Gaddafi is stronger than ever in Libya
The fact Gaddafi has survived the rebellions and Nato bombing undermines the
simplistic view of a hated tyrant clinging on
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- [image: Richard Seymour]
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/richard-seymour>
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- Richard Seymour
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/richard-seymour>for Lenin's
Tomb <http://leninology.blogspot.com/>, part of the Guardian Comment
Network
- guardian.co.uk <http://www.guardian.co.uk/>, Friday 29 July 2011
09.35 BST
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history<http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jul/29/gaddafi-libya-nato#history-link-box>
[image: Libya demonstration]
Supporters of Muammar Gaddafi participate in a demonstration in Tripoli,
Libya, 28 July 2011. Photograph: Hamza Turkia/XinHua/Xinhua Press/Corbis
The war on Libya has not gone well. Kim Sengupta's report on Wednesday detailed
this
starkly<http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/libyan-rebels-have-conceded-ground-since-bombing-began-2326524.html>
:
"Fresh diplomatic efforts are under way to try to end Libya's bloody civil
war, with the UN special envoy flying to Tripoli to hold talks after Britain
followed France in accepting that Muammar Gaddafi cannot be bombed into
exile.
The change of stance by the two most active countries in the international
coalition is an acceptance of realities on the ground. Despite more than
four months of sustained air strikes by Nato, the rebels have failed to
secure any military advantage. Colonel Gaddafi has survived what observers
perceive as attempts to eliminate him and, despite the defection of a number
of senior commanders, there is no sign that he will be dethroned in a palace
coup.
The regime controls around 20% more territory than it did in the immediate
aftermath of the uprising on 17 February."
If the Gaddafi regime is now more in control of Libya than before, then this
completely undermines the simplistic view put about by the supporters of war
– and unfortunately by some elements of the resistance – that the situation
was simply one of a hated tyrant hanging on through mercenary violence. Of
course, he uses whatever resources he has at his disposal, but a) it would
seem that the involvement of imperialism has driven some Libyans back into
the Gaddafi camp, as it's unlikely he would maintain control without some
degree of support, and b) we know that rebellious sectors started to go back
to Gaddafi within mere weeks of the revolt taking off, meaning in part that
his resources of legitimising his regime were not exhausted even before the
US-led intervention. Despite the defections, he has consolidated his regime
in a way that would have seemed improbable in the early weeks of revolt.
It's important to bear in mind what this means. Both Ben Ali and Mubarak had
the support of the US and its major allies – especially Mubarak. They had
considerable resources for repression, and there was financial aid being
channelled to them, talks aimed at offering reforms to the opposition … and
in the end they proved too brittle, too narrowly based, to stay in power.
The state apparatus began to fragment and decompose. The protests kept
spreading, and withstood the bloodshed. Nothing they could offer or threaten
was sufficient. Gaddafi, on the other hand, has hung on in the face of not
only a lack of support from his former imperialist allies, but active
political, diplomatic and military opposition. That he did so to a
considerable extent through sheer military superiority doesn't mean that the
regime hasn't a real social basis.
Perhaps as important has been the weaknesses of the rebellion. I argued that
the chief problem facing the revolt was that it had taken off before any
civil society infrastructure had been built up to sustain the opposition.
This meant that unrepresentative former regime elements were well placed to
step into the fray and take effective control. As a result of the defeats
they faced, those arguing for an alliance with Nato grew stronger and gained
more control. There's no question that if Nato really wanted to, they could
defeat Gaddafi. It would, however, require a level of commitment (serious
ground forces) that they aren't ready to use. I think this is because, far
from this being a pre-planned wave of expansionism by the US, the decision
to launch an aerial assault constituted a desperate act of crisis
management, which the "realists" in the administration were never
particularly happy with. Only the zealots of "humanitarian intervention"
could seriously have contemplated the kind of protracted, bloody land war in
Libya that would have been necessary to win. So, the bet on an alliance with
Nato now appears to have been doomed from the start, even on its own terms –
even if the best outcome sought was nothing more than a slightly more
liberal regime incorporated into the imperialist camp.
Now, what can Libya expect? The leading war powers are once more bruiting
negotiations, but to what end? Gaddafi may be persuaded to abandon direct
control, in which case the result will most likely be a moderately reformed
continuity regime, with ties to European and US capital fully restored.
There appears to be little prospect of his going into exile. But that's not
all. The Transitional Council led by former regime elements continues to
state that it is the only legitimate authority in Libya. It has been
internationally recognised as such by a number of crucial powers. But this
is pure cynicism. The imperialist powers know that the Transitional Council
can't control all of Libya. They're certainly not taking any steps now to
give them the military means to do so. So this means that the tendencies
toward partition are
sharpened<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/telegraph-view/8666184/We-are-edging-towards-the-partition-of-Libya.html>
.
There are signs of such a resolution being offered as a "temporary"
measure<http://www.channel4.com/news/pragmatism-rules-in-libyan-stalemate>to
secure the peace and allow some process of national reconciliation to
take place (note that this conflict has increasingly been described as a
civil war). This would be economically disabling for all of Libya, including
those territories controlled by the rebels. It would also be dangerous in
ways that I hope I don't need to spell out.
The final justification for this debacle will be that speedy intervention,
however half-hearted, prevented a massacre. Now, there may once have been
reason to believe this. But there no longer
is<http://medialens.org/index.php?option=com%5C_content&view=article&id=635:rape-mercenaries-and-bloodbaths-on-the-scale-of-yemen-media-blank-amnestys-failure-to-find-evidence-in-libya&catid=24:alerts-2011&Itemid=68>
.
Gaddafi has enough blood on his hands, and deserved to fall to the
insurgents, but there's no reason to submit to war propaganda. In reality,
as Amnesty put it, "there is no proof of mass killing of civilians on the
scale of Syria or Yemen". Which is an interesting way of putting it. It's no
secret that the coalition that was supposedly preventing a genocidal
bloodbath in Libya was actually behind much of the bloodshed in Yemen. This
completely demolishes the last leg of the moral case for war. The
"humanitarian interventions" of the 1990s left the US in a stronger
position, both geopolitically and ideologically. I'm not convinced that this
will be the result of the bombing of Libya. In fact, if there was any idea
that the US could offer an alternative model of development for the
populations of the Middle East, it now lies in ruins. It is more than
unfortunate that Libya had to be reduced to ruins for this to become
apparent.
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