From Volume 38, Issue 39 of EIR Online, Published October 7, 2011
Africa News Digest

McCain Dumps Qaddafi, Shifts Support to NATO-Installed Leadership in Libya

Sept. 30 (EIRNS)—In a complete turnaround from his 2009 visit with Muammar Qaddafi's son Mutassim in Libya, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) led a Republican Senatorial delegation in a meeting with the rebel leadership in Tripoli yesterday. The delegation said the post-Qaddafi rebel government would become a strong ally of the U.S.A., and praised Obama for his role in the regime change. This was the highest U.S. delegation from the United States to visit since the overthrow of Qaddafi. The delegation included Lindsey Graham (S.C.), Mark Kirk (Ill.), and Marco Rubio (Fla.).

In his 2009 visit, in which he did most of the talking, McCain told Mutassim, Qaddafi's son and National Security Advisor, according to Wikileaks, that he would do what he could to help Libya obtain military supplies, particularly new aircraft, if it gave up what were described as its weapons of mass destruction, which included its nuclear power project. Graham also accompanied him on that trip, along with Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.). At that time, McCain said U.S.-Libya relations were strong, and thanked Libya for its counterterrorism cooperation.

Kirk has dropped his previous opposition to the regime-change operation in which Obama played such a significant role. In March, Kirk had demanded that Obama should better define the role of the U.S. military in Libya, and that Obama should have sought approval from Congress before using force there.

After yesterday's visit to Tripoli, Kirk said: "This is a victory for the United States military, for our British and French allies, for NATO, for the president of the United States, but most importantly for the Libyan people.... This was a success by President Obama and his team. Any military conflict has ups or downs or things you might have done differently, but we have all the makings of a very strong U.S. ally in Libya."

However, fears being expressed by U.S. institutions, Europeans, and the Libyan National Transitional Council (NTC) that the McCain delegation met, about the danger represented by jihadi elements in Libya to take advantage of the power vacuum in Libya, makes Kirk's talk of a strong ally sound incompetent. Reports are now circulating that the Absolute Monarchy of Qatar, a collaborator with NATO in the Libyan regime change, is supplying weapons and otherwise supporting the head of the Tripoli military council Abdul Hakim Belhaj. Belhaj is a Libyan who had deployed in Afghanistan with jihadists, and then founded the anti-Qaddafi Libya Islamic Fighting Group, which had an office in London.

As the Islamist vs. secular fight develops in Libya (the NTC is mostly secular, as is a large part of the Libyan population), Qatar will be in a good position to fan the flames of internal conflict. Sheik Ali Salabi, a prominent Libyan Islamic scholar, lives in Qatar, but travels to Libya frequently. He has close ties to Belhaj. Salabi's brother, Ismail, heads another Islamist militia in what had earlier been the rebel stronghold of eastern Libya. The Salabis have been openly critical of the rebel leaders, calling them "radical secularists" who bring a "new era of tyranny" to Libya.

City of London Takes Another Step To Control Africa

Oct. 3 (EIRNS)—International Criminal Court (ICC) judges today authorized ICC prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, to launch an investigation of post-election violence after the Presidential election in Ivory Coast on Nov. 28 last year. Then-President Laurent Gbagbo, an opponent of policies the IMF had imposed prior to his initial election in October 2000, contested numerous irregularities, initially verified by African Union, after which militias of his opponent, Alassane Ouattara, moved to take Abidjan, the commercial center and largest city. Ouattara had formerly worked with the IMF.

Instead of investigating the irregularities, French President Nicolas Sarkozy sent the French military, with political cover from UN peacekeeping forces, to launch a military campaign that eventually led to the arrest of Gbagbo.

The ICC was originally founded with money from British agent George Soros, and its actions will serve as a message to Africans not to consider resisting the British system's globalist control of Africa, as well as French control of its former colonial sector. This investigation will be the ICC's seventh formal probe, all of which have been cases involving Africa.

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