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PETER'S NEW YORK, Tuesday, August 23, 2001--Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) President Richard Haass admitted yesterday that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has been bombing Libya for political purposes, and not for the humanitarian mission for which it claimed authority to do so.
NATO has insisted that it is attacking only targets that threaten civilians. But Haass, in an article written for the Financial Times and posted on the CFR website, sees it differently.
"Nato's airplanes helped bring about the rebel victory," said Haass. "The 'humanitarian' intervention introduced to save lives believed to be threatened was in fact a political intervention introduced to bring about regime change."
This is a stunning admission from an establishment insider, and, coming from an astute and well-recognized observer of the foreign policy scene, would seem to be a direct challenge to the premise that NATO's actions were designed to save civilians from the predations of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi after alleged popular protests in Libya turned violent in February.
Haass has been critical of the NATO intervention since its inception, but has never before so directly questioned the "humanitarian" rationale that became the pretext for United Nations Resolution 1973, which authorized U.N. member nations to take necessary measures to prevent civilian casualties and deaths. The resolution did not lay down firm criteria to distinguish attacks on civilians from actions taken by the Libyan government to fulfill its obligations to maintain order within its borders and to defend the country from hostile attacks. Neither did it include penalties for countries that might take advantage of the situation to wreak havoc and devastation on the country for other reasons.
Haass's statement would appear to support what many critics have been saying since the beginning of the NATO bombing in March--that the attacks have been the prelude to a complete occupation of the country by foreign forces for unstated reasons. What those reasons might be has been a topic of intense speculation in the alternative press, as much as it has been taboo to speak of within the mainstream media. Some commentators believe the invasion was sparked by Libya's having become a fast-developing magnet for regional economic growth--it controls two percent of the world's oil resources--thus threatening the balance of power in North Africa/Middle East region. Other critics have speculated that NATO nations wanted to control the country's oil production and seize the large quantity of gold held in the Libyan treasury.
Still others have surmised that Libya was not complying with requests by the United States to support its goal of establishing a strong military foothold on the African continent. Among remaining theories are that the bombing was in retaliation for Libya's attempt to negotiate more favorable contracts from oil companies to pay for the billions of dollars in penalties exacted from Libya for its alleged role in the downing of an airliner over Lockerbie Scotland in 1988.
In his essay, Haass argued for the deployment of a foreign military contingent to stabilize the country.
"Some sort of international assistance, and most likely an international force, is likely to be needed for some time to restore and maintain order," Hass said. "Looting must be prevented. Die-hard regime supporters will have to be defeated. Tribal war must be averted. Justice and not revenge need to be the order of the day if Libya is not to come to resemble the civil war of post-Saddam Iraq in the first instance, or the chaos (and terrorism) of Somalia and Yemen down the road."
