Le serment de BHL, de la Libye au Mali et au-delà

Le serment de BHL, de la Libye au Mali et au-delà

Comme on le sait beaucoup mais pas encore assez (fréquentation maigrelette dans les salles qui projettent le film), le “serment de Tobrouk” a d’inestimables et d’inimitables conséquences, selon la notion-BHL de la vertu de l’action humanitaire et politique. Il faut aussitôt ajouter que, l’esprit métaphysique veillant, ces conséquences ne s’arrêtent pas à la Libye ; avec BHL, les conséquences n’ont, par définition, aucune limite.

Un article très fouillé de Andrei Akoulov, le 10 juin 2012 sur Strategic Culture.org, nous fait un tableau vivant et complet des conséquences en chaîne, notamment au Mali, également dans le reste des diverses régions du Sahel, et bien entendu conséquences catastrophiques. Quand on fait les choses, nous enseigne BHL, on ne les fait pas au seul et piètre niveau national ; il faut avoir la vision globalisée, au moins à l’échelle du continent.

Akoulov nous retrace les aventures des Touaregs chassés de Libye par le nouveau pouvoir révolutionnaire, démocratique, tolérant et éventuellement multiethnique. Il s’agit essentiellement des soubresauts qui s’en sont suivis au Mali, avec les plus récents épisodes. Il est aussi question de l’expansion dans diverses directions d’al Qaïda et de ses composants divers, réarmés de bric et de boc par les arsenaux de Kadhafi et, de frais, par ceux qui furent parachutés par l’OTAN pour avoir raison de Kadhafi. La perspective s’élargit alors à d’autres régions du Sahel, avec les pressions déstabilisatrices qui s’ensuivent dans les pays de la région, de l’Afrique subsaharienne aux pays du Maghreb. L’évidence nous le crie : le “modèle libyen”, ou “modèle BHL”, est bien assez rôdé, et bien assez large dans ses ambitions, pour être appliqué à la Syrie.

«A NATO ignited spark is causing a real big fire, this time in Africa. Mali's Tuareg rebels clashed in June with their former Islamist allies, after the two groups fell out over forming a breakaway state in the northern Mali. The clash near the remote regional capital Kidal was the first armed confrontation between the rebel National Liberation Movement of Azawad (MNLA) and the Islamist Ansar Al-Din. The two groups are made up of Tuareg tribesmen from rival clans. The fighting has raised fears of widening chaos in the vast northern part of the country, a desert region the size of France (60% of the Mali’s territory). On June 6 African leaders urged UN backing for military intervention in Mali to return the region to central control. After having fought the Malian army together, the two groups are now fighting on a tribal basis. The Ansar Al-Din is regrouping around Kidal, where they want to set up their headquarters. Meanwhile the residents of Timbuktu launched an attack to kick out the Islamists currently controlling the ancient city in the north of Mali. The Patriots' Resistance Movement for the Liberation of Timbuktu opposes the secession of northern Mali. So the combat actions are spreading involving more actors. The UN, the African Union and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) officials meeting in Abidjan also called on June 6 for an immediate dissolution of the former junta which came to power following the March 22 coup. The putschists have formally ceded authority to interim authorities but practically remain their hold on power. […]

»…In April the north of the country was lost to the rebels with the help of arms and men spilling out of Libya’s conflict. It was backed by Islamists with ties to Al-Qaeda, triggering fears of the emergence of a new rogue state. The Mali’s desert Tuaregs proclaimed independence on April 6 for what they call the state of Azawad after capturing key towns in an advance that caught the newly installed junta off guard. The advance capitalized on confusion in Bamako after the March 22 coup by mid-ranking officers whose main goal had ironically been to boost efforts to put down the rebellion.

»The Tuaregs are nomads, the population is about 5,5 million, they are the people that have always been oppressed in other countries, they never recognized the state borders and never stopped to fight for statehood, the territory they call Azawad. The insurgencies have been numerous, for instance in 1994-1995 and 2007 – 2009 they tried to establish an independent state in the territories of Niger and Mali.

»Muammar Gaddafi gave refuge to dozens of hundreds Tuaregs, many of them served in the Libyan armed forces, about two thousand in the PanAfrican legion. He mediated all the conflicts the Tuaregs were involved in. He was the one to save them in the times of terrible drought in 1973 and it was him who came out with the Greater Sahara project presupposing a wide autonomy for the nomads. Taking the Tuaregs side made the Colonel’s clout grew in all the counties where they constituted part of population, like Mali, Niger and Burkina-Faso. Gaddafi had a dream to become the king of Africa, he never spared efforts to render any kind of support to Mali. The Tuaregs were a kind of leverage tool, any time the Mali rulers tried to do something against his wishes he loosened a grip of the nomads to remind them who was the boss in the house.

»With Gaddafi gone, the Tuaregs were left to fend for themselves. Having received military experience in Libya. armed with up-to-date weapons they were a force to count with. Since autumn 2011 they became persona non grata in Libya and had to leave the former haven. Some of them were born in Libya. Their attempts to come to any kind of arrangement with the new Libyan authorities were futile.

»In January 2012 angry and hungry Tuaregs, the former Libyan servicemen, united in the separatist MLNA. They moved to Mali and were victorious. By the middle of January they had captured Menaka, Tesalit. Aguelhok. They happened to be stronger than the regular armed forces of Mali, equipped with obsolete 1960-70 China produced weapons and poorly trained. One of the factors making them stronger was the possession of French arms parachuted by NATO aircraft to be used against the Gaddafi’s forces. […]

»…The NATO supplied weapons parachuted in Libya are used by Al Qaeda cells in Algiers, Mauritania, Niger and Mali now. The poorly trained and equipped armed forces of the Sahel countries make them an easy prey to fundamentalists. It’s not an occasion a new regional Al Qaeda's branch - the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) branch has been established recently made up of the Islamists coming from Mauritania mainly. Thus the overthrow of Gaddafi’s government provoked the Al Qaeda’s activities in the North of Mali. The Ansar militants set the goal of establishing Sharia laws in the newly born state. They never stop to commit acts of extraordinary cruelty like mass killings. For instance that’s what they did on January 24, 2012 in Aguelhok killing hundreds of Mali regular troops and civilians. The Ansar militants captured Tambuktu on April 2. The first thing they did was the declaration of new Islamist emirate... […]

»…Solving this crisis will not be easy. Re-instituting a democratically elected government in Mali will take years. The influx of extremist groups poses significant challenges not only to the region, but also for the United States and the international community. Mali is a country sharing borders with Algeria, Niger, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Guinea, Senegal and Mauritania. NATO went beyond the UN resolution 1973 in Libya against Russia’s and China’ warnings not to do so. The NATO’s intervention spurred a domino-like effect across Africa’s Sahel region. Now we all face the implications. One nation gets set on fire after another. Various North African regions are glued together by a delicate balance – due to the messy colonial legacy inherited. Instability in one African country can lead to major instabilities throughout the region. A dangerous chain reaction has been started. Now Mauritania, Niger and Algeria are targets for intervention. Should AL Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb be successful in carving out holdings in northern Mali, it will only be a matter of time before they begin crossing into Algeria. The situation had been serious enough even before the Mali events. It’s not in vain Algeria, Mali, Niger and Mauritania formed the Joint High Command Operational Centre (CEMOC) in 2010, to address the perceived threats from organized crime and Islamic armed groups. The events in Mali spilled over to Guinea-Bissau, which immediately saw a coup d’état of its own in mid-April. While ECOWAS and other parties attempt at keeping conflict to a minimum in an increasingly agitated western African region, the next country at risk could be Morocco with regards to its Western Sahara issue. The Western Sahara has long been a contentious issue in the region, with Morocco and Spain being key players in this crisis. With Algeria hosting various Western Saharan refugee camps, the contested territory must be carefully watched over the coming months. There are probably other consequences in store but they are all the responsibility of those who stand for unilateral actions (or going beyond the international law), the lessons like Iraq and Libya, to name very few, never learned.

»Isn’t it something to think about before a foreign intervention is launched in Syria, an option on the table according to the US UN Ambassador Susan Rice Mali, or Iran, an action strongly supported by some USA and West European warmongers?»

dedefensa.org