Libyan patriots resist NATO-led forces in Sirte

By Abayomi Azikiwe
Editor, Pan-African News Wire

Oct 17, 2011

U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, formerly director of the CIA, said at a news conference at NATO headquarters on Oct. 6 that the nearly nine-month-old war against the North African state of Libya would continue until all vestiges of resistance on the part of the people were eliminated.

This means that the intensive bombing of civilian areas and the national infrastructure will not let up. More innocent people will die by the thousands in this oil-producing country.

The following day Panetta visited the U.S. Naval Air Station at Sigonella, Italy, which has served as a major launching point for more than 20,000 sorties and 9,000-plus air strikes carried out so far in the war. He stood in front of the Global Hawk, a sophisticated fighter aircraft that provides important surveillance and intelligence information from its flights over Libya.

This aircraft can fly 24-hour, high-altitude missions that capture and transmit photographs of what is taking place on the ground. Panetta boasted that the war on Libya will provide lessons for future military operations.

Resistance continues in Sirte

Meanwhile, the forces of the National Transitional Council, supported by the U.S. and NATO, have for a month been attempting to take both Bani Walid and Sirte, two strongholds of the loyalist forces still committed to defending the country against the imperialist onslaught. Since March 17 NATO has bombed the nation nonstop. Despite numerous attempts to seize both cities, the NTC forces have been repelled, suffering hundreds of casualties.

According to an Oct. 10 Associated Press report, “The inability to take Sirte, the most important remaining stronghold of Gadhafi supporters, more than six weeks after the capital fell, has stalled efforts by Libya’s new leaders to set a timeline for elections and move forward with a transition to democracy.”

The NTC and NATO have no mandate to wage war or rule Libya. This is reflected in the fierce fighting by the Libyan people against these foreign financed and armed elements, which are handing over the country’s oil, natural gas and waterways to their imperialist masters.

British Defense Secretary Liam Fox, who is consumed by charges of corruption in the scandal-ridden government of Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron, announced that even if the NATO-led forces took Sirte, the Western “military actions would continue as long as remnants of the regime pose a risk to the people of Libya.” (AP, Oct. 10)

The NTC launched a new offensive against Sirte on Oct. 7. Although the city has been under siege for weeks and NATO has extensively bombed targets inside and around the coastal town, including a major hospital, the putative leader of the NTC, Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, admitted on Oct. 10, “Our fighters today are still dealing with snipers positioned on the high buildings and we sustained heavy casualties.”

The imperialists view the capture of Sirte as key to their strategic objective of subduing Libya. Some 250 miles southeast of Tripoli, Sirte is considered essential in solidifying neocolonial control over Libya’s 6 million people because it lies at the center of the coastal plain containing most of the population.

Gadhafi calls for intensifying resistance

In an Oct. 6 audio message, broadcast over Syria’s Al-Rai television, Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi called for the escalation of both military and political opposition to the NTC and its NATO backers. He called for “new million-man marches in all cities and villages and oases” and described conditions in Libya as “unbearable” and the so-called NTC revolution as “a charade gaining its legitimacy through air strikes.”

Civilians who have fled Sirte since the siege and bombing say, “We didn’t know where the strikes were coming from. Everyone is being hit all day and all night.” (Reuters, Oct. 10)

The NATO-led attacks have created a humanitarian crisis. One family pointed out, “There is no electricity and no water. There is nothing. There is not one neighborhood that hasn’t been hit.” Nevertheless, the resistance to this military onslaught remains formidable.

Even the British press agency Reuters noted on Oct. 10 that “NTC forces have repeatedly claimed to be on the point of victory in Sirte, only to suffer sudden reversals at the hands of a tenacious enemy fighting for its life, surrounded on three sides and with its back to the sea. In just one field ­hospital to the east of the city, doctors said they had received 17 dead and 87 wounded in the fighting on Oct. 9. There were dozens more casualties elsewhere.”

NATO war seeks imperialist domination

NATO has refused to investigate the thousands of civilian deaths emanating from the atrocities committed by the NTC and the U.S. and European air strikes. In addition, an estimated $15 billion in property damage has been carried out against Libya thus far.

The imperialist countries have frozen $128 billion in Libyan assets accumulated during the period of Gadhafi’s leadership. The country reportedly owes no money to the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank. This distinguishes Libya from other African and developing states, which have been strangled by debt payments to the global financial institutions based in the West.

A delegation of World Bank and IMF officials is scheduled to visit the country amid infighting among the NTC leaders, who have consistently failed to create a provisional government. A recent plot to assassinate the military leader of the NTC shows the incapacity of this group to control the country without the continuing support and coordination of NATO.

Anti-war forces inside the NATO countries must step up their opposition to the war against Libya and expose through leaflets, broadcasts, mass demonstrations and petitions that this effort on the part of the imperialists is no different than what is taking place in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and Palestine. The U.S. and the other NATO countries, faced with a worsening economic crisis at home, are escalating their aggression against the oppressed nations.

Demonstrations and occupations by youth and workers inside the U.S. and Europe are growing, but greater efforts are needed to link the plight of the working class and the oppressed, both inside the imperialist states as well as in the most underdeveloped regions of the planet. It is only through this unity that the economic crisis can be effectively challenged by those who are the most severely impacted by the current stage in capitalist globalization.