There hasn’t been much in the media on Libya since the Gaddafi regime was overthrown two years ago. This has suited the United States which wants people to remember only that a ruthless dictator was overthrown. The US government prefers people not to know how much of Libya’s modern infrastructure was destroyed by the US, British and French bombing raids, or how many thousands of civilians were killed or wounded.
The American storyline is that Libya is now a free country. But the truth is that the armed groups supported by the US in 2011 do not today adhere to the rule of law – but only the rule of the gun. Libya today is like a Wild West.
In a sense you can’t blame the Libyan militias for being so cocky, because they are just imitating American practice. On October 5 American commandos seized an alleged al Qaeda leader, Abu Anas al-Liby, in a Tripoli street and took him off-shore to an American warship. The Libyan parliament passed a motion condemning this “flagrant violation of [Libya’s] national sovereignty” and the Libyan justice minister, Salah al-Marghani described it as an “act of kidnapping of a Libyan citizen” – one who incidentally had been living quite openly in Tripoli.
One Libyan militia group then thought that what’s good for the (American) goose is good for the (Libyan) gander, and four days later they temporarily kidnapped the Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zidan. There are not many countries where you can kidnap the Prime Minister and get away with it. But this is what happens in Libya because the militias, or various sorts, control the streets. As the Guardian reports “militias have besieged key ministries in the capital, Tripoli and stormed ministers offices this summer to force the parliament to pass a divisive law aimed at purging officials who served under Muammar Gaddafi…” Oil production is almost at a standstill because militias control most of the refineries. And the government has no control in the east of the country. Add to that the ongoing bitter battles between major tribes, and rampant discrimination against black Libyans from the Toubou and the Tuareg minorities, and you have a very divided society.
Libyans don’t have much to thank the Americans for. And Libyans are still aware that the American government was previously supportive of Gaddafi when he was at his most repressive. During that time, the US even “rendered” anti-Gaddafi activists like Abdul Akim Belhadj back to Libya to be tortured by the regime.
The mess in Libya today is a salutary lesson on the dangers of forcing “regime change” through the outside powers using massive air power.
In 2011 there was a prospect of a non-military solution through pressure from and mediation by the African Union. Delegations of African leaders were visiting Libya putting pressure on Gaddafi. But the American government gave this approach short shrift. To Washington the only solution was military, and it was quite pleased to be able to display its aerial might.
The end result for Libya has been disastrous. Now we see its regional, political and tribal differences being resolved, not by democratic means, but by force of arms.
This is not to say that in the end (with UN help) Libya might develop and an effective democratic government. But even when it does, the wounds on the body politic caused by the bloody infighting will take a long time to heal.
My understanding at the time was that Obama was actually not keen to go in, and only did so after getting Arab support from some quarters.
I’ve had a debate with a friend over the merits of attacking Gaddafi and while I’m now more of the opinion that an arms ban by all countries is the best approach to such conflicts (highly unlikely, of course), I still think one can’t ignore the fact that if Gaddafi had actually relinquished power in a timely fashion, things would likely have gone a bit better. He was a despot who had no problems with killing anyone who opposed him and as unpleasant as his ending was, he really was prepared to bring the whole house down with him, which he pretty much has. By being a despot he left only one means of overthrowing him, and that was by a more powerful force – a story repeated persistently through history, much to the suffering of the general population.
It is untrue that the West was supportive of Gaddafi when he was at his most repressive. That would have been in the 1980’s when he brutally suppressed opposition in Benghazi and hunted down opposition figures in other countries. At the time he was public enemy number one in the eyes if many in the Western establishment.
What you seem to forget Mr Locke is it was only after he gave up his nuclear weapons programme that he was received by Western nations with any warmth. This is the sort of process you seem to suggest the West follows in relation to Iran. I wish you would be more consistent in your approach.
Simply understanding the politics of this region is beyond most outsiders and under Gadaffi despite his hard rule, the country was safe and prospering.
As followed in Egypt and Syria, violence only begets violence and the haters become what they hate..
The country wasn’t prospering under Gaddafi. The only thing that really worked was the oil industry. Even that was abused by the elite for their own ends.
Gadaffi was a prick and a murderer but under him the country was relatively prosperous. Now… The place is a mess. Libya was one of the countries wanting to sell oil in Euros and had a Muslim banking system. As soon as G was murdered etc etc a central banking system was introduced and US dollars used to buy oil. the US and their mates got rid of the despot to ‘save’ the people but was it worth it? There’s more to Libya, Iran and Syria than the so called goodie two shoes US, saviour of the free want to let on. Trouble is mainstream media don’t go there.
What a load of nonsense. The main player in the Libyan intervention was France not the US. France, in case you forgot, uses the Euro.
As for the laughable suggestion tgat the AU could have resolved the problem in 2011 you just need to look at their track record in places like Zimbabwe to see how improbable that would have been.
And you need to do some more research.
If you disagree perhaps you woukd explain why.
Totally predictable; I predicted this would happen. France was heavily and prominently involved, yes, but so was the US (which was pulling the strings all along). The whole gig was bullshit, and the screaming hypocrisy practices by the west just defies belief. Which is why, probably, too few seem to believe it.
I’ve known ever since 1970 that when it comes to foreign policy everything touched by the USA turns to shit. It’s uncanny – a King Midas in Reverse touch. In 1970, it was revealed that the USA was involving itself on Cambodia – until then a seemingly blameless country of gentle peaceful people. Right then and there I knew – this was more than 40 years ago – that Cambodia was going to be a complete and utter disaster.
And so it was. And so it has been ever bloody since. The irony of it all is that the USA would be held in much higher global esteem were it not for the bloody-minded and insanely stupid methods that country employs to get its way. All fuelled by an irrational fear of any different ideologies they encounter (unless they are dictatorships – go figure).
Barack Obama’s claim to an exceptional place in the world for the USA as a ‘force for good’ would be risibly puerile were it not that the USA could, with more enlightened leadership – with leadership possessing the slightest glimmer of enlightenment – have become just that – an advertisement for capitalism, democracy, and tolerance.
And look at the reality. I quite fail to understand how extra-legal murder of ‘suspects’ is a force for good in the world, how destabilizing and interference in other sovereign states is a force for good in the world, how kidnapping and torture is a force for good in the world, how (by threatening sovereign states into compliance with their own deregulated banking system) wholesale destruction of the global economy is a force for good in the world, how possession of the largest nuclear weapons arsenal is a force for good in the world… Barack Obama had such a wealth of global good will when he came into office – and look how he squandered it.
And now the Government shut down owing to an impasse in the Houses of Congress. A real advertisement for US democracy eh?
Well, I always knew that sooner or later the USA would throw up its own anti-body. No – not Russia, not China, not the Middle East. No. It is the United States itself. In self-destruct mode.
You are very wrong in relation to everything the US involves with turns to shit. Even if we take 1970 ( Why this seemingly arbitary date by the way?) There gave been a number of foreign policy successes. Most notably the end of the cold war, the break up of the former Yugoslavia (which was a mess when the Europeans were the main players in trying to resolve it), and the First Gulf war in 1991. Additionally I don’t see much better success from other nations. Perhaps France in Mali(Interesting that lefties don’t jump up and down about that) or the UK in Sierra Leone and NZ/ Australia in Eat Timor but the list is short compared to the success of the US led interventions.
I do not regard a single one of those interventions as a success barring one possible exception: East Timor. That one came out of left field if you like. Pres Clinton was in Kiwiland at the time for some PacRim leaders’ conference or other, at a time when Indonesian sponsored excesses became too public and too … excessive … comfortably to stomach.
In it’s standard manner our Government tried to sweep it under the carpet, but Clinton decided (as I understand it) that things had gone beyond the extreme edge. It was at his behest that events were brought under control and ET got its independence. Of course a certain J. Shipley (who had tried to wish the whole sorry business away) took credit for this. Or tried to. I don’t think anyone bought that story.
1970 was not an arbitrary date: that was when it became global news that the U.S. was involving itself in Canbodia. That it had been doing so for at least 12 months prior was much less well known at the time. True: I could have picked Viet Nam, or Europe (but no: I regard the Marshall Plan – give or take Czechoslovakia – as a success, albeit a qualified one).
As far as France’s involvement in African conflicts is concerned, I do believe voices have indeed been raised on the matter. But I guess you weren’t listening.
Why wasn’t Yugoslavia or the first Gulf war a success militarily?
The Nato intervention (spearheaded by the United States) in Yugoslavia was clearly successful and lead to Milosevic being indicted for war crimes. “Ion” has tunnel vision.
I’ll tell you why a lot doesn’t get much of an outcry that we can hear. So wide-spread and varied are the crimes of the powerful globally that you just have to pick your fights. There is no option.
I recall some right wing political oaf in the ’60s (when I was still at school) complaining that once present issue was resolved (I think it was the Vietnam War at the time), ‘they’ will find something else to protect about.
Damned right. That RWPO ought to have listened to himself. The story has of course become worse since.
The last time that the United States was indeed a ‘force of good’ in the world was when they did so much to clean up piracy along the North African coast. When was that, you ask? The 1790s…
Yep: more than two centuries ago…
So how about the Korean war then?
Thanks Keith, and thank goodness for alternative media.
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