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

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

“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 Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

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

Related Podcasts

BAR Radio Logo
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
Black Agenda Radio February 13, 2026
13 February 2026
In this week’s segment, we discuss conditions in Libya, the forces behind the assassination of Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, and the struggle to regain so
Saif al-Islam Gaddafi
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
The Assassination of Saif al-Islam Gaddafi and Conditions in Libya
13 February 2026
Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the son of Libya's assassinated president Muammar Gaddafi, was himself assassinated on February 3, 2026.
BAR Radio Logo
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
Black Agenda Radio May 23, 2025
23 May 2025
In this week’s segment, we discuss the legacy of Malcolm X and the state of the political party that many Black people feel trapped in.

More Stories


  • Mayor Eric Adams Proposes Ending the Right to Shelter
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Mayor Eric Adams Proposes Ending the Right to Shelter
    14 Jul 2023
    Krys Cerisier is an organizer with Vocal-NY’s Homeless Union.
  • The State's Constant Attack on Black Liberation
    Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    The State's Constant Attack on Black Liberation
    12 Jul 2023
    Indictments, disruptions, arrests, defamation, incarceration and even assassination are the weapons used to discredit Black people who act in opposition to the system and who call for liberation…
  • ESSAY: American Imperialism and the British West Indies, Claudia Jones, 1958
    Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    ESSAY: American Imperialism and the British West Indies, Claudia Jones, 1958
    12 Jul 2023
    Claudia Jones reminds us of the progressive potential of the failed West Indies Federation. But her analysis unwittingly anticipated the rise of its bourgeois descendant, CARICOM.
  • The UK-Rwanda Pact to Keep Migrants from Crossing the English Channel
    Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    The UK-Rwanda Pact to Keep Migrants from Crossing the English Channel
    12 Jul 2023
    The UK is spearheading a European drive to outsource migrants to Rwanda.
  • Homegoing for Harry…
    Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    Homegoing for Harry…
    12 Jul 2023
                                               “Every artist, every scientist, every writer
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us