If the revolutionaries lose the confrontation with Muammar, I will lose my confidence in this nation…once more. A few days before Gaddafi brought the western city of Zawyia down on top of its people, Abdul Rahman Shalgam warned me of what will happen as though he could see it himself. He is a former Libyan Foreign Minister who is familiar with the Colonel's regime from within, and he has recently quit his post as the Libyan Ambassador to the United Nations to join the opposition. I had called on the Egyptian army, with the start of the Libyan uprising on the fifteenth of last month, to strike Gaddafi's forces. I did not call for a land invasion across one thousand kilometers, but for air strikes to eliminate the regime's military assets. Abdul Rahman Shalgam said that a no-fly zone over Libya is necessary to prevent Gaddafi from killing Libyan civilians, and currently, there is Western talk regarding such a measure. Both President Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron have discussed the situation in Libya, specifically the option of imposing a no-fly zone, and said that all options are indeed on the table. Personally, I want to see an Arab intervention before witnessing yet another Western intervention in an Arab or Muslim country. Two days ago, GCC ministers called for implementing a no-fly zone over Libya, and I hope that the Arab foreign ministers will reiterate this call in their emergency meeting today, and will go further than that by explicitly calling for the removal of the Gaddafi regime by any means necessary, including an Egyptian military intervention that would restore confidence in all Arab armed forces. Perhaps the Arab ministers will also declare their support for the Libyan National Council and its president Mustafa Abdul Jalil, since he is a former Minister of Justice and judge. In a phone conversation we had, Abdul Rahman Shalgam told me that Abdul Jalil is an honest man who is not seeking to rule to begin with, and that all the members of the council are like him, including some who spent 20 years in prison or who were sentenced to death. Today, these people are confronting a regime that is corrupt to the bone, beginning with the president and his sons, down to the clique that does not want reform because it alone benefits from the corruption of the regime. Abdul Rahman Shalgam, like all other Libyans, is opposed to Western military intervention in his country. He believes that a no-fly zone is sufficient to prevent Gaddafi from using military aircraft, mercenaries, and ground forces equipped with tanks and so forth, to kill people, especially that Gaddafi and his son have promised, or threatened, to fight until the last Libyan, or in other words, hundreds of thousands of people dead at the very least. The best argument against the Gaddafi regime is the criminally insane Colonel himself. He is so foolish that he believes that people are foolish or insane and ignorant like him. For this reason, he claims that the heroic people of Libya rising up against him today are merely al-Qaeda militants from Egypt, Algeria, Afghanistan and the Palestinian territories, or rats, mice and drug addicts. Does Gaddafi believe himself? I do not discount this possibility. He is a catastrophe that has plagued the Libyan people, and the Arabs, Muslims and the whole world. He has the audacity, or say ignorance, to claim that Western threats of military intervention are aimed at seizing Libya's oil. However, the West already controls Libya's oil today, because this was the price Gaddafi paid to end the international sanctions against his regime in 2004, whereby he entered in oil agreements with Western companies and ceded his country's future to them. Gaddafi had made the above obviously false allegations and insults to the Libyan people repeatedly, during an interview with the Turkish television. However, I also heard him say during the interview that chaos in Libya threatens the security of Europe, and even Israel. Do I understand from this that the Gaddafi regime guarantees the security of Europe and Israel? He indeed hinted at this, or said it implicitly. What matters now is saving the Libyan people. Each day, more and more martyrs die, and there is no room for agreement or negotiations with the regime, which has crossed the point of no return with its people, the nation and the entire world. For this reason, I reiterate my call for Arab military intervention in Libya before the West intervenes and before we find ourselves facing a new occupation. I also call on the Arab league to withdraw its recognition of the regime of Muammar Gaddafi, and shift this recognition to the National Council and its president Mustafa Abdul Jalil, because it is not acceptable that France beat the Arabs to such a measure. While I fear for post-revolutionary Egypt, and for Jordan, Yemen, Bahrain and other countries, because they have limited natural resources, there are no such concerns for the future of Libya after Gaddafi. This is because the country's oil revenues are high and sufficient for a fast rebuilding of what the Colonel and his gang have destroyed. Abdul Rahman Shalgam says that there are good development plans, worth 146 billion dollars, which are already in place, and the funds for them are indeed available. All that is left then is for Gaddafi to step down for them to begin. [email protected]
