country's economy was so badly managed that essentially all political leaders of Congo had to borrow against their oil reserves at staggeringly terrible rates from French firms and the poverty created as a result, directly led to multiple civil wars, some lasting decades and over a million deaths. All the wars led to more debt, and foreign debt reached '$9 billion' in 2005. The corruption turned Congo into an absurd country where there were parts highly french, expensive and protected by the military, whilst the majority was completely out of control, dangerous and poverty-stricken. This type of abuse was enjoyed by the West, and shows exactly why Gaddafi was so correct in keeping his country independent. It is absolutely no coincidence then that it was the French who instigated NATO's involvement in murdering Gaddafi and that it was based on his idea to create an African oil currency that would help Africa be more independent from foreign financial lenders, and achieve better international contracts
The tragic death of Muammar Gaddafi - the murder to prevent the Libyan Golden Dinar.
Hilary Clinton famously celebrated the murder of Gaddafi as a heroic 'We came, we saw, he died' moment of glory. The sinister truth is that it was victory for foreign oil, money and power - and this became clear when 3000 emails belonging to her were released in court, one showing 'Sarkozy's plans are driven by the following issues:
1. A desire to gain a greater share of Libya oil production
2. Increase French influence in North Africa
3. Improve his internal political situation in France
4. Provide the French military with an opportunity to reassert its position in the world
5. Address the concern of his advisors over Qaddafi's long term plans to supplant France as the dominant power in Francophone Africa.' It is incredible that there were no humanitarian reasons listed.
Above all it was uncovered that it had just been found out that - Gaddafi's government held '143 tons of gold, and a similar amount in silver ... This gold was accumulated prior to the current rebellion and was intended to be used to establish a pan-African currency based on the Libyan golden Dinar. This plan was designed to provide the Francophone African Countries with an alternative to the French franc (CFA)'. British Prime Minister David Cameron, French President Nicholas Sarkozy, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and US President Barack Obama all reacted aggressively, and Nato committed to bombing Libya for six weeks. As a result, Gaddafi could no longer defend against the rebels and ultimately lost.
Skeptics may say this was all a coincidence but its patently the truth, after all the rebels created a central bank (the first time this ever occured in history). As Robert Wenzel in 2011 pointed out in The Economic Policy Journal in 2011: 'This suggests we have a bit more than a rag tag bunch of rebels running around and that there are some pretty sophisticated influences. I have never before heard of a central bank being created in just a matter of weeks out of a popular uprising.' Moreover, a British House of Commons' Foreign Affairs Committee report in September 2016, titled - 'Libya: Examination of intervention and collapse and the UK's future policy options inquiry' startlingly revealed the horrid facts that 'Qaddafi was not planning to massacre civilians. This myth was exaggerated by rebels and Western governments, which based their intervention on little intelligence... The threat of Islamist extremists, which had a large influence in the uprising, was ignored — and the NATO bombing made this threat even worse, giving ISIS a base in North Africa... France, which initiated the military intervention, was motivated by economic and political interests, not humanitarian ones...The uprising — which was violent, not peaceful — would likely not have been successful were it not for foreign military intervention and aid. Foreign media outlets, particularly Qatar's Al Jazeera and Saudi Arabia's Al Arabiya, also spread unsubstantiated rumors about Qaddafi and the Libyan government... The NATO bombing plunged Libya into a humanitarian disaster, killing thousands of people and displacing hundreds of thousands more, transforming Libya from the African country with the highest standard of living into a war-torn failed state.'
The death of Gaddafi was equally as disgusting as the motives. Many of his sons and even grandchildren were slaughtered, some were just less that four, whilst Gaddafi was sodomised with a bayonet, with his last words reputedly 'Haram alaikum!' meaning 'it's a sin what you are doing!'. NATO managed to kill the only successful leader in Africa out of all the oil-rich African nations and Libya has never recovered. Almost all politicians within oil-rich undeveloped nations lose total interest in their fellow citizens, when oil and gas make up up generally over 90% of exports and government revenue. That is why Gaddafi was so special, he completely bucked the trend.
References
(1) Gaddafi's "The Green Book", 1975, Muammar Gaddafi
(2) Poisoned Wells: The Dirty Politics of African Oil, 2008, Nicholas Shaxson
(3)Gaddafi Interview, Transcript, George Negus https://www.journeyman.tv/film_documents/5884/transcript/
(4) Gaddafi Mentioned Threat of NATO in 2009, 2022, https://libyareview.com/21620/gaddafi-mentioned-threat-of-nato-in-2009/
(5) House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee Libya: Examination of intervention and
collapse and the UK’s future policy options, https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201617/cmselect/cmfaff/119/119.pdf
(7) U.K. Parliament report details how NATO's 2011 war in Libya was based on lies, Ben Norton, 2011, https://www.salon.com/2016/09/16/u-k-parliament-report-details-how-natos-2011-war-in-libya-was-based-on-lies/
(8) Gadhafi’s crime: Making Libya’s economy work for Libyans, 2012, Stephen Gowans https://gowans.blog/2012/05/06/gadhafis-crime-making-libyas-economy-work-for-libyans/
(9) Gadaffi and Mandela; a lesson in friendship built on mutual struggle and defiance, Apr 2, 2020, https://medium.com/@tijanifunmi123/gadaffi-and-mandela-a-lesson-in-friendship-built-on-mutual-struggle-and-defiance-8ed6c8af177d
(11) NATO intervention turns GADDAFI’S prosperous Libya into FAILED STATE https://mfa.gov.lk/nato-intervention-turns-gaddafis-prosperous-libya-into-failed-state-see-more-at-httpwwwdailynewslkqfeaturesnato-intervention-turns-gaddafi-s-prosperous-libya-failed-state/
(12) Exposing the Lybian Agenda https://www.herald.co.zw/exposing-the-libyan-agenda-a-closer-look-at-hillarys-emails/
(14) The Changing Libyan Economy: Causes and Consequences, Ronald Bruce St John, 2008
(15) Nigeria: Another Portrait of a Tragic Hero, Kayode Komolafe, https://allafrica.com/stories/201110210111.html
(16) Gaddafi’s Libya was Africa’s Most Prosperous Democracy, Foreign Policy Journal, https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2013/01/12/gaddafis-libya-was-africas-most-prosperous-democracy/
(17) Gaddafi family deaths reinforce doubts about Nato's UN mandate, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/may/01/gaddadi-family-deaths-reinforce-doubts
(18) The Killing of Gaddafi 10 Years ago has Resulted in the Death of the Nation of Libya and the Destruction of its People, Richard Medhurst, 2021 https://www.blackagendareport.com/killing-gaddafi-10-years-ago-has-resulted-death-nation-libya-and-destruction-its-people
(19) The Obama Administration Wrecked Libya for a Generation, Cato institute, https://www.cato.org/commentary/obama-administration-wrecked-libya-generation#
(20) Gaddafi's last moments: 'I saw the hand holding the gun and I saw it fire' 2012, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/oct/20/muammar-gaddafi-killing-witnesses
*Note there were many articles wiped off the internet that couldn't be referenced that helped write this blog. I believe I have referenced enough here to show this article to very well researched.
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