Civil War in Libya

[econ21]

The BBC had a delightful telephone interview with a Tripoli resident, Rana, who was obviously young and spoke completely without guile:

Reporter: "Tell me, what do you think is happening?"

Rana: "We are free. This is it. The day we have been waiting for."

And later on:

Rana: "We didn't expect it to be this way, we thought they were going to be attacking us, I thought there would be dead bodies all over the country but it was easy, thanks to Allah."

...I´m predicting a "meet the new boss, same as the old boss" kind of thing.

I don't think we'll get someone as grotesque and monstrous as Gadhafi, at least not yet. The rebels seem far too disorganised - there's no one party in waiting to assume absolute control. And I don't think all the young protesters will give up their demands for freedom and democracy so easily. I suspect we will get a mess - perhaps not unlike the rather unedifying attempts of the Iraqi politicians to get their act together or the Karzai regime to rule. But with a less traumatic history and less foreign meddling - at least on ground - perhaps, there will be enough good will and high aspiration to pull through.

Earlier on, the BBC had an Arab expert predicting another Somalia. That's the worst case scenario - where people would be glad of an "old boss" again.

[PanzerJaeger]

Why do you hate freedom?

The extremely limited, racist Libyan version?

[Montmorency]

I believe you owe Lemur royalties for that.

[Banquo's Ghost]

Earlier on, the BBC had an Arab expert predicting another Somalia. That's the worst case scenario - where people would be glad of an "old boss" again.

Indeed, I think that is the worry. The Western rebels are, apparently, distinct from those in the east and have a great disdain for them. Then there are the various tribes who have been bribed into peace by Gaddafi.

[Populus Romanus]

Damn, that was over quick. A very sudden turn of events, hopefully Libya can recover from this Civil War and flourish.

[Montmorency]

The man of the hour is still at large and fighting continues.

Oh, and here's a map of it:

[Furunculus]

i imagine that i will be hearing of gaddafi's end when i wake up in eight hours time.

lol, no surprises there then.

congrats to libya, they can only thank their lucky stars that clare short is no longer in charge of DfID, actively preventing her department from aiding in the rebuilding of institutions as she did in 2003, they should have hung that woman.

[HoreTore]

All dictatorships live on borrowed time. Only democracies can stand the test of time.

Thankfully, Gadaffi's time is now up. The future is looking brighter in that part of the world at least, my guess is that the feeling in Libya now is about the same as it was here in 1945.


The end of an era of oppression, bloodshed and insanity.

[Subotan]

Taking all bets on whether Gaddafi does a Ceauşescu within the next 24 hours.

[Hax]

Yay! Lets replace a crazed dictator with either another one or some fundamentalist theocratic ********.

Action --> Consequence.

Or did you think the Iranians hate(d) the US and UK "just because"?

[Adrian II]

The end of an era of oppression, bloodshed and insanity.

I wouldn't bet on it. Libya has nothing remotely resembling a civil society; everyone and everything was state-controlled since 1969. The country is rich and at the same time deeply divided between regions and tribes and local bureaucracies. That has never been a recipe for equitable development. Think of Iraq: who gets the oil, who gets the harbour(s), who sits across someone else's pipeline, who benefits from the proceeds?

The least we should hope for is that the country will now open up to the outside world and not hunker down behind a wall of new-found religious fundamentalism or tribal barriers.

AII

[Papewaio]

Oil is the quickest way to create wealth without effort. Oil doesn't require a middle class to make the upper class rich. Every other form of wealth requires some level of investment in the 'lowest' classes (Farm hands), and some of those forms of wealth require the formation of a 'middle' class (IT, Vets).

Oil always dictators to buy arms, and for other nations to turn a blind eye.

Tunisa had to create a middle class to become wealthy, it meant it's fall was quicker and I daresay it's future brighter.

If the US had been founded on oil wealth first, it might have evolved into a different nation. Having a diversity of natural resources tends to be one way of combating oil rot.

Most of the third world dictators need a form of easy cashflow... oil, blood diamonds or drugs.

So my guess is that Libya is screwed... unless we wean ourselves off our additictions including oil, we will be always aiding and assisting 'our bastard' dictators.

[Montmorency]

Top Ten Myths About the Libya War

The secret of the uprising’s final days of success lay in a popular revolt in the working-class districts of the capital, which did most of the hard work of throwing off the rule of secret police and military cliques. It succeeded so well that when revolutionary brigades entered the city from the west, many encountered little or no resistance, and they walked right into the center of the capital. Muammar Qaddafi was in hiding as I went to press, and three of his sons were in custody. Saif al-Islam Qaddafi had apparently been the de facto ruler of the country in recent years, so his capture signaled a checkmate.

Moreover, those who question whether there were US interests in Libya seem to me a little blind. The US has an interest in there not being massacres of people for merely exercising their right to free assembly. The US has an interest in a lawful world order, and therefore in the United Nations Security Council resolution demanding that Libyans be protected from their murderous government. The US has an interest in its NATO alliance, and NATO allies France and Britain felt strongly about this intervention. The US has a deep interest in the fate of Egypt, and what happened in Libya would have affected Egypt (Qaddafi allegedly had high Egyptian officials on his payroll).

1. Qaddafi was a progressive in his domestic policies. While back in the 1970s, Qaddafi was probably more generous in sharing around the oil wealth with the population, buying tractors for farmers, etc., in the past couple of decades that policy changed. He became vindictive against tribes in the east and in the southwest that had crossed him politically, depriving them of their fair share in the country’s resources. And in the past decade and a half, extreme corruption and the rise of post-Soviet-style oligarchs, including Qaddafi and his sons, have discouraged investment and blighted the economy. Workers were strictly controlled and unable to collectively bargain for improvements in their conditions. There was much more poverty and poor infrastructure in Libya than there should have been in an oil state.

2. Qaddafi was a progressive in his foreign policy. Again, he traded for decades on positions, or postures, he took in the 1970s. In contrast, in recent years he played a sinister role in Africa, bankrolling brutal dictators and helping foment ruinous wars. In 1996 the supposed champion of the Palestinian cause expelled 30,000 stateless Palestinians from the country. After he came in from the cold, ending European and US sanctions, he began buddying around with George W. Bush, Silvio Berlusconi and other right wing figures. Berlusconi has even said that he considered resigning as Italian prime minister once NATO began its intervention, given his close personal relationship to Qaddafi. Such a progressive.

4. There was a long stalemate in the fighting between the revolutionaries and the Qaddafi military. There was not. This idea was fostered by the vantage point of many Western observers, in Benghazi. It is true that there was a long stalemate at Brega, which ended yesterday when the pro-Qaddafi troops there surrendered. But the two most active fronts in the war were Misrata and its environs, and the Western Mountain region. Misrata fought an epic, Stalingrad-style, struggle of self-defense against attacking Qaddafi armor and troops, finally proving victorious with NATO help, and then they gradually fought to the west toward Tripoli. The most dramatic battles and advances were in the largely Berber Western Mountain region, where, again, Qaddafi armored units relentlessly shelled small towns and villages but were fought off (with less help from NATO initially, which I think did not recognize the importance of this theater). It was the revolutionary volunteers from this region who eventually took Zawiya, with the help of the people of Zawiya, last Friday and who thereby cut Tripoli off from fuel and ammunition coming from Tunisia and made the fall of the capital possible. Any close observer of the war since April has seen constant movement, first at Misrata and then in the Western Mountains, and there was never an over-all stalemate.

6. Libya is not a real country and could have been partitioned between east and west.
Alexander Cockburn wrote,

“It requites no great prescience to see that this will all end up badly. Qaddafi’s failure to collapse on schedule is prompting increasing pressure to start a ground war, since the NATO operation is, in terms of prestige, like the banks Obama has bailed out, Too Big to Fail. Libya will probably be balkanized.”

I don’t understand the propensity of Western analysts to keep pronouncing nations in the global south “artificial” and on the verge of splitting up. It is a kind of Orientalism. All nations are artificial. Benedict Anderson dates the nation-state to the late 1700s, and even if it were a bit earlier, it is a new thing in history. Moreover, most nation-states are multi-ethnic, and many long-established ones have sub-nationalisms that threaten their unity. Thus, the Catalans and Basque are uneasy inside Spain, the Scottish may bolt Britain any moment, etc., etc. In contrast, Libya does not have any well-organized, popular separatist movements. It does have tribal divisions, but these are not the basis for nationalist separatism, and tribal alliances and fissures are more fluid than ethnicity (which is itself less fixed than people assume). Everyone speaks Arabic, though for Berbers it is the public language; Berbers were among the central Libyan heroes of the revolution, and will be rewarded with a more pluralist Libya. This generation of young Libyans, who waged the revolution, have mostly been through state schools and have a strong allegiance to the idea of Libya. Throughout the revolution, the people of Benghazi insisted that Tripoli was and would remain the capital. Westerners looking for break-ups after dictatorships are fixated on the Balkan events after 1989, but there most often isn’t an exact analogue to those in the contemporary Arab world.

8. The United States led the charge to war. There is no evidence for this allegation whatsoever. When I asked Glenn Greenwald whether a US refusal to join France and Britain in a NATO united front might not have destroyed NATO, he replied that NATO would never have gone forward unless the US had plumped for the intervention in the first place. I fear that answer was less fact-based and more doctrinaire than we are accustomed to hearing from Mr. Greenwald, whose research and analysis on domestic issues is generally first-rate. As someone not a stranger to diplomatic history, and who has actually heard briefings in Europe from foreign ministries and officers of NATO members, I’m offended at the glibness of an answer given with no more substantiation than an idee fixe. The excellent McClatchy wire service reported on the reasons for which then Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, the Pentagon, and Obama himself were extremely reluctant to become involved in yet another war in the Muslim world. It is obvious that the French and the British led the charge on this intervention, likely because they believed that a protracted struggle over years between the opposition and Qaddafi in Libya would radicalize it and give an opening to al-Qaeda and so pose various threats to Europe. French President Nicolas Sarkozy had been politically mauled, as well, by the offer of his defense minister, Michèle Alliot-Marie, to send French troops to assist Ben Ali in Tunisia (Alliot-Marie had been Ben Ali’s guest on fancy vacations), and may have wanted to restore traditional French cachet in the Arab world as well as to look decisive to his electorate. Whatever Western Europe’s motivations, they were the decisive ones, and the Obama administration clearly came along as a junior partner (something Sen. John McCain is complaining bitterly about).

[econ21]

A bizarre turn of events - Gadhafi's son Saif appears in the presidential compound and says he was not arrested; that the loyalists have been leading the rebels into a trap. He's handing out guns to his supporters and sending them out to fight. I suspect people power will crush them, but it's messy.

One of the news channels reported that the rebel leader had dismissed his entire cabinet and had not yet appointed replacements.

[Louis VI the Fat]

A bizarre turn of events - Gadhafi's son Saif appears in the presidential compound and says he was not arrested; that the loyalists have been leading the rebels into a trap.

It's a trap! They've lured the rebels into a trap!

[Cute Wolf]

It's a trap! They've lured the rebels into a trap!

it's funny because I still remember that Admiral Akbar in EB is Libyan

[Fragony]

I'm with Ronin, see no good comming out of this. Don't we have better things to do than picking sides in civil war anyway

[Adrian II]

A bizarre turn of events - Gadhafi's son Saif appears in the presidential compound and says he was not arrested; that the loyalists have been leading the rebels into a trap. He's handing out guns to his supporters and sending them out to fight. I suspect people power will crush them, but it's messy.

One of the news channels reported that the rebel leader had dismissed his entire cabinet and had not yet appointed replacements.

I'm wierdified.

I keep hearing that Saif has 'escaped house arrest'. Did they put an electronic tag on him and tell him to report to his local police station every 24 hours?

[ICantSpellDawg]

I'm with Ronin, see no good comming out of this. Don't we have better things to do than picking sides in civil war anyway

Absolutely not

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Indeed, I think that is the worry. The Western rebels are, apparently, distinct from those in the east and have a great disdain for them. Then there are the various tribes who have been bribed into peace by Gaddafi.

That's interesting, because the Libyans themselves say otherwise, they were quick early on to scotch the idea that the "Western" rebels wanted to move the capital, establish a seperate state, etc., etc.

These people have fought a bloody war against their oppressor, the provisional authority seems not only administatively competant but also keen to avoid new fissures and breaches either between the rebels and the Gadaffi forces, or within the rebel movement itself. Even more though, unlike Egypt and Tunisia these people have fought a bloody war for their independence, they will not be easily cowed again... but nor do they want more bloodshed.

As to the lack of a middle class, I dissagree, the NTC itself is made up of academics, lawyers and doctors trying very hard to be politicians.

We shall see what happens but it is imperative that the West does NOT impose a settlement, no UN authority, no peacekeepers, no meddling.

If we can avoid our pathlogical need to "be colonial" then I think Libya has more hope of being a decent society than either Egypt or Tunisia, who are both currently veering between Islamist state and Military Junta every other week.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

A civil war within a decade following the overthrow of the oppressor/colonial power is the norm -- a peaceful transition of power afterwards is the exception.

The blood and strife will continue even after Kadaffi's ouster. Picking sides would involve re-colonializing Libya. Messy and expensive business.

[HoreTore]

Top Ten Myths About the Libya War

Excellent read, thank you for providing it.

[HoreTore]

I'm wierdified.

I keep hearing that Saif has 'escaped house arrest'. Did they put an electronic tag on him and tell him to report to his local police station every 24 hours?

The revolutionaries are not navy seals, and the situation is rather chaotic. I don't find it very etrange that he managed to escape..

Also, hell is frozen; I agree with PVC!

[Viking]

Gaddafi has lost some of his bling bling

[Seamus Fermanagh]

The revolutionaries are not navy seals, and the situation is rather chaotic. I don't find it very etrange that he managed to escape..

Also, hell is frozen; I agree with PVC!

I thought Helle froze up pretty regularly. Which you should know better than I norseman!

[HoreTore]

I thought Helle froze up pretty regularly. Which you should know better than I norseman!

Nah, Helle is in the south. Hell, on the other hand, is in Trøndelag in the middle of the country, and thus quite cold most of the time....

[Viking]

Oh yes it's far north, I don't think I've ever been further north than Trøndelag. I hear there are polar bears in the streets further north, and that Sami shamans can cast nasty spells on you. The Sun doesn't rise every day, either.

Anyway, here's a terrible racist scene that played out in Tripoli today, as predicted by PJ earlier in this thread. EXTREMELY GRAPHIC stuff, you are warned.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Montmorency]

OH MY GOD HE'S ABOUT TO BEAT THAT WHITE LADY.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

,.Actually, PJ was suggesting that the victorious rebels might be hanging chads.

Sorry, I live in Florida now, land of the recount election. Please forgive me, or at least try not to take it out on my children.

[econ21]

I keep hearing that Saif has 'escaped house arrest'.

One rebel leader said that the story of Saif's "arrest" helped the rebels a lot, in encouraging the pro-Gadafi soldiers to surrender. But whether the rebels were showing a mastery of black propaganda or Saif bribed his way out, I don't know.

There was an interesting piece from a British woman reporter giving her impressions of Saif over the previous months. She said she found him strangely childlike. She told an anecdote about how he drove her alone to the most pro-opposition part of Tripoli (before the current rebel advances) and took her to talk to people in the street. Then he seemed to become a bit discomforted and took her back to the car, where he nervously asked if she had a gun.

It's strange how the journalists are so much better armored than the rebel fighters. There's a picture on the BBC news website of one equipped as in the above video, next to a sign written in Arabic "Don't shoot, we are journalists!". They do look rather more like Stormtroopers than journalists.