After Gaddafi

Stop the revolution’s derailment - independent workers’ action needed!

Robert Bechert, CWI

Almost every day there are warning signs of the dark shadows that NATO’s intervention has thrown over the Libyan revolution.

In a country with hardly any tradition, so far, of a workers’ movement, the distorting effects and dangers posed by the manner of Gaddafi’s overthrow are starting to come into the open.

Quickly after the revolution started, imperialist powers, Britain, France and the US especially, took advantage of the counter-attack by Gaddafi’s forces towards Benghazi and the east. Stung by the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions, these imperialist powers intervened as “protectors” of the Libyan people and, via the agency of the self-appointed and pro-western Transitional National Council (TNC), sought to control the revolution and exploit it for its own ends. Thus the fledging democratic bodies that had begun to develop in Benghazi were curtailed and, in essence, the TNC became a NATO ally.

The newly revealed correspondence confirming the close links between the Gaddafi regime and imperialist agencies, like the CIA and Britain’s MI6, show the Western powers’ utter hypocrisy. Their “concern” for the Libyan people under Gaddafi did not amount to much. Trade and assistance with the ‘war on terror’ were the West’s priorities.

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