Latest update March 29th, 2024 12:59 AM
Oct 23, 2011 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom
Muammar Gaddafi said that he would never flee his country; that he preferred to die as a martyr than run. He did not flee. Like the true solider he was he died in his country, the victim of an imperialist conspiracy and an indifferent world.
Among the countries that became indifferent to Gaddafi was Guyana, which did not offer any condemnation of the international intervention in Libya.
The message must have finally registered to the rulers in Guyana that they ran the risk of offending the West if they sided with the Gaddafi regime. And this was so despite there being flagrant violations of international law and in spite of the fact that Gaddafi faced an armed insurrection from within his country and was seeking to put it down when he was accused of crimes of humanity against his people. Those accusations became the pretext for external intervention, sanctioned by the United Nations, as China and Russia shamelessly abstained.
On the day the forces of the National Transition Council cold-bloodedly executed Gaddafi after capturing him alive, the Secretary General of the United Nations issued a statement in which he called for the end to the conflict.
It was interesting that when Gaddafi made repeated offers for talks with the rebels and for Libyans to settle their differences, calls rejected by the rebels, the United Nations refused a peaceful solution, including an offer by Hugo Chavez for an international resolution to the crisis.
The United Nations disgraced itself by the Libyan vote in the Security Council, but Libya contributed to its own demise by its isolation over time of countries with which it had developed relations. Among those countries was Guyana.
Libya has never offered much to Guyana. The People’s National Congress government has cultivated close relations with the regime of Muammar Gaddafi and there were some investments in fishing and agriculture but apart from this, relations were based on anti-imperialism.
Before facing international isolation because of his support for the anti-liberation struggles and movements perceived by the West as supporting terrorism, Gaddafi had reached out to other countries of the world that were also anti-imperialist. On this basis, diplomatic relations were established with the government of Guyana.
These relations brought limited benefits to Guyana. In fact, Gaddafi hardly helped anyone outside of Africa and the Middle East. He lathered countries and movements in those parts of the world with support, but when it came to the Caribbean, he had little friends during the years of isolation because his government offered, relative to its means, only token assistance.
The government of Guyana, a few years ago, misguidedly went on a drive to forge closer relations with countries in the Middle East, as well as with Libya. It was a major misstep because there was little to indicate that any assistance would have been forthcoming.
The much anticipated flood of investment that was to originate from Kuwait is yet to materialise. Iran is supposed to provide some support to map Guyana’s mineral resources, but there is no clear indication as to whether any work has commenced.
During his Middle East sojourn, the President of Guyana met with the Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, in a tent in Libya. Not long after, Libya insulted Guyana by sending an envoy with a token cheque for charitable purposes. The sum received was less than what it probably cost the envoy to reach these shores. It was clear for that act that Libya was not interested in deepening relations in Guyana and that our government was short-sighted and misguided in believing that it could attract assistance, aid or investment from the oil-rich countries of the Middle East and North Africa.
The government of Guyana noted that these oil-rich countries had huge sovereign funds, accumulated from the oil proceeds. These funds were usually invested in the West, but given the financial crisis and the fear of the freezing of those funds, the government of Guyana believed that it could encourage those countries to invest their sovereign funds in projects in Guyana.
The Guyana government clearly did not seek the right advice, because if they had, they would have understood that Guyana is of almost non-existent trade or economic interest to the oil-producing countries of the Middle East and North Africa.
It now faces a tough decision as to whether to recognise a regime that came to power through insurrection. It should not. In addition, it should immediately cut diplomatic ties with all the member states of the Arab League, whose resolution calling for international action against Libya has opened the floodgates to the decolonisation of Africa.
THIS IDIOT TELLING GUYANA WE HAVE NO SAY IN THE 50% PROFIT SHARING AGREEMENT WE HAVE WITH EXXON.
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