The Fall of Tripoli

WESTERN politicians are gloating over their victory in Tripoli, which was stormed last week by Libyan rebels led by Nato and Qatari commandos and backed by waves of Nato warplanes.

Human rights and the Geneva Conventions are rarely respected in civil wars and the Libyan conflict was no exception. But the bourgeois media is pumping out the usual atrocity stories, as they did with the alleged shootings and mass rape claims used to justify the imperialist attack on Libya in the beginning, while saying little or nothing about the pogroms and killings of black immigrant workers in areas under rebel control.

The imperialists claim they were acting in the name of “United Nations” and “democracy”. But they were, as usual, working solely for the benefit of the big oil corporations that are already queuing up for their share of the spoils.

Meanwhile the shadowy stooges who sit on the “National Transitional Council of Libya” are trying to out-do each other in proving their loyalty to their imperialist masters.

Some say they will recognise Israel at once; others that they will withdraw from the African Union. All are vying with each other in the race for lucrative posts in the new puppet administration that the imperialists will establish to cover the systematic looting of Libya’s gold and oil reserves. But the only thing the Libyan people can look forward to is a grim future of occupation and exploitation by France, Italy and Anglo-American imperialism.

There will, of course, be resistance. The Gaddafi family have vowed to fight on and some towns are still in loyalist hands. Whether the resistance can prevent the plunder of Libya’s vast oil reserves in the years to come, however, will depend on the balance of forces inside and outside the country.

Syria next

Now the heat is on Syria. The imperialists have always regarded the Baathist government as an obstacle to their plans for the total domination of the Middle East. Syria’s support for the Lebanese and Palestinian resistance has, time and time again, thwarted Anglo-American attempts to impose a surrender peace on the Arabs.

Syria’s popular front government, which includes communists and other progressive forces, has provided an alternative model to the feudal and sectarian Arab societies that imperialism prefers in its quest for cheap Arab oil.

The mass support for President Bashar al Assad and his efforts to move forward towards genuine reform are ignored while the bogus human rights gang, backed by the paid media of imperialism and the oil princes, portrays the reactionary Syrian Muslim Brothers as democrats and calls the gunmen and terrorists “freedom fighters”.

At the United Nations the imperialists have been trying to get an anti-Syrian motion passed on the Security Council to provide a cover, à la Libya, to justify Nato military action to overthrow the Syrian government.

Russia and China together with the Third World countries have been blocking these transparent imperialist manoeuvres over the past few months. The Russians have hinted that they will, at last, veto any motion that could lead to the repetition of the Libyan tragedy.

Now they are trying to turn the tables on the imperialists by tabling a motion of their own that calls on the Syrian government and the opposition to work together to implement the reform programme while specifically excluding any call for sanctions or military action against the Damascus government.

Genuine solidarity with the Syria’s communist and progressive forces goes hand in hand with defence of the Assad government in the face of imperialist threats. While the war of words goes on at UN HQ the struggle for peace in Britain has to be stepped up to prevent British involvement in yet another war against the Arabs.