Libya may already be lost. “Lost”, that is, for people-power democratisation. The Arab freedom wave has seemed an irresistible force, smashing down old post-colonial crony dictatorships in four Arab states and counting. But it has run smack into world oil politics in Libya and crashed to a stop. The rebel’s ill-organised ground battle faces a reversal almost too painful to watch. Yet more painful is that, in western rhetoric about what to do next, the rebel movement itself is now largely marginal even to debate about how to “protect” it. The West itself inflicted mortal blows on that movement and, although still holding on, its momentum now appears irreparable, its eulogy ringing in Western debates about imposing a no-fly zone.
We can see the progressive marginalisation of the rebels signalled all over the media. For instance, a few hours before this writing, in a debate broadcast on al-Jazeera, Salman Shaikh, head of the Brookings Institute in Doha, claimed “unanimous” Arab support for a no-fly zone, protesting, “What else can we do?” It was bad enough that, by “unanimous”, Shaikh meant the Arab elites and Gulf emirs—as though the past two months had not happened and the specious claim of unrepresentative elites to express Arab public opinion had never been challenged. The really bad signal was that the “we” in his “what can we do?” clearly no longer included the Libyan rebels themselves. Just a few days ago, the rebels were the main players: wielding prodigious moral authority in their claim on Libyan public conscience; able to raise an inspiring nationalist Libyan banner against Qaddafy’s unrepresentative crony rule; taking town after town on a wave of optimism built from the fall of two Arab regimes in the last two months. The movement had stalled in Tripoli only under extreme repression. But now its moral authority is crumbling and its nationalist banner is scorched and drooping, as the rebels cling to their shrinking base, facing Qaddafy’s military (or mercenary?)
Why this debacle in what should have been another domino in the Arab democratisation tsunami?
It was never going to be easy in Libya: the regime was all-pervasive, not even a facsimile of elections had been held in decades, and civil society barely exists. But hardly anyone in Libya likes Qaddafy: he is now quite old and occasionally irrational, much of the population is chafing for freedom, and his political days seemed numbered. Experience of Tunisia and Egypt, and simple caution, suggested that the West stand back and let people power take its course. But the gleaming lure of oil energized the wrong side—the military interventionists, the neo-colonialists, who always assume that (a) mere Arabs can’t be relied upon to do the right thing, and (b) western military power still somehow has a place in the Arab world. Given the oil lure and the urgent agendas of AFRICOM, the military-oil complex could not restrain itself—could not hold back, trust the Libyan movement and let the domestic struggle work its magic. Instead, in classic colonial fashion, European powers swaggered in to “energise the opposition” with a show of imminent force—gunboat diplomacy, diplomatic gestures, back-channel messages. Of course, the show of force was always hypocritical: the last thing Europeans really want is a military intervention in Libya (leaving out the war entrepreneurs, whose mouths are watering). But diplomatic hypocrisy and the show of force did its work, nonetheless, for it dealt the rebellion two mortal blows.
The first mortal blow was to convey to the rebels the entirely deceptive message that they could punch above their weight with Qaddafy’s loyalists. This is the same old bitter betrayal that first-world powers have inflicted on gullible populaces all over the world: during the cold war, for example, both Left and Right regularly inspired local peasantries with false hopes of great-power help and sent them off with machetes to die under the machine guns of local dictators. The illusion of powerful friends regularly ruins other political calculations as well: e.g., persuading rebels that they can spurn negotiations with state forces because the Sugar Daddy is vastly stronger, also wants the government to fall, and has (vaguely) promised support. Hence the crucial political moment—when the Libyan rebels were gaining ground and Qaddafy’s people offered to negotiate toward some consensus and compromise—was squandered by a movement that believed it didn’t need those negotiations (and had the sugar plum fairies of Egypt’s triumph dancing before their eyes). Now that the rebels are losing ground, Qaddafy’s people no longer have the same motivation to offer such talks, and won’t. The only hope for the rebels now is external help, which means the home-based liberation movement, inheritor of the Tunisian and Egyptian torches, has ceased to exist.
The second mortal blow was to the moral authority of the rebels and thus their political clout within Libya. This is the most astounding and heartbreaking effect of Western cluelessness. It might seem Foreign Policy 101 to recall, from mere weeks ago, that the Tunisia and Egyptian governments both used false charges of foreign agitation and manipulation in failed attempts to delegitimize the mass opposition. Yemen’s president is presently making the same claim. It was precisely because these claims were specious that they could be exposed as lies and further discredit the regime. To just take one instance, historians of the Egyptian revolution will doubtless confirm that Wael Ghonim’s famous interview on Egyptian state television was indeed a turning point, as his heartfelt expression of loyalty and passion for Egyptian freedom persuaded the startled Egyptian middle class and professional classes that the rebellion was truly home-grown and brought them en masse into the streets, helping to secure the Mubarak regime’s final demise.
With these dramas sweeping across world television screens, not associating western powers with the Libyan rebellion might have seemed the obvious move. The political moment was confirmed by the rapid advances of the rebellion, as it faced only ambivalent resistance. The Libyan army was clearly avoiding serious attack on its own people, as in Egypt, by making half-hearted ground movements followed with hasty retreats, while air force pilots dutifully performed their flyovers but dropped their bombs harmlessly into the desert. Now, thanks to Western ham-handedness and imperial hubris—especially by the irrepressible French, who still somehow believe French colonialism in Africa was really a good thing and it was all just a big misunderstanding—the Libyan opposition no longer manifests to the military or an ambivalent public as “their own people”. It is now a fifth column for the fleets of European ships off Libya’s coast. Nothing other than foreign intervention could so quickly have revived the military capacity of Qaddafy’s regime, which is now resurrected—pulled back from the brink, beyond belief, as the symbolic bastion of Libyan sovereignty.
It’s a bit of a mystery that Europe and the United States still labour under the facile notion that they are liked by the Arab world. Of course, they are still getting this message from slickly dressed elite pundits like Salman Sheikh and the Arab League has wagged its tail as usual, but that’s hardly an excuse for ignoring the contradictory evidence pouring from the world media over past months. Nor is it any excuse for forgetting basic lessons about nation-building: e.g., that true domestic consensus is the only basis for stable government, that autochthonous revolt can provide such consensus, and that foreign intervention routinely breaks it down. On all counts, therefore, the best hope for US and European influence has been to back the Arab democracy movements in mild rhetoric and stand off until the rebellions were complete, then re-enter with the usual offers of favourable trade deals, technology and expertise and restore their relevance and influence. Instead, they have swaggered in to control the transition and capture the rebel leadership to ensure that the rebels are “our guys”. Now they hold the shards of a broken country, as anyone outside their imperialist bell jar might have predicted. Libya looked nothing like Iraq until now.
The so-called “left” cannot escape some guilt either. For one thing, from the earliest weeks of the pro-democracy wave, sympathisers have clamoured indignantly for overt Western support of rebellions in rhetoric and deed with little regard for the dangers of delegitimizing and hamstringing the very movements they wanted to support. Hopefully they see the bitter fruits now. For another, the demonstration effects of Tunisia and Egypt have propagated a simplistic model of triumph as the physical departure of the head of state. This fixation is simply unwise when applied across the range of different regimes the democracy movement is confronting. Yes, in Tunisia, the ruling family was so corrupt that its removal was imperative. And in Egypt (a much more complicated situation), removing Mubarak became essential as well, as his power bloc revealed itself to be uneducable and had to be humbled in order to create the political space essential to real reform. In both Egypt and Tunisia, however, the democracy movement is now freshly sobered by the monumental task of building real political parties across entire countries. An early demand that Egyptian elections be held in two months, for example, is now recalled as both absurd and dangerous. If delay in reforms can favour the manoeuvrings of nefarious forces, so can excessive haste if it gives too little time for democratic forces to organise. Regime change requires proper timing if it is to serve the people well.
And each country’s political conditions are unique: mass revolt doesn’t always have the same leverage and cannot necessarily ensure that rapid change favours the people.
Hence it’s not entirely clear that removing Yemen’s president precipitously is absolutely essential to a good outcome for the people, given the promised transition to parliamentary rule. Nor is it clear, although he’s awful and detested, that removing the fossilised Qaddafy is essential, either. It could suffice, perhaps, that people around him be led to accept that his days are truly numbered and that a new system of government must be invented, and quickly, in consultation with the rebel-held cities. We had some signals this was happening—before the gunboats arrived.
Productive negotiation across Libyan tribes and factions required, minimally, realistic appraisal by all sides of their own limitations. The rebels’ limitations became clear when the strength of the regime’s ferocious clampdown in Tripoli was revealed. In that brief window of stalemate, genuine talks with the Tripoli power elite might have crafted some agreement toward an effective transition to a reformed post-Qaddafy regime. But with warships off the coast, helicopters dropping British special forces into rebel-held territory, Sarkozy’s beaming recognition of the opposition “council”, and flat rhetoric from President Obama and others about Qaddafy’s removal, the rebels believed they could kick the regime in the teeth. Now they face the consequences. Having taken up weapons, they cannot use them effectively and cannot advance militarily. Although rebel fighters are rushing to defend Benghazi, they appear unable to galvanise self-sacrificing heroics among the mass of Libyan people who could tip the balance but who see them standing in front of Western military wallpaper. And the Libyan military’s spine has clearly stiffened, as the struggle is recast from Libyan people-versus-dictator into foreign imperialist rule versus Libyan sovereignty.
Now the rebels’ hope has reduced to western military assistance, against a very formidable military foe. And the West has marched itself right into providing it. As usual, the true victims are the people who were deceived by great-power promises. The rest of us can only sputter on the sidelines about western miscalculations and elite Arab-world folly while listening to pundits and the high-and-mighty debate what “we” will do next.
Virginia Tilley is author of The One-State Solution.
