Protests began in Benghazi on 15 February that soon morphed into a resistance movement, populated by a rabble of disorganised but passionate men. Their early successes were quickly whittled away by Gaddafi’s vastly superior troops who had advanced to within 100 miles of Benghazi by the time the Security Council took action. Two UN Resolutions within just over a month of the outbreak of hostilities imposed travel bans and asset freezes on major government officials, placed an arms embargo on Libya and authorised the foreign use of force, short of an invasion, “to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack”. Shortly thereafter, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court sought INTERPOL’s help in enforcing outstanding arrest warrants issued for Gaddafi, one of his sons and his intelligence chief. These actions, coupled with endorsements and condemnations of Gaddafi from North and South of the equator from Israel and the US to Iran and Oman, gave legitimacy to the rebels and induced numerous high-level defections from the government. NATO airstrikes devastated Gaddafi’s troops and, in likely defiance of their international mandate, intelligence and military experts directly assisted the rebels, coordinating their attacks and instructing their leaders. As wartime turning points go, this one was pretty impressive. Gaddafi’s previously irrepressible momentum was stalled, precipitating a six month stalemate which ended suddenly with the fall of Tripoli on 21 August.
The breadth of actors involved is most telling. The airstrikes started with the US but, as they began to retreat into a nationalistic shell, the remaining NATO allies came to the fore, particularly the French. The African Union tried repeatedly to broker a ceasefire, while the European Union and Western, Asian and Eastern countries were diligent in implementing the asset freeze and calling for the removal of Gaddafi. The Arab League also moved to condemn Gaddafi’s actions and swiftly isolated him from some of his traditional allies. The Human Rights Council chipped in by ejecting Libya. Lest the political operations overshadow the humanitarian crisis, several hundred million euro in aid has flooded into the country from the world over.
The worthiness of these acts cannot be questioned, but they still raise concerns. When Libya called for help it was forthcoming; other peoples have not been so fortunate. The Syrian attempt to harness the Arab Spring was repressed equally cruelly and yet the will to intervene has paled in comparison. Protests for democracy in Bahrain and The UAE were silenced with little more than a tut-tut of disapproval echoing internationally. In Somalia, it has taken a famine and tens of thousands of lives for us to wake up to the horrors of hunger in the Horn of Africa.
The list of neglect is tragically and literally endless. In 2005 Martyn Turner published a cartoon in The Irish Times depicting a man collecting donations for the Indonesian Tsunami relief operation. Around him were many hands throwing many notes, while in his shadow, looking dreary and ignored, were the collectors for AIDs prevention, Darfur, the Congo, World Hunger and World Poverty. The analogy to Libya is unnerving.
We do not resent the Libyans or the Tsunami relief collector, and yet we are still stuck with a sense of injustice and guilt because our very act of donating highlights the fact that we are simply not doing and not giving enough. We are selective with our charity, just as our governments are selective in where they intervene. The difference lies in the motivation behind our choices. We choose who receives our charity on compassion alone, but our governments seem instead to be driven by much more. Certainly, they want to help, but only if it also serves that most precious commodity; national interest.
Muammar Gaddafi is a cruel man and his fall from power can only be welcomed, but so to is Robert Mugabe. Mugabe is an eccentric with a similarly deplorable human rights record and yet he remains little more than a mild disappointment to democratic leaders. Zimbabwe lacks what Iraq and Libya has. All have had terrifying and dangerous men in charge for decades, but only the latter two have oil. The realist knows that with China now the world’s largest energy consumer and in the midst of an investment scheme to buy most of the African continent, the West wants greater control of its oil supplies. A realist will also tell me that oil is necessary for wealth, and that a prosperous West is why I get to sit in university, but we should at least consider whether there are more worthy reasons for exercising our influence.
Maybe Libya is different. Maybe our government, the EU, the US, NATO and the UN said what they said and did what they did because something special happened in Libya; the people stood up, spoke out and fought against oppression, and we, as people around the world, insisted that they be listened to. Maybe we told our governments where to intervene. Or maybe it was just oil. Whatever the reason, the Libyan story should make us take note of the impact we can have when we take an interest in the suffering of people and the injustices of corruption in distant parts of the world.
