Guerra al terrore e ingerenze africane

[glry at ngi.it]

Due articoli in inglese: 

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1. La "Guerra al Terrore" è costata agli USA in 10 anni 1.300 miliardi di dollari, cioè 3.600 
milioni al giorno, 4.000 dollari al secondo. Con un saldo totale di milioni di morti.  

US pays price in blood and treasure for war on terror
By Tom Clonan - Irish Times - September 8, 2011

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2. Il "Caos" libico, dove scorrazzano truppe Nato e arabe, mercenari occidentali (italiani 
compresi), ribelli di ogni risma, al-Qaeda veri e finti, mercanti d'armi e di petrolio. Per la 
Libertà!? E dove a un terzo di popolazione libica di pelle nera (autoctoni Tuareg o ex 
migranti neri dal Chad e Sudan, e Tuareg dal Niger e dal Mali) vien data la caccia perché 
"mercenari di Qaddafi"... 2 milioni di libici da annientare o sottomettere? La vera guerra per 
la Libia forse comincia ora, nel deserto. 

THE ROVING EYE - Asia Times, Sep 7, 2011
Libya: The real war starts now - By Pepe Escobar

(...) "In Tripoli, rebels from Zintan, in the western mountains, control the airport. The central 
bank, Tripoli's port and the Prime Minister's office are being controlled by rebels from 
Misrata. Berbers from the mountain town of Yafran control Tripoli's central square, now 
spray-painted "Yafran Revolutionaries". All these territories are clearly marked as a warning.
(...) "The TNC seems to confuse black people with mercenaries ... [They seem to think] all 
blacks are mercenaries. If you do that it means one-third of the population of Libya which is 
black is also mercenaries." (...) "To see where this thing is going, one has to look at the 
desert. The immense southern Libyan desert was not conquered by NATO. The TNC has no 
access to virtually all of Libya's water and a lot of oil. Gaddafi has a chance of "working the 
desert", of negotiating with a number of tribes, to buy or consolidate their allegiance and 
organize a sustained guerrilla war."(...)


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1. 

Million Dead, $1.8 Trillion Spent On Decade-Long U.S. 'War On Terror'

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2011/0907/1224303633269.html

Irish Times
September 8, 2011

US pays price in blood and treasure for war on terror
By Tom Clonan

- In January 2002, the US began the lesser publicised Operation Enduring Freedom - 
Philippines...
- In October 2002, the US military started African military operations from Djibouti, 
establishing Operation Enduring Freedom - Horn of Africa... within Ethiopia, Somalia, Chad 
and Niger....
- This operation was subsequently broadened to include Operation Enduring Freedom - 
Trans Sahara, widening the scope of its operations to Central Africa and sub-Saharan 
Africa. 
This little-known war on terror in Africa has been fought in the main by thousands of US 
special forces and has been overshadowed by US military operations in Afghanistan, Iraq 
and Pakistan...

The US continues to wage its war on terror on several continents - from the Horn of Africa 
and Yemen to Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In the decade since 9/11 about a million people worldwide have lost their lives in what is 
now known as the global war on terror. The term "war on terror", was first used by President 
George Bush on September 16th, 2001, at Camp David as the US began to configure its 
military response to Osama bin Laden´s attacks on New York and the Pentagon.

In the weeks and months following 9/11, the Bush administration launched a series of robust 
military and intelligence interventions worldwide. The first phase started with the invasion of 
Afghanistan, or Operation Enduring Freedom, which began in October 2001.

The war aims were simple - to remove the Taliban leadership in Kabul and deny al-Qaeda 
physical sanctuary within the country. The US aimed to destroy al-Qaeda and disrupt its 
capacity to mount international operations from Afghan soil. It also sought to capture or kill 
bin Laden.

In January 2002, the US began the lesser publicised Operation Enduring Freedom - 
Philippines, to destroy the Islamist terror groups Jemaah Islamiyah and the Abu Sayaf group 
who had been co-ordinating terrorist operations throughout the Philippines and Indonesia 
from the island of Besilan...

In October 2002, the US military started African military operations from Djibouti, 
establishing Operation Enduring Freedom - Horn of Africa, designed to identify and destroy 
al-Qaeda affiliated Islamist terror cells within Ethiopia, Somalia, Chad and Niger.

This operation was subsequently broadened to include Operation Enduring Freedom - 
Trans Sahara, widening the scope of its operations to Central Africa and sub-Saharan 
Africa. This little-known war on terror in Africa has been fought in the main by thousands of 
US special forces and has been overshadowed by US military operations in Afghanistan, 
Iraq and Pakistan.

In March 2003, the US invaded Iraq in Operation Iraqi Freedom. The war aims of the US in 
Iraq were less clear than in its other interventions. Faulty and false intelligence reports on 
so-called weapons of mass destruction were mobilised as a motivation to attack Iraq.

The initial invasion phase, involving approximately 200,000 coalition troops, managed to 
topple Saddam Hussein´s regime. Saddam was subsequently captured, tried and hanged in 
Iraq. But no weapons of mass destruction were discovered and the invasion had the 
unintended consequence of strengthening Iran´s influence in the region.

A decade after the Twin Towers attacks, the US continues to wage its war on terror on 
several continents - from the Horn of Africa and Yemen to Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. 
The term "war on terror" has entered the language as a catch-all phrase for everything from 
the inconvenience of security checks at airports to drone attacks in Pakistan. Officially, 
however, the global war on terror is now over. The Obama administration has rebranded 
and renamed the Global War on Terror, the Overseas Contingency Operation.

Since March 2009, the Pentagon and US Department of Defense have been requested to 
refrain from using the term, Global War on Terror.

In terms of blood and treasure, the wars have been costly for the US and Nato. In Iraq, the 
US and its allies lost almost 5,000 troops. More than 32,000 were wounded. In Afghanistan, 
where casualty rates have increased five-fold in five years, the US and its allies have lost 
almost 3,000 killed in action with a further 13,000 wounded.

More than 10,000 US and foreign mercenaries - euphemistically termed security 
contractors - have also been killed and injured in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The strain of a decade of war on America´s volunteer army has been heavy. According to 
the US Army Surgeon General 66,935 US troops suffer from acute combat stress reaction. 
In addition, the US Congressional Research Service has reported that a staggering 178,876 
US veterans have suffered traumatic brain injuries. Almost 2,000 of these veterans are 
amputees and hundreds have also died of self-inflicted wounds or suicide while on active 
service in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The rate of suicide among US troops has more than doubled since 9/11. For civilians, the 
cost of war has been especially high. While estimates vary, British medical journal The 
Lancet suggests that a minimum of 655,000 Iraqi civilians were killed during Operation Iraqi 
Freedom.

Similar studies suggest that approximately 4,000 Afghan civilians have died during 
Operation Enduring Freedom. These figures represent those killed by both coalition troops 
and belligerent forces within Iraq and Afghanistan. The majority of civilian casualties, in both 
countries, were inflicted by insurgents.

The US Congressional Research Service, in its March 2011 report, states that the Overseas 
Contingency Operation has cost the US taxpayer $1.3 trillion - $130 billion per annum since 
9/11. At present, US military operations worldwide cost $386 million per day, or $4,000 
dollars per second. According to US Congressional estimates, the final bill will total $1.8 
trillion.


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2. 

ASIA TIMES/Pepe Escobar: Libya: The real war starts now

Middle East
Asia Times, Sep 7, 2011

THE ROVING EYE

Libya: The real war starts now
By Pepe Escobar

Enough about The Big G's downfall. Now comes the real nitty-gritty; Afghanistan 2.0, Iraq 
2.0, or a mix of both.

The "NATO rebels" have always made sure they don't want foreign occupation. But the 
North Atlantic Treaty Organization - which made the victory possible - can't control Libya 
without boots on the ground. So multiple scenarios are now being gamed in NATO's 
headquarters in Mons, Belgium - under a United Nations velvet cushion.

According to already leaked plans, sooner or later there may be troops from Persian Gulf 
monarchies and friendly allies such as Jordan and especially NATO member Turkey, also 
very keen to bag large commercial contracts. Hardly any African nations will be part of it - 
Libya now having being "relocated" to Arabia.

The Transitional National Council (TNC) will go for it - or forced to go for it - if, or when, 
Libya spirals into chaos. Still it will be an extremely hard sell - as the wildly disparate 
factions of "NATO rebels" are frantically consolidating their fiefdoms, and getting ready to 
turn on each other.

There's no evidence so far the TNC - apart from genuflecting in the altar of NATO member 
nations - has any clue about managing a complex political landscape inside Libya.

 Guns and no roses

Everyone in Libya is now virtually armed to its teeth. The economy is paralyzed. A nasty 
catfight over who will control Libya's unfrozen billions of dollars is already on.

The Obeidi tribe is furious with the TNC as there's been no investigation over who killed 
rebel army commander Abdul Fattah Younis on July 29. The tribals have already threatened 
to exact justice with their own hands.

Chief suspect in the killing is the Abu Ubaidah bin Jarrah brigade - a hardcore Islamic 
fundamentalist militia that has rejected NATO intervention and refused to fight under the 
TNC, branding both TNC and NATO as "infidels".

Then there's the drenched-in-oil question; When will the Libya Islamic Fighting Group 
(LIFG)-al-Qaeda nebula organize their own putsch to take out the TNC?

All over Tripoli, there are graphic echoes of militia hell in Iraq. Former US Central 
Intelligence Agency asset and former "war on terror" detainee, General Abdelhakim Belhaj - 
issued from the Derna circle, the ground zero of Islamic fundamentalism in Libya - is the 
leader of the brand new Tripoli Military Council.

Accusations have already been hurled by other militias that he did not fight for the 
"liberation" of Tripoli so he must go - whether or not the TNC says so. This essentially 
means that the LIFG-al-Qaeda nebula sooner or later may be fighting an arm of the 
upcoming guerrilla war - against the TNC, other militias, or both.

In Tripoli, rebels from Zintan, in the western mountains, control the airport. The central 
bank, Tripoli's port and the Prime Minister's office are being controlled by rebels from 
Misrata. Berbers from the mountain town of Yafran control Tripoli's central square, now 
spray-painted "Yafran Revolutionaries". All these territories are clearly marked as a warning.

As the TNC, as a political unit, already behaves like a lame duck; and as the militias will 
simply not vanish - it's not hard to picture Libya also as a new Lebanon; the war in Lebanon 
began when each neighborhood in Beirut was carved up between Sunnis, Shi'ites, Christian 
Maronites, Nasserites and Druse.

The Lebanonization of Libya, on top of it, includes the deadly Islamic temptation - which is 
spreading like a virus all across the Arab Spring.

At least 600 Salafis who fought in the Sunni Iraqi resistance against the US were liberated 
from Abu Salim prison by the rebels. It's easy to picture them profiting from the widespread 
looting of kalashnikovs and shoulder-launched Soviet Sam-7 anti-aircraft missiles to bolster 
their own hardcore Islamist militia - following their own agenda, and their own guerrilla war.

 Welcome to our racist 'democracy'

The African Union (AU) will not recognize the TNC; in fact, it charges the NATO rebels of 
indiscriminate killing of black Africans, all bundled up as "mercenaries".

According to the AU's Jean Ping, " ... the TNC seems to confuse black people with 
mercenaries ... [They seem to think] all blacks are mercenaries. If you do that it means one-
third of the population of Libya which is black is also mercenaries."

The small port of Sayad, 25 kilometers west of Tripoli, has become a refugee camp for 
black Africans terrified of "free Libya". Doctors Without Borders found out about the camp 
on August 27. Refugees say that since February they started to be expelled by the owners 
of the businesses they were working in, accused of being mercenaries - and they have been 
harassed ever since.

According to rebel mythology, the Muammar Gaddafi regime was essentially protected by 
murtazaka ("mercenaries"). The reality is that Gaddafi did employ a contingent of black 
African fighters - from Chad, Sudan and Tuaregs from Niger and Mali. The majority of black 
Sub-Saharan Africans in Libya are migrant workers holding legal jobs.

To see where this thing is going, one has to look at the desert. The immense southern 
Libyan desert was not conquered by NATO. The TNC has no access to virtually all of 
Libya's water and a lot of oil.

Gaddafi has a chance of "working the desert", of negotiating with a number of tribes, to buy 
or consolidate their allegiance and organize a sustained guerrilla war.

Algeria is involved in a vicious fight against al-Qaeda in the Maghreb. Algeria's vast, 
porous, 1,000 kilometer-long border with Libya remains open. Gaddafi can easily base his 
guerrillas in the southern desert with a safe haven in Algeria - or even in Niger. The TNC is 
already terrified of this possibility.

NATO's "humanitarian" operation has unleashed at least 30,000 bombs over Libya over 
these past few months. It's safe to say that many thousands of Libyans have been killed by 
the bombing. The bombing never stops; soon NATO may be targeting some of those - 
civilians or not - it was in theory "protecting" until a few days ago.

A defeated Big G can reveal himself to be even more dangerous than a Big G in power. The 
real war starts now. It will be infinitely more dramatic - and tragic. Because now it will be a 
Darwinian, northern African, war of all against all.


Pepe Escobar is the author of 
Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0978813820/simpleproduction/ref=nosim> 
(Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge 
<http://www.amazon.com/Red-Zone-Blues-snapshot-Baghdad/dp/0978813898>. 
His new book, just out, is 
Obama does Globalistan 
<http://www.amazon.com/Obama-Does-Globalistan-Pepe-
Escobar/dp/1934840831/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1233698286&sr=8-1>
(Nimble Books, 2009).

He may be reached at pepeasia at yahoo.com <mailto:pepeasia at yahoo.com>.

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---  from : jure ellero <glry at ngi.it> 
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