‘US wars from Afghanistan to Libya triggered refugee influx’

The United States is fighting a war from Afghanistan to Libya and thus causing a massive influx of refugees fleeing to Europe, but American media never cover such issues from this angle, an American journalist and political analyst says.  

Don DeBar, an anti-war activist and radio host in New York, made the remarks in an interview with Press TV while commenting on latest US airstrikes inside Libya that killed nearly 50 people.

US officials claimed that the airstrikes targeted a Daesh (ISIL) training camp in Sabratha, western Libya. According to Serbia's prime minister, two Serbian Embassy staff members abducted in Libya in November were also killed in the air assault.

“So, the United States is bombing Libya again… The US says it bombed ISIL, but people on the ground in Libya said it wasn’t ISIL but rather the people who were fleeing fighting elsewhere – refugees in other words,” DeBar said.

“Just like the first time [in 2011] when the US bombed Libya for nine months on a daily basis… now bombing Libya again is not an ‘intervention,’ that’s what [US State Department spokesperson] Mark Toner is saying,” he added.

“What’s in reality happening is there is a war which’s going on from Afghanistan to Libya… going well into the African continent as well, but certainly the fighting in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen are of a whole cloth,” he stated.

“Here in the media [in the United States], you barely see any mention of any of those things other than wrangling, the political wrangling going on around Syria right now, and very little of that,” the analyst pointed out.

“But no one is speaking about this as the United States is conducting a war from Afghanistan to Libya, as the people on the ground know it certainly. The refugees that are fleeing to Europe who apparently people in Europe and Washington think that they came down on a spaceship; they even call them aliens,” DeBar noted.

After more than four years since the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi, Libya is still grappling with rising insecurity as the country has been witnessing numerous clashes between government forces and rival militia groups. The former rebels refuse to lay down arms despite efforts by the central government to impose law and order.

In an earlier interview with Press TV, DeBar said, the United States and its allies are responsible for destroying Libya, which is perhaps the richest country with a highest standard of living in Africa.

“Libya has been completely destroyed by the intervention of the United States and NATO.  With once the most prosperous countries in the region, perhaps the wealthiest country with a highest standard of living on the continent of Africa, and one of the wealthiest countries with one of highest standard of living in the Middle East region as well, it had complete domestic peace; they were constructing and had constructed rather an amazing economic space,” he said in December.

“It was the engine for the consolidation of the integration of Africa. And it has been completely and totally destroyed,” the analyst noted.

Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses:

www.presstv.co.uk