Of Bettors and Debtors

Dr. Ali Tarhouni and "the True Voice of the Masses"
December 24, 2011
last edits, new title, Jan. 17, 2012

Dr.Ali Tarhouni was an exile during all but a few months of Gaddafi's "Arab Socialist" Jamahiriya system, studying free market economics in the United States, and teaching it at the University of Washington, Seattle. In February, he returned to Libya to join the new NTC (NATO Terrorist Collaborator) government as its oil and finance minister. Once the country was brutalized into submission, he would try and turn back the "growing ... resource nationalism" that had alarmed Western oil companies and the State Department from 2007 onward, helping make war more likely.

I had cheered his failure to be re-appointed to the post for the 2012 NTC team. But I was missing much about that. Now he's taken a bold new turn, it would seem, tossing off the shackles of indebtedness to would-be foreign controllers with material interests.

Vanessa Gera, Associated Press, November 25:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/25/ali-tarhouni-libya-new-leaders_n_1112889.html

http://articles.boston.com/2011-11-25/news/30441806_1_mustafa-abdul-jalil-oil-and-finance-minister-libyan-people

etc..

Tarhouni ... was one of the most visible and internationally respected faces of the Libyan revolutionary leadership that presided over the ouster of Moammar Gadhafi's regime.

But he said he refused an offer to join Prime Minister Abdurrahim el-Keib's transitional Cabinet, because he believes that those now in power are not representative. He accused them of being "supported from the outside by money, arms and PR."

"The voices that we see now are the voices of the elite," he said.

The U.S.-educated [elite] Tarhouni, who managed the then-rebel government's financial system, is one of the first senior Libyan politicians to openly question the new government's legitimacy.

He said the countries who backed the rebellion have interests in Libya, "some which we know and some which we don't know." While he didn't elaborate, Tarhouni did not object when a journalist suggested that he was speaking about Qatar.

No one asked if he also meant France, the U.S., or the U.K. Would he have said yes? Or is he just picking on Qatar on behalf of the other partners, jealous as they are that the Gulf Arabs have greater sway with fellow Muslims than their own more familiar pale face of Imperialism?

"Some are thinking of imposing their will on the Libyan people and that's a mistake," Tarhouni said. "For me the question of sovereignty is the most important. This revolution was for re-establishing dignity and sovereignty."

No comment. Gera continues:

Earlier this week, the chairman of Libya's National Transitional Council, Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, also indicated that Qatar was meddling in Libyan affairs.

He said Libyans remain grateful to "our brothers" in Qatar for supporting the revolt against Gadhafi, but said Qatar was doing some things in Libya "that we as the NTC don't know about." He said his leadership protested to Qatar's leaders, but was told that the Gulf state had a right to be involved because it "betted on the success" of the revolution.

If true, that sounds quite annoying.Who wants to be told they're like a racehorse someone's going to ride home now because of the money someone made betting on them? Especially when they couldn't even reach the finish line, and only won by default because the bettors had snipers in the stands killing all the other horses?

But again, the Qataris are far from the only ones doing that here. It was the intent of "The West" at large from February forward. Dr. Tarhouni, the American puppet (??), may be using the chasm of discontent his party unleashed in order to blame foreign meddling on junior partner Qatar and cut them out of the nation-building. I want the Qataris ripped off and punished now, just not by and for the benefit of the bigger bullies yet with a longer history of neo-Imperialism.

Anyways, whatever his motive, Tarhouni's new ideas are ambitious. A later article from the Washington Post gives hints where he's headed now, after a brief return to Seattle to see his family.

[O]n Tuesday he described [the NTC] as a good government, and said he would continue working to form a new, broad, democratic political party.

“There’s really no manual for building a state from scratch,” he said. “What makes it really tough is — we’re hoping, we’re dreaming, and I believe strongly we will succeed in building a democratic society — but there’s really no history of democracy in Libya. ... I thought I could serve it better by building this political movement.”

He'll be doing this in Libya, sounds like. For a hint of its flavor, maybe even going for the green vote (and thus acknowledging it exists):

Among the most memorable moments of his return to Libya from exile were standing in the capital, Tripoli, and declaring it to be free, as well as holding the hand of a crying, injured 14-year-old supporter of Gadhafi, he said.

“I told him, ‘You’re not my enemy,’” Tarhouni said. “He died three hours later.”

He was less saddened by the death of Gadhafi.

“I stood over his corpse the same day he was killed,” he said. “I thought of the comrades and friends who died in prison and never saw this day. ... I couldn’t believe this ugly corpse did this damage to Libya.”

No, it was the NTC and the bombs and other support from NATO countries and, yes, Qatar, that made an ugly corpse of their leader, killed that boy who loved him, and starved and wrecked the country, leaving all the questions about starting "from scratch."

Returning to the Gera piece for more foreshadowing:

Libya's new Cabinet, a gathering of mostly older men who are relatively unknown, faces daunting challenges. They must prepare the country for democratic elections in seven months while establishing control over a nation shattered by four decades of Gadhafi's rule and eight months of civil war.

Tarhouni said that more than 90 percent of Libyans are not represented by this new leadership.

"It is about time that we hear the true voices of the masses," he said.

What if that voice is loud and green? It was until July anyway, and nothing's changed since then but greater brute force, physical defeat, and a greater hate, kept deeper inside, for the Libyan Contras sent to stupidly and brutally subvert the country to outside powers.

I don't trust him in the long run but this type of statement should be rewarded and encouraged, especially as/if it gets more sincere and more meaningful.

Update Jan. 17:
Confirmation that Tarhouni is only helping sideline Qatar, not fighting foreign control: Italy Last Among Libya Friends for Potential Oil Concessions. Flavia Krause-Jackson, Bloomberg. January 09, 2012, 6:00 PM EST

France and the U.S. haven’t come across as “someone who is basically grabbing” and are “playing it right,” former Libyan Oil Minister Ali Tarhouni, who quit shortly after the capture and death of Qaddafi, said in an interview yesterday in Washington. Italy “will take time to figure it out.”

At stake is Italy’s position as the top energy investor in Libya, where its closest rivals are Total SA of France, which was the first country to recognize the Libyan opposition, and Russia’s Gazprom OAO. The U.S. and the U.K. joined France in leading efforts to win United Nations approval for air strikes against Qaddafi’s forces.

“We are indebted to the French, and I cannot find the right words to say it,” Tarhouni said, listing Libya’s “friends” in the following order: France, the U.S., Britain and Italy. “If everything else is the same, of course we will remember our friends.”

"Indebted" is just the right word. Time to start paying back. As for who's down the list even than Italy; Qatar, apparently, Russia and China (abstain and complain!), most of Africa (mercenaries!), and at the very end of the global list of friends of this revolution, battered to a pulp, is Libya.

Libya's Free Market Future

May 11 2011
last edits August 5

The Future Path and the Basic Problem
Gheriani tried to assure me that the new state the rebels envision would be led not by confused mobs or religious extremists but by “Western-educated intellectuals,” like him.
- Jon Lee Anderson, New Yorker, April 4

This message from rebel Transitional National Council spokesman Mustafa Gheriani is re-assuring in a way, ominous in another. The mobs of "pro-democracy demonstrators" the world is so excited to protect are a troubling lot, with the urge to burn soldiers and lynch blacks entirely too close to the surface of their hearts, oozing hatefully with the slightest scratch of a Twitter rumor. Known al Qaeda operatives took the lead in Dernah and apparently set up an Islamic emirate (quickly recalled and denied). Some rebels looted, raped, tortured and killed for fun. All of this was part of the overall takeover, but not part of the long-term future, it's hoped by more level heads.

That future path will surely run to the West, and will be informed by base material and geopolitical motives - obviously oil, but also its amazing water system, the central bank and so on. The whole Libyan state is public-sector, government run, with proceeds that took Libya from among the poorest countries in the world to the richest (per capita) in Africa and with the highest living standards by far. There's a certain level at which it's obvious that this is the crux of the decades of demonization, sanctions, the epic framing of Libya for Iran's destruction of Pan Am 103, and so on. Too much shared with the people, not enough with Wall Street.

A vendetta against Gaddafi's unusual economic system could also help explain NATO-types' approach to this "humanitarian crisis." It's costing more lives in "stalemate" than Gaddafi's repression likely would have, but it does have the opposite outcome for who runs Libya. Coincidence?

Obvious air support for the rebels (or is it the rebels are obviously NATO's ground troops?) is masked always as a simple measure to protect innocent civilians. An obvious assassination atempt that kills four innocent civilians, three of them under two years of age, was a simple part of the aforesaid mission, targeting command and control, and communications, intelligence, morale, whatever. It's all obvious, just too much so to bother explaining. Doublespeak is what it's become.

The French Connection and February 17 Movement
All this when much evidence suggests the spontaneous revolt was planned in advance with outside (mostly French) help. Nouri al-Mesmari was Libya's protocol minister - Gaddafi's C-3PO - until he resigned in protest at the shooting of protesters on the Day of Rage. He was in Paris at the time, having gone there for some reason four months earlier, in between meeting with French secret service and leaders of the planned rebellion.

Alex Lantier at the World Socialist Website describes al-Mesmari as "a prominent pro-free-market reformer in the Libyan ruling elite." In a video interview shortly after resigning, he revealed he is the son of a monarchist minister, who's long been trying to get back nationalized family wealth.

Another leftist at the Monthly Review, Vijay Prashad, describes the top leaders of February 17, three of whom allegedly met with al-Mesmari: "These men (Fathi Boukhris, Farj Charrani, Mustafa Gheriani and All Ounes Mansouri) are all entrepreneurs."  [5] As the quote above shows, their spokesman Gheriani, the one not on the Paris trip, at least-considers himself western-educated.

Rebel Leadership and Privatization Fixation
Those entrepreneurs were arrested, aside from Gheriani, in the days before the war started. From there, he and others then became important in the Interim Transitional National Council in Benghazi. Vijay Prashad wrote of two of the more important and prominent among these:

The Benghazi council chose as its leader the colorless former justice minister Mustafa Abdel Jalil. Jalil's brain is Mahmoud Jibril, a former head of the National Economic Development Board (NEDB). A U.S. embassy cable from May 11, 2009 (09TRIPOLI386) describes Jibril as keen on a close relationship with the U.S. and eager "to create a strategic partnership between private companies and the government." Jibril's NEBD had collaborated with Ernst & Young and the Oxford Group to make the Libyan state more "efficient." Jibril told the ambassador that "American companies and universities are welcome to join him" in the creation of new sectors outside hydrocarbons and that "we should take him up on his offer." His Ph.D. in strategic planning from the University of Pittsburg is useful in this context.

More comes to us via the Willyloman wordpress page, May 10: Al Qaeda Linked “Rebels” in Libya Need More Money… So They Come to Congress. It says in part:

The money poured in already by outside sources looking to cash-in on the wholesale privatization of Libya like the 20 million ponied up by Great Britain, is running out. Or so claims Ali Tarhouni, Washington’s man on the inside of the Interim Transitional National Council (TNC). Tarhouni is an American professor of economics at the University of Washington but he’s taken a bit of a leave to serve as the TNC’s minister of finance, oil and economics.

Now he has returned to Washington * from Benghazi to pass the hat so to speak in D.C. looking for access to the 35 billion or so of the Libyan people’s money that Hillary Clinton [sic] froze. You see, he want’s to use the people’s money to return Libya back to the good old days of the corrupt monarchy, the system that was entrenched in Libya before the revolution in 1969 led by one Moammar Gadhafi.

*(To clear up some confusion - the Washington of that University is the state in the northwest. "You dub," as it's called around here, is in Seattle.)

This American theft ("freezing") of Libyan riches is a shameful and cruel episode. By fiat of piracy Obama withheld this money - over $5,000 for each Libyan man, woman, and child - until they join the rebels (whom we're willing to pay) or come under their rule. It was deceptively called Gaddafi's personal fortune, siphoned from the Libyan people. An equal or larger amount was also frozen by various nations outside the United States, turning the people of Libya into something like Human shields in a socio-economic sense.

To explain his trip back to the US, finance minister Tarhouni told MSNBC:

“We’re faced with the same sanctions as Gadhafi,” he said, referring to U.S. sanctions that have frozen more than $34 billion of Libyan government assets, in addition to U.N. and European sanctions. “I don’t have access to any foreign exchange to cover any purchases, open lines of credits to merchants, so that’s a very challenging aspect to what I do.”

An older article I missed had mentioned Dr. Tarhouni in his American acedemic connection - Dr. K. R. Bolton, Foreign Policy Journal, Feb 26

“Most participants argued for privatization and a strong private sector economy.” That is a statement culled from a report of a panel discussion entitled “Post-Qaddafi Libya: The Prospect and The Promise,” organized by Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies in 1994. Dr Ali Tarhouni stated at the conference, “with privatization, entrepreneurs will reach out and get involved in regional cooperation by searching for markets.” Is that what the long-planned, well-funded “spontaneous revolts” now toppling regimes like a house of cards is actually about?”

The handy thing is how many talking heads and think-tank experts there are to back these guys up. "Of course privatization is the answer! Gaddafi was against it and he was evil! Had mercenaries on Viagra rape kids! Just look at the state Libya was in before under Gaddafi's Green Book sytem!" Indeed, take a look - ask for specifics. Environmentally speaking, do we need more bio-diversity, or more monoculture? Why is it different when it comes to economic systems?

And let's be honest a moment - in an age of such Western economic failure, is the Euro-Atlantic community really more likely to be dispesnsers of good advice - good enough for a regime change war?  Or to be looking for some stored up financial blood to suck, via a regime change war and the plunder-by-privatization of Libya?