[Peace-discuss] What we've done in Libya

[C. G. Estabrook]

Libya after the NATO invasion

There can be no quick fix for a Libya caught between a loose-cannon despot and 
an opportunistic Western intervention.

Mahmood Mamdani Last Modified: 09 Apr 2011 16:33


The 2010 UN Human Development Index – which is a composite measure of health, 
education and income – ranked Libya 53rd in the world, and first in Africa.

What was a predominantly rural and backward country when the king was deposed 42 
years ago is today a country with a modern economy and high literacy. This 
single fact embodies the gist of Gaddafi's claim to the historical legitimacy of 
his rule.

The popular debate on Libya is today divided: one side stresses solidarity with 
an oppressed people, the other is opposed to another Western war.

Soon after the Western coalition imposed a no-fly zone on Libya, the New York 
Times published an opinion piece by a Libyan professor of political science at a 
US east coast college. Ali Ahmida divided Gaddafi's rule into two periods, each 
representing one side of the argument today.

Impressions of a young Gaddafi

In its first two decades, he wrote, the revolution brought many benefits to 
ordinary Libyans: widespread literacy, free medical care, education, and 
improvements in living conditions. Women in particular benefited, becoming 
ministers, ambassadors, pilots, judges and doctors. The government got wide 
support from the lower and middle classes.

The down side was a demagogic regime that revelled in rituals of hero worship 
and cynically embraced violence. Faced with successive coup attempts, it staffed 
security forces with reliable relatives and allies from central and southern 
Libya, a move that gradually transformed a national government into a tribal 
administration.

My first impression of Gaddafi was formed by a revealing incident I read several 
decades ago in a memoir by Muhammad Haykal, Nasser's famed press secretary.

Haykal recounts a conversation between visiting Chinese premier Chou en Lai and 
Nasser during a state reception.

Pointing to a young man in uniform, Chou en Lai asked: Who is he? Why, replied 
Nasser, that is Col Gaddafi who just overthrew the monarchy in Libya, and added, 
why do you ask?

It is difficult to forget Chou en Lai's response: Well, he just came over and 
asked me how much it would cost to purchase an atom bomb! The anecdote sums up 
Gaddafi's well-known erratic nature.

No rest for the revolutionary

Gaddafi saw himself as an anti-imperialist fighter, which is how the Gaddafi 
brand was marketed on the African continent. In practise, however, the Gaddafi 
regime supported whoever was willing to pay homage to his leadership.

The beneficiaries of his largess added up to a motley list: from Uganda's 
National Resistance Army, of which Gaddafi was among the earliest financiers, to 
the Revolutionary United Front of Sierra Leone, better known for its brutal 
savagery – chopping off noses, fingers and hands of supporters and opponents 
alike – to mercenary-type groups for which he was often the sole financier, such 
as the Arab Legion, an umbrella group under which sheltered several armed 
nomadic militias in Chad and Darfur.

Gaddafi came to see himself as the CEO of the 'liberation' camp in Africa. When 
Ugandans debated several years ago whether or not to amend the Constitution and 
remove the two-term limitation on the presidency, Gaddafi had no hesitation in 
intervening in the national debate. He pronounced: "Revolutionaries do not retire!"

Gaddafi's rapprochement with the West unfolded in 2003. In return for 
dismantling nuclear facilities and inviting a string of US, UK and Italian 
companies – Occidental Petroleum, BP and ENI – Gaddafi was welcomed back into 
the Western fold.

As the external face of the dictatorship shifted from an anti-imperialist to a 
pro-Western orientation, Gaddafi went so far as to join the American-led 'war on 
terror'.

But when the crunch came and his new patrons turned against him, Gaddafi was 
without nuclear weapons to fend off military reprisals or powerful friends to 
stand up for him in the Security Council.

Lessons from the periphery

It may be too late for Gaddafi to draw lessons from these developments, but not 
so for others.

One such lesson was offered by a North Korean foreign ministry official who 
accused the US of having removed nuclear arms capabilities from Libya through 
negotiations as a precursor to invasion.

The spokesperson told Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency that "the 
Libyan crisis is teaching the international community a grave lesson."

Claiming that it vindicated North Korea's military-first policy, the official 
went on to sum up the lesson: "The truth that one should have power to defend 
peace has been confirmed once again."

Uganda's Yoweri Museveni, one of America's closest allies in Africa, draws a 
similar lesson: "I am quite sure that many countries that are able will scale up 
their military research and in a few decades we may have a more armed world. 
This weapons science is not magic.?

The irony is that the invasion mounted to save civilian lives in Libya is likely 
to end up making the world more insecure.

But what about civilian lives in Libya itself? How effective will the NATO 
intervention be in saving these?

Premeditated intervention

To begin with, there is the case of the grand marshal of the NATO invasion, 
Sarkozy, who has over the past few months resembled a man looking for an 
opportunity to flex his military muscles, no matter the cause.

His first offer of "French security forces expertise" came in January and it was 
to help Tunisia's president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali keep rebellious civilians 
under control.

When nothing came of it, Sarkozy switched steps without the blink of an eye, 
offering that same expertise to save rebellious civilians in Benghazi at the 
head of the NATO invasion.

Given the haste with which the no-fly resolution was passed at the UN Security 
Council, one may ask: How much evidence, aside from Gaddafi's blood-curdling 
hyper-rhetoric, was there of an unfolding genocide or a 'crime against humanity' 
in Libya?

Perhaps the most telling comment during the UN debate on a no-fly zone came from 
India's deputy ambassador to the UN.

In a speech welcoming the appointment by the UN secretary-general of an envoy to 
Libya, Manjeev Singh Puri regretted that the envoy's work had been 
short-circuited by Resolution 1973:

We have not had the benefit of his report or even a report from the Secretariat 
or his assessment as yet. That would have given us an objective analysis of the 
situation on the ground… The Council has today adopted a resolution that 
authorises far-reaching measures under Chapter VII of the United Nations 
Charter, with relatively little credible information on the situation on the 
ground in Libya.

The intervention that followed has been about more than just policing Libyan 
skies to save civilians on the ground.

In an obviously coordinated move, the British went for the person of the Libyan 
leader with a cruise missile, the French targeted his army and the Americans 
blew the Libyan air force to smithereens.

Together the NATO allies have made sure that no matter its identity, the regime 
that follows its humanitarian mission in Libya will be without a credible means 
of national defence.

For the people of Libya, there can be no quick fix. Not only will the 
post-invasion Libyan state lack the means to defend its sovereignty externally, 
a post-invasion Libyan government will need to accommodate a highly fractured 
society through patient coalition-building, if Libyan society is not to 
disintegrate into an Afghan-style civil war.

That necessary work will have to be political, not military. For that work to 
begin, the first prerequisite is an end to the NATO invasion and a ceasefire.

Mahmood Mamdani is professor and director of Makerere Institute of Social 
Research at Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda, and Herbert Lehman Professor 
of Government at Columbia University, New York. He is the author, most recently 
of Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, The Cold War and the Roots of Terror, and 
Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics and the War on Terror.