EGYPT’S Air Force, on Monday morning bombed Islamic State positions in Derna, Libya, after IS beheaded 21 Coptic Christian Egyptians.
The city was also bombed by planes loyal to General Haftar. He is the Libyan ally of the US and Egypt in the struggle for power that is now going on in Libya, where as well as IS, there are two governments, one in Tripoli and the other (recognised by the US) based in Tobruk.
General Haftar, in a phone interview with the Egyptian TV channel Dream, said that the military ‘strongly support Egyptian military intervention to strike Daaesh (IS) and other terrorist groups.’
He emphasised his oneness with Egypt by stating that ‘Libyans are helping the Egyptian army to take revenge on these terrorist forces because Cairo is considered to be a Libyan city’. The converse of course is that Egypt and the US may well be considering that Tripoli and Benghazi should also be seen as Egyptian cities.
France and Egypt have now called for a UN Security Council meeting, urging ‘new measures’ against the IS. At this meeting it is believed that permission will be sought from the Security Council for a new military intervention into Libya, led by Egypt, France and Italy, to try and return Libya to its pre- 1969 revolution status, as an imperialist protectorate, and thereby secure its massive oil resources.
In fact, NATO launched its 2011 war against Colonel Gadaffi, after the UN passed a resolution allowing intervention, which Russia did not veto, to provide air cover for an Islamist insurrection to overthrow and murder Gadaffi. This ended Libya’s independence by handing it over to movements that destroyed it as an advanced country and tried to turn its huge oil wealth into the private property of terrorist gangs.
In fact, these Islamist partners of NATO, as soon as they had murdered Gadaffi, were shipped off to Syria to seek to destroy that country and add Assad’s head to their trophies. All that in fact happened was that they strengthened their alliance with Al-Qaeda and then joined the IS, and returned home to establish their Caliphate.
The imperialist powers now seem to be considering a new war in Libya, and that because of the better relations between Russia and Egypt, the passage of a new UN resolution, sponsored by Egypt and France (now a ‘peacemaker’ in the Ukraine), to support a new imperialist intervention into Libya, is possible.
This will not be welcomed by the masses of Libyan people who have seen their country cynically and systematically destroyed by the imperialist powers, who took great care, using the then British Labour PM, Tony Blair, to disarm Libya of its nuclear technology, and its wmds before they moved in for the kill.
The masses of the Libyan people remained loyal to Gadaffi during the period where NATO used its air power to prevent the Islamists from being defeated, and then to hunt down and kill the Libyan leader.
What is required in Libya is a new revolution of the masses led by the working class to overthrow the various ‘regimes’ and ‘governments’ that have imposed themselves, thanks to NATO.
This revolution must establish a workers’ and farmers’ government that will maintain the nationalisation of the oil industry and rebuild the country for the benefit of its people.
Such a government will be able to reach out to the powerful working classes of Egypt and Tunisia.
The Egyptian workers have already brought down the Mubarak dictatorship, and then the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mursi through a massive eruption of 18 million workers after he attempted to take society backwards.
The Tunisian workers also brought down the dictator Ben Ali in 2010 and proceeded to a secular government in 2014, with links to the UCGT trade union.
This is the way forward to a powerful and socialist North Africa which will have the resources and the people to transform both North Africa and the Middle East.
