How Clinton and NATO Overthrew Gaddafi to Keep the Migrant Pipeline to Europe Flooding
How Clinton and NATO Overthrew Gaddafi to Keep the Migrant Pipeline to Europe Flooding
The Migrant Crisis Was Avoidable, but Regime Elites Wanted It to Happen
The Hamas-Israel conflict has now taken the world by storm, drowning out coverage of most other issues. Important to remember, however, is that shortly before that long-running conflict was ratcheted up to 11 by a gut-churning surprise attack, the migrant crisis was again dominating headlines.
The most powerful imagery of that crisis was a scene reminiscent of Raspail’s The Camp of the Saints,1 which came from the Italian island of Lampedusa. There, on a little island that sits just off the shore of North Africa, the small Italian community was swamped by thousands upon thousands of migrants flooding its shores.2 In two days alone, over 7,000 African migrants washed up on the shores of the Italian community of about 6,000 pre-migrant residents, absolutely overwhelming it.3
Similar scenes have played out across Europe in recent years. Whether the zombie-like hordes attempting to cross Poland’s border fences,4 the millions of migrants that showed up in Germany,5 or the no-go zones in Sweden in which the once-peaceful Nordic country experiences near-daily bombings and stabbings,6 it’s obvious that Europe has been flooded with non-Europeans, particularly migrants from the Middle East and North Africa.
So, what happened? How did we get here? Unsurprisingly to those who know how the US-sponsored white genocide in southern Africa7 and attempted to wipe out Syria’s Christians,8 the blame largely lies with America’s leftist elites. In this case, Obama’s Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.
Gaddafi: The Dictator Who Offered to Shut Off the Migrant Spigot
Just as it should be predictable that “democratic governance” in the Middle East and North Africa leads to anarchic disaster, it was entirely predictable that anarchy in the region would mean a flood tide of migrants headed to the safe region right across the relatively calm waters of the Meditteranean, Europe.
So, those European states most likely to be impacted by such a flood did their best to avoid it. Instead of stirring up trouble in the region, they tried to strike deals with the order-enforcing governments of those traditionally troubled lands.
In particular, Italy, the shoreline of which has lain open to predation since Classical times,9 was raided routinely by the Ottoman Turks,10 and now is ground zero for much of the migrant deluge, decided to strike a deal with the most influential leader in the North Africa region rather than embark on a policy of hostility with him.
Gaddafi, the Stable Leader with Whom a Deal was Possible
That leader was Libyan dictator and pan-African nationalist Muammar Gaddafi, who took control of Libya in 1969 and kept a firm grip on his country until deposed by a coalition of NATO warplanes and Islamic terrorists.
Though once a chief backer of Islamist terror, Gaddafi had, by the 2000s, become a generally responsible global leader. He gave up his country’s nuclear program,11 embarked on a policy of rapprochement with the West,12 and used oil revenues to develop Libya’s economy and create a functional education and healthcare system for his people.13 Though hardly an enlightened despot, much less a democratic leader, Gaddafi did govern Libya well enough that it had the “highest gross domestic product (GDP) at purchasing power parity (PPP) per capita of all of Africa.”14 In fact, “[t]he 2010 UN Human Development Index – which is a composite measure of health, education and income – ranked Libya 53rd in the world, and first in Africa.”15
Those benefits came because Gaddafi’s focus on development led to “widespread literacy, free medical care, education, and improvements in living conditions. Women in particular benefited, becoming ministers, ambassadors, pilots, judges and doctors. The government got wide support from the lower and middle classes.”16
All that is to say that Libya was, in the first decade of the 2000s, hardly a backward outpost of barbarism, much less the anarchic hellhole it is today. It was a functional, modernizing state that stood out as an outpost of civilization amid failing post-colonial states.
So, as a stable country with a functional economy and shrewd leader, it was also a country with which Italy, its former colonial leader, could make a deal to shut off the migrant spigot. That’s exactly what Italy decided to do, much to the chagrin of the pro-migration17 regime.
The Reasonable Deal Italy and Libya Struck
The basic deal Italy made with Gaddafi’s Libya in the summer of was an agreement to invest in Libya, its former colony,18 in exchange for Libya sweeping boats off the North African coast for migrants and ensuring those migrants did not show up on Italy’s shores. Further, Italy could immediately deport to Libya those illegals it caught, thus dodging onerous and lengthy “asylum” rules.
Predictably, that outraged “human rights” groups (read: color revolution-supporting NGOs and anti-Western civilization leftist groups). Euractiv, reporting on the deal struck and the outrage of those “human rights” groups, noted:19
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi personally welcomed Gaddafi on Wednesday during his first visit to Italy, staged as an historic closure of a “painful chapter” in the two countries’ past.
In the meantime, hundreds of people demonstrated in a Rome square to draw attention to what they described as Libya’s poor human rights record.
On the business side, Italy agreed to pay Libya a $5 billion reparations deal over its 1911-43 colonial rule. But in fact, most of the money is Italian investment committed over 20 years, and no transfer of sums will take place. Libya is also pumping petrodollars into major Italian companies like UniCredit and Eni, as well as supplying a quarter of Italy’s oil imports.
Under a ‘Treaty of Friendship’, the two countries agreed to cooperate in fighting illegal immigration. The pact allows Italy’s coastguard to swiftly deport boatloads of illegal immigrants back to Libyan shores, skipping procedures for filing potential asylum applications.
One of those “human rights” groups that went ballistic was the leftist NGO group Human Rights Watch, one closely affiliated with the ruling regimes in the liberal West,20 which said after the deal was struck that it was working at keeping out migrants. In that NGO’s words (emphasis added):21
Libyan leader Mu`ammar al-Gaddafi will visit Italy on June 10, 2009 to celebrate the ratification of an Italy-Libya Friendship Treaty that has already resulted in joint naval patrols that run roughshod over refugee and migrant rights, Human Rights Watch said today.
"Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and Mu`ammar al-Gaddafi are building their friendship agreement at the expense of people from other countries whom both regard as expendable," said Bill Frelick, refugee policy director at Human Rights Watch. "It looks less like friendship and more like a dirty deal to enable Italy to dump migrants and asylum seekers on Libya and evade its obligations."
Berlusconi promised to provide US$200 million a year over the next 25 years through investments in infrastructure projects in Libya. Italy provided three patrol boats to Libya on May 14, and has promised three more. Italy has also said that it will help construct a radar system to monitor Libya's desert borders, using the Italian security company, Finmeccanica.
Cosimo D'Arrigo, the commander of Italy's Finance Guard, said that the patrol boats would be "used in joint patrols in Libyan territorial water and international waters in conjunction with Italian naval operations," according to the ANSA news agency. So far, the joint patrols have succeeded in curtailing the flow of boat migrants to Italy.
Libya is not a party to the United Nations Refugee Convention and has no asylum system. It has a dismal record of abuse and mistreatment of migrants caught trying to flee the country by boat, and cannot seriously be regarded as a partner in any scheme that claims to protect refugees, Human Rights Watch said.
Since Italy established its new interdiction and summary return policy on May 6, about 500 migrants and asylum seekers have been interdicted by Italian security forces and their boats towed to Libya. The migrants are returned without even a cursory screening to determine whether any need protection or are particularly vulnerable, such as sick or injured persons, pregnant women, unaccompanied children, or victims of trafficking.
…
The Italian minister of interior, Roberto Maroni, declares that Libya is working "to keep illegal migrants from leaving." Human Rights Watch said that the accounts of migrants who are arrested for trying to leave Libya raise serious questions about whether its actions to prevent departures, encouraged and financed by Italy, violate the right of anyone to leave any country (International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, article 12) and the right of everyone to seek asylum (Universal Declaration of Human Rights, article 14). Italy's summary return of boat people to Libya also indicates that it may be reneging on its own obligations under international law not to return people to places where their lives or freedom would be threatened (Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, article 33) or where they would face inhuman and degrading treatment (article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights). Accounts from migrants about brutal treatment and the lack of asylum law and procedures in Libya raise grave concerns about the safety of the migrants that Italy returns to Libyan shores.
In other words, Italy paid a small fee that enabled it and the Libyans to police the region's waters and stop a flood tide of illegal migrants from reaching Italy’s shores. Leftists then went berserk over the deal, making all the same claims about “rights” they did when Trump tried to secure the American border, particularly about so-called asylum-seekers.22 Left unmentioned was why Italians did not, in their view, have a right not to be swamped by Saracens.
So, how did the US and its NATO partners in crime respond to the reasonable deal, struck by reasonable men, with the protection of Europe and the development of North Africa as their goal? It deposed Gadaffi and laughed as he died in the most brutal way imaginable,23 then flooded Europe with millions of migrants.
"We Came, We Saw, He Died": How Killary Flooded Europe with Migrants
When the so-called Arab Spring swept the region in the early 2010s,24 the Obama Regime and its lackeys reacted with glee.25 The chaos gave the “moderate rebels” (al Qaeda-affiliated terrorists) Team Obama a chance to kill Christians in Syria,26 Egypt’s government, a loyal US ally27 and promoter of peace in the region,28 was deposed and replaced with the Muslim Brotherhood,29 and Gaddafi was murdered and replaced by no one, so the deal with Italy became a dead letter, and migrants flooded into Europe.30
How did it all happen? Well, the case of Libya is instructive because what played out there is the broad strokes version of what happened across the rest of the region as well.
The Nation of Africa’s Best Leader Before the War
As mentioned previously, Libya was a very successful country in the first decade of the 21st century. Though hardly as wealthy as the United States, or even Europe and the Anglosphere, it was a standout, rare success in its neighborhood. Whereas anarchy and/or Islamic extremism were more or less the norm across Africa and the non-Gulf States in the Middle East, it was stable and had a well-funded and developed education system, healthcare system, and what problems there were, the government promptly tried to fix with relatively proactive policies:31
In Libya, a lower percentage of people lived below the poverty line than in the Netherlands....Libya ranked 61st, with a lower incarceration rate than Czech republic. It had the lowest infant mortality rate of all of Africa. Libya had the highest life expectancy of all of Africa, less than 5% of the population was undernourished, In response to the rising food prices around the world, the government of Libya abolished all taxes on food.
A fact the media cannot falsify is the HDI (Human Development Index) measured by UN officials. These data indicate, for example, that Libya had in 1970, a situation a little worse than Brazil (HDI of 0.541, against 0.551 of Brazil.) The Libyan index surpassed the Brazilian years later, and in 2008 was well ahead: 0.810 (ranked 43rd), compared to 0.764 for Brazil (ranking 59th). All three sub-indices that comprise the HDI are higher in Libya: income, longevity and education. Libya is the country with the highest HDI in Africa. Therefore, the best distribution of income and health care and public education—the last two are free. And almost 10% of Libyan students receive scholarships to study in foreign countries. In his “Green Book” Gadhafi wrote that workers should be politically involved and self-employed, and that the land belongs to those who work it and the house to those who reside there. And power shall be exercised by the people directly, without intermediaries, without politicians, through popular congresses and committees, where the whole population decides the fundamental issues of the district, city and country...real democracy, not capitalist “representative” democracy that works for those who have the most and ignores those who have little. (Taken from “Who Is Muammar Gaddafi?” by Antonio Cesar Oliveira)
Before the current USNATO [sic] military invasion, Libya was pumping one million 800 thousand barrels a day of excellent quality light oil, along with abundant deposits of natural gas. Such riches—because shared with the Libyan people--allowed Libya to reach life expectancy that is almost at 75 years of age and the highest per capita income in Africa. In December 1951, Libya became the first African country to attain its independence after WWII. Its harsh desert is located over an enormous lake of fossil waters, equivalent to more than three times the land area of Cuba; this has made it possible to construct a broad network of pipelines of fresh water that stretch from one end of the country to the other.
Then America rolled in and blew all that up, leaving in its wake open-air slave markets, gangland fights, and a social services desert. Or, as then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton put it, “We came, we saw, he died."32
What Happened
All was going well in Libya, so far as things in the notoriously violent and chaotic region can be going well, up until the Obama Administration and its “Arab Spring,” or a string of color revolutions meant to subvert dictatorial order and replace it with democratic anarchy.33 Protests began in Tunisia and spread across the region, setting Egypt ablaze, leading to chaos in Syria,34 regime change in Yemen, and the total destruction of Libya.
So, what happened in Libya? Well, shortly after Libya and Italy inked a deal to stop migrants from flooding into Europe, a “human rights” lawyer was arrested by Libyan security forces, and a small sit-in protest in the Libyan capital, Benghazi, resulted. It was promptly broken up by the security forces.35
As with other color revolutions,36 the West resorted to hysterics as soon as Gaddafi and the Libyan security apparatus stopped foreign-funded liberals from meddling in their internal affairs. As the “protests” spread, one of Qaddafi’s sons, Sayf al-Islam, blamed outside agitators for the deteriorating security situation and government forces took a hard line with the not so “mostly peaceful protesters,” using everything from small arms to helicopter gunships to fight back against that outside agitation.37
That’s when the leftist-controlled West went absolutely berserk, spreading lies and rumors about the security forces that were desperately trying, like the Syrian armed forces,38 to keep a lid on Islamist terror and foreign-backed agitation in their country. Predictably, the same “human rights” groups furious over Gaddafi’s anti-illegal immigration deal with Italy also wrung their hands and clutched their pearls39 over his quashing Islamist40 uprisings.
After much fighting, Western condemnation and economic attacks, and attempts by Gaddafi’s government to deal with the supply shortages stemming from the fighting, the Libyan security forces began to gain the upper hand:41
As the fighting continued, forces loyal to Qaddafi seemed to gain momentum, launching successful assaults to retake control in strategic areas around Tripoli and on the coast of the Gulf of Sidra. Attacking with fighter jets, tanks, and artillery, pro-Qaddafi forces had by March 10 driven rebel forces from Zawiyah, west of Tripoli, and from the oil-export centre of Ras Lanuf. Those gains highlighted the Qaddafi loyalists’ advantages in weaponry, training, and organization.
That’s when the West struck. Using baseless rumors that Gaddafi was distributing Viagra to his troops to encourage them to rape civilians (no evidence of that was found),42 along with the usual claims of “atrocities,” the leftist West got the UN Security Council to vote “10–0—with abstentions from Russia, China, Germany, India, and Brazil—to authorize military action, including imposition of a no-fly zone to protect Libyan civilians.”43
Gaddafi declared an immediate cease-fire in response, but the damage was done, and the warplanes were in the air. Guided bombs rained down on Libya,44 decimating government forces and assisting the Islamist rebels.45 The pro-Islamist air war conducted mainly by American and European warplanes eventually led to the brutal death of Gaddafi46 and the overthrow of his regime. As could be expected, we later found that “the whole pretext for the intervention, ostensibly to stop a ‘slaughter’ of civilians, was based on "erroneous assumptions and an incomplete understanding of the evidence.”47 So Libya was destroyed for nothing, and what followed was far worse than anything seen under Gaddafi.
The Wages of Anarchy are Death, both for Europe and Libya
The entirely predictable end result of NATO’s bombing campaign for Libya was that the country descended into chaos, much like Iraq after Bush’s invasion48 or Syria after Obama backed the Islamist, Christian-murdering rebels there.49 Instead of “freedom and liberal democracy” replacing Gaddafi’s dictatorship, the country got anarchy, warlords,50 and slave markets.51
Europe, meanwhile, got exactly what those “human rights” groups wanted when they protested the Libya-Italy migration deal: a tidal wave of illegal immigrants swamped Europe.52 As the Migration Policy Institute admitted (emphasis added):53
African and Middle Eastern migration flows to Libya and the country’s posture toward these migrants have changed dramatically since the 2011 fall of dictator Muammar Gaddafi. While Libya once was a destination for foreign workers drawn by a strong economy, post-civil war, migrants have used the country as a transit point to set off for Europe—though as European borders have hardened since the 2015-16 migration crisis, many have remained stranded.
…
Prior to the death of Gaddafi in October 2011, Libya was a prime destination for migrants within Africa. The country’s oil wealth propelled a strong economy and plentiful jobs. Yet that fell apart when Gaddafi was deposed. According to IOM, there were approximately 2.5 million migrant workers in Libya before the conflict started, but 800,000 fled during 2011, leaving vacancies throughout important sectors such as health and construction.
…
The Eritrean and Nigerian migrants encountered during the author’s research were part of a massive flow of asylum seekers and other migrants who reached Europe in 2015, when more than 1.3 million such arrivals occurred, and in 2016. However, unlike in Greece where the migrant crisis was short but intense during those two years, Italy was under constant pressure from 2014 to 2017. During this period between 119,000 and 181,000 migrants arrived in Italy each year, creating a sustained state of crisis. Amid the pressures on asylum processing and reception systems, as well as on political systems, the European Union and individual Member States began undertaking a series of measures to harden their borders and reduce the number of arrivals. Limiting boat arrivals across the Mediterranean, with Libya one of the lead setting-off points, became a key policy focus.
…
The effort has been effective at halting migrants. From 2014 through 2017, 625,000 migrants arrived in Italy via the sea, primarily departing from Libya, according to UNHCR, with a peak of 181,000 migrants in 2016.
Though the problem abated over the next few years, it has since returned with a vengeance. Growing worse and worse, Italy now estimates that 700,000 migrants or more might try to cross into Italy in 2023 alone:54
Intelligence reports indicate nearly 700,000 migrants are in Libya awaiting an opportunity to set out by sea toward Italy, a lawmaker from Premier Giorgia Meloni’s far-right party said Sunday, but a U.N. migration official called the number not credible.
Tommaso Foti, the lower parliamentary house whip for the Brothers of Italy Party, told television channel Tgcom24 the Italian secret services estimated that 685,000 migrants in Libya, many of them in detention camps, were eager to sail across the central Mediterranean Sea in smugglers’ boats.
That follows after “some 105,000 migrants reached Italy by sea in 2022,” meaning they mostly came from Libya.55 Were Gaddafi still in charge, not only would Libyans be living in a relative land of plenty, but those migrants would have been stopped by Libyan naval craft before they could reach Europe.
The Christian Science Monitor, describing how the whole process played out, noted:56
The migration crisis in its current iteration stems, in part, from the fall of Libya's Muammar Qaddafi. In 2010, Europe was moving quickly to normalize relations with the former dictator. Oil interests played a role, but so did the desire of many European nations to outsource migrant control to the North African country.
Libya's coast has a long history of sending people – willing and unwilling – to Europe and the Americas. Ports like Tripoli and Benghazi were the final stops for medieval slave-trading caravans from the African interior until the 19th century. In recent decades, migrants have shoved off for Italy and Spain in rickety fishing boats, with Libyan officials looking the other way.
Mr. Qaddafi was well aware of European alarm at the rising tide of migrants in his final years in power. He used it as a powerful wedge to improve his own standing. Back to 2004, Qaddafi began making deals with individual European states to control the tide of migrants. In August 2010, he visited his friend Silvio Berlusconi, then president of Italy, in Rome and said Europe would turn "black" without his help.
"Tomorrow Europe might no longer be European, and even black, as there are millions who want to come in," Qaddafi said. "What will be the reaction of the white and Christian Europeans faced with this influx of starving and ignorant Africans ... we don't know if Europe will remain an advanced and united continent or if it will be destroyed, as happened with the barbarian invasions."
Qaddafi had a handy solution. He offered to shut down his country and its coastal waters to the job seekers in exchange for €5 billion a year. He pointed to his work with Italy as proof he could get the job done. In June 2009, he signed a "friendship" agreement with Italy that involved joint naval patrols against migrants and Italy handing over migrants captured en route to Europe to Libya, no questions asked. The number of Africans caught trying to illegally enter Italy fell by more than 75 percent that year.
By the end of the year Qaddafi had struck a more modest €50 million deal. Internment camps were built and watchtowers erected on the beaches
…
It's hard to imagine that boatloads of African migrants are being filled in Tripoli without some of the militias that control the city taking a cut from the people smugglers. The Tunisian captain of the vessel that sank over the weekend is now in Italian custody and has been charged with murder. But in Libya, there's money to be made and few consequences for the gunmen who control the ports. For Europe, there's no prospect of a new Qaddafi to act as warden.
So, in the end, the pro-migration elites got what they wanted all along: an uninterrupted pipeline of migrants to Europe, with no stable, functional leader to stand in the way.
https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/politics/421814-us-risks-human-rights-abuses-by-funding-border-wall/; https://www.americanprogress.org/article/president-trumps-alarming-human-rights-agenda-home-abroad/; https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/02/01/border-wall-dangerous-waste; https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/12/11/trump-administrations-final-insult-and-injury-refugees