LIBYA: THE PERPETUAL TARGET

Sanctions and embargoes are increasingly being used in international conflicts as methods of warfare, frequently producing horrifying results: in Bosnia, a long-standing embargo prevented Muslims there from receiving arms and sustenance as Serb and Croatian forces practiced genocide there for years. Iraq's people are undergoing immense hardship due to the quarantine imposed there. Thousands of people are going blind in Cuba due to the quarantine imposed on that island nation by the United States. Due to external blockade, thousands of children, old people and people with curable diseases are dying.

The Saharan country of Libya, located in the heart of North Africa, has been subject to UN Security Council sanctions for nearly three years for the alleged involvement of two Libyans in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, on December 21, 1988, killing all 271 on board. The context for the continuing assault on Libya is one in which no country can decide its destiny for itself or disregard American plans for the fate of its own people. Libya has formed a target of opportunity for U.S. assaults since it broke its shackles of dependence on September 1st, 1969. On that date, a revolution led by a young, junior officer named Mu'ammar Qaddafi succeeded in overthrowing the Senoussi monarchy and announced its determination to change the course of poverty, dependence and humiliation which had been the lot of the Libyan people in this century.

Libya had experienced over three decades of Italian colonial rule from 1912 until World War Two, when the U.S. led Allies swept the Italian and German presence out of North Africa. After the War, Libya was granted independence, with King Idris installed as a compliant regent with a demonstrated propensity to take orders from the U.S.A. and Britain. The U.S. maintained a huge Air Force base near Tripoli, the Libyan capital, with the British holding onto their military barracks at Azizia.

When oil was discovered, the oil companies moved in to drive a hard bargain with the monarch. The royal retinue would batten off a small part of the proceeds while the conglomerates made off with the wealth generated by Libya's newly found natural resource. The Libyan people, who had suffered to the tune of having over one million of their number killed in the resistance to Italian colonization earlier, continued to live in makeshift shacks and lean-tos while a small, Westernized elite tried to emulate their benefactors.

Mu'ammar Qaddafi brought a number of notions with him which were unacceptable to "American interests." He propagated the idea that all people have a right to self-determination, and should be supported in their quest to realize sovereignty over themselves and their lands. Oil wealth was not to be given away to multinational corporations abroad, but used to improve the living standard of the nation's own people. The inequities promoted by the Western powers were to be rejected in favor of a society in which justice, equity and a high standard of living for all citizens were to be built. Popular forms of direct democracy, in which the entire population could participate in decision-making, were created. In steps which would benefit the country but simultaneously draw the wrath of the U.S. and others, Libya nationalized the oil companies and drove the foreign bases away from its soil. Wheelus Air Force Base, a major American military installation located on the Mediterranean Sea just east of Tripoli, was shut down.

To make matters worse for Libya, it chose to pursue an active foreign policy entailing support for national liberation and social justice movements around the world. All parties and groups fighting for the liberation of Apartheid South Africa were given aid and training. Peoples ranging from the Muslim Moros of the Philippines to the Indians of the Americas drew vocal and material support from Tripoli. The Nicaraguan Sandinistas, Grenada's New Jewel led by Maurice Bishop, the IRA in Northern Ireland, the Basques, the Kurds, the Palestinians and many others found a friend and a base of sustenance in the new Libyan Jamahiriya ("gathering of the people"). It was political and economic defiance of the U.S.A. which put Libya and Qaddafi on the hit list of countries slated for death and destruction in what is now called the "New World Order."

Libya has been repeatedly attacked ever since it took its bold stand on behalf of those silenced majorities who suffer the consequences of U.S. hegemony. American jets repeatedly attacked Libya during the reign of Ronald Reagan. An attack on Tripoli and Benghazi in April 1986 claimed more than one hundred lives, including that of Qaddafi's infant stepdaughter. It was one of many attempts made on the Libyan leader's life, all of them failing, as his continued presence makes clear. The Libyan revolution is hanging on after 25 years of resistance to constant attacks of all sorts, ranging from internal CIA subversion to armed attacks over its cities.

The CIA and the State Department issue periodic scare stories which are disseminated by their accomplice media to keep Libya in the public eye as a "terrorist" threat to the well-being of Americans. At one point in the build-up to the 1986 bombings, "Libyans" were alleged to be infiltrating the U.S. via Tijuana to assassinate Reagan and otherwise wreak havoc on America. Columnist Jack Anderson was exasperated that he had been used as a conduit for false information, declaring that he had been "spooked by the spooks." At other times, CIA disinformation had Libya manufacturing chemical and even nuclear weapons, promoting all forms of "terrorism" around the world and stirring up trouble where there was none previously found. Domestically, the Libyan experiment in social equity greatly disturbed their ex-patrons. Such notions as "The house to those who live in it" are anathema to a country that has over five million homeless persons residing in it, as the U.S. does now. The idea that emancipation from want, ignorance and injustice was to be actually implemented somewhere is unacceptable to an entity that foments poverty and dependence everywhere. Libya, a nation of some 4 million people, over half of whom are under 15 years of age and spread out over 680,000 miles of Sahara Desert-dominated North Africa, had become a perpetual target for the bellicose designs of the U.S.-led "New Order."

The Lockerbie Pan Am crash formed the most recent cover for actions against Libya. Even though all evidence pointed to Syria as being the perpetrator of the bombing, and a Hollywood movie even made the case against Syria and Iran, attention shifted to Libya as the culprit when a tiny electronic chip was "found" by investigators in April 1990, over 16 months after the calamity. This tiny, thumbnail-sized chip was alleged to be part of the radio which contained less than a pound of plastic explosive, enough to scatter the 747 over 845 square miles of Scottish countryside.

It so happened that the U.S. was building its coalition to destroy Iraq in Desert Storm at the time. Syria was one of the prime components of that force, joining Egypt, the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia in turning against their Arab compatriots who had made the mistake of ignoring U.S. wishes by annexing Kuwait. Iraq and Saddam Hussein were the new targets of opportunity along with Libya. All was forgiven their new-found ally, Syria.

After "going over" the evidence once again, the investigators decided to pin the blame for Pan Am 103 on Libya, specifically charging two Libyan airline employees with involvement in the act. The U.S. and U.K. further demanded that the two "suspects" be handed over for trial to them. The Libyan government has refused, suggesting the International Court of Justice as a fairer tribunal to judge the case. What are termed "limited sanctions" have been in place against Libya since April 15, 1992, served up by a United Nations Security Council, which is increasingly compliant with U.S. demands. Meanwhile the ongoing terrorism AGAINST Libya has continued unabated: 158 people perished in the crash of a Libyan airplane near Tripoli on December 22, 1992. Twenty years earlier, another Libyan civil airliner was blown out of the air over Egypt by Israeli forces. Continuing efforts to organize and equip groups inside Libya to overthrow Qaddafi have met with the usual lack of success. The Libyan people, especially the younger generation, do not want to return to the pre-Jamahiriya era in which squalor and misery prevailed. Giant strides in education, housing, medicine and agriculture have taken place in a county in which the literacy rate has increased tenfold since the revolution.

The Libyan people are suffering as a result of the "limited" sanctions. Thousands of people have not been able to travel abroad for medical treatment of grave illnesses and have died as a result. Hundreds of medical personnel have been prevented from entering the country. Traffic accidents and deaths have doubled due to the increase in highway travel caused by the shutdown in international travel which the sanctions enforced. Over $1 billion has been lost to Libya in agricultural and livestock production. In all, over 10,000 lives have been needlessly cut short.

According to U.S. policies, the Libyan experiment cannot be allowed to work. It may influence others to emulate its example, or, more precisely, to set their own independent course of development. The sanctions weapon, used "successfully" in Cuba, Iraq and Nicaragua in recent years, is a relatively "cost-free" method of bringing populations to heel. The danger of Arabs, Africans and Muslims getting together must be averted in the calculations of U.S. policy makers. This "danger" will remain a perpetual target of opportunity until it ceases and desists in trying to create a just society at home and in supporting struggling people around the world in their aspirations for self-determination.

Husayn Al-Kurdi, a Senior Editor of News International Press Service, has written hundreds of articles which have appeared in over 70 publications. He specializes in themes relating to the liberation of oppressed people. Al-Kurdi grew up in Libya and currently lives in San Diego.