Fighting over the corpse of Gaddafi like vultures

AFTER NATO – The death of Muammar Gaddafi as a wounded prisoner of war. Disturbing images on Al Jazeera. A war crime?

HOW THE WEST WON LIBYA

By Pepe Escobar

They are fighting over the carcass as vultures. The French Ministry of Defense said they got him with a Rafale fighter jet firing over his convoy. The Pentagon said they got him with a Predator firing a Hellfire missile. After a wounded Colonel Muammar Gaddafi sought refuge in a filthy drain underneath a highway - an eerie echo of Saddam Hussein's "hole" - he was found by Transitional National Council (TNC) "rebels". And then duly executed.

- Brazilian journalist Pepe Escobar’s last book was Obama Does Globalistan (2009). Read his full article here and his “Roving Eye” columns at the Asian Times.

ON THE DEATH OF GADDAFI

By Gordon Campbell

THE DEATH of Muammar Gaddafi – either from wounds inflicted by a NATO air strike, or (more likely) from summary execution on his way to hospital – cancels the option of an international war crimes trial. Doubtless, such a trial would have given the Libyan dictator a useful platform from which to harangue the court, and to reveal embarrassing details of the lucrative deals he’d signed in the past with the same Western governments who eventually sent their warplanes to depose him.

No doubt, Gaddafi alive would have been a disruptive figure on the landscape of the new Libya. The trial of Slobodan Milosevic didn’t set an inspiring precedent for how the rule of law is likely to operate in such cases, Yet for all their flaws, such trials are the only alternative to the extra-judicial killings and assassinations (eg Osama Bin Laden, Anwar Al-Awlaki) that are fast becoming the West’s preferred modus operandi.

Also, there was a faint hope that Gaddafi on trial could have been the focus of a truth and reconciliation process in which the Libyan people who suffered at his hands could have confronted the humbled tyrant in a courtroom, and told their stories. More to the point, Gaddafi dead removes a source of national unity. Hostility to Gaddafi is just about all that is holding together the various Libyan rebel militias.

That lack of unity is a product of Gaddafi’s 40-year personality cult, which crushed any semblance of civil society. Now, all the tribal factions that Gaddafi manipulated so skilfully will have to be represented in a government of national unity. As the Stratfor intelligence think tank has pointed out, it is already clear that the Libyan Transitional National Council that the West recognises, enjoys little respect or authority among many of the rebel fighters:

The NTC is one of several political forces in the country. Since the rebel forces entered Tripoli on August 21, there has been a steady increase of armed groups hailing from places such as Misurata, Zentan, Tripoli and even eastern Libya itself that have questioned the authority of leading NTC members. These groups have been occupying different parts of the capital for two months now, despite calls by the NTC (and some of the groups themselves) to vacate.

In other words, the TNC has only a shaky clam to authority beyond Benghazi. At the same time, the outside world is expecting the TNC to honour the dodgy contracts for Libya’s oil reserves that Gaddafi signed, and not to let matters like internal politics or morality get in the way:

There have been repeated questions over the status of business contracts and agreements involving Russian companies, which have been signed by the Gaddafi regime, and whether they will be honoured. They generally involve oil or gas development and exploration, but also include railways and military cooperation….

Last month the Russian Foreign Ministry recognized the Transitional National Council of Libya as the current authority, adding that it expected existing contracts to be honoured.

“At present the Transitional National Council is analysing the contracts, signed by the Gaddafi regime, in order to establish whether or not they are transparent. I do not think the new Libyan government will begin with the evaluation of contracts with Russia by political criteria,” Margelov said, adding that it would be more correct for the new government to analyse the contracts from a technical and economic perspective.

Now, the real problems begin.

- Independent New Zealand journalist Gordon Campbell can be read on his Scoop Media blog and on his Werewolf netzine.

• Robert Fisk: You can't blame Gaddafi for thinking he was one of the good guys

BEFORE NATO – Independent images of the Gaddafi regime and reasons why the West had to ensure the crushing of a maverick Arab voice.