Dakar, Senegal - The African Union (AU) on Tuesday boycotted the meeting of the Contact Group called by France to decide the political future of Libya, which is still being bombarded by Western coalition forces. Despite the take-off of the coalition strike force, to pave way for the advancement of the insurgents, they found this difficult as they have been constrained to retreat in the past hours. This has led to a stalemate of the military coalition, which was to give vent to the plans of France and US, shared by Great Britain and Spain, four of the biggest colonial and slave masters of the last centuries. The absence of the African Union at the London meeting proved that the pan-African institution does not intend to approve the motives of the coalition that has continued to twist Resolution 1973 by considering the supply of arms to the insurgents.

Indeed, Paris has already indicated that it is discussing this possibility with its partners (United States, Great Britain), that is to say, outside Resolution 1973.  Will the United Nations persist in turning a deaf ear?

In fact, Resolution 1973, that appears to be a real 'confusion', continues revealing its hidden elements, as it is exploited by the countries of the coalition.

Of course, the economic and financial crises that persist in the West more than anywhere else, have seen the growing presence in Africa of the Asian giants (China, India) and the American states (Brazil, Venezuela).

The haste in which Paris organised its allies within a political 'contact group', at the time when the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) takes over the command of the military operations in Libya, suggests the imminence of the sharing of the fruits of this intervention whose provisional cost has already been evaluated by the US Strategic Planning Centre at US$9 billion.

Who will pay the bill? NATO, the African Union, the Coalition or Libya?
Anyway, the countries engaged in this military operation in Libya will not at all be the losers. American Strategic Planning Centre has already estimated the monthly cost of the operations in Libya at US$1.1 billion, or, according to its projections, the equivalent of the Libyan oil exports of less than a week. Tempting.

But the most tempting is this former military base the Americans had been constrained to abandon on 11 June 1970, in the aftermath of the Revolution by Mouammar Kadhafi against the then monarchy strongly supported by the United States.

Indeed, France does not have a military base on the Mediterranean but is about to lose those in Senegal. Moreover, its attempt to group the States of the South bank of the Mediterranean in one Union for the Mediterranean (UPM) failed much to the pleasure of Mouammar Kadhafi who did not see its use at a time when the United States of Africa was on the agenda.

'As concerns the Union for the Mediterranean, we neither accept the partition of Africa nor the carving out of Northern Africa to tie it up to the Mediterranean, much as you will not accept that the South of Europe be cut out and tied up to the African Union,' Kadhafi had told the Europeans, on the opening of the Africa-Europe summit.

Located in the suburb of the Libyan capital, Tripoli, at the beach like a watchtower dominating the Mediterranean coast, this former base called  'Maatigua' stretches over 40 hectares and houses a secondary airport and a hospital.

This former base, among others, seems to be one of the sites particularly coveted by the allies, and one of the motives of vengeance nursed by the United States against Kadhafi and his Revolution of September 1969.

By its geographical position, the former base deserted by the United States, is favourable to the strategic control of the Arab Maghreb region, of the immense and elusive Sahara where terrorism, drugs and traffics of all kinds prevail, as well as bordering countries of Libya, notably Sudan and Chad.

In a nutshell, it is all the North–West loop of the African continent that will escape to the control of the West, with the planned dismantling of the French military base in Dakar, as well as the rise of the anti-French feeling detrimental to the maintaining of the base of Abidjan, if Laurent Gbagbo remains in office.

But the coalition must face the facts and know that its military operations against Libya would have contributed to arming Al-Qaeda elements whose presence in Libya is now clear.

In this respect, it seems difficult to take as a word of honour the declaration of the head of the French diplomacy that says 'to exclude land operations in Libya', when one knows that the cruise missiles, even the most efficient ones, have never been able to triumph over the guerrilla.

Pana 31/03/2011