Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire
  • omnibus

Black Libyans Make Their Stand in Sirte and Bani Walid
Glen Ford, BAR executive editor
12 Oct 2011

“Black soldiers are fighting for survival against the world’s biggest lynch mob, armed to the teeth by the United States and Europe.”

When it comes to Blacks – whether Libyans or immigrant workers - NATO-backed rebels have shown no respect for the rules of war, or for women and children. If surrender means torture and debasement or summary execution at the hands of racist killers, the only option is a battle to the bitter end.“The Black defenders of Sirte and Bani Walid fight like lions because they have no choice.”

Both NATO and their Libyan rebel surrogates express wonder at the fact that loyalist forces continue to fight so fiercely in the contested cities of Sirte and Bani Walid, despite being vastly outnumbered on the ground and unceasingly pummeled from above by the world’s largest air armada. But one look at a picture of Gaddafi loyalist prisoners, captured at a hospital in Sirte, tells the story: they are all Black. The assault on Libya has largely devolved into a race war, and the Black soldiers are fighting for survival against the world’s biggest lynch mob, armed to the teeth by the United States and Europe.

Where are the people of Tawurgha, the mostly Black Libyan city that was wiped from the face of the earth by the rebels? Many of those who were not killed or captured have clearly made their way to Sirte and Bani Walid, to make a last stand against the racist killers that westerners like Amy Goodman, of Democracy Now! call “revolutionaries.” The rebels are brazen – absolutely without shame – in their determination to cleanse Libya of its Black population. They are like Arab Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, backed by a European and American air force, a racist militia whose fighters have vowed to “purge Black skin” and who scrawl the Arabic equivalent of “nigger” on the homes of their vanquished Black countrymen. Their rationalizations for ethnic cleansing and summary executions of Black prisoners are quite familiar to the American ear, identical to our own practitioners of White Terror. The Tawurghans raped women, the rebels claim, even as international observers report that it is the rebels and the riff-raff that surrounds them who have systematically raped captured Black girls and women. The Tawurghans, say the rebels, tried to “slaughter all the Misuratans” – and “this is something they have to answer for.”

“Many of those who were not killed or captured have clearly made their way to Sirte and Bani Walid, to make a last stand against the racist killers.”

Of course, the town of Tawurgha, with only 30,000 mostly Black Libyan citizens, could not possibly have terrorized Misurata, the third biggest city in the country, 25 miles away. But racists always claim to be the victims of crimes in which they, themselves, specialize. So, the Tawurghans – standing in for all Blacks – are labeled rapists, to justify the racist rampages of the Misurata Brigade.

According to a report by none other than the Voice of America, one-third of all prisoners of the rebels are Black. And they appear to be the lucky ones. The captured Tuwarghan men are nowhere to be found, an indication that the rebels don’t give them a chance to surrender, or keep them long after they do. Wounded Blacks that have made their way to hospitals are snatched from their beds, to an unknown fate.

NATO says it will keep bombing until the last resistance to their Libyan rebel surrogates, is crushed. That appears to mean, until the last free Black men in Libya are captured or killed, their families caged at the mercy of racist brutes and sexual marauders. Black civilians are clearly not the kind of people that the Euro-Americans had in mind, when they claimed to be on a mission to protect civilians.

No wonder, then, that the defenders of Sirte and Bani Walid fight like lions, against all odds. They are heroes, but they also have no choice. The racist death squads will have no mercy. Black skin will be purged, Black women raped and then killed. The First Black President of the United States has unleashed a hell on Black Libya. No decent person can ever forgive him.

For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford. On the web, do to BlackAgendaReport.com.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at [email protected].

listen
http://traffic.libsyn.com/blackagendareport/20111012_gf_LibyaSirte.mp3
Libya
R2P

Related Podcasts

Black Agenda Radio, Week of December 11, 2017
Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford
Black Agenda Radio, Week of December 11, 201
13 December 2017
Black Agenda Radio for Week of December 11, 2017 Universities Nurtured Ideology of Slavery
Slavery in Libya A Surprise? You Weren't Reading Black Agenda Report
Bruce A. Dixon , BAR managing editor
Slavery In Libya A Surprise? You Weren't Reading Black Agenda Report
07 December 2017
If the news that black Libyans and black migrants from sub-Saharan Africa were being
Omali Yeshitela: U.S. to Blame for Slavery in Libya
Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford
Omali Yeshitela: U.S. to Blame for Slavery in Libya
06 December 2017
By overthrowing the government of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, the US “created the conditions” that led to the return of slave auctions in Libya,” said

More Stories


  • Build Back Better Legislation: New Keynesianism or Neoliberal Public Relations Stunt?
    ​​​​​​​ Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
    Build Back Better Legislation: New Keynesianism or Neoliberal Public Relations Stunt?
    13 Oct 2021
    Some provisions of Biden’s “Build Back Better” legislation benefit the masses of Black people, but this legislation is a bare minimum effort to blunt some of the sharpest contradictions of the
  • Many would-be migrants, like the Garifuna, would love nothing more than to stay in their homes. It’s Washington that’s making it difficult.
    Miriam Miranda
    Afro-Indigenous People in Honduras Are Being Forcibly Displaced. Washington Is Complicit.
    13 Oct 2021
    Many would-be migrants, like the Garifuna, would love nothing more than to stay in their homes. It’s Washington that’s making it difficult.
  • STATEMENT: Black Caucus Protest at the African Studies Association, Montreal, October, 1969
    Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    STATEMENT: Black Caucus Protest at the African Studies Association, Montreal, October, 1969
    13 Oct 2021
    Black challenges to white control of African Studies at the 1969 African Studies Association meeting in Montreal exposed the deeply entrenched racism within, and the imperialist leanings of, th
  • U.S. Imperialism in Africa with Abayomi Azikiwe
    Danny Haiphong and Margaret Kimberley
    U.S. Imperialism in Africa with Abayomi Azikiwe
    13 Oct 2021
    Abayomi Azikiwe of Pan-African News Wire joined Danny Haiphong and Margaret Kimberley to discuss AFRICOM and U.S./NATO imperialist actions on the African continent.
  • San Francisco Court’s Racist Denial of the Constitutional Right to a Speedy Trial
    Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    San Francisco Court’s Racist Denial of the Constitutional Right to a Speedy Trial
    13 Oct 2021
    San Francisco Public Defender Manohar Raju spoke to Ann Garrison about why his office is suing San Francisco Superior Court for denying hundreds of Black and Brown people the speedy trial right
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us