American Footprints » Libya

Tripoli’s Power Vacuum

Brian Ulrich — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 22:31:42 +0000

Writing in The National, Bradley Hope paints a picture of Tripoli that isn’t pretty:

“The deposed leader is dead and its temporary leaders have declared the country ‘liberated.’ Yet the capital, in particular, has become a patchwork of armed fiefdoms, as wannabe power brokers backed by hometown militias made up of former clerks, students and engineers battle with each other and with natives of Tripoli for the spoils of war, a slice of the country’s wealth and a share of political power – all of it, in their way of looking, up for grabs.

“Kidnappings and disappearances are the new currency in the swelling conflict, with outright shootings a tactic of last resort. The creeping mayhem is fuelled by an infusion of weapons that has turned Tripoli into a virtual armoury.”

Much like Iraq in 2003, Libya appears to have no nation-wide institutions capable of keeping a semblance of public order. Revolutions breed chaos, and even in Tunisia and Egypt there has been a steady undercurrent of private vigilante violence. The most challenging task for the National Transitional Council in Libya is not to decide on the nature of Libya’s state, but simply to construct a state where Qadhafi’s personalized organs of control have evaporated.

(Crossposted to my blog)

The Trouble with Libya

Brian Ulrich — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 02:57:03 +0000

These statements from a leading TNC member have gotten a lot of attention today:

“When Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, the chairman of the Transitional National Council, pronounced the end of the uprising, the crowd reacted with shouts of ‘God is great.’ This was not long after people sang the bouncy national anthem of pre-Qaddafi days, which was revived to help celebrate the downfall of the dictator, who was killed on Thursday after he tried to flee Surt.

“Two strands — a new piety and all-purpose, freewheeling happiness — dominated the ceremony. Mr. Abdel-Jalil, stooping humbly to shake hands in the crowd and embracing the elderly relative of a fallen rebel, made clear that personality would have nothing to do with the new order.

“’We are an Islamic country,’ he said as the sun descended. ‘We take the Islamic religion as the core of our new government. The constitution will be based on our Islamic religion.’

“Among other things, he promised that Islamic banks would be established in the new Libya. He also talked of lifting restrictions on the number of women Libyan men can marry, The Associated Press reported.

“The comments reflected not only the chairman’s personal religious conservatism and the country’s, but also the rising influence of Islamists among the former rebels. The Islamists, who include some influential militia commanders, have warned that they will not permit their secular counterparts in a new government to sideline them.”

What concerns me isn’t the fact that Abd al-Jalil is proclaiming an Islamic state. Arab countries all claim their laws and institutions are derived from Islam. What concerns me is that this is simply being proclaimed rather than discussed in a political process, and that armed militias are likely to remain such an important force in the country.

I do not regret the fall of Qadhafi, but the road ahead remains difficult, far more difficult than in Tunisia or Egypt. Libya is divided and without strong institutions that can manage the transition. If under Qadhafi the west was favored, the TNC is drawn mainly from the east, and the patronage connections are sure to bring about an uncomfortable reallocation of national resources in that direction. Right now there is celebration and giddy proclamations about the future, but for Libya’s sake, national reconciliation needs to be around the corner.

(Crossposted to my blog)

Qadhafi Falls

Brian Ulrich — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 21:12:40 +0000

As I write, it is crystal clear that Moammar Qadhafi’s 42-year rule of Libya has come to an end, and he himself will likely be captured, killed or fled before the evening is out. Yesterday I commented that the best case scenario was for an uprising against him in Tripoli itself to go with the advance of the Free Libya forces. Juan Cole recounts how just that occurred:

“The underground network of revolutionaries in the capital, who had been violently repressed by Qaddafi’s security forces last March, appear to have planned the uprising on hearing of the fall of Zawiya and Zlitan. It is Ramadan, so people in Tripoli are fasting during the day, breaking their fast at sunset. Immediately after they ate their meal, the callers to prayer or muezzins mounted the minarets of the mosques and began calling out, ‘Allahu Akbar,’ (God is most Great), as a signal to begin the uprising. (Intrestingly, this tactic is similar to that used by the Green movement for democracy in Iran in 2009).

“Working class districts in the east were the first to rise up. Apparently revolutionaries have been smuggling in weapons to the capital and finding a way to practice with them. Tajoura, a few kilometers from Tripoli to the east, mounted a successful attack on the Qaddafi forces in the working class suburb, driving them off. At one point the government troops fired rockets at the protesting crowds, killing 122 persons. But it was a futile piece of barbarity, followed by complete defeat of Qaddafi forces. Eyewitness Asil al-Tajuri told Aljazeera Arabic by telephone that the revolutionaries in Tajoura captured 6 government troops, and that they freed 500 prisoners from the Hamidiya penitentiary. The Tajoura popular forces also captured the Muitiqa military base in the suburb and stormed the residence of Mansur Daw, the head of security forces in Tripoli…

“At one point an Aljazeera Arabic correspondent was able to get the frequency of the security forces and we overheard them fretting that they were running low on ammunition and fuel for their riposte to the revolutionaries’ advance.”

That last paragraph calls attention to the critical role of international support for the rebels, seen most dramatically in the NATO bombardment which destroyed much of Qadhafi’s military might. The NATO intervention was still a gamble, in that there seemed to be no plan for what would happen if a stalemate developed, but in this case it is a gamble that has paid off.

The history of the 2011 Arab revolutions now runs something like this: In December 2010, an uprising began in Tunisia, developing out of worker protests in the southern part of that country that may have been inspired by the culture of protest in neighboring Algeria. After a month, Ben Ali fled, and a massive uprising began in Egypt, which succeeded in ousting Mubarak just a few weeks. Tunisia’s revolution had inspired protest movements elsewhere in the Arab world, and after Mubarak fell, these became much larger, as such a development in 1.) a second country and 2.) a larger, more culturally central country led people to see themselves as living in a possible age of revolution. However, other governments succeeded is using loyal security forces to crack down on their protest movements, and there have been no major developments since.

Until now. Does the success of the Libyan Revolution presage similar developments elsewhere, especially in Syria and Yemen? Not necessarily. Libya had a well-armed insurrection which succeeded with the aid of a significant foreign military operation. It is not clear that those conditions will exist elsewhere, and so the “Libya model,” which as Robert Farley notes is really the Afghanistan model, does not seem a likely prototype for other countries. On the other hand, the fall of Qadhafi could inspire people elsewhere to resist their regimes to a greater extent than they otherwise might, against especially in Syria, and this in turn could ultimately lead to fractures in national security forces or between regimes and their security forces, and this could enable those revolts to succeed.

(Crossposted to my blog)

Recognizing Free Libya

Brian Ulrich — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 03:29:40 +0000

The Free Libya forces have gained some crucial international recognition:

“Major western and regional powers said yesterday that they officially recognised the Libyan opposition as the legitimate representatives of the country in a move designed to convince Col Muammar Qaddafi that his 41 years in power are over…

“The contact group, made up by more than 30 countries, includes leading western powers such as the United States, the United Kingdom and France as well as regional countries such as host nation Turkey, the UAE and Morocco and international organisations including the Arab League, the African Union and Nato.

“‘The contact group reaffirmed that the Qaddafi regime no longer has any legitimate authority in Libya and that Qaddafi and certain members of his family must go,’ the statement said. ‘Henceforth and until an interim authority is in place, participants agreed to deal with the National Transitional Council (NTC) as the legitimate governing authority in Libya.’

“Col Qaddafi responded late last night, saying the contact group’s recognition of the NTC, held no significance…

“The French foreign minister, Alain Juppe, said the international community could now ‘unfreeze certain Libyan state assets because it is the NTC that will henceforth exercise this responsibility’. Mamoud Shamman, an NTC official in Istanbul, said the opposition needed US$3 billion (Dh11bn). ‘We need funds, funds, funds,’ he said.”

This is important in part because of the Arab membership in the contact group. I suspect the timing was related both to a desire to generate a positive headline for the the rebels, as well as to provide them with the funding mentioned from Libya’s state assets.

(Crossposted to my blog)

Slow Grinding in Libya

Brian Ulrich — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 20:03:19 +0000

Camille Tawil provides a useful look at the status of the Libya War. After describing NATO’s success is degrading Qadhafi’s forces, she looks at key campaigns:

“NATO attacks succeeded in reversing the situation on the ground in the rebels’ favor. In the east, opposition forces moved from Ajdabiya toward the oil port of Brega (al-Burayqah – some 80 miles to the west), but they have not yet been able to take it, despite heavy bombardment by NATO from air and sea. It has been reported that one of Qaddafi’s sons, Muatasim, is leading the defense of Brega, which, if true, indicates how important the town is to his father (al-Hayat, May 19). The fall of Brega can open the road for the rebels to reach Sirte, Qaddafi’s birthplace and a stronghold of his tribe, the Qadadfa.

“In western Libya, the rebels of Misurata have also been on the offensive, after breaking the siege laid by Qaddafi’s forces on the city since the start of the uprising in February. However, the rebels have been trying for weeks to overrun the nearby town of Zliten, which blocks their advance on Tripoli, around 100 miles to the west. The rebels claim that they have not entered Zliten yet because they are waiting for the town’s own rebels to rise against Qaddafi. Despite claims that the rebels are indeed active inside Zliten, the town is still held firmly by Qaddafi, either because the majority of its own citizens are still loyal to his regime, or because of fear of his troops stationed inside the town. Here, again, it has been reported that Qaddafi has deployed one of his sons, Khamis, the head of the 32nd Brigade, to lead the defense of Zliten (al-Khaleej [UAE], June 2).

“But if the rebels in the east have failed to overrun Brega, and their colleagues in Misurata have also failed to enter Zliten, the opposition forces in Jabal Nafusa, south west of Tripoli, have managed to score an important victory against Qaddafi, whose forces were pushed out from almost the entire region, which lies 70 miles west of Tripoli. In June, the rebels of the Nafusa Mountains broke the siege which Qaddafi forces had laid against them from the start of the uprising, and they quickly advanced north towards Tripoli. In order to continue to Tripoli, they must first take Gharyan from loyalist forces, a task the rebels are confident can be achieved sometime this month. Rebel success in this region seems to have been the result not only of their patience and courage, but also due to weapons drops from French aircraft, including Milan anti-tank missiles (Le Figaro, June 28). The rebels are also reported to be receiving weapons from Qatar and are known to have received aid smuggled in via Tunis. Even if the Nafusa rebels manage to take Gharyan, they will soon find themselves facing major populated areas still loyal to the regime.”

The overall picture I came away with is that the rebels are slowing grinding out progress, but the emphasis is on “slowly.” Qadhafi’s best hope for survival is simply to keep fighting and hope for NATO to tire of the mission, perhaps enshrining a division of the country in the process. Tawil notes that he can probably take heart from the fact that the rebels have failed to inspire large-scale revolts in areas still under his control, suggesting his regime may have some genuine loyalty, or at the very least a critical mass of fear in the population, in the areas still under his control.

(Crossposted to my blog)

Oil and the Libya War

Brian Ulrich — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 18:36:04 +0000

Glenn Greenwald argues that these considerations are the key to the American involvement in Libya:

“By November 2007, a State Department cable noted ‘growing evidence of Libyan resource nationalism.’ It noted that in his 2006 speech marking the founding of his regime, Gaddafi said: ‘Oil companies are controlled by foreigners who have made millions from them. Now, Libyans must take their place to profit from this money.’ His son made similar remarks in 2007.

“Oil companies had been forced to give their local subsidiaries Libyan names, the cable said. Eni, for example, became Mellita, and the Spanish firm Repsol became Akakoss. Labor laws were amended to ‘Libyanize’ the economy, and oil firms were pressed to hire Libyan managers, finance people and human resources directors…

“But doing business in Libya remained difficult. ‘Everything in Libya — everything — had to be approved by Gaddafi or one of his sons,’ said Nansen Saleri, the founder of Houston-based Quantum Reservoir Impact and former head of reservoir management at Saudi Aramco. ‘. . . That’s one reason we elected not to be involved.’

“Saleri said that he would like to do business enhancing the percentage of oil recovered from known reservoirs but that he would wait for the political situation to settle down…

“But Libya’s oil production has foundered, sagging to about 1.5 million barrels a day by early this year before unrest broke out. The big oil companies, several of which had drilled dry holes, felt that Libya was not making the best exploration prospects available. One major company privately said that it was on the verge of a discovery but that unrest cut short the project.”

The quotes above are from a Washington Post story which does shake my certainty that oil was largely irrelevant to the American, British, and French decision to become involved in Libya’s civil war. However, the very last sentence also matters. Qaddafi may have been difficult to deal with, but civil conflict and uncertainty are worse, and no one knows what Libya’s future holds. At most, I think his oil policy simply represented a key reason that NATO powers saw Qaddafi as expendable in a way that they don’t Bahrain’s royal family, for example.

It’s worth mentioning that the British and French were actually the drivers of this intervention, and in that light, the refugee issue bears mentioning:

“The European responses to the predicted influx of migrants from Tunisia and Libya have been ones of panic; Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has claimed that Italy will be ‘flooded’ with half-a-million migrants, while the British Prime Minister David Cameron has repeatedly conflated trans-Mediterranean migration with security and Britain’s national/capitalist interest, couching it all in liberal interventionist terms. Speaking before Parliament on 14 March 2011, Cameron stated: ‘Do we want a situation where a failed pariah state festers in Europe’s southern border, potentially threatening our security, pushing people across the Mediterranean and creating a more dangerous and uncertain world for Britain and for all our allies as well as for the people of Libya?’ Meanwhile the neoliberal interest behind British attitudes to the North African revolutions was plain to see: ‘Europe needs to follow through on its declaration with a real and credible offer to these countries based on three of the key freedoms – movement of goods, services, and investment.’

“Noticeably while Cameron talks about the ‘movement of goods, services, and investment,’ another key freedom and one that underpins Schengen, the free movement of people, is absent. The contradiction between the free flow of capital and the free flow of people was starkly illuminated by Cameron who in the same speech advocated for the free movement of capital and at the same time warned against the movement of people in terms that paint migrants as an almost existential threat and seek to conflate migration with terrorism. For the idea of any movement of people from Europe’s southern neighbors creates a sense of panic, as Cameron so ably demonstrated in a speech to Parliament on the eve of the US and European enforcement of the No-Fly Zone on 18 March 2011: ‘Libya will become… a state from which literally hundreds of thousands of citizens could seek to escape, putting huge pressure on us in Europe. We must also remember that Gaddafi is a dictator who has a track record of violence and support for terrorism against our country.’”

(Crossposted to my blog)

Black Africans in Libya

Brian Ulrich — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 23:26:34 +0000

Reports that Moammar Qadhafi has brought in mercenaries from sub-Saharan Africa has placed Libya’s African migrant workers in a vulnerable position:

“As rumours of black mercenaries flown and trucked into Libya in their thousands have swirled about the country, poor sub-Saharan African migrant workers have borne the brunt of rebel outrage at the claims…

“The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said it has become a “poisonous” atmosphere for sub-Saharan Africans in Libya, noting youth gangs this week broke down the doors to threaten an Eritrean family in hiding for three weeks, and that there are unconfirmed reports of some killed…

“Says the man in hiding: ‘Some people here among the black African community tend to support the regime purely on the basis of wanting to survive. If the rebels win, they’re going to unleash their terror on black Africans.’”

Libya apparently has a history of racism. According to Julie Flint and Alex de Waal’s Darfur: A New History of a Long War:

“Colonel Gaddafi had been mentor of the Arab Gathering. When relations with the Arab League sourced in the 1990′s, he turned his attention towards building strategic alliances in Africa, and opened Libya’s borders to migrant workers. But an estimated one-third of Libya’s youth were unemployed, and race riots in 2000 killed an estimated 250 black migrants. Thousands more were expelled from the country.”

Libya, incidentally, is relevant to Darfur because during the 1970′s and early 1980′s, Qadhafi sought a Saharan empire, fighting a lengthy war with Chad in which he used Darfur as a side base. Qadhafi promoted an aggressive Arab supremacy as a political movement potentially favorable to his ambitions, which led to the “Arab Gathering.” This ideology of Arab supremacy is an important element to the genocide in Darfur.

(Crossposted to my blog)

The U.S. Government: Firing Missiles and Keeping the Lights On

Eric Auner — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 18:31:43 +0000

Today’s Washington Post‘s describes “America on the installment plan”:

Absent an agreement to fund the government until the end of the fiscal year in September, Congress has passed six short-term stopgap measures, one after another. The current one lasts until April 8.

The short-term extensions have kept the lights on. But the uncertainty over whether the two sides will eventually reach a long-term budget deal has done its own damage, producing waste and inefficiency as a massive federal bureaucracy tries to live paycheck to paycheck.

Some agencies have had to halt new projects in midstream, because the funds they expected have not arrived. In California, there is a new federal prison with 160 staff and no inmates. The government has no money to open it.

This is the same government that has launched over 150 Tomahawk cruise missile into Libya, each of which cost approximately $1.5 million. Galrahn at Information Dissemination calls that per missile figure a bit high, but emphasizes the operational/energy costs of an operation like this.

I am not familiar enough with the particulars of American involvement in Libya to have a strong opinion about it. But one thing is clear: unless we can pay our bills at home, it becomes very difficult to argue for expensive foreign ventures. One good reason to have a thriving economy and a well-financed government is so that we have the resources to act abroad when we need to. A major crisis — the unravelling of the North Korea, for example — might require American boots on the ground or American planes in the sky, and it would be a shame if they simply were not available.

I realize that this is as much an argument against unnecessary foreign intervention as it is an argument for fiscal prudence at home, but there is something unsettling about a government that neglects its domestic responsibilities but so enthusiastically uses force abroad.

(Just to be clear, there are a lot of ways we could better match fiscal means to ends, and I am not endorsing a particular strategy in this post)

Odyssey Dawn

Brian Ulrich — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 00:29:55 +0000

Today an international coalition began attacking military forces loyal to Libyan leader Moammar al-Qadhafi, with the official aim of protecting civilians in rebel-held areas of the country, especially the major city of Benghazi. The Obama administration is working hard to ensure that this is not perceived as an American operation. I believe this scenario is correct:

“Perhaps the Obama administration has cleverly figured out a way to bring about the neoisolationist fantasy of the 1990s: making the rest of the world shoulder the load of global policeman. Many of the critiques of U.S. military intervention over the past twenty years have been critiques of U.S. involvement, not military intervention, per se. The cases in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, and so on were deemed not to be in our interest. Perhaps they required military intervention, but let someone else bear the costs.

“The Bush 41 and Clinton administrations tried this, but were never able to get the rest of the world to handle matters satisfactorily. The United States was ‘indispensable,’ Clinton’s Secretary of State Madeleine Albright concluded. If we did not lead and shoulder the leader’s load it would not get done, whatever it was that needed doing (the East Timor exception that proved the rule notwithstanding).

“In Libya, the Obama administration followed the old Bush-Clinton playbook, but stuck with it much longer. For weeks, nothing much happened. Hawks bemoaned the fecklessness. Doves praised the ‘strategic reticence.’ And Qaddafi steadily slaughtered the rebels.

“Finally, the French and British couldn’t take it anymore and, just before the rebels couldn’t take it anymore, forced through the Chapter VII UNSCR that made military intervention imminent.”

This fits with Obama’s usual modus operandi, which centers around patience and sticking to a strategy past the point where everyone else is a nervous wreck clamoring for action, as well as his public statements and what appears to be actually unfolding in the conflict zone. The United States has been involved in missile warfare to degrade Qadhafi’s air defense capabilities, but the French are leading publicly and actually flying the bombing runs into Libya. Whether the domestic and international perceptions are what Obama hopes they will be remains to be seen.

Regardless of the allied leadership configuration, however, I have concerns about where this is headed. The textbook successful no-fly zone, in Iraqi Kurdistan in the 1990′s, depended on the group we were protecting having ground forces who could defend a perimeter such that the U.S. and Co. really only had to worry about the Iraqi air force. This is not the case in Libya, which is why we also have the “no drive” zone.

Another difference, however, is that unlike the Kurds the Libyan rebels are not interested in just maintaining autonomy, but want to topple Qadhafi. The international community has just offered to supply an air force allowing them to do so. What happens, however, if the civil war in Libya becomes a stalemate? This whole operation reminds me of Operation Deny Flight, which led after two years to a wholesale aerial bombardment of Bosnian Serb targets. If this conflict drags on, I expect the alliance currently enforcing UN Resolution 1973 to determine that eliminating Qadhafi is better than a commitment of resources with no end in sight.

Then, too, there is the aftermath. The ad hoc organization of the rebels does not seem to provide a clear, nationally recognized leadership which could take over if Qadhafi falls. We should even keep in the mind the possibility that civil war could continue among different factions, with the country possibly even splitting into Tripolitanian and Cyrenaican, or western and eastern, factions fighting for control of the oil in and around the Gulf of Sirte. It is possible the coalition could pull out once the threat of Qadhafi’s massacres is removed, but that would defy history and certainly leave a sour taste in mouths in the participating countries.

I am not opposed to a mission to stop massacres from happening. I am, however, concerned about the future direction these events could take. “Mission creep” seems not just a possibility, but a certainty unless the rebels quickly regroup and finish off the regime, and even then, if the country collapses, former colonial powers are not the ideal choices to manage the aftermath. This could indeed be the dawn of an odyssey on which none want to embark.

(Crossposted to my blog)

Intervention in Libya

Brian Ulrich — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 23:11:00 +0000

Recent days have seen Moammar Qadhafi’s forces advancing steadily against Libya’s rebels and gathering for a final assault on their stronghold in Benghazi. The United Nations Security Council just voted in favor of strong action:

“The United Nations Security Council approved a measure on Thursday authorizing “all necessary measures” to protect Libyan civilians from harm at the hands of forces loyal to Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi.

“The measure allows not only a no-fly zone but effectively any measures short of a ground invasion to halt attacks that might result in civilian fatalities. It comes as Colonel Qaddafi warned residents of Benghazi, Libya, the rebel capital, that an attack was imminent and promised lenient treatment for those who offered no resistance.

“‘We are coming tonight,’ Colonel Qaddafi said. ‘You will come out from inside. Prepare yourselves from tonight. We will find you in your closets.’

“With the recent advances made by pro-Qaddafi forces in the east, there was a growing consensus in the Obama administration that imposing a no-fly zone by itself would no longer make much of a difference and that there was a need for more aggressive airstrikes that would make targets of Colonel Qaddafi’s tanks and heavy artillery — an option sometimes referred to as a no-drive zone. The United States or its allies might also send military personnel to advise and train the rebels, an official said.”

When Libya’s uprising first started, I posted in support of a no-fly zone. Subsequent discussion made me realize that would not work under Libyan conditions the same way it did those in late Ba’athist Iraq. What we have now is what we could even have gotten then, a full assault on air and ground forces in conjunction with Libyan rebels. In other words, the United States and its allies are about to become a full part of this war.

(Crossposted to my blog)

The Libyan Atrocities

Brian Ulrich — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 01:29:24 +0000

Libya’s unbalanced dictator Moammar Qadhafi is hoping to avoid the fate of Tunisia’s Ben Ali and Egypt’s Mubarak by lashing out forcefully. Reports today show an escalating massacre of anti-government protestors, a massacre carried out by aerial bombardment and heavy artillery, killing hundreds. There have been defections, not only among the diplomatic corps, but in the military, but unconfirmed reports from inside Libya allege soldiers who refuse orders are being burned alive inside their barracks.

By these actions, Qadhafi and his entire family have secured a place alongside Saddam Hussein and Hafez al-Assad as the great monsters of the late 20th century Middle East. Not since the former’s response to the 1991 Shi’ite uprising and chemical weapons assault on Halabja has the Arab world witnessed such brutality, and there is little doubt that Qadhafi would create another Hama if the situation called for it.

In addition to the humanitarian implications, the rest of the Arab world has a stake in what happens, for if Qadhafi is successful, he will have crafted a path to regime survival for those facing their own protests, while if he fails, they will be more likely to give in with less struggle. For this reason, I wholeheartedly agree with Marc Lynch that the international community must intervene:

“By acting, I mean a response sufficiently forceful and direct to deter or prevent the Libyan regime from using its military resources to butcher its opponents. I have already seen reports that NATO has sternly warned Libya against further violence against its people. Making that credible could mean the declaration and enforcement of a no-fly zone over Libya, presumably by NATO, to prevent the use of military aircraft against the protestors. It could also mean a clear declaration that members of the regime and military will be held individually responsible for any future deaths. The U.S. should call for an urgent, immediate Security Council meeting and push for a strong resolution condeming Libya’s use of violence and authorizing targeted sanctions against the regime. Such steps could stand a chance of reversing the course of a rapidly deteriorating situation. An effective international response could not only save many Libyan lives, it might also send a powerful warning to other Arab leaders who might contemplate following suit against their own protest movements.”

A no-fly zone has already been called for diplomatically by none other than Libya’s own deputy UN ambassador, one of those diplomats who, along with his colleagues in New York, has sided with the people against his government. Qadhafi’s lack of friends in the Arab world has also led to a call for Arab League action by Qatar, which echoed the call for action by the UN Security Council.

(Crossposted to my blog)

Libya’s Insurrection

Brian Ulrich — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 01:50:28 +0000

The Los Angeles Times provides useful background on Libya:

“The eastern region has long been marginalized by Kadafi, and anger has been growing over failed economic reforms, especially for the jobless young. There is also lingering hostility over the 1996 deaths of hundreds of inmates from the east killed in a massacre at Abu Salim prison in Tripoli.

“‘Libya is more like a black hole. It’s very hard to see inside at all,’ said Joe Stork, deputy director for North Africa and the Middle East for Human Rights Watch. ‘Libya’s police have in the past shown zero tolerance for any dissent. Especially public dissent. People have been locked up for years for organizing even small protests. What’s new here is that large numbers of people are still coming out…’

“But U.S. diplomatic cables released recently by WikiLeaks reveal growing internal discontent with Kadafi.

“‘Static state salaries and inflation, particularly with respect to prices for food and key staples, have hit ordinary Libyans hard in the last two years,’ states a 2009 U.S. diplomatic cable. ‘Conspicuous consumption by regime elites, has not sat well with the silent majority…. The fact that many young men are forced by lack of means to delay marriage is another pressing economic issue in a conservative society in which marriage is a key social anchor.’”

It’s hard to say what is happening in Libya right now, but the eastern city of Benghazi in particular continues to be the scene of violence, which is also starting to spread in the west. There are also reports that Qadhafi is bringing in mercenaries from sub-Saharan Africa to augment his perhaps unreliable security forces.

(Crossposted to my blog)

The Case of Libya

Brian Ulrich — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 21:09:25 +0000

Issandr thinks that Libya’s protests are currently the most important:

“Libya shares something important with Egypt and Tunisia: an aging leader (41 years in power) faces a looming succession crisis in which the leading candidates are his own sons. I simply don’t think that’s an acceptable outcome for any republic in the 21st century, and was a key aspect to the revolt against Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, and to a lesser extent in Tunisia (with the rumored heir apparent being his nephew). Of course there are also differences: the Libyan regime is much more brutal, more tribalized, more totalitarian than Egypt or Tunisia. The country is split along an east-west axis, with the east kept systematically poorer and discriminated against, along with older historical grievances. That’s why it’s not surprise Benghazi saw the first and biggest protests, particularly since core organizers were relatives of the victims of the Abu Salim prison massacre of 1996.

“The second reason that Libya’s regime appears in some respects more fragile (at least in parts of the country) is that it is the worst in the Middle East — basically the region’s North Korea. Except that it’s not protected by China, and is situated in a region of the world that is historically globalized. Libyans may have been cut off from the rest of the world by the sanctions, but they share an Arab and Mediterranean culture with over 300 million people and know that there is better than Qaddafi out there.”

Here’s what’s happening:

“Libyans have taken to the streets and buried their dead, accusing government forces of perpetrating massacres in Benghazi and other towns said to have been taken over by anti-regime protesters.

“Opposition sources claimed that at least 61 protesters had been killed in three days of unprecedented unrest largely in Libya’s impoverished eastern region, though it was not possible to confirm that figure.

“Human Rights Watch reported that 24 people had been killed by Thursday.

“Diplomats reported the use of heavy weapons in Benghazi, Libya’s second city, and ‘a rapidly deteriorating situation’ in the latest Arab country to be hit by serious unrest.

“Amid a near-total official news blackout, fragmentary information and a ban on journalists entering Libya, there was a blizzard of rumours and claims about killings by mercenaries and defections by members of the security forces…

“Supporters of a Libyan ‘day of rage’ on Facebook reported that Derna and other eastern towns had been “liberated” from government forces.

“Crowds in Tobruk were shown destroying a statue of Muammar Gaddafi’s Green Book, and chanting: ‘We want the regime to fall,’ echoing the uprising in neighbouring Egypt. The city’s airport was closed.

“Troops were reported to have landed at Benghazi airport, suggesting a significant move into the city.”

(Crossposted to my blog)

Islamist Politics at MESA

Brian Ulrich — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 02:35:57 +0000

Greetings from the 2009 annual meeting of the Middle East Studies Association, where I’ve had the pleasure of attending four panels so far, all of which were interesting. One which probably has some interest for readers was Islamist Parties and the Political Process, which examined Islamist political movements in Morocco, Kuwait, and Algeria with eyes on inclusion in the formal political process, trends toward moderation, and competition among movements for members.

I write this based on my notes and the abstracts on the panel web site, but warn anyone who clicks through that ideas can shift between the submission of the abstract and the actual paper, and I think something like that happened with the paper “Public Religion, Democracy and Islam: Examining the Moderation Thesis in Algeria” by the University of Notre Dame’s Michael Driessen. At the very least, while I guess some of what’s in the abstract makes sense given the paper, my own notes picked up on different themes, perhaps because history is a less theory-driven field than political science and the abstract couched its topic in terms of theory. That said, he talked about the nationalization of religion which has taken place during the past decade or so as a means of co-opting Islamists and government attempts to manage religion, but also notes that, once the religious ideas are floating around, ideas, attitudes, and behaviors develop independent of both government and opposition Islamist influences, which he called an “individualization” of Islamist ideas. (Or was the government competing with the Islamists? The abstract suggests the former, but my memory the latter.)

The well-known Algerian Civil War of the 1990′s was an influence seen in the paper of Noureddine Jebnoun of the University of Montana, which was called “The Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG): From Armed Confrontation to Ideological Reversal.” That conflict led the Libyan government to perceive and sell the perception of Islamist forces in their own country as a major threat, and quelling that threat was one of the objectives behind the Qadhafi regime’s reconciliation with the United States. Since then the LIFG has come to seek its own reconciliation with the Libyan regime, renouncing both violence and the practice of takfir, or rejecting another’s claim to me Muslim, in what Jabnoun sees as a sincere change of attitude.

The other two papers (a fifth presenter was unable to attend) dealt with Morocco, and were focused to some extent on the Justice and Development Party’s position in Moroccan politics and society. The government has legalized its political participation, and today it is the largest opposition party in parliament. However, St. John’s University’s Azzedine Layachi argues in “Official and Popular Islam: The PJD and the Struggle for Legitimacy,” this cannot be seen as a successful co-option of Islamism into the Moroccan regime as the PJD does not represent the bulk of Moroccan Islamists. Layachi put forward the idea that it might ultimately be on the same path as socialism in North Africa, gradually losing contact with its grassroots in gaining inclusion without being able to act on any of its agenda.

The University of Texas’s Avi Spiegel focused exactly on those grassroots supporters with his study of the political attitudes of youth in Rabat, Casablanca, and the belt along the train tracks between them. In addition to the PJD, he looked at the JSO, or Justice and Spirituality Organization, an illegal rival of the PJD, as a means of conceptualizing not the relationship of an Islamist movement to the state, but the relationship of Islamist movements with each other. In this case, the two organizations acted as rivals competing for supporters and therefore resources. Spiegel portrayed a fluid world, but argued for a broader trend in which, instead of disillusioned youth pushing seasoned movement leaders to take more radical stances, movements’ desire to broaden their base among youth led to an increasing moderation of an initially highly conservative religious message. I forget if this was addressed by Speigel, Layachi, or both, but in entering parliament, the PJD has added to its traditional focus on public morals and family law one on political reform which it uses to compete for public support.

Similar ideas came up later in the day in a panel on political change in Iran and Kuwait in a paper by the University of Oslo’s Bjorn Olav Utvik called “Electoral Religion: Salafis and Muslim Brothers Competing for Votes in Kuwait.” One of his points was that due to Kuwait’s somewhat open political system, one gains relevance in that country through election to parliament, and therefore in order to compete with the Muslim Brotherhood in the country, the Salafis had to enter the political fray. Since doing so, however, the Salafis have drifted well away from the common image of Salafism: The slogan of the most prominent hadhar Salafi MP is “Shari’a, stability, development,” and all have taken on broader social and economic causes. In response to a question, Utvik, who was also at the morning session on North Africa, thought the idea of parties moderating to successfully compete for influence among the broader public made sense.

This has been a long post, so I won’t say much about my own thoughts stimulated by all this, but I did think of Hamas, which has entered politics but focused on aspects of government other than moral reform, even in Gaza which it now dominates. The group has thus in a sense “moderated,” but one side effect is that hardline elements then form their own groups, such as the al-Qaeda-like one from a few months ago. This, I think, represents a response both to Hamas’s moderation and its inability to achieve much through its chosen strategy. The base unit of politics is not the autonomous organization, but the individual, and when individuals are free to choose whether or not to join organizations, those organizations will permutate based on their view of the benefits of recruiting new members and the strategies they employ to do so.

(Crossposted to my blog)