Eder Peña, Misión Verdad, in Internationalist 360°, February 5th 2019
https://libya360.wordpress.com/2019/02/05/from-yugoslavia-iraq-libya-to…
Originally posted at Misión Verdad. Translation Internationalist 360º
Misión Verdad Editorial Note: In a context where the discourse of “humanitarian aid” is warned as an operation to be carried out in Venezuela by the United States, we republished the present investigation of late 2017, in order to keep fresh in memory the chronicle of what happened in countries of the Balkans, the Horn of Africa and the Levant, after “humanitarian” operations were applied with a visibly destructive character.
Let the history of other peoples serve as a mirror to what happened and what could happen if Washington decides to invade Venezuelan territory by military force, because the disasters that have resulted from such “aid” bring greater negative consequences than anticipated.
A few days ago, the U.S. Congress passed a “Humanitarian Assistance Act. In theory with this legal instrument, still awaiting Senate approval, it would seek to provide humanitarian assistance to the Venezuelan population at the same time as it reinforces the financial blockade against the country by importing food and medicines. Do we know the implications of “humanitarian aid” for the countries that have received its impacts and how profitable it is for those who traffic in it? Let’s look at three tragic cases.
The former Yugoslavia – how the US has an aircraft carrier on land
After decades of dismantling by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, more political strategies by Germany and the US succeeded in dismantling the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia), the last remnant of socialism in Europe, and recolonizing the Balkans.
Geopolitical and economic movements separated Croatia and Slovenia, generating a chain reaction in which Bosnia experienced a conflict of more than two camps: Serbs against Croats, Croats against Muslims, Serbs against Muslims, Serbs against Muslims, Serbs and Croats allied against Muslims, these in turn allied with Serbs against Croats, Muslims with Croats against Serbs.
The “humanitarian” sanctions of the United Nations (UN) in 1992 to Yugoslavia economically isolated the country, at the time President Bill Clinton approved a plan of “humanitarian aid” to guarantee, supposedly, the operation of hospitals and basic services of the population. By then, with the plan in place, per capita income had dropped to $700 per year, unemployment had risen to 60%, Serbian civilians endured a 37% increase in infectious deaths, and their calorie consumption had fallen by 28%. The most amazing thing was that inflation, as a result of these sanctions, reached 363 quadrillion percent. While no sanctions were applied to Tudjman’s Croatia, which ethnically “cleansed” nearly 200,000 Serbs through rape, execution and bombing in the same period, and with the support of private military companies made up of U.S. veterans.
The disintegration of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia also led to the unilateral proclamation of the Republic of Kosovo by Western-funded insurgents in 1991. To counter the independence intentions of the Kosovar Albanians, the authorities in Belgrade (Serbia) resorted to force, while ending the autonomous status Kosovo had enjoyed since 1974 within the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Since 1996 there has been an escalation and the military operations (ranging from murder, kidnapping, white slavery, organ trafficking, heroin trafficking) of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) have intensified, provoking the Serbian reaction.
After a fierce media campaign, Yugoslavia was accused of excessive and indiscriminate use of force, resulting in numerous victims and a large number of refugees; on 23 September 1998, the Security Council adopted resolution 1199, in which it stated that the deteriorating situation in Kosovo constituted a threat to peace and security in the region. On 13 October 1998, NATO issued an ultimatum to Yugoslavia to comply with these demands.
In March 1999, NATO launched its 78-day air assault on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia without Security Council approval, more than 1,000 fighter planes launched more than 2,000 air strikes in almost 40,000 raids, dropping more than 20,000 bombs on the former Yugoslavia, killing thousands of civilians, men and women, as well as more than 1,000 Yugoslav soldiers and policemen. It also used weapons considered criminal under international law, such as depleted uranium and cluster bombs, and bombed only state-owned enterprises and factories, as well as state housing projects, water supplies, railways, bridges, hospitals and schools, which has translated into “privatization by bombing.
Washington’s intention was to try to create an “Israel” in the Balkans, a vassal state that owes them everything and can be used as an “aircraft carrier” in such a sensitive strategic region. With the construction in Kosovo of the military base Camp Bondsteel (the largest in Europe), it can house up to 7,000 soldiers, is equipped to guard the entire Balkan territory and even the Black Sea and Turkey. This was the strategic objective of the sanctions and “humanitarian aid” promoted by the United States.
Iraq: from weapons that did not exist to civil war
In November 2001, after the attack on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York, then US President George W. Bush defined Iraq as the strategic objective of the “War on Terrorism”. His administration already had a plan of attack against the nation and its Secretary of State, Colin Powell, coordinated the military invasion not without preparing an oiled media machine that propitiated the ground to initiate chaos.
Bush Jr. justified the invasion with the argument that the then Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, had weapons of mass destruction, even though intelligence agencies such as the CIA and MI6 knew that such weapons did not exist. An Iraqi deserter declared that he had worked in the supervision of bacteriological weapons: nine years later, he admitted his lie to the BBC and justified it in his desire for Iraq to rid itself of Hussein’s regime.
In reality, the US invasion of Iraq was a military action to gain control of the Arab nation’s oil resources and expand its geo-strategic position in the Middle East, its “fight against terrorism” operation resulted in a civil war.
The invasion marked the beginning of turbulence in the Middle East, with the fall and capture of Saddam Hussein in December 2003 and his death on December 30, 2006. The number of attacks in the country increased sevenfold in the first three years alone, with Al Qaeda taking responsibility for the bloodiest. This led to the emergence of terrorist groups such as the Daesh, which also expanded into Syria.
Nearly 2.7 million Iraqis have been forced to leave their homes by unrest and violence, half were refugees outside Iraq, while others have fled their homes but remained in the country.
One study argues that the war and occupation directly and indirectly claimed the lives of about half a million Iraqis from 2003 to 2011, and that violence peaked in 2006 and 2007. More than 60% of the excess deaths of men, women and children reported between 2003 and 2011 were the direct result of shootings, bombings, air strikes or other forms of violence. The rest was due to the collapse of the health system and the infrastructure that maintained drinking water, food, transport, waste management and energy.
Since the 90s, rations of flour, rice, oil and sugar have been distributed within the framework of the Public Distribution System, as a way to help the poorest families survive the war, while the Usaid reports that between 2014 and 2017 the funding of “humanitarian aid” for Iraq has been 1.7 billion dollars. A round business.
Libya, chaos marks NATO
Libya’s “humanitarian crisis” was declared in February 2011, after the beginning of some supposed protests that in the background constituted a violent escalation similar to the Venezuelan guarimbas, only that the use of conventional weapons was opened.
Three days after the “uprising,” The Guardian quoted Al Jazeera’s interview with “political activist” Amer Saad, who said: “Protesters on al-Bayda have been able to take control of the military airbase in the city and have executed 50 African mercenaries and two Libyan conspirators. Even today in Derna, several conspirators were executed. They were locked up in the cells of a police station because they resisted, and some died in flames inside the building.
NGOs such as the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the Libyan League for Human Rights (LLDH) claimed that Gaddafi was killing his own people, called for Libya’s suspension from the UN Human Rights Council and urged the UN Security Council to “review the situation and consider referral to the International Criminal Court. According to the two NGOs, “the repression has caused the death of at least 300 to 400 people since 15 February” and “the Libyan regime is apparently using mercenaries from Chad, Niger and Zimbabwe” (or have they been Chavista collectives?).
In collaboration with the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), more than 70 NGOs echoed the need to suspend Libya from the Human Rights Council, as well as urging the Security Council to invoke the principle of “responsibility to protect” (R2P) for the supposed benefit of the Libyan people.
Without the Gaddafi government countering the accusations, without evidence or demanding that they be presented, the Human Rights Council followed the recommendation and then the Security Council adopted resolutions 1970 and 1973, authorizing a no-fly zone for Libyan military aviation, and although article 2 of the 1973 resolution emphasized the need to use diplomacy to find a peaceful solution, the bombing did not take long to begin.
After the Battle of Sirte, in which Gaddafi was assassinated, journalists and NGOs witnessed looting of homes, widespread torture and ex-officials, soldiers and civilians executed in numbers exceeding 500 bodies.
Between 2012 and 2015, Libya’s GDP fell from 82 to 29 billion dollars. In 2008, three years before the NATO attack, it reached 87 billion dollars. Public debt increased from 3.7% in 2013 to 100% in 2017. Since NATO declared Libya “liberated” after Gaddafi’s assassination in October 2011, the country has plunged into chaos, today it is a hotbed of Islamist brigades, including Daesh, rival governments and tribes compete for power and immigrants on their way to Europe are sold into open slave markets.
NATO weapons directed against Libya ended up in the hands of terrorists linked to Al Qaeda. A Libyan rebel commander admitted in March 2011 that his fighters had links to al-Qaida and that the White House was well aware (albeit “concerned”) that Qatar was sending weapons to jihadists inside Libya from the beginning of the war.
A UN report says they have requested 165.6 million dollars for humanitarian projects, but only 48.3 million (or 28%) of the projects have been funded, while the European Commission reports that it has allocated a total of 29.76 million euros in “humanitarian aid” to respond to the most urgent needs of internally displaced persons, returnees and other vulnerable groups in conflict-affected areas.
The Humanitarian Threat against Venezuela
Now that the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives calls on the Secretary of State and the Usaid to “develop a strategy to provide humanitarian aid to the people of Venezuela,” and that the MUD disappears in the middle of the show they finish interpreting today (they were but were not there), the U.S. strategy is clear: to take command and action in the disintegration of the Venezuelan state.
Phrases such as those of the head of said committee, Ed Royce, who declared that “the international community, the regional leaders (…) must unite so that Maduro takes seriously the need to resolve this serious political and humanitarian crisis”, are already common in the cases that we present here, they have even done their essays in the United Nations.
These are veiled threats to the stability of the country and the region where there are too many accomplices to execute them. The project proposes to take to the UN a resolution that obliges the Venezuelan State to accept “humanitarian aid”, a movement similar to the one applied to Iraq, Libya and the former Yugoslavia.