We’re just over a year past the beginning of the uprisings in Libya that ultimately produced (along with, of course, NATO’s intervention) Muammar Qaddafi’s ouster. And there are now increasing calls for some form of military intervention in Syria. As such, this seems like an important time to evaluate the aftermath of NATO’s intervention in Libya, and how it intersects with American interests.
Essentially, there is a dearth of information publicly available about the state of affairs in Libya, but we nonetheless know a number of facts unambiguously:
- The TNC has yet to establish its authority within Tripoli. However well-meaning its endeavors may be, they are not being executed or enforced outside a very small geographic area.
- The overwhelming majority of the country is ruled by local militias under commanders with no accountability or common code of conduct.
- Several towns (including Zintan, Misrata, and Benghazi) are dominated by local warlords who have power equal to, or greater than, the capital. Indeed, the emergence of a western council in the Nafusa Mountains that directly opposes the TNC is a testament to its weakness.
- Qaddafi loyalists (more tribal than ideological in nature) have successfully retaken Bani Walid, and have not been displaced.
- The Libyan Islamic Fighting Group is well established in parts of Tripoli and Derna. Its rise is directly correlated to attacks against Sufi shrines, and the movement of foreign volunteers going to fight in Syria.
- There has been a rash of ongoing retaliatory ethnic and tribal fighting against communities perceived to be pro-Qaddafi, most notably Tuaregs, Berbers, and black Africans.
- The influx of weaponry and returning Tuareg mercenaries after Qaddafi’s fall has helped to destabilize a not-inconsiderable part of Mali. Violent incidents occurring in Algeria, Niger, and Tunisia have also been traced back to Libya.
- Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb’s Sahara emir, Mokhtar Belmokhtar, claims to have absconded with a considerable amount of Qaddafi’s arsenal. The U.N. has claimed that this has been used to outfit Boko Haram.
Qaddafi’s last enclaves fell in September, so it has been less than five months since the (first phase of?) major fighting ended. If you’re drawing a parallel to Iraq in 2003, there was more violence in Iraq in terms of high-profile attacks by what would later become Al Qaeda in Iraq against the U.N., U.S. forces, and Shia religious leadership. There is also no parallel to countries like Iran or Syria that are actively trying to export instability and violence into Libya at present. A better parallel is perhaps Afghanistan, which in 2002 was more or less carved up between various warlords, then severely neglected by the U.S. and its allies as America’s focus shifted to Iraq. The Taliban wasn’t able to resurge until 2005, and it took quite a while before Afghanistan’s cracks began to show. In Libya, conflict may well become more severe once the TNC tries to seriously enforce its authority, or one of the various factions gets organized enough to try to either declare autonomy or take over the country.
While there was a good deal of waxing Churchillian about stopping the violence and toppling the Colonel’s government, nobody seems interested in cleaning up a growing mess in Libya. The result is that a lot of rapid changes have come to the country, particularly in terms of reducing it to a balkanized state, and infusing the Maghreb (and other parts of Africa) with a significant amount of weaponry that is readily available to the highest bidder. The argument that an intervention in Libya was in the U.S.’s strategic interest was tenuous from the outset, and it remains unclear that a single American interest was advanced by this military commitment. At this point, the intervention doesn’t appear to have bought us any tangible goodwill in the Arab street, and may have helped to severely destabilize the northern region of a country that, as of 2006, produced 1.8 million barrels of oil per day.
Of course, we still don’t know precisely how things will turn out in Libya. As Ann Marlowe rightly points out, “Americans should not be too quick to judge how the country will evolve in the coming years.” But, particularly in an age of limited resources, we do need to evaluate our strategic interests, particularly where lessons from the Libyan intervention are applicable to other actions that some observers believe the U.S. should undertake abroad. And the early picture of Libya in February 2012 is not particularly positive.
I am afraid it is very hard to take seriously an analysis that contains the phrase “There has been a rash of ongoing retaliatory ethnic and tribal fighting against communities perceived to be pro-Qaddafi, most notably Tuaregs, Berbers, and black Africans.”
The Berbers (who are the same people as the warlords of the Nafusa Mountains - the appellation itself is one preferred by the Berber speaking community), are most certainly not perceived as pro-Qadhdhafi. Quite the contrary, they are well known as among the most antti-Qadhdhafi communities in Libya. To write the above rather highlights a lack of knowledge about Libya.
The Tuareq (themselves, of course, linguistically Berber, but distant from the settled Berberophone communities) are another matter, having long served as mercenaries for Qadhdhafi - particularly the Taureq from Mali, for reasons particularly their own.
The Black African attacks, however, are nothing new. Populist violence against Black Africans has long been a feature of Libyan society, and was rarely punished with any real severity. Resentment againts The Guide pissing away billions on his African dreams and old racism in Libyan society, not a Libyan revolution, are the reasons.
This is, overall, a silly, superficial analysis.
For the issue of no interests, the primary interest was not having a counter-revolutionary Qadhdhafi - after the inevitable massacres in Benghazi - destabilising Tunisia and Egypt. Already before his own revolution started, in Tunisia there were credible signs of Qadhdhafi funding the Benalistes, issues that not-at-all-coincidentally evaporated once Qadhdhafi had his hands full on home territory.
As for Good Will in the Arab Street for the Americans, no magic wands exist, but in the Maghreb where I operate as an investor and have for a decade, this gets positive comment.
In all, a rather dishonest or stupid evaluation.
And the early picture of Libya in February 2012 is not particularly positive.
Sure, it is! Qaddafi’s not in power.
OK, here’s the thing. There’s what gets reported on the news, and there’s what actually happens. There’s quite often a large delta between those two things. We found this in Bosnia where the shibboleths and clichés parroted on the news were worth palpably less than the tripe found in the National Enquirer every week - at least the Enquirer could be entertaining and tongue in cheek. The reportage about Libya since Gaddafi met his end seems to worryingly follow the same trajectory.
Addressing a first set of bullet points above - Libya was ruled by a personality cult for 42 years that killed or exiled anyone that even seemed to oppose it. To think that in five months a strong and organised central authority would arise in a country where the people just overthrew their strong, organised central authority is both fanciful and disingenuous as analysis. It took an incredibly bloody and costly civil war, with after-effects that resonate today still, for the USA to establish federal authority over the States so to judge Libya by the standards of 21st century democracies is somewhat hypocritical. More on that in a bit.
Secondly, a report that Gaddafi loyalists took over Bani Walid, is forgiveable if CBS News reported it; to say they still have control simply isn’t for anyone. But for a howler like that to appear in a respected defence blog should raise more than one eyebrow. Reports from people actually in Bani Walid could have confirmed the event as a situation involving disaffected youth summarily ejected by the Misrata militias amongst others.
Additionally, people on the East Coast of the USA might believe the Berbers (Amazigh) to be perceived as pro-Gaddafi. Almost any Libyan would quickly disabuse them of this perception. Again, this bit of analysis could easily have been confirmed with better sources.
To look at a final set of bullet points, stating that a country, under the thumb of an autocrat, that then revolts against him might experience an amount of chaos and lack of accountable control over its arsenals is stating the obvious. To say that there are bad people out there who take advantage of this(!) isn’t an argument amplifier. It’s still stating the obvious but in that inflammatory way the TSA and friends do when trying to lobby for billions from ignorant Congressmen: if they waver, invoke al Qaeda; the money will flow.
But these are quibbles (but supporting quibbles) compared to the conclusions drawn. To say there is no goodwill on the Arab Street means narrowing ones definition of the Arab street to the posher bits of Riyadh or the HQ of the SCAF in Cairo. So Obama didn’t go to Tripoli but Cameron and Sarkozy were celebrated as heroes when they arrived, and NATO is no longer a swear word in much of the Middle East.
National interests were advanced, tremendously even: we were the ones that supplied those arms, we bought the oil, we feted Gaddafi when he (apparently) “came in from the cold,” but we’re now seen as the ones that pushed the UN envelope to liberate the people from him.
We have a finite period of time to nudge parts of the Middle East in a positive direction by doing everything we can to encourage the uptake of democracy and democratic institutions in these countries. If successfully entrenched, this will do more than all the realpolitik of all time to advance our national interests!
To be fair, it will take a generation or two but will greatly decrease the international political threat level our children will face in a globalized world. If people of the Middle East & North Africa have the ability to freely choose their leaders (thus their policies) and exercise their freedom to do so, they will do so. They may muddle along (like Iraq) or choose and suffer the consequences (like Gaza) but will eventually get there.
It took the USA 130 years to get to a semblance of the nation of rights and rule of law vaguely recognisable in the form we know it today. Getting to that point wasn’t benign: during that time we invaded colonial Canada, Mexico and Spanish colonial territories, to say nothing of WT Sherman writing the “How to utterly subdue your enemies” manual for Assad and Gaddafi during the American Civil War, so some humility is on order on our part.
Don’t write Libya off on the basis of trying to carefully find its way to a form it’s never known before. They’re doing well, considering, but less than optimal analysis of the situation doesn’t help.
This isn’t exactly an objective analysis. “The intervention doesn’t appear to have bought us any tangible goodwill in the Arab street” doesn’t jibe with what I’ve heard from Libya, and begs the question of what “tangible” is supposed to mean. The fact that authority is decentralized at this early stage in rebuilding the country is not surprising and not necessarily a frightening thing, as implied in this article. Dictators like Gaddafi and Assad perpetuat(ed) their power by systematically eliminating any real or potential roots for a political alternative…which necessarily means that a civil society will have to be built from the ground up, and will take a very long time. At least a generation, in fact. Anybody who suggests that intervention in Libya (or Syria) is going to produce immediate and unmixed benefits is lying. But anybody who already concludes that intervention wasn’t worth it is lying too.
Quite agree, I have no idea where the good-will angle came from, as someone active in the Maghreb. Perhaps back East where Israel issues reign supreme, but out in the Maghreb there is clear real good-will.
It’s not always about us.
Pingback: Guilt, Inaction, and Trying to Pay it Backwards | Plastic Manzikert
Pingback: Weekend Reading « Backslash Scott Thoughts
Pingback: Syria is Libya on Nightmare Mode | Plastic Manzikert