In a four minute TV report [YouTube below] on the conflict in Mali and France's new involvement, Polly Boiko, who is a RT correspondent, and not one of those people they like to put on who can get away with saying anything, went into the history of the conflict and the Libyan connection.
In describing that connection, she as much as admitted that Qaddafi used African mercenaries, in fact she said that Tuareg fighters from Mali "actually made a large portion" of the army Qaddafi had used to suppress the Libyan people:
"Many experts are linking this crisis to the Libyan legacy and what happened in Libya because the Tuareg people who originally came from northern Mali, they actually made a large portion on Mummar Qaddafi's army in Libya. and after the very brisk military intervention there to topple Qaddafi many of these Tuaregs actually returned to their native northern Mali, ah, They took with them a lot of weapons and a lot of Qaddafi's military arsenal has kinda uncontrollable been flowing into Mali now and what we've got is actually a number of Islamists groups, and these Tuaregs have actually been taken over by other Islamists-jihadists but they're all very strong now in the north of Mali and lots of experts are saying this is a real consequence of what happened in Libya." [03:02-03:40 ]
As far as RT [Russia Today] is concerned, the "Mali Mess" is "Libya Overspill."
They see the takeover of northern Mali by Islamic and Tuareg groups as part of the "blowback" from the NATO Libyan intervention, the unfortunate consequence of another western orchestrated regime change.
Many anti-interventions and Qaddafi supporters also support this line of reasoning and blame the problems in Mali, and a number of other places today, on those that overthrew Mummar Qaddafi.
Co-incidentally, during the struggle to overthrow Qaddafi, just about all of these forces held that Libyan opposition claims that Mummar Qaddafi was employing African mercenaries in his fight against the Libyan people was a damnable and racist lie with no foundation in fact.
This has been a cardinal element of their alternate universe on the reality of the Libyan revolution.
This statement from Global Civilians for Peace in Libya, 8 Nov 2011, came from this alternate universe:
The myth of ‘African mercenaries’ in Libya has been used throughout the conflict to demonise the Libyan state, justify NATO intervention and to cover up the relentless racist rebel campaign of mass detention, lynchings and atrocities directed at black Libyans and migrant workers. Amnesty International have stated several times that the accusation of ‘African mercenaries’ being used in Libya against rebel forces is baseless. Despite no evidence the lie persists in the western media and the phrase ‘alleged mercenary’ has been continually used in an attempt to give context to the racist atrocities committed by rebel forces against black Libyans and migrant workers.
Now I find it patently ridiculous to blame the Libyan people for the mayhem these Tuareg mercenaries have created since they were kicked out of Libya, but that's how some people think. That's like blaming a robbery victim for what the bandits did after he escaped from them.
Libyan blame for the current Mali crisis should more properly be placed with Mummar Qaddafi, IMHO. He's the one that hired these mercenaries up from Mali. He's the one that armed them and turned them into a gang. He schooled them in creating mayhem, paid them for it.
Sooner of latter there was going to be "blowback" from that back to Mali and that "blowback" was not going to be pretty. That was the potential energy of the situation Mummar Qaddafi created.
Once his regime was overthrown, these Tuareg mercenaries were no longer free to make mayhem in Libya, and nobody was going to pay them anymore, so they went home and since they were well armed, they got to take their weapons with them.
So because the Libyans were successful in freeing themselves from these Tuareg mercenaries, some people want to blame them for allowing the Tuaregs to take the weapons Qaddafi gave them, going home and making more mayhem. Go figure.
Anyway, that's not what I want to talk about, and I truly wish I could cover Mali too but one's got to know one's limits.
I want to draw your attention to the admission by this long time Qaddafi supporter and Russian mouthpiece, an admission no doubt made because she was talking about Mali and therefore forgot to lie about Libya.
It is already known that Mummar Qaddafi had large numbers of mercenaries from Chad and Niger fighting for him. He had military specialists from Russia and the Ukraine, snipers from Colombia and Serbia, as well as a large number of Libyans outside of his immediate family.
And now we have the revelation that Tuaregs from northern Mali "actually made a large portion on Mummar Qaddafi's army in Libya."
This should give the honest anti-interventions pause for thought, because they never opposed foreign intervention on the side of Mummar Qaddafi where it now appears a "large portion" of the fighters were foreigners. They only opposed foreign intervention on the side of the Libyan people.
And the proof that it was "the Libyan people" that he was fighting is the fact that he had to hire so many foreigners to do the fighting for him.
I imagine the mercenary stories... (0+ / 0-)
are massively overstated. When the dust settles, I bet we find out that Gadhafi forces are almost entirely Libyan Gadhafi supporters. The African mercenaries people talk about have never fought well before, but all of a sudden, they are now?
We'll see.
by papicek on Sat Apr 23, 2011 at 12:43:20 PM PDT
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