By Jonathan Power,The citizen
In Summary
In truth, many of the protesters from day one used
arms and the government at first responded with only rubber bullets and
water cannons
On Saturday Libya beat Ghana to win the African
Nations Football Championship. A return to normalcy? To win a team must
have a first class pitch and a non-stressed out team. Does this indicate
that Libya, two and a half years after the fall of dictator Muammar
Gaddafi, is getting back on its feet?
Alas, the football win is out of the ordinary in
Libyan life, made by a team that has found a way to the top by hard
practice and severe self-discipline. The rest of Libya is not like that.
Its government is wobbly, self-appointed militias still rule in many
parts and the rule of law is ignored as often as it’s obeyed. An
increasing number of its people yearn for the peace and order of the
dictatorial Gaddafi regime where the economy grew, life was improving
and even human rights were being more respected.
Inspired by the Arab Spring in neighbouring
Tunisia and Egypt, Libyans, so the accepted Western narrative went, rose
up in non-violent protests. Gaddafi responded by ordering the
protesters to be shot and ordered his troops to fire indiscriminately
into residential areas. The protesters turned violent and the civil war
began.
In truth, many of the protesters from day one used
arms and the government at first responded with only rubber bullets and
water cannons. Western television reported that Gaddafi’s forces had
used live ammunition, showing a video of this. The BBC the next day,
almost alone among news organisations, admitted it had made a reporting
mistake. The video had been “uploaded more than a year ago”.
Nonetheless the situation quickly deteriorated and
those that chose non-violence were pushed aside. The rebel militias
faced the troops head on. The rebels called for the outside world to
intervene.
The UN Security Council was convened and agreed
(Russia and China abstaining) that “all necessary means” be used to
protect Libya’s civilians. But that was not what happened. France,
Denmark and the UK with US back up went for the jugular and set about
bombing the regime into submission. Gaddafi was killed.
Russia felt betrayed. This was not what it had
accepted and it has made it shy of voting for “humanitarian
intervention” in Syria and, doubtless, future hot spots. As Professor
Alan Kuperman writes in the current issue of Harvard University’s
“International Security”, “If Nato had prioritised the protection of
civilians it would have enforced a non-fly zone, bombed forces that were
threatening civilians and attempted to forge a cease-fire. Instead Nato
took actions that were unnecessary or inconsistent with protecting
civilians but which fostered regime change”. The New York Times reported
that Nato planes even attacked those Libyan forces which were in
retreat.
Thanks to sloppy and sensational reporting and
Nato disinformation we were never given the true picture. Rather we were
reminded of the terrorism Gaddafi initiated more than three decades
earlier and which he had renounced many years ago.
As a result of Nato intervention, Libya’s war
lasted 36 weeks rather than ending in 6 weeks as Nato governments had at
first estimated. Around 5,000 civilians and rebels were killed.
Gaddafi committed no blood baths (unlike Assad in
Syria today where the number of deaths has been around 100,000). By and
large civilians were not targeted, as in Syria and Rwanda.
By making it clear that they were intent on regime
change Nato perversely encouraged the regime to fight to the bitter
end, thus escalating and prolonging the war. Gaddafi’s offer of a
cease-fire and negotiations, only two weeks into the conflict, was
ignored.
The only apparent benefit to Libyans is that they
have been able to vote in democratic elections. But the unstable
government has little authority in a country where the militias have
grown big, thanks to the unnecessary length of the war. Kuperman argues
that human rights abuses are considerably worse than in the decade
preceding the war. Nato intervention also trigge
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