 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today we have with us Prof. Ajaz Ahmad, who has come back after a long time with NewsClick. Thank you, Ajaz, for being here with us. Thank you. Very good to be back. Ajaz, Libyan situation has changed in the last couple of, last 5-6 days. Gaddafi seems to have really lost his hold on Tripoli. The National Transition Council seems to have now got at least 90 percent of the territory they claim under its control. Do you think that this situation now is going to be the one which is going to be even more difficult because this is the time that they have to stabilize Libya? Pravee, the first thing that occurs to me is that Europeans and Italians in particular are celebrating the 100th anniversary of the first aerial bombing ever done in the world, when the Italians bombed in Libya in 1911. Now, of course, with 100 years of developments of the technology, there have been 20,000 aerial attacks on Libya in a matter of about three months. 20,000 is a total number of aerial attacks. Yes, Gaddafi gives that number. I was surprised that until now we had been seeing figures of 8,000 and 9,000, which is big enough. Also special forces from both France and England seems to have been a party to this. In fact, the same sources, Gaddafi and among others, tell us that they were there from the very beginning. The special forces, both Americans and British and possibly French, were there from the very beginning, well before the National Transition Council itself came into being. So, this has been really a military intervention of a great order. Now, with respect to the question that you have asked, this is the typical pattern of Afghanistan and Iraq and now in Libya. When such overwhelming Western force comes in, how can anybody stand up and fight? It's easy to win a military victory, though this one is taken about six months. So, that part was always thought to be the easier part. The more difficult part was really how to really control, quote unquote, control Libya, particularly after this kind of a military campaign. We are actually seeing a repeat a third time. Overwhelming Western force comes in. The regime crumbles. The entire military infrastructure of the Libyan forces had been completely destroyed. The news is that half of the rebel force was brought in from the seas into Tripoli by NATO. So, it's really NATO bombing that has done it and if that is what has done it, then clearly what happened in Afghanistan, what happened in Iraq would be repeated, which is to say the regime crumbles and disappears. The military had been, the military command had been decomposing from the very beginning. In fact, the prime minister of the so-called new government that is being recognized by a host of countries was the Home Minister in Gaddafi's regime and a number of military officers, senior, most senior military officers, defected and so on. According to again the Guardian, there were people who were very much in touch with the CIA and M16 and that is to say the British and American intelligence agencies and so on. So, I don't believe that there is a hidden Gaddafi army that is going to be dispersed and which is going to do the fighting. But now I think what is going to happen is this National Transition Council is a conglomerate of all kinds of people, disparate elements. One of the things that is also happening in Libya again after Afghanistan and Iraq is really a sort of restoration of the ASEAN regime. That is to say the very people in Afghanistan who were toppled by the Khalkh Revolution of 1978 became the backbone of the American intervention there and they were the people who were ultimately toppled by the Taliban and so on. So, in Iraq the same thing, it is the ASEAN regime, every prominent leader of Iraq today is part of the old Iraqi elite that was overthrown by the Vatests. Now again in Libya, the Sunni tribe and their leaders, the old monarchical elements and all of them are being brought back. So, that is one part of what is going on. The other part that is going on is that that bringing the Salussis back is also playing with America's new obsession, moderate Islam. Libya is an extremely wealthy country. $150 billion worth of Libyan assets were seized and by the western powers from the banks which is now going to come back as part of the stabilization process and part of paying off the occupiers. Libya is the largest oil producing country in Africa. Libyan Reserve Bank has 143.8 tons of gold. Is there going to be only pilfering or looting? Who will get what? Which faction of this TNC is going to get what? Libya has 100,000 worth of fresh water. Bottling agencies of Europe are sitting there looking at this water to grab who are going to get the contracts and so on. So anyway, first point regardless of ideology, regardless of anything, one big fight that is going to come is over the distribution of these spoils of war in terms of tribe, in terms of region, in terms of religious groupings and so on. I think what you are going to have is Libya, you know Libya is a country that engaged the Italians for over 20 years. Italy, Italians could never actually stabilize their rule. They could never win Libya. So you have that whole tradition and soon enough you will have an upsurge against NATO as soon as NATO comes in the ground. With its arms, without NATO arms, this kind of conglomeration is not going to hold together. They are going to need NATO arms what they are calling stabilization process. So if you look at it, so what this is what we discussed in fact when the Libyan War started, if you remember that the war against Gandalfi, the first phase could be easy that you know it is possible in the military to defeat Gandalfi. The problem would be occupying Libya because this is what really it is all about, occupation in a different way. That is going to be the far more difficult case and that is as you said the history of Libya shows that this is not never going to be easy in the past, is not going to be easy now. You see what bears repeating is that what has defeated Gandalfi are not internal forces. It is NATO that has defeated and it is only NATO that can stabilize the what comes after the war. So you really talk we're really talking about the boots on the ground which NATO said it would not put though it has put in terms of special forces but there's still very much behind the scene in that sense. But now if they put as an occupation NATO forces and if they're going to be European NATO forces I think that is going to be a far more difficult mix. Do you think that's possible or do you think they look for local allies or in the west station and other regions? Well you know I mean those kinds of discussions as obviously not in the public domain but Richard Haas for example who is a very very powerful figure has already gone public saying we need boots on the ground that is actually the phrase he uses NATO troops on the ground. By the way very interestingly that argument is also being made from the international left if you wish to call a section thereof. Gilbert Ashkar who's Lebanese leftist teaching in London has made that argument. Who has been in favour of the intervention right from the beginning? Of the invasion absolutely Juan Cole and all that so there is a section of that. So that has been that there have to be boots on the ground now is now the the general position whose boots. My guess is that to start with these will be Gulf Cooperation Council troops. One of the things to to keep in mind is that on Libya this has been Americans and the Arab League versus the African Union. So you cannot get African troops. Libya somehow has ceased to be an African country. It has suddenly become some sort of an Arab Emirate you know of some sort. So my sense is that the first contingent and by the way Qataris are there have been there already along with the Americans and the British the troops but that's going to be completely insufficient. Who are the next ones? One very unclear one country whose policy is completely unclear at this point is Turkey which is a Muslim country. The NATO is looking for Muslim troops. Turkey has the most professional army that you can find in Europe. The natural one would be Turkey. Will Turkey come in? Will Turkey not come in? There are different kinds of calculations including this is a quagmire. If you go in there you're going to be there for 30 years. Turkey on this issue has really sided with the NATO. That's right for the beginning. That is why I said that it's very hard to read which way and how far Turkey is willing to go. On this one they have sided entirely with NATO. How that plays with their social base getting Europe to invade a Muslim country. What happens to their own social base? How far they can go? We don't know. Strategically within the military would they make the calculation of being ready to be in Libya for the next 25-30 years? I don't know but my sense is that in the first the first contingent we might see would be the Gulf Feeds. Gulf Cooperation Council in the Qataris. That is not going to work. Along with that will come a whole area of what will be called experts but who will be. So you might see 5,000, 7,000 experts coming in from NATO or something like that. The Vietnam War start in the fact. Yeah. That's right. That's right. And my sense is that that is going to prove a quagmire. Not because there is some great Libyan army, Qaddafi's army spread around the country but there are just too many conflicting forces in Libya and you open this up and people are going to fight actually each other. This is a completely different stage now of interventionism. You have the Security Council passing a resolution that you should do all things necessary to protect civilians and you launch a full-scale intervention and I mean military assault and now an occupation and then you become actually the new administration avoiding this, that and the other and so on. And this is done by NATO. The implication in my view is that it is to get Libya also to become a part of the African, the American new command they have set up a new command that they have set up for Africa to which most African countries are very unwilling to offer bases and so on. So you are also at a point where they have not only invaded a third Muslim country but also really the first military foray of this kind of this level into Africa where that is using this kind of NATO license. The subservience of the members of the Security Council is astonishing. At any point any member of the Security Council permanent or non-permanent could have called for a special session saying that NATO is exceeding its they did not. So there is an acquiescence not only from Russia and China but also the non-permanent members of the Security Council like India for instance. Will this be repeated for Syria? We do not know. So it is an interesting issue that what we are seeing is the ability of the old colonial regimes if you will of course with the new imperial neo-colonial power United States being able to intervene and change regimes militarily but the ability to handle the aftermath which is what they thought would be easy with the amount of oil wealth that for instance Iraq had and Libya has that might prove the much more difficult part. Thank you very much Ajaz. We will continue to watch this as we go along and I think we will really need to see the region as a whole as it is developing in the future. Thank you very much.