NATO march off Libya immediately after the barbaric assassination of Col. Gaddafi has given rise to several bitter questions about the future of the sparsely populated oil-rich nation surrounded by the Mediterranean Sea in the North, Egypt in the East, Tunisia and Algeria in the West and Chad, Niger and Sudan in the South.

Demonized by the West as a tyrant, Col. Gaddafi was killed in custody of the rebel forces working under the strict command of the US-led NATO. His barbaric murder in custody has left a black scar on the face of NATO. The international community and historians may do justice to themselves and to history by analyzing the sequence of events that shook the people of Iraq, Yugoslavia and now Libya in the name of democracy. President Saddam Hussein was hanged by judicial murder. Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milosevic was poisoned to death in the UN Criminal Prison in The Hague when the US failed to prove any case against him. Prof. Bhim Singh (this author) and Ramsey Clarke were not permitted to argue his case before the UN Criminal Court.

Col. Gaddafi was also on their hit list. They fired a missile at his home in Tripoli, killing his infant daughter. Western leaders and media have always maligned Afro-Asian leaders who did not fall in line.  Kissinger called Indira Gandhi a ‘bitch’ when she was trying to liberate Bangladesh. Saddam Hussein resisted the US invasion, was abducted and put on false trial and finally hanged. Milosevic defended the right of Yugoslavia to exist, was abducted, jailed and poisoned. Yasser Arafat was disgraced at the instance of the ‘Zionist’ block, squeezed in his official residence in Ramallah for two years till he died in a French hospital.

Gaddafi was not a greater tyrant than some of the kings and sheikhs enjoying the confidence of the White House. His Green Book earned him the wrath of some Arab rulers. His ‘no’ to NATO and ‘no’ to the dictates of the Anglo-American Bloc put him on their hit-list. Washington’s supreme interest is to swallow Arab oil.  Libya is the 9th country in oil reserves with 40 billion barrels in its store.

Secondly, Libya is a ‘gateway’ to earth wealth-rich Africa that the US has been eyeing for over half a century. US wanted control of the Mediterranean. Yet Libya made revolutionary progress under Gaddafi. In 40 years, literacy touched 93%, the highest in the third world; GDP scaled 14000 US$.

Till 2011, Libya did not owe a single ‘dollar’ to any outside agency. Land was distributed free to anyone who opted for agriculture. Legal aid and medical care were free and education was funded by the State. Students wanting pursue studies abroad were financed by the ‘dictator’. Under Gaddafi, Libya was only country in the world where citizens did not have to pay electricity bills or interest on loans of any kind; there was a home for every parent though his own parents still lived in a tent. Each new couple received 50,000 US$ to settle down. Every new car purchase was subsidized by 50%; petrol costs 14 cents about Rs.8/- per liter.

Parents of every newly born child would get 5,000 US$ to give them a start in life. Gaddafi left US$ 150 billion in sovereign wealth in foreign accounts (frozen by the invaders) and now being claimed by NATO to cover the expenses incurred on seven months war against Libya. Yet Libya suffered a loss of 50 billions US$ during NATO/drones bombing, not to mention the untold loss of human lives.

History will not forgive the offenders for their crimes against humanity. The United Nations proved itself a foot soldier of the US-NATO colonials. Col. Gaddafi was invaded from the skies by the Junta of 40 countries (NATO) led by the US. The US conceived the Nationalist Transition Council of Benghazi backed them with arms, finances, western media and US drones with only one target – to liquidate the Libyan leader and take control of the oil and wealth of Libya.

Col. Gaddafi was brutally showered with bullets on his feet, hands and legs to demonstrate the US arrogance of power. Worse, the NATO-backed NTC disgraced his dead body by it by the hair on the streets of Sirte. Finally, they dumped his dead body inside a meat shop in Sirte. The Prophet once stood up when a Jewish dead body was being taken for burial. He told his followers that the ‘dead body’ belonged to a human being and deserved all respect.

Nowhere in the world have I come across such a shameful humiliation of a human being. How shall Obama, patron of ‘Revolution,’ justify the mysterious burial of a Muslim body by strangers in unknown grave, as claimed by the NTC?        

Neither the West nor its Arab clients could digest the political philosophy of Col. Gaddafi. The latter refused to designate himself under any rank or style. Impressed by the philosophy of Buddha and Mao Zedong, Gaddafi revealed his philosophy in the Green Book in 1984, which was widely perceived as a threat by his rivals and enemies. A few lines on his ideas on the readjustment of a society:

-        “If an instrument of governing is dictatorial, as in political systems in the world today, the society’s vigilance towards deviation from law will have only one way to gain readjustment. That is violence, which means revolution against the instrument of governing. This violence or revolution, even if it is an expression of the feeling of the society against deviation, is not carried out by the whole society. It is undertaken only by those who have the initiative and boldness to proclaim the will of the society. However, this approach is the way to dictatorship, for this revolutionary initiative increases the opportunity for an instrument of governing, representative of the people, to arise. This means that the instrument of governing is still dictatorial. Moreover, violence and change by force are themselves undemocratic, although they take place as a result of the existence of a previous undemocratic situation. The society that is still entangled around this resultant is a backward society. What, then, is the solution?”   

The Green Book was taught in schools in its original Arabic script; there were also French and English translations. Col. Gaddafi himself focused on the issue of deviation from the rule which ‘gives rise to violence in support of the revolution’.

Gaddafi did not support violence to achieve political gains. In 1969, he ousted King Idris of Libya without blood-shed and sans violence. Gaddafi enabled 92% Libyans to read and write. No Arab government under kings or sheikhs dared teach the ideas that the Green Book taught the people of Libya.

Now he is buried in an unknown grave in the deserts of Libya. The USA will now try to bifurcate or trifurcate Libya to consolidate control over its oil and land. The 140 tribes in Libya with distinct social, cultural and ethnic identity will not be easy to bundle up. The ‘Berber’ tribe with which Col. Gaddafi was affiliated is strong and influential. Other tribes will not accept NTC leadership to be subordinate to NATO. European countries may not receive even ‘peanuts’ from the Libyan loot, as happened in Iraq. The newly elected Prime Minister, a US tool, shall not be able to win the confidence of the 140 tribes.

Libya may undergo a bloody ‘civil war’ before the US and NATO meet a Vietnam-style fate in Libya. The US-led NATO aggression against Libya violates the UN Charter and directly infringes Article 2(7) of the United Nations.

Now, New World Order takes over the Mediterranean Sea to the North Africa region. The US plan is to take control of the entire North African region, Mauritania, Western Sahara (which this author crossed in 1971 on motorcycle), Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya. A resolution to this effect was adopted in a secret Zionist session in Zuriq in 1894, long before World War I, when the entire Arab Peninsula including Palestine was under the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire. 

Gaddafi was the last strong Arab leader to resist US aggression. Now Washington will try to establish its supremacy in the African region by exploiting the Mediterranean route where the Italians, Greeks, French and British had not been able to succeed during the past four centuries. NATO has dared today. The Arab resistance movement for the time being appears to have crumbled after the liquidation of Gaddafi. The peace prospects in the Arab world as well as in the North and Central African continent are not very encouraging. This suits the neo-colonial masters, the US and NATO.

Prof. Bhim Singh is Chairman, National Panthers Party. He was closely associated with Yasser Arafat, Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic and other leaders in the Arab World and in the Balkans