BRITISH legislators have issued a damning report on the UK’s leading participation with France, the US and other NATO air forces, is the destruction of the Gaddafi dictatorship in Libya.
The aerial campaign which was launched in 2011 was initially to protect the rebels who had taken over Benghazi from assault by Gaddafi’s troops. But thanks to mission creep and the enthusiasm of the French, who led the first air strikes against the dictator’s massing army, the protection of the civilian population morphed into regime change which was not what the UN Security Council signed up for.
Since his overthrow and death in 2011, Gaddafi’s die-hard supporters have pointed out that he had predicted accurately the chaos into which Libya has now sunk. What the British parliament’s report makes clear was that in London in 2011 there was minimal understanding of the nature of the rebels and of the dangerous role that was being played by the Muslim Brotherhood in the insurrection.
One witness the committee heard said that the debacle that followed Gaddafi’s ouster owed much to the refusal of the UK, France and the US to become involved in the political process that followed the revolution. London thought that it could best assist Libyans with “technical” advice. This completely ignored the capacity of successive Libyan administrations to accept and act on such advice. For instance, an EU border mission that cost European tax payers tens of millions of dollars, never managed to persuade Libyan governments to put forward a single suitable candidate for training in frontier security.
It is clear that, almost unbelievably, France and Britain repeated the mistake of the US-led Coalition that overthrew Saddam. The bland assumption of the ill-informed and ill-advised President George W. Bush was that by destroying Saddam, his government, police and army, Iraqis would immediately come together to rebuild their country in peace and amity. The profound ignorance of this president and his political butler Tony Blair, plunged Iraq and then Syria into a bloodbath which has cost the lives and homes of millions of people and shows no signs of ending.
Libya is a smaller country with only six million people and it is uniformly Sunni. But its tribal make-up coupled with the presence of sizable Amazigh, Tebu and Tuareg minorities makes it anything but simple. Over and above tribal affiliations there are deep rivalries between urban centers. Though Benghazi had trading families linked to Misrata, Libya’s third city, the enmity between the two places has always existed and is now much deeper.
British MPs have acted with commendable speed in assessing the shortcomings of the UK’s military initiative in Libya. The problem for the Libyans is that after the failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, Washington and its allies have little appetite for more than anti-terror airstrikes, special forces advisers and further “technical” assistance. The one and only thing that unites Libyans is the presence of foreign troops. Thus Rome’s plans to send 100 paratroopers to guard a new military field hospital Italy is setting up near Misrata are fraught with danger.
In the end Libya is going to have to solve its own divisions, maybe even with a political split between east and west. This will happen faster if outside powers actually foster unity rather than quietly backing one faction or the other
