- As the US Consulate bombing makes clear, even in Benghazi, the centre of the NATO-led uprising , the situation is unstable. Construction in the city is at a standstill since almost all of Libya’s 3.5 million foreign workers left last year. Unemployment is rife and those jobs that remain go to lower paid migrant workers from Bangladesh and Sudan.
- The Berber tribes in the west of the country have complained of official indifference and neglect by the NTC.
- Armed gangs are fighting for control of the smuggling routes into Chad and Sudan, leaving hundreds dead.
- Clashes around Tripoli have frequently led to closures of the border with Tunisia.
- Last month, Amnesty International cited the case of 20 detainees who were stripped and beaten repeatedly until they became unconscious, then revived and beaten again in Ain Zara Prison. They were left for two days on a concrete floor without mattresses or blankets.
- The Guardian cited a horrific example of surgeon Salem Forjani, who was sent to Tripoli’s main medical centre by the health minister to remove the hospital director, who was accused of misusing public funds and having close links to "the Gaddafi regime".
Forjani was kidnapped, detained and tortured by the SSC. After five days, he was released without charge. The health minister could get no explanation from the NTC. The NTC neither arrested the kidnappers nor launched an investigation as the minister requested.
- On Wednesday, the US Consulate in Benghazi came under bomb and grenade attack, although no one was injured.
- Many of NATO-led NTC armed gangs have yet to disband or be integrated into the national army, itself little more than another militia.
There have been constant reports of fighting between these armed groups as they carve up Libya’s towns and cities into “zones of influence.”
- The continuation of these conflicts exposes as a lie the justification for the NATO-led war for regime-change— that it would bring democracy and human rights. Rather than “liberation”, the country faces violent break-up and civil war.
Their real intention in Libya was to install a pliant administration that would enable them to secure control of the country’s lucrative oil reserves, bolster their geo-strategic position in North Africa, and increase their penetration of the entire African continent.
- The NTC is handing out security contracts to private companies from the NATO countries
- Libya’s ruling National Transitional Council (NTC) has postponed elections scheduled for June 19 amid continuing militia clashes, kidnappings and arrests.
The NTC has expanded from 9 to 86 members, but no one even knows who they are or how they are appointed. Its meetings are held in secret, its votes are not published, and its decisions are announced only irregularly on television broadcasts.
- NATO’s war on "the Gaddafi regime" was only the herald of a US offensive to bring Africa under its control.
Immediately after Gaddafi’s lynching, the US announced it was sending troops to four more African countries-- the Central African Republic, Uganda, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
AFRICOM, the US military's African command, is set to carry out 14 major joint military exercises in African countries in 2012, an unprecedented number.
This could not have been achieved without Gaddafi’s ouster.
Gaddafi was an obstacle to US penetration of Africa. He wielded considerable influence through the African Union (AU), playing a major role in establishing it in the 1990s, serving as its biggest donor and chairing the organization in 2009-10. Libya also provided about $150 billion of investments in Africa and had proposed an African Union Development Bank that would have reduced Africa’s financial dependence on the West.
Full article : Libyan elections postponed amid mounting violence
