ANALYSIS:Democracy for Libya—A hard road to travel? – Asks Dr Michael J.K. Bokor

A group of people heading towards the Libyan border with Tunisia/UNHCR.A.Duclos
Historical antecedents confirm that the dynamics of a country’s internal politics should determine the nature of that country’s system of governance…

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For all the 40 or more years that he has been ruling Libya, Col. Muammar al-Gaddafi cannot be said to be the perfect ruler that Libyans (or the world) expected him to be. By acts of commission or omission, he has succeeded in positioning himself to be loved or hated, depending on where one stands to relate to him. To his admirers, he is a “King of Kings”; but to those who dislike him, he is “the madman of the desert” whose dictatorship knows no bounds. Gaddafi is, indeed, a character-of-sorts who is where he is today because of the bundle of contradictions that he has turned himself into.

Now that the international military operation against him has struck the nerve centre of Libya’s military establishment and will virtually turn him into a sitting duck for his opponents, it seems that Gaddafi has reached the Rubicon and will—as the International Coalition wills it—cross it sooner than later. The nagging question will then be: Will Gaddafi’s departure give Libyans the democracy that the rebels are gunning for (which the Coalition partners support and for which they are bombarding Libya)?

The dynamics of the Libyan situation suggest many complications. Brought face-to-face with reality, the pro-Gaddafi forces know only one thing: that they have to fight to death “to survive.” They know that attack is their only form of defence and will press on until doomsday. This determination to rout those they call “armed militias and al-Qaeda terrorists” will egg them on despite the airstrikes by the International Coalition. The Libyan problem may drag on much longer than anticipated.

Misrata is still being attacked by the pro-Gaddafi forces. There is no let-down in Benghazi either. What will happen is a total devastation of these cities, which will leave in its trail very terrible national problems unless the Coalition adopts measures other than enforcing a mere “no-fly” zone. The “no-fly” zone effort alone will not solve the problems on the ground. Already, the US says it has a “limited objective” and will not commit its ground troops to the Coalition’s efforts. So, what will happen on the ground if the pro-Gaddafi forces limit their operations to only that level?

The Coalition’s mission will be made more difficult if it can’t protect those civilians on the ground that the UN Resolution 1973 stipulates. The intense bombing now going on seems to be an over-extension of the Coalition’s mission (if strictly viewed within the context of UN Resolution 1973), which is likely to create credibility problems for the international military operations.

The Arab League has already bared its teeth against this excessive bombing, saying that it wanted protection for civilians, not this large-scale bombing of Libyan installations. We can begin to have glimpses of the credibility problems that the Coalition will soon face in its mission if its devastation of Libya continues to force the Arab League out of the Coalition in protest.

Indeed, this Coalition is already doomed to face serious problems, especially if the emerging conflict of opinion and interest within the Arab League solidifies into open opposition to its actions. This being the first time that the Arab League has entered into such an arrangement with the military establishment of the West, fears and doubts (or mistrust?) are emerging about this kind of collaboration, especially considering the fact that so far none of the Arab League members has contributed anything concrete (military personnel or armaments) to the Coalition’s efforts.

Qatar seems to be the only one that is expected to dispatch fighter jets to support the Coalition’s military operations. If the Arab League turns its back on the Coalition, it will face problems, especially if the consciousness is created among Arabs that the West is out to destroy a fellow-Arab state. Altruism may influence the Arab League’s conduct to erode confidence from the Coalition’s mission.

Russia is also displeased with this indiscriminate use of force in Libya. A statement by the Foreign Ministry says it is inadmissible for the aims of Resolution 1973 to change for the Coalition to go outside the mandate of that framework. Russia thinks that the international military operation is not the solution to the Libyan crisis. Economic interests may be at the centre of Russia’s position, though.
The West thinks that Gaddafi has lost his legitimacy and must not be tolerated, which confirms that regime change is the determining sub-text pushing this international military operation against Libya. By this regime change, then, the West (and Arab League) seems poised to help the rebels install themselves in office. That’s where the real challenges for Libya lie. Can a true long-lasting democracy be established this way?

Historical antecedents confirm that the dynamics of a country’s internal politics should determine the nature of that country’s system of governance. The future destiny of a country’s political system must be shaped by its own internal forces if its democracy is to endure. The Iraqi situation offers a clear example.

Internal turbulence of the kind that often led to drastic changes which eventually resulted in a refined and stable political system is not difficult to find in the history of nations.

In classical Greece, turmoil preceded Solon’s political reforms. Certainly, the mere fact that the rule of the Areopagites didn’t establish stability or the kind of democracy that the Athenians needed should inform us about the dynamics of uprisings against the status quo. Then, comparing notes on the attempts at unifying Greece and the causes and effects of the Peloponnesian War, we can confirm that classical Greece experienced much turbulence that was to help find lasting solutions to the political crisis facing the country. Eventually, the forces played themselves out to give Greece a lasting democracy.

The US may be proud of its democracy today but that democracy wasn’t achieved overnight or without traumatizing events that don’t even equal what might have prompted this concerted action against Libya. Historians haven’t hidden the facts from us; and we know what the US went through to be where it is today. Even though its Civil War might be blamed on issues pertaining to slavery (the North under Abraham Lincoln’s anti-slavery dispositions as against the South’s support for slavery and subsequent secessionist moves), we can tell that the dynamics of the turmoil contributed largely toward fashioning a democratic blueprint for the country. To date, the spirit of Confederacy hasn’t yet died.

France is another example. The 1789 revolution that gave the country the livewire for its democracy may be regarded as a sordid blot on the country’s image but its benefits far outweigh the demerits; that’s why France doesn’t hide the facts surrounding that Revolution.

Britain’s own internal turmoil, leading to the public pilloring and decapitation of Oliver Cromwell cannot be forgotten all too soon as a mere incident in that country’s struggle for democracy. Has Britain so soon forgotten its own repression of Northern Ireland and how the forces unleashed by Gerry Adams’ Irish Republican Army eventually provided the impetus for the kind of relative stability that the United Kingdom now enjoys?

In Russia, the paradigm-changing manouevres by the Bolsheviks and Vladimir Lenin’s rise to power confirm assertions that a country’s own internal dynamics should be allowed to shape its fate. Under Stalin, what didn’t happen in Russia? Which international force intervened? We were all witnesses to the internal contradictions that precipitated the break-up of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics into the Commonwealth of Independent States, giving a different status to the different entities that had constituted the USSR. Today, the various countries have their own brands of democracy.

Other states that may boast of democracy today cannot tell us that they didn’t learn any useful lesson from their own internal crises to be able to establish the kind of political system that they now have.
Libya may just be at that threshold too. We may be alarmed at the Libyan experience because of its peculiarities and the fact that it is being singled out as a notable occurrence which is uncharacteristic of the circumstances surrounding other uprisings, especially those in Tunisia and Egypt that led to the exit of the Presidents without as much hostility as the Libyan case has recorded. In its nature, form, and effects, the Libyan crisis no more qualifies as a peaceful protest by opponents of Gaddafi.
We already know that the uprising has degenerated from a mere protest against Gaddafi to a full-scale military warfare between the pro-Gaddafi and anti-Gaddafi forces. This internecine warfare has its own dynamics whose outcome could have been determined had this military intervention not begun when it did. Of course, with superior military force, Gaddafi’s loyalists were close to re-taking Benghazi, Misrata, Ajbadai, Tobruk, and others where the rebels had pitched camp.

The windows of opportunities for better solutions to the Libyan crisis had all not been shut at the time that the Coalition began its onslaught. Having not before had so intensive an uprising waged against his 40-year-rule, Gaddafi would have seen things in a better light to make moves that would usher Libya into a new phase of life. He wasn’t given the benefit of the doubt because his critics and bitter opponents (including countries now ganged up against him) had already written him off as someone who was marked for the slaughter house to be destroyed. They had already sealed his fate.

The military action against Gaddafi is destroying not only his personal interests but those of the country. We can tell from the massive destruction of those 20 or more strategic installations that the billions of dollars spent by Libya on those installations have become dust. This loss to the country is spuriously being interpreted by the attackers as a destruction of Gaddafi’s military capabilities. It’s not to be seen as Gaddafi’s assets and pushed away into the dustbin of history. What has been destroyed belonged to Libya and the country will have to turn around to rebuild itself, which will be a heavy cost to bear.

More importantly, the rebuilding will likely require more efforts than what the Gaddafi haters might contemplate. The battle lines that had been drawn between the pro-Gaddafi forces and their counterparts based in Benghazi will remain long after the dust has settled. The claim by Gaddafi’s opponents to have launched a “Revolution” risks not materializing because that’s not how successful revolutions erupt.

From what we see unfolding in Tunisia and Egypt, we can tell that whatever benefits the uprisings may usher in are anything but tenuous until such a time that lasting solutions are found to the ethnic, partisan political, and bitter religious differences that galvanized the protesters to remove their leaders from office. Even then, unlike the Libyan one, these uprisings had no overt foreign involvement.

The pro-Gaddafi forces see those fighting against Gaddafi as armed militiamen and terrorists and accuse the Coalition of supporting them—the very terrorists that the West has been fighting all these years. This is a terrible contradiction, which will strengthen their resolve to fight on. For as long as this enmity controls affairs, the Libyan situation will not pan out the way the Coalition may see things.
With the hand of the West and Arab League manipulating the internal dynamics of Libyan politics, it is debatable whether a consensus will ever be reached on which direction to move Libya after Gaddafi.

E-mail:mjbokor@yahoo.com