(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Terje Tvedt writes in the article "The Silence of Libya" in New Norwegian Journal (no. 3 – 2015) that there is a total silence after the war in Norway. Libya was previously an authoritarian but functioning welfare state, and according to the UN had the highest index of human development (human development index) in Africa – it was also higher than in some states in Europe. But after the war in 2011, Libya has been transformed into a chaos ruled by Islamist militias, clashes with each other and mafia groups making millions of dollars on human trafficking. Libya's two competing governments have little to say. But in Norway silence prevails. Almost no one writes about the responsibility Norway has for bombing a state apart and together.
Tvedt is looking for one explanation of the silence and the total Norwegian agreement – in government, parliament and the media – to bomb Libya. The public conversation was in 2011 marked by war euphoria. For many, it was about fighting the dictator and saving civilians from a massacre. That the war was about something completely different, it was almost impossible to address. With few exceptions, the silence has been total.
I was one of the few who criticized the bombing in 2011, and was probably the one who at that time wrote the most articles criticizing the war in Libya (seven articles in Aftenposten, Dagsavisen, Ny Tid and Klassekampen). I pointed out that there were completely different interests behind the war than the official ones; that the regime was not a serious threat to civilians; that many of NATO's Libyan allies had fought with Al Qaeda in Iraq, and that they started a violent uprising and were responsible for the racism and ethnic cleansing of black Libyans who supported Muammar Gaddafi. As in previous colonial wars, the West allied itself with some tribes, against the tribes loyal to the government. If you look at the Norwegian values, which reject colonialism, racism and radical Islamism, one would think it was more natural that Norwegian bombing should rather support the government against the rebels' violence.
Gaddafi had stopped the smuggling of people from Benghazi and Misrata by agreement with Italy. The mafia in these cities had lost revenue of tens of millions. They mobilized Western states in the name of freedom in order to resume human trafficking. With a victory for NATO bombing and the rebels, it was almost certain that Libya would be divided by clashes with each other, that Islamist groups would end up ruling large areas, and that hundreds of thousands of refugees would be transferred to Europe.
Those responsible know the Norwegian Foreign Ministry had difficulty believing that the Norwegian authorities had been led by the Americans and British. Within Norwegian intelligence, Gaddafi was also believed to be a direct threat to Benghazi. The media presented a picture of tens of thousands – perhaps hundreds of thousands – dead if no one intervened. But all this was a lie. So did the Americans (who had satellite images), and probably the British. There were only 14 tanks and some armored vehicles (which were bombed by French aircraft) heading east, ie towards Benghazi. They only had the capacity to stop the rebels' advance to the oil cities of Brega and Ras Lanuf. They had not been able to enter Benghazi. The threat was a bluff, but the Norwegian authorities were not informed.
On the Norwegian military side there was unrest over the consequences. On August 1, in the middle of the war, Norway ended the bombing. The Norwegian F-16 aircraft were ordered home. Jens Stoltenberg had realized that the war followed a different agenda than the UN resolution. Norway had entered the war on erroneous terms. It also shows an important article by Colonel Lieutenant Tormod Heier in the defense journal RUSI Journal from March 2015.
The question one must ask is whether Norway really exists as an independent state.
But the Norwegian authorities said nothing.
Prime Minister Stoltenberg relied on President Obama. With a few phone calls, Stoltenberg accepted acceptance for Norwegian participation in the war. It is almost the same thing that happened when President George HW Bush called Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland in 1991 to achieve Norwegian participation in the war against Iraq. Bush asked Brundtland for a contribution, and she sent the Coast Guard vessel Andenes to the Gulf to display the flag. Only two phone calls, and Norway was in the war. The question one must ask is whether Norway exists as an independent state.
In Norway, many proud on what the Americans and the British said about the threat to civilians, but the vast majority of NATO countries did not participate in the bombing. Perhaps they were better informed than Norway. They realized that the bombing was not about civilian casualties and that all attack wars start with a lie. Sweden's war against Russia 1788 was legitimized by Swedes in Cossack uniforms attacking a Swedish border post. The Nazis' war against Poland in 1939, the beginning of World War II, was legitimized by SS officers in Polish uniforms attacking the German radio station in Glewitz. Documents from the United States Defense Force from 1962 say that the United States can shoot down an American plane over Cuba, drop a US vessel at Cuba, bomb the Dominican Republic with Cuban-like aircraft, and launch a "Cuban terrorist campaign" in the United States with fake documents that "reveal Cubans" . All this to legitimize a war against Cuba. President Kennedy did not accept the defense leadership's proposal, but in 1964, after Kennedy's death, the same people used such provocations against North Vietnam to legitimize a new war. False documents were also used to legitimize a war against Iraq in 2003, documents that claimed that Saddam Hussein had applied to buy uranium from Niger. Foreign Minister Colin Powell told the UN about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, but everything was a bluff. The same is true of the threat to Benghazi, which was used to legitimize the bombing of Libya.
In 2012, I wrote a book on the Libyan Wars (Libya War geopolitics), which came out at a Swedish publishing house. The book addressed how the UN was seduced, the central role oil played, and the extreme Islamists under Abdel Hakim Belhadj who fought alongside Qatar special forces. These waged the ground war with the British. The British commander traveled back and forth to Qatar. In the book, I address how NATO bombing with Islamists and Arab ground forces (from Qatar, Sudan Jordan, the Emirates and Egypt) wiped out Libyan state power and hoisted Qatar's flag over Gaddafi's bunks. Immediately after the victory, Belhadj and the Islamists began transporting weapons and soldiers via Turkey to Aleppo in Syria. Irish-Libyan commander Mahdi al-Harati, who led the advance to Tripoli in August 2011 and proved to be financed by US intelligence, also led the uprising in Aleppo, Syria. According to Seymour Hersh, Americans began to support a Sunni rebellion in Syria as early as 2007. France's former foreign ministers Roland Dumas said that the British in 2009 attempted to bring France into a riot in Syria. WikiLeaks shows that Libyan rebels Mustafa Abdul Jalil and Mahmoud Jibril began working with the Americans and Qatar as early as 2009. In Libya, special forces from the United States, Britain and Qatar had arrived before the war began. Everything was prepared. Russia, China and South Africa felt they had been completely fooled. South African President Jacob Zuma believed that NATO had to be held accountable. NATO had bombed the African Union peace initiative. After Gaddafi's last shot, his hometown of Sirte, was bombed and collapsed by Islamist ground forces and NATO aircraft (according to the UN, almost every house was hit), the Islamists entered the city with the same black flag used by IS in Syria today .
I meant that the book was important, and planned a press conference in Norway as well. At the same time, Hilde Henriksen Waage planned a press conference on his Israel book. Geir Lundestad should comment. A former head of the Norwegian intelligence was to comment on my book, but the press conference was canceled. A critical book about the Libya war was not desirable.
When Terje Tvedt writes that there is a consensus not to discuss a Norwegian responsibility for Libya, it should be said that this consensus has been partly enforced. Reviews stopped. Editors who previously submitted articles no longer did so. Academics are adapting to project funding, and a project on the Libya war does not make money. The result is silence. We have developed a "dictatorship of silence" where we cannot name our own war crimes by name. In principle, they are as serious as an attack war. And the refugee disaster from Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya is only a predictable consequence of their own actions.
I have written about this in Ny Tid before, but the silence has settled like a wet blanket over the public conversation. It is almost impossible to breathe.
Tunander is a research professor at the Department of Peace Research (PRIO), and a regular contributor to Ny Tid.
