Libya: West’s Dry Run For Regime Change? – OpEd

By Kian Mokhtari

Where did they come from initially, all these rebels armed to the teeth, in Muammar Gaddafi’s North African coastline autocracy?

There was not so much of an uprising in Libya; instead it essentially began with an armed insurrection against Gaddafi’s rule and spread like wildfire in the east of the country.

Other uprisings and revolutions such as those witnessed in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and Egypt began via acts of self-sacrifice by members of the general public that led ultimately to a tremendous outpouring of discontent over decades of dictatorial rule by Western-backed and free loading rulers, their family, associates and business partners.

While the US Defense Secretary went to Bahrain and rubber stamped the Persian Gulf Sheikhdom’s brutal suppression of its population and even tacitly approved the invasion of the country by Saudi forces and mercenary elements from Pakistan, a kangaroo session at the United Nations Security Council immediately authorized “all measures necessary to protect the civilian population of Libya.” This came very quickly following rubber stamped targeted sanctions against Tripoli.

The above R2P (right to protect) resolution is so loose in its language that in a nightmare scenario could mean a nuclear attack on Libya.

But that is not all!

In two cities in Syria, a similar scenario as that of Libya began to take shape. Again and very much like in Libya, it is not so much an uprising as it has been an armed rebellion. Within days, dozens of dead Syrian police and army personnel were being wheeled into morgues with clear evidence of large caliber weapon wounds to their battered bodies. And as Damascus tried to wrestle back control from the well-armed rebels, Washington again cried foul very quickly with a threat of targeted sanctions – Curtain II Act I if you know theatre.

Let’s take you back to 1953 Iran and the democratically elected premier Dr. Mohammad Mosadeq’s drive to nationalize Iran’s oil industry. A US- and UK-backed coup brought Mosadeq’s government down and reinstated Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to the throne.

Declassified documents released almost five decades later were very telling about the whole affair.

The US had viewed the entire operation named “Ajax” against premier Mosadeq as a kind of a dry run for other ambitious schemes throughout the world. After the success of Operation Ajax, at least 30 other countries in Latin America like Chile and Argentina and indeed throughout the rest of the world were taken over by Western-backed puppet regimes often through military coups.

Many agree that the Western game of military cat and mouse with the Gaddafi regime has done little other than create a very profitable stalemated civil war in Libya; profitable for France, Britain and the US!

While the revolutionaries desperate for weapons and aid are signing away Libya’s future and shipping cut-price oil out to Qatar for refinement, Gaddafi is making his own unholy alliances to remain in power; again at the expense of the Libyan people and their future.

And a similar scenario is beginning to take shape in Syria. With Egypt in turmoil and Libya and Syria out of the way in the Middle East and their armies degraded to short range weapons, Tel Aviv must be feeling just dandy.

Let’s hope that Libya’s developments are not another blueprint for what is to come in the region.