Who Incited Obama to topple Gaddafi?
The barbarism with which Colonel Muammar Gaddafi was killed, and the dancing for five days and nights, around his half-naked body in the cities of salt, embodied the mentality and behavior of the leader himself with a people. Enormous, very little development. The “Green Book” theorist fought absurd wars that spanned a geographical area, stretching from Northern Ireland, to Chad, Niger, and Sudan.
And support for separatist movements, including the Kurds of Iraq and Turkey.
I was the last journalist representing the international television channel “Russia Today”. He met Gaddafi in power two days before the launch of the NATO military campaign against Libya in March 2011.
The meeting took place in the tent in which I saw dusty furniture, a stark example of the system of government based on the idea that the people are a herd, and authority is a gift from heaven for whom the Lord has chosen as a shepherd of sheep. If his sheep rebel, a small disciplinary process is sufficient to bring them back to the straight path.
The filming team arrived in Tripoli from Tunisia, which has accumulated thousands of foreigners on its borders with Libya in the “Abu Jdir” center, fleeing from the cities of the Colonel, after the outbreak of what has become known in international political literature as the Libyan revolution, and the colonel remained burdened with Libyan Bedouin dress, describing it as an armed rebellion, Because the “revolutionaries” of Benghazi quickly took over the army barracks and weapons stores, and a long battle began to topple the regime, which was achieved thanks to the intervention of NATO.
According to an exclusive interview with Mr. Abd al-Rahman Shalgam, Libya’s former permanent representative to the United Nations, and he was one of the first Libyan officials to announce their defection from the regime, before the military intervention, he made efforts with the Colonel to contain the protests and listen to the angry voice of the street.
Shalgam was, according to what he told us, he left Tripoli to return to his workplace in New York, a few days before the escalation of events, after he stayed in the capital of his country for a period during which he was waiting for an improvement in the performance of the authorities, on the basis that the colonel would hear, his comrades in The leadership, and their calls, not to resort to excessive force, in dealing with what appeared to be limited sit-ins, demanding the clarification of the fate of prisoners who were killed in the Abu Salim prison riot in 1996, and there was talk at the time about 1,270 victims, according to the report of the “Human Rights Watch” organization. .
On the fifteenth of November
2011, the lawyer for the families of the victims of Abu Salim prison, Fathi Terbol, was arrested. As a result, demonstrations demanded his release.
Perhaps Lenin’s famous saying, “From the spark the flame goes out”, after about a century found its echo in Libya, as the spark of arrest of the lawyer ignited entire cities, and the crowds went out, raising an attractive slogan, which was reverberated in the squares, streets and dialogues, neighboring Tunisia:
” The people want to overthrow the regime”.
In his conversation with us, Abd al-Rahman Shalgam denies that the external and regional factor had any role in fueling the flame of Libyan events, stressing that matters would not have escaped if the colonel had dealt with it with caution and prudence, and was not accompanied by vanity, stubbornness, and ignoring the variables in The world and in the vicinity.
If the demonstrations in the capital, Tripoli, were limited, they acquired a widespread popular character in Benghazi and the cities of western Libya, which revealed a mismanagement rooted in the state structure, which Colonel Gaddafi deepened and fragmented, with his tribal rule.
According to Shalgam’s testimony, Colonel Gaddafi and senior officials, during the outbreak of protests against the regime of Tunisian President Binali, and the spread of its effects, to Egypt, considered it a wake-up call for the colonel’s regime, who was attending an international event that he wanted, despite its unreality.
Gaddafi’s former ambassador to the United Nations says that the colonel believed that he could reform the United Nations or create an alternative to it, by calling for an international conference attended by 130 countries plus China, which would put an end to Washington’s hegemony over the United Nations.
It is clear that the illusions in the colonel’s imagination make him certain that, thanks to the Libyan money and the slogans of the Green Book, he will be able to turn the international equation upside down.
Shalgam says that he tried to convince the Libyan leader that the project was unrealistic, and that adding non-permanent members to the UN Security Council represented the most that the five permanent members could offer to members of the international organization, while retaining the right of veto.
The former Libyan minister and diplomat indicates that the colonel was listening attentively to the opinions of his interlocutors and showing understanding, but he did not take them in the end.
Likewise, he did not listen to advice not to use force to control the protests.
“I told senior officials, including intelligence directors Abdullah Al-Senussi, Musa Kousa, Prime Minister Mahmoud Al-Baghdadi and others, that blood in the streets is like a red rag in a bullfighting ring,” Shalgam says.
Abdel-Rahman Shalgam returned to his workplace in New York, to announce on February 25, a little over a week later, his condemnation of the use of force, and the involvement of the army in suppressing the demonstrators, and preparing for military action against the western Libyan capital, Benghazi. Thus, he was the first Libyan diplomat to defect, which gave the explosive Libyan file an international dimension, which was immediately grabbed by the capital of international resolution, Washington.
At a reception, held to mark the opening of the new headquarters of the United States Mission to the United Nations, the dissident ambassador was invited to the ceremony, and in the crowd of the audience, they informed him that President Obama was waiting for him in a side hall.
Continued …
Peace traveler
The article expresses only the opinion of the newspaper or writer
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