Recent anti-government protests in the Libyan city of Benghazi, and the subsequent reaction by the armed forces, have caught the attention of the world’s media in the last few days, quick on the heels as they were of the ‘victory’ of the Tahir Square ‘revolution’ and the fall of Ben Ali’s government in Tunisia. The wave of popular demonstration has been over simplified by painting the whole region as geopolitically the same; essentially undemocratic, ruled by a despotic elite and tethered together like a string of dominos. From this logic follows the obvious conclusion that Gaddafi will eventually be forced to listen to the grievances of the masses and cede reform, reconstruction or even leave office himself. What has been lost in the tidy summaries and opinion pieces surrounding the recent events in Libyans second city is the nature of the beast these protest are up against, the actual and perceived injustices these people seek to address, and the role Libya has to play in the region, especially vis-à-vis Egypt.
Ruled since 1969 by the sometime erratic sometime psychotic Muammar al-Gaddafi, Colonel Gaddafi, or ‘Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution’ as he likes to be called, who came to power in an army coup against the monarchy and quickly established himself as leader of the new Libyan Arab Republic, a Che Guevara for the region. His rule from here reads like a play list of the things to do when one has a large oil-based revenue, a messiah complex, and a general and unfocused hatred of ‘western interference’ in Muslim lands. He has demonstrated, consistently, in his leadership of this country and the misuse of its resources that no scheme is too madcap, no agenda too fantastical, no opportunity too cynical for him, from Lockerbie to IRA arms sales, from the disappearance and possible murder of Lebanese politician Musa al-Sadar in Libya to the banning of dissenting websites and the imprisonment of dissenters, Gaddafi is a cold, calculated leader, not afraid of upsetting anyone. The recent protests against him are not to be viewed in isolation but merely as part of a wider momentum which has been bubbling under for the past decade or so, especially since the failed assassination attempt on him in 1993. Unlike the aging bumbling Mubarak and the unsure military that the protesters in Egypt met a few weeks previously, these Libyan protesters have consistently come up against a man for whom his own divine right to lead his country, Africa and the Muslim world, is not even in question, a man who sees it as his destiny to die on Libyan soil, rather that escape and allow a transition of power.
Recently, and only to an extent, he has been welcomed into the fold of the civil world community, mostly due to the wealth in natural resources Libya possesses, and the actions of his security forces in the past few nights will embarrass his new friends’ immensely. He has no intention of listening; the protesters in Benghazi have been met with unrestrained military aggression, victim numbers ranging from 300 to 500 at time of writing, most shot in the head or chest, kill shots, live ammunition, machine gunned down. These are the actions of a man at war with his country, these are the actions of a man who will not be moved by mere popular disapproval, he will not be advised by his people, and he will not be swayed by populism.
What will the international community do if the protesters continue, as they have promised to, and Gaddafi continues to body bag them, as his from book suggests he will? Short answer is a whole lot of nothing, meek statements, condemnation and tut-tuts, some watered-down remarks about the Colonel being up to his old tricks but the truth is that the people of the world are not with the people of Benghazi. Libya has oil, it has been a basket case economy for years now but it has a significant amount of foreign investment in it and it won’t benefit anyone in Europe or the US to back the wrong side in this conflict, and as it seems like there will only be one winner, it doesn’t pay to upset Gaddafi, who protects the investment and keeps the oil flowing. Gaddafi will continue to send his army in to cut down protesters, armed or not, he will round them up, bag them, torture them and get to the bottom of it, imprison or kill the current leaders of the main opposition group The National Front for the Salvation of Libya and generally recreate an aura of fear of speaking out, an reassertion of who is the top dog. The cavalry will not come, there will be no dancing in the streets, just outpourings of outrage and a footnote in history when the ‘Day of Rage’ begun a month of massacres.
20/2/11
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