By Soroor Ahmed, TwoCircles.net,
Sounds surprising. Osama Bin Laden is killed when the American and British forces are busy attacking anti-Osama regime of Muammar-al-Gaddafi in Libya. In fact he was eliminated only hours after the death of at least one son and three grandchildren of Gaddafi in the NATO bombardment on Libya.
Osama was liquidated in Pakistan when he was not hitting the headlines in the West. In fact the media in the United States and Europe were giving more coverage to the royal marriage in United Kingdom and operation in Libya.
President Barack Husain Obama got rid of Osama when more and more people in the Middle East are taking up the peaceful struggle, be it in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Bahrain, Yemen and Jordan. He was bumped off when the myth of Islamic Terrorism got exploded.
Ironically, the movements in these countries are both inherently against dictatorship, anti-America as well as anti-Osama. That is why Muslim Brotherhood, the biggest organization in the Arab world, while reacting to the news said that the killing of Bin Laden “eliminates one cause of violence.”
The West and Israel were alarmed by a totally new type of largely democratic upsurge in these countries. Since almost all these respective regimes, are/were backed by the West it was natural for them to feel embarrassed as well as disturbed. There was no scope for their intervention till things boiled up in Libya a few weeks after the big upheaval in Egypt.
Though Gaddafi discarded his earlier anti-West stand, especially after 9/11 and leaders like the then British Prime Minister Tony Blair and even the then US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Tripoli a few years back, yet Libya was always a soft target.
So when the people of Libya took to streets peacefully Gaddafi used brutal force to suppress them. He accused Al-Qaeda of fomenting trouble in the country. He might have raised the bogey of Osama Bin Laden to seek sympathy and help of West.
But the West had some other plan. It wanted to intervene anywhere in the Muslim world. So on March 19, 2011––exactly eight years after the March 19, 2003 invasion of Iraq––US and British planes started bombing Libya.
While Saddam Hussein, once a great friend of the West, was attacked on the plea that he was supporting Al-Qadea, in the other oil-rich country the dictator is being targeted when he is shouting that Al-Qaeda is after him.
Incidentally, hours before the operation against Al-Qaeda leader, Gaddafi’s youngest son and three grandkids were reportedly killed and the Libyan envoy in London was expelled.
The irony is that the western media is not linking this two very significant developments for obvious reasons. In Libya the West were not invited by the rebels as the US and Britain are trying to make it out. In fact many rebels too were killed in raids, but the Allied forces said that it happened accidentally.
The West appear to be divided over the Libyan involvement. The Allied are finding themselves over-stretched and after one and half month they have failed to achieve the goal.
After almost a decade of stalemate in Afghanistan and Iraq––though apparently the West won the battles on the ground––the American establishment wanted to hit several birds with one stone.
They wanted to shift the global attention from Libya and upsurge in the Middle East. Besides, they wanted to give their own people a sense of victory. Many in the United States were not at all impressed by the capture of Kabul and Baghdad. Even the arrest and subsequent execution of Saddam did not give them cathartic satisfaction. They were convinced that Saddam was not involved in any attack on the western target anywhere in the world. In fact he was the best friend who fought eight-year long battle with the enemy number one of US, that is, Iran.
But regarding Osama Bin Laden there appeared to be clear unanimity in the United States as well as Europe. So the Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Husain Obama ordered his elimination and gave the countrymen a big trophy. But the killing has raised several questions. The most important one is: will it lead to the withdrawal of the US troops from Afghanistan?