Life after Gaddafi – what future for post-war Libya?

Post-invasion Iraq | Post-9/11 Afghanistan | Somalia – the failed state scenario | The Arab Spring: Egypt, Tunisia and Syria | Post Shah Iran | Cuba, a Cold War relic | After the Berlin Wall | Post-war Italy, Germany and Japan

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (l) with post-war governor Lt Paul Bremer: their exclusionist policy strengthened the Sunni insurrection

Post-invasion Iraq

Regime change in Iraq and Afghanistan was the result of direct foreign intervention.  NATO air strikes also played an important part in Libya.

But unlike Iraq and Afghanistan intervention was preceded by a popular revolution.  Even more significantly there are no foreign ground troops and foreign occupation in Libya. 

One important component that was absent in post invasion Iraq was a legitimate and indigenous government ready to assume power. The Transitional National Council fills this gap in Libya.

This bodes well for the rebels who entered Tripoli as liberators rather than occupiers. The fact that the final push came from the Nafusa mountains, Misrata and other Tripolitanian towns underlined the national character of the rebellion. 

One important lesson that the rebel government can draw from Iraq is that excluding rank and file supporters of the regime could trigger civil war. 

The decision by post war governor Paul Bremer to ban Baathist party members from the army and civil service may well have triggered the violence, which fuelled the civil war in Iraq.

It created a vast recruiting ground for the Sunni insurrection which was only defeated after these armed groups were co-opted in the battle against Al Qaeda.

Failure to co-opt Iraqi tribal leaders is also blamed for the ensuing unrest. 

Post invasion Sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shi’ites has cost more than 100,000 civilian lives.  But violence has subsided in the past two years and parts of the country like autonomous Kurdistan are relatively stable and prosperous.  But national politics continues to be dominated by sectarian parties and episodes of violence and terrorism persist.

Post-9/11 Afghanistan

President Hamid Karzai –large parts of Afghanistan still not under his control

Afghanistan offers a dual lesson, one drawn from the instability after Soviet troops left the country and another drawn from the toll of the insurgency following the ousting of the Taliban by US forces in 2001.

After the withdrawal of Soviet troops conflicts between rival muhajdeen factions created the chaos from which the Taliban emerged as a stabilising force. 

But unlike Libya, events in Afghanistan were largely shaped by an intrusive neighbour namely Pakistan whose secret services promoted and financed the rise of the Taliban in Pashtun areas. 

A fear exploited by the Gaddafi regime was that the west was repeating its mistakes in Afghanistan by assisting and arming fundamentalists.

In reality the anti-Soviet muhajdeen included an Arab component largely financed by Saudi money, which later gave birth to Al Qaeda.

But one has to distinguish between the muhajdeen and the Taliban, Islamic scholars educated in madrassas in Pakistan who won power in 1996. It was they who gave shelter to Al Qaeda.

It was Pakistan too which later helped the Taliban defeat the muhajdeen and impose their radical brand of Islam.

One parallel with Libya was the split between the north, which never submitted to the Taliban, and the Pashtun areas, which provided the Taliban with their power base. 

But unlike Libya, the divide is not merely economic and social but ethnic and linguistic.

So far events on the ground suggest that tribal and regional divisions in Libya have been over emphasised.

A decade after the toppling of the Taliban, vast swathes of the country are still subjected to instability and terror and the government is notoriously corrupt.

But there have also been notable improvements. Prior to the US invasion of Afghanistan, there were virtually no girls being educated. In 2010, there were 2.5 million girls in school.

Somalia – the failed state scenario

Siad Barre: a brutal dictator, but his overthrow plunged Somalia into chaos

One nightmare scenario for post Gaddafi’s Libya is that of slipping in to the chaos of a “failed state” like Somalia after the deposition of the brutal Said Barre. Just as Berlusconi courted Gaddafi, Siad Barre was very friendly with Bettino Craxi at a time when toxic waste from Italy was dumped literally under roads sponsored by the Italian government.

Like Gaddafi, Siad Barre came to power through a coup d'état in 1968, just a month after Gaddafi. He ruled uninterruptedly until 1991. Like Gaddafi, Siad Barre was a survivor who switched his allegiance to the West after breaking up with the Soviet Union in the late 1970s. And like Gaddafi he committed horrendous human rights abuses like destroying water reservoirs to deny water to the Majeerteen and Isaaq clans and their herds. As a result 2,000 members of the Majeerteen clan died of thirst.

Rebels of the United Somali Congress (USC) led by Mohamed Farrah Aidid attacked Mogadishu and on January 1991, Barre's government was overthrown.  But the fall of the dictator resulted in the country falling in to chaos. In 1992 US peacekeepers were sent to provide humanitarian assistance and alleviate famine but their presence was deeply resented.

The country still lacks a central government and is riven by conflict between rival warlords and clans and the Al Qaeda linked Al-Shabaab.

One major difference between Libya and Somalia is related to the vast differences in wealth between the two countries.  Libya is not only richer but has a larger percentage of university educated young people.  While many Somalis have seen nothing but war in their life, Libyans have grown up under an irrational dictatorship, which still offered basic services.

One similarity is the absence of political institutions and the strength of clan loyalties, which undermine national loyalties. 

In this sense one understands the attempt of the Libyan rebels to foster national loyalty symbolised by the old pre 1969 tricolour.

The emphasis on tribalism in modern Libya could also be an exaggeration.  As Libyan academic Najla Abdurrahman notes it was Gaddafi who deliberately sought to impose a “primitive, tribal image” on wider Libyan society for decades, regardless of the fact that it does not reflect the predominantly modern, urban character of the majority of its citizens today.

“It may come as a surprise but, unlike their leader, most Libyans who travel abroad do not pitch tents in the middle of city streets.”

Regardless of the eccentricities of its leader and his love for pointless popular committees and the brutality of his secret police, Gaddafi's Libya also had most of the administrative mechanisms that can be found in ‘normal’ countries.

The Arab Spring: Egypt, Tunisia and Syria

Both Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak were installed and eventually overthrown by their own armies/p>

Mubarak and Ben Ali were not overthrown by protesters. They were removed from power by an all-powerful army, which acted as a stabilising force in the post revolutionary period.

It was the army, which in both cases kept armed loyalists and police loyal to the former regime from killing protesters.

Both Mubarak and Ben Ali could not cling to power without the support of the army, which stood out as an impartial arbitrator rather than risk its reputation by defending the moribund regime.

Although this prevented a breakdown in law and order, this raises the prospect of tension between elected civilian governments and the army in the future.

On the other hand Gaddafi lacked an army, which could topple him from power as he had done himself to King Idris in 1969.

This could well create a dangerous vacuum in Libya and the risk of rogue elements creating mayhem and disorder.

One advantage of Libya over Egypt is its smaller population and its oil wealth and untapped tourist and solar power potential.  This will make it easier for the post revolutionary Libyan government to keep the population happy. 

One difference between Libya and its two North African neighbours is that while the revolution in Tunisia and Egypt was entirely indigenous, NATO was instrumental for the rebel success.  But US financial leverage on the Egyptian military did play a role in Mubarak’s demise.

In contrast post revolutionary governments in Egypt and Tunisia will find it harder to address the economic hardships, which triggered the revolt.

While Mubarak and Ben Ali were quick in conceding defeat, Assad in Syria has shown the same resolve as Gaddafi in brutally cracking down on dissent. 

But unlike both deposed leaders Assad not only commands the full loyalty of his army but is virtually immune from foreign intervention because of his country’s proximity to Israel and his ability to destabilise the region through his proxies in Lebanon, Iraq and Palestine.

Post-Shah Iran

Ayatollah Khomeini – his political brand of Islam hijacked the popular revolt against Iran’s Shah

A ghost has been haunting the Arab Spring from its beginning; that the popular revolution could degenerate into an oppressive theocracy like that in post revolutionary Iran in 1979. 

In Iran, what started as a revolution against an unpopular corrupt regime involving trade unionists, secular left-wingers and Islamists was eventually hijacked by Ayatollah Khomeini’s brand of political Islam.

Like their Iranian counterparts in 1979, the Libyan revolutionaries are also a motley crew including western educated liberals, former elements of the regime and Islamists.

The same applies to popular revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia where Islamists are expected to perform well in forthcoming elections.

The TNC’s constitution itself refers to Islam as “the Religion of the State and the principal source of legislation is Islamic Jurisprudence,” but it also makes reference to political pluralism, a multi party democracy, press freedom, human rights, asylum rights and rights of ethnic minorities and women.

While political Islam is likely to play an important role in all three north African, it could be a very different brand than that promoted by Iran and more similar to the brand advocated by moderate Islamists who govern a democratic Turkey.

The fact that this time round western powers (as opposed to 1979) were on the right side of history backing the revolt against Gaddafi would also immunise the new Libyan government from the vehement anti Western ideology characterising the Iranian regime.

But the success of the Libyan revolution depends on the ability of the TNC to hold together the uneasy coalition of liberal and Islamic elements in the unstable post revolutionary period. Turkish influence could have a major role to play in events in north Africa in the coming months.

Cuba, a Cold War relic

Fidel Castro – driven to Soviet embrace by US policy of defending rightwing dictators

Cuba represents a historical lesson on how a genuinely and highly romatanticized popular revolution associated with the youthful image of Che Guevara could evolve into a relatively benign but totalitarian dictatorship. 

Cuba obviously stands as a relic of the Cold War era, where the nationalistic Fidel Castro was driven in to the Soviet embrace by the rigidity of US governments who protected right wing dictatorships against the slightest deviation to the left.

But this policy was also continued in the post September 11th word with regards to Arab  and Central Asian dictatorships perceived as bulwarks against political Islamism.  The Gaddafi regime, despite its anti imperialistic rhetoric and friendship with Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela, was also eventually perceived as a bulwark against Islamism.

The fall of Mubarak, Ben Ali and Gaddafi could herald a new era where dictatorships are no longer cultivated as bulwarks against rival ideologies.

After the Berlin Wall

The collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe came largely as a result of peaceful revolutions. Mikhail Gorbachev refusal to send Russian troops to prop up Stalinist regimes resulted in the regimes falling like a pack of cards.  The only dictator to try to hold to power through violence was Nicolae Ceausescu. He was also the only communist dictator who ended up killed along his spouse. 

The situation was far worse in the Balkans after the break up of Yugoslavia. Failure to intervene to save Srebrenica from the Serbian onslaught was later invoked to justify humanitarian intervention in Kosovo and later to save Benghazi from a similar fate after Gaddafi promised to eliminate the rats and cockroaches in this city.

Although there is a striking similarity between the domino impact of the Arab Spring which has already swept three dictators to 1989, there is one fundamental difference; while Eastern European nations had the prospect of integrating themselves in to NATO and the EU, a move which stabilised their institutions, Arab countries like Libya, Egypt and Tunisia do not have such a prospect in front of them.  But the emergence of democracies in the Arab world could embolden efforts to create a Euro Med union.  But democratic Arab regimes will be less likely to accommodate business interests and will be less accommodating towards Israel.

In this context the rise of democratic but increasingly outspoken Turkey as a regional power could provide a magnet for the budding democracies in the Middle East.

Post-war Italy, Germany and Japan

Despite harbouring some of the world’s most criminal and atrocious regimes, democracy thrived in all three countries after the Second World War.

Similarly to present day Libya, Italian rebels known as partigiani – mostly composed of socialist and communist battalions-fought alongside British and American troops to liberate northern Italy from Nazi fascism.

The alliance between Christian Democrats and Communists did not survive the war but the Italian constitution itself stands as a monument to the post war national consensus. The reconstitution of the fascist party remains a crime to this day.

West Germany was directly liberated by American and British troops but while the army fought to the bitter end, by the end of the war the Nazi party had disappeared.

Details about the holocaust emerging from post war trials has immunised Germany from far right politics. 

Both Germany and Japan were subjected to military occupation but this created little resentment mostly due to post war US economic aid that ensured the emergence of Japan, Germany and Northern Italy as economic powerhouses.