It is more than apparent now. The western adventurists are in Libya for regime change, not for civilians’ protection as were they authorised by the UN Security Council. In fact, in that UN mandate’s cover, they are debilitating Muammar Qadhafi’s military muscle to help eastern revolutionaries gain upper hand over pro-government elements and make advances to capture more territories. Their sleight stands exposed from the way they are reacting to popular uprisings in Yemen and Bahrain, so akin to the Libyan revolution. In Yemen, as in Libya, military commanders and their units have revolted against President Ali Abdullah Saleh. His own kinsman and his number two in military, Major General Ali Mohsin al-Ahmar has walked over to the revolutionaries’ camp. A number of ministers and diplomats too have defected. Even the country’s influential tribal confederacy, including his own tribe, has revolted. And no loath has he been in employing brute force to crush the student-led uprising. He too has unleashed his security forces and thugs as well as tanks and guns on street protestors and has also clamped down the country in a state of emergency. And in Bahrain, the al-Khalifa royals after failing to smash the popular revolt with their own security forces have called in troops from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to crush the movement. Besides, they have put their Gulf island state under martial law. Yet neither has drawn a strong reaction from the western adventurists as has Qadhafi. Obviously, their humanitarianism, spurious and self-serving as it is, has caved in to their vested interests there. They in fact are deeply worried, particularly the Americans, if Saleh is turfed out by the revolutionaries, which in all probability he would be, Yemen may then not be as pliable to them as is it now. And they are fearful if the al-Khalifa royals go, not only the Americans may be in a pickle in keeping Bahrain as their Fifth Fleet’s base but the island state may fall into the orbit of Iranian influence. So they are all hedges and caveats in reacting to Yemeni and Bahraini popular upsurges while suffer from no such inhibitions in Libya. But they are playing there with a fire with regional ramifications Libya is no monolithic polity, as are not the Arab polities by and large. It is a conglomerate of tribes, divided by mutual rivalries as well as confessional, sectarian, even ethnic antipathies, as are so many other Arab polities. These diverse entities were held together under Qadhafi’s authoritative rule, as are other Arab polities under their own autocratic dispensations. By egging on the eastern Libyans to go for a kill in Tripoli, the western adventurists are making for tribal animosities to engulf Libya with a civil strife that may not even remain confined to its own frontiers. But they appear least pushed, as they now seem eyeing Syria as their next target, as evidenced by the popular upsurge’s coverage there by their western media, which so perceptibly is no more an objective observer but fully partisan and participant of their bloating adventurism. Nonetheless, their experience of Iraq should hold them back. The US-led war party descended there, thinking their Iraqi adventurism would just be a cakewalk. But it turned out to be their nightmare. And almost ten years down the lane and a lot of expending of blood and treasure, apart from the terrible holocaust of the Iraqis, they are leaving it when it is still to fully be at peace with itself, even as it has gone through a horrible period of wholesale bloodletting on sectarian, tribal and terrorist lines. If all sanity has not left them, the western adventurists must work for a political settlement in Libya that stands in the best interest of the Libyan people, not theirs own. The prospectus otherwise portend to be very harrowing for the Libyans of course, but for them too. The Libyan resistance too in its blind desperation should not become just a pawn in their hands for some transient gains to rue later. And Qadhafi must also understand his time is over and in his people’s greater interest he must himself volunteer to lay down the baton he has held and wielded for so long as 41 years. Those Arab autocracies and royalties reigning for so long so despotically, too, must know their party is over and on their own submit to their enslaved subjects’ wills, wishes and rights.
No comments:
Post a Comment