Is the West in Libya on an oil or rescue mission?
Mar 29, 2011
THE Coalition now bombing into submission forces loyal to Libyan leader Muammar Gadaffi has been accused by some critics of only being interested in the oil beneath the Libyan Desert.
By Dr Opiyo Oloya
THE Coalition now bombing into submission forces loyal to Libyan leader Muammar Gadaffi has been accused by some critics of only being interested in the oil beneath the Libyan Desert.
To this way of thinking, the blistering firepower now raining on Libya is another naked greed by Western powers to grab the resources of a small African nation.
Otherwise, why not also intervene in other conflict areas like Southern Sudan, Somalia and Ivory Coast where civilians continue to be targeted? The coalition, they argue, must allow the African Union to sort out the issues in Libya peacefully.
However, while strategic interests including the insatiable thirst for oil in the West are factors in this kind of intervention, the better explanation rests with one single letter, “Râ€.
The letter stands for Rwanda’s genocidal events from April to June 1994 which left over 800,000 Hutu and Tutsi dead. At the time, leaders in Europe and North America and Western media watched from the sideline as forces and militias loyal to the then president Juvenal Habyarimana systematically hacked their opponents with machetes. River of blood flowed everywhere as children, women, men faced the blind fury of the relentless killers.
The failure of Western countries in preventing the Rwanda genocide is captured in the singular anguish of Canadian Lt. Gen. (rtd) Romeo Dallaire. As a high-ranking officer in charge of United Nations Observer Mission in Uganda and Rwanda in Kigali at the time, Dallaire had tried unsuccessfully to raise international alarm about the impending tragedy. There will be blood, he had warned his superiors in New York.
There will be a lot of blood, he had repeated. But as he writes in his book, Shake hands with the Devil, there was just no interest in the events in a tiny African country which nobody could locate on a map, let alone pronounce its name.
Bill Clinton, a president who had just suffered a bloody nose in Somalia six months earlier, was not in the mood to send the US Marines in. And so the world watched while the innocents were slaughtered like goats in Rwanda.
Although Rwanda has faded away from the minds of many on the continent who must move on to eke a living or even face other calamities, the opposite is true in the West especially for decision makers like US President Barack Obama.
In terms of horror, the Rwanda genocide is right next to the holocaust that claimed more than six million Jews in the days of Hitler. It is woven deeply into the psyche of Western nations, especially in North America, where it is synonymous with western neglect of Africa, a shame that forever stains the claim to higher moral values and respect for human life.
Rightly so, it is something taught in schools and discussed over and over again in meetings and seminars, as if it happened yesterday. Thousands of articles, dozens of books, almost two dozen documentaries and at least a dozen feature length films, including the movie Hotel Rwanda, ensure that the West could never escape its utter failure in Rwanda.
This is the background that many ignored but which I used in my accurate prediction that the West would act decisively in Libya by establishing a no-fly zone as well as hitting Gaddafi hard with bombs. I understood what few seemed to grasp that the memory of Rwanda would spur the West into action. After all, Gaddafi and his sons had begun making threatening speeches that were eerily reminiscent of pre-genocide Rwanda. The rebels were “drug addictsâ€, “rats and dogsâ€, “al-Qaeda terrorists†and the leader promised there would be a “bloodbathâ€. Rwanda militias referred to their victims as “inyenziâ€, cockroaches.
US President Barack Obama, until that moment content to let the Libyans fight it out, even allowing that Gadaffi might win and remain in charge, swung into action when Gadaffi’s forces began their merciless assaults eastward toward Benghazi city which is at the heart of the uprising. At that point, the die cast, every western leader who was old enough to know Rwanda was determined never to repeat the same mistake.
With former president Bill Clinton pushing from the side, while his wife Hillary Clinton pushed from inside, Obama finally adopted what Britain and France had long accepted, namely that doing nothing was worst than being accused of meddling in African affairs. He chose to do something—to stop mad Gadaffi from wreaking havoc on his people.
With this understanding of what motivates the Coalition in Libya, African Union is ill advised to keep insisting on negotiating without clearly stating that Gadaffi must go. While AU leaders continue to see Gadaffi as a legitimate leader, one of their own, Western leaders haunted by memories of Rwanda see a genocidal maniac waiting to pounce.
Sure, some of the Coalition partners may see oil as reason enough to intervene in Libya, but the deepest fear is that of doing nothing when doing something could have saved lives. On that basis, the bombs will not stop dropping over Tripoli until, on his own volition or with encouragement from AU, Gaddafi leaves power.
Opiyo.oloya@sympatico.ca
THE Coalition now bombing into submission forces loyal to Libyan leader Muammar Gadaffi has been accused by some critics of only being interested in the oil beneath the Libyan Desert.
To this way of thinking, the blistering firepower now raining on Libya is another naked greed by Western powers to grab the resources of a small African nation.
Otherwise, why not also intervene in other conflict areas like Southern Sudan, Somalia and Ivory Coast where civilians continue to be targeted? The coalition, they argue, must allow the African Union to sort out the issues in Libya peacefully.
However, while strategic interests including the insatiable thirst for oil in the West are factors in this kind of intervention, the better explanation rests with one single letter, “Râ€.
The letter stands for Rwanda’s genocidal events from April to June 1994 which left over 800,000 Hutu and Tutsi dead. At the time, leaders in Europe and North America and Western media watched from the sideline as forces and militias loyal to the then president Juvenal Habyarimana systematically hacked their opponents with machetes. River of blood flowed everywhere as children, women, men faced the blind fury of the relentless killers.
The failure of Western countries in preventing the Rwanda genocide is captured in the singular anguish of Canadian Lt. Gen. (rtd) Romeo Dallaire. As a high-ranking officer in charge of United Nations Observer Mission in Uganda and Rwanda in Kigali at the time, Dallaire had tried unsuccessfully to raise international alarm about the impending tragedy. There will be blood, he had warned his superiors in New York.
There will be a lot of blood, he had repeated. But as he writes in his book, Shake hands with the Devil, there was just no interest in the events in a tiny African country which nobody could locate on a map, let alone pronounce its name.
Bill Clinton, a president who had just suffered a bloody nose in Somalia six months earlier, was not in the mood to send the US Marines in. And so the world watched while the innocents were slaughtered like goats in Rwanda.
Although Rwanda has faded away from the minds of many on the continent who must move on to eke a living or even face other calamities, the opposite is true in the West especially for decision makers like US President Barack Obama.
In terms of horror, the Rwanda genocide is right next to the holocaust that claimed more than six million Jews in the days of Hitler. It is woven deeply into the psyche of Western nations, especially in North America, where it is synonymous with western neglect of Africa, a shame that forever stains the claim to higher moral values and respect for human life.
Rightly so, it is something taught in schools and discussed over and over again in meetings and seminars, as if it happened yesterday. Thousands of articles, dozens of books, almost two dozen documentaries and at least a dozen feature length films, including the movie Hotel Rwanda, ensure that the West could never escape its utter failure in Rwanda.
This is the background that many ignored but which I used in my accurate prediction that the West would act decisively in Libya by establishing a no-fly zone as well as hitting Gaddafi hard with bombs. I understood what few seemed to grasp that the memory of Rwanda would spur the West into action. After all, Gaddafi and his sons had begun making threatening speeches that were eerily reminiscent of pre-genocide Rwanda. The rebels were “drug addictsâ€, “rats and dogsâ€, “al-Qaeda terrorists†and the leader promised there would be a “bloodbathâ€. Rwanda militias referred to their victims as “inyenziâ€, cockroaches.
US President Barack Obama, until that moment content to let the Libyans fight it out, even allowing that Gadaffi might win and remain in charge, swung into action when Gadaffi’s forces began their merciless assaults eastward toward Benghazi city which is at the heart of the uprising. At that point, the die cast, every western leader who was old enough to know Rwanda was determined never to repeat the same mistake.
With former president Bill Clinton pushing from the side, while his wife Hillary Clinton pushed from inside, Obama finally adopted what Britain and France had long accepted, namely that doing nothing was worst than being accused of meddling in African affairs. He chose to do something—to stop mad Gadaffi from wreaking havoc on his people.
With this understanding of what motivates the Coalition in Libya, African Union is ill advised to keep insisting on negotiating without clearly stating that Gadaffi must go. While AU leaders continue to see Gadaffi as a legitimate leader, one of their own, Western leaders haunted by memories of Rwanda see a genocidal maniac waiting to pounce.
Sure, some of the Coalition partners may see oil as reason enough to intervene in Libya, but the deepest fear is that of doing nothing when doing something could have saved lives. On that basis, the bombs will not stop dropping over Tripoli until, on his own volition or with encouragement from AU, Gaddafi leaves power.
Opiyo.oloya@sympatico.ca