ON Tuesday Foreign Minister Hague told Sky TV that he would not tell the counter-revolutionaries to cancel their planned assault on the city of Sirte.
The city has over 100,000 inhabitants, and is very strongly defended. To stand a chance of taking it there will have to be very heavy attacks by the NATO air arm of the counter-revolutionaries and then a storming of the city, led by the SAS, that will, inevitably, cause a huge loss of civilian life.
Hague knows this, but with Libya’s oil wealth at stake, and despite the counter-revolutionary leadership stating that already 50,000 lives have been lost in the NATO-led ‘revolution’, the refrain of the government is let the slaughter continue.
So the legitimate government forces have been given an ultimatum that it is either surrender by Saturday or death for the defenders of Sirte, and as collateral damage, a large number of Sirte’s civilians.
British imperialism is once again showing its absolute ruthlessness in securing its interests.
No one can or should doubt that if Hague, Cameron and Co prevail in Libya, then they will treat the working class, the middle class and the poor with the same absolute ruthlessness.
No conduct is too foul. This is the ruling class which organised a love-in between Gadaffi and Blair in order to allow British business into the country, where it could corrupt a section of the Libyan ruling group and also get the Libyan government to disarm, and give up its WMDs, as a sign that a new era had come – with Libya defenceless.
The signed accord in 2007 stipulated that the aim was ‘To build a stable and long-term special relationship between the two countries as equal partners, proceeding from the principle of mutual respect and confidence’.
O ‘Perfidious Albion’. Some four years later after a softening up of the Libyan leadership, the UK smashed up its own accord and backed the Libyan version of Al Qaeda to the hilt, so as to grab the oil.
The French newspaper Liberation has just published a list of the main ‘rebel commanders’.
It states: ‘The man who took Tripoli, at the head of the Libyan rebels. . . is an old acquaintance of the US secret services. The CIA hunted, tracked, and finally captured him in Malaysia in 2003. It then transferred him, in the utmost secrecy, to one of its “secret prisons”, the one in Bangkok. . .
But the main reason why he was wanted by the CIA is that he was one of the founders, and indeed the ‘emir’, of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), a small, ultra-radical grouping that during the years prior to 11 September had at least two secret training camps in Afghanistan.’
It continued: ‘After Afghanistan, Abd al-Hakim Belhaj’s trail led to Pakistan and Iraq. In this latter country, he was apparently closely associated with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Al-Qaeda’s leader in that country, where Libyans constitute the second largest contingent of Islamic volunteers, after the Saudis. . .
‘Military posts: it is probably no coincidence that it is former LIFG members who now occupy the top military positions – Belhaj in Tripoli, Ismail al-Salabi in Benghazi, Abd al-Hakim al-Asadi in Derna, and so forth.’
These are Hague’s footsoldiers in the struggle for ‘democracy’.
However, the struggle in Libya has just begun and the Libyan people will not retreat from their battle for their liberty, national sovereignty and their oil.
They must be supported by the British workers.
If the UK imperialists are able to restore colonialism in Libya, they will spare no effort in bringing back 19th century conditions to the UK.
We are in the same trench as the Libyan workers. Their victory will be our victory and vice versa. So organise the general strike to bring down the Cameron regime, to bring in a workers government that will bring in socialism and smash imperialism.
