The double standard of the Libyan adventure
In essence, Ghaddafi deserves all he gets, and even more, for terrorising his people and terrorizing the world. His present persecutors are just too eager to hang a dog with a bad name. Like ravenous wolves, they had waited for the prey to weaken before launching the attack. The evidences are there, the Lockerbie bombing […]
In essence, Ghaddafi deserves all he gets, and even more, for terrorising his people and terrorizing the world. His present persecutors are just too eager to hang a dog with a bad name. Like ravenous wolves, they had waited for the prey to weaken before launching the attack.
The evidences are there, the Lockerbie bombing the most grotesque from which present-day terrorism borrowed a leaf; his complicity in the protracted Chadian conflict; and then the Sudanese conflict. We would remember his romance with continental coupists and willingness to train nihilistic terror squads for maximum rulers. All this confirm accusations that he is a grand sponsor of terrorism.
But, hold on a minute, the braggart is a whole lot of contradictions. He wrestled power from a corrupt oligarchy and dismantled its rump. Then, on the shards of that destruction, he built an oasis in the desert. He took the sole resource of the country and broke the tradition of dictators by not simply putting its proceeds in his own nest, but largely using the proceeds to better the lots of his people. He told reporters recently that ‘my people love me.’ But that was then. This is now. People would rather live in an open hell, looking for the options open to them, than be sentenced to a confined paradise.
Ghaddafi’s error is the tragic flaw of all dictators – a wrong reading of the political thermometer. Otherwise, which of the countries ruled by dictators is able to boast that it has not thrown its people into beggarly exile? In which dictatorial regime are youngsters sent to train abroad, adequately catered for only to voluntarily return to serve the nation? Libya, under Ghaddafi had electricity – that is more than can be said of the Giant of Africa which cannot power a quarter of its own population. Libya under Ghaddafi was a desert country which never lacked pipe-borne or other sources of potable water. Libya under Ghaddafi may have bred international terrorists, but it didn’t refuse to cater for its citizens, such that they became refugees scattered across the globe.
Under Gadaffi Libya became a stop-over for citizens of wealthier nations in their quest to escape the crippling hardship imposed on them by leaders who built nests for themselves and their families and leaving the rest to rot. Under Ghaddafi Libya’s waters became the red sea between slavery in many an African country and the utopian paradise of Europe. To most migrants, this country was a good stop gap in which some found menial jobs that paid better than some taxi driver professors earn in Europe and America. They stayed on, found jobs and while dodging police, were either able to make enough to remit home, or to fulfil their dreams of emigration or die in the process.
Ghaddafi is a dictator who murdered his people, perhaps, but fact, too, is that in almost four decades, no foreign country had to change its visa policy towards Libyans because it had become a nuisance.
It is, therefore, shameful that Ghaddafi has allowed himself to be so boxed in. It is a shame that the coalition of states stocking the embers of dissent and throwing bombs on the hapless citizens of Libya are the same ones who have the worst policies against immigrants. Only a few years ago, these same countries were ready to kiss Ghaddafi’s behind, if only to get a slash of Libyan oil. It is a shame that these leaders lead countries that constantly spit in the face of immigrants and put hurdles on their paths to emigrate. This war is not about paying back Ghaddafi, it is about having unimpeded access to Libyan oil, a control of its economy to the same state of ruin as they have done in other ‘democratic’ countries that are nothing but vassals of their own.
Is there altruism in this adventure or is it for pecuniary interests? Do they care that democracy takes root in Libya or that it is fractured, allowing unbridled and uncoordinated access to the oil wealth? They have not come like democratic missionaries, but like pirates waiting to bring the Libyan people and its economy to its knees for their contractors to move for the economic kill. These attackers are modern day pirates, waiting for Libya to be like Somalia. How have they reacted to the kleptocrats in banana republics who organised shambolic elections which their observer citizens swear fell short of their own standards?
When they entered Benghazi, it was to prevent Ghaddafi from inflicting harm on his own people; to ‘protect civilian casualties.’ They have gone from that to subtle engagement. With a no-fly zone in place, annihilation of a sovereign country’s military might, and indirect invasion of mercenaries,the victory envisaged is still several months, if not years, away. It shows the resilience of the desert rats and, perhaps, the tenacity of the Libyan people who can see through the veil.
Today, it is not Ghaddafi that is inflicting civilian casualties, but coalition bombs. One single country recently admitted to dropping over 300 bombs on that country. With a weakened economy at home, a crippling financial crisis and rising unemployment, these pirates have enough at home to occupy their minds.
They do not have the mandate of their own people for the misadventure in Libya and should encourage the rebels to negotiate a transition to be monitored by impartial countries either within Africa or the Arab world with the coalition as observers. There is definitely no sensible reason why they should kill this obvious fly with a sledge hammer. As it stands, foreign meddling is causing more damage to the people of Libya within the period of their intervention than Ghaddafi could have done in twenty more years of his brutal dictatorship. Where then is the sense of justice in the military campaign?