U.S. Has Transformed Libya Into Danger to All Africa
February
23, 2014 AFP
By Richard Walker
President
Barack Obama and former French President Nicholas Sarkozy should have provided
Libya with an “after sales agreement” when they ordered the destruction of the
Libyan government and the assassination of former Libyan leader Muammar
Qadaffi. That was the opinion of Niger’s Interior Minister Massoudou Hassoumi, who has called on France and the United
States to bring their militaries back to Libya in order to stop the flow of
arms and violent terrorists from pouring out of Libya into Niger. Southern
Libya, he warned, has steadily become “an incubator”
for violence and terrorism.
Christian
churches in Libya have been expressing concerns as well about the plight of
their members in Libya, arguing that the adoption of radical Muslim laws and
growing sectarianism have placed Christians in jeopardy. In their view, it has
been difficult, if not impossible, to get the mass media to focus on the issue.
There has
been little coverage of the mess Libya has become since Washington and its
allies washed their hands of the country. The only mention lately concerned a
plan to destroy Qadaffi’s chemical weapons stockpile. According to a February
2, 2014 article in The
New York Times, Washington secretly spent $45M to contain and destroy the
last of Libya’s supplies of mustard gas, completing the task on January 26.
That
announcement only served to highlight the fact that Washington and its allies failed to address
the massive stockpiles of conventional weapons that
fell into the hands of militias and terrorist groups.
Many of those weapons were sold to Arab countries
and moved out of Libya to be shipped into Turkey and then to terrorist camps in
Syria.
It is believed
that Qadaffi spent as much as $100B on weapons, including anti-tank
missiles, surface-to-air missiles and many other weapons that in the hands of terrorists could pose a serious threat to the
U.S., Europe and Russia. In October 2013, The
Times of London carried a story and a photo of a militia leader, who it said was
a “human trafficker,” in charge of an abandoned facility containing 4,000 surface-to air missiles.
The
tragedy of Libya is the plight of its people and in particular Christians, who had hoped for better times. Washington has ignored them because focusing
on their persecution would expose the reality
that murdering Qadaffi has created chaos and
increased violence in the region.
According
to Open Doors, the international Christian
organization, Libya in 2013 was the most dangerous North African country for
Christians. Salafist Sunnis, the dominant sect in Libya today, have been
determined to enforce strict Islamic law defining the religion of the state as
Muslim. In the words of Open Doors, the aim and outcome of this strategy is to
make “all [Libyan] citizens Muslim by definition.”
It should
come as no surprise that the persecution of Christians across the Middle East has led to a mass exodus. Open Doors estimates 75% of Libya’s expat
Christians have fled. Nevertheless, the
unstable nature of the country and a growing anti-Christian
atmosphere made citizens of Libya fear for their lives.
- See more
at: http://americanfreepress.net/?p=15750#sthash.ByLtXuBF.dpuf
No comments:
Post a Comment