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Flashmag! Issue 170 March 2026
It was this country— the country that dared to nationalize its oil, educate its children, and build public hospitals— that the United States invaded in 2003. The official justification? Weapons of mass destruction that were never found. The economic reality? The US invasion put an end to the oil nationalization that had been implemented in 1972, opening up the sector to foreign companies. American companies such as Halliburton established a long-term presence in the country. The Ba’ athist Syria of Damascus had the same project. Before sinking into the bloody dictatorship of Assad father and son, Baathist Syria had nationalized its industries, built one of the most advanced public education systems in the Arab world, and emancipated women in the public sphere. Neither the crimes of the Assad regime nor foreign intervention spared what Arab socialism had built. As for Gaddafi’ s Libya: the man was brutal, unpredictable, and authoritarian. But before NATO’ s bombs in 2011, Libya had the highest human development index in Africa. Free education. Free healthcare. Guaranteed housing. And above all, Gaddafi financed liberation movements across the African continent. He dreamed of a pan-African currency backed by gold to break dependence on the dollar. After NATO’ s intervention, Libya became an open-air slave market.
The dollar atomic bomb: killing without firing a shot
Let us understand the mechanics of American power in the 21st century. War is no longer waged only with bombs. It is waged with the dollar. In 2000, Saddam Hussein decided to bill his oil in euros, despite the reluctance of the United States and the United Kingdom. Political scientists such as William Clark of Johns Hopkins University saw this as one of the motivations for the military invasion. Alarm bells rang in Washington, and the question became: who would be next? Jordan had already begun trading crude oil with Iraq in euros. Iran had expressed its intention to follow suit, as had Algeria and Libya.
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