Shame on You African Union!

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi met with a delegation of African heads-of-state from the AU and agreed to the conditions for a ceasefire in the fighting with the western-backed counter-revolutionary rebels fighting in the east of the North African state., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

Shame on you African Union!

Wednesday, 24 August 2011 02:00
Zimbabwe Herald
Caesar Zvayi Deputy Editor

Well the Nato Alliance, which over the past few weeks had been so stumped by Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's resilience to the extent that the French component had proposed dialogue with Gaddafi is over the moon after helping smuggle their proxies into Tripoli via the waters of the Mediterranean.

Their game plan appeared to be in tatters when the rebels tore at each other's throats in Benghazi where Transitional National Council leader Abdul Mustafa Jalil ordered the dismissal of the TNC's executive committee on Monday last week.

All of a sudden what appeared to have eluded Nato over the past six months, deposing Gaddafi, appears within their grasp and naturally they have intensified the offensive with their electronic media providing glowing, albeit twisted, coverage that seeks to sell the Libyan sacrilege as a "revolution" or an "uprising" by Libyans.

Really?

If this was a Libyan "revolution" "uprising" or whatever the westerners want to call it, why are the Press conferences about the "endgame" being held in London and Washington and being addressed by Nato representatives, British premier David Cameron, and US president Barack Obama and/or his foreign face Hillary Clinton? Where are the leaders of the TNC? And why has it taken the rebels so-long to overrun Tripoli since Monday if Libyans shun Gaddafi?

Should Nato succeed in hounding Gaddafi out of Tripoli, kill him or cart him off to their Kangaroo Court in The Hague, soon, very soon those Libyans backing this western sacrilege will discover that the devil has no free lunch as the Nato Alliance will soon demand its pound of flesh in return for the billions of dollars in material and logistical support they gave their proxies from Benghazi. Already there is unofficial talk of a barrel of oil per bomb.

Already even before fully securing their interests in Tripoli by virtue of installing their proxies from Benghazi on the seat of power, the westerners are jostling over the spoils with the "rebels" promising lucrative oil contracts.

The announcement by the rebel leaders sent oil prices tumbling on Monday night amid anticipated massive western looting of Libyan crude.

So there it is, the Libyan bombardment was never about the professed philanthropic need to protect civilians since it did the exact opposite, pulverising them with tons of bombs among them banned weapons like cluster bombs and depleted uranium weapons.

Infact the Nato bombardment has claimed far more lives than were ever threatened by Gaddafi's security forces and, over the past few weeks, has involved major war crimes, including the heavy bombardment and use of Apache attack helicopters in Tripoli, a city of two million people.

The Nato powers' decision to back the ragtag TNC, which does not have a mandate from Libyans, shows that their intervention was never about protecting civilians let alone establishing democracy, but was about advancing their strategic and economic ambitions among them exploitation of Libya's vast oil reserves and the establishment of a foothold in North Africa from which to launch sorties on the rest of Africa and the Arab north.

What emerges from the Libyan fiasco is a devastating indictment of not only the Nato alliance but our so-called African Union whose leaders should do better than warming chairs in Addis Ababa.

How can westerners be left to flagrantly violate UN resolution 1973 which they extended to an open pursuit for regime change when it was issued to effect a no fly zone per se? And all that without even a whimper from Addis?

Why didn't the AU leaders exploit the diplomatic channels at their disposal by approaching the UN to get Nato to adhere to or a rescission of resolution 1973 or to get another resolution ordering a halt to the Nato bombardment?

Can the African Union chairman, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo and the Commission chairman Jean Ping and the entire secretariat please resign forthwith!

Their cowardly silence is an affront to everything the founding fathers of the Organisation of African Unity aspired for when they set up the OAU in Addis Ababa on May 25 1963; men who had the guts to take up arms against western-backed settler governments.

How do the AU leaders or member states sleep at night knowing that the Anglo-Saxons are busy hunting down Gaddafi like a wild animal?

What makes them think after securing a foothold in Libya and a base for the so-called US Africa Military Command; Nato will not set sights on the rest of the continent? How can the westerners receive the leaders of the so-called Transitional National Council as if they are a legitimate government? How can they be left to extended diplomatic recognition to the TNC as if it is an elected authority? How could they be left to seize Libyan assets and to parcel Libyan embassies to the TNC as if Gaddafi's government doesn't exist?

Who elected the TNC? Who gave them the mandate to represent Libyans? Where does the UN stand in all this? Can we say we have a UN Security Council let alone an AU Peace and Security Council when warmongers bomb the weak at will?

Given the precedent the AU has set in Libya, what will stop Nato from extending its war games to other parts of the continent since it now realises the AU is nothing but a lily-livered paper tiger that does not even raise a finger when one of its own is under attack?

Where is the International Criminal Court? Is it blind to the crimes being committed by Nato in Libyalike the use of weapons of mass destruction and the wanton killing of Gaddafi's children and grandchildren as young as 18 months?

Instead we have the ICC prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, campaigning for and getting an arrest warrant against Gaddafi and not those who are butchering his people.

How many other nameless, faceless innocent Libyans have perished at the hands of the Nato war machine? Who will speak for them?

What will it take for the AU leadership to get off their cowardly backsides and justify their existence?

I used to be so proud of the AU, that was at a time I thought it had the same radicalism and focus as its predecessor the OAU that successfully led the charge for flag independence but I am not so sure anymore.

What stopped the AU from deploying a force to help Libyans repel the western attack and massive lobbying at the UN to get the Security Council to issue a resolution halting the attacks, and if need be to assemble a multi-national force to come to Libya's defence?

That is what a continental bloc worth its salt would have done but all we have had from Addis Ababa is deafening silence.

Does this AU serve any other purpose other than a biennial meeting platform for the continent's leaders to pat each other on the back for doing nothing?

Nxa! Shame on you AU!